Old School AD&D Game: 1/7/2011 Recap

Continuing with posting recaps from our "monthly" Friday night AD&D Old School game, this provides the recap of the second session.  By this point, even though I hadn't told them which module we were playing through, most of the group had enough knowledge of D&D history to have figured it out - Module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.  Amazingly, although all but one player had actually heard of it, none of them had played through it before, so many of the little surprises were still new and fresh.

This time, I wrote the recap instead of one of the players.

QUICK RECAP:  The adventuring company, led by the fearless Sir Clennan Athol Innes-Kerr III continued to explore the strange cave, which appeared to be composed of some kind of strange metal and other odd materials.  It is clearly not a natural phenomenon, and the strange chambers cause echoes to reverberate all around them.  With the help of a light spell provided by the elderly Altman Maximandius (aka "Max"), the group searched the area under the alien-like "manta-ray" creature that dropped out of the ceiling to attack them.  On the ground they found a small rectangular shape composed of multiple layers of paned glass, violet in color.  Further exploration and examination of the object resulted in Innes-Kerr attempting to fit the object into a slot adjacent to one of the doors in the hallway.  The doorway opened as if by magic, sliding into the wall, to reveal a small room filled with jumbled furniture, torn bedding and personal items, and the remains of two skeletons, roughly humanoid in shape.  Innes-Kerr bravely led the group farther down the hallway, exploring each room they encountered and using the violet rectangle to open each door.  Each room was similarly appointed as the last, and after nearly an hour of exploration, the adventurers began to express their displeasure at finding no treasure, or anything else of interest.  While they debated the next course action, they were attacked by a group of small humanoids who seemed to almost be composed of living plant life, accompanied by a pack of dog-like creatures covered with vegetation and thorns.  The attackers wielded weapons that, upon close examination, were made from materials found in the adjacent rooms, such as clubs that were once clearly metal chair-legs.  Some of the creatures also used darts as weapons.  Although many in number, the attackers were beaten back by the adventurers, and after some magical trickery by Max caused the creatures to become confused, the survivors fled the adventurers, returning back up the hallway.  It was suggested that perhaps the creatures, which Prince Lanliss had dubbed "vegepygmies", were running to get reinforcements.  At this point, continued frustration at the lack of anything interesting happening led the brave Innes-Kerr to order the adventurers back to the cylindrical room near the entrance of the cave, where he fearlessly ordered the little halfling girl Lyria to jump into the center of the shaft and try to grab one of the handles.  Adroitly leaping into the shaft and successfully grabbing the handle, Lyria began to slowly move downward, as a "track" upon which the handle was joined, began to move down.  At the same time, a track on the opposite side of the shaft began to move upward.  Rather than risk Lyria being lost in the darkness, the adventurers threw her a rope and pulled her back out of the shaft.  After having let the waifish halfling "test the waters", Dougal was then ordered by Innes-Kerr to descend to the bottom of the shaft on a rope to see what he could find.  Max took this opportunity to announce to the group that he had a pair of magic boots that allowed him to levitate, which seemed to somewhat impress Prince Lanliss, who most likely thought that humans were not smart enough to make use of such advanced magic.  At the bottom of the shaft, Dougal discovered a sphincter type of doorway, in the closed position, and after some time spent probing in the darkness, he found a button which he pressed with no thought of danger to himself, and the sphincter opened.  He called up the shaft what he had found, and was ordered to go down and explore by the brave Sir Innes-Kerr, who, from his perch at the very top of the shaft, was not afraid of what might be lurking way down below.  Dougal performed a quick reconnaissance, and finding no immediate danger, called up that it was safe to descend the shaft.  Although the adventurers are not used to climbing and leave such physical efforts to Dougal and Lyria, in this case they had rope which meant the descent was done easily with no chance of falling.  Near the opening of the cylindrical chamber, they found another skeletal body, with a torn "uniform" and bearing some strange equipment.  Max, thinking the object some kind of miracle device, began to examine it and after a few minutes, ended up discharging some kind of odd form of light which burned a small hole in the ceiling near him.  Declaring it too dangerous, he began to put the item into his pack but was stopped by Prince Lanliss, who was confident that his superior elven intelligence could figure out the nature of the device.  After a few minutes of examining the device, he, too, managed to cause the device to emit a powerful beam of light, but this time it was unfortunately aimed at Max, who suffered significant burns to his body.  At this point, Prince Lanliss declared that he had successfully determined how to safely use the device in the future, and stowed it away in his pack for future use.

JOKE OF THE NIGHT: Although a bunch of stuff totally cracked me up, I have to go with:
Question: "How do we get the sphincter to open up?"
Answer: "I find that red wine usually helps."