2018-06-15
Weather:
Warm, clear, sunny
Player Characters:
Durkerle (M.C. Warhammer), Dwarf Cleric, 175 (+10) points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 186 (+2) points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 160 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 180 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 179 (+9) pointsSignificant NPCs:
Hugin, Human Caravan Guard
Quintus, Human Wizard
Alrux, Dwarf Armorer
Kat Glimer, Gnome Wizard
4 starving caged trollhounds
Chu-Thuk the Ugly, Half-Orc Wizard
Findle Glimer, Gnome Gemcutter
4 Orc Harem Ladies
1 armored trollhound with spikes
Kaernga, Orc Barbarian Chief of the White Talon Tribe
The party started in town, waking up early this time to have more daylight hiking time. They ran into an oddly familiar elf named Polly, who turned out to be the sister of their deceased ally Holly, and rather unhappy about her sister's demise. Needing an archer, they immediately asked her to join.
But first they had some business to take care of. They asked Quintus to identify a magic rock and some smashed bird eggs, and tell them if they could make armor out of their rust spider webs. He figured out they had a Thunderstone, some smashed Blood Hawk eggs that were no longer worth anything because they were smashed, and not really enough rust spider webs to make spider silk armor beyond maybe a glove. Also that a rust spider's rust gland would be valuable (though difficult to remove since you have to use stone tools), and that a live huge spider would be really valuable if it didn't kill you.
They took the rust spider webs to Alrux the dwarf armorer, who told them that he didn't work with that kind of vile stuff, preferring honest materials like metal and stone, but maybe they should try some pointy-eared elf in Mystenmere, a few hundred miles northwest. He also suggested that everyone buy some heavy plate armor. Nobody had enough cash for that.
Ibizaber went looking for Kat Glimer, who they had rescued from the orcs, to find out about a reward she was offering for the safe return of her brother. She was pretty sure the orcs were still keeping him alive, since he was a gemcutter and they had a mine full of blue quartz that needed cutting. And Hugin reminded the others about a reward that the old fortuneteller Sukuhn the Snake was offering for the head of the orc chief Kaernga: a stack of silver coins and a magic helmet.
Their town business done, the group hiked to the castle. They made it there without significant incident, and made good time thanks to the usually slow Durkerle picking up the pace. They headed immediately for the stairs down to the orc guardroom.
This time, there were no orcs standing guard. The group snuck down a passage to the east, and found a locked door to the south. Ibizaber picked it, and revealed a storeroom full of casks and barrels and digging tools. Durkerle smashed a crate open while everyone else told him to be quiet, but nobody appeared to hear the noise. The containers were full of low-quality food (a mix of mystery meat jerky and dried fruit), or water, or lamp oil, or mine cart wheels, or other mildly exciting things. There was a secret door behind some crates, which led to a secret passage back to a torture chamber they had previously discovered behind the slave pits. Seépravir and Ibizaber carefully explored that whole area of the dungeon, finding another mostly-empty storeroom and two mostly-empty barracks. Then they found a room with a locked metal box containing some actual treasure: a bearskin rug and a locked metal box containing some more Thunderstones and a little statue and some coins and some dwarven deepwine, made from fermented mushrooms. It smelled awful, but Durkerle assured the others that it would get any non-dwarf seriously drunk.
They heard the sound of howling behind a door, and geared up to fight. When they finally stopped preparing to ambush and opened the door, they saw a room containing 3 large cages, with a total of 4 huge hounds inside, trying to break out of the cages. Polly thought they were probably trollhounds, horrible unnatural creatures that she'd heard of but never actually seen. They had green-black fur and scaly skin, huge jaws with underbites, orange eyes, and pus-filled blisters. There was some debate about whether they were demonic. Garreth stabbed one between the cell bars with his greatsword, and it bled a bit, then started regenerating. The hound was smart enough to back out of reach, but then Polly put an arrow through its eye and it went down. That started healing too, so Durkerle cast Flaming Weapon on Garreth's sword, and he opened the cage and killed it with fire. That worked. With the other 3 trollhounds also in cages and unable to really defend themselves, they repeated the same steps a few times: shoot them in the eye until they go down, then open the cage and stab them with a flaming sword until they don't get back up. Thinking the regenerating trollhounds might contain valuable magical ingredients, but not wanting to carry a 350-pound dog corpse home unnecessarily, the group chopped a trollhound ear off to bring back to town as a sample.
With that section of the dungeon explored, the party headed back through the first storeroom to another door. When they opened this one, it revealed a chained gnome cutting blue gems, and a very ugly orc (much smaller than the other White Talon orcs, without their milky-white skin) supervising. The gnome dove for cover as the PCs attacked the orc using a mix of tactics, such a shooting it with arrows, hitting it in the face with thrown knives, stunning it with spells, and stabbing it with a greatsword. The orc lasted just long enough to beg for its life and claim to have useful information, but not all of the party were in a mode for parley, and it died. The gnome thanked them for showing up and asked them to unlock and give him some decent food. He was Findle Glimer, brother of Kat, and had been enslaved and forced to cut blue quartz rocks into pretty blue quartz gems full time. Once they freed and fed him, Findle pointed in the direction of the rest of the orcs, and said he'd box up the gems for them while they went adventuring. Besides the pile of cut blue quartz, the orc also had a magic gem and a potion in its pocket, a magic staff, a couple of interesting non-fiction books (one about fungus recipes and one about gemcutting), a couple of spellbooks (one of them Kat's, which Findle asked be returned to her), and an Orcish romance novel which, fortunately, most of the group could not read. (Unfortunately, it had pictures.)
The group then continued down the passage, which forked, giving them a choice of southeast and southwest. Seépravir picked southwest, and she and Ibizaber did their usual slow stealthy sneaky searchy movement that way until they found a big wooden door. It had a tapestry above it showing a white talon holding a morningstar, very Orcish, probably the banner of the White Talon Tribe. Listening at the door revealed some indistinct conversation inside, so everyone lined up in Ambush Mode, and then Garreth kicked open the door.
Unfortunately for the group, they didn't achieve surprise. Instead, they saw a big room featuring a fire pit with a huge pig on a spit above it, four scantily-clad female orcs, a huge trollhound wearing spiked armor, and an even bigger orc wearing studded leather armor, lounging on a huge thronelike chair. A fight ensued. Polly shot the closest harem orc, but she dodged. Ibizaber aimed his throwing knife at the big orc. Hugin aimed his crossbow at the trollhound but couldn't get a clear shot off without risking hitting his friends. The trollhound charged Garreth and failed to bite him, and Garreth stabbed the trollhound. Durkerle moved up to cast Flaming Weapon on Garreth's greatsword. Seépravir moved up to cast Stun on the trollhound, succeeding. The remaining harem orcs grabbed improvised weapons: a kitchen knife, a platter, a goblet. Kaernga the orc leader readied his great axe and charged across the room.
It turned out that the female orcs weren't very good fighters. Holly shot one a second time, and this time she didn't dodge the arrow and died. Another one critically failed her attack on Garreth and managed to stab herself to death. Another actually almost hit Durkerle with a silver serving platter, but he dodged. Ibizaber threw a knife at Kaernga's face, and hit, but it bounced off his tough skin. Garreth chopped and burned the trollhound again, killing it, then stepped and took a good swing at Kaernga, who almost dodged. Almost. He was a tough orc though, and didn't go down despite the massive cut. Seépravir used her Rapier Wit to insult and stun Kaernga, then cast Itch on him to lower his dexterity.
The last harem orc ran out of the room, but Ibizaber threw a knife into her back and she went down. That left just Kaernga. Polly put an arrow through his eye into his brain, which did a lot of damage but didn't knock him out. Then Garreth stepped up and used Rapid Strike to double-hit the stunned, itchy, knocked down, and extremely wounded orc chief. He failed his third death check, and that was the end of that.
Kaernga's pleasure chamber had some nice pillows and goblets and platters, plus some decent (if overcooked) pork barbeque. The elves immediately saw that Kaernga's armor and cloak were magic, and marked it for taking. Hugin started hacking Kaernga's head off for the reward, which he was informed he would be sharing with the group. Ibizaber found a secret door behind the throne, leading to a spiral staircase down, but nobody went down it. Instead, the group grabbed Findle and as much treasure as they could fit into their two wheelbarrows, and headed for town.
It was a very profitable session, with rewards due for both Findle and Kaernga's head, plus the loot from Kaernga's house of pleasure and the gem-cutting room / orc wizard's lair and the orc ranger's quarters. Not to mention a trollhound ear.
GM's Comments:
After multiple sessions fighting orc reinforcements in the same guard room, the orcs apparently ran out of guards to put there, and the PCs got to run around in empty rooms for a while. Some of the players thought the orcs might have all left the dungeon, but then they found a few, too proud to flee but too few to survive. Are there any left? We'll see next week.
The trollhounds were pretty tough, but the first four were were in cages (because their handler had been killed last week, too far away to free them), so they never really had a chance to fight. We did the fight against the first one the slow way, and once the players demonstrated that they could murder the caged hounds at no real risk to themselves, I fast-forwarded through finishing off the other three.
The orc wizard never really had a chance either, because it was one of him against 6 invaders. He tried to parley instead of cast spells, and it didn't help him because at least one PC had Bloodlust and missed their self-control roll. (He was unlucky not to hear the PCs making noise in the nearby storage room. If he'd heard, he would have had a chance to run away, or go get reinforcements, or something.)
Kaernga and his armored trollhound were tough, but his harem were unarmored and almost unarmed mooks, so numbers told again. And the room was big enough that it took Kaernga a few turns to get into melee, by which time his trollhound was almost dead.
"Defeat in detail" was the story of the day. If all 11 enemies the PCs faced this week were in the same room (and not locked in cages), they might have won. But orcs don't always use the best tactics.
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