Brokeback Dungeon (GB013)

12th Eleasis, 1492 - Phandalin
Jackals are not renowned tree climbers, and are even less reliably arboreal when thrust sixty feet into the air by an instantaneous magical tree courtesy of Friend. Long story short: many jackals died this day, with only Hamebi the werejackal and one of her minions (named Jackwaffle by the gang) surviving the battle.

Hamebi quickly trades information for freedom, giving up the story that her pack was hired by a representative of The Six to search the ruined manor for survivors. Given an opportunity she legs it. Jackwaffle seems to have taken to Friend and hangs around - and sniffs out a body buried in the rubble. The body turns out to belong to Gildha Dunn, an understandably starving, dishevelled and delirious half-orc cleric and former member of the Fellowship of the Golden Mongoose who appears to have something in her mouth.

Gildha regains her senses after some food and drink, and reveals that the item in her mouth (a clockwork device) was used by the Fellowship's paladin to teleport away during the attack on the manor, leaving the device behind. Gildha had popped it in her mouth to conceal it when she heard the rubble being cleared away.

With trust established, the party note that the device has markings similar to the Orrery that Sack carries, and when it is held close to the device, snaps into place and whirs to life. She also reveals that the attack was mounted by agents of Dran Enterprises going by the graffiti scrawled on the walls, and notes that from under the rubble she saw several of the assailants heading into the small cellar beneath the manor.

Availing themselves of the Fellowship's remaining supplies, the group delve into the cellar. It is a small room with a cistern of bubbling water. Sack immediately of course jumps into the pool. The adjacent storeroom is full of crates and casks, but is also booby trapped with Alchemist's Fire. Slightly singed, the party discovers a secret door and moves out of the cellar into a dark dungeon hall.

The hallway opens into a cavern, bisected by an open chasm from which a crunching noise is heard. The party is then attacked by multiple swarms of insects that have, it turns out, been feasting on the skeletal corpses in the chasm.

What follows is some relatively sensible ability use from Moloch, Friend and Gildha, and some mostly ineffective but sexually supercharged shirts-off axe-thrashing from Sack and Redshirt. Friend goes down, the insects are defeated, and the curtain falls on the episode as Friend is revived and the two fighters breathlessly look each other over.