It was great fun. For various reasons we made our way to a clearing in the woods where a rich nobleman was running a game to choose a party of adventurers. Basically the contestants were split into teams and sent into a giant mine which had been rigged with little traps and beasties and we had to recover a replica of an ancient artifact (placed there by the nobleman's wizard). The winners were chosen as a sponsored adventuring party and sent off to do unspecific adventury things. Beard (Mead, Gregor the wizard) and Sword (Mark, Arthur the fighter) met up early on and rode into the clearing on a cart driven by mules causing chaos as people had to leap out of the way. Around this time Ug (Andy, Ugene the barbarian) and Healy Stick (Owen, Mishkal the cleric) were nearing the front of the sign-up queue. They'd been chatting to pass the time and when they reached the front they were informed they needed a team to go in. So naturally they decided to team up and grab the two loonies on the cart.
About this time, Emily was wandering into the clearing looking a little out of place as she was dressed like Baldric down on his luck. After wandering round for a bit she summoned the courage to join the sign-up queue. Father Mishkal, in a fit of lunacy, looked round the clearing for a fifth party member, saw the scruffy urchin of unspecified gender (far too filthy for that) and thought "that's the one for us". So he saunters over to the starving, dirt-encrusted, tiny person (he's 6', Arthur is 6'2 and Ug is 6'3 - the party is freakishly tall!) and starts a conversation with the immortal words "Are you alright?" (he's not terribly bright). Anyway he tells Emily that she's going to need a party to compete and offers her a place on the party wagon - something she greatfully accepts.
After a bit more madness and conversation where the rest of the party gets over their new member being a mudball remarkably smoothly we're sent into the mine. Standard fair here - "does anyone have a torch?" "No torch? How are we supposed to see?" "Um, so this lighting thing then" etc. Oh, we're all given recall broaches so if anyone is spastic enough to get hurt they can teleport back to the clearing.
We wander for a while. I'm scouting ahead at the fringe of the lamplight. We find a door, we kick it in, we fight some millipedes. It's all good fun and the party is getting on well (Me: "So who is this big chap then?" Ugene: "I am the son of Een. I am Ewj." Me: "You are aren't you") and having a laugh (Me: "What do the winners get then?" Gregor: "The chance to person great heroic feats" Me: "You have heroic feet?" ... etc). We find a pit trap which lets us into a lower level. We wander some underground ruins. Eventually we find the talisman in a building with some suspicious skeletons hanging round it (I've given my recall pin to another adventurer at this point who was wounded - we're all Good of various non-lawful types).
I go forward to scout and the skeletons animate (shock). Kirsty then expects me to run and let the party job the things. Instead Emily legs it for the building and hurls herself behind some furniture. The skeletons animate, get up and the party engages leaving Emily to explore the building which is magically protected - it still has furnishings (everything else barely had walls in these ruins). It's at this point a rug peels itself off the wall and attacks Emily whilst the sofa moves to block the doorway. Armed only with a lamp, Emily manages to wrestle the rug to the ground, set it on fire and grab the talisman. The rug keeps attacking whilst the party splat the skeletons and hack the sofa to death before Sword chops the damn thing in half. We escape and teleport back to the clearing where some other group has a talisman already and the nobleman is congratulating them. Team Emily (since they all appear to be following her advice despite her STILL looking like a dung beetle that has let itself go - that'll be the charisma shining through I guess) gets approached by the noble's associate who apparently ran his own contest on the quiet. And the adventurer we rescued with my pin got arrested.
So something is going on, but we're not sure what. We've been given rooms at an inn and we're going to be given something to do next time.
That's about it, except the aftermath fun and games where Beard remembered his Prestigination spell and used it to clean me without asking first. At which point the party realised the peasant rags were glued to me WITH the mud and there was suddenly a semi-clean naked girl standing in a forest clearing looking terrified. Comedy ensued as Emily got money out of an embarrassed old man for clothes and a cloak to hide herself in. Which she sold to the clothing merchant in a fit of pique (the clearing had some basic traders present who had taken advantage of the whole event to make some cash).