Back to the Blue Book: part 3

After retreating from a group of elves that outnumbered them, the adventurers travelled through several web-filled rooms, eventually encountering and dispatching a large spider. 
Soon after, they entered another chamber filled with cobwebs, a room which also held an oversized arachnid. 

The eight-legged beast fell upon the group.  Rolling for its target randomly, the arachnid fell upon Abe's thief.  The bite of these creatures does just one point of damage, but that was the apprentice's total hit points!  With the thief brought to 0 hp, I house ruled that he was unconscious, but not dead.  Still, large spiders have weak venom (save at +2), so I told the player to roll a d20. 

Abe failed the save, and so the thief succumbed to the spider venom.  The party vacated the dungeon at this point, hoping to bring their companion back to health, but he died from the poison as they were discussing whether to undergo a quest from the priest in exchange for helping their friend.

I told Abe to roll up another character, which took about 60 seconds.  This time around, he had much better stats--two 16s and a 14--but once again rolled a 1 for hit points.  However, his 16 constitution let him add another hp to his total, for a whopping two hit points.  So the party gained a second cleric, named Yellow after the way the miniature was painted.

Returning to the dungeon, the party heard a noise behind a door.  Entering the room, they found a wounded gnoll.  In Holmes, all elves speak the language of the hyena-men, so Chris's character was able to converse with the injured creature.  He said he was wounded by a group of gnomes to the southwest, and offered to lead the party there (along with the handful of coins in his possession) in exchange for mercy.

As the gnoll led the adventurers south down a long hallway, they heard beautiful music coming from behind them.  Three of the characters failed their saves and were enchanted to walk toward the source of the heavenly notes.  The rest of the party followed them, and saw a tall, winged woman gesturing to join her.  The quick-thinking elf threw a sleep spell that silenced the music but also dropped the three party members.  Luckily, the winged woman-bird creature was alone, so the adventurers dispatched their foe (who was wearing a diamond filigree necklace) and woke their companions.

The captive gnoll took advantage of the battle and was nowhere to be found.  The adventurers headed back down the corridor the way the gnoll had been leading them, when they came across two men wearing armor and black cloaks.  Thanks to a decent reaction roll, the party was able to parley with the strangers, who told them of gnomes to the southwest and goblins to the east.  They also knew about the witch, who they said liked having others do her work.

At that point, one of the players had to leave, so I handwaived the journey out of the dungeon and told them the jewelry was worth 1,100 gold pieces.  The players were happy with their initial forays, and I was happy I managed to keep track of everything I needed to as the dungeon master (which I had been worried about going into the session).  To give you an idea of what the players explored, here's the map John drew during their time underground:

We'll see what the adventurers can add to this when I host another game sometime in February.  I hope everyone can make it.