DF Whiterock Session 64: Dawn

Date:

2019-09-13

Weather:

Warm, sunny

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 352 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 418 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 415 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 406 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 425 points

Significant NPCs:

Goblin wasp rider

Stagheart, human druid

Braxilant, skeletal chimera

Haele, centaur

Soras, centaur leader

Grisby, faerie dragon

Dalen Porrel, human boy

Giant scorpion

Ninia Porrel, human girl

We started on the other side of the mysterious portal, immediately after the PCs defeated four goblin wasp-riders and their huge wasps.  Three of the goblins were dead, but one survived, and Garreth convinced everyone to capture it alive for questioning.  The group recovered the goblins' bows and shortswords and arrows and leather armor, while Zaber checked out the portal from the other side, and the goblin gradually recovered from being knocked unconscious.

Zaber tied up the goblin, while Seépravir cast Possession on it, while gave it access to all the goblin's memories.  The goblin worked for Trag, a great bugbear leader, who was invading the Far Garden from another portal, which was guarded by a giant bug.  The goblins were at war with the woodland creatures native to the Far Garden, led by centaurs.  The goblin wasp-riders had been sent to investigate signs that this portal had been reassembled.

After they finished interrogating the goblin, Seépravir Charmed it, Elias Healed it, then they sent it through the portal with a note for Hugin.  (They believed that notes sent alone did not make it through, so thought maybe attaching a note to a goblin would work better.)  Polly then played with the moss-covered stone columns near the portal, to no effect.  Zaber looked around from the hill, and noticed a tent town to the northwest.  The group could easily fly that way magically, but they had a heavy wheelbarrow, and pushing it would work better on a trail than through heavy overgrowth.  The only trail led north, so the PCs went that way.

A few miles up the trail, Zaber noticed someone hanging upside-down from a tree.  It was a shirtless, barrel-chested, unconscious human male.  On closer investigation, the man was badly wounded, with a lot of bruises and some puncture wounds.  The group cut him down and laid him down gently on the trail.  Elias tried an Awaken spell, but the man did not wake up.  He followed up with Major Healing, which healed some of his wounds, then another Awaken, which still failed.   Garreth tried his chi-based Esoteric Medicine and rolled a critical success, which told him that the man was poisoned and how to dilute the poison with healing dirt.  Then man then woke up.  His name was Stagheart, he was a druid (and before that a cart-pusher), and he'd been out looking for some lost kids, when a goblin patrol caught him and beat him up.  Stagheart asked for food and water, then volunteered to push the wheelbarrow to the tent town, called Dawn-on-Stream.

However, before the group reached town, they heard crashing sounds coming through the trees, and saw small animals fleeing.  Through the trees burst a huge skeletal creature with three canine heads.  It looked evil enough that the party didn't bother with negotiation, and Polly just started shooting arrows at it.  It dodged two out of three, and the third left a small mark.  Zaber invisibly flew behind the creature.  Garreth used the pearly spear's Great Haste power.  Elias ran right in front of the monster, and it responded by trying to bite him with all three heads.  He blocked one, parried the second, and got bit by the third.  Fortunately his heavy armor prevented most of the damage.  Seépravir, not paying enough attention, cast a redundant Great Haste on Garreth.

Zaber backstabbed the creature in the foot, doing some damage but not crippling it.  Polly shot more arrows, which got dodged.  Garreth concentrated on Uninterrupted Flurry, then threw a spear (which was dodged), then fast-drew his katana.  Elias used his Heroic Grace and Might.  The chimera spun and tried to bite Zaber with all three heads.  He managed to dodge all of them, though it required using his Luck.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Polly.  Zaber flew away, not wanting to deal with all those attacks again.

Polly fast-drew her rapier and started smashing the skeletal creature, knocking off a few small bones.  Garreth flew up and unleashed a ridiculous number of attacks, horribly wounding it.  Then Elias followed up with two very strong crushing attacks with his flail, and finished it off.  (The creature's bones seemed particularly brittle to crushing attacks.)  Garreth threw one of the skeletal heads into the wheelbarrow, but then Stagheart mentioned that there might be a reward for killing this thing, and they threw the other two heads in there too.

The trail continued north, then west, then as it approached the town, a patrol of centaurs appeared.  They spoke to Stagheart in Sylvan, then one centaur ran back to town to report, while the other centaurs continued their patrol to the east.

The group continued toward town.  As they walked and flew, Zaber spotted a house on a hill, a few miles to the southwest.  Nobody else could see it.  As they continued into town, a centaur named Haele greeted them in broken Common, and asked them to visit Soras in the big tent.  They complied, and inside the pavilion they saw an old centaur, a young human boy, and a tiny faerie dragon.   

Soras, the old centaur, thanked them for killing the goblins and the skeletal chimera.  Grisby, the faerie dragon, mentioned that Soras owed them a reward.  Then Dalen, the boy, started telling them about his missing sisters.  The group had already heard that story from Stagheart, so Seépravir short-cut the exposition and asked if he had any of his sisters's stuff, that could be used as a focus for the Seeker spell.  He led the PCs to a tent, where he pulled out a doll and a book.  Seépravir cast Seeker twice, seeing a vision of six-year-old Ninia in a burrow surrounded by huge badgers, and then twelve-year-old Jae tied up in a cave.  Neither spell gave an exact location, though, so some tracking was needed.  Seépravir asked if there were a ranger or scout around who could help with the lay of the land.  Dalen recommended talking to Grisby.  Grisby mentioned that caves are mostly found in hills, which are to the north-central, southwest, and southeast parts of the Forest.  He recommended checking the southwest first because it was closest.

The group, minus Elias who stayed in town, flew southwest to the house on the hill that Zaber had spotted.  The house was quiet and shut up, so Zaber flew in through the chimney.  (It was a tight fit but he has a good Escape skill.)  Inside was the body of a deceased elderly human male.  There was a locked door inside, which Zaber picked.  This led to a room with a bed and a chest.  When he approached the chest, a giant scorpion appeared.  Rather than fighting it, Zaber flew away, back up the chimney, back to the others.  They decided this didn't look like a place the girls would be, and would come back to it later.

They flew back to the trail where they met the druid, and started looking for giant badger tracks.  They eventually spotted some, heading into the woods off the side of the trail.  They followed the tracks to a small cave.  A huge badger jumped out and hissed at them.  Seépravir called out for Ninia, who yelled that she wasn't there.  At that point there was a long negotiation.  Seépravir fast-talked Ninia into coming along to help save her sister Jae, but the badgers weren't having it.  However, Zaber had Animal Handling (Mustelids) for wrangling Logan the Wolverine, and it came in handy, as he was able to establish dominance over the badgers and get them to let Ninia go.  Seépravir cast Flight on her.  There was then some debate on whether to go after Jae immediately or get Ninia safely back to Dawn-on-Stream first.  Garreth convinced the others that they really didn't want a six-year-old along on a dangerous mission, and they flew her back to Dawn-on-Stream.  They asked where she had last seen Jae, and she described a tower.

We stopped for the session at that point, though the PCs were going to grab Elias and head immediately out to find Jae, rather than waiting.

GM's Comments:

Great Haste is getting annoying in this game.  It's not just that it's very powerful, it's also that it makes player-turns take forever.  And then the players who have to wait too long for their turn to come around tend to get distracted, and the flow of the game suffers.  So I'm ruling that Uninterrupted Flurry is not cumulative with Great Haste since they do the same thing.  I will probably need further house rules to tone down the action abuse, though.  I'm considering a hard limit of three attack rolls per second for PCs, from any source.