Sean's Campaign - Session #18

Sorry for being late, so I guess I’ll jump right into the game itself.

No Justin for the third week in a row, so Trebor was still poofed out.

I still haven’t thought of a good honorary title for Artemis. The best I’ve heard so far is Provost of the War College of Maratheelia, but I’m kind of “eh” on that title. Provost is not a title for a warmage, even if for an effeminate little elf.

I also had to prep for two different adventures because the party had two options for directions. They could stay in the northern lands and figure out what to do there, or they could head to Lataan (birthplace of Lindo and Caspar) to find a guide, but instead find some adventure.

I could have forced them down one path, but I’d rather railroad on when I have to.

We last left the party as they neared the pass in the mountains but smelled the smoke of a large fire in the air.

They decided to check out the source of the smoke, hoping maybe to find a guide if they’re lucky.

Instead they found devastated forest. A large fire had recently burned down a large swath of land (about half a hexagon on the map).

The party searched for any clues as to the source, and found none. They did meet a group of green-skinned giants that looked a lot like elves, only with very short tempers.

The giants asked the party if they started the fire, and the party tried to get help from the giants. The giants rudely told the party to scram. Reluctantly, the party gave up and returned to the pass to head to Lataan.

The pass’s occupants had only been cleared out a couple of weeks ago, but already some denizens of the mountains were returning. In this particular case, mountain trolls.

The party stumbled across a pair of them looking around one of the above ground sections of the pass. The trolls thought “food!” while the party thought “XP!”

These trolls were tough too.

In the first few rounds of combat the party found out how much of a wallop these trolls can hand out when Sorra was hit twice with a couple of swings from its greatclub for over 80 damage. This prompted Ysilia to use a Sudden Maximized, Sudden Empowered Cure Critical Wounds that was converted to a ray to heal Sorra from 20 feet away. She rolled a natural two and Sorra has a ridiculously high touch AC of 19. So Ysilia used one of her 1d20 re-rolls, which didn’t do any better. Then Aaron bribed the DM with Gummi Savers. I rolled another natural two.

The next round Sorra was squished down to -20 hit points. Ysilia then risked attacks of opportunity and was able to cast the group’s favorite raise dead class spell, Revivify. Sorra was then placed at one hit point.

That was the highlight of the combat though. The party got serious about the trolls after that and took them down. It also helped that I couldn’t roll well either.

While the partying was doing their post-combat looting and healing up, a third mountain troll went crazy at the sight of his dead and looted brothers and attacked the party. Although he was able to get some level of surprise on the party, my poor rolls guaranteed no real danger this combat.

Besides the trolls the party found nothing new of interest in the pass.

A few days later they were on the road to Lataan and a few days after that they found some of their good old friends from long ago.

Four huge fiendish ankhegs burst from the ground from the rear and a side of the party.

Once again, horses bought the party a round or so of near-safety as the ankhegs were going for food. But since the horses were summoned via the Regal Procession spell, the ankhegs had to find a different source of food.

The party, being of much higher level than last time (level 10 this time, level 6 last time I think), was able to withstand many of the ankhegs grapples and a Solid Fog spell helped keep two of the ankhegs at bay.

One particular ankheg had only 3 hit points remaining when it successfully grabbed Zelast and went underground with him (he used a d20 re-roll to prevent it, but failed). During Zelast’s next action he grabbed his father’s masterwork silver dagger, swift cast Magic Weapon on it, and killed the ankheg from the inside.

But the ankheg had already retreated below ground. By the time Zelast had killed the ankheg, its head was 5’ beneath the surface.

I gave Brian a 50/50 chance that he might be able to find a way up above ground, but if the rolled failed the path the ankheg had dug had collapsed behind it, leaving nothing but loose soil and Zelast to die of asphyxiation.

He failed the roll. He probably would have used a reroll, but I goofed and had him use percentile roll instead of a d20 roll. Had he mentioned something about it I probably would have let him. It’s too late now though.

After the other ankhegs were finished off, the party began digging to get Zelast. Eventually they found him, raised him, and traveled on.

Their next obstacle was a large barricade of boulders, planks, and debris that blocked the road.

When Artemis started flying up to get a look, a small rain of arrows came from behind the barricade. So he turned invisible and scouted from a better angle.

Long story short, 8 ogres and a dozen orc barbarians (level 1) had set up that barricade then the party came along. When the party returned fire, it was brutal. A Fireball fried 5 of the ogres and the orcs were baked by a Wall of Fire from behind and in front.

Any clues as to why the ogres and orcs were there were probably roasted by those walls, but there were definitely no survivors.

The party moved on until and in a couple of days they made it to the port city of Lataan, which was at that time being attacked by orcs, giants, and sea monsters.

The attack was over though as the creatures began retreating moments later thanks to the city being a center of training for knights and monks of the realm.

The party head to the gates to enter the city, but were told they could not enter at that time. The city was on high paranoid alert and would not let anyone enter until morning. The party persisted so a couple of arrows in the ground in front of the party drove the point home.

But Dale isn’t one to take “no” for an answer, so Ari cast Protection from Arrows on Artemis and he went back to talk some more to the trigger happy guards.

Warning shots did nothing, so they started shooting at him. He eventually turned invisible and flew away when hails of arrows were coming at him.

The next morning a troupe of knights came out to see the party directly. First they took Artemis away, potentially to jail.
(Artemis spent the entire day doing some work to replace the arrows he “wasted” the previous night.)

The rest of the party was escorted into town and otherwise were left alone.

First the informed Caspar’s mother of his death over a year ago (and they weren’t very sensitive about it either).

Then they went about getting information in their own ways.

They heard various rumors and facts; the mayor of the town had remarried, the horde of orcs and giants were landing their boats a few days away and were on their way, large wall-crushing constructs were among the horde, the horde was being led by someone named General Takral a fallen knight who has tried before to take the city, monsters with large tentacles destroyed nearly the entire fleet the night of the attack, and so on.

At one point a huge red dragon flew over Lataan and announced to the city that if it wanted his protection, the city should send representatives to the “Circle of Death” just north of the city, and to bring money.