Session 52: E is for…
10/22/23-10/27/23, rest 10/28-10/29, active 10/30
PC: Gwendolyn, Elkland, Flynn, Galt
Hench: Amadayo, Beyza, Madroff, Mahin
We’ve been off for a few weeks, RL schedules and such. It was nice to get back to the table with the group. They as usual had a ton of hooks, but chose to chase down a treasure map for the name level cleric PC Redcorn, who asked only for the first pick of the magic items that they might find. What a deal!
I went into the session with only the barest idea of what they planned to do or where it might be. I try to ignore the player specific stuff like that during downtime so that I’m not tempted to over prepare a scenario based on what I think the players will do. 60% of the time it works every time.
The party got their shopping done and took off towards Riverstride, where they were going to rendezvous with Redcorn to pick up the mission and the map. Just outside of Talston there was a weird magical occult ring of stones with gargoyles standing as guard. The PCs had surprise on the vicious creatures and could have evaded, but spent quite a long time discussing what to do. Elkland the Enchanter really wanted to get a chance to peer into the mysterious magical… whatever it was. If I ran class grades, he’d be E for Extremely Likely to be Killed.
Initiative was on, but the PCs won and threw up a couple protection from evil bubbles which kept the charging summoned monsters at bay. Unfortunately, Elkland was not within the bubbles. Instead of diving in for safety, he rushed the circle of magic because “I want all the magic”. The elf was bombarded with magical energy which he failed to save against, stunning him and leaving him helpless, as he stood in a clear pool of water that shone with many colors.
Next turn, he made his save at a penalty that would increase cumulatively until he won or died. He was bombarded by the entropic, chaotic energy of everything within a 1 mile radius and would need another round to try to make any use out of it. He also took some damage but survived.
Meanwhile, the party was deciding whether to run or fight. As soon as they took aggressive action they’d lose their protection bubbles and they were fairly sure the gargoyles could only be damaged by magic weapons. They had several of these but thought it wasn’t worth the risk. They heroically fled to leave Elkland to figure it out. He didn’t. He was mauled and eaten by a gargoyle, the first PC to have been lost by that player since the game’s inception.
The party outran the remaining beasts until the creatures returned to their vigil over the pool, then continued on the road through the nearby swamp hexes. They were accosted by the tollmaster Meowster Mittens the Magnificent, a Sphinx who has been around a long time now and harrasses travelers on the road through the swamp. This time, reaction rolls were high and the party got off for a song, literally, Gwendolyn performing her way past the usually greedy catmanthing.
A short visit with Redcorn and they had their mission, picking up the replacement for Elkland. Galt was a venturer riding a cart, which the party wasn’t having any of considering how slow it was, so he upgraded to a horse and off they went.
The next leg of travel was uneventful. The party stopped briefly at the trader’s outpost of Hakim the Ekbirian who had Gwendolyn’s order of goat patterned cloth ready from months ago. They stayed for a nice lunch and made it to Northbridge with no trouble. The next day they carried on, arriving to the hex indicated by their treasure map and started looking around. They found another weird ring of stones with some glittering lights around it and ran immediately away. The sound of tiny shrill warhorns echoed after them, but no combat was joined.
The target location was eluding them, so the party camped the night. Just before dawn they were attacked by a warband of goblins, like 40 of them, who were returning from a hunt to their lair. I had rolled what type of creature might be around or guarding the treasure and came up goblins so this random encounter fit perfectly.
The fight was on and after a slugfest the party emerged victorious, breaking the morale of the enemy and capturing one of the champions with a hold person spell from Flynn. This goblin had all the intel and was willing to share it, sure that cooperation would lead to his release. Nope. They clubbed him like a baby seal after wringing the location of the goblin village, rough force estimate, and the like from him.
Mahin the Assassin hench was volunteered to go scout the place with an invisibility spell cast on him. He would try to get the hidden treasure if he could from under the goblins’ noses. I didn’t care to spend a bunch of time going through every single action of a henchman because that would just give the players details about the place that they shouldn’t have. Instead, I had Mahin’s employer roll some abstracted surprise, move silently, and search rolls. The end result was that Mahin found the treasure and was trying to retrieve it when he was discovered. He dropped some and ran away, returning to the party with a random amount of the treasure which I made the PCs roll so it’s not my fault he only showed up with the oil of sharpness instead of the big ticket items.
The camp was alerted and swarming, five of the six warbands sallying forth to find the intruders! Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on whose side you’re on, the adventurers were able to evade notice and attack the base while most of the goblins were out searching for them.
They almost found the goblin chief, but were discovered by a patrol of dire wolves with a goblin handler who blew an alarm horn and fled before he could be killed. So a potential ambush turned into a straight up fight, this time against roughly the same number of goblins but including some dire wolves and a sekrit weapon, a witch doctor with a decent spell list.
A brutal battle ensued, with the goblins swarming the adventurers and the witch doctor casting spells from a hidden location in one of the nearby huts. A stinking cloud neutralized many of the goblins and PCs alike, but not before the martial henchmen cleaved and cleaved their way through most of the goblins. I thought I had a TPK with the lightning bolt that the goblin threw, but the damage roll was poor and it blew out the side of his hut revealing him for attacks. Before he could cast a gust of wind to push the cloud into the PCs not yet affected, Flynn charged and crushed his skull with a single mighty blow of his hammer.
Eventually the goblins’ morale failed, again, and they fled, but not before another timely hold person spell paralyzed the chief, who was wearing several of the items that Mahin had to drop from his failed pilfering. They applied hasty triage, looted what they could find nearby, and fled as horns sounded the goblin warbands returning from their search. They were able to push long into the night, suffering penalties if attacked, to make it back to Northbridge and safety.
Musings:
I enjoyed this session, generating the treasure map ahead of time to give the PCs some idea of what they might find. I lean heavily on the Axioms 8 table for adding flavor to magic items which is another thing that sets apart session play from downtime.
I always enjoy when Meowster shows up and was disappointed that he didn’t shake them down for more loot. But he’ll be back. The magical gargoyle circle pool of chaotic entropic energy was pulled directly from my ass. I was disappointed Elkland didn’t get a chance to leverage the power that he had harnessed, cuz I was feeling particularly improvisational during that encounter and who knows wtf I or he would have come up with.
It felt right that the goblins just kinda squatted there but hadn’t found the hidden treasure. It was only the failed theft that revealed it and gave the goblin boss some heinously high ac. I thought the spellcaster was a great weapon and the first time that I’ve rolled one of significant level. They’re usually bums.
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