The Temple of Death: Part Zero

Real Life:
D&Ding is fun! We all know this, and thus a group of us got together to play the Basic D&D adventure module: The Temple of Death! Join us as we travel through the Gauntlet towards potentially certain doom! (Yes, Basic D&D, before any of those Advanced ideas or even the d20 open source system. Back when men were men, demi-human races was the same as a particular class and hit rolls meant THAC0!) If you are likely to play this module yourself, note severe spoilers ahead (I'm going to use white font). If you have played this module, you might notice a number of encounters missing. We were playing for speed through the module, not for encountering everything, so some things were skipped for time.

Deep Background:
Many years ago, a group of adventures known as the Pentad (consisting of Kogaun, Thaddeus, Habenath, Alrick and Bolim) were in the area of Galifrei. During one particular adventure they encounted a nasty piece of work who called himself the Rahib (the "Teacher"). They defeated him, with his final death fall into a river far below, where he certainly perished, because no-one could ever survive that. Right?

Shallow Background:
The human forces of Mondas clashed in a fierce battle with forces Y, whom were lead by someone who called themselves the Master. The forces of Mondas were sounded thrashed within an inch of their lives and the remnants are now bravely gathering at an outpost known as Mt Erl to advance in a less than forwards direction. During this battle, one particular fighter (Excrutia) managed to hold her ground and keep her group together for one of the small pockets of victories, and obviously is someone who can be relied upon.

Into this came a touring group of adventurers, made up of some members of the Pentad and other adventurers (Argorn, Lotus, the Bard, Morf) that had joined together to help a Dwarven King return to his throne, although not with a few troubles of their own. But this is not that story.