Escape From Brandescar Prison: Take I

It's been quite a while since we played the early part of the campaign, but I will attempt to recount it as accurately as I remember.

We wake up in prison, chained by hand and foot, doomed to be executed three days hence.  We are all guilty of some heinous crime, ranging from larceny to murder- mine being the desecration of a Church of Mitra.  My crime, such as it could be called a crime at all, was nothing more than a misunderstanding of artistic interpretation.  As it were, the priests of the Church of Mitra were not amused by my poetic endeavors to decorate the inside of their beloved cathedral with  epic poetry regaling the sordid tales of the High Priest Ramsay and his fornication with a goat, whose name shall be stricken from the record to protect his innocence.  They've no sense of humor at all, these dreary worshipers of Mitra.

Our group included an elf magus, a dwarf cleric, a human monk, a human ranger, and myself, an elf witch.  For future reference, this party conformation will change drastically after the first game, so I won't delve too deeply into characters yet.

Tiadora comes to speak to Alfbert (the dwarf), disguised as his distraught wife, and she gives him the magic veil and the instructions to escape the prison.  After fiddling around with the patches on the veil, we extricate the master lockpick set and attempt to free ourselves.  This does not go as planned, as we make obscene amounts of noise by rolling 1's and 2's trying to pick the locks.  This was not helped by the fact that we also removed the patch that appeared to be a bag of money, scattering a fuckload of gold all over the floor and making even more noise than before.

 The guards are alerted, and two arrive at the cell, one carrying a horn.  They attempt to restrain Alfbert, who grapples, forcing us to roll for initiative.  I use Slumber on the guard with the horn, but since we are all incapacitated and weaponless, this is not incredibly helpful.  We do manage to kill one guard and free ourselves, but the other guard runs away and alerts the rest of the prison.  In the meantime, we manage to escape our manacles with the help of the trusty magical veil (though completely ignoring the window patch and instead dropping a shitload of gold on the floor).  We find and free the ogre Grumblejack, and we run into and (somehow) manage to kill Sergeant Blackerly.  Around the corner we face a large contingent of guards and the Warden, a wizard who we were not remotely prepared for.  Grumblejack's usefulness as a meat shield does not last long, and we are quickly dispatched by the Warden's magic.  We are taken back to our cell while unconscious, save for the human monk, who is taken to the warden's office for questioning.  She proceeds to beat the everloving shit out of him with her fists, managing to kill him and traumatize the entirety of the guards before she is finally taken down.

Our incompetence knows no bounds- So ends our first escape attempt from Brandescar Prison.

Way of the Wicked- Team Rocket Style

Our group started playing Way of the Wicked in December 2013, and upon nearing the end of Book I, it has become apparent that we are the Team Rocket of villains.  We are somehow endearingly incompetent- we come up with the most harebrained schemes, our attempts at stealth are laughable failures, but we have miraculously not yet ended the game in a total party wipe (though we have been very close).

So I'd like to present, for your reading pleasure, the record of our bumbling villainy, from Brandescar to Balentyne.