DF Whiterock Session 17: Piercers and Trogs

Date:

2018-08-24


Weather:

Warm,  cloudy


Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 184 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 229 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 217 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 205 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 239 points


Significant NPCs:
Lord Granger Flitwick, noble and artist
Lady Chauntessa, inn owner
20 Piercers
9 Troglodyte Warriors and assorted Troglodyte non-combatants


The party met at the Inn of the Slumbering Drake.  Elias had visited the temples of Elyr and Justicia, but again failed to find an exorcist willing to travel to Castle Whiterock.  Ibizaber and Garreth had been around town, looking for information and beer, but hadn't found much information.

Garreth was able to commission a penetrating katana at Bao's Blades.  Elias tried to purchase some heavy dwarven plate armor from Alrux at the Sign of the Silver Armiger, but did not like the asking price.

Lord Granger Flitwick offered to sell copies of his drawings from inside Castle Whiterock to Lady Chauntessa, which rubbed the party the wrong way, since they thought they had exclusive rights, even though Flitwick had explicitly refused to sell those.  Some threats were exchanged and Ibizaber stalked Flitwick to find out where he lived, but Elias eventually talked the others down.  Seépravir did some research on Flitwick and his family at the Hall of Worms, looking for dirt.

Polly, bored of all this town nonsense, talked the others into going back to Castle Whiterock to kill more bad guys.  It took them a long time to hike there, because they were pushing a heavy wheelbarrow, but the weather was good, and nothing accosted them on the way.

Elias cast another Bless on Ibizaber, since the previous one had been used up saving him from a crossbow bolt.  Seépravir cast Dark Vision on everyone, Keen Vision on Ibizaber, and Lighten Burden on Elias, and they went down two flights of stairs to the level where they had fought the orc zombies.  They opened the secret door leading to more stairs down, Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage Stealth on Ibizaber, and they went downstairs with Zaber scouting ahead.

The stairs opened into a large cave, with stalactites on the ceiling and a few small piles of faintly glowing rocks arranged in kind of a double-square pattern.  Invisible Zaber went forward to check out the rocks, and saw that they were covered with some kind of plant life or fungus that emitted light.  Polly though the pattern of rocks was interesting, and asked Zaber to stand in one place while she stood in another to complete all the corners of a double square, but nothing happened.  Then Seépravir wandered across the middle of the room, and a piercer dropped on her from above with total surprise, wounding her pretty badly but not enough to be life-threatening.  Garreth ran over to help, and Elias lifted his shield over his head in case there were more.

While Polly filled the first piercer with arrows, keen-eyed Ibizaber scanned the ceiling for more, and found a bunch, which he then called out to the others.  (He couldn't point effectively because he was invisible, but he yelled out general locations.)  A battle then ensued, where Ibizaber found piercers, Polly rapidly murdered piercers at range with her bow, while Garreth stood wherever he thought piercers were going to drop, waited for them, and then killed them with his katana in flight.  One almost got Elias, but he had his shield up and it bounced off.  Eventually, twenty piercers died.

Garreth started collecting dead piercers, but found that they exuded some kind of caustic fluid.  It didn't damage him through his heavy leather gloves, but he thought better of picking them up.  Elias healed Seépravir, everyone rested a bit, and then the group started exploring two exits from the cave, to the northeast and southeast.

Ibizaber started down the southeastern passage, but then saw something suspicious on the floor, which turned out to be a pit trap covered with debris.  He thought about triggering it to explore inside, but decided it would make a lot of noise, and chose to jump over instead.  Four of the group jumped over the pit, but then Polly saw a second pit on the other side.  Elias was stuck, as he couldn't jump far enough to clear either the pit without a running start, and had no space to run.  He asked Seépravir to come cast Levitate on him, while the three better jumpers jumped over the second pit, and found a third pit.  They jumped over that one too, and found no fourth pit.  Seépravir Levitated herself and Elias and the wheelbarrow across, and then needed to rest.

While the group was resting in the tunnel, three troglodytes with javelins and clubs came around the corner and ambushed them.  They led with their stench attack, which everyone managed to resist, and Polly resisted so well that it turned out she was naturally immune to these troglodyte's stench.  Then they followed up with some thrown javelins.  Despite being surprised, Elias managed to block one with his shield.  Another troglodyte horribly missed Garreth.  The third hit Polly with his javelin, but not very solidly.

The group recovered from surprise quickly, as the troglodytes readied their clubs and stepped toward the intruders.  Polly shot one in the vitals twice and killed it.  Ibizaber pulled out his long knife.  Garreth tried chopping another one, but it dodged.  Seépravir, not really a fighter, and a bit behind the others, took a little while to notice the ambush.

Polly was suspicious of the wall behind the group, and asked Zaber to guard it, while she shot another troglodyte.  Zaber checked it out, and found that Polly's suspicions were right and there was a secret door there.  Garreth chopped up the third troglodyte, Elias cast Stop Bleeding on Polly, and the group rested again, then went up the secret passage behind the secret door.  It ended in a dead end, which seemed like an obvious spot for another secret door, which was there.  Ibizaber opened it, and it turned out to lead back near the room with the piercers, just a secret bypass passage around the one with the pits.

The group explored the passage to the northeast, and found a big pile of rubble.  It looked like it would take a while to clear, and that sounded too much like hard work to some, so they decided to go back south and keep exploring.  Elias and Polly got a bit too far ahead of the others, and ran into another ambush, this time six troglodytes.  This time the troglodytes failed to achieve surprise.  Their stench didn't affect anyone too badly, and Polly started shooting while Elias started smashing with his morningstar.  They each took a troglodyte down before their friends caught up, and then the numbers were on their side.

Garreth missed one with a thrown sai (with Continual Light on it), Polly shot another couple, and Seépravir cast Smoke to mess up the last two.  (She botched her casting badly, with so many spells on, but used Luck to fix that.)  Elias hit the one in front but not very hard, then shield rushed the one in back to knock it prone. Ibizaber moved into position to finish the one in front off, and then Garreth ignored dibs and chopped its head off with his katana.  Polly ran around the smoke to shoot the one that Elias had knocked down, and that was all the moving trogs.

At this point the passage was very stinky with dead and unconscious troglodytes, but Seépravir remembered the orcish recipe to harvest troglodyte stench organs and make stenchpots out of them, and started cutting.  She got most of the stench organs out intact, but pierced a couple, which made the smell even worse.  Elias had to hide in the corner to get away from it.  Eventually the butchery was complete, everyone rested, and Seépravir cast Invisibility and Mage-Stealth on Ibizaber and Polly so they could scout ahead.

They found a huge cave, with many small cave alcoves coming off the sides, which appeared to be a great troglodyte living area.  A few noncombatant troglodytes were spotted on the far side, but they ran away and the group decided (after some debate) not to hunt them down.  The two invisible scouts found various primitive pottery and stone furniture, but no treasure.  One side cave contained meat, corpses of cave lizards and sheep or goats and orcs.  One had some graffiti in Common: "Bronwyn was here."  They also found two passages leaving the big cave, one to the west and one to the south.

The scouts went back to the others to report their findings, and, after some debate, the group decided to go back to the northeast and clear the rubble.  It took about an hour, with Garreth and Polly doing most of the rock-moving, Elias smashing rocks with his Penetrating Morningstar (which worked better than you'd expect), and the others standing guard.  Finally, there was a wide enough passage to squeeze through, and they did, with Ibizaber in the lead.

They found another cave, long and narrow, this one with a weird flowstone rock formation to the south, leading to some kind of stone pipe organ built into the rock wall, complete with stone piano bench and stone keyboard.  Unlike the rest of the caves, this one did not smell like troglodytes.  When Ibizaber approached the organ, some moaning speech in a language nobody understood came out, like something was trapped in there.  Seépravir's best guess based on the windiness of the language was that it might be Auran, but she wasn't really sure.  Nobody had any spells to speak or understand random languages, so communication seemed impossible.  Seépravir tried playing the magical jade flute that they had found earlier, and whatever was inside the organ said some other things that nobody understood in response, but it didn't have any obvious effect.  Ibizaber tried playing the organ, which had no definite effect.  He found a bump on the piano bench, but pushing on it didn't have any clear effect either.

The group decided to go back to town and come back with a way to speak and understand more languages.  They made it out of Castle Whiterock and back to Cillamar with no significant difficulties.


GM's Comments:

I thought we might see some violence toward Lord Flitwick over the rights to his drawings, but somehow calmer heads prevailed.

Polly was onto something with the positioning of the glowing rocks, but nobody knew it was piercers above, until one dropped on Seépravir.  Twenty of them was a lot, but the piercers had no tactical coordination, and the PCs were lucky to have positioned themselves so that not many piercers got to attack at once.  Once the group stopped panicking and figured out how to group together and let Garreth kill them as they dropped, and Polly kill the rest at range, it was not much of a challenge.

The first few troglodytes also achieved surprise (very difficult against high-Perception PCs who tend to send invisible and silent scouts ahead, but they got lucky while the wizard was messing around levitating things over the pits), but the one javelin hit was a weak one, and then the PCs recovered from mental stun quickly, and five on three wasn't a fair fight.

A couple of PCs wandered ahead, briefly leading to a six-on-two ambush, which could have been fatal, but this time the troglodytes failed to achieve surprise, and Elias and Polly did a good job fighting them off until their friends arrived.

The group failed to solve the mystery of the stone organ, but I suspect they'll be back next time with Gift of Tongues to figure out whatever's in there.