Last time we left off the party was cleaning up after a blind rush into a drake's lair. They grabbed the magic loot, left the DC 15 Search check non-magic loot, cut some chunks off the drakes, and skedaddled with their dead. They camped two miles away, two fire drakes tracked them down after about 6 hours and the beguiler was replaced with a crusader who came in during that fight. Since the ladies were running late this session the ranger was "off somewhere" and the warlock stayed dead for a while. The NPC cleric identified items and threw down a Gentle Repose on the warlock's corpse then the party decided to explore the tunnels to the north.

After running through several dead ends and scaring a few lizards they came to the "lair" of Sulfras. The quarter mile high and wide obsidian wall blocking the tunnel was impressive, the two hundred foot high doors with handles the size of oxen were imposing, and the Nalfeshnee on a giant fishhook being used as a door knocker actually had them being respectful. Sulfras is colossal*2 and keeps his treasure pile out in the open, the PCs were less... there was less greed twitching than I expected from a treasure pile including things like a Staff of Power and Robes of the Archmagi. Any way they left after asking about any nearby liches and "can we do anything for you?", so they know that Sulfras wants the Onyx Scepter. See, they've heard about the Onyx Scepter before but they don't remember it because Solberg is the one who mentioned it back in September(real time)/June(game time) and their memories of Solberg have been overwritten by the Akronath incident. This is probably why they also have a firm belief that the lich holding the tip or Demonslayer is on the west wall of the Great Cave (Solberg said near, but not in the Great Cave).

They finished exploring the caves past Fort Remote by finding one of the six or seven blocked exits out of Exile (the only open one is past Sulfras). They plan on coming back to open it up someday, forgetting that someone had to scry and collapse it first and could have a warning system in place to detect re-opening attempts. Then they went back to Fort Remote, the ranger decided to take her 9th level feat as Leadership also (the crusader has it too, this is getting to be too much) and picked up the priest from the fort as her cohort. The warlock got Reincarnated as a black bear (I allow them to choose which edition's Reincarnate table to use and they always choose the AD&D table) with the HD waived because a non-humanoid form is penalty enough. They spent a day exploring the western walls of the Great Cave still looking for a lich, were warned about the local bandits (who aren't interested in attacking 40mph phantom steed adventurers, no lootable/clue including encounters for you!), and ended up in Dharmon. They flopped around there, getting the bandit stash by force and intimidation, and being directed to a guy in Blosk if they wanted to "strike a blow against the Empire." They still complained about the traps on the bandit stash, both the DC 19 mechanical trap on the door and the demon summoning Glyphs on the ceiling three feet above the tops of the unlocked treasure chests. Frankly I don't think that not having someone with Trapfinding is any excuse for chronic inability to take any safety precautions at all. Of course they also have an NPC cleric with bardic lore and Augury + Divination as domain spells whom they regularly fail to consult for any hints at all. I've never screwed them on divinations because those are a wonderful DM tool for helping the PCs to follow the plot and not DIE ALL THE TIME.

Any how, loot ended up being Boots of Striding and Springing and 900 lbs of iron and bronze bars plus a reward of about 2000$. They slapped an acid slime Babau into the crates of fine linen and furs which lost them another two grand. We stopped there for the night and that was the week that GITP was down.

The next session started with everyone present [psy-war, archer-pyrokineticist, crusader, boom-sorcerer, bear-warlock, ranger, NPC cleric(warlock), NPC dragon shaman(crusader), NPC favored soul9ranger)]. They went up to Fort Saffron, goobed around a bit and trotted off to Blosk. They offloaded the metal and drake bits for cash and started to get involved in the Blosk plot. That's a convoluted plot involving nine NPCs, insurance fraud, theft, arson, and two murders. Some of them were trying, some said "no ranks in investigation skills, pass", and the sorcerer just goofed off. So I cut it short by bringing in the Scimitar agent (secret pro-Exile trans-legal organization people) whom they had completely forgotten about and setting them off towards Spire and the Abyss.

In Fort Saffron (they missed the bandit stuff at 40mph again) I had all three NPCs mention that they were worried about crossing the Abyss. There's a negative energy rift/node in there with Screamers, aggressive undead that are attracted to bright lights and sounds near the Abyss. The PCs questioned a bandit prisoner in the fort lock-up and learned that there was a wizard's tower nobody went near west of Spire town (still after the lich in the wrong places) and that she got back across the Abyss by "sleeping in a stone circle on the northeast rim." While she didn't lie there are holes in that information that you could drive an aircraft carrier through. The PCs just accepted the testimony of a hostile prisoner as gospel. They went north along the road (missing gremlins and the bandits again at 40mph, no loot or clues here!) and came to the anti-plant, anti-animal obelisks along the border of the Abyss. They didn't investigate beyond reading the signs saying "Beware of Screamers. Dim all lights and no loud noises or you will die." So they gave the on-fire large-size hippogriff a potion of Hide from Undead and started to cross the three mile long (ten foot wide, three foot railings) stone bridge leading to Fort Spire. In the conversion from AD&D to 3.5 banshees went from 9HD to 26HD...

They all saved vs the DC 11 Will Negates of the potion, they easily saw a large flying bonfire in the pitch black. I figured that half would bother to investigate and already knew how long it would take them to get there. I gave it a DC 20 Int check to plot an intercept course between the banshee's fly speed and the party's speed, only one made it although two others got close enough that they could have turned up a minute later. The hippogriff was 100' in front of the party except for the warlock who was right underneath it on her phantom steed... Lets just say that the party saw an incorporeal undead and stopped to buff in preparation for a fight. On the first round the warlock and hippogriff died (so the sorcerer lost his spells for the day). By the third round the crusader was dead so the psy-war and sorcerer went back to "rescue his loot" from the incorporeal monster. On the fifth round the psy-war was down from Charisma drain. On the seventh round the sorcerer was dead and the pyro was down to 2 Charisma.

In the end only the warlock, sorcerer, and crusader died. Heroic action from the pyro (and a potion of Lesser Restoration, gravity, and the Ectoplasmic Form power) saved the psy-war. Everyone who ran in the first round(ranger, NPCs) got away unharmed. The other survivors all failed the DC 26 Fort save and lost Str, Dex, and Con from looking at the banshee. The crusader's loot went into the chasm because he was using Boots of Levitation to fight over the railing, but he dropped Smite onto the bridge. The sorcerer will be Reincarnated (using the last of the NPC favored soul's spell components) as a Slyth (Underdark p17) because he rolled DM's choice, and I'm going to change his familiar because he's getting people killed again with this flying bonfire idiocy. I'm not sure what the warlock and crusader are going to do. But the pyro and two NPCs are in Fort Saffron, everyone else (except the deaders) is in Fort Spire under lock-down mode. It's October 16th (I think, have to check my notes) and the party has just lost money, reputation, and the good will of local soldiers.