|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 9, 2008 21:00:49 GMT -5
It had been a long and arduous trip, taken at much effort and with grave discomfort, but it was worth the cause. A caravan of pilgrims, on their way to a holy site, had been taken captive by goblin brigands. Falling upon the caravan train at night, the goblins had captured almost all without great struggle, though a few of the caravan guards had escaped. They were scorned as less than men, but they brought word of who was among those taken from the caravan.
Their names had reached their relatives, and their relatives had responded, not with money, but with the lesser sons and daughters of their extended families. Over days and weeks, folk made their way to Garyton, the nearest dorf to the site of the ambush.
The Rodemus family castle had stood proud in the hills near Garyton for many years until the family's mysterious disappearance. Since then, the castle slowly fell into ruin, until all that was left were the twin towers that guarded entry to the castle and the gatehouse that lay between them. Strange lights shone from time to time near the castle, and the land surrounding them is considered haunted.
The towers are the likely redoubt of the marauding goblins and now the target of the vengeful relatives of the missing pilgrims. Two of them, Alex del Mar, an elven woman, and Royal Ironspike, a dwarven man, plot their strategy in the dark and smoky tavern known as the Grey Goose. After collecting their belongings and purchasing their supplies, they agree to make their way overnight to the haunted keep, expecting to camp out of sight of the keep and then arrive early in the morning.
Travel out to the keep goes without trouble, and the granite towers stand before them. Two great square towers, each with a gate house attached to them, are plainly visible. It is possible that each gate house and each tower have entrances, but the eastern one is closer and its door is plain to see.
The elf and dwarf, each swapping stories about the crotchety distant relative they are here to save, hike up to the door. The door to the tower is large and solid looking, but the hinges are sorely worn. One of the hinges looks almost entirely worn through and the other is heavily rusted. Royal steps up and, with a swift kick, opens the door, shivering one of the hinges.
The short passageway beyond is dark, but the morning sun illuminates enough to show an empty corridor ending in a door. "Start tapping," directs Alex, and Royal unlimbers his ten foot pole and starts tapping on the floor before them. Indeed, five feet up the corridor, the floor collapses, actually a canvas stretched over a pit.
The two adventurers look down at the ten foot deep pit that spans the corridor. "I could probably jump it," says Alex, but Royal shakes his head. In his heavy platemail and with his stumpy legs, he is not certain to clear even five feet. "Can you go hand over hand on the pole?" she asks Royal. Royal wonders about the strength of the pole, whether it can take the weight of the dwarf's armor, or if it will snap in twain. "Did you buy a discount pole or something?" asks the elf, wondering whether the dwarf uses his brain. Royal sets his concern aside. The two of them stretch the pole across the pit, and Royal uses his rope to lower himself down into the pit and pull his way up the far side. Alex simply goes hand over hand on the pole, spanning the pit. Fortunately for Royal, the pole is able to take the weight.
Collecting themselves on the far side, Royal shoulders this door open, finding a perpendicular passageway. The passageway ends to the right in a door, but, to the left, turns to the right after a few feet. At the corner, another door can be seen. "Which way?" asks Alex.
"Let's go right," says Royal. "I don't want to leave an unexplored space behind us, blocking the exit." Alex agrees, but motions that Royal should prod the floor before them as well. Tapping like a blind man, the dwarf does so before reaching the door. The door yields to Royal's foot, revealing a square room.
The floor of the room has subsided, and the ceiling leaks. The combination of the two has led to the creation of a three foot deep pool. In the middle of the pool is a rusted statue of a female warrior, and floating in the pool is a sodden, water-logged bed. The pool spans almost the whole room, but the very edges can be easily leaped.
The two adventurers do so, meeting back up at the opposing door. The door again yields to Royal's stout kick. A passageway parallels the wall of the room and ends in a door. "This isn't taking us anywhere," says Alex. "Let's go back." Royal shrugs and follows the elf back to the entryway.
The other passageway turns left after the corner, breaking an easy line of sight. "Check up the passageway first," urges Alex. Royal resolutely taps his way up the corridor, around the corner and out of sight. The tapping stops, and Royal returns.
"The passage turns right again, with a door at the bend and a door at the end of the corridor," reports Royal. Alex ponders a moment.
"We'll take them in order," she decides. "This one first." Royal kicks twice at this door before it is opened. Inside the room is a large poster bed and an armoire, its doors ripped open. The poster bed is a mess, with mold and fung growing on its frame, while the armoire is missing a door completely. The dwarf begins to sneeze, the mold in the air triggering his allergies. "Poke the bed with the pole, see if anything comes out," she directs and Royal follows. Plumes of mold spores erupt, but nothing else does.
The mold spores settle on the clean ground, a discovery that sets Alex's mind awhirl. The floor does indeed seem to have been swept at some point. A thin line of dirt and grime is pressed up against the base of the armoire, but the rest of the floor is clear. Alex spends many minutes searching unsuccessfully for a secret or hidden passage before finally giving up and moving on to the next door.
The two of them hike up to the next door, where Royal kicks down the door. A narrower room extends before them, their vision occluded to the right by a tapestry that hangs down across the room. The tapestry is old and ill-maintained, bearing a hunt scene on it, the details lost to their infravision. "Poke the tapestry," suggests Alex. Royal complies.
Royal pokes the tapestry with his ten foot pole. A resounding cracking sound occurs when he does so, and a five foot spider clambers around the end of the tapestry, its carapace slightly dented. "That's a big spider," says Royal, in shock. The spider scuttles up to Royal and bites his arm off, Royal's pole landing on the ground. Falling to the ground in shock, he gasps, "Poison!" and his eyes roll up in his head.
Alex takes an assessment of the situation and then turns and flees. "Five feet," she thinks as she tears through the passageway, "no problem." Indeed, she hurdles the pit without breaking stride and stumbles out into the morning sun. Looking back into the tower, she sees the spider chase after her but stop at the pit's edge. Apparently deciding that the dwarf is food enough, it turns and walks back to its den.
Alex looks around and begins to head back to Garyton, hoping that more distant relatives will have arrived.
|
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 9, 2008 22:29:36 GMT -5
Alex looks around at the motley band of relatives that have accreted to her side at the Grey Goose. A strange crew they most certainly are, and Alex doubts that all of them even have relatives taken from the pilgrimage. "I say we must recover Royal Ironspike's corpse so that he may be brought back from the dead, or at least interred rather than eaten," she asserts, for at least the fourth time.
The others look at her with varying degrees of disbelief. Xena, a warrior princess of great strength, looks as capable of fighting as Royal did, but she regularly coughs a hacking, brutal cough. Wrollo Oakroot seems willing to head into the haunted keep, but also seems very interested in playing with the candles and oil lamps. A'a smiles at the serving girls far too often for Alex's happiness; he seems a playboy at heart and not particularly strong or wise. The quiet mage, Ralph, seems lost in his own thoughts much of the time, and Marvin, a cleric of dirt, seems almost the opposite, too interested in prosetylizing to others. Only Bronwyn the elf seems to take the situation with seriousness, oiling his crossbow as if he expects to have to use it.
They all hear stories of how many itinerant adventurers had headed up into the hills to face the haunted keep, and how none had returned. Perhaps they will run into some of these poor souls dead on the grounds of the keep, like Royal is.
Alex bids them all to be ready in the morning, and they are. Like with Royal, Alex leads them all up the haunted keep, to where the two towers and the two portions of the gatehouse still sit. Waiting for the sun to rise, for they all know that goblins are nocturnal beasts, they note that in addition to the door that Alex and Royal entered through, three other doors are visible: one into each of the gatehouses and one into the base of the other tower. They argue briefly about which door to enter, but Alex insists, "We are here to get Royal's corpse out first." The others grouse some but follow.
The door into the tower has been propped back up, but only one hinge remains, the other totally destroyed. Alex frowns, as she definitely did not replace the door. Xena knocks the door open and they see the passageway as Alex did before; fifteen feet long and ending in a door. "Beware," warns Alex, "there's a pit five feet in from the door. It should be obvious, but it's not. Someone has reset the tarpaulin over it. Get out a pole."
Wrollo unlimbers several long poles and pegs them together into a ten foot pole. Prodding before the party, he, like Royal before him, discovers the pit. The taller of the party are able to lower themselves to the bottom of the pit and then climb back out, while Wrollo is simply tossed across. Alex goes hand over hand, and eventually all cross with little difficulty.
The door opens to Xena's ungentle urging, revealing the same passageway as before. "To the right is a pool of water," says Alex. "We go left to get his corpse. Something weird behind the first door too. The floors been swept, but we didn't find any hidden doors." The party moves up to the door.
Alex wants to push on through to get Royal's corpse, but the others want to look into the room. Xena's willing, so she throws open the door for them. The room is unchanged from Alex and Royal's previous visit. The party roots around under the bed with the ten foot pole, but finds nothing, not even dust. The armoire is more productive; much dust is found under it. "Definitely swept," agrees Wrollo, and he and Bronwyn search the room as well. No matter how hard they search, they do not find a hidden passage.
Frustrated, the party backs up and heads down to the next door, where Royal's corpse should be. The door is closed. Royal's corpse is nowhere to be seen. "He's in there," says Alex. "It's a big, big spider." Xena shoulders the door open. No spider is seen, but a dead, bloated, gnawed-on dwarven corpse is. Alex and Bronwyn grab the corpse by its legs and pull, dragging it out of the room. Xena takes a quick look around, seeing that the tapestry is ragged and moth eaten and has a hunt scene of a chased hart on it, and then slams the door shut.
The dwarf's corpse is shifted back down the corridor and examined. It was definitely eaten by a big creature with mandibles, but is also has had its backpack rifled. The small pouch of coin that Alex knew the dwarf carried is missing, as are the iron rations and wine that the dwarf carried. More signs that something greater in intelligence than a spider lives here.
The party argues about what to do next. "Burn it!" urges Wrollo. "The tapestry will burn nicely, and this is a stone building. Let us scourge it with fire, purifying fire." The others look down on him in amazement. Instead of lighting it on fire, they decide instead to bypass the door and open the one at the end of the corridor. Wrollo, Bronwyn, and Marvin do so and easily open it.
The room's walls are carved with leering, grimacing faces, each one distorted with fangs and teeth growing out of lengthening snouts. Another door exits the room, but probably leads back into the room with the spider. Wrollo and Bronwyn, not believing the artistic embellishment was without reason, search the carved heads closely.
In the back of the party, Alex and A'a engage in a long and heated argument about what to do with Royal's corpse. His goods are distributed among the other party members, but A'a begins peeling the dwarf of his armor. Alex, worrying that the dwarf might simply come apart if not bound into his armor or, even worse, that A'a has some horrible necromancy in mind, argues with A'a to leave the dwarf inside the armor. Their voices become louder and louder until finally Alex pulls out her sword and says, "My dwarven buddy keeps his armor and you keep yours, deal?"
A'a glares back at her and yells, "If you want to carry a dead dwarf in platemail over a pit rather than just the dead dwarf, so be it! You carry him." Clearly, A'a and Alex don't see eye to eye. Bronwyn's voice echoes back down the corridor calling for A'a, and A'a stalks away, up the corridor.
Bronwyn and Wrollo, after much searching, have found that one of the carved faces has a thin crack around it, as if it hides a secret compartment. A'a searches it for signs of alarm or protective device, but doesn't find any. "Press it's eye and it will unlatch," he reports. Everyone backs up, and Wrollo tries to poke it in the eye with his ten foot pole. After many failed attempts, Bronwyn takes the pole from the struggling halfling and succeeds. The sculpture opens up, and an iron safe is revealed.
"Ha ha!" says A'a searching the safe over. It appears to be locked but otherwise unprotected. He fishes out his special tools that he has brought for this reason and begins probing its innards with his fine rakes and files. After several minutes of grinding, he withdraws them, bent and broken. "Rotten thing," he curses.
"I got it," says Bronwyn, who has come up behind everyone. He takes one of her iron spikes and begins hammering it into the frame of the iron safe. Eventually, the frame bends enough that the safe door should be able to be yanked open. Xena comes up to do so.
The iron safe opens, revealing two thin wooden boxes and a jar filled with clear liquid, neatly stacked within. Everyone smiles. A hissing sound fills the air, as yellow gas shoots out of small holes in the safe, enveloping those near the safe. Everyone frowns. Everyone except for Bronwyn falls down to the ground.
As the gas dissipates, Bronwyn pulls the thin wooden boxes out of the safe. The rest of the party tries to recover from the gas, which appears to have put those effected to sleep. Several strong shakes and slaps are enough to wake those under the gas's power, much to everyone's relief. Bronwyn looks inside the thin wooden boxes and finds them lined with silver coins. Perhaps four hundred coins are kept between the two boxes, enough money for a new set of armor! Bronwyn divides the coins between everyone, but places the jar of liquid in his own backpack.
"I think that door goes into the room with the spider," says Bronwyn. "Let's split into two teams and then open both doors. Then we can attack it from both sides of the room." The others think this is a good idea. Alex, A'a, Xena, and Ralph go down the corridor to where they opened the door before, while Wrollo, Bronwyn, and Marvin prepare themselves in the room. "All this for a spider," mutters Bronwyn.
Xena and Bronwyn both position themselves in front of their respective doors and then try to knock them open. Xena's door flies open; Bronwyn's door does not. Xena sees the same empty room as before, the tapestry blocking view of the rest of the room. "I'm not going in there alone," says Xena. No one agrees to go in with her. Bronwyn again tries and fails to open his door. A huge spider, five feet across, crawls out from behind the tapestry and gnashes its mandibles at Xena. "That's a big spider," she says, mouth agape.
Bronwyn kicks the door down, finally, revealing a room containing a table with some hand-made playing cards on top of it, several stools, and a small latched chest. A tapestry of a hunt, a hart being chased, blocks view of the rest of the room, but flickering light comes through the moth-eaten fabric. No spider is visible. Bronwyn and Wrollo enter the room, Wrollo commenting, "Ohh, lots of stuff would have burnt here!"
The huge spider clambers forward, snapping at Xena. Xena recoils behind her shield, fending off the mandibles of the spider and smiting it a heavy blow with her sword. Alex, trying not to hit Xena, shoots an arrow into its side through the open door frame. Hearing the battle on the far side of the curtain, Bronwyn reaches up and pulls down the tapestry, it skittering across the rail it is hung on rather than ripping or tearing. Bronwyn lowers his crossbow at the spider's side and shoots a bolt through it. The spider flips over onto its back, its legs curling up into a small ball.
The belongings on the far side of the curtain are of great interest to the party. A'a checks the chest for any protections, and finding none, opens the chest. Inside is a small sack filled with almost a hundred silver coins! A'a, against his better judgment, divides the coins among those present again.
Bronwyn and Ralph carry the table, which is missing a leg, it having been kept aright with a wooden block, back to the entrance. There, they place it upside down across the pit, providing an exit should they need one in a hurry.
Faced with no other doors or places to explore, the party retreats back to the entrance and then to the other door, where, indeed, a large pool of scummy water is present. A waterlogged mattress floats in the pool and a rusted statue lies in its bottom. Bronwyn, Xena, and Marvin wrestle the statue out of the algal water, finding that its upraised dagger is embedded in the bottom of the bunk. Anyone using the mattress to cross the pool would be in for a surprise! The statue is female, but is so corroded that no other features can be resolved.
The other door is opened without further ado, showing the parallel corridor described by Alex. Xena is able to open the door at the end as well, finding that the corridor loops back on itself in a Z shape, but that two door, one to the left and one in front, are present. Bronwyn quiets everyone and then clanks up to the front. Leaving all light sources behind, he clanks down the corridor and looks around the next bend. His infravision reveals the remainder of the Z, with two doors on the right hand wall, equally spaced down the corridor.
Behind him, Xena bashes down the door on the left. A dirty, dusty room, with a pile of embroidered cloth is behind the door. No one moves into the room. Marvin stretches Regal's pole forward and pokes the pile of cloth. Nothing erupts from the cloth, but a mass of green slime falls from the ceiling onto the area just before it, landing on the pole and sizzling. Xena's eyes open in surprise as the slime begins sliding toward her.
Wrollo throws his torch into the slime, as does Ralph, but the slime just keeps coming. "More fire," urges Xena, as it comes closer and closer. Marvin's pole seems to be shortening as well, as the slime consumes it. Wrollo gets a flask of oil into the slime, burning it, but it is not enough, the slime continues to advance. Ralph lights another torch from A'a's torch, and both of them throw their torches at the slime. It continues to slide towards Xena. "More fire, more fire," she urges, growing more concerned.
"But, it's my last flask," says Wrollo. "What if we need it later?" Ralph and A'a light more torches, but Xena swings her sword at the green slime. The sword sizzles and hisses and pits as the slime quickly begins to consume it. Pressed in by the rest of the party, Xena is unable to retreat or to flee! Ralph and A'a finally get their torches lit and thrown onto the green slime, burning the last of it, much to Xena's relief. Xena's sword and Marvin's pole are both losses. Marvin breaks his into a smaller piece, while Xena tosses hers into the room, not interested in what might be within the embroidered cloth. Xena merely closes the door, collecting Royal's old sword from Alex.
Xena opens the other door, revealing a small room with splinters of wood on its dusty floor. Wrollo is able to scrape some of the splinters of wood to the doorway by using Marvin's shortened pole. Parts of the wood are lacquered, and Bronwyn's keen eyes see where shelves might have been attached on the masonry of the walls. The presence of a peg jutting out from one of the wood scraps solves the mystery for Bronwyn. Regardless, Bronwyn leads the others in an extensive search of the small room, looking for hidden passages and chambers. He is certain there will be one and is crushed when there is not. Resigned, he agrees to head further on.
The party wends its way around the passage and, similarly to their approach with the spider, bypasses the first door to go to the second one. Xena kicks at this door, but it resists her efforts, failing twice to open. When she gets it open, she sees how ill-timed this was. Four large goblins, hobgoblins, stand in the room. A desk with two chairs sits on an area rug in the middle of the room. Two prisoners, both men looking like farmers, pig farmers, huddle in chains in the corner. "Surrender to us now and we will only take you prisoner! Fight and we shall kill you all!" bellows the largest of the hobgoblins, pointing his sword at the party.
|
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 10, 2008 8:38:56 GMT -5
who played who??
I am really disappointed I missed this, sounds like awesome low-level fun!!
|
|
|
|
Post by Wolfgar on Mar 10, 2008 9:05:33 GMT -5
who played who?? I am really disappointed I missed this, sounds like awesome low-level fun!! Care to venture a guess? I don't think we ventured to far from our regular characters. |
|
|
|
Post by Ginger on Mar 10, 2008 9:39:00 GMT -5
When guessing characters, you should know that Nicole also played a character on Sunday.
|
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 10, 2008 15:18:21 GMT -5
When guessing characters, you should know that Nicole also played a character on Sunday. Tricky... Here goes: Royal- David? Alex- Nicole? or Rose? A'a- James? Xena- Rose? or Nicole Ralph- Lee? Bill? Bronwin- Josh? Wrollo- James? the baby? Marvin- Bill? Lee? |
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 10, 2008 15:54:57 GMT -5
The party is somewhat surprised by the hobgoblins' presence and preparations, and, for a moment, they don't know what to do. The answer lies with Bronwyn, who shoots a crossbow bolt at one of the hobgoblins, crying out, "We surrender!" in hobgoblin. The distraction works amazingly well, and the party swings into action.
The tight confines of the corridor prove difficult to work in, as switching positions involves much coordination. "Send up the mage!" shouts Bronwyn, but few of the party seem to want to move forward. Xena stands her ground next to Bronwyn, swinging her sword at the nearest hobgoblin, but only Wrollo advances up the chain of party members. Everyone else moves backwards, including Marvin, A'a, Alex, and Ralph. Hearing his name called in specific, Ralph begins, with a sigh, to move his way to the fore.
The hobgoblins react poorly to the party's rejection of their gracious offer. "Attack them from all sides!" shouts the leader, causing the elves, who understand the hobgoblin cant, to warn the others of impending flank attacks. With a bellow of rage, they move in on the doorway, striking at Xena, who blocks the doors. One of the hobgoblin swords strikes the warrior princess alongside the temple, leaving a wide gash and knocking her into unconsciousness. Bronwyn's bolt flies off at an angle, missing the hobgoblins completely, as he is startled by the noises coming from behind him.
The door that they have bypassed shudders, as if someone has tried to pull it open but failed because of its poor repair. The sound of many voices can be heard even through the battle. Whoever is behind that door is trying to come out, and there are many of them. Marvin moves further away from the door, going around the corner and shuffling back towards the room with the pool.
Ralph finally makes it to the front and casts his enchantments. Throwing sand in the air before him, he ensorcels the hobgoblins into slumber. All four of the hobgoblins and both of the prisoners collapse in a heap. At the end of the corridor though, by Xena's unconscious body, things go from bad to worse. Part of the wall slides open and four goblins rush forward. One holds the wall open. One collapses under the weight of Ralph's spell. One trods over his sleeping brethren and attacks Bronwyn, while the last pulls forth his short sword and stares at the fallen warrior princess before him.
Alex runs up to the others and hands spikes to Ralph and Wrollo and Royal's hammer to Wrollo. "Spike the door!" she urges. The mage and halfling do so while the door increasingly shivers, Wrollo taking great care to hammer his spike in deeply. "Where's Marvin?" asks the elf, wondering where the heavily armored priest might be. The others shrug as the door flexes once again under the efforts of those trapped within.
Marvin dithers in the hallway wondering what to do. He moves forward and backward, uncertainly. "If we can lure them all back here, to the bend in the corridor, we could overwhelm them one at a time," he notes. "Of course, they are all fighting way up there, around the next bend." Even A'a has abandoned Marvin, moving up towards where the others are fighting, digging in his backpack for flasks of oil.
The goblins appear more fell fighters than one might suspect, and press Bronwyn heavily. Xena, on the other hand, is the recipient of a slash across the throat. Her body flops for a moment as her life's blood gushes from her, before she becomes a corpse. The other two goblins run into the room where the hobgoblins lie asleep. Bronwyn struggles back and forth with the goblins, killing one as it tries to get by to wake the sleeping hobgoblins, but three goblins is too much for the elf. A goblin slips a lucky blow by his guard, doubling him over, and then conks him on the head. Bronwyn collapses like a load of bricks.
"Damnation!" curses Alex, as she unlimbers her bow. "I'll get that flask out of his backpack and give it to you Ralph. You hold them off of us Wrollo." Wrollo nods in agreement and runs forward, clanking in his platemail, and stands over Bronwyn's unconscious form, blocking the intersection again. He juts his sword in the face of the goblin providing enough of an opening for Alex to pull out the jar of clear liquid.
Behind them, the door begins to rhythmically thump, as if someone or someones were beating on it with a bench or great hammer. The door creaks and splinters from the repeated blows. A'a squats down and pours his flask of oil under the door frame between the iron spikes, splashing it up the door slightly. An evil grin licks across his face.
Ralph grabs the jar of clear liquid from Alex and pours it onto Bronwyn's face, trying to get it into his mouth. The liquid seems to have a beneficial effect, healing Bronwyn's ills rather than dissolving his face off. Bronwyn gasps in surprise and disorientation as he returns to consciousness. "My job here is done!" says Ralph.
"Stay down," urges Alex, as she finally has a clear shot at the goblins over Wrollo's head. She stretches her bow and fires an arrow through the chest of one of the goblins. The goblin squeals and falls to the ground, unmoving. Wrollo smiles at the death of the goblin and trods forward over its corpse to reach the doorway, where he smites the goblin that slew Xena. The halfling is a remarkable swordsman, and the goblin falls.
With a quick glance, he surveys the room and the hidden cubby. The cubby is just that, a crude five by eight chamber that the goblins must have tightly squeezed into. The room though, is much more alarming. The goblins, unseen by the party, have been awakening their brethren, and two of the hobgoblins swing at Wrollo's diminutive frame. Wrollo's armor and shield deflect the blows, but it is clear to him that a single blow might easily slay him.
Bronwyn lies on his side and spots the hobgoblin appearing in the doorway, imperiling Wrollo. Arcane syllables crackle from his lips and a long bolt of eagle-headed energy arcs out from his hand into the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin falls down dead, much to Bronwyn's pleasure.
Marvin continues to dither around the corner from the battle, torn between running away and staying to fight. Ralph, retreating from battle, comes across the metal-clad priest. "What are you doing back here? Are you going to leave everyone to their deaths while you stand here hoping to reap the spoils of other's efforts? Do you imagine us convinced of the might of your god when you stand in the rear, around the corner from where real men and women fight against the forces of evil? Are your friends and relations so unimportant to you that you would leave them to torture and slavery? Even I, an unarmored doddering man, have shown more worth and valor than you with your armor, shield, and mace!" mocks Ralph. "Do I need to taunt you some more to put spine into you?"
A'a looks at the pool of oil ebbing into the hallway. The door continues to shudder by him, but the spikes seem to be holding. "Maybe a little more," A'a concludes, pulling out another flask and pouring it under the upraised door.
The goblins, having finished awakening their larger brethren, join in at the battle at the doorway, trying to strike the halfling down. The halfling's heavy armor and natural dexterity make him difficult to hit with a telling blow, and he survives the onslaught. Alex stares at the situation, Wrollo dodging the blows of goblins and hobgoblins and decides it is time for her magics to be used. Summoning arcane symbols before her, she casts her voice behind the only hobgoblin she can see from the doorway. "Stop you fools!" she hollers in hobgoblin. "Can't you see they are surrendering? Cease striking them and they will throw down their weapons!" As if to punctuate her point, Wrollo guts the goblin before him.
The hobgoblins are somewhat perplexed by the sudden announcement, and they stare around in confusion, trying to work out who has commanded them so. Browin takes the opportunity to move forward and reinforce Wrollo, drawing his sword. Even Marvin, who has been properly abashed by Ralph, arrives next to A'a, prepared to join battle.
A'a reaches down with his torch and lights the pool of oil on fire. The door is engulfed in flame and collapses under the strain. Through the shards of wood that remain, four goblins burning like candles can be seen. The room appears to be a barracks, with bunk beds stacked around the edge of the room. The other eight goblins cower away from the flames that fill the area before the door. A'a spies a stone structure opposite the doorway, a bunk built over it, but its purpose is unknown.
Alex, Wrollo, and Bronwyn continue their assault on the remaining goblins and hobgoblins, but the battle is a brutal one. Wrollo slides over so that Bronwyn can hold the door, allowing Alex to strike with her sword. The three of them fail to down the hobgoblin they face, and more alarming, the sole hobgoblin not in combat with the party grabs hold of one of the sleeping prisoners. "Surrender now! I will kill the prisoners if you do not! They are worth less to me than a copper farthing!" shouts the hobgoblin in the common tongue.
A'a and Ralph continue to bombard the goblins trapped in their burning barracks with more flasks of oil. Even the flasks that do not land on the goblins serve to herd the goblins into smaller and smaller areas. The bunk beds smolder, sure to eventually catch fire, as oil soaks into them. The goblins lack missile weapons to return fire, but instead grab up bedding and pallets to try to beat out the pool of fire and create a bridge to the two humans.
Alex, Wrollo, and Bronwyn continue their assault on the remaining goblins and hobgoblins, spreading wounds about, but none fall. The hobgoblins are fell warriors themselves though, and Bronwyn succumbs to a sword in the gut, his vitals pierced. The hobgoblin leader is a hobgoblin of his word, and he pierces the skulls of the prisoners, driving his sword through the prisoners' ears. "You'll die a horrible death for that," rages Wrollo, incensed at the slaughter of the sleeping prisoners.
Marvin joins Alex and Wrollo at the door, trying to hem in the remaining hobgoblins and goblins while A'a and Ralph finish burning the other barracks. A'a and Ralph score direct hits on the scurrying goblins, dousing them in oil that quickly flashes into fire. The goblins keel over with horrible burns, slain at last.
The sole remaining goblin reaches out and hamstrings Marvin, dropping him to the ground, where a quick thrust kills him. Alex and Wrollo are surprised by the sudden death of the cleric. He had barely arrived, swinging his mace only once, before the priest was brought low. In an awful turn of fate, Alex, who had slid in front of the door frame to allow Marvin into melee, is similarly slain by a lucky blow from one of the hobgoblins. Ralph and A'a hurry forward, seeing their doom approaching if the hobgoblins break free.
Wrollo slays the last of the goblins and tries to hold back the remaining hobgoblins. The hobgoblins press him fiercely, but his stature and armor make him a difficult opponent to hit. Unfortunately, Wrollo's concentration on his own defense makes his attacks weak and unfocused, more jabs to distance his opponent from him than strong blows with followthrough. Ralph throws a dagger at the hobgoblin pressing Wrollo, but his aim is poor, and it flies wide, ricocheting back at Ralph.
The hobgoblins make a push to exit the room and surround the halfling, but Wrollo holds steadfast. The hobgoblins frenzy provides an opening for Wrollo to stab one of his opponents in the thigh. The hobgoblin collapses, spouting blood from a certainly lethal wound. Ralph rushes up and pokes his staff at the hobgoblin in the doorway. Visibly annoyed, it takes the opportunity to lash out at the unarmored man. Ralph is stricken through the chest and collapses, bloody froth bubbling from his sucking chest wound.
A'a rapidly backpedals from the dying Ralph, not wishing to close with the hobgoblin and suffer a similar fate. Instead, he pulls a dagger free and throws it at the hobgoblin. The hobgoblin doesn't see it coming, and it is a perfect throw. The dagger penetrates the hobgoblin's eye, but the blade is caught in the hobgoblin's helm. The hobgoblin roars in rage and pain and flails about Wrollo, his wild swings shooting sparks from the granite walls. Wrollo dodges these blows and with a flourish strikes the dagger protruding from the hobgoblin's face. The dagger slides deep, and the hobgoblin suddenly stiffens and says an unintelligible word in some unknown language. With a clatter, the hobgoblin slumps to the floor, dead.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ginger on Mar 10, 2008 16:54:24 GMT -5
The hobgoblin leader shouted "Attack them from all sides!" and the elves who understood shouted for people to prepare themselves for surprises.
Before Bronwyn went down the first time, he killed the goblin who was engaging him with an attack of opportunity when the goblin retreated to wake a hobgoblin.
|
|
|
|
Post by Wolfgar on Mar 10, 2008 17:48:04 GMT -5
When guessing characters, you should know that Nicole also played a character on Sunday. Tricky... Here goes: Royal- David? Alex- Nicole? or Rose? A'a- James? Xena- Rose? or Nicole Ralph- Lee? Bill? Bronwin- Josh? Wrollo- James? the baby? Marvin- Bill? Lee? Not bad. Royal- Dana Alex- Nicole A'a- James Xena- Rose Ralph- Lee Bronwin- David Wrollo- Josh Marvin- Bill |
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 10, 2008 18:34:00 GMT -5
Not bad. Royal- Dana Alex- Nicole A'a- James Xena- Rose Ralph- Lee Bronwin- David Wrollo- Josh Marvin- Bill : ) If I'd been able to read the third part before I answered I might have narrowed it down better. Bronwin had to be either you or David- This is so Lee: |
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 10, 2008 20:42:32 GMT -5
The hobgoblin leader shouted "Attack them from all sides!" and the elves who understood shouted for people to prepare themselves for surprises. Before Bronwyn went down the first time, he killed the goblin who was engaging him with an attack of opportunity when the goblin retreated to wake a hobgoblin. Thanks! Fixed it and changed Bronwin to Bronwyn as well! |
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 10, 2008 22:12:00 GMT -5
Wrollo and A'a look about them at the carnage. The rest of their party lies dead, and the two prisoners they have found have also been slain. While proving their mettle and gaining them much practical experience, it has not been exactly productive. Wrollo and A'a search through the goblins and hobgoblins, finding a large iron key on a leather thong around the neck of the largest hobgoblins. A'a checks to see that the fires, burning well in the other room, are not spreading, while Wrollo confirms that the hidden cubby has no more surprises in it.
A'a returns with a small sack and two thin wooden chests of silver coins, collected from his dead compatriots. "Under the desk is an iron box," says Wrollo, who has been busy inside the hobgoblins' room. "Under the area rug is something else. It's bumpy and lumpy, and I hear an occasional groan and thump." A'a and Wrollo move the desk and box aside, and then they roll up the rug. A trapdoor with a large iron pull ring is visible in the floor.
"Let me look at this chest first," says A'a. He peers at it through a jeweler's loop. "Looks safe to me," he confidently avers.
"That's what you said with the safe," retorts Wrollo, inserting the key and turning it. The top of the iron box opens easily, revealing four small sacks. Three of the sacks provide the reassuring jingle of coins, all silver, but almost as many as were found in the thin wooden boxes. The fourth sack though, it jingles and jangles, and a careful palpitation of the sack reveals an object within the coins. They dump the sack onto the rolled up rug, revealing a gold and emerald necklace caught up with the coins.
"O'o!" says A'a, marveling at the precious jewelry. A'a dons the jewels and slides them under his shirt. "Safer there," he reassures Wrollo. Wrollo eyes A'a wryly and then begins to tug on the ring in the middle of the trapdoor. The trap door lifts upwards revealing a staircase leading downward into the darkness. Huddling on the stairs, bound and gagged, are a small group of people. "More relatives, I'll bet," says A'a, as he helps Wrollo pull them out of the staircase.
Five people are pulled out of the staircase, and they are a slightly battered and woozy group. The shortest is a dwarf, who introduces himself as Anvil Ironspike, cousin of Royal Ironspike. Wrollo and A'a have only bad news for him. The tallest is fighter named Angus. Hairless, he insists on being called Angus the Black, or at least Black Angus. Built like an ox, he seems stronger than the average man. A lithe elven woman turns out to be the sister of Alex del Mar, Andy. She takes the death of her sister with equanimity, perhaps displaying some strange elven distancing of emotion instead of grief. Another elf, this one a man, also climbs out. Martin by name, he is only interested in pushing on and finding his missing relatives. Last is a tall woman dressed in colored clothes, much worse for the wear. She names herself Sheena, a mistress of magical arts.
Wrollo and A'a explain the situation, how they have reached where they are only through the sacrifice of their comrades. The freed prisoners all wish to join up with Wrollo and A'a, extract vengeance on their captors and rescue their friends and relations. Wrollo and A'a are more than willing to allow the freed prisoners take from the now-dead party members whatever arms and equipment they need.
While they sort themselves out, Wrollo doles out the coin in equal amounts to the others, so that no one is unduly burdened. A'a carefully enters the smoldering barracks and tries to determine what the stone object was that he saw from the doorway. Using the remains of Marvin's pole, he pushes aside the top bunk that rested on the stone piece. It appears to be an altar of some sort, and some searching through the corpses and the smoldering bedding finds a rather hot statuette. Plopping it onto a still-intact sheet, he drags it out of the hot room and shows it to Wrollo. The two of them look closely at it. It is covered in dirt and grime and seems to have been defaced by the goblins, but it plainly shows a rat-headed man. "Rat worshippers," says A'a. "How low can you go?"
The others finally kit themselves out, taking weapons if needed from the hobgoblins and goblins, and the party hikes down the stairs. The stairs descend a long distance and end at a wide passageway, easily twenty feet across, that crosses the stairs. While it extends out of the torchlight to the right and left, a door is a mere ten feet away on the right-hand wall. A'a holds up his hand and asks, "Do you hear that?" Everyone else strains their ears to hear what A'a does, but it is quiet to them. "It sounds like really bad singing and an out of tune lute," says A'a. "It's stopped. No, there it goes again. Man, that's bad."
The party hikes up to the door, and Angus, with a huge booted foot, boots it in. A stench of incense, body odor, and sour wine roils out of the door. A seraglio of cushions, pillows, furs, and rugs fills the room beyond. Two braziers burn smoky incense and a door can barely be made out in the left wall. Torches adorn each wall, providing a flickering, ruddy light. A man with a thin black mustachio, black clothing, and a lute breaks off singing slightly out of key. Next to him, swaying on the furs with an unfocused look on her eyes, is a flimsily clad young woman. Across from him squats a flimsily clad goblin female. Two gigantic rats frolic on the rugs as well. "I wants to talk with you!" booms Angus at the black-clad man.
Martin fires Bronwyn's crossbow at one of the rats, missing, but startling them out of their surprise. Angus strides up to the man and waves his large sword at him. Andy sends a shaft at one of the giant rats, impaling it, while Wrollo and Anvil enter the room to close with the other giant rat and the goblin woman.
Angus's violent mien panics the black-clad man. He stumbles to his feet, drawing a sword and in the process knocking one of the braziers over. It ricochets off the wall and sprays the man with coals, burning him badly. "Miranda! Protect me from these louts," cries the man, the torchlight reflecting off of a heavy gold ring worn on his right hand. The young woman dashes over to the wall to grab a torch from one of the torch holders.
Anvil, Wrollo, and Andy slay the other giant rat and the goblin woman with quick, merciless strokes. Angus, tall and with a long two-handed sword, says, "Not today little girl!" and lops off the young woman's head, her torch falling to the ground. Dark black smoke boils out of the floor where the torch has landed in a pile of incense.
"No! You idiot," shouts Andy. "Can't you see that she's Morgan Ironwolf's sister? We're here to save the prisoners, not to kill them!"
Angus frowns, shrugs, and then strides after the black-clad man, who has run to the door and thrown it open. As Angus closes with him, the man shudders and transforms, taking on the appearance of a large rat-headed man. "Whoa!" says Angus, as the man hisses at him and then runs down a short corridor with a door at its end. Angus plods along after him, and Sheena chases after the two of them.
The rat-man stops at the door, knowing that if he opens it, Angus will cut him down, and instead raises his hand, showing Angus his ring. "You are my friend, not their friend," the rat-man hisses. "Protect me from them, not them from me!" Angus looks at the rat-man like a dumb cow and then turns and swings his sword at Sheena.
"Eeep!" cries Sheena, as she ducks Angus's blade. Tossing a handful of sand at Angus, she invokes her hard-earned magics, and both Angus and the rat-man fall down unconscious. Sheena scrabbles backwards, concerned that either might awake.
Wrollo and Anvil, seeing the rat-man collapse, quietly tiptoe down the corridor to the rat-man. The two of them mouth words at each other silently. "One. Two. Three!" they sign, and together they swing their swords down on the rat-man's head. Off pops his head.
Angus seems in much better spirits once the rat-man is dead, taking his tongue lashing from Andy about Miranda's death without resorting to swinging his sword at her. "Too bad that wasn't Aunt Minerva," grumbles Anvil. A'a collects the gold ring from the rat-man, along with a belt pouch holding platinum coins in it.
The seraglio's furnishings are mixed in quality, all needing a good washing, but some were originally quite nice. Additionally, a great number of middling to good bottles of wine seem stashed amidst the incense and layers of rugs and furs. A'a gives Angus his wineskin to keep Angus from cracking open bottles twenty times the wineskin's worth. The bottles are set near the door for easy retrieval when they leave.
The door at the end of the corridor enters into a midden, where heaps of bones and trash are strewn about. Anvil and Wrollo, hearty individuals, both search through the midden, finding a broken silver dagger and some few copper coins, barely worth the effort, and a minty, iridescent liquid in a flask. Satisfied they have overcome their opponents and leave none behind, the party exits into the wide hallway.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ginger on Mar 11, 2008 8:03:31 GMT -5
Time for another guessing game.
|
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 11, 2008 9:41:22 GMT -5
Time for another guessing game. Nicole -> Alex -> Andy Dana -> Royal -> Anvil (I could be mistaken about this one) Rose -> Xena -> Shena Bill -> Marvin -> Martin David -> Bronwyn -> Black Angus (who else would get charmed in a one-off adventure but David?) |
|
|
|
Post by Ginger on Mar 11, 2008 9:57:01 GMT -5
Time for another guessing game. Nicole -> Alex -> Andy Dana -> Royal -> Anvil (I could be mistaken about this one) Rose -> Xena -> Shena Bill -> Marvin -> Martin David -> Bronwyn -> Black Angus (who else would get charmed in a one-off adventure but David?) Excellent logic, but I was Anvil. Lee was Angus. |
|
|
|
Post by Wolfgar on Mar 11, 2008 10:48:20 GMT -5
Lee has always wanted to play a barbarian. Finally he got the TPK and stats to do it.
|
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 13, 2008 23:54:24 GMT -5
Andy, who has watched the corridor while the others searched the room, points out their options. To the left, the corridor can be seen to bend to the right. To the right, the corridor extends out of sight. Anvil Ironspike strongly suggests that the party go to the right, ignoring the bend in the corridor. As the party leaves the room, they fail to see the corpse of the rat-man ominously begin to twitch.
The party walks down the corridor to the right, spreading out across the twenty-foot wide hallway. After a hundred feet, a narrower passageway extends off to the left. Ahead, barely visible at the furthest extent of vision, the larger passageway ends in a great archway. Andy slips off out of the light and quietly heads up to the archway. The party anxiously waits for her return.
When she suddenly reappears, she has much to say. Air flows through the archway into the space beyond. The space beyond is round and open. An audible sound of air whooshing in and out the archway can be made out, and a slight pressure felt. The air in the space past the archway is notably warmer than that in the corridor as well.
"Let's go left," declares Anvil, not particularly interested in the archway.
"Sounds like a dragon's lair," says Angus. "Hoooooo, haaaaaa, hoooooo, haaaaaaa, just like a big dragon breathing." The others look at him with a dour eye.
The party hikes down the narrower passageway until they see doors on both sides of the corridor, exactly across from one another. The party closes on them as quietly as they can. A'a listens at the doors, but they are equally quiet. He motions Angus up to the door on the left.
Angus hammers the door open with his boot, revealing a training room of sorts. A number of dummies partly clad in beaten armor are spread around the room. A woman wielding a sword spars against one of the dummies, and she looks up at the party with a glare in her eye. Her sword seems to have the faintest of glints in it, unnatural in this light, and she closes to the doorway to stop the party from entering and surrounding her.
Angus greets her as she comes. "Hah, hah, hah, nice to meet you," he woodenly laughs as he smites her a great blow with his greatsword. Her riposte is poor and off-balance, and Angus easily avoids it. He is still very startled as her form writhes and takes on a rat-like mien. The rat-woman hisses and loudly shrieks as she wards off the blows of Wrollo and Martin. She instead pulls out a flask from her belt pouch and drinks it down, the wounds on her body healing.
"No! No!" cries Anvil. "Don't let her drink the potions." It is too late though. She tosses aside the potion's flask and rejoins the fight. Simultaneously, the other door shudders open, and four goblins crowd the doorway. They strike at Anvil and Wrollo, trying to draw their attacks away from the rat-woman. The goblins are lethal, slaying Anvil with a thrust to the neck, but Martin's armor protects him.
Andy and Martin focus their attention on the goblins, while Angus and Wrollo work on slaying the rat-woman. Andy quickly guts one of the goblins, but they seem to be made of stern stuff. They do not break from battle. Indeed, a fluke blow slaps Martin across the temple, knocking him unconscious and leaving Andy as the only protection from being flanked by the goblins escaping their room.
Sheena runs up to the fallen dwarf and elf and frantically searches through their backpacks, searching for the strange potion found among the trash. Dragging it from the dead Anvil's backpack, she feeds it to Martin, restoring him to consciousness. He has little wish to return to combat, but begins to rise to his feet again.
The rat-woman seems a fell warrior as well, and she strikes hard with her glinting blade, catching Angus a slashing blow. Angus is a massive warrior, well trained to ignore pain in an almost bovine way. He continues his methodic pummeling of the rat-woman's guard, and between his hammering and Wrollo's quick blade, she is brought low.
With the death of the rat-woman, Wrollo is able to aid Andy and Martin against the goblins. The three of them quickly fell one of the goblins, and the remaining two goblins bolt for the darkness of the room. Wrollo and Angus chase after them, Martin and Andy following at a slight distance with a torch. The goblins are unable to escape the halfling and the hulking warrior, even when the goblins try to slip through a hidden passage on the far side of the room. As the goblins get the hidden passage open, they are cut down from behind.
A'a busies himself in collecting the belongings of the rat-woman, an earring, some coin, and her strangely glinting sword, while the others search through the goblins' den. The goblins have layered pillows and tapestries in humps around the room, and a large, latched, unlocked chest sits against one wall. Andy keeps a watch down the secret passage, which seems to end in a dead end, a sure sign of further hidden passages, while the others unearth the goblins' treasure.
Angus and Sheena dig around in the pillows for anything of note. Angus finds a pair of matched boots, dark in color and apparently the size for his feet. He decides to wear them. Sheena finds a bound and gagged man. "I found a prisoner!" she cries as she stands him up. Martin comes over and the two of them drag him out of the pillows. The man seems to gesture with his chin, in a somewhat imperative manner, towards the large, latched chest.
Martin and Sheena turn to the chest in time to see Wrollo reach down and open up the chest. He looks down, dumbfounded, at the small droplet of blood welling up from his finger where a miniature needle hidden in the latch has pierced his skin. "Poison!" he gasps, and then he falls down dead.
"That sucks!" exclaims A'a, who enters the goblins' room bearing the rat-woman's belongings. "Well, let's see what's inside of it. The prisoner guy can carry Anvil and Wrollo's distribution of the silver coins, unless you want to take the time to divide them up?" A'a gingerly uses a dagger to open the latch and then pries the top of the chest open. The goblins' treasure is within, several gold bracelets and other jewelry and a bag of silver coins as well.
Angus scoops up the coins from the dead while Martin and Andy free the prisoner. Freeing the prisoner is remarkably hard, as he does not lie still to have his bound undone, but instead writhes and strains against them. Only with the greatest of care is the prisoner not stabbed by accident while his bonds are being cut. When he is finally released, Martin begins to find out information from him. "What's your name?" asks Martin.
"Never mind my name!" exclaims the prisoner. "The woman's corpse is getting up! They are were-creatures and can only be harmed by silver and magic!" A horrible realization falls over the party. The rat-people and possibly the giant rats they believed slain may have not actually been permanently harmed, and now they are between the party and the exit of the Haunted Keep!
|
|
|
|
Post by Dead Greyhawk on Mar 13, 2008 23:54:45 GMT -5
So concluded our Garycon.
|
|
|
|
Post by Ginger on Mar 14, 2008 8:39:42 GMT -5
James declared himself the winner, because A'a was the only one to survive. He also got just enough experience to reach 2nd level.
|
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 14, 2008 9:37:29 GMT -5
James declared himself the winner, because A'a was the only one to survive. He also got just enough experience to reach 2nd level. How did he pronounce the name exactly? |
|
|
|
Post by Dell on Mar 14, 2008 10:14:47 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by venger on Mar 14, 2008 11:07:08 GMT -5
lol
|
|
