Hearing the twang of the second shot and the wet meaty thunk of the arrow sinking into it's target, Faerin moves into the room. Seeing Katrine's handiwork, she produces a flask of oil, pouring a little of it on each of the corpses before setting it alight with a spark of elemental flame she produces with a sharp of her fingers, at first one, then the other.
"Just to make sure they don't get up ten minutes from now somehow." she says flashing the ranger a grin as she shrugs. "These monsters are ridiculously hard to kill for good"
The second troll dies as quickly and quietly as the first, and a judicious application of magical fire ensures they will not rise again.
Quickly scanning the barracks, you find nothing that would be of value to anyone but a troll. With no money or other ill-gotten gains stowed away by the trolls who sleep here, you grow to suspect that perhaps their master keeps a tight fist upon the bulk of their treasure.
Although another passage leads northward from the barracks, Ahto first leads the party back down the other route to the southwest. Whatever may await inside, you reason that it's better not to have any surprises at your back when you venture deeper into the dungeon.
The rough tunnel widens into a thirty-foot-high natural cavern hung with dripping stalagmites. Gnawed bones litter the floor, while the northern portion of the room holds a collection of severed, humanoid heads arranged around a large circle drawn on the floor with dried blood.
You find the source of the muttering you heard earlier: An immense brute - much bigger than the trolls you have encountered thus far - sits off to the side of the cavern. While it looks like a troll, besides its increased size, the other very noticeable difference is the fact that this creature has two heads!
It plays with a pair of skulls like puppets, each of its heads providing a voice for the macabre little play it entertains itself with. However, it stops the play and rises to its full 15-foot height when it notices Ahto enter its chambers.
The two-headed brute's attempt to demoralize Ahto with stomping and violent posturing has zero effect on the Abadaran lord.
Stayven whispers to the party, "Let me try something." He raises his hands and begins speaking to the troll in the same tongue that it spoke.
"Now, now, we are not worth stomping to paste. I see your anger and bluster, but we are more than a match for you. Let us talk about this like polite folk, and work something out."
The two heads begin whispering to each other before one finally speaks in response to Stayven.
The unusual, two-headed troll punctuates his words by jovially waving you over.
Stayven takes a moment to try to determine the vibe of this invitation. It certainly didn't seem friendly.
The treasure situation paints the picture that there is indeed a ringleader. Even if there are patrols of trolls out and about in the countryside, dispatching him should make them leaderless and restore balance.
Pelipe moves through the passages and upon seeing the beast playing with skulls, she tries to identify exactly what he is and why he is different than the others.
Pelipe understands the langauge as Giant and is somewhat impressed he has the intelligence to even come to the point of having a conversation. She evaluates him as she cautiously lingers where she is at the doorway. Meanwhile, she will cast some dancing lights to very slowly spread out and light up the room. This is, of course, unless he seems to take offense to the spell. If not though, she will continue to let the lights spread from her throughout the room to ensure that no other trolls or enemies linger in the shadows nearby.
Though his speech was violent in that he intended to rip the heads from their bodies, she seems to take it as if he wished them to introduce themselves.
"My name is Pelipe, what is your name? Are you the leader here?"
The strange creature straightens up and responds the Pelipe, giving Stayven more time to assess his sincerity.
He introduces himself as Nagrundi, the smartest of all trolls - much smarter than "dose idjits" in the rest of the gang.
He doesn't outright claim to be the leader of the gang, which probably means he doesn't want to admit that he isn't.
Pelipe has never seen a specimen like Nagrundi before, suspecting him to be rather unique. As best as she can figure, he is the half-breed offspring of a troll and an ettin.
He's trying to lure you closer, away from the rest of the party, so he can stomp you. Or grab you. Or club you. Or whatever crosses his heads' fancy.
Anyway, it is a very bad idea to trust Nagrundi.
He says quietly in Common to the party, "He aims to do something horrible to me if I come in close. I'm going to go in. I'm willing to bet that he underestimates just how slippery I am. You folks be ready to strike, I'll move in and get the action started."
Stayven smiles and nods to the troll as he speaks in Giant.
"You bet, big fella! My breath is awful, I'm going to drink something for it."
As he walks over, he drinks an extract of shield, quite prepared for Nagrundi to try to murderize him.
Pelipe readies herself to cast a spell and blast the two-headed odd beast if he does anything threatening.
She will let the troll attempt to figure out which one is the cute one, all while Stayven gets closer, hopefully giving him an advantage against hostile actions.
Katrine shifts her stance slightly, adjusting her grip on her bow. Beside her, Storm picks up on his mistress' intentions, tensing up in preparation to charge the enemy.
Observing, a spell on the tip of her tongue, Faerin waits for the troll to betray his treachery.
Nagrundi's left head jabbers on at the right, insisting that he is the "cute" one. This provides enough of a distraction that when his right arm sweeps down to snatch up Stayven, the brave cartographer easily ducks down and evades the foreseen betrayal.
Faerin throws up a hand, uttering a powerful chant in druidic as a brilliant explosion of light erupts all around the troll.
Stayven takes a moment to assess Nagrundi’s movements and combat style before stepping in and taking a swing at the troll.
Katrine sprints around the corner, points at the troll(?) and whistles the attack command. Storm shoots forward, teeth bared as he lunges at Nagrundi's legs. The ranger takes aim and fires twice in rapid succession.
Both heads turn in reaction to Faerin's bursting spell behind them, leaving them blinded and their skin blistered by the radiant magic.
Stayven sinks his handaxe into the side of Nagrundi's calf, and Ahto - still empowered by Pelipe's magic - delivers a doughty slash with Burden.
As Nagrundi stomps around blindly, he inadvertently avoids Storm's bite and Katrine's first arrow, but her second arrow sinks into the troll's butt during one of his thrashings turns.
Pelipe's spell blasts forth instantaneously from her hand as she summons her inner magical power to augment it with words and movements. A glob of marble-like gelatinous stone flies toward the two-headed beast.
(-2 from fatigued. She is now exhausted after this combat)
As the fatigue takes its toll on her, Pelipe finds her aim compromised such that even a large target like Nagrundi becomes a challenge, and the two-headed brute's stomping around makes it all the harder. Thus, the unique troll is spared a dousing of acid.
Nagrundi has already made a blind, opportunistic, and ultimately futile swing at Ahto as he charged close. Now, though, both halves of his body turn their full attention - blinded though they be - upon the Lord of Tamlyn.
The right head and its constituent arm are apparently more affected by Faerin's spell, since they fail their attempts to claw and bite at Ahto. The left set, unfortunately, are better able to find their mark and deal a bit of damage to the Abadaran.
As the blinded troll somehow manages to locate and tear into big warrior, Faerin begins to chant in druidic, drawing upon the primal elemental energy of fire as her hand rapidly traces the path of a sphere in the air before her, visible swirls of sparking energy circling her hand as the area directly behind the troll begins to ripple with rapidly building heat before erupting into a roiling ball of pure flame, that rolls toward her target to sear the monster's back.
As the troll gets a solid attack on Ahto, Stayven feels the force of the impact and sees an opportunity. Capitalizing on the blind troll’s distraction, he steadies his hand before swinging his axe in a well-placed blow, calculated to be both vicious and precise.
Katrine frowns as her first shot goes wide and Storm's teeth snap shut on air. The troll-ettin is acting as though Faerin's spell blinded him, so she takes a chance and whistles the command for Storm to attack the enemy from behind. Sure enough, Nagrundi's flailing misses the wolfdog entirely as he darts around and lunges at the backs of the enemy's legs.
While her companion moves to catch Nagrundi between himself and the two men, Katrine plants her feet and fires three arrows in rapid succession.
Already, Pelipe can see the strange troll seemingly regenerate. However, thanks to Faerin's fire, she will bring that to an end. Still, perhaps Pelipe can blast him equally as bad before Ahto draws more vicious attacks.
Faerin's flaming sphere rolls right into Nagrundi, searing his already inflicted wounds and staunching their regeneration.
The collective punishment then heaped upon the two-headed troll by sword, axe, and bow overcomes the brute, and Nagrundi flops down upon the cavern floor. Pelipe's jet of acid ensures that the foe's death is quite final.
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Ahto stands beside the troll's corpse and performs the Sin-eating Ritual.
Once the ritual is complete, some color comes back to his complexion, but it is clear that his body is still badly bruised, and possibly a cracked rib or two. Ahto calls to his deity to restore the rest of his strength.
"Lord Abadar, grant me the strength to persevere, and mete justice to these lawless beasts."
Ahto's body is suffused with an angelic glow, and his remaining injuries wash away as the light fades, leaving him hale and whole.
"Is anyone else in need of healing?" he asks his companions.
With the troll taken down and truly dead, Faering moves into the chamber, her sharply attuned eyes easily noticing a mismatch in the stone walls, indicating a hidden cache of stored wealth.
"He has clearly been busy."
Pulling the small hoard of coins out of the niche, you realize it may take some time for a full accounting. However, you also find a small dusty rose gemstone cut like a prism nestled among the myriad coins.
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"Who's a good boy? You are! Yes you are! Storm is the best boy!" Katrine praises and pets her bloody-mouthed wolfdog, who wags his tail happily and pushes his head against her hand like a pampered pet rather than the deadly predator he is. She tosses him another bit of meat, then turns to see what Faerin found.
"Wow. I'm glad I have a pack mule, that's a lot of coin." She pokes at the gemstone with one long, pointed fingernail. "This doesn't look like the kind of stone I've seen in jewelry. It's kind of a weird shape. Pelipe, can you check it for magic?"
The body of the two-headed troll stops moving and her acidic powers of stone seem to melt him further downward. Ahto performs his ritual and she sighs in exhaustive relief.
"What a monster..." she voices with labored breath. She shakes her head "no" in answer to Ahto's offer of healing.
"Of course," she answers her friend.
She can't do much in this exhaustive state with the hoard anyway. As they look at her, Pelipe cannot even seem to hold her gear as it is, but she can examine the gem. Her father's history with the mines rubbed off on her, as she has shown previously in their adventures. She will look at the prism with her intuitive eyes and detection of magic should something in the gem be magic, let alone the hoard.
The coins are quite mundane, although it is always worth investigating. After all, there was a fad out of Taldor a few generations ago for nobles and merchants to enchant their gold coins with false magic auras in an attempt to flex on their lesser peers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the gemstone radiates magic. though. Pelipe identifies the item as a dusty rose prism ioun stone, and a flawless one at that.
Meanwhile, Nagrundi's cavern is otherwise a dead end. The next direction to explore is the passage beyond the barracks where Katrine executed the sleeping trolls.
The cave that deadends seems now to be more of an afterthought; as though Nagrundi didn't like the Dwarven keep and wanted a cave of his own to sleep in. Pelipe will tell the others what the stone is and will let them decide who would appreciate being harder to hit with various forces. After this, she will head toward the barracks, allowing the others to lead.
"Sure thing." Katrine takes up a position as rearguard, Storm at her side.
Faering nods, advancing through the tunnels in the middle of the group.
Before departing Nagrundi's cavern, Pelipe turns back to examine something that caught her eye whilst her vision was still magically attuned. She finds that the necklace, adorned with a hard scale from some unknown creature, worn by one of the troll's heads shines with magic.
The way leading north from the barracks soon splits into two more short passages offering access to two final cavern chambers: one to the north, and one to the west.
With the beast dead and his horde scanned, she almost is ready to leave when the angle of her exit leaving reveals the necklace hidden by the thickness of the troll's body. Its shine stops her in her tracks and with the help of others, recovers it.
She will educate the others on how to activate the magical items and how they will benefit them via their magic.
After that, then she will proceed through the barracks.
Peering around the corner, into the room to the north, you find the trolls' gruesome larder.
The air in this cavern seems somewhat cooler than that of the rest of complex, but the stench of decaying flesh hangs heavy in the air. Along the walls are stacked the carcasses of dozens of beasts, from foxes and wolves to deer and elk, as well as a couple of horses and what appears to be a skinned bear. The southern portion of the room holds a grislier collection of corpses: the bodies of several humanoids, from gnomes and halflings to humans and elves. Most of the cadavers seem to have been decapitated.
You dare not draw any closer just yet, for you can hear another troll aggressively eating something drawn from the horrible stores of meat.
...
To the west, you find the "throne room" of the so-called King Hargulka, leader of these trolls and would-be ruler of an entire domain of trolls.
The ceiling of this cavern arches thirty feet overhead. A wagon with its wheels removed sits against the eastern wall, heaped with smelly furs, and a single barrel stands in the southwest corner. Against the northern wall, a crude throne carved from a giant tree stump sits atop a makeshift dais made of boulders, with a large bearskin spread on the floor before it.
Hargulka sits upon his makeshift throne, lost in thought - either planning raids or daydreaming of building up his own kingdom. He does not see you yet, but it would be exceedingly hard to enter his room without being immediately spotted.
Stayven speaks quietly in Common, "Now, I understand that Hargulka is responsible for a great deal of turmoil, but I would like to at least try and talk to him. Call it idealism, but conflict I find oft comes down to a lack of communication. If he can rally the trolls as effectively as it seems he can, he could be a powerful ally. Just imagine, a troll road crew, building the kingdom's infrastructure...The sheer good that they could do the kingdom if directed properly is incredible."
"Because attempting to reason with them worked so well a moment ago." Faerin mutters quietly. "A hunter who constantly announces his presence to his prey is rarely successful." she says, giving Katrine a sidelong glance.
The intense stenches are not doing Pelipe any good. She in part is starting to switch to the frame of mind to purge the keep of these trolls just so she could start to cast some prestidigitation spells and clean it of refuse. They struggle against it and manage to come to a split.
Pelipe will look into the throne room and look toward the northern wall. She attempts to recall primitive effigies and religions of giants and other kin that this perhaps could be a totem to. Perhaps knowing this can help them deal with the Troll leader?
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Katrine gives Stayven an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? Did you not see what was in their larder? We are food to them! Not potential allies! Any thinking being that eats humanoids in or near our territory is a clear and present danger to the people of Tamlyn." And she's made the proper response to such a danger perfectly clear. Animals are one thing. Most large predatory animals are smart enough to avoid settlements, and the ones who aren't are pretty simple to hunt down. But intelligent predators like trolls? They're a far more difficult foe, beyond the means of a village militia to fight.
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"While we have adopted Indentured Servitude as possible sentence for lawbreakers who show remorse, I doubt this Hargulka has any regret. Attempt to parley with him, if you wish, Master Stayven, but given the physical evidence of slaughter, butchery and cannibalism present both in these caverns, as well as the village of lizardfolk, he would have to show an extraordinary amount of genuine contrition to even be considered for such mercy." Ahto's tone carries heavy skepticism that the giant feels anything other than violent turpitude.
"...and before you try, keep in mind that each one of these people were likely taken captive to here and later killed based on their decay. That means these trolls, who many understand common, heard these here and how they didn't let out animal cries at their deaths. They pleaded for their lives. It is far different than just thinking of us as animals. They ignored the words of that many people and likely many more as they hunted out in the open."
While originally open to discussing this with Hargulka, she clearly changed her mind.