Agrizoophobia

That's right, my Players are afraid of wild animals.

They enter a tomb in the dead of night after one player had startling nightmares about graveyards and being buried alive. They aren't sure what to expect. Undead? Traps? Magical wards? Ancient curses? In the end, it's not the puzzles that get to them. It's not the dark and foreboding atmosphere. It's not even the threat of being betrayed and trapped underground, left to rot with the other corpses. It's wild animals. This isn't the first time it has happened either. It seems that when the players are sneaking up on opponents and have enough time to prepare themselves, they do just fine. In fact, when they were creeping up on a pair of hired thugs in yesterday's game they actually overkilled both opponents with arrows/crossbow bolts. But when they come to a stand-up fight with badgers, weasels, or snakes they end up taking a damage, getting poisoned, or having to run away.

And it always seems to be Sten, the middle-aged bard, who takes most of the damage. In yesterday's session he got bitten and poisoned by two snakes while the other two players withdrew from the combat, loosing arrows at their reptilian foes. It was fortunate then, that they have very recently allied themselves with the local cleric who provided healing for them when they dragged themselves out of the crypt.

So I'm guessing that while they might challenge an entire hobgoblin tribe to battle, as soon as dire wolves appeared on the scene they would high-tail it and run for cover.

Samulus managed to get spotted "balancing" the party treasure twice last session. Sten has found a love for both dancing lights and cure light wounds. And Elysia stomped around the inn pretending to be drunk, while getting inexplicably angry at the local high priestess for speaking in Celestial.

I thought that the players would really speed through this adventure and make it part way through the next one before the end of the session; but, as it happens, their previous experience with crypts, tombs, and charnel houses, has taught them to be very cautious about moving through mausoleums. They enjoyed a fair amount of role playing (Nick especially liked talking to the rotted Homunculus), solved some abstract puzzles, got into some brief but satisfying combat, and managed to keep hold of a gem they had to use for a puzzle for themselves.

Oh yeah. I didn't much like the old image of Elysia I drew. It didn't really look right to me and her armour wasn't really good enough either. So, inspired by the previous session (the one a fortnight ago in which she pulled off some very John Woo moves), I sketched another portrait of her. I'm pretty happy with it, see what you think.