A quickly-summarized update on how the campaign is going:
After traveling to Larm, the party discovered that the idol that they were searching lay in an abandoned fort two day's journey into the swamp. When they reached the fort, they discovered the remnants of another party -- since the party reacts to new encounters with a single strategy of unfettered violence, the situation deteriorated into the two mages from each party standing in a field full of slept adventurers. The wizards came to an agreement, woke everybody up and then planned their excursion into the fort, which was full of endlessly-regenerating undead. The other party's mage was here to research this phenomenon and his guess was that the idol had something to do with it. The combined parties managed to avoid both the major dangers and riches of the fort and ran out with the idol, with a handshake agreement on letting the other mage study the idol once it had been returned to its resting place.
Said resting place turned out to be in another part of the swamp known locally as the Poison Lands, where even the water and earth would be deadly if consumed. Heading back to Larm first, there was an interesting interlude where the thief was kidnapped by the local noble, Lady Orchid, who had it in for the party. A partially-botched rescue attempt ensued and the party got away with only the loss of a few retainers and the health of the thief's urethra. (Hint: if a torturer is asking you to guess where he's going to put a red-hot needle, saying "up your dick" is only going to give him ideas.)
Once the group was back in the bog, they were of course double-crossed by the other mage, who used his sleep spell to KO all of the party except for the elf and the thief. With the elf near death, he agreed to let the other wizard take the idol and he ran off into the bog, pursued by the thief and the now-awake cleric. He then decided to use Sleep again in order to make good his escape. He had multiple casts of it because I've adopted the DCC spell system for use with Labyrinth Lord. He then rolled a one and fell into a coma. The party thoughtfully cut his throat before he drowned.
Replacing the idol was actually quite easily done, once the part figured out how to traverse the sunken temple that they were headed to -- again, there were dangers and riches galore; the players felt that get in/get out was the wisest course of action. Heading back to Larm, they decided to take out Lady Orchid once and for all, leading to an incredibly bloody home invasion adventure which concluded with the party deciding that the Lady must have escaped through the magical mirror that they found in her bedroom and headed off to try and figure out just exactly how it worked...
