Seal kicks the head over to Thunderpuss so that he may use it as a chew toy. Thunderpuss pick up the head with its jaws and tosses to the new cat. New cat paws it back to Thunderpuss, which falls to the ground and begins to rake the eye sockets with its back paws.
Seal settles down, but does not seem sated.
"Let's see what's on the other level."
"Interesting" Rissi muses as she holds a silken handkerchief into the black void of her hood - no doubt to block out the spell.
"I do not normally associate ogres - or their spawn - with any significant level of magical aptitude, much less the manufacture of the undead. More disturbingly - who would train such a vile creature?" She shudders at the though of more magically trained giants.
"Uh, these ogres don't look right..." Lucian observes as the mass of flesh goes limp. "I assume this was the family's mother, but where is the father?"
The upper floor contains some disused cots and a dirty attic. You find a sack; the sack of coins contains a mix of 121 cp, 110 sp, and 23 gp, along with 17 mostly skeletal severed fingers. Five flasks of acid are stored under one of the tables in the attic.
Down in the basement you find another room with several unused beds. There is also a room with a gruesome sight: This dark, recessed corner of the basement smells of rot and old blood. Piles of gore-spattered skin lie heaped on the floor. A horrid rubbery face robbed of its supporting skull and muscle rests on top, its toothless mouth agape and empty eyes revealing only the layer of tan flayed skin resting beneath.
In the basement there is also a damp, steamy room reeks of rotting vegetable matter. Pools of mud and stagnant water dot the mossy floor, and the walls are caked with thick swaths of puffy fungus and mold.
---
Finally, you make your way out to the barn: The barn houses several mounds of molding hay, grain stores, and even a large but crude still. Two catwalks rise up along the walls, leading to doors near the ceiling in the east wall. Lower, a pair of massive doors, boarded over with thick timbers, allows ground access to the room beyond. Several dingy kennels are built into the walls under the catwalks.
Three younger ogrekin lounge about the barn guarding a door in the back wall! They grunt and reach for their spears as you enter!
"RRRRAAAAAAWWWWW!!!!"
Seal charges ahead recklessly, requiring no motivation to rage. He leaps the last five feet as he deliveres an over head chop to the blue tinged ogrekin.
Lucian moves about ten feet behind Sealman and casts prayer to bolster the party's resolve and demoralize the ogrekin.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Considering her options, Rissi decides a sprinkling of glitter will accessorize the ogrekin nicely.
Kufieno moves in and to a position where he can see the ogre-kin with the red sash, then conjures and throws a snowball.
Seal cuts one of the ogres in two! Rissi blinds them and then Miana kicks one of them in the gut! Kufieno's snowball hits the other in the face. The ogrekin roar in anger and stab!
green: 15 dmg
red: 17 dmg
Rissi pulls a wand of magic missile and waves it at northern creature.
Seal barely notices the flesh wound as he stalks around the corner of the green sashed ogrekin. Once in position he attempts to cleave both of the "giants" down.
Lucian touches Kufieno's shoulder while whispering a short prayer for guidance to him.
Kufieno moves to flank the red sashed ogre-kin and stabs with his short sword
Seal easily cleaves through the ogrekin!
The party is now able to move through the doors the ogrekin were guarding:
The majority of this large, stuffy chamber is covered in filthy webs forming a funnel that dips down into the ground. A catwalk runs around the rim of the room near the ceiling, twenty feet above the ground. In northeast and southeast corners, the catwalk expands into a ten-foot-square platform that’s fenced in by wooden beams, forming cages. The walls within each cage are hung with iron manacles. Most of the manacles—while bloody—are empty, but three in the southeast corner imprison emaciated men.
Moving carefully and warily into the room, Kufieno keeps a look out while moving toward the three men. "Ho there, who did this to you? Are they still here? Let me get men out of those."
"It was giants Kufieno. They are behind these kidnappings, and there will be more. These ogrekin are their minions, like koblds to a dragon. The giants will continue to steal away our kin. Then in the middle of the night, they will strip the meat from our bones to eat raw and feed their pets. Then they will take our bones and grind them into flour to make bread from. This is only the beginning.
Let us free these men and find this cat its master should he not be among one of them."
Indeed, the men wear the marks of Black Arrows and the cat seems attracted to one of them. They mumble out their names: Jakardros Sovark, Vale Temros, and Kaven Windstrike.
Jakardros speaks first: After his patrol was delayed, they arrived back home to find the fort under Kreeg control. He lost a third of his unit in an attempt to retake the fort, and when they were forced to flee south into Kreegwood, the remainder were easy targets for the Grauls.
Shalelu comes towards Jakardros and studies him for a a few moments. "So what happened to your wife?" she asks out of the blue. This startles Jakardros for a moment but he continues his story, his eye glazing over as if remembering a different lifetime entirely. "Before I joined the Black Arrows, I spent a few years as an adventurer. My group eventually ended up in the region around the Mierani Forest, where we helped a small village of elves defeat a group of murderous ettercaps led by a green dragon. My adventuring companions all perished in the fight, giving their lives for the elven community of Crying Leaf. I was nursed back to health by an elven priestess of Desna there, and the two of us fell in love."
His eye squints as he looks at Shalelu closely, a strange expression coming over his face. Nonetheless he continues his story. "I would have lived the rest of my life in Crying Leaf had not my lover, Seanthia, herself perished when the village was attacked by the resurrected dragon 3 years later. With my aid, the town defeated the dragon again, but I gathered his belongings and, within minutes of the dragon’s death, left Crying Leaf behind, abandoning the sorrowful task of attending to Seanthia’s funeral to my stepdaughter." Here he pauses again. "I eventually heard of the Black Arrows and applied for membership, hoping that service to the order would help me bury what I left behind."
There is a tense moment of silence before Jakardros asks, "But you know most of this already, don't you?" Shalelu nods, tears welling up in her eyes, "Some, not all." she wipes away tears as she unlocks Jakardros' shackles. "But I never knew why you left, only that I had been abandoned. Everything's all right now, though. I'm fine. And you're fine. And your. . . you. . . I understand. I understand." The two embrace and begin to chatter about lost time together, the firepelt nuzzling up against Jakardros' legs.
Vale's story is simpler: Vale was born into the Order of the Black Arrow; both his parents were members, as were his two younger brothers. All of them are now dead, slain either years ago (in the case of his parents) or weeks ago (in the case of his brothers) by various Kreeg ogres. Vale’s oath of vengeance against the Kreegs has become the only thing holding him together over the past several days of torture and mind-numbing horror at the Grauls’ hands. Vale seizes any opportunity to strike back at the ogres with grim satisfaction. It seems that Vale and Seal will make fast friends.
Kaven Windstrike, a handsome young man with dark hair and emerald eyes, has traditionally been able to get what he wants out of life via his good looks and smooth tongue. He was a wayward youth born to harried parents in Turtleback Ferry, and his antics finally got him in over his head when he assaulted and robbed an old goatherd who turned out to be a longtime family friend. Infuriated, his father was all but ready to press charges and have the boy taken south by the law to serve time in a jail in Ilsurian, but his mother managed to temper that reaction. Kaven was given a choice: be disowned and spend time in prison, or seek membership among the Black Arrows. His father always admired the order, and figured if they couldn’t shape Kaven into an upstanding man, no one could. Kaven, balking at the thought of prison, chose the Black Arrows.
Kufieno spends a little time unlocking the men from their manacles, then moves a respectful distance away as Shalelu and Jakardos speak, feeling as if he is interrupting a private moment.
Looking around, he asks the other two. "Are there anymore prisoners? What of you captors, are there anymore nearby?"
Seal chops off the heads of the three ogrekin and kicks them toward Kufieno to answer his question.
"So the fort is over run by ogres. Let's get up there and take it back! You can get mushy later.
"So Vale, when attacking giants, you want to go for the knees. That is why sometimes it is useful to use a hammer so your edge doesn't get stuck in their big bones ..."
Rissi pulls out a few spellbooks as her companions, beginning some hushed chants as she works to imbue her mind with new arcane incantations.
Vale shakes his head, "I think we're the only three left...."
"Then there is no time to wait. How much farther until we reach the fort? What else could be there besides ogres?"
"Wait, do you mean the Black Arrows have been wiped out almost completely? That's a catastrophe. We should hurry, in any case. Is there a hidden way into Fort Rannick?" he asks the rangers.
"I can't think of any hidden way besides maybe the tunnels, bu they've not been used in decades and were infested by shocker lizards last I heard," Jakardros admits. "And I'm afraid Vale might be right. There could be a few stragglers like us hidden up somewhere, but it seems everyone else was taken out and I highly doubt there are any other survivors. We couldn't withstand the onslaught. The only reason we escaped the slaughter at the fort was because we were on a long-range patrol during the massacre. It seemed the ogres knew how to get through our defenses; must've had some information from the inside, which is an even more troubling thought."
---
Fort Rannick has fallen. A notorious clan of ogres known as the Kreegs launched a devastating assault on the Fort three weeks ago, an assault that left little doubt of treachery in the mind of the few survivors. Someone must have given the Kreegs detailed information about the Fort's defenses-the assault was too perfect in its execution and timing for any other explanation to make sense. And now a desperate attempt to retake the lost Fort begins....
Fort Rannick is located at the northern end of a wide valley that runs along the southern edge of the mountains. This bleak landscape stretches on for miles along the border between the mountains and Kreegwood. This rugged, forlorn landscape fits well with the morose and grim attitude of its guardians, the dwindling Order of the Black Arrow.
Vale draws a rough sketch of the layout of Fort Rannick and offers to help you with any information about the Fort you may require to plan your assault.
Rissi halts her spell preparations to look at the map.
"Is that your secret tunnel, or stairs leading somewhere?" Rissi points to the northern part of the sketch. It is clear her mind is working furiously - this assault is simply another problem to be solved.
"That's the tunnel," Vale says.
Shocker lizards have a pale yellow underside, with bright green scales elsewhere on its 3-foot-long body, and weighs about 25 pounds. Shocker lizards tend toward group living, as their electrical abilities grow in power when they are close to another lizard.
A shocker lizard colony is usually located near a source of water. Once the colony has settled on a location, the lizards become very territorial and attack anything that intrudes on them.
"These are some of our *squeak * magic tools: obscuring mists, invisibility, a hat to make one appear to be ogrekin, *chhhhh* invisibility magic and magic to make some fly."
Seal looks at Rissi sideways when she reviews spells of subtly.
"What are these building next to where the tunnel comes out? Is it just ogrekin or are there ogres there as well?"
Kufieno frowns as he learns his favored element will be useless here. Using the wand of armoring, he nods. "I'm ready."
"I will ward us against electricity before we head inside, the the shocker lizards won't be as big a problem as that."
"It is not clear to me that we gain any advantage going through the caves. If we *chhh* disguise Kufieno as an Ogre Kin, he could get them to open the gate; we all know how slippery of tongue our *squeak* dear friend can be."
"Perhaps then Kufieno and Miana could be invisible, and Lucian and I could fly, and Seal we could disguise as an ogre-kin. Do you think you could *chhh* hold yourself in check long enough to bluff your way into the gates?"
"Or, if you give me an hour I could learn this "dimension door" spell in this ogre's spellbook and three of us could use it to bypass the walls."
Kufieno grins and rubs his hands together. "I like the way you think, Miss Rissi."
The 20' tall gatehouse out front is guarded by three ogres. Seeing the other ogrekin approach, they grunt. "Who you?" the leading ogre asks. "Minktuck not see you before. Minktuck need to ask the Lady if you good ogres or bad ogres...."
Trying as best as he can to mimick the ogrekins' clumsy way of walking, Lucian approaches the wall and answers in giant with a very ogrelike accent.
"We be good ogurs! We allies from farm below! Proof is we haf some ranjurs dat ran from Kreeg ogurs, but we need help frum Kreegs to bring dem back to Fort fer eatin'. You come?"
The ogres grunt at each other and nod. "Good eatin'? We come."
They start to follow Lucian away from the gates....
Sealman the Giant Hunter charges forth from the bushes, slowly materializing from his invisible state with Thunderpuss at his side. There is nothing but empty hate and aggression in his eyes. Isoult is raised above his head, its blade glimmering ever so slightly in the presence of giants.
Thunderpuss jumps into the frey and tries to pull Minktuck down to Seal's level.
Lucian starts praying for the odds to be in his favor!