Starring:
Adam as Ari/Beaver the Wizard – String them up from the arrow slits!
Jake as Kroq the Fighter – She’s not a sorcerer, she’s shit!
Chris H. as Uffo the Bard – By the way, where the fuck are we?
Matthew as Cru the Cleric – He didn’t mention it, so he doesn’t know about it!
Henry as Darin the Rogue – I am a bounty hunter from Red Larch!
Special Guest Star – Simon as Helmuth the Sorcerer
Chapter 1 – Secret of the Sumber Hills continued.
The main story so far:
– A rogue member of a cult dedicated to the worship of ‘elemental earth’ tried to gain control of the town of Red Larch. He was found to be in possession of some rare trade bars from the city of Mirabar.
– A trade delegation from Mirabar went missing in the area recently. Powerful organisations want them found. The delegation was ambushed by the Black Earth cult and the delegates kidnapped.
– Whilst travelling with the delegate prisoners, the Black Earth cult got into a fight with the Air Cult. It isn’t known what the outcome of that was or where the delegates are now.
– The party investigated the Air Cult base at Feathergale Spire, admitted everything, trusted the big bad boss dude because he was nice to them, sat down for dinner and got ambushed <sigh>.
– The boss was beaten, the spire looted, a letter from the head of the Howling Hatred air cult ‘Aerisi’ was found and also directions to Riverguard Keep.
– There was also a mention of ‘Sacred Stone Monastery’ being associated with the Black Earth cult.
– The temple entrance in the valley is protected by a barrier they party cannot get through. There is a mechanism next to it that seems to require four pieces to function. They recovered one piece from an amulet worn by Thurl Merosska, the boss dude from the spire.
Don’t let me down Rookie!
The party returned to town and on the way in found four bodies hanging from a tree with a sign saying ‘TRAITORS!’ nailed to it. They were asked to meet Constable Harburk outside the Swinging Sword where he gave them a run down on the investigation into the ‘Believers’. Several of them had been caught and hung but three others had done a runner.
At this point Darin was handed a Red Larch Bounty Hunter’s badge, a hand crossbow and a nightstick and told to bring them back alive for a reward.
The constable then led them to a large nearby house that had belonged to one of the Believers and told they could live there rent free for a year as a reward for saving the town from falling under the sway of the Black Earth cult.
Factions were contacted and personal quests updated and Cru learned a lot about the Elder Elemental Eye and how it corrupts the weak, evil and unhinged into trying to bring about a really shitty future. The cults are really bad, this shit is serious, serious people are seriously worried, bad shit is going down and reinforcements have been sent for. Unfortunately, it will probably take at least three weeks for them to arrive. Until then it’s all on you lot.
The world is fucked.
Rivergard Keep
The bard performed at the inn with a set of pan pipes he couldn’t play. No one gave a shit. Or any money.
Cru cast Augury to decide between the Abbey and Rivergard and then completely ignored the result. Thankfully the rest of the group were paying attention.
The DM offered a choice to approach by river or by land. There followed a lengthy discussion (when isn’t there?) on which one to take, at the end of which Darin made a snarky comment about taking half an hour to choose between two things and another snarky comment about the bard’s inability to show up on time. Oooh!
There then followed an even longer (I know, right?) and somewhat heated discussion about what approach to take to actually get into the keep. Ari actually had the gall to say “Look where your last plan got us!” at which point the DM gleefully gave a summary of Beaver’s greatest hits from the last campaign, not to mention Fucking Womford and the Valley of Death in this one.
Ari did point out, quite accurately, that on most of those occasions the group had agreed with the course of action. The DM can only attribute this to Stockholm Syndrome.
Or possibly drugs.
Ari sent in an Owl to scout and it failed the stealth check by 1 point with a 14… BWAHAHAH!
A Bandit crossbowed it and it was an ex-familiar. Used one, lost one.
Uffo approached the guardhouse with Cru and attempted to gain entry to the pirate stronghold with the ‘We are poor lost travellers, can we kip here tonight?’ approach. “Fuck off you tramps” was the gist of the reply. Uffo then offered to perform in exchange for accommodations.
The general feeling from the rest of the party was that this would not end well.
However, the plucky, if slightly deluded, bard made the persuasion check and the group were led to the Great Hall of the keep to meet Jollivar “Jolly” Grimjaw, the boss of this pirate base. Uffo repeated his ‘poor lost travellers in need of rest and by the way, where the fuck are we?’ approach and Jollivar appeared to believe it, welcomed them and offered them accommodation.
BWAHAHA, yeah, no really. He’s the leader of a bunch of bandits and pirates and one of the leaders of an evil elemental cult. He is going to kill you, rob you, rape you and eat you, probably in that order, but he wants you asleep in the barracks when they start it.
Normally they have to go hunt down lost travellers to rob and kill, you lot appeared to have just wandered in. Bonus.
Ok, nicely done, now what?
Off to the barracks they go and at this point a minor flaw in the plan appeared; namely that they didn’t actually have a plan.
A common DM complaint is that their players tend to go full murder-hobo on anything that crosses their path. I’ve got the opposite problem: they won’t start a fight at all. These cultists are a bunch of real douchebags. They murder, steal and rape and want to create a world of chaos. The keep bosses have amulets the players need to progress and they aren’t going to just give them over, they need to be taken.
So having gotten inside, our intrepid adventurers find themselves in the barracks. It’s cosy: there are 16 Bandits and a Bandit Captain inside the barracks with the players and, just for good measure, there are two more Bandits outside the door.
This could have gone really, really badly if they kicked a fight off in there. An argument A discussion was had about what to do in which a mini-rant by Uffo included the always helpful “you can all get fucked”. Uffo then stepped up and did a performance. It wasn’t exactly great but he didn’t get killed at least (and that was very possible).
Darin struck up a conversation with a bandit, was asking question about nefarious activities and was doing ok but the bandit was admitting nothing. Cru made the wonderful assumption that “He didn’t mention it, so he doesn’t know about it”. Bwahahah! That’s what insight checks are for; people lie. I know, shocking right?
Darin’s conversation started going nowhere until he mentioned the missing delegates. The DM had a sudden flashback to a windy dock in a forgotten shit-hole of a town “Excuse me mate, you know anything about valuable stolen Dwarven books for sale?” <sigh>
Ok, the delegates are important people carrying important things. They are valuable to both the cultists and the factions, not to mention the city of Mirabar. These cultists were implicit in the capture of those delegates and soon after the dirty deed took place, a band of ‘lost’ adventurers turned up and started asking questions about them. Hmmm.
Showdown
The bandit captain was told the group had been asking about the delegates. Weapons were drawn and the captain hurried out the door. The party decided to stay put (wise choice). The captain came back and, with a few other guards, escorted the group back to Jolly who made it plain the time for bullshit was over.
Uffo started to bullshit.
Uffo was told to shut up and Jollivar demanded Cru tell him what was going on. Cru waffled a bit (unexpected pressure sucks) and then Darin stepped up and informed the pirate commander, in a keep full of pirates and bandits that he was a bounty hunter.
Well, that was one way of doing it 🙂
Rather surprisingly, a fight started.
Even more surprisingly, Jollivar turned into a were-crocodile. Awesome.
As Drikk Fra-Kar, six-time grand champion of the Luskan extreme arena once said “Shapeshifters are dicks. If you can’t afford a magic weapon, get a normal one silvered. It really comes in handy for stabbing werewolves. If there aren’t any werewolves, you can always use it as a shaving mirror.”
The DM’s attempt at a world record for ‘longest on-going string of shit die rolls’ carried on from last week with the exception of the Bandit Captain, who despite being an unplanned addition to this fight, proved to be a bit of a star.
Guess what you lot are going to be seeing a lot more of from now on? BWHAHAHA!
The Reavers were shit (again). The Bandits didn’t even get a go due to an Ari Shatter. The Priest was… I can’t actually remember… oh wait, he landed a cracking Hold Person on Kroq that kept him quiet for a round and a bit. The Fathomer turned into a giant water snake and then proceeded to do not very much due to craptastic dice rolls.
Cru, being a more support Cleric this week, started throwing Inflict Wounds about with abandon. To be fair, he was stuck between a rock (a very large, angry lycanthrope with very large, angry teeth) and a hard place (a Reaver/giant water snake combo).
Uffo landed a Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on Jolly but it didn’t take effect. It would on ‘normal’ lycanthropes, but Jolly is a bit special. Jolly then ran around biting people. He nailed Uffo and Helmuth and they were each asked to make Constitution saves. What will come of those?
Uffo remembered the WoMM! Unfortunately he didn’t remember how to use it, which as Cru summed up “This isn’t even maths, it’s just counting”. However, this spawned another Maths is Hard moment and that shit did become contagious with the DM, Ari and Kroq joining in the fun with not being able to add up small numbers of small numbers.
Jake set up the upcoming Battle Royale with some smack talk about Ari “She’s not a Sorcerer, she’s shit”.
Helmuth lobbed ‘sorcery shit’ at ‘croc’, and it was rapidly specified which one because the DM will take that shit literally and Jake/Kroq was panicking slightly.
Uffo managed to say “It’ll cost you schpell schlot” which tickled Darin immensely.
There was then a lengthy out-of-character interlude discussing Jake’s impending diabetes and the unpleasant effects of kidney stones and their treatment.
The valiant Bandit Captain finally succumbed to a prolonged assault 🙁 and Jolly died soon after.
Moral Dilemma Time
The group finally finished off the Priest and the Fathomer but this fight used pretty much everything they had. However, no reinforcements turned up (presumably the other bandits thought Jolly won) and it is now fairly late at night. The party barricaded the door and went to check out the rest of the rooms before having a long rest.
In the kitchen they found 5 people, two of which looked a bit ragged. It turned out these two, along with three others in the next-door servant’s quarters, had been kidnapped from Womford and put to work as the pirate’s domestic help. The other three were failed Reavers and hadn’t been particularly nice to the Womforders.
So what do the party want to do about this?
Ari wanted to string them up from the arrow slits. Uffo, having pulled off a most unlikely intimidation check, wanted to just kill them. Cru didn’t really know what he wanted except not to kill them. Kroq absolutely wouldn’t stand for killing them but was quite ok with knocking them out and tying them up. Darin and Helmuth didn’t seem overly fussed but Darin didn’t want his manacles sullied.
There was some chat about letting them go. That would have been interesting. Instead they were knocked out and restrained and the Womforders were lowered out of an arrow slit and told to hide up the road where the party would find them later.
In return, one of the women they freed told them about two secret doors. Behind one in the Great Hall was a set of stairs leading down to a landing alongside an underground river. This was protected by another barrier with another four-socket device next to it. They now have two amulets, one from Therosska of the Howling Hatred cult and Grimjaw’s from the last fight.
The other secret door led to Grimjaw’s quarters. Loot was looted and the party rested.
End of session.
Next time on Ten-foot Squares:
– There’s a lot of stuff in that barracks, how are they going to clear it out?
– What were the consequences of those constitution checks?
– Will they clear the keep and then totally forget about the Womforders?
Tune in next week to find out!