DF Whiterock Session 10: Into the Mines, and a Mystery Duergar

Date:

2018-06-29

Weather:

Hot, partly cloudy

Player Characters:

Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 196 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 192 (+1) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 173 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 201 points

Significant NPCs:

8 Orc slavers of the White Talon tribe
Tarik, orc slaver boss
unknown Duergar
10 human commoners, pressed into slavery by the orcs


Garreth wanted to investigate the clue they had found in the slaver monk leader Ikenvar's quarters: a mostly burned paper with "Umberwood Coffins" visible.  Ibizaber and Seépravir came along.  It turned out there was a business with that name in the Common Quarter of Cillamar, a small coffin factory.  But when they visited the premises, the factory was closed and the doors locked.  A neighbor said that creepy tall guy Mortimer Umberwood had locked up the factory and left a few weeks ago.

The group considered talking to the authorities to try to get permission to search the place, but then decided it would be easier to turn Ibizaber invisible and let him search the place unofficially.  So, after receiving Invisibility, Hush, Keen Vision, and Infravision spells from Seépravir, Ibizaber picked the lock and searched the place.  He found a few assembled coffins (just cheap thin pine boxes, really), a few planks and nails, and a partly burned ledger that talked about logs a lot.  The ledger was suspicious, but Mortimer Umberwood was gone, so that lead appeared played out.

After waiting a bit in vain at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake for Polly or Durkerle or Bernard to show up, the three decided to head to Castle Whiterock without them.  They all did a better-than-usual job of hiking the familiar path, and made good time.  Garreth wanted to go downstairs and look for more orcs to kill, but Ibizaber and Seépravir wanted to first check out the trap door down they found last time, under the fallen tower where a giant praying mantis had ambushed Polly.  Garreth agreed, and then opened the trap door, finding a rusty metal ladder leading way down.  Ibizaber carefully climbed down the wall instead of the ladder, making it to the bottom easily, then shook the ladder and found it was stronger than it looked.  Seépravir didn't trust it, and cast Levitate on herself instead.  Garreth took the ladder, without problems.  At the bottom of the ladder, the group found a winding passage leading mostly southeast, eventually ending at a staircase going down and east.  The staircase dead-ended at a blank wall, and they found the obvious secret door and opened it.  This led into a previously-found storeroom, near the orcs' former slave storage pits.  So now the group knew a second way into the orc slavers' level, and they were conveniently there to kill more orcs.

However, the western part of the level was still conspicuously empty of orcs.  It appeared they'd run out of reinforcements to guard it.  They visited the trollhound kennel, and found four trollhound corpses still there, about as stinky as before.  Garreth dragged two of them back to the stairs up, since Quintus had been interested in trollhound bits.  The three then walked over to Kaernga's throne room, and found it unoccupied, with the large pig on a spit still there, with a lot of the meat having been cut off it (with tools not animal teeth), but now a couple of weeks old and attracting flies.  Given the choice between continuing to the east to explore more of this level, or going down the secret stairs behind Kaernga's throne, they decided to clear this level first.  So they snuck carefully into new territory, with Seépravir invisible and levitating.  She also cast Infravision on all three of them, so nobody needed lights, as long as they didn't need color vision or the ability to read.

The passage opened up into a large cave, with 4 orcs with crossbows guarding 7 human slaves, 3 of them walking around carrying rocks, and 4 of them turning a large wheel to power some kind of mechanical contraption.  (It later turned out to be a conveyor belt, used to move rocks.)  There was also a huge pit to the north that the slaves were dropping rocks into.  The cave was loud enough, the heroes stealthy enough, and the orc guards lazy enough that the party achieved complete surprise.  A melee ensued, with Ibizaber backstabbing an orc in the face (I know, the face isn't in the back of the head, but he reached around from behind the orc to where its open-faced helmet didn't protect), Garreth missing with a sling then pulling out his greatsword and stabbing orcs, and Seépravir switching between Rapier Wit and Stun to keep stunning orcs every time they recovered from being stunned, so they hardly got to do anything.

The orcs had ideas, involving using slaves as human shields, threatening to throw slaves into the pit, calling for reinforcements, hitting the intruders with crossbow bolts, etc.  None of these ideas worked.  The orcs were very tough and wearing scale armor, so it took a while to kill them, but they never really accomplished anything beyond running toward reinforcements, screaming, missing, and getting hurt.

At some point during the fight, a familiar Elven voice with a woodsy accent came up behind them, accusing them of leaving to kill orks without her.  Polly didn't have Infravision, so she could only shoot where there was light.  (Fortunately for her the human slaves didn't have Dark Vision like the orcs, so there was some light in the cave for them to work.)  But there were enough lit-up orcs for her to have someone to shoot.

One of the orcs eventually fled through a passage to the southeast, screaming for help, pursued by Garreth and Polly.  Seépravir cast Haste on Garreth to let him give chase more effectively despite his armor.  In the room there was a huge orc with a whip and a greatsword, who the fleeing orc had called Tarik.  He saw Garreth coming and a greatsword duel ensued.  They were both huge and strong, but Garreth appeared a bit more skilled, or maybe a bit luckier.  He landed a vicious blow, enough that Tarik was slowed by his wounds.  After a few more misses, Garreth feinted Tarik out of his mail.  Realizing that he was in deep trouble, Tarik gave up on defense and went for a fast all-out attack.  Garreth parried though, and then struck a massive blow, killing the huge orc.

Meanwhile, the retreating crossbow orc fired its bolt at Garreth, and missed.  Polly then fired a whole lot of arrows at that orc, a couple missing, the rest hitting.  It went down hard and did not get back up.

Two more orcs with crossbows came up from the southwest, and loosed at Garreth right after he finished Tarik.  Neither hit.  These orcs were good at pointing crossbows at helpless slaves to intimidate them into working, not so good at actually hitting moving targets at range.

The group heard some other orcs running away into the mine passages, but there were a lot of places to check, so they decided to loot the rooms they had cleared instead.  They found a crate, which Ibizaber forced open.  It contained some uncut rough blue quartz stones.  Otherwise, they hadn't found any treasure, other than the orcs' weapons and armor.  But then Ibizaber found a secret door, behind the crate.  It was a well-constructed (surprising in this orc mine, which looked like it had not exactly been built to dwarven code) vertically sliding slab of rock  Ibizaber found the catch, and it slid down, silently.

The group headed down the secret passage behind the door, which went down some stairs, and then opened into a nicely appointed room.  The room contained a bed, a desk, a platform with some manacles, and an unarmored bald-headed dwarf with gray skin, facing the other way.  All four figured out that he was a duergar, and most decided to try for capture.  Polly decided the best way to stop him was by shooting him in the back with an arrow.  She missed -- and almost hit Ibizaber in the back instead.  He used Luck to make her miss.  Then Ibizaber decided the best way to capture the duergar was by stabbing him in the eye.  This was quite effective, as his knife went through the eye, into the brain, and got an instant knockout without doing enough damage to kill the duergar.  Seépravir performed first aid to keep the prisoner from bleeding to death.  Ibizaber searched the room and found a secret compartment, containing some ledgers in an unknown language.  The group also gathered up the dwarf's mail shirt and hammer and some coins and gems and a key, and headed back toward the surface.

Garreth thought of offering the liberated slaves cash to help carry back loot, so they made it back to Cillamar with a dead trollhound and an unconscious tied-up duergar in wheelbarrows, and a bunch of former mine slaves carrying scale armor and crossbows.  Interrogating the duergar to figure out what he was doing in the dungeon would have to wait until he woke up, if he woke up.

GM's Comments:

We got off to a late start, due to two players needing to start late, and a third player unexpectedly missing the session.  So we didn't quite get four hours of play in.

Chasing down the Umberwood Coffins rumor didn't pan out, because it had been weeks since the fake-monk slavers on the surface level of Castle Whiterock had been wiped out.  Maybe if they'd checked sooner...

The trap door they found last week turned out to just be another way into an area they'd already mostly cleared, so not that interesting, just tying up loose ends on the map.

Infravision and Stealth and Invisibility were effective, though.  The PCs started both fights with surprise this week.  The big fight against the orcs took a long time, but I didn't feel like the orcs ever really had a chance, since they kept getting stunned or hit or missing with their crossbows.  Tarik the giant orc with the greatsword could have done some real damage if he hit someone, but Garreth has a good parry and rolled defenses well, and Tarik kept missing when he took Deceptive Attacks to give himself a chance to get around Garreth's parry.  (This may have been the first time I had an enemy take a Deceptive Attack in this campaign.)

I like the house rule that you don't roll Feints until right before the next attack, so that the defender doesn't know how badly he's been Feinted.  I forgot to mention it until after Garreth feinted though, so next time.  Since that house rule was not in play, Tarik got to respond to being Feinted horribly with an All-Out Attack, but it didn't work.  (Running away is another great tactic if you know you've been Feinted horribly, but Tarik was slowed by his wounds and couldn't have gotten out of range.)

There was very little time left in the session when the group found the duergar.  He was surprised and didn't have his armor on, so it wasn't much of a fight.  The biggest danger a PC was in all game was probably when Polly shot through Ibizaber's hex and almost hit him, but he used Luck.  (Odds of an accidental hit are never better than 9 or less on 3d6, so 3 tries to not make a 9 are usually enough.)

Besides the Feint house rule, there were two interesting rules questions in this game.  One, if you're backstabbing from behind, can you hit the face?  The eye?  I ruled yes for the face; faces are pretty big, and a cheek shot from behind seems reasonable.  The eye is a tougher call, one I need to think about more.  (Of course slitting throats from behind is a common trope, but in DFRPG, the neck location gets protection from torso armor, so it doesn't always work well against armored enemies.)  Two, does Move and Attack benefit from the sprint bonus, like Move?  I thought that was a clear yes, even if the rules as written aren't 100% clear.

Next week: Maybe the group gets to interrogate the captured duergar, if he wakes up.  And what's in those ledgers?  Plus, they know at least two orcs are still running around in the mines somewhere, and the rescued slaves said there are more enslaved miners and orc guards back there.  Will they finally finish mopping up the last of the White Talon Orcs?