DF Whiterock 28: Trogs and Frogs

Date:

2018-11-23

Weather:

Freezing, snowy

Player Characters:

Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 235 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 272 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 256 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High-Elf Wizard, 294 points

Significant NPCs:

Lady Chuntessa, Innkeeper and Historian
Elder Brother Sampson, Cleric of Elyr
Tyber Lasir, Half-Elf Arms Dealer
3 Giant Miner Stonebore Ants
3 Bat Swarms
2 Frog-Trainer Troglodytes
6 Giant Demon Frogs or Possibly Toads
1 Huge Troglodyte-Frog-Toad-Demon Boss
Carlia, Human Farmer-Prisoner
Jath, Human Child-Prisoner


The cold snowy weather weather continued in Cillamar.  Winter is here in the northlands.

Elias went to Elder Brother Sampson to report the lich sighting and ask for paladins to help eradicate the presumably evil undead.  Sampson told Elias that all the Holy Warriors were still stuck in the Warlands, probably for the rest of winter.

Tyber Lasir told Polly that he had heard there might be an excellent elven longbow available in the capital Galaron, and Polly placed an order and paid half the price in advance.  Of course not many caravans move in the winter, so delivery might take a while.

Lady Chauntessa, having heard crazy rumors of the group's encounter with a lich's library, delivered a note to Seépravir saying that she would pay dearly for information about the secret Sleep of Ages spell.

Zaber went looking for his nemesis Lord Granger Flitwick again, but the lord was still out of town.  Rumor said he was spending the winter somewhere to the south.

Garreth was nowhere to be found.  Neither was Hugin.  So the four remaining adventurers gathered their warm winter clothes and/or Warmth spells, and started trudging through the snow toward Castle Whiterock.  They made awful time, but fortunately none of the creatures that prey on travellers wanted to be out in the winter either, so they made it to Lake Whiterock unscathed.  At that point they had to choose between walking across the frozen lake or around it.  Seépravir and Polly both thought they remembered an elven nursery rhyme that said that walking across lakes before December would result in falling through thin ice and freezing to death and being eaten by fish, so they went around.

Once they reached Castle Whiterock, the group decided to immediately go downstairs, where it might be warmer.  They made it down to the cave where they'd killed the queen ant, because Polly thought the queen ant's head might be worth money.  But the queen's corpse was gone.  Whether it had been carried away respectfully by her surviving ant subjects, or eaten by random scavengers, nobody was sure.

Zaber noticed a suspicious stone in the ant cave, about 15 feet up.  He and Polly climbed up the slippery walls, and found that it was indeed blocking a passage, but was hard to move.  Seépravir threw a few Earth to Air spells under the rock, loosening its perch on a ledge, and it crashed to the floor with a mighty boom.  While she was resting to recover from the exertion of casting the spells, a couple of giant ants showed up to investigate, but they immediately ran away when they saw the intruders, and the group decided not to chase them.

Seépravir Levitated herself and Elias up to the newly discovered passage, and the group walked north until they saw a large cave, featuring an underground stream, some giant ants, and a whole lot of bats.  Both the ants and several swarms of bats charged at the intruders.  Polly started shooting the onrushing bat swarms with cutting arrows, but each arrow only took out a few bats, so the swarms continued.  One of the swarms attacked Zaber, but didn't manage to bite though his light armor.  Seépravir dropped some smoke, which slowed down the bats, but they eventually came through it, and one swarm bit her pretty badly.

With no bat swarms in line of sight, Polly shot a giant ant instead, and knocked it out.  One of the bat swarms reached Elias, but failed to bite through his heavy armor.  Elias started smacking the swarms with both his Flaming flail and his shield, killing or chasing away many bats.  Zaber stabbed a few bats as well with his knife, and then Seépravir cast Create Fire on the last swarm of bats and burned them away.  The last surviving giant ant ran away -- apparently these ants were not as brave as the previous groups.

With the ants and bats gone, Zaber wanted to explore the stream, so he asked Seépravir for a Warmth spell and the Ring of Water Breathing.  Seépravir cheerfully cast the spell, reluctantly lent him the ring, and Zaber went for a dunk.  The stream was pretty boring though -- no monsters, no treasure, and it narrowed pretty soon, in both directions.

Elias cast Stop Bleeding to partially heal Seépravir's bat bites, and then the group continued exploring to the east.  They found a lot of empty passages, and moved another big rocks, before Elias (working with only the limited light radius of his Flaming flail, rather than Dark Vision like everyone else) blundered away from the group.  First he found a passage leading down to another level, and then he found a giant cave containing a stream and also some troglodytes and giant demon frogs.

The group eventually got back together, in time to face the trogs and frogs.  The trogs unleashed the usual stench attack, and Zaber was nauseated (-2 to DX, -1 to defenses), but not actually retching.  Then the trogs started encouraging the frogs to attack the PCs, while Polly started shooting arrows.

Polly's first arrow was critically dodged by a trog, but there was a frog right behind the trog, and she scored a lucky hit on it.  Seépravir cast Great Haste on Polly, increasing her rate of fire from a ridiculous 2 arrows per second to a downright stupid 4 arrows per second.  Elias waded in with flail and shield and did some blocking and some bashing.  Zaber threw a knife at a trog and critically hit it for moderate damage.  Zaber also heard a human woman screaming in Common to the north, but didn't have time to go that way yet.

While Polly kept shooting things, Elias smacked a stunned trog twice with his Flaming flail and killed it.  Seépravir put a Great Haste on Zaber too.  The last badly wounded frog passed out, and then the group turned their attention to the screams to the north. 

Getting to the north required crossing a stream.  Polly and Zaber and Elias all jumped over it.  Seépravir Levitated instead.  Eventually they all reached a cave, where three more demon frogs were menacing a woman and a child.  That meant they were facing the wrong way, so Polly started shooting them in the back.  She took down two, Zaber killed the third one with his knife, and then the two humans were safe from being eaten, at least temporarily.  But before the group could rest, the woman yelled to Polly to look out for the big one behind her.

In the stream to the north, there was a huge troglodyte-frog-demon-something, about twelve feet tall.  Polly ran around a bit to get a clear shot, then fired some arrows at it, but it dodged and dove under the water, making it much harder to hit.  Seépravir cast another Great Haste on Polly, who had used her 10 seconds of super speed.  The huge thing advanced underwater, while Polly plugged it with mostly ineffective shots.  (-4 to hit and half damage due to water, plus the creature had a lot of DR and a lot of dodge and also regenerated.)  Eventually the frog thing reached the edge of the water closest to the party, then popped up and threw an ice ball at Zaber.  He failed to dodge it, used his Luck, failed to dodge it twice more, and got smacked for 11 points of cold damage, enough to force his Bless spell to save him.  The Bless was gone, but Zaber was miraculously unscathed.

Next, the creature jumped out of the water at Elias and attacked him with its huge tongue, but he managed to block the tongue with his shield before getting to learn what kind of horrible damage that would have done.    With the creature finally standing up out of the water where she could get a clean shot, Polly shot it once in each eye.  The first shot was a critical hit, working around the creature's inhuman dodge.  And once it took an arrow through the eye into its brain, the death spiral began.  The stunning and slowing from the first arrow caused it to fail its dodge against the second arrow, for still more brain damage.  It rolled a 17 on one of the major wound checks for a brain injury, resulting in a knockout.  But, while knocked out, it was still visibly regenerating.

And that point the whole party pitched in to carve up the monster.  Polly gave the kid they'd rescued (named Jath) a souvenir arrow, which the kid immediately started stabbing the creature with.  Elias used his Flaming silvered flail, but it didn't stop regenerating because of fire or silver.  Eventually they stopped trying to think of good ways to stop regeneration, and just resolved to keep chopping until it stopped healing, which eventually worked.

Zaber had spotted some coins and gems in and near the stream, so as soon as the trog frog demon was dead, he went collecting treasure.  Among the treasure was a jade drum, which the group had been looking for to help free the air elemental a level up.  There was some natural light filtering into the cave from the north, and the woman (named Carlia) said their home was that way, so the group decided to go that way for now, and head back to Cillamar later.

GM's Comments:

Garreth wasn't available this week, and the party also failed their availability roll for Hugin, so no truly beefy melee fighters were around.  This didn't seem to matter a whole lot though, as Polly kept pumping out damage, and Zaber and Elias also got a good few shots in.  Seépravir, as usual, didn't bother fighting but just buffed everyone else.

The bat swarms presented some challenge, since nobody has any really good anti-diffuse attacks, but they only rolled decent damage against a lightly-armored character once.  The miner ants and frog-trainer troglodytes were pretty wimpy.  The giant frogs were not as tough as I expected, probably largely because a Great Hasted Polly kept shooting them before they reached melee range, and they kept failing their Stay Conscious checks.  The giant trog demon frog thing was a real challenge, but with all his allies dead, the PCs all ganged up on him, and once Polly got a couple of eye shots in, it was all over.

Besides fighting, the party found a few interesting things this week: a way down to possibly a new level, a deeper entrance to the dungeons, and a jade drum that may be the third musical instrument they need to free the air elemental.  Plus of course there's still the lich librarian they found last week.