Archive for year 2010

Warning: This post is going to contain a lot more meta-gaming than usual. I do my best to avoid using it in these posts; but for this post in particular I won’t be able to explain the events of the gaming session to my satisfaction without using it.

Day 2 – Afternoon

Once we reach the ruins of the Temple of Tyr, it doesn’t take long for the bandits to surround us. They’re mostly just rank and file thugs; but deeper into the ruins, there’s Zark and the bandit leader, as well as a lizard-man {greenscale marsh mystic}.

After a few moment’s fighting, the bandits have managed to maneuver Eramus {our defender→Paladin} away from the front of our formation. Voulge, who’s pretty well armored himself, steps forward to act as temporary blocker until Eramus can get back into position. The bandits decide to concentrate all their attacks on Voulge who gets knocked out {HP≤0}.

The rest of the party fights valiantly and manages to kill a few of the bandits; but there’s too many of them and we won’t be able to keep them at bay for very long. After a little while {3 rounds} Eramus is able to rejoin the formation, and he hits Voulge’s reset button {uses Lay on Hands power} (The idea of Voulge having a reset button came up as a bit of a joke. As a Warforged, Voulge is a living construct/machine; therefore he doesn’t have any flesh for the Lay on Hands power to heal. Fyrewind came up with the idea of a reset button as a way to cause Voulge to reboot.)

Voulge wakes up somewhat revitalized {¼ HP from the Lay on Hands power} and springs into action. Without standing up, he starts channelling his energy to heal himself further {Warforged Resolve racial power | minor action}. Ilikan is close enough to Voulge that he gets caught in the healing aura and benefits from it as well {Warforged Faith feat}. He then proceeds to cast his Rune of Mending {minor action | burst 5}, healing Eramus {1 healing surge} and temporarily boosting the strength of his allies {allies in burst get +2 bonus to damage for 1 turn}. Having healed himself and his team, Voulge then unleashed his wrath. While still lying down he smashes his warhammer into the ground, releasing the Rune of the Undeniable Dawn, and creating a consecrated space that protects his allies {standard action | allies in burst 3 gain +2 to all defenses}. The bandits had sustained quite a bit of damage at the hands of the party, and 3 of them (maybe 4) were killed in the burst of energy released by the rune. Still enraged, Voulge struck the ground again with his warhammer {action point} and divine flames issued forth, killing two more bandits. Eramus was also caught up in the blast, but the purifying fire actually healed him further.

While all this was happening, Garnik was attacking the bandit leader from far away, causing him to move in closer. When the leader came within range of Artrius’ powers, Garnik switched over to the lizard-man who had been slowly advancing on the party and causing them a whole bunch of trouble.

After Voulge was done reaping his revenge, the bandit attack force was essentially smashed and the fight was now a mop up operation. When the bandit leader also died, Zark and the lizard-man decided to run away. Garnik and Ash gave chase, but were unable to catch up.

With all the Zelbross Bandits dead or run off, it was now safe to free the children. We also looted the bandits treasure room. It was now time to head back to Loudwater.

Day 2 – Evening

Upon our return, we went straight to the City Watch Headquarters and handed over the children to Captain Harrowleaf. There was still a bit of time before the shops closed up for the night, so we headed over to Garwan’s Curiosities so Garnik could buy that enchanted longbow he had his eye on.

We then retired for a well deserved night’s rest.

Day 3 – Morning

We get up late and decide to relax in the Green Tankard Tavern until it’s time to head to the ball.

Day 3 – Early Evening

At the masked ball, we mingle with the guests and have a very nice time. Garnik and Ash discover Curuvar and talk with him for a while. We learn more about the Endless Caverns and Dragonspear Castle (two locations whose maps we bought at Garwan’s), as well the Dire Wood. He also mentions that farmlands to the north of Loudwater have been plagued by odd weather; snow in the middle of summer, and that we should go talk to Lady Moonfire.

When we find Lady Moonfire, we have a nice chat before moving on to business. She wishes to visit the High Forest and wants our party to escort her; but before we do that she wants us to investigate and deal with the odd weather patterns to the north of town, as it could seriously affect the harvest.  She believes we should focus our investigation on Draigdurroch Tower. Curuvar has more information on the subject. Many years ago a warlock named Draigdurroch built the tower near the Dire Wood in order to study it; but somehow, it became encased in a sheet of ice, and no one has seen the warlock since.

Eramus asks Lady Moonfire to dance, and she will spend the rest of the evening dancing with him.

A few of the team members meet a strange woman named Heyana Dhorwiz. She asks them many questions, almost as if she is interrogating them. She has a pin on her lapel depicting a harp over a crescent moon. The impression is that she might be a Harper; but then again, they don’t actually exist, they’re only a fairy tale.

Ilikan bumps into Megana Nistral who makes some very provocative advances towards him. He turns her down because he doesn’t feel like playing cards. [Ilikan was about 10-12 years old when he became trapped in the stepping disc's pocket dimension. As such he is very naïve and he didn't understand that "playing card" was a euphemism for something entirely different.]

Ash and Garnik end up talking to Starra, and the conversation turns to the subject of knives, as it invariably does when one talks to Starra. It’s mentioned that she has some nice enchanted knives in her shop, but that we can’t afford her prices. We may have defeated and looted a great many of Loudwater’s enemies; but none of them were exactly swimming in the lucre. So she makes us a deal. If we do her a favour, we can have any one knife of our choice from her shop for free. We gladly accepted before finding out that the favor was to get Ilikan to bed her friend Megana.

Around this time, Lady Moonfire invites Eramus up to her private rooms.

We enlist Artrius’ aide, because his telepathic abilities might make it easier to explain things to Ilikan. Little did we know that we were about to unleash a ravening sex monster. After Artrius’ telepathic peep show was over, Ilikan grabbed both Megana and Starra in his arms and carried them to one of the guest rooms upstairs; renegotiating the deal to 2 knives along the way.

Next day - Morning

(Note: I’m dropping numbered day notation. That was just to keep track of the time left before the ball.)

The next morning, after everyone was recovered the previous night’s debauchery, we headed over to Starra’s Knives to claim our payment. Rather than take two of her magical knives {daggers}, she asked if we would take an enchanted fullblade instead. Turns out Garwan owed her some money and remembering Ash had a fullblade himself, she figured he’d prefer that to some daggers, so she had Garwan give her the fullblade he’d acquired as payment. Ash gladly took the fullblade and the party headed of to Draigdurroch tower.

Before we could reach the tower, we were caught in a powerful blizzard. But through a mix of strength and cunning {skill challenge} were able to make our way through it.  We found ourselves on the eastern end [E] of a snow covered valley, with some hills[H] to the west, south and southwest of us. We could see some hostile looking creatures attempting to hide in the hills in order to ambush us. (The DM told us that if we had failed the skill challenge, we would have found ourselves in the south end[S] of the valley where we would have been quickly surrounded by the enemy.)

When the enemy revealed themselves we discovered they were blue skinned “frost” goblins. They might be involved with the changing weather patterns.

We decided to use a different strategy than in the previous battle and held our ground rather than rush in. The goblins had only slightly more melee fighters than ranged fighters. Because of our location[E], we were safe from the goblin ranged fighters at [H2] and there was no easy way for their melee fighters on [H1]to get down the hill (the other two hills had ramps). This meant that the goblin melee fighters would come in waves. Their leader, a hexer, unknowingly helped us by casting a spell that turned a large area of ground into ice {difficult terrain}. It would slow down the approaching goblins as much as it would us. While we waited for the melee fighters to reach us, Garnik and Artrius moved slightly to the NW and started eliminating the goblin ranged fighters on [H1]and Voulge and Ilikan moved slightly S and started throwing javelins at the goblin snipers on [H3]. The goblin melee fighters on [H3] were the first to reach us.

When the SE hill [H3] was cleared of enemies we moved our entire group there in order to get out of range of the goblin ranged fighters on [H1].