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So, our all-Dwarf Kingmaker party took out the Stag Lord's fort last session in true Dwarf style:
We repaired one of Oleg's light catapults, hauled it to the Stag Lord's fort, built a quick palisade wall and spike pit at the edge of the forest, and started lobbing rocks. The first rock was inscribed with a surrender demand. There was quite a bit of debate over whether it should be inscribed in Dwarven or Common; Common eventually won out, just to give them a fair chance to read it and surrender. That rock was aimed at where we knew the Stag Lord was holed up (one of our party who couldn't be there at Sunday's session did an advanced scouting run using the password to get into the fort as a "new recruit"). We waited a couple rounds until the arrows started falling, then started raining boulders with flasks of alchemist's fire strapped to them onto the archers' positions.
Eventually the Stag Lord, Auchs, and Dovan snuck out of the fort and through the woods behind us (which we'd trapped with all the bear traps from the trap field; the traps did no damage, but warned us of their approach). The Stag Lord very nearly killed our Queen-to-be with a lucky helmet-assisted crit, but was crit by a bear-riding cavalier in return. Auchs and Dovan got bogged up attacking my Eidolon and didn't really do much (the Eidolon got a bit beat up, but not even close to being banished), and by the time the turncoat fallen Paladin second-in-command came riding out of the fort to help us against the Stag Lord (and was greeted with an exploding bomb from our alchemist for his trouble -- how were we to know he was on our side?), the fight was pretty much over. Burning Stag Lords don't hide very well.
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It was a ton of fun. I don't think the adventure designers really anticipated a bunch of Dwarves building a fort outside of the fort, Caesar-style, and laying siege to the place, but hey, the only other Dwarven option was to tunnel under the walls, and then we wouldn't have been able to use the catapult!
So, anyone else have any awesome "storming the castle" stories?
Sounds very fun with the catapult.
The rogue in my group snuck in with the password, alcohol, and claiming to be and ambassador from an allied thieves guild.
There were merry adventures, such as playing chess with Akiros, and then ultimately, the Stag Lord challenged him to a drinking contest and the rouge tried to poison the Stag Lord's drink. He succeeded and the Stag Lord passed out. But, in their contest, both participants had to dip their flasks in the same big (poisoned) jug, so one turn later the Rogue succumbed to the poison (immobilization or sleep, I forget exactly what it did)-- after he stumbled to the palisades and manged to signal the group to attack.
Akiros seized the opportunity to throw open the gates in a purposeful terrible maneouver, allowing the group to run in-- while Akiros fought Dovan and Auchs, trying to keep the door open. Still, a partial-NPC-mage ally of the players managed to get surrounded by zombies and he was taken down on the hill.
In the last session, my group bought Oleg's catapults and started on repairs. Thanks for the writeup, it gives me some ideas on how to handle it.
That was awesome, Zurai! All-dwarf party laying siege to a fort - definitely very memorable. No storming the castle story ... yet, from my group.
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Not quite "storming" the castle...
our group waltzed right in with significant Diplomacy and Bluff checks, claiming to be the rightful monarch to this land, looking for vassals, etc.
They handed off a 5 gallon jug of the Witch's moonshine as a "tribute" to old Staggy, and waited.
A minute or so passed while Akiros talked his boss into going to meet these interlopers, and when he showed up they exchanged a few words.
Giving him the stink eye was enough to set the drunken maniac off, and he almost dropped the Witch with a single round of arrows, getting stuck to the floor with a tanglefoot bag.
The rest went down as you'd expect, with bandits falling asleep, Akiros chopping his old boss down to size, Dovan and Auchs doing some decent damage on attack but dying for their efforts.
okay that catapult is awesome, but I just know that one of my players would have loaded themselves up as ammo....
anyways ours went down pretty basic, we came up to the fort, held up our amulet collection and told them their men sucked, but we're looking for work. So we got in, the players managed to notice Akiros's issues and approached him beforehand... we then used him to set up the party as the watch in the towers the next day... also I had rolled up that entire month's worth of weather, and a thunderstorm had hit earlier leaving the ground muddy. So the bandits are bogging through that, and then our arrows started to fly right after we got the signal of our invisible fey friends letting the owlbear loose... it turned into complete chaos there, and I know my party will remember it fondly. personal favorite part was when one of the bandits(the snitch) who I had portrayed as this really oily sycophant, hid once the owlbear was released. and after the owlbear took out the targets in front of him he went after the greasy bastard and well.. he died poorly, but the party cheered. worst part was when our ranger just filled Auchs with arrows and downed him in two rounds, poor bastard just collapsed on the walkway from his room and his dragon toy fell from his hands.
okay that catapult is awesome, but I just know that one of my players would have loaded themselves up as ammo....
There was some discussion about doing this, actually. We also almost shot the Stag Lord's flaming corpse back into the fort with the catapult, but my LG character talked them out of that (partly by reminding them that we needed the corpse to give to the dead ferryman).
My group... oh man, I don't even know where to begin. My group's assault on the Stag Lord's fort would make a decent straight-to-video movie.
To set things off, the Bard PC betrayed the party. He stole the Thorn River alcohol, robbed Oleg blind, dramatically escaped from the fort with the help of a large amount of Alchemist's Fire and Happs (who has become a major character in my game), and rode off to the Stag Lord's Fort to sell his friends out.
Which he did. In exchange for an instant promotion to lieutenant, he told the Stag Lord everything he knew about the party, allowing the Stag Lord to set up a couple nasty traps that the party ran into on their way to the fort, as well as giving him enough time to have over a dozen bandits on horseback in hiding near the fort as a reserve force.
Meanwhile, Sky (the bard) did what bards do best and became best friends with everyone in the fort, except Dovan (who knows another snake when he sees one) and of course the Stag Lord and his father.
The rest of the party, meanwhile, discovers the betrayal, and is simply heartbroken... for about negative five seconds before they start talking about creative ways to kill Sky. Forced to head to the Stag Lord's Fort without their friendly Cavalier (he missed that session, fortunately as it would turn out), they struggle with the Stag Lord's traps and almost get completely overwhelmed by the zombies.
Finally deciding to go for broke, they use every form of invisibility and/or wildshape the party has access to in order to sneak past the zombies and into the back door.
Elsewhere... (I ran a one-on-one session with the Cavalier to catch him up with the party) The cavalier, having been the first to discover Sky's betrayal, sets off to do something about it in a much more proactive manner than the rest of the party. After running across most of the northern greenbelt and some fierce negotiation, he amasses an army consisting of Kesten Garess and his men, Chief Sootscale and some of his kobolds, and Jhod Khavken. Together, they ride for the Stag Lord's fort, only a little bit behind the party.
At the Stag Lord's fort: Thanks to a screw up by the invisible monk, the bandits are alerted to the party's presence and sneaking turns into all-out combat. The Druid is the first to realize the party is in trouble as (wildshaped into a raven) he sees the army of bandits approaching. The Rogue is the first to realize something strange is going on as she discovers Happs, bound and unconscious in a corner of the fort, and upon being revived he warns her not to kill Sky.
Meanwhile, Sky himself appears alongside Akiros and the remainder of the bandits, who hold back while the party deals with Auchs and Dovan; Auchs badly beats up the Monk, and Dovan goes one-on-one with the Rogue and has a pretty impressive fight.
Right as everything looks pear-shaped, a lot happens at once. The Cavalier's army shows up to engage the bandit's reserve force, and the Cavalier himself forces his way into the fort and brings down Auchs. Meanwhile, Sky reveals that he was on the party's side the entire time, cashes in a previous natural 20 wild empathy roll involving Beaky, and starts a rebellion among the bandits that like him better than the Stag Lord.
Right as Dovan is about to kill the Rogue, Happs damages him enough for her to finish him off. Meanwhile, the Stag Lord himself and his father have shown up and the rest of the session is basically a free-for-all trying to bring those two down, with the help of Akiros and Beaky.
All in all, there was so much political intrigue, scheming, and backstabbing that I am almost dreading the PCs actually getting their own kingdom...
And I'm actually leaving out a fair bit of detail in this summary...
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100% Uncut Awesome
I doff my GM hat to you sirrah. That kind of game requires quite a lot of trust, maturity and imagination from both yourself and your players.
My players are still exploring the Stolen Lands and so far we've had some crazy situations because I've been fairly liberal with the Plot Cards. (I fear that I've given them the ability "Summon Bigger Fish" 1/adventure lol).
In any case, I'm looking forward to the Stag Lord's Fort.
My group... oh man, I don't even know where to begin. My group's assault on the Stag Lord's fort would make a decent straight-to-video movie.
That is, indeed, an awesome storming-the-castle tale! Thanks for sharing!
I can’t wait to run this one next session. Unfortunately, it’s going to be a couple of weeks while we wait for everyone to come back from vacations.
My players recruited Perlivash and Tyg-Tigger-Tut to play the biggest prank possible on the forces of the Stag Lord. The fey split them into two teams and each of them is working with a team to set up as many traps and pranks as possible outside and inside of the fort (if they’re stealthy enough, of course). Points are scored for every time a bandit runs into a prank, and the winners get bragging rights over the losers.
Meanwhile, another player will be leading a small group of Sootscales as a diversionary tactic, in the hopes of pulling the bandits out of the fortress and into the mine field of booby-traps set by the two teams. She’s well aware that the kobolds have had their eyes on the fortress for some time, so she may have to deal with crazy kobolds who change their minds mid-battle and decide to take the fortress for themselves.
I can’t wait to see what kind of traps they come up with, but I guarantee it will ridiculously fun, no matter what happens.
OT
Recently got to play in this AP (am currently running a table of 6 as well - now moving through the Varnhold Vanishing) and our Stag Lord encounter went awesome!
Firstly, the party consists of:
Jon, Human Ranger 2 (me)
Kurt, Half-Orc Fighter 2
Burbo, Gnome Sorcerer (Fey) 2
Jessie(?), Gnome Cleric (Erastil) 2
We're all Good, Erastil-following folks, out to right wrongs and settle this untamed land. Funnily enough, this is about the exact opposite of the party I am running...
After having thoroughly trounced Kessel and her mooks, we elected to head straight to the fort, armed with cases of "Plot Booze" and the password to get in. To top it off, we dressed up as bandits, with Kurt (and his +10 or so Intimidate Skill) as the "Badge Wearer."
Admission was easy enough, with the SL grabbing his hooch and proceeding to get good and smashed. We exchanged pleasantries with the bandits until Dovan spoke up. Kurt and he stepped aside, and with MUCH Hero Point use, Kurt managed to talk us into a contract killing of Akiros.
Now armed with the knowledge that all is not happy fun time at the fort, Jon and Kurt chat up Akiros. Some more hot dice (they loved us that night...later on, Jon rolled consecutive 20, 19, 18 on his few attack rolls) later, and Akiros storms out demanding satisfaction from his traitorous underling.
Seizing the moment, Jon and Kurt move into the SL's room, drawing Heavy Crit weapons (Heavy Pick and Longbow, IIRC) and preparing for the coup de grace. Our gnomes assist with Akiros and Dovan's "Duel," from which the rogue earns a shallow grave.
Burbo even managed to Sleep the last bandit as he sprinted for Beaky's cage release level. Overall, the 4 or 5 rounds of combat resulted in almost no deaths. Dovan dropped and was finished off by Kurt, one bandit fled (unfortunately for him, it was over the zombie-infested area...nom nom nom zombie chow...), and of course, Mr. Drunk and Angry himself went down to the 3" diameter steel spike through his temple.
All in all, awesome fun, plenty of tension, and with creative use of the "surroundings," ultimately perfectly successful. Even Auchs survived the fracas (only to be eaten by Beaky later).
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So my players finally stormed the Fort.
The quick version: They borrowed four kobold rogues from the Sootscale Caverns and travelled south to the Stag Lord's Fort. The Inquisitor and Rogue took a pair of kobolds with them to scout around the Fort but ended up drawing the zombies. They retreated back to the bottom of the hill and discussed strategy.
They decided to use a spell to blow out the torches around the Fort and sneak in through the front door around midnight.
The plan started well enough, until a bandit opened the gate in order to leave and relight the torches (Falgrim Sneeg, I even had a wall guard mention his name within earshot). Sneeg got smacked down, the Druid, his lion and some kobolds ran straight inside. When the cavalier rode inside he called the Stag Lord out challenging him at the top of his voice - essentially waking the entire fort.
The battle was intense, huge and complicated, but my players did me proud. There were some tense moments (the Inquisitor would have been killed in a round by the Owlbear, but he played moment of indecision so it left him on negatives rather than finish him off). Doc (the Dwarf Cavalier) managed to turn Akiros with some battlefield diplomacy (and another Plot Card). Two of the four kobolds were killed by a bandit (who managed to sneak away in the fracas BWAHAHAHAA!).
Final Kill Count:
Auchs 300 xp
Dovan 300 xp
Akiros 600 xp
Beaky 1600 xp
Dire Rats x3 405xp
Stag Lord 3,600 xp
Nugrah 1,600 xp
Bandits x 9 1,800 xp
/7 Players
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1029 xp
(Further Note: Joog Joog and MikMek Level Up!)
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Special Thanks to Alexander Kilcoyne for his excellent conversion for 6 players.
Now I need decide what to do to segue between books.
The Stag Lord's Fort was cleared on the 37th day of Exploration (the 7th of Desnus 4910 AR). (But was actually cleared on the 22nd of November 2010 (my birthday!)).
I'm going to hit the hay.
Oh man, our storming the castle was soo pathetic, it was awesome.
Our party at the time was level 3, a human cavalier (order of the dragon), a shield and longsword fighter, a rogue, a universalist wizard and my cleric of sarenrae who at the time had fire and healing domains. we had encountered a party on our way down that were encouraged by my kindness to give up their evil ways (they had heard that previous parties had survived and were earning a decent wage at Oleg's trading post where they were employed cleaning the place up) and one gave us info and the secret password.
Didn't matter much. Our rogue snuck up and found the back entrance, uncovered it so we could make our approach at night, when stealth would be more favorable... so we thought. Cue a group of idiot adventurers getting nommed on by a pack of zombies. From inside the fort we hear "Hey Akiros, some group of do-gooders have triggered the zombie trap again!" and thus, we knew that we were in for some proper challenge.
We get through the door, slam it shut so that the zombies can't get through to face a duo of crossbow snipers at an elevated position, and Dovan and Sneeg are roaming about as well. Can't recall the exact details, but Dovan was the first to fall, and Sneeg was pretty quickly put out of combat, tied up and thrown off the side catwalk so that he was dangling. We all ascended to the catwalk, causing some of the lesser bandits to flee. My cleric went in pursuit of one who hid himself behind the door across the bridge and she was tossing firebolts at the door, trying to get him to back off... Obviously, this wasn't working, so she started across the bridge to take care of him, and triggered the Owlbear trap. Owlbear rages "HOOOOOOOOT!" waking the Stag Lord from his inebriated slumber. The entire table is looking at me with death eyebeams.
So there we are, almost all of us huddled up in that tower complex. Owlbear is feeding on the corpses of bandits the fighter made on his way up to us, and the Stag Lord is sniping us through the windows. We're all freaking out, wondering how we're going to get out of this situation, when we hear from beneath us "CHOP! CHOP!" and the floor starts moving as someone (Akiros) starts attacking the support beams. Our party rogue bravely turns and bolts, jumping from the bridge. My cleric quickly followed him, assuming that he'd make an excellent target for the sniper alone, and... I dunno, at that point she still felt responsible for his actions. She bolts after him, and fails her acrobatics and takes damage from the fall. As she's picking herself up, Akiros strides over, and rolls a critical threat on her, which the GM decides to take back as the sight of her holy symbol stops his murderous rampage. It was a very tense moment, to be sure, I was clearly expecting to die at the hands of a barbarian with a two handed weapon. Instead, he actually turned against the Stag Lord as he came to pick me off. On my turn, I got off a Hold Person spell, which succeeded, and told the rogue to tie him up while he was unable to do anything, then sat there and watched him so that he didn't stab him in the back.
Meanwhile Akiros, the fighter, and the cavalier saved the poor wizard from the raging owlbear, and then we loot. That was the first night in over a month my cleric slept relatively alone, in Akiros's bunk.
Survivors were Sneeg, Stag Lord, Akiros and Auchs. Sneeg and Stag Lord got theirs from Kesten with little protest from my cleric, while Akiros and Auchs came to serve in the new government. Akiros is a pretty central figure in our game. Auchs... is currently dead, but not for much longer. One more level, and... after getting my money back from saving Pitax from plague I'm resurrecting him and Kundal.