Session 5

(This is a placeholder so I can catch up to where we actually are.)

They rest up for an entire day after the kobold fight. During the night, they're attacked by a swarm of rats. Tthardas gets diseased and feels very weak the next day. With no way to cure the disease or restore lost points, they decide to continue on. They head back to the orcs with the head of the kobold wizard. The orcs honor their deal and give back most of their stuff, with a warning to leave orc territory and never return.

The party wanders on: searching through the storage rooms, poking at some moldy sacks, setting off a fire trap. In a spurt of good thinking they use a Mage Hand spell to avoid the mold inside a chest.

Approaching another room Tex warns them of some darkmantles on the ground around a pillar with a dagger on it. Sadly, nobody notices the darkmantles on the ceiling of the room. They move in and check out the darkmantles, back off and buff up, then Tthardas fumbles casting an Acid Splash. The party moves in, taking out the ones on the ground quickly. Tthardas tries to Mage Hand the dagger, but it doesn't work. They spend some time trying to figure out why, then just send in Arren to set off the trap...err...get the dagger. He falls asleep and the last darkmantle dives down for a tasty orc snack. The rest of the party runs in from the corridor where they'd taken cover and eventually kill it and the wounded one who returned to attack the druid who had remained in the corridor alone.

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Soapbox: WLD Design
The first section of the WLD is filled with stat drainers. Low level parties don't have access to Restoration or Cure Disease spells, so you could easily spend many game days recovering from a bad fight against a single rat swarm or couple of stirges. The Darkmantles are bad, but these are worse.