KABOOM!

The walls of +Ken H's Montporte megadungeon shook tonight as an explosion killed 8 party members and left only 6 standing.

OK, it's my fault. 

But I can explain....

We'd been having encounters with a bunch of cultists and heard rumors that they were planning a ritual to make themselves immortal. We rescued a couple of gnomes intended for sacrifice in that ritual and in the next room we discovered a number of ritual components -- ceremonial candles, a special dagger, and three vials of components consisting of dragon blood, unicorn blood, and the blood of the fey Queen of the Summer Court. Alaric (my character) suggested we destroy the stuff, the idea being that it was the only way to stop the cultists from executing their plan. We were pretty deep in cultist territory. If we kept the materials, we might be captured, the bad guys would get the stuff back, and they would become immortal. So my reasoning went. Septimus agreed and Skull remained silent, thinking Septimus and I knew what we were doing. 

We didn't. 

I poured the components on the ground, poured oil on top, then dropped a torch on it. The puddle blew up in a fireball right in our faces. Alaric, Skull, Septimus, and Septimus' sidekick survived the blast. A torchbearer and a dog who were outside the room also survived. Killed in the blast were our two remaining sidekicks, the prisoners we'd rescued and four henchmen. 

The moral of this story is that even when you've been playing for over 35 years, you can still do stupid sh** that gets characters killed.