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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-11-12 11:33 pm
james_davis_nicoll) wrote2013-11-12 11:33 pm
Adventurer Conquerer King: Session Seventeen and Eighteen
Well, back on the horse.
The party is free but the way out is not clear. As per his usual role, Otho gets sent off to sneak around to see if he can find the party's stuff. No luck. He does find a room full of carousing orcs, and settles for peeking at them before sneaking away. Interestingly, the Gnoll ambassador notices Otho but does not raise an alarm.
A quick head countL the chief, 2 guards, the Gnoll, 2 more orcs at the head table, 2 more tables with six orcs each, plus orcish women. The body guards are soberish. No sign of the party's stuff and no obvious way to get it just at this moment.
It could be that once the orcs are drunk enough, the party can overpower them. Accordingly the group wants to wait and maybe free the walled up prisoner as an ally (which the party did later on; turned out to be a 0th level peasant, walled up as a joke).
This plan goes up in flames as the Gnoll leads two orcs down into the cellar so they can all poke at the stupid weak human prisoners. Sadly for the orcs, the stupid weak human prisoners are in a position to preemptively poke back, plus the Gnoll is on our side, sort of. After some brutal violence, the party is alive and the orcs are not.
[There's an awful lot of 'entire party focuses on one warrior on other side, which does not feel sporting but is very effective]
It turns out the orcs thought the best place for an ambassador was in the room next to the offal pit, a room the orcs never use because of the smell. The orc/gnoll alliance is off.
Escape routes:
The owlbear cage has a trap door that leads to throne room.
The staircase leads to the throne room.
The garbage chute leads up to a cave by the guard room. Sadly, Otho cannot climb the chute (I think it was roll of 2). The dwarf, being an NPC, gets volunteered and he managed not only to scale the tunnel but drag a rope with him. With the rope in place, the rest of the party can follow.
There are four or five orcs on guard. The wizard has the ability to disguise himself with a cantrip (I think) so he makes himself look like the Orc chief, opens the door to the guard room and calls one of them out. This lucky fellow gets heaved down the chute so he survives or at least he survives meeting the party.
The rest of the orc guards are not so lucky. Let this stand as a grim lesson for all minor characters who think accepting a guard post where three or four other groups have been wiped out in the last couple of days is a good idea.
[One fumble: Otho breaks one of the sharp things he is throwing at people. This is balanced by a number of criticals]
Gnoll can't tell the party where their stuff is but he can give a vague description of the layout. The Gnoll is interested in a mutually agreed boundary between humans and Gnolls, which the party is agrees to on a conditional basis. With the possibility of some diplomatic work later on (and directions to the Gnoll village), the party lets the Gnoll head off to his people.
***
As per his usual role, Otho explores the tunnels leading back to the throne room and beyond.
[You know, suddenly I don't feel so badly about how reluctant Otho is to join in on hand to hand fighting. This is less because he is much better with ranged weapons and more because in the first HTH fight he was in, he got badly injured and then lightly killed by a wizard]
The first foray ends when Otho finds himself in a domestic area. Rather than just mysteriously vanish, he makes his way back to the party and explains the situation before heading back into the tunnels.
A lot of exploring occurs that I will not document here except to say it says a lot about the orcs that their first line of defense is to stick the women and children out where invaders will show up first.
Eventually Otho makes his way to the underground river, which lets him work his back to the group. Almost. He is close enough to be heard by the party up in the guard room so they can dangle a rope down to him. All he needs to do is use his Master Woodsman skills and swim to the rope.
Of course I roll a 1 at this point.
Otho is swept past the rope but managed to get onto a ledge downstream. The current is too strong to swim against but happily the map ended just beyond where Otho was and the GM didn't want to come up with a side quest for Otho so he was not lost at this time. Instead the party used a dead orc as a float to lead the rope to him, and he was able to climb back out.
Voices coming up from the cells via the chute make it clear that the party's little ruse has been discovered. The group prepares for the worse and then!
Nothing happens for a long time.
Eventaully, there is the sound of orcs trying to sneak up on the party. It turns out not to be a group of heavily armed angry warriors but one of the body guards accompanied by his wife and kids. He's not trying to sneak attack the party but trying to sneak out of the cave system entirely.
The party agrees to let them by peacefully if they go get the stolen gear. Happily, the big orc knows where it is and can see trying to buy us off might let him and his family escape, whereas fighting his way through is likely to end badly. He doubles back and retrieves the stolen gear and in return, the party allows him and his family to go on their way.
And this is just one benefit of not killing non-combatants out of hand.
As they leave, his wife offers a warning: "There is death in the darkness."
Everyone dons their armour and grabs their regular weapons and the whole group heads back down into the caves *again*. There isn't much resistance and what there is dies in short order. The party allows non-combatants to flee, with the benefit that this spreads panic through the cave system.
The throne room is oddly still with bodies laying standing. Grom is on his throne or at least his body is. Everyone seems to be dead.
There is one exception who when it moves gets magic missiled (non-fatally) by our Wizart. It turns out to be a blind (eyes gouged out by Grom) orc who complaints that "She has forsaken me." Patience the cleric establishes that "she" is the Lady of the river. The orc is not forthcoming about the nature of Lady, possibly because he does not know.
The dead orcs died hard. It is not clear of what but it could have been poison.
Another sound behind the party provokes a colour spray. Sadly this only amuses the thing in the shadows. The thing in the shadows is oddly shy about letting the party get a good look but eventually it becomes clear it is the Lady and the Lady is a medusa. An old one.
This is bad enough but while the medusa sets off the evil detector the wizard was given, it doesn't set off the cleric's geas, which means as bad as this thing is, there has to be something even worse down here.
The party is free but the way out is not clear. As per his usual role, Otho gets sent off to sneak around to see if he can find the party's stuff. No luck. He does find a room full of carousing orcs, and settles for peeking at them before sneaking away. Interestingly, the Gnoll ambassador notices Otho but does not raise an alarm.
A quick head countL the chief, 2 guards, the Gnoll, 2 more orcs at the head table, 2 more tables with six orcs each, plus orcish women. The body guards are soberish. No sign of the party's stuff and no obvious way to get it just at this moment.
It could be that once the orcs are drunk enough, the party can overpower them. Accordingly the group wants to wait and maybe free the walled up prisoner as an ally (which the party did later on; turned out to be a 0th level peasant, walled up as a joke).
This plan goes up in flames as the Gnoll leads two orcs down into the cellar so they can all poke at the stupid weak human prisoners. Sadly for the orcs, the stupid weak human prisoners are in a position to preemptively poke back, plus the Gnoll is on our side, sort of. After some brutal violence, the party is alive and the orcs are not.
[There's an awful lot of 'entire party focuses on one warrior on other side, which does not feel sporting but is very effective]
It turns out the orcs thought the best place for an ambassador was in the room next to the offal pit, a room the orcs never use because of the smell. The orc/gnoll alliance is off.
Escape routes:
The owlbear cage has a trap door that leads to throne room.
The staircase leads to the throne room.
The garbage chute leads up to a cave by the guard room. Sadly, Otho cannot climb the chute (I think it was roll of 2). The dwarf, being an NPC, gets volunteered and he managed not only to scale the tunnel but drag a rope with him. With the rope in place, the rest of the party can follow.
There are four or five orcs on guard. The wizard has the ability to disguise himself with a cantrip (I think) so he makes himself look like the Orc chief, opens the door to the guard room and calls one of them out. This lucky fellow gets heaved down the chute so he survives or at least he survives meeting the party.
The rest of the orc guards are not so lucky. Let this stand as a grim lesson for all minor characters who think accepting a guard post where three or four other groups have been wiped out in the last couple of days is a good idea.
[One fumble: Otho breaks one of the sharp things he is throwing at people. This is balanced by a number of criticals]
Gnoll can't tell the party where their stuff is but he can give a vague description of the layout. The Gnoll is interested in a mutually agreed boundary between humans and Gnolls, which the party is agrees to on a conditional basis. With the possibility of some diplomatic work later on (and directions to the Gnoll village), the party lets the Gnoll head off to his people.
***
As per his usual role, Otho explores the tunnels leading back to the throne room and beyond.
[You know, suddenly I don't feel so badly about how reluctant Otho is to join in on hand to hand fighting. This is less because he is much better with ranged weapons and more because in the first HTH fight he was in, he got badly injured and then lightly killed by a wizard]
The first foray ends when Otho finds himself in a domestic area. Rather than just mysteriously vanish, he makes his way back to the party and explains the situation before heading back into the tunnels.
A lot of exploring occurs that I will not document here except to say it says a lot about the orcs that their first line of defense is to stick the women and children out where invaders will show up first.
Eventually Otho makes his way to the underground river, which lets him work his back to the group. Almost. He is close enough to be heard by the party up in the guard room so they can dangle a rope down to him. All he needs to do is use his Master Woodsman skills and swim to the rope.
Of course I roll a 1 at this point.
Otho is swept past the rope but managed to get onto a ledge downstream. The current is too strong to swim against but happily the map ended just beyond where Otho was and the GM didn't want to come up with a side quest for Otho so he was not lost at this time. Instead the party used a dead orc as a float to lead the rope to him, and he was able to climb back out.
Voices coming up from the cells via the chute make it clear that the party's little ruse has been discovered. The group prepares for the worse and then!
Nothing happens for a long time.
Eventaully, there is the sound of orcs trying to sneak up on the party. It turns out not to be a group of heavily armed angry warriors but one of the body guards accompanied by his wife and kids. He's not trying to sneak attack the party but trying to sneak out of the cave system entirely.
The party agrees to let them by peacefully if they go get the stolen gear. Happily, the big orc knows where it is and can see trying to buy us off might let him and his family escape, whereas fighting his way through is likely to end badly. He doubles back and retrieves the stolen gear and in return, the party allows him and his family to go on their way.
And this is just one benefit of not killing non-combatants out of hand.
As they leave, his wife offers a warning: "There is death in the darkness."
Everyone dons their armour and grabs their regular weapons and the whole group heads back down into the caves *again*. There isn't much resistance and what there is dies in short order. The party allows non-combatants to flee, with the benefit that this spreads panic through the cave system.
The throne room is oddly still with bodies laying standing. Grom is on his throne or at least his body is. Everyone seems to be dead.
There is one exception who when it moves gets magic missiled (non-fatally) by our Wizart. It turns out to be a blind (eyes gouged out by Grom) orc who complaints that "She has forsaken me." Patience the cleric establishes that "she" is the Lady of the river. The orc is not forthcoming about the nature of Lady, possibly because he does not know.
The dead orcs died hard. It is not clear of what but it could have been poison.
Another sound behind the party provokes a colour spray. Sadly this only amuses the thing in the shadows. The thing in the shadows is oddly shy about letting the party get a good look but eventually it becomes clear it is the Lady and the Lady is a medusa. An old one.
This is bad enough but while the medusa sets off the evil detector the wizard was given, it doesn't set off the cleric's geas, which means as bad as this thing is, there has to be something even worse down here.