Showing posts with label session Five. Show all posts
Showing posts with label session Five. Show all posts

Monday, May 31, 2010

XP for Unraveling the Prophecy Session #5

Each player gained 700 experience for the session.

Total XP: 12500 (level 8 at 13000 xp)

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Thorn is betrayed... again

In the morning, I enchanted a rapier for Treble, and tried my hand at brewing a couple of potions. The potions are a new craft for me, and I'm pleased with the results. I gave one to Brogar and one to Morangan. We made a rough plan for the others to follow somewhat behind, and I headed up to the lodge, dressed as one of the battleragers. An orc was there, with a white flag of surrender. When he saw me, he ran up and shouted with relief "Brock! I'm so glad to see you. What happened?" ...so I guess that made me "Brock." Check. He said he was trying to find Agrawal, to give him a message from Thorn, but since I reported being unable to find Agrawal, he suggested that we go together to give Thorn the update. I was a little worried when he looked expectantly at me, being as I didn't know the layout of the place, so I told him to lead the way. We passed a hall on the right where it's clear that slaves are being kept... I saw their cages out of the corner of my eye and heard the ruckus from the room. And right down the hall we went, through a door into an office. Behind a large desk sat Thorn, dressed in black chain. There were two warforged against the wall behind him, holdin' quarterstaves. To the right of his desk was a striking Eladrin archer lady, and to the left of the door was an ogre, noisily chugging some foul-smelling concoction from a mug the size of a bucket, his giant club resting on the wall next to him.

Thorn asked what happened, and I relayed (uh... basically) the truth: that Agrawal must have betrayed him, that he and his men had drawn "our" guys out with a ruse and then stormed the lodge, killing most of its occupants, with only a few of us left to drive him out. I told him I had been searching for him and his crew but had been unable to find them. He was extremely angry, and ordered me and Murg (oh, so that's the guy who led me in here...) to clean the place up.

Murg helped me carry one of the bodies out of the lodge to the river. Next time I disguise myself as such a high-ranking officer, I should remember to give orders with more confidence to avoid arousing suspicion. Thankfully, Murg was naive and stupid, so he didn't catch onto my blunder. As we exited the lodge with a body, I said somewhat loudly, "Let's take him over to the mouth of the river and give him a water burial," unsure of whether my allies were within earshot. Apparently they were, though; that shiny rapier I'd just enchanted and polished for Treble appeared, sticking through Murg's chest before we even reached the river. I shouted "Murg, get down!" and brandished my greataxe. I fully intended to take a swing at Treble if need be, to keep my cover, but Murg was running like hell for the lodge and I swung at a post instead, to give the appearance of attacking our "common foe."

Poor Murg never made it to the door. I did a quick once-over on his pockets to see if he held any keys of any type but found only a few silvers, which I left on his person. I stood guard in front of the lodge, where Aurora approached and asked what she should do, posing as one of the shifters we had fought the previous day. I ordered her loudly to search for the intruders, and in a softer voice I told her to relay to the others what we had seen.

Shortly after, Thorn roared down the hall, ordering me back to his room. I obeyed, and he was properly livid. He accused me of working with Agrawal, and I denied it. He said he had just seen Murg be killed, a magic I will have to investigate when I have the time to devote my attention to it. The lies dripped glibly from my mouth as I told him Agrawal's guys were out there launching an assault on our lodge while I was trying to defend the outer doors. He totally bought it; although he seemed somewhat confused, he couldn't help but believe my convincing story. Then, to my surprise, he told me to go find Agrawal or whoever was in charge, and send 'im in.

I headed back to the front, and found my party there, about to launch an assault on the lodge. I told 'em that the boss wanted to see whoever was in charge, and backed away from them into Thorn's office, where he told all of 'em to come in, which they did. Brogar posed as the fellow in charge of us all, and told Thorn that he intended to take the slaves. Thorn didn't appreciate this too well, and ordered us all to be killed, as by now he had begun to believe that Brock had betrayed him. (First Agrawal, then Brock... Thorn wasn't having a good day.)

The ogre attacked Brogar, and battle ensued. Soon into it, Thorn escaped to save his own skin. Between the two warforged and the eladrin, we found ourselves often knocked to the ground. Some of the others got up, just to be knocked down again. I saved myself the trouble and stayed down. I think I need to work on my tactics a bit, but the others did well here: Phelaia launched a round of devastating attacks, Colvin erected a wall of bolstering light, Brogar bravely fended off the ogre and a tiger as well (until the ogre finally crushed him, at which point I healed him and he got back up and kept fighting), Aurora whirled her blades around like a madwoman, Morangan shot arrow after arrow, and Treble teleported to flank the ogre and bring the massive creature down. This battle was another tough one; at one point we had Phelaia, Morangan, Brogar, and Treble all bloodied before Colvin healed them with his wall, saving Morangan from falling unconscious the next round. In the midst of all this was the Eladrin, shooting pot shots at us from down the hall until Colvin went to chase her down as the battle wound up.

In the end, Colvin, Phelaia, Brogar, and Morangan went after the eladrin while Aurora and Treble searched the two rooms in the back. I was somewhere between the two sets of my allies, waiting to act as a reinforcement. After several minutes, we all rejoined together. Colvin, Phelaia, and Brogar brought the eladrin back with them as their prisoner, Treble reported finding a secret passage behind a bookcase in Thorn's bedroom, and Aurora reported finding some papers, a secret lever that opened a trap door to a fifteen-foot-deep pit in front of the desk, and an odd mirror (which I plan to investigate further).

We all healed up, and the questioning of the prisoner commenced, as I rifled through the papers that Aurora had found and examined the eladrin's magic items: a ring and an amulet. I think we'll be going after Thorn through the secret passage next, to try to stop him from getting away. The next likely plan is to free the slaves.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Every Rose has its Thorn... or something

Agathor--

Surely, from my last correspondence, you must be wondering what has been happening with our little party. I apologize for the delay in reporting since our cleansing of the Stormcrow Company's old hideout.

On the way back from the hideout, we encountered a band of pilgrims that had been attacked by bandits. We tracked down the bandits and recovered some of the property that was stolen, and in the process uncovered a strange plot involving the smuggling of many slaves. Since then, we have been dealing with that problem, tracking the operation to a compound located on the Dagger River. Through clever tactics and Derrick's profound skill at disguise, we have rescued many poor souls from bondage, and inflicted large casualties and property damage on the slavers.

In particular, we have made an enemy of an orc named Thorn, who is the head of the operation. In the past few days, we cleaned out his "Dagger River Compound," killing a good many of his grunts, including some higher-value minions, such as an ogre, some bloodrager orcs, a few pet tigers, and two warforged spellcasters. Alas, Thorn escaped through a secret tunnel in the middle of the battle. After he fled, the battle slowly turned to our favor, Brogar bravely holding off the ogre (and suffering gravely for it) while the rest of us dealt with the others, including a female eladrin archer with some skill in stealth and arcana, presumably his second in command. During the entire battle, the eladrin woman proved to be quite a nuisance, firing at us from a distance with sorcerous burst attacks that repeatedly knocked us prone. When the ogre and the eladrin were our only remaining threats, I decided I had had enough, and chased after her, determined to give her a drubbing, or at least keep her busy so the rest of the team could handle the ogre.

To make a long story short, the others killed the ogre, and the eladrin woman led me on a game of hide-and-seek. Phelaia was the only one close enough to assist me, but together we flushed out the woman and coerced her into surrendering. We have agreed not to kill her in return for any information she can give us (an easy promise to make, since we are law-abiding citizens).

Tonight, we shall see what else she has to tell us. I have a feeling that this wasn't Thorn's only base of operations, and an even stronger feeling that we have not seen the last of him.

I hope you are well, and look forward to seeing you, Balthazar, and the others again. Walk always in the light of the Flame,

--Colvin

Friday, October 16, 2009

Second try's a charm

During our short rest, I asked Sertanian more about the gnomes' involvement in his capture. He said he had not seen them before, and did not know why they might be involved, aside from falling into Sinruth's widely-reported charisma. Not much help, really, but there you have it.

We prepared to press on into the dungeon and enter the next room--the one into which the Ettercap queen had escaped. Treble scouted ahead and threw a dagger into the room before retreating back up the steps, intending to lure the goblins he had seen up, so that we would be fighting a more even tactical battle. We waited several minutes, in which we tried various tactics to lure them up: first, Treble moaned and groaned loudly about his "broken leg," and then, Horadric conjured the sounds of battle near us to make the goblins below think that we were engaged in combat with their allies. All we heard in response was some mumbling. Our front line worked itself into position, and as we did so, several of us voiced our uncertainty... we really weren't in a good tactical position on the steps, which were narrow and steep. Keh'r was insistent about pressing on, so I headed into the room, and as I reached the bottom of the steps, I was attacked by four creatures. Fortunately, one missed, but I still took an arrow and a couple of energy orbs before I was immobilized and forcibly pushed back up the steps. Keh'r took one look at my bloodied body and decided that retreat was the best option. Maybe next time I should make him go first?

I healed my wounds and we retreated up the steps. Treble propped a battleaxe precariously on the steps, in the hopes that it would fall noisily if the goblins gave chase, and Keh'r used another axe handle to bar the doors behind us. Treble scouted up the stairs, and reported back that he found a doorway labelled "von Adrez" leading to a coffin and crypts. The doorway opened into a huge room, with doors on each side. He said the room was guarded: four hobgoblin guards and two drakes. We weren't really prepared to explore; our focus was to finish what we'd started and rescue the cook. So Treble rejoined us and Keh'r suggested that we circle around and see if we could access the cook's location from a different entrance.

We worked our way back to the hallway that had the two large pits in it. Treble crossed and fashioned a rope ladder for our less-agile members, while I got into position to leap across. He threw a dagger into the room and we all headed in. We found ourselves in the same room as before, though this time we weren't navigating a narrow staircase to get in, and the enemies weren't expecting us to approach from this direction. Rhogar, Keh'r, and I took the front lines, protecting our allies behind us. In all, there were about 10 goblin-types facing us, along with the Ettercap queen and a drake. The three of us took quite a few hits and also slaughtered our fair share of goblin-types. Rhogar spat acid into the room and hit about all of them, taking out several minions. Unfortunately for us, it was around this time that the Ettercap queen threw a web at us, immobilizing essentially all of us.

One of the magic-wielding goblins slid Horadric down into the pit, and slid Keh'r back. Fortunately for us, the immobilization did not hinder our party as much as it could have: those of us in the front line still had several enemies to battle against, and those in the back with ranged attacks were just as effective as before. Treble continued attacking the Ettercap queen, and eventually killed it. I had my hands full with the drake and a tough hobgoblin soldier, along with one or two of his minions. One of the goblins restrained me, which made it a little harder to fight, but I still was pretty effective in my attacks. Elaira saw me trading blows with a hobgoblin soldier, so she threw a blow at him which slid him forward and gave me the necessary opening to finish him off with my flail.

The more melee guys we finished off, the more necessary it became to whittle down their archers. Keh'r, although still immobilized, had teleported in that direction when the Ettercap queen taunted him; he eventually shrug off the immobilization and was starting to resemble a pincushion with all of the arrows he was taking. In the meantime, I was still restrained in place, but even from there I finished off the last hobgoblin minion. One of the goblin archers tried to walk wide around Keh'r to gain tactical advantage, and must not have thought of Elaira as much of a threat, because he deliberately walked right past her instead. She was more cunning than he must have realized, because she stuck out her foot and tripped him as he walked past. It didn't hurt him much, but he cursed under his breath as he stumbled. Even his allies couldn't help but snicker at him.

It was around this point that the battle really seemed to move into the endgame. Horadric harnessed some new and surprising arcane power of thunder that allowed him to attack two bowmen, slide them towards us melee fighters, and then used a followup attack to finish one off. Rhogar then expended some reserves of energy to finish off the goblin that was threatening Keh'r, who by this point was looking to be in pretty bad shape. The last goblin ran away.

We had been so busy in combat that it wasn't until now that we had a chance to look around the room. We saw several large sarcophagi, and a religious altar. Keh'r, Rhogar, and I accomplished the quite difficult task of removing the heavy stone sarcophagus lids and we found a few treasures for our trouble: a shiny suit of plate mail; a magic khopesh; two potions of healing; and 100 gp. Horadric found a lantern in the room, which he took. There was a fancy inscription around the wall near the ceiling, and religious markings on the altars. Rhogar, who knows more about religious markings than I, pointed out to us that the altars had been defaced; where it now is written about being devoted to Bel Shalor, it used to be devoted to the Silver Flame.

Against everyone's better advice, Treble was insistent upon climbing down into the trash compactor chute. He came out triumphantly brandishing a bent-up, blackened rod, which Shamash quickly snatched out of his hand, saying something about how only warlocks know how to properly harness its magic. Treble now smells significantly less pleasant to travel with. While we rested, Keh'r went to peek around the corner in the next hallway. He took an arrow to the cheek... looks like a nasty wound. He reported that he saw four statues of displacer beasts and also large ratlike creatures in the room antagonizing a terrified woman tied to an altar. His description of the woman matches the cook Mertala; so after he bandages his cheek, we will go in and rescue her before taking Mertala and Sertanian back to Brindol.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

XP for session 5

Each player gained 168 experience for the session.

A shot to the face

The goblin sprang from the darkness, its wicked grin illuminated by candlelight. It leveled its crossbow at the face peeking around the corner. Keh'r jerked back, but not fast enough, as the crossbow bolt scraped a deep wound across his face.

Keh'r retreated, face bloodied, and with that, the group decided to take a short rest.

While they rested, the party identified the treasure found in the sarcophagi, as well as the rod Treble picked out of the trash pit:

1. A suit of bronze and steel plate armor with engraved designs of dragons in battle. It is Battleforged Armor +1
2. A wickedly-curved blade with an ivory hilt carved with wings for hand guards. It is a Farbond Spellblade +1 (khopesh)
3. A misshapen wooden rod, covered with burned black whorls. It is a Rod of Corruption +1
4. 2 potion of healing
5. 100 gold pieces