The AvocaD&D group is currently running through a set of Eberron adventures, DM’d by Josephus Brown. The player characters (all at Level 4) are as follows:

• TheCleverGuy as Cybin Stoneswift, a Hill Dwarf Wizard who’s singularly obsessed with the study of various forms of mushrooms
• Otto (our only non-Avocado party member) as Magz, a Changeling Rogue, a native of Sharn familiar with the city’s seedy underbelly
• The Hayes Code as Cassidy Cody, a Tiefling Bard who makes a living busking in the lightning rail stations with the talent passed down to her from her Pa’s deal with the devil
• Wafflicious as Pizzazzle, a Dragonborn Druid who just wants to clean up the planet so it’s fit for consumption by the all-powerful Nexu
• Spiny Creature as Aina Nistor, a Half-Elf Monk who wears the red hood of the Blood of Vol, a religion that worships no deity, but rather the divinity within all mortals
• Sister Jude the Obscure as Orana Coratash, a Kalashtar Barbarian who’s hiring herself out as muscle to local adventurers
• The Wasp Woman as NRS-K80, a Warforged Cleric, who discovered a passion for healing after serving as a living weapon in the Last War
  
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Things were going so well, too.

We’d holed up in our gnomish friend’s safehouse after escaping from the Cannith compound, getting a good night’s rest in relative safety.  We woke up to find our new kobold friend missing.  He’d left a note saying we were too dangerous for him to hang around, but he also left a parting gift.  His bag of holding, and an old sock that seemed to be filled with doorknobs.  Aina picked up the sock and tossed in into a corner, but to everyone’s surprise it flew right back into her hands.  That little kobold had put a returning enchantment on it!

While we were marveling over this oddity, the bag suddenly turned itself inside out dumping its contents all over the ground. If you’ll recall, said contents were an entire kitchen’s worth of food and the corpse of that Cannith artificer.  (The kobold must have created a new bag for himself, which would have destroyed his old one.)  Getting rid of a body might be tricky, but Aina was able to use her monastic connections to have it quietly buried in an unmarked grave somewhere.  The less I know about that, the better!  In the meantime, I set out to search for NRS-K80 and eventually found her fixing up and painting that skycab she’d “acquired.”  The cab looked quite lovely when she was done, and we met the others back at the safehouse.

The next day, we heard a knock on the door from another courier.  He handed Cassidy a gilded-edge envelope addressed to “the Interlopers”–we assumed that was us.  We were being invited to a meeting with someone called Ty’nald d’Phiarlan at a place called the Starfire Dragon Theater.  House Phiarlan apparently controlled the bard colleges and were rumored to be masters of spycraft as well.  Which I guess explained how they’d found us so quickly.

At the theater, we were pointed toward an elf sitting alone at a large table, watching a show.  He bought us all food and drinks and we got down to business.  Tybalt said he knew we’d had a few dust-ups with the Boromar clan, and that the Boromars have been trying to take advantage of a rift in House Cannith.  Honestly, I didn’t quite follow all the political talk.  Tiny wanted  us to find a certain halfling by the name of Fridden Boromar, who was somehow tied up in whatever plot was going on.  The Phiarlans wanted whatever information Freddy had.  They said he was holed in up in a stronghold in the Dwarven quarter of Sharn, and that there was a tavern next door to the place.  He gave some gold and said he could provide 5 times the amount when we’d completed the mission.  He also promised us some vials of poisons to be delivered next morning.

We decided to check out the stronghold that evening, just to get an idea of how best to get inside. We took K80’s cab and arrived as the tavern next door was starting to close down for the night.  Magz (disguised as a dwarf) and I talked to the local patrons, while Cassidy played some music and Aina challenged every dwarf in the bar to an arm wrestling match.  Cass accidentally pulled out her magical cittern, but luckily only ended up curing some random passer-by’s corns.  Aina lost the armwrestling contest but handily defeated someone in a follow-up game of darts.  Through all this, we found out that the dwarves at the outpost weren’t really well-regarded by the rest of the neighboorhood.  The were rumors of shady business going on there, though no one could really say what sort of business.

Meanwhile, Pizzazzle had turned herself into an owl and scoped out the outside.  She noted 2 guards posted at the door of the outpost, and 2 more standing by the alley between it and the tavern.  She also spotted an archer patrolling along the third-floor balcony.  The tavern roof only came up to the second floor, though, and the alley was narrow enough that we could climb through the second-story window into the stronghold.  We decided that’d be our best bet, and went back to sleep for the night.

In the morning, we did receive a package from Tie-Nard containing some a vial of ether (that would knock someone unconscious) and a bottle crawler mucus (that would cause paralysis), as well as a folding fan that casts Gust of Wind. Aina and K80 each took a poison vial and Pizzazzle took the fan.  We waited until dark and then climbed onto the roof of the bar using Aina’s grappling hook. Then we snuck over to the window with the help of Pizzazzle’s Pass Without Trace spell.  And this is where things took a turn…

We all climbed in the window into a bedroom, but Magz somehow managed to trip on the window sill and fall, bringing down a tapestry and making a LOT of noise. We started to hear footsteps coming up to see what the ruckus was. I made myself invisible, and Cassidy followed suit while the rest hid as best they could.  Pizzazzle turned into an owl again to try to distract the halfling and the dwarven guard who showed up, or make them think she’d made all the noise.  But K80 hadn’t had time to close the closet door and she was spotted.

We all sorta panicked after that.  Cassidy reacted first, and put the dwarf to sleep, but the halfling was still up.  I dosed him with some of my special spores and he froze for a second, seeing a giant constrictor snake wrapped around him that no one else could see.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t considered any way to keep him quiet, and he started screaming real loud. Magz tried to stab him, but this halfling was wearing some pretty heavy-duty armor.  Cass used her magic to plant a Suggestion in the halfling’s mind that he should escape out the window with us–he took that to mean jump out the window and run away, still screaming and still thinking that phantasmal snake had his arms pinned.  More guards came rushing in as Pizzazzle (still an owl) and K80 dove out the window after the halfling, who by now had alerted some of the guards outside as well. Magz managed to kill one of the guards, while Aina and I went diving out the window as well.  Magz ran but stopped by the window to hurl one of her walloping pellets at the guard to give a clear path to escape.  Cassidy used her magic cittern to cast Fly on herself and flew out the window, grabbing Magz on the way. We were all outside, but that halfling was still running and screaming, bringing more and more guards every second…

I’m not sure how we’re gonna get out of this one.