To crush your PCs, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their players

Last night (Saturday pm Korea time), we played another session of the Vaults of Ur campaign on G+, run as always by Justin.

Alexei is off in Turkey doing archaeology stuff (and with the trouble in Syria - he said he's going near the border, it may be more Indy Jones-like than normal, who knows?).  We didn't get any word from Matt the new guy.  But Brian was able to return as Caradoc the Mumbler (cleric serving Gorma the Crone), along with Jeremy as Ripper, Dean as Elder Karl and myself as Thidrek.  [Sorry to again be lazy, but if you want links to their various blogs and other online presences, find an earlier Ur post by clicking on my Constant Con or actual play tags.]

We're still on a mission from God...or at least Karl's Great Bear church, to wipe out the carnivorous apes.  We purchased war-beasts/animal companions/pokemon in Fort Low (crowd-sourced mostly by Jez Gordon and Scrap Princess on G+).  Thidrek shucked out the gold he earned in Castle Zagyg to buy the group a giant crab, miniature velociraptor, pygmie axe-beak, and of course a giant beetle from the Hive (using guard dog stats for the most part).  We retained the services of Pliny the Younger, and hired another archer with the unfortunate name of Thodrick, who was quickly nicknamed "Rick" to avoid confusion with my character.

Prepared to hunt us some apes, we headed into the ruins.  We came to a narrow spot in the road where some rubble had fallen.  There was a humanoid body behind the rubble.  Thidrek detected an extremely foul stench in the area.  Skirting the rubble and body, we got to the far side with no trouble and Ripper decided to investigate the body, falling into a covered trench with punji sticks at the bottom.  We dug him out, uncovered the pit, and found the body to be a vulture-man wearing normal clothes instead of the loincloth and rags of the other vulture-dudes.

That's when the harpies attacked.  Four of them.  Golden Girls jokes were made, but in the first round of combat, everyone but Caradoc fell victim to the siren song of the hideous avian hags.  Luckily, on that initiative, Thidrek scored a hit with his crossbow and Karl knocked one off its perch and the axebeak was sent into the rubble to finish it off.

As Thidrek, Ripper, Karl and the henchmen sat down to watch, Caradoc rallied the beasts and made a most heroic stand for a 1st level Cleric.  They managed to take down one of the harpies (the axebeak finished off the one Karl started in on) and wounded both of the others before all the animals were dead and rains of heavy spikes forced Caradoc to retreat and allow us to be led off.  He came back out and made another stand, slinging with all his might, but the spike showers took him down to 0 hit points.

The party minus Caradoc was led into the thorn maze to the cheering of hundreds (maybe thousands?) of vulture-men.  Caradoc was drug underground by some beastmen, who informed him that they keep the apes alive to keep the vulture-men in check [we may need to renegotiate with the Temple of the Great Bear if we make it back to Fort Low] and who were also very interested in his magical armor. 

So, a cliff-hanger ending.  Will we survive and escape the vulture-men and their harpy mistresses?  Will we at least sell our lives dearly in the attempt?  Or will we simply be locked away as breeding stock for more vulture-men/vulture-sleestaks?  Only time will tell.