Kronug eases up a bit on his attacks, trying for more accuracy.
He still misses.
Haftor continues to attack, hoping to finish the fight.
Round 5 (ongoing):
Initiative Order
Gorb-acted
Jarrek
Trianne-
Kronug-acted
Haftor-acted
Seamus-
Kronug misses, but Haftor hits solidly. The warpriest can tell that the ogre doesn't appear to be affected by the shock aura; whatever protects him from that doesn't seem to help with impact, though.
The bard lands the final blow of the combat, leaving the ogre dying on the floor.
The ogre spellcaster wears a symbol of the demon lord Zura, patron of cannibals and vampires. He also has three javelins, one of which detects as magical; two scrolls of speak with dead (and one blank sheet of vellum), the wand he used to summon the bat, a quarterstaff, and a headband that detects as magical. The two other ogres were both pregnant, but other than that have nothing of interest on them.
Jarrek cleans off his overgrown sword and sheathes it, dabbing at the blood oozing from his claw wounds as he looks over the magical items.
Jarrek identifies the wand as holding eight charges of summon monster iii. He can't figure out the other two items, though.
"Disgusting. Just vile." Haftor looks around the room, frowning his displeasure. "What would make a thinking creature want to... He trails off, losing interest in finishing his own thought. "Ughh," he finally manages, before getting back down to business.
"I can make use of the scrolls, though not the vellum."
Finally, he produces their wand of healing. "We're down to this."
Haftor knows that speak with dead won't work on a body that's lacking a head, or otherwise has lost its mouth.
The headless skeleton is still clad in a uniform of high quality and in surprisingly good condition. A signet ring remains on one bony finger, and a gold chain of office is draped about what's left of the neck. The uniform and decorations match those worn by the figure in the painting; now that the party is close enough, they can read the inscription on the small brass plaque at the bottom of the frame: "Tamand Varias, Castellan of Redlake Fort."
Kronug doesn't recognize the name of the castellan, but he starts putting the pieces together.
"Jarrek, you implied that the Castellan resorted to cannibalism during the siege. Because you brought him up when we encountered that cursed cooking pot that gave us all vision of cannibalism.
Well, here are his remains, it seems. The ogres wanted to do something with the remains - animate him as an undead, maybe.
Do we have any other options for healing? Perhaps we should fall back and rest somewhere. I would be willing to continue on but Jarrek has taken some serious injuries."
Trianne closes the doors for the moment against whatever lurks near or within the cauldron. Her face twists in disgust as the details of the horrific scene come to light.
“Where’s his head?” she asks no one in particular, studying the ritualistic nature of the ogres’ efforts. She doesn’t linger overlong however and moves to help Jarrek with the magical assessment.
The headband increases the wearer's force of personality , and the other item is a javelin of lightning.
Haftor stands and frowns at the decapitated skeleton for a few long moments before finally making a decision and removing the castellan's chain and slipping it into a belt pouch.
"Regardless of what a piece of s$##e this particular castellan was, the chain of office is a piece of history, grim though it may be. I won't leave it to be looted or lost. We can try to return it to...someone...official? I don't know."
Faced with all the unpleasantness, the warpriest seems a bit off his game.
He turns to Trianne. "Why, after all these years, would these monsters have this ritual set up? Is it arcane magic, would you say? Maybe the ogre was a necromancer."
Finally, he responds to Kronug. "There doesn't seem to be much coming and going in this building, but that doesn't mean there won't be. We could hunker down in a room here and hope we don't get discovered and trapped, or we could go back out the sewer and find a tent or something to squat in. The tent seems like the less risky choice."
It doesn't take a lot of Survival skill to tell that the room with the haunted kettle is being used as sleeping quarters for more than three ogres or ogrekin, so staying there would probably bring a rude awakening at some point.
Haftor rubs his head in deep thought. You can almost see the gears working in there as he considers the layout of what they've seen of this building so far. He finally offers what he sees as their options. He holds up his index finger. "So, there doesn't seem to be anything else on this level that we can access directly. If we stay here, more ogres will come eventually, maybe soon." He adds a second finger. "If we go upstairs, we may run into baddies that are investigating how the manticore escaped. But if we quickly go to the privy and climb back down into the sewer, we probably won't be spotted. We could then find a relatively clean and stench-free spot to hole up and rest, and praise Torag, of course. I think this is our safest option. Or..." He raises a third finger, "We push our luck and go back down to the well and explore one more room. Risky, but we might find a better hidey-hole." He raises a bushy eyebrow, awaiting everyone's opinions.
"If there are enemies out searching for us, I would rather not be cornered. Going down the well might place us in a situation where we cannot escape. If it were only one more room I could do that, but the possibility of being trapped has me concerned.
I believe some of our casters need uninterrupted rest, and if you know where enemies are resting it is easy to deny them that."
Jarrek nods at Kronug, agreeing with the assessment that it's weird the ogre mage was messing with this corpse now, so long after its death.
"Regardless of what a piece of s%**e this particular castellan was, the chain of office is a piece of history, grim though it may be. I won't leave it to be looted or lost. We can try to return it to...someone...official? I don't know."
"We can give it to Blix. Her great-grandfather served under this guy and she's the closest thing to official we've seen out here." The big half-orc frowns and shakes his head at the idea of what they've put together from clues and rumors.
Jarrek gestures at the ceiling , indicating the room with the manticores above them. "How often do you think anyone visits those starving monsters we just killed? I'd guess not often, right?"
Trianne hands the headband to Jarrek, slings the wand at her waist, and offers the javelin to whoever makes a move to take it. Then she circles and studies what remains of the ritual after suffering through the bloody melee. She talks idly to their circumstances as she assesses the scene.
“Ogres, giants, and orcs, relatively leaderless in the fort,” she says. “I wonder how close to murdering each other they are?”
“One manticore slipped away from us, but was finished off in the courtyard,” she continues. “They may have come looking as to why, but if the bear fight is still going on…”
“Would take some work hauling these,” she says, pointing at the bodies. “But staging the ogres up with the giants and the manticore as if they all fought each other. We might be able to slip away without being hunted. Maybe set off some bad blood in here.”
“One manticore slipped away from us, but was finished off in the courtyard,” she continues. “They may have come looking as to why, but if the bear fight is still going on…”
It takes a few tries, but Haftor, Jarrek, and Kronug eventually tear the grate loose. Just as they finish, a roar of mostly disappointment goes up from the far side of the fort. The oracle nods in satisfaction. "Sounds like he beat the bear again. I'd better go patch him up."
"The bear fight is done, I believe."
“Would take some work hauling these,” she says, pointing at the bodies. “But staging the ogres up with the giants and the manticore as if they all fought each other. We might be able to slip away without being hunted. Maybe set off some bad blood in here.”
"I don't think our chances at such a deception are great," says Kronug. "If they have any skilled hunters among their number, our tracks will be obvious. Man-sized footprints covered in ogre blood. And if we took the time to stage the scene and wipe our tracks, they might stumble upon us."
"I suggest we fortify our position here. There is only one door. We close and bar it, and don't let any in - I suspect the foul sorcerer we killed might have done that when in the midst of his rituals. If they come for us anyway, a doorway is a good chokepoint. Moving back to the sewer or to the well risks encountering more enemies."
"Or we make a run for it, to the sewer and out of the fortress, and don't go back in that way."
Trianne wracks her brain as she studies the inscriptions on the floor, and finally figures out a working hypothesis: the ogre sorcerer was trying to make contact with the late castellan's spirit using a necromantic ritual to obviate the need for the missing skull.
The door doesn't bar from the inside; this area was apparently used as a storeroom, and used to be set up to be secured from the outside.
Haftor tilts his head back and lets out a single barking laugh at Trianne's suggestion. "HA! Now, THAT is an idea! I like the way you think."
When Kronug points out how unlikely the plan is to work, however, he is forced to agree. "I don't fancy hauling ogres up the steps, either, and it would take some time as well." He shakes his head in disappointment. "No, it's too risky, but we can't stay here either. There's no back door out of here if we're discovered. My vote is to leave the building entirely."
Jarrek shrugs. "I'm pretty sure I could carry them if I had to." He glances at Trianne. "But didn't you say some servants finished off that other manticore? They'd know these ogres and the manticores didn't kill the giants."
Trianne shares what she believes the ogres were up to and then exhales, her lips flapping in displeasure. “There’s no good choice here. If we hole up inside the fort, we have a good chance of being discovered, possibly trapped. If we get clear, we have mobility, a better chance of rest against the likelihood of increased patrols, but then we have to get back inside.”
She looks around and says, “Hard to gauge if this sortie of ours will unify them or strain them further. Either way, I think I favor our chances outside.”
"We'll get back inside. Maybe a way they didn't expect.
If we are heading out, then I offer to lead the way."
Kronug starts heading out - first through the haunted room, then south to the stairs.
Haftor raises his eyebrows in surprise and appreciation. He was expecting a protracted discussion, perhaps even an argument, but then they were suddenly in agreement, and moving. This suited the Warpriest just fine.
He slipped his warhammer into its belt loop, took the javelin from Trianne (assuming it's still on offer) then followed Kronug out the door.
Jarrek nods appreciatively at the group's forward movement and follows the others out the door.
"All right, then. Let's make our way back to the sewer and have a look-see at the situation before we get too far ahead of ourselves."
"Fine by me," Kronug says.
"If the orcs want a fight, I am ready. And if they want to ignore us emerging from the fortress, that is fine with me also."
Jarrek thumps Haftor on the shoulder. "Orcs are nothing! We've killed hundreds of 'em!" He nods at the dwarf. "But you're right, caution is always good. Let's take a look!"
Haftor produces a grim smile and responds with a brotherly clasp to Jarrek's upper arm. "Aye."
Jarrek nods and grins his confident smile at Haftor then turns and smiles at Seamus. "You going out first, Seamus? I can make you invisible for about half a minute, should be more than enough time for you to look around."
The party retraces its steps back to the latrine and down to the sewer. As you cross the room with the dead hill giants, though, it sounds like several someones may be coming up to investigate--guttural shouts in Giant can be heard, the gist of which is that the loudest speaker wants to find out how the manticore escaped. The disagreement attendant on this pronouncement delays the arrival of the investigators until the party has a chance to get down the hole.