Episode 12

This week nearly went without any combat at all, which is kind of neat since last week was a very combat intensive night.  As a result of that I have no combat maps to upload this week!    Over all it was a good night.

Episode 12:

The party started off the evening at the top of a dwarven fortress with a bunch of dwarves outside the main keep.  Now the dwarves were currently unaware that the heroes had slipped into the temple, slaughtered a bunch of guys, stolen 15 bars of mithril, released all their slaves, and freed their friend from captivity.  The part quickly looked around the room they were in, grabbed Durn's gear and a book written in a cypher, and booked it.

This gave me a nice opportunity to add some tension.  They could hear the dwarves discover what happened and then they could hear the tread of running dwarven feat as they ran down the steps to stay just out of reach of their stubby little feet.


The party then bolts out the secret door at the rear of the cliff and managed to get out before the dwarves knew where they went to.  Outside they met with all of the folks who, only a few short hours before, where about to be slaves of the dueregar.  They ducked back into the trees and slept from dawn to the evening so that they could be full rested and move in the night time.  Before that point the party was fatigued due to pulling an all nighter.

Under the cover of darkness the party managed to move out of the valley, and with tremendous luck and good decision making every potential combat was avoided.  This was partly due to Whoden, Sam's 1 eyed raven, and just being careful, and of course tremendous luck over and over.

The party then met up with some roving dwarven patrols from Garrets Reach.  These were not bad guys and when they realized that they had saved a bunch of their citizens from slavery escorted them back to Garrets Reach.  At this point the party decided that they were not going to go IN to Garrets Reach due to the heat that they were under.  Durn went in, since he was not with the group, and agreed to meet up with the party 1 day later with potential news about the other missing party member, Kong.

Once the party had rested Durn came back and explained he would work to help clear their name, but he needed to stay and help take care of his father who agreed to testify against the Stoutfellows.  In regards to Kong he had been tried and his sentence executed.  His fate was the worst a dwarg could suffer, he was banished, had his beard shaved off, and his hand was clamped in the "Black Gauntlet", a device that caused searing pain so long as it was worn.  Kong left several days before, with the party believing that he went to meet them in Wisthaven to the southeast.

The party then continued to Wisthaven.  Wisthaven is the largest, oldest, and most corrupt city in the area.  I should mention that at this point an NPC noticed that Sam the Salesman had his gender changed.  This is something that I had not mentioned in previous posts due to in game knowledge of other players.  Sam picked up a cloak with from the doppelgangers a few weeks back and when he put it on he began to slowly change gender- and his party failed to make perception checks to notice (which was staggering).  Once Urz realized Sam was now Samantha he immediately groped him, causing Sam to look ashamed and confused.

Once on ground the party had a lot of loose ends to tie up.  They looked for information on Kong- paying information dealers, gathering information on their own, trying to pick up hints.  They needed to locate the next Seal Tower and find out where Belfast had gone to- so they went to the temples and asked around about where the tower might be and if the death cultists had been heard from.  Urz decided to find out if someone could enchant the green dragons wings he had been carrying around for weeks so that he could fly- This one was interesting.  It turns out Ismana, from Osht who sent them on a previous quest, has a tower in a pocket dimension with entrance points in more than 1 location, and that is who Urz ran into, and picked up a another quest from her as well.  Sam had a personal quest to deal with and looked into that as well.

Speaking of Sam, for the first time since the beginning of the game he ran into the guy who brought him into this dimension.  On the streets of Osht Sam Simmons ran into a man who called himself Eric Erinson.... though Eric did not recognize "Samantha".

That evening the party ran into a black knight wielding a Lucerne Hammer with a bowl of incense hanging off of a chain.  This was an Anti-paladin with spring attack (stealing some inspiration from a podcast).  His incense gave let him use his cruelty in any square he had stood or swung his hammer.

This was not designed to be a hard fight.  Just challenging and making the players work around him some.  So he bounced around hit a bunch of people, fatigued the group, and then ran away as soon as he could to avoid being killed (with a hp total of 7 at the end of the fight).I


Vlaad the Black Kngiht took off, but made sure to leave his calling card and now the party has 1 more thing to worry about (like they needed that).

We did a lot of role playing, the party spent a lot of time shopping (something they had little chance to do for the past many weeks).  And they really had a chance to wind down from the past few weeks and put together all the details of what they needed to do.  The game could have gone the whole night without combat, but I know that not everyone would have liked that so I made sure to include that here.

Well, we have 2 more villains to contend with - Eric and Vlaad, a couple of new quests, and they have a dwarf friend missing somewhere in the city.  It looks like next week is going to be good.

Until Next Time!

-UberCrozier