Episode 13

I apologize for the lateness of the posting, but sometimes life gets in the way.

I had anticipated about 3-4 different paths the party would go down at this point.  I always try and figure out what the most likely and least likely options are for where the party is going to go.  Once I have that figured out I spend energy planning accordingly.  This was not the #1 thing that I expected from the group, but I did have something in store if its how things went down.

Episode 13:

At this point the party started the night in Wisthaven.  They had spent a few days gathering information and following up on leads.

Tian Primrose, the half-elf information dealer, caught up with Lina at the Smoking hound (the Inn they are staying at).  I decided to make Tian kind of a creep, he hits on the little gnome Lina and in general acts like a jerk.  But he has the information that Lina is looking for and has found out where Kong, the beardless dwarf is.  At this point Lina also asks for information on Eric Erinson (Sam's nemesis) and on Vlaad the Dark Knight Anti-Paladin/Bounty Hunter from the week before.

Once the part found Kong they met back up with Ismana, the elven wizard, at her trans-dimensional Tower that has at least 1 entrance in Wisthaven and 1 in Osht.  They were reminded that she was looking for some White Yew from the mountains.  Kong knew of some other beardless dwarves who were interested in some work.  So with a ahdnful of dwarves in tow the rest of the party decided it was time to go and do this little fetch quest for the addle-brained wizard.

They spent a little extra time getting making some purchases and once they were ready, they loaded a bunch of horses and their dwarven allies.  With that they made the 2 day trip to the mountains and began cutting down trees.


After a few days the party had most of what they needed.  But, each day they were there added to the possibility that a local group of bandits was going to notice them and attack.  As it turned out, on the 4th night they decided to lay an ambush.

The way I ended up doing this was to have them write out their order of watch and have each one roll their perception check for their watch.  Once I had that I rolled randomly to see who was on watch when the bad guys snuck in.  If our heroes perception beat their sneakiness, they had a chance to act before getting hit.  As it turns out it fell on Lina's watch, the best possible result for the party since she had the best perception roll.


By the numbers this was a CR8 encounter.  In reality it was probably close to 9/10.  they fought 3 rogues (level 2 rogue, level 2 warrior) 3 archers (level 4 warriors), 1 fighter (level 3), 1 ranger (L3) and 1 Wizard (L3).  Over all no individual enemy was more difficult that a CR2, but the bad guys were buffed up and the goodguys were off guard and mostly unarmored, which was overcome with a pretty ingenious unseen servant spell to help the inquisitor and the fighter.

This was a fun battle. The wizard was using his familiar to deliver chill touch, the archers were pulling the party in different directions and Kong got sneak attacked by two rogues when he tried to skip out the back of the tent.  I was honestly really happy with how this turned out.  Sam made some judicious use of the Create Pit spell (which may be the best 2nd level spell...period) which really cut off the enemies mobility.  Sam ended up getting downed, but not killed and Damone swung in to save him.  After about 10 rounds of difficult combat the elf wizard managed to get away and Typhus decided it was time to get to his "Dark Work" of questioning the still living bandits.  As a side note Lina calls it his "Dirty Work", which I think most of the group has started to pick up on and kind of makes me chuckle.

Typhus found out that the bandits had a fortification built about a days ride away.  They spent the next couple of days finishing up their lumber work and sent the dwarves back south to Wisthaven with the prisoner.

The fortress was basically a wooden pallisade 25' tall 50' long and 40' deep.  about 10 guys were inside, including a 5th level cleric and a 6th level fighter.

The party came up with a plan to get inside: Sam would make a silent image of the guard they rescued while Lina would throw down Ghost Sound to make him call for help.  From Ismana's bag of Tasty Treats they pulled 3 flying candies and handed those out to the melee fighters.  Once the guards opened the gates they would all throw down the buff spells and the up front fighters would fly up top while the sneaky guys/casting guys would come in from the bottom. 

The plan worked like a charm, they hit a couple of snags (Kong was flying 50' in the air when the cleric dispelled magic on him.... which caused him to hit -8... but he was fine).  The Hsted flying combatants had not trouble moving around the battlefield and within 12 rounds they cleaned up the bad guys.

The only sad news is that between these 2 fights and a little role-playing we chewed up the enitre night.  It was fun though ran some enjoyable combat and we have a good place to pick up from next week,  Now I just have to dish out the treasure for all that...

Until Next Time!

-Ubercroz