My First Stint as DM

We finished up Jeremiah's scenario last week. I put in a very brief segue to lead into my scenario, and this week we actually got started on my scenario. Everyone knew there would be shopping opportunities, so we took care of those mostly by e-mail, and, to make things simpler, I had a fair going on outside the town we'd be getting to. Among other things, it gave my character an opportunity to stock up on things before she gets disappeared for a while.

The story so far:
As the heroes ran from the halfling wizard's tower, it exploded. Most likely the fire (from the fire-elemental-in-a-stone) caught up to the odd randomizing device (among other things, used to switch John Theta's head with that of a goblin ... and back ... twice). They were far enough away that we were not in any danger. As it was cold and snowy outside, they took shelter in a cave. Inside the cave were some blue veins of stone called isildiril. They learned that this stone had teleportation properties, and was likely the source of many of the halfling wizard's powers, and Dovra found that when she cast her light spell on it, the stone would absorb the light and then emit it all at once.

As the sun began to rise, they heard whuffling and pawing outside the cave, and connected it to the wolf-sign they were suddenly noticing. Four gray wolves, two vicious dire wolves and two wolfogriffs (basically flying wolves) attacked. Dovra, keen to try out some new powers she had, cast a Zone of Avarice and used it to keep pulling the wolves away from the cave, and through the attack area of a Fire Pillar that she cast. The wolves were eventually slain, and skinned, and the heroes journeyed on down a path that led through a coniferous forest and to a water hole. Near the water hole was another cave, a sort of crack in the mountainside, and all the visible stone this time was isildiril. Rather tentatively, the heroes scouted through it and found that it was a tunnel going under the mountain to another forest clearing on the other side. When the scouts were convinced it was safe, they waved for everyone else to come through. As soon as everyone was inside, a magical light began rolling through the isilidiril. It teleported people as it caught up with them, taking them to a rather similar tunnel in a different mountain, but this time there was a village visible through the exit, and a fair going on outside the village.

And, yea, the heroes did go about their shopping with much gusto*, and learned that the volcano visible in the town appeared at the same time as a warlock disappeared, and that an evil warlock was controlling the elf who ran the magic-item-shop. They also met up with a dwarf blacksmith and his eladrin, artificer daughter**, whose experiments with area burst grenades greatly impressed them. The sun was going down as they made their way into the city, and the Captain of the Guard simply assumed they were yet another batch of heroes come to rescue Ridol from its curse*** and made them fill out paperwork indicating their preferred burial arrangements.

Next time, we begin in the cursed city with the sun down. ^!^

*I find it inordinately amusing that the only female character was happy to buy exactly two items, and otherwise stock up on necessities like food and alchemical reagents, and learn a few new rituals, whereas most of the males have gone overboard to get as much as they possibly can, particularly of magical items.

**No one seemed to find this odd, which I find extremely odd.

***The captain was designed to be as uncooperative as possible, but they finally managed to convince him that they really didn't know all about the curse already, and got more useful information out of him than I had planned on. So far they haven't drawn the correct conclusions from it, however, so it will probably still work out.

Final thought: I need to get Dovra out of the scenario as soon as possible. There's an exit planned for her, but I think I may activate it a bit sooner than originally planned. It was a bit disconcerting to be half-cheering at how well the pillar/zone combination worked and half-cursing at it for killing off all my beautiful wolves. Also, I think the group can handle rougher encounters than the one I used last night, so I've got a bit more leeway to ramp things up (heh-heh-heh).