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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8156816" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>Session 25: First We Loot. Then We Travel.</p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)</p><p>Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)</p><p>Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge)</p><p>Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger</p><p>Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)</p><p>Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)</p><p></p><p>GM - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p></p><p>22 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 53) (immediately after)</p><p></p><p>A minute or two after the combat, the people of the town started to emerge from the buildings and take stock of things. Mo spent the time using prestidigitation to clean us up with a smoke ring that passed over us like a Dyson blade dropping the filth and gore to the ground around each of us.</p><p></p><p>When the first person emerged, Mo asked who’s in charge. He was told that the hobgoblins had killed the mayor when they first took over the town.</p><p></p><p>Joybell: Oh, excellent! I mean, that means they were bad guys and we killed them. That’s good.</p><p></p><p>Then she got quiet and hid behind Orryk.</p><p></p><p>Mo: We’re gonna take their stuff.</p><p>Villager: Some of that stuff was ours.</p><p>Mo: We’ll give that back to you.</p><p></p><p>We checked to make sure that we’d taken out all of the hobgoblins (and ogres) (and other hobgoblin associates) and confirmed that with the villagers as they emerged.</p><p></p><p>We asked how long they’d been in the town and what they’d been up to since taking over. They’d been around for about two weeks and killed the Mayor first. After that, their priest, not a fighting cleric, was forced to face their warriors in single combat until he was killed. So they really were horrible. They’d also killed the town’s guards -- all four of them. Since then they’d been working on the fortifications. The villager we were speaking to, the town blacksmith, didn’t know what they were planning beyond building the stockade.</p><p></p><p>Mo: Was this a small part of a larger horde?</p><p>Villager: I know from time to time the leader would release a raven carrying a message. It would fly west into the mountains.</p><p>Thneed: Is there anything you need from us? Can we rest here?</p><p></p><p>Before he could answer that…</p><p></p><p>Mo: Let’s loot! Then we can go over the mayor’s office to see if there are records of what they were planning. Then we can hang out with people.</p><p>Joybell, to Thneed: This doesn’t seem like the same MO as your village. Didn’t you say your village was completely wiped out? This was more of an occupying force.</p><p></p><p>After some discussion, we realized that this specific group of hobgoblins couldn’t have been the same ones that took out Thneed’s village. Her village was several days travel into the mountains and was attacked at about the same time Tristlan was occupied.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, Mo started looting the bodies.</p><p></p><p>Joybell stripped the plate armor off the hobgoblin warlord and asked the villager we’d been speaking to if there was a blacksmith in town. When he said that he was the blacksmith, she asked if there was any way to cut down the armor and make it fit her. After some discussion it became clear that he would not be able to cut it down to her size without essentially remaking it. So it went into the bag of holding.</p><p></p><p>Looting the bodes, we found:</p><p></p><p>17 longswords</p><p>9 suits of chainmail</p><p>16 shields</p><p>14 longbows</p><p>Lots and lots of arrows (15 per hobgoblin, so it comes to 210)</p><p>1 set of plate armor (Joybell, hopefully)</p><p>1 set of half-plate armor (un-recorded a couple of sessions ago from the hobgoblin captain we fought on the road)</p><p>1 greatsword (ditto)</p><p>1 set of studded leather armor (magical, see below)</p><p>1 quarterstaff (we didn’t keep this)</p><p></p><p>Between the bodies and the loot in the mayor’s office (which the warlord was using as his headquarters) we found the following coinage:</p><p></p><p>70 pp</p><p>1500 gp</p><p>3500 sp</p><p>3 art items, 25 gp each (Mo claimed the set of dice)</p><p>10 gems, 100 gp each</p><p></p><p>(Note: Split 6 ways (I converted non-money things to gold for simplicity):</p><p>11 pp each, 4 left for group fund</p><p>429 gp each, 1 left. [404 for Mo I assume he's actually keeping the dice]</p><p>583 sp each, 2 left )</p><p></p><p>We also found:</p><p></p><p>Vial of Oil of Etherealness</p><p>A set of +1 Studded Leather Armor (which was on the devastator wizard) (Taman, whose Mariner’s Armor then went to Thneed)</p><p>1 spellbook (Fiona) (the spellbook contained: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Cause Fear, Catapult, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Cloud of Daggers, Mindspike, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Thunderstep, Sending, Erupting Earth, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Vitriolic Sphere)</p><p></p><p>We left the townspeople the 450 copper pieces, some pieces that they identified as belonging to them (not listed above), and also armor and weapons to equip a new set of guards for the village (4 swords, 4 chainmail, 4 shields, 4 longbows, and 60 arrows). Technically that quarterstaff as well, I suppose.</p><p></p><p>In the warlord’s headquarters we found a plain mask, white, a Mask’s mask, mounted on a weathered plaque which was mounted on the wall on a shiny new nail. This was clearly a trophy that had been hauled around by this guy.</p><p></p><p>(Note: At this point we had a little talk about all those conversations Joybell has had with innkeepers about seeing big guys in masks passing through -- while having the sign from outside the House of Masks in Pelsoreen strapped to her back. She’d gotten so used to it being there, she’d forgotten.)</p><p></p><p>We also found a lot of papers written in goblin. Which no one in the party can read. Not even Fiona.</p><p></p><p>One of the papers was a map of the town, showing the fortifications that had been built and where the stockade was planned.</p><p></p><p>A more interesting map showed a detail of the Dunnimar Mountains (the Green Quilt) with Tristlan at the eastern edge of it. Comparing the map to our map of Urnod, it appears that there’s a hobgoblin realm about 50 to 100 miles into the mountains. There was a line marked on the map that seemed to show the territory that this band had passed through in some detail. We got the feeling that they were mapping as they went -- moving out into territory not well known in the hobgoblin motherland.</p><p></p><p>Thneed figured out where her village is, or would have been, on the map, but it was not in the band that this group of hobgoblins had passed through and mapped. Her village may have been destroyed by another group from the Red Bones exploring in another direction. Or the Red Bones may be one of many hobgoblin clans exploring out from the motherland. These mountains have many wood elf villages and others that have diverse populations of wood elves, forest gnomes and firbolgs (and others).</p><p></p><p>The map didn’t have the road we were traveling on it, beyond a small distance out in each direction from Tristlan. It also didn’t have anything in the direction where we expect to find the place where the Masks are forged, several more sleeps from here.</p><p></p><p>Looking at all the notes in goblin, Joybell asked one of the villagers if anyone in town spoke goblin, but there was no one.</p><p></p><p>She also asked if traffic had been normal along the road while the hobgoblins were occupying the town. The villagers said that it had been - most of the travelers just paid the toll to the hobgoblins and passed on through.</p><p></p><p>Joybell, to the blacksmith: Have you seen any big guys with masks on, maybe three weeks ago?</p><p>Blacksmith: Ilgmar, the mayor, said he saw weird guys with masks go by in the middle of the night about that time…</p><p></p><p>Joybell noted that most of the other villages had seen the Masks early in the morning.</p><p></p><p>After looting and trying to make sense of the maps, we helped the villagers dispose of the bodies -- hauling them to the crematorium.</p><p></p><p>Fiona went off to learn some of the spells from the spellbook. Mo and Taman went to find the booze, or someone who would sell it to them. The villagers were happy to drink with them -- both because they were now rid of the occupying force and because they needed to cleanse their brains of some of the things they’d seen. Mo played some music in the inn to try and lift spirits and ease troubled souls.</p><p></p><p>When it was time for bed, Fiona did her thing with the alarm spell and the tiny hut. And we set watches. Because there’s nothing like going after a continent-wide guild of assassins to make a party paranoid.</p><p></p><p>The night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>23 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 54)</p><p></p><p>We headed off along the road to Otza, the next town along the road, one day’s travel away. We traveled with Taman doing his usual scouting ahead routine.</p><p></p><p>Late in the day we arrived at town without having any incidents along the road.</p><p></p><p>The town was a down and we did not hear any screams when we arrived. The inn (with rooms for rent) and the bar (with booze and food) were two different establishments. Fiona, Joybell, Thneed and Orryk went to the inn to arrange for rooms. Mo and Taman (Team Ethanol) went to the bar. Mo gave the barkeep 10 gold pieces and told him to just keep booze and food coming as required.</p><p></p><p>There were some other folks in the bar -- people playing a card game, folks having drinks and dinner, etc. There were also folks walking around the town just going about their business.</p><p></p><p>After arranging for three rooms, as usual, Fiona and Orryk and Thneed headed up to to relax for the night. Joybell went over to the bar to join Mo and Taman for dinner and to watch Mo perform.</p><p></p><p>Just a few moments after she was in the building, walking to the bar to join her friends, there was a loud scream from outside.</p><p></p><p>Orryk, upstairs in the inn, heard the screams and ran back down the stairs (with his crazy monk speed) and saw through the window a snake like creature with a parrot beak and four tentacles like petals around its head (Running total: 1 grick).</p><p></p><p>Orryk, to the innkeeper: Sorry about the window.</p><p></p><p>Then he took two shots with his shortbow through the window. The first broke the window, but missed the grick. The second hit.</p><p></p><p>Thneed followed down the stairs and saw the same situation. She put her hunter’s mark on the thing and took two shots -- hitting with both. It stopped moving and collapsed to the ground.</p><p></p><p>Orryk, to Thneed: Do we go back upstairs now?</p><p></p><p>But the screaming from elsewhere in the village hadn’t stopped…</p><p></p><p>Fiona cast mage armor on herself and came down the stairs at about that time.</p><p></p><p>Over in the bar, Taman, hearing the screams, vaulted over the bar and past the bartender so he can go out the back door in the bar. He rushed out the door and ran to the one to his left, which was the closest of the ones he could see, and stabbed it with his rapier. (Running total: 2 gricks)</p><p></p><p>Joybell, still in the bar, jumped on Scooby and rode out through the entrance to the bar and hit the one right outside the door for a pitiful small amount of damage with her first attack. Her second attack was better. (Running total: 3 gricks)</p><p></p><p>Orryk, Thneed and Fiona, all inside the inn, saw the extra big (size large) grick slither down the road, passing the body of the dead one and moving toward Joybell. (Running total: 3 gricks and one big grick)</p><p></p><p>Mo followed Taman over the bar, grabbing a bottle of something strong as he went over it, and ran out through the back door, swigging a drink as we went. As he exited the building he saw two of the parrot-beaked snake things -- the one Taman had attacked and another one that had come from around the corner of the building. (Final total: 4 gricks, 1 big grick)</p><p></p><p>Mo, to the one Taman had attacked: You look like you’re about to die. Why don’t you just do that?</p><p></p><p>The vicious mockery worked, leaving the grick shaking its head. Then Mo inspired Taman.</p><p></p><p>Mo: Hey, could you kill that thing for me?</p><p></p><p>The unoccupied one near Taman and Mo attacked a civilian -- wrapping a tentacle around her waist and dragging her toward it’s hard beak. Mo tried to use his cutting words to save her, but there was a gurgling gasping noise as it bit her head in half.</p><p></p><p>The other gricks weren’t able to hit either Joybell or Taman.</p><p></p><p>The remaining civilians on the street were able to run away. Most of them took shelter in various buildings, a couple ran around a building but stayed outside. They were lucky that the big grick had set its sight on party members by that point.</p><p></p><p>Orryk, swearing in Gnomish, ran out into the street and threw daggers at the big guy, hitting. Then he went into his defensive stance. Thneed stepped out of the inn, moving out of the doorway to keep it clear, moved her hunter’s mark to the big one, and shot it twice. She observed that the arrows did less damage than she expected, given how solidly she hit. Fiona stepped out of the inn and cast one of her new spells, Aganazzar’s scorcher, on the big guy. It nimbly slithered out of the way of the worst of the effect, but still took half of the damage from the spell.</p><p></p><p>Taman, moved by Mo’s inspiring words, stabbed the grick in front of him and dropped it. Then he turned to the one that had just killed the lady in the street to see if there was anything he could possibly do for her, but it was clear that she was beyond any sort of healing magic.</p><p></p><p>Joybell drew down the power of nature into her attack on the smaller one she’d been fighting, dropping it, then rode over on Scooby to the big one, prepared to smite it as well, but missed. Dammit.</p><p></p><p>The big guy attacked Orryk with one of its tentacles and missed. Then it swung its massive tail and hit Joybell hard across the torso.</p><p></p><p>Mo walked to the corner of the inn (where he’d be able to see Joybell), taking a swig from his bottle along the way, and saw the big one on one side of him and the smaller one that had just killed the lady on the other side.</p><p></p><p>Mo: You guys are total buzzkills.</p><p></p><p>With those words, he cast mass vicious mockery on them both. The big one saved but the little one did not. Then he inspired Fiona. He almost immediately realized that was a waste because Fiona rarely makes attack rolls with her spells, so inspiration won’t help her much.</p><p></p><p>The grick that had killed the lady wrapped its tentacles around her and began to drag her away into the forest to devour her at its leisure.</p><p></p><p>Orryk attacked the big one with a dagger -- hitting and spending a ki point to stun it. The stunning strike actually worked. Then he hit it again. Thneed shot the stunned large grick, but it was clearly not taking all the damage from her arrows. Fiona moved to where she could get a good line of attack on the one dragging its victim into the woods and cast lightning bolt on it. It flashed briefly, its bones showing through its skin, then it died, twitching.</p><p></p><p>Taman moved around the corner of the building and saw the big guy, being attacked by both Joybell and Orryk. He attacked and did a lot of sneaking damage while its attention was elsewhere. Finally, Joybell hit it and smote it and dropped it.</p><p></p><p>Joybell rode around the village and took a few extra whacks at each of the gricks with her short sword, just to make sure they were all really dead for real. Then, back at the building across from the inn, she asked a lady who’d fled into that building (the stables perhaps) where they came from, but the lady (still thoroughly freaked out) didn’t know.</p><p></p><p>Taman found some tracks outside of town that indicated they came in from the wilderness as a group then split up outside of town so they could come in from several different directions at once. Which is pretty advanced tactical thinking.</p><p></p><p>Someone in the party remembered learning something about these things -- they’re normally underdark predators from deep underground.</p><p></p><p>Joybell: Why did these things come out then? Is there an entrance to that underdark place around here?</p><p></p><p>Whoever remembered learning something about them (Note: I apologize for neither remembering nor having written down who) told us that they come out sometimes if they’re not finding enough food in their usual habitat.</p><p></p><p>We followed the tracks back to a cave in the side of one of the mountains. If something had monsters from the underdark emerging from this cave, the people of Otza were going to face lots of attacks from various nasty monsters. So Mo suggested collapsing the cave entrance.</p><p></p><p>Joybell: Lots of animals live in caves. We don’t want to trap anything in there.</p><p></p><p>Mo cast clairvoyance and looked down into the cave to make sure there was nothing living in it. There wasn’t, so he cast shatter aiming at the top of the mouth of the cave. There was a loud bang from the spell followed by a satisfying rock slide that partially filled the entrance. He cast the spell a couple more times until the entrance was closed and sealed with the fallen rock, though not really collapsed per se.</p><p></p><p>We then headed back to the town and resumed the activities we’d begun (or been preparing to begin) when the gricks attacked. Fiona, Thneed and Orryk went up to our rooms at the inn. Mo and Taman drank. Joybell ate some dinner and watched Mo play. His performance was good -- which he later attributed to being just the right level of drunk.</p><p></p><p>Eventually we all gathered up at the inn, made our usual precautions, and the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>24 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 55)</p><p></p><p>In the morning, we headed out of Otza and toward Blostln, which we’d reach at the end of the day. Blostlin would be the last town as closely spaced as one day’s travel from its neighbors on this part of the road.</p><p></p><p>At breakfast before we left, Joybell asked about weird looking big guys in masks. They went through the down and didn’t stop at all.</p><p></p><p>Mo, singing as we left town: We’re just a band out of Blostlin…</p><p></p><p>Taman did his usual scouting on the road ahead of us thing.</p><p></p><p>Most of the day passed with no trouble, but just before we got to the town Taman saw a troll “hiding” off the side of the road. It was bloated and oozy and seeping with nastiness. Because it was so committed to trying to hide from passers along the road, he just stopped and waited in the middle of the road for the rest of us to show up. When we got close, Taman said, in Gnomish (which most of the party speaks) that there was a nasty looking troll a ways up ahead off to the left of the road. Orryk pulled out his shortbow and Joybell pulled out the wand of magic missile.</p><p></p><p>Taman moved up a bit, then took a shot with his longbow at it - hitting it. A spray of black goo came out of where the arrow pierced its skin. Orryk moved up as much as possible and took two shots with his bow from just outside the best range of the shortbow, missing. Thneed put her hunter’s mark on it then shot at it. Her first shot hit for a small amount of damage (and another spray of black goo), the second missed because it had partial cover in its hiding place. Fiona moved forward and cast firebolt on it, but missed. Mo took a shot with his crossbow and missed.</p><p></p><p>Joybell used the wand to magic missile it, doing a decent amount of damage, then remembering the “Don’t charge so far forward the rest of the party can’t support you” lesson, moved up so she was next to Taman.</p><p></p><p>The troll figured out that we had spotted it, what with having been shot at and magic missiled and such, so it stepped out of his hiding place (behind a bush) and ran as fast as it could toward Taman and Joybell. As it ran toward them, they could see its wounds healing.</p><p></p><p>Taman moved off the road into the woods. Orryk moved off the road in a different direction and took two shots with his short bow -- hitting it with both shots, one of them in a critical spot. Thneed took two shots and hit with one and missed with the other.</p><p></p><p>Fiona cast scorching ray on it -- two of the rays hit it in critical places and it dropped. (1 venom troll)</p><p></p><p>She dropped a few fire bolts on it just to make sure it stayed dead and then we continued on the way, getting to Blostlin not more than an hour later.</p><p></p><p>Joybell asked about the Masks at the inn and was told they’d come through late in the evening.</p><p></p><p>Joybell: They’re not on the same sleep schedule. Or they’re not sleeping at all.</p><p></p><p>Then she asked the bartender and some of the travelers about the troll we’d encountered. None of them knew anything about it.</p><p></p><p>Joybell then asked about the road between here and the next town, Esh, two days travel away. She was told that the road is going to get a lot more rough -- more like a track than an actual road -- once we leave Blostlin.</p><p></p><p>We made our usual precautions and the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>25 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 56)</p><p></p><p>We headed out the next morning with Taman doing Taman things and scouting ahead.</p><p></p><p>It was still morning when Taman saw five large flying creatures heading toward the party at considerable speed. He was still quite a distance away up ahead. They were eagle-shaped and bird-like with the heads of stags, about the size of a humanoid. (5 perytons)</p><p></p><p>The group of them split and circled around, so that there were three coming in on one side of the road and two on the other, at about 120 feet up. They were out of range of Thneed’s hunter’s mark, but not of her arrows and she was able to get a critical hit on one of them. Orryk shot the same one and hit it as well. Joybell used the wand of magic missile on the same one again, because focusing fire is good sometimes, and it augered down out of the sky and crashed to the ground away from the road.</p><p></p><p>Taman took a shot at another one from way up the road and got a hit. Mo cast hypnotic pattern on the two coming in from the left. The brightly colored swirling smoke caught the attention of one of them and it forgot to flap its wings or sustain flight, so it too spiralled out of the sky and died in the crash.</p><p></p><p>The three remaining perytons then swarmed on Joybell, which she wasn’t terribly concerned about, because they’d clustered themselves up and Fiona would get a chance to do something about that in just about a second or two.</p><p></p><p>Fiona did not miss the opportunity. It was Thneed’s first time witnessing as Fiona cast a fireball with Joybell and Scooby right at the center of it. When the explosion of fire passed, Joybell and Scooby were there unharmed, one of the perytons was dead and the other two were badly injured.</p><p></p><p>Thneed put her hunter’s mark on one of them and dropped it with one of her arrows. Orryk threw daggers at the other, getting a hit in a critical location and dropping it very sincerely.</p><p></p><p>We resumed our way and the rest of the day passed.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Treasure:</p><p></p><p>13 longswords</p><p>5 suits of chainmail</p><p>12 shields</p><p>10 longbows</p><p>Lots and lots of arrows (150)</p><p>1 set of plate armor</p><p>1 set of half-plate armor</p><p>1 greatsword</p><p>1 set of studded leather armor (magical, see below)</p><p>70 pp</p><p>1500 gp</p><p>3500 sp</p><p>3 art items, 25 gp each (Mo claimed the set of dice)</p><p>10 gems, 100 gp each</p><p></p><p>Split 6 ways:</p><p></p><p>11 pp each, 4 left for group fund</p><p>429 gp each, 1 left. [404 for Mo I assume he's actually keeping the dice]</p><p>583 sp each, 2 left )</p><p>Vial of Oil of Etherealness</p><p>A set of +1 Studded Leather Armor (which was on the devastator wizard) (Taman, whose Mariner’s Armor then went to Thneed)</p><p>1 spellbook (Fiona) (the spellbook contained: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Cause Fear, Catapult, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Cloud of Daggers, Mindspike, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Thunderstep, Sending, Erupting Earth, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Vitriolic Sphere)</p><p></p><p>Party Kitty update:</p><p></p><p>4 pp, 3 gp, 5 sp, and 16 cp.</p><p>We have enough to start paying for things out of it again.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8156816, member: 7016699"] Session 25: First We Loot. Then We Travel. Dramatis Personae: Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore) Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant) Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)/Cleric (Knowledge) Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)/Ranger Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients) Thneed - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave) GM - Everyone Else 22 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 53) (immediately after) A minute or two after the combat, the people of the town started to emerge from the buildings and take stock of things. Mo spent the time using prestidigitation to clean us up with a smoke ring that passed over us like a Dyson blade dropping the filth and gore to the ground around each of us. When the first person emerged, Mo asked who’s in charge. He was told that the hobgoblins had killed the mayor when they first took over the town. Joybell: Oh, excellent! I mean, that means they were bad guys and we killed them. That’s good. Then she got quiet and hid behind Orryk. Mo: We’re gonna take their stuff. Villager: Some of that stuff was ours. Mo: We’ll give that back to you. We checked to make sure that we’d taken out all of the hobgoblins (and ogres) (and other hobgoblin associates) and confirmed that with the villagers as they emerged. We asked how long they’d been in the town and what they’d been up to since taking over. They’d been around for about two weeks and killed the Mayor first. After that, their priest, not a fighting cleric, was forced to face their warriors in single combat until he was killed. So they really were horrible. They’d also killed the town’s guards -- all four of them. Since then they’d been working on the fortifications. The villager we were speaking to, the town blacksmith, didn’t know what they were planning beyond building the stockade. Mo: Was this a small part of a larger horde? Villager: I know from time to time the leader would release a raven carrying a message. It would fly west into the mountains. Thneed: Is there anything you need from us? Can we rest here? Before he could answer that… Mo: Let’s loot! Then we can go over the mayor’s office to see if there are records of what they were planning. Then we can hang out with people. Joybell, to Thneed: This doesn’t seem like the same MO as your village. Didn’t you say your village was completely wiped out? This was more of an occupying force. After some discussion, we realized that this specific group of hobgoblins couldn’t have been the same ones that took out Thneed’s village. Her village was several days travel into the mountains and was attacked at about the same time Tristlan was occupied. Meanwhile, Mo started looting the bodies. Joybell stripped the plate armor off the hobgoblin warlord and asked the villager we’d been speaking to if there was a blacksmith in town. When he said that he was the blacksmith, she asked if there was any way to cut down the armor and make it fit her. After some discussion it became clear that he would not be able to cut it down to her size without essentially remaking it. So it went into the bag of holding. Looting the bodes, we found: 17 longswords 9 suits of chainmail 16 shields 14 longbows Lots and lots of arrows (15 per hobgoblin, so it comes to 210) 1 set of plate armor (Joybell, hopefully) 1 set of half-plate armor (un-recorded a couple of sessions ago from the hobgoblin captain we fought on the road) 1 greatsword (ditto) 1 set of studded leather armor (magical, see below) 1 quarterstaff (we didn’t keep this) Between the bodies and the loot in the mayor’s office (which the warlord was using as his headquarters) we found the following coinage: 70 pp 1500 gp 3500 sp 3 art items, 25 gp each (Mo claimed the set of dice) 10 gems, 100 gp each (Note: Split 6 ways (I converted non-money things to gold for simplicity): 11 pp each, 4 left for group fund 429 gp each, 1 left. [404 for Mo I assume he's actually keeping the dice] 583 sp each, 2 left ) We also found: Vial of Oil of Etherealness A set of +1 Studded Leather Armor (which was on the devastator wizard) (Taman, whose Mariner’s Armor then went to Thneed) 1 spellbook (Fiona) (the spellbook contained: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Cause Fear, Catapult, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Cloud of Daggers, Mindspike, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Thunderstep, Sending, Erupting Earth, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Vitriolic Sphere) We left the townspeople the 450 copper pieces, some pieces that they identified as belonging to them (not listed above), and also armor and weapons to equip a new set of guards for the village (4 swords, 4 chainmail, 4 shields, 4 longbows, and 60 arrows). Technically that quarterstaff as well, I suppose. In the warlord’s headquarters we found a plain mask, white, a Mask’s mask, mounted on a weathered plaque which was mounted on the wall on a shiny new nail. This was clearly a trophy that had been hauled around by this guy. (Note: At this point we had a little talk about all those conversations Joybell has had with innkeepers about seeing big guys in masks passing through -- while having the sign from outside the House of Masks in Pelsoreen strapped to her back. She’d gotten so used to it being there, she’d forgotten.) We also found a lot of papers written in goblin. Which no one in the party can read. Not even Fiona. One of the papers was a map of the town, showing the fortifications that had been built and where the stockade was planned. A more interesting map showed a detail of the Dunnimar Mountains (the Green Quilt) with Tristlan at the eastern edge of it. Comparing the map to our map of Urnod, it appears that there’s a hobgoblin realm about 50 to 100 miles into the mountains. There was a line marked on the map that seemed to show the territory that this band had passed through in some detail. We got the feeling that they were mapping as they went -- moving out into territory not well known in the hobgoblin motherland. Thneed figured out where her village is, or would have been, on the map, but it was not in the band that this group of hobgoblins had passed through and mapped. Her village may have been destroyed by another group from the Red Bones exploring in another direction. Or the Red Bones may be one of many hobgoblin clans exploring out from the motherland. These mountains have many wood elf villages and others that have diverse populations of wood elves, forest gnomes and firbolgs (and others). The map didn’t have the road we were traveling on it, beyond a small distance out in each direction from Tristlan. It also didn’t have anything in the direction where we expect to find the place where the Masks are forged, several more sleeps from here. Looking at all the notes in goblin, Joybell asked one of the villagers if anyone in town spoke goblin, but there was no one. She also asked if traffic had been normal along the road while the hobgoblins were occupying the town. The villagers said that it had been - most of the travelers just paid the toll to the hobgoblins and passed on through. Joybell, to the blacksmith: Have you seen any big guys with masks on, maybe three weeks ago? Blacksmith: Ilgmar, the mayor, said he saw weird guys with masks go by in the middle of the night about that time… Joybell noted that most of the other villages had seen the Masks early in the morning. After looting and trying to make sense of the maps, we helped the villagers dispose of the bodies -- hauling them to the crematorium. Fiona went off to learn some of the spells from the spellbook. Mo and Taman went to find the booze, or someone who would sell it to them. The villagers were happy to drink with them -- both because they were now rid of the occupying force and because they needed to cleanse their brains of some of the things they’d seen. Mo played some music in the inn to try and lift spirits and ease troubled souls. When it was time for bed, Fiona did her thing with the alarm spell and the tiny hut. And we set watches. Because there’s nothing like going after a continent-wide guild of assassins to make a party paranoid. The night passed without incident. 23 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 54) We headed off along the road to Otza, the next town along the road, one day’s travel away. We traveled with Taman doing his usual scouting ahead routine. Late in the day we arrived at town without having any incidents along the road. The town was a down and we did not hear any screams when we arrived. The inn (with rooms for rent) and the bar (with booze and food) were two different establishments. Fiona, Joybell, Thneed and Orryk went to the inn to arrange for rooms. Mo and Taman (Team Ethanol) went to the bar. Mo gave the barkeep 10 gold pieces and told him to just keep booze and food coming as required. There were some other folks in the bar -- people playing a card game, folks having drinks and dinner, etc. There were also folks walking around the town just going about their business. After arranging for three rooms, as usual, Fiona and Orryk and Thneed headed up to to relax for the night. Joybell went over to the bar to join Mo and Taman for dinner and to watch Mo perform. Just a few moments after she was in the building, walking to the bar to join her friends, there was a loud scream from outside. Orryk, upstairs in the inn, heard the screams and ran back down the stairs (with his crazy monk speed) and saw through the window a snake like creature with a parrot beak and four tentacles like petals around its head (Running total: 1 grick). Orryk, to the innkeeper: Sorry about the window. Then he took two shots with his shortbow through the window. The first broke the window, but missed the grick. The second hit. Thneed followed down the stairs and saw the same situation. She put her hunter’s mark on the thing and took two shots -- hitting with both. It stopped moving and collapsed to the ground. Orryk, to Thneed: Do we go back upstairs now? But the screaming from elsewhere in the village hadn’t stopped… Fiona cast mage armor on herself and came down the stairs at about that time. Over in the bar, Taman, hearing the screams, vaulted over the bar and past the bartender so he can go out the back door in the bar. He rushed out the door and ran to the one to his left, which was the closest of the ones he could see, and stabbed it with his rapier. (Running total: 2 gricks) Joybell, still in the bar, jumped on Scooby and rode out through the entrance to the bar and hit the one right outside the door for a pitiful small amount of damage with her first attack. Her second attack was better. (Running total: 3 gricks) Orryk, Thneed and Fiona, all inside the inn, saw the extra big (size large) grick slither down the road, passing the body of the dead one and moving toward Joybell. (Running total: 3 gricks and one big grick) Mo followed Taman over the bar, grabbing a bottle of something strong as he went over it, and ran out through the back door, swigging a drink as we went. As he exited the building he saw two of the parrot-beaked snake things -- the one Taman had attacked and another one that had come from around the corner of the building. (Final total: 4 gricks, 1 big grick) Mo, to the one Taman had attacked: You look like you’re about to die. Why don’t you just do that? The vicious mockery worked, leaving the grick shaking its head. Then Mo inspired Taman. Mo: Hey, could you kill that thing for me? The unoccupied one near Taman and Mo attacked a civilian -- wrapping a tentacle around her waist and dragging her toward it’s hard beak. Mo tried to use his cutting words to save her, but there was a gurgling gasping noise as it bit her head in half. The other gricks weren’t able to hit either Joybell or Taman. The remaining civilians on the street were able to run away. Most of them took shelter in various buildings, a couple ran around a building but stayed outside. They were lucky that the big grick had set its sight on party members by that point. Orryk, swearing in Gnomish, ran out into the street and threw daggers at the big guy, hitting. Then he went into his defensive stance. Thneed stepped out of the inn, moving out of the doorway to keep it clear, moved her hunter’s mark to the big one, and shot it twice. She observed that the arrows did less damage than she expected, given how solidly she hit. Fiona stepped out of the inn and cast one of her new spells, Aganazzar’s scorcher, on the big guy. It nimbly slithered out of the way of the worst of the effect, but still took half of the damage from the spell. Taman, moved by Mo’s inspiring words, stabbed the grick in front of him and dropped it. Then he turned to the one that had just killed the lady in the street to see if there was anything he could possibly do for her, but it was clear that she was beyond any sort of healing magic. Joybell drew down the power of nature into her attack on the smaller one she’d been fighting, dropping it, then rode over on Scooby to the big one, prepared to smite it as well, but missed. Dammit. The big guy attacked Orryk with one of its tentacles and missed. Then it swung its massive tail and hit Joybell hard across the torso. Mo walked to the corner of the inn (where he’d be able to see Joybell), taking a swig from his bottle along the way, and saw the big one on one side of him and the smaller one that had just killed the lady on the other side. Mo: You guys are total buzzkills. With those words, he cast mass vicious mockery on them both. The big one saved but the little one did not. Then he inspired Fiona. He almost immediately realized that was a waste because Fiona rarely makes attack rolls with her spells, so inspiration won’t help her much. The grick that had killed the lady wrapped its tentacles around her and began to drag her away into the forest to devour her at its leisure. Orryk attacked the big one with a dagger -- hitting and spending a ki point to stun it. The stunning strike actually worked. Then he hit it again. Thneed shot the stunned large grick, but it was clearly not taking all the damage from her arrows. Fiona moved to where she could get a good line of attack on the one dragging its victim into the woods and cast lightning bolt on it. It flashed briefly, its bones showing through its skin, then it died, twitching. Taman moved around the corner of the building and saw the big guy, being attacked by both Joybell and Orryk. He attacked and did a lot of sneaking damage while its attention was elsewhere. Finally, Joybell hit it and smote it and dropped it. Joybell rode around the village and took a few extra whacks at each of the gricks with her short sword, just to make sure they were all really dead for real. Then, back at the building across from the inn, she asked a lady who’d fled into that building (the stables perhaps) where they came from, but the lady (still thoroughly freaked out) didn’t know. Taman found some tracks outside of town that indicated they came in from the wilderness as a group then split up outside of town so they could come in from several different directions at once. Which is pretty advanced tactical thinking. Someone in the party remembered learning something about these things -- they’re normally underdark predators from deep underground. Joybell: Why did these things come out then? Is there an entrance to that underdark place around here? Whoever remembered learning something about them (Note: I apologize for neither remembering nor having written down who) told us that they come out sometimes if they’re not finding enough food in their usual habitat. We followed the tracks back to a cave in the side of one of the mountains. If something had monsters from the underdark emerging from this cave, the people of Otza were going to face lots of attacks from various nasty monsters. So Mo suggested collapsing the cave entrance. Joybell: Lots of animals live in caves. We don’t want to trap anything in there. Mo cast clairvoyance and looked down into the cave to make sure there was nothing living in it. There wasn’t, so he cast shatter aiming at the top of the mouth of the cave. There was a loud bang from the spell followed by a satisfying rock slide that partially filled the entrance. He cast the spell a couple more times until the entrance was closed and sealed with the fallen rock, though not really collapsed per se. We then headed back to the town and resumed the activities we’d begun (or been preparing to begin) when the gricks attacked. Fiona, Thneed and Orryk went up to our rooms at the inn. Mo and Taman drank. Joybell ate some dinner and watched Mo play. His performance was good -- which he later attributed to being just the right level of drunk. Eventually we all gathered up at the inn, made our usual precautions, and the night passed without incident. 24 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 55) In the morning, we headed out of Otza and toward Blostln, which we’d reach at the end of the day. Blostlin would be the last town as closely spaced as one day’s travel from its neighbors on this part of the road. At breakfast before we left, Joybell asked about weird looking big guys in masks. They went through the down and didn’t stop at all. Mo, singing as we left town: We’re just a band out of Blostlin… Taman did his usual scouting on the road ahead of us thing. Most of the day passed with no trouble, but just before we got to the town Taman saw a troll “hiding” off the side of the road. It was bloated and oozy and seeping with nastiness. Because it was so committed to trying to hide from passers along the road, he just stopped and waited in the middle of the road for the rest of us to show up. When we got close, Taman said, in Gnomish (which most of the party speaks) that there was a nasty looking troll a ways up ahead off to the left of the road. Orryk pulled out his shortbow and Joybell pulled out the wand of magic missile. Taman moved up a bit, then took a shot with his longbow at it - hitting it. A spray of black goo came out of where the arrow pierced its skin. Orryk moved up as much as possible and took two shots with his bow from just outside the best range of the shortbow, missing. Thneed put her hunter’s mark on it then shot at it. Her first shot hit for a small amount of damage (and another spray of black goo), the second missed because it had partial cover in its hiding place. Fiona moved forward and cast firebolt on it, but missed. Mo took a shot with his crossbow and missed. Joybell used the wand to magic missile it, doing a decent amount of damage, then remembering the “Don’t charge so far forward the rest of the party can’t support you” lesson, moved up so she was next to Taman. The troll figured out that we had spotted it, what with having been shot at and magic missiled and such, so it stepped out of his hiding place (behind a bush) and ran as fast as it could toward Taman and Joybell. As it ran toward them, they could see its wounds healing. Taman moved off the road into the woods. Orryk moved off the road in a different direction and took two shots with his short bow -- hitting it with both shots, one of them in a critical spot. Thneed took two shots and hit with one and missed with the other. Fiona cast scorching ray on it -- two of the rays hit it in critical places and it dropped. (1 venom troll) She dropped a few fire bolts on it just to make sure it stayed dead and then we continued on the way, getting to Blostlin not more than an hour later. Joybell asked about the Masks at the inn and was told they’d come through late in the evening. Joybell: They’re not on the same sleep schedule. Or they’re not sleeping at all. Then she asked the bartender and some of the travelers about the troll we’d encountered. None of them knew anything about it. Joybell then asked about the road between here and the next town, Esh, two days travel away. She was told that the road is going to get a lot more rough -- more like a track than an actual road -- once we leave Blostlin. We made our usual precautions and the night passed without incident. 25 Sicklin 748 (Campaign day 56) We headed out the next morning with Taman doing Taman things and scouting ahead. It was still morning when Taman saw five large flying creatures heading toward the party at considerable speed. He was still quite a distance away up ahead. They were eagle-shaped and bird-like with the heads of stags, about the size of a humanoid. (5 perytons) The group of them split and circled around, so that there were three coming in on one side of the road and two on the other, at about 120 feet up. They were out of range of Thneed’s hunter’s mark, but not of her arrows and she was able to get a critical hit on one of them. Orryk shot the same one and hit it as well. Joybell used the wand of magic missile on the same one again, because focusing fire is good sometimes, and it augered down out of the sky and crashed to the ground away from the road. Taman took a shot at another one from way up the road and got a hit. Mo cast hypnotic pattern on the two coming in from the left. The brightly colored swirling smoke caught the attention of one of them and it forgot to flap its wings or sustain flight, so it too spiralled out of the sky and died in the crash. The three remaining perytons then swarmed on Joybell, which she wasn’t terribly concerned about, because they’d clustered themselves up and Fiona would get a chance to do something about that in just about a second or two. Fiona did not miss the opportunity. It was Thneed’s first time witnessing as Fiona cast a fireball with Joybell and Scooby right at the center of it. When the explosion of fire passed, Joybell and Scooby were there unharmed, one of the perytons was dead and the other two were badly injured. Thneed put her hunter’s mark on one of them and dropped it with one of her arrows. Orryk threw daggers at the other, getting a hit in a critical location and dropping it very sincerely. We resumed our way and the rest of the day passed. Treasure: 13 longswords 5 suits of chainmail 12 shields 10 longbows Lots and lots of arrows (150) 1 set of plate armor 1 set of half-plate armor 1 greatsword 1 set of studded leather armor (magical, see below) 70 pp 1500 gp 3500 sp 3 art items, 25 gp each (Mo claimed the set of dice) 10 gems, 100 gp each Split 6 ways: 11 pp each, 4 left for group fund 429 gp each, 1 left. [404 for Mo I assume he's actually keeping the dice] 583 sp each, 2 left ) Vial of Oil of Etherealness A set of +1 Studded Leather Armor (which was on the devastator wizard) (Taman, whose Mariner’s Armor then went to Thneed) 1 spellbook (Fiona) (the spellbook contained: Burning Hands, Magic Missile, Thunderwave, Cause Fear, Catapult, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Scorching Ray, Cloud of Daggers, Mindspike, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Thunderstep, Sending, Erupting Earth, Evard’s Black Tentacles, Vitriolic Sphere) Party Kitty update: 4 pp, 3 gp, 5 sp, and 16 cp. We have enough to start paying for things out of it again. [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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