Session 5 - The One Where They Forged Ahead
11th Oct 2020 19:00 - 22:00
In-game timeline: DR1489 Elesias 6 - Eleasias 6
Our "Heroes" are standing before a fortress that, ages past, fell into a chasm by process unknown. Slightly battered and bruised from a run-in with some twigs, they are understandably cautious.
Tommy decides to ignore the slightly open door and shimmy up the rough, crumbling walls to see if there's an alternative way in, or to see if he can get the jump of anybody waiting just inside. He manages to get up the wall, but the upper floor is completely crumbled and ruined, and the ceiling of the lower floor is intact, so he is unable to see down. So they walk in the door instead. How conventional.
The first room is the remains of a circular tower. No way up as the old staircase is completely blocked, but there are two doors, leading north-west and south-west. Three bodies of kobolds lie on the floor, killed a while ago, and another is stapled to the far wall by a spear to his chest. Mahtis completely fails to pull the spear from the wall, and it is down to TC to show her how it should be done. With the dead kobold released from his pinned state, he fell to the floor, revealing an engraving in the wall, in Draconic, which seemed to dedicate the building to an ancient dragon named Ashardalon.
Asking Meepo where they should go is always risky, but they did it anyway, and Meepo excitedly ran to the north-west door, opened it and ran through, without warning. The rest of them hurried through, to stop Meepo from going too far and alerting anyone in the building.
Ahead of them is a rockslide of sorts, which Meepo stated blocks off the area to his old home. It is unpassable without a lot of excavation work, but luckily there is an alternative route off to the east. Our "Heroes" slowly and carefully make their way along the rubble and old vine-strewn corridor.
Carro's alert eyes spots that the floor seems to move slightly as the others move along it. Further investigation from all shows a pivot point in the floor - if one of them moved beyond that point the floor seems to tilt ever so slightly down from their weight. Unsure what this mechanism is for, the party decide it is probably a bad thing, and think about how to overcome it. Using heavy rocks from the rockfall behind them, they weigh down the near end of the floor until it stops moving when someone walks past the tipping point. Now confident that they have averted some unknown disaster by doing this, they proceed to, one by one, enter the door at the far end of the corridor with no problems.
And find themselves in a strange room with a door ahead of them and another to their left. The one on their left is surrounded by 4 low, stone pedestals which are engraved in draconic, and topped with very dried blood, charred and scorched. The door itself seems to have some sort of stone 'button' in its centre, but has no other means of opening it. Confused by this weirdness, our intrepid explorers ignore it, and move on, whilst Meepo dances atop the stone pedestals, proclaiming under his breath how much more brave he is than the retreating "Heroes".
The next room is empty of anything obviously living, but does have an impressive bas-relief carving around the walls depicting some great dragon exploits, culminating in a crouching stone dragon , whose head protrudes from the wall and looks like its gaping mouth was once a fountain, with a font beneath, now dry.
Ignoring this, our blinkered and focussed adventurers press on, heading north, ignoring for now a door to the west, and moving towards some slightly open doors in the corridor to the north.
Their persistence is rewarded with an encounter with some giant rats, that emerge from each of the 'cells' as they are disturbed in their sleep. The narrow corridor prevents prolonged ranged weapon use, and is a little cramped for melee fighting too, some tactics are in order, to ensure the rats are dispatched as efficiently as possible.
Some cruel commentators might observe that this requirement for tactics would be the downfall of this group. But no. To the great surprise of everybody involved, not least the rats, the party sort themselves out quickly and go about taking out the rats as they appear, with Mr Covenant making rat kebabs with his longsword, Mahtis, ignoring how squishy she now is since disposing of her chain mail, putting her shortsword to excellent use and taking out three rats in quick succession. At the back, Carro uses his longbow in cramped conditions, but does still manage to impale one of the rats, whilst Kandi, unable to attack with standard weapons due to the mass of fighting bodies in front of him, puts his Vicious Mockery to good use, though his toning down of the insults transforms the spell into a Subtle Mockery, but with the same effect of not only doing some damage, but distracting the rat enough to ensure it misses on its next attack. The rats do manage to do some damage, but are taken out quickly.
Six giant rats duly dispatched, though with some significant, though luckily not mortal, wounds to our "Heroes", Meepo proceeds to start to skin one of the giant rats, ensuring a good meal - for him at least - next time they stop to cook. Or maybe to eat raw. The others take a quick look in the rats' nests and find a small amount of loot amongst the smelly gatherings of straw, moss and bones in each of the cells. A quick check that nothing else seems to be coming from the north, and our group decide to backtrack a little and head west through the closed door there.
The empty room that it leads to seems to lull them into a false sense of security and, when Thomas boldly opens the next door they come to, they are slightly surprised - or should that be "alarmed" - to hear a bell clanging as the door moves, warning anyone, or anything, else in the nearby vicinity of their presence.
The "anyone" proved to be two goblins, who immediately managed to fire off a couple of arrows at TC who was standing in the doorway, before they then ducked behind a low wall at the far end of the corridor, which seemed to be strewn with sharp metal caltrops, making passage across the room…. painful.
These goblins were pretty quick off the mark, and managed to get another shot off before any of the group could react, causing Tom some damage, before once again ducking out of sight.
Oh no. More tactics needed methinks. But the party came good once again with a masterful display of battlefield strategy. Kandi and Carro, unable to do much to the goblins in front of them due to the narrowness of the terrain, focussed on protecting the rear of the group from anything that may be following and may have heard the alarm. Mahtis meanwhile cast Entangle in the area near the goblins, hoping to restrain them in the grasping vines that sprouted from the floor. And it seemed she succeeded too - one of the goblins was entrapped, and the other, despite being able to get another shot off, missed his attacks. TC meanwhile ran across the caltrop-ridden floor, taking some damage and slowing down in the meantime, but getting close to the attacking goblins. Before the goblins were able to escape, or score another hit, Mahtis had also rushed across the room and blasted the unrestrained goblin with a spray of poison, taking him out, and TC was able to reach over the wall with his longsword and slash at the remaining goblin, who was busy failing to free himself from the entangling vines, and kill him with a single blow.
No further goblins visible, and nothing seemingly coming from behind, the group slowly made their way into the room where the goblins were located, Kandi following Meepo's lead in collecting up a few handfuls of caltrops and putting them in a pouch for possible use later.
The room was small, consisting of just a low wall and some barrels, which contained mainly dried foodstuffs - flour, salt and the like - and a door leading back south. Our party pause, checking that nothing else was immediately approaching.
And so we leave our "Heroes" having taken some damage in two battles, used some of their healing abilities and spells to recover, but feeling pleased with their exploits. Their battle tactics, which now consist of a bit more than Carro just shouting at the others to "get out of my line of fire!" seemed to be paying off. Though the fortress is becoming more dangerous as they progress….