Adrianna attempts to take on one of the dinosaurs as they charge on Jonah but they are very small and her blade goes too high.
Ingolf commands his boar to charge the dinosaurs, and brave Ebba walks over the boards stabbing her tusks on the greenish compsognathus! Both the dinosaur and the boar shriek and the reptile starts to bleed profusely. The hit was so terrible the dinosaur seems left dizzy.
Tonny whips on one of the dinosaurs trying to help Adrianna who flanks it trying to slash the compsognathus from the rear. But again, she is not used to fight such small creatures and fails.
On his part, Splits takes some herbs from one of his pouches preparing a poultice to treat poison.
Jonnah does something heroic.
The dinosaurs step away of the dangerous boar, moving over Adrianna and trying to bite her.
The combined attack results difficult to avoid and both dinosaurs bite and pull from a different leg.
The wounds on the greenish compsognathus broaden, the lose of blood so large the dinosaur finally falls unconscious.
Surprised at how quick and how vicious the small dinosaurs turned out to be, nor just how sharp they were. What she thought would be a quick handling of skittering lizard had somehow turned unexpectedly dangerous and as the green dinosaour bites her she grunts in pain and jabs with the point of her scimitar instead of her usual broad swings.
Adriana was hard pressed by the attacking dinoasaurs; Ingolf had to do something to help! He moved forward and Swung his morningstar down at its back, but hit only dirt.
Following the gnome, Ebba grunted angrily and attacked the aggressive little dinosaur, showing Ingolf how it was done!
Jonah moves away from the melee, shooting another arrow carefully at the small critters as they swarm over his allies
Rosemary the falcon swoops in, biting at one of the tiny critters
the next round will look about the same, arrow to one of the dinos, Falcon scratching at the other one
Rosemary:
Adrianna stabs her sword at the weakest dinosaur as it approaches over her sending it to the floor, and Ebba charges on the remaining animal opening a wide wound while Jonnah steps back and precisely shots a deadly arrow that shatters the skull of the tiny dinosaur!
With the dinosaurs laying unconscious or dead you have an easier time to examine the courtyard.
Across this wide, muddy courtyard, three buildings cling to the sides of the fort’s interior walls. Those to the southwest and the east are sealed tight, while the door to the building in the northwest is slightly ajar. A well squats near the northeastern end of the courtyard, while a fence between the southwestern and northwestern buildings forms a simple animal pen. Two human bodies—quickly decaying in the tropical sun—lie in the mud one with a spear poking out from its chest.
Both bodies have been gnawed by scavengers but the one of a woman still wears a holy symbol around her neck. You have seen this symbol at Pridon's Hearth Countinghouse. The golden key of Abadar.
The spear poking out from one of the bodies is a hunting spear from one of the Song’o halfling tribes in the region.
You examine the wounds and find the spear was stabbed into one of the bodies after the man died.
"Is anyone hurt?", Ingolf asked the others.
He want over and examined the spear. "This wasn't the work of just dinosaurs!", he declared. He removed the holy symbol and and checked the bodies for any other items.
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”Hmm. If you look at the carvings on this spear, you can see several figures - well, ‘figures’ in a rather abstract use of the word, since those of us not raised locally don’t really understand Song’o symbology, but that’s beside the point and as Professor Moonbrooke always said, ‘Focus on what’s important, Tonny!’, and that’s precisely what I’m doing right now, thankyouverymuch, and these figures have larger feet than traditionally observed, which would imply either an entirely new race of civilization or a tribe of halflings, but we have to remember to take the simplest explanation, which is that perhaps this variance from the norm is simply a mistake, though the consistency of the design would suggest it is indeed intentional...” The half-elf’s voice trails off as he studies the spear to the exclusion of all else.
"It's nothing. Just a bite." Adriana answers Ingolf as she shakes her leg a little and covers up where the small dinosaur had bitten her. She was still surprised at just how sharp the small things were.
She decides to keep her scimitar unsheathed for the time being and continues to investigate with the others, starting with the bodies.
She wasn't sure if she knew what Tonny seemed to know regarding the spear - most of what she knows about the area is what little she's gathered from what Sasha had told her - but she was just confident enough to say that it was Song'o. The rest she would leave to Tonny since the lad clearly knew plenty.
She kneels down next to the rotting corpses and scrunches her face at the smell and carefully attempts to remove the key of Abadar. She would bring it back for Baldra.
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The druid looked at the dinosaurs only trying to protect themselves. "It is a shame what has transpired here... Truly a waste." He slowly moves up toward Adriana, "Are you sure you're okay? If you do get poisoned please do not hesitate to ask, because I will know when you fall unconscious anyway." His eyes glance over her quickly before surveying the scene.
He doesn't seem to know much about the tribes but thankfully the excitable half-elf does and he listens intently.
Listening to Tonny speak about the tribes he nods, learning what he can about the Song’o's. "Tonny, can you tell me something... This tribe, would they have a reason to spear someone who was already dead? Superstition perhaps?" Moving to the corpse he notices that the wounds were what caused the death and that the spear was impaled post-mortem.
While Splits and Tonny complete discussing the findings in the corpses, some of you approach the animal pen and the well to further examine.
The mutilated carcasses of a half-dozen animals litter this pen. Bite and claw marks edge a section of the fence that has been shorn away, while the shoulder-high gate remains shut.
You do determine the carcasses pertain to two goats and four pigs.
A sturdy stone well sits before the northernmost wall of the fort. An empty bucket hangs from a pulley over the dark shaft. A well-used dagger is embedded in the waterlogged bucket.
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"Tonny, can you tell me something... This tribe, would they have a reason to spear someone who was already dead? Superstition perhaps?"
"Oh! Well, the most logical suggestion would be if they were worried the dead would not stay dead," Tonny replies. "Or perhaps the spear was placed by someone hoping to implicate the Song'o. Or somebody was just really bad at determining if their opponent was dead." The half-elf shrugs and holds up his hands helplessly. "We'd need further input to determine any kind of hypothesis that would hold up to peer review."
Tonny's gaze flits past the deceased livestock to the dagger sticking out of the well bucket. "Now this is interesting!" he exclaims excitedly, hurrying over to the well. "Look at the craftsmanship on this! And here - these decorations are in the same style as the spear we found earlier. You can tell again by the stylized proportions of the engraved figures."
He turns to the explorers, his expression grave. "Nobody would leave weapons behind when they are the difference between life and death in the wilderness surrounding us - especially not one as well-made as this. Probably an heirloom or family treasure. One is coincidental, but two is the beginning of a pattern. Someone wants these to be noticed, and wants to communicate something through them. I don't know if what they're saying is a warning or a lie, but it's definitely intentional."
Ingolf looked at the dagger embedded in the bucket. "This blade does look like it came from the Song'o halflings," he commented.
The fort goes silent as the group reflects on the facts Tonny and Ingolf reveal while they point at the dagger in the bucket.
It might be time to retreat back to Pridon's Hearth and inform by taking the way through the gates the group just crossed. Meanwhile, the courtyard buildings remain silently quiet. The two to the southwest and the east are have their doors sealed tight, while the door to the building in the northwest is remains slightly ajar as when you arrived. You look up at the corner watch towers and ramparts and still, you spot no one there.
What each of the adventurers is doing?
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Tonny investigates the eastern building's door. Could have been sealed by defenders - if that's the case, we'd probably want to bring them back to town with us. Or if they just happened to keep the doors shut really tight here, then perhaps there's something inside that wasn't taken by whoever knocked down the main gate. He rolls his shoulders, unconsciously remembering being struck by the log. No logs here - let's see if we can't get this open!
Adriana frowns as she slowly moves away from the animal pen to the closed door as she processes what they've so far discovered - that so far, everyone is dead or missing and that Song'o haflings seemed responsible - or at least implicated. There was already plenty to tell the sheriff but she wanted to be thorough.
As Adriana watches Tonny approach the same door she turns and asks Splits the Leaves "Can you tell the time? Or the weather?" and as she awaits a reply she stops a few paces behind Tonny and gives the door a thorough looking over, asking the half-elf "See anything?"
Tonny approaches the eastern door and discovers the door is well locked.
After a first attempt to force the door, the half-elf produces his tools and starts working hard on it. While others search other areas of the courtyard the half-elf insists until he hears a successful 'tick' and the door opens.
This room has a single door. Wood-and-metal racks, their hinges slightly corroded from the tropical humidity, line the walls, each fitted with an assortment of arms and armor.
Attending the state of the armory you can tell, whatever happened to them, Fort Breakthrough's defenders never made it to their armory to prepare for defense.
Among the supplies you find multiple short swords, longswords, light and heavy crossbows, bolts, suits of leather armor and heavy wooden shields.
A crate in the corner is packed with straw and contains additional short swords, longswords and crossbow bolts. The crate is marked with the name "Northwind Smithy".
Nothing else strikes you at the armory. Where to explore next?
He follows along, not unfamiliar with the creations of man but clearly a little anxious about something. The druid had always felt a pull to such things, to a way back to his old life but that is gone; and he had to keep telling himself that to move forward.
His reverie is dispelled by Adriana. "The time and weather? I could do that." He finds a spot and looks around and upward before responding to her.
"There will be light rain later on, but I cannot say what time it is precisely. If we need to move we are in no rush; it is not like a typhoon is coming."
Moving toward the barrels the one names Splits the Leaves looks at it curiously before speaking up. "This barrel here, it is from Northwind Smithy in Pridon's Hearth." He rummages through the breastplates and longswords and other sundries but finds nothing of note. "They did not have time to arm themselves; so what happened here?"
He moves toward an open space and with his staff, and considers casting a spell.
must have been quite an attack to take out an entire fort before the guards could even make it into the armory. that dome-headed dino they used to bash down the gate must have been even more efficient than I guessed! if they got in and out so quickly perhaps they missed something.
Jonah will walk slowly around the fort courtyard yelling out in common asking if anyone is there. he knocks on the southwest door
Splits and Tonny examine thoughtfully the armory while Jonnah crosses the courtyard to check the other door. The man starts to shout trying to determine if someone is left in the Fort. He knocks at the building door and discovers it is closed but not locked.
By when Jonnah shouts for the third time the man's shout dissolves in a painful cry. Looking into his direction you discover an arrow lodged in his back.
Looking up to the direction from where the arrow came, you spot a small frog-like humanoid with red eyes and a strange bow.
Despite she is clearly trying to hide, you spot her, and she quickly reacts by shooting another arrow before you react to what is going on.
The second arrow lodges exactly in the back of Jonnah near the first one! The wintered hunter holds!
Once discovered she starts croaking loudly: "Koj tawm kuv lub tsev tshiab!"
"You! Leave my new home!"
Hearing the hunter scream from an arrowshot, the druid had to stifle a smirk. Perhaps he will understand the pains of ambushes now. He knew full well that he wasn't going to let Jonnah get hurt past this point but there was some vindication in the small act.
"Jonnah hold on!"
He begins to hear the grippli and speaks back in his polyglot, "Wait! Wait! We mean no harm to you." Holding his hands and staff upright he continues calmly, "Let us talk first."
Ingolf took cover behind the well, took out his sling, and loaded it.
Ebba took cover beside Ingolf. There didn't seem to be a way to get to the hostile frog creature.
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The sounds of Jonah yelping snap Tonny out of analytical mode. As he rushes out of the armory, he is quickly distracted by the sounds of Polyglot. Looking up to the ramparts above, the half-elf spots the small figure perched there.
A grippli! Tonny quickly muses. Not a halfling or a dinosaur. Opportunistic third party perhaps? As he strides closer, he calls back in the same language. ” Hav! Tsis txhob tua kuv tus phooj ywg!” He cracks his whip, hoping to grab the small humanoid’s weapon.
Splits attempts to talk down the situation calling the frog-like humanoid down in Polyglot. It will require some time of talking though.
Ingolf and Ebba take cover behind the well, while the gnome prepares his sling to fight the sniper.
Resolved, Tonny makes it out of the armory and faces the wall extending his arm at is maximum to whip out the enemy's bow. The frog takes cover behind the rampart, but the whip successfully hits the bow and the creature loses control of her piece of wood.
The whip pulls the bow and the bow hits the ramparts spinning in the air a fraction of a second just before falling down all the way to the courtyard!
The frog-like one croaks in astonishment!
Caught unaware again within the space of a few moments causes a deeply repressed feeling of rage to start boiling over within her and Adriana grips her scimitar just a little too tight and wrestling with her emotions she stomps over to Tonny and points her scimitar up at the frog-like figure and with the point slightly wavering from both anger and a forceful attempt to channel said anger into a useful outlet.
"Enough! Enough of this! Stop shooting!" She shouts in a fury, hoping to cower the frog-person into submission before anybody else is attacked.
Without her bow, the grippli trembles at Adriana's commanding words. She croaks something uninteligible once more, goes trough the door of the near watchtower and closes the door.
Caring about a possible volley follow up, Jonnah opens the door and refuges himself into the building.
The grippli apparently remains inside the watch tower.
Watching the grippli flee in a panic brings Adriana back to her senses enough that she takes two deep breaths and sheathes her scimitar, contrite and embarrassed. She wasn't doing very well at being in charge.
"Alright. That could have gone...better. Worse too, yes, but better would have been... well..." She turns to the others and takes a second to force herself to be calm and collected.
"Someone please help Jonah, and anybody that speaks, um, frog, please come with me. They might know something useful, and I'd like to apologize for shouting." With that she turns back to the ramparts and looks for a way up.
The druid moves swiftly to the hunter. "Be still, this will not take long." He rubs his hands and channels energy into him to make him right again, "Do be careful in the future. It is not often the ambusher becomes the ambushed."
After the frog creature disappeared, Ingolf called out, "What did it say?"
He joined Splits the Leaves to help heal Jonah, "Do you think that small creature was really responsible for all this?"
He shakes his head, "He said it is now his place. I doubt it was entirely him." He scans the courtyard, "None of these weapons are his size."
Adrianna looks for some stairs up to the ramparts, but she does not find an obvious way up. She does thing she can climb up though.
Splits and Ingolf enter the building with Jonnah and considerably heal the hunter who feels the pain quickly disappear as the arrows fell down and the holes in his back close up.
They find the room in disarrangement.
The eastern door of this wooden chamber is caved in, collapsing a makeshift barricade of haphazardly stacked shelves and crates. Three headless human bodies are impaled on the cabinets by crude spears. Flies buzz around the corpses, constantly landing on the crimson morass of gore where the heads were removed.
The bodies are heavily decayed, making the cause of death difficult to determine.
Most of the remains here are broken stuff, but your appraising eye catches sight on a box on the corner full of construction supplies, nails, rope, pulleys, hammers, saws and chains, all of excellent quality. The crate is at least worth 150 gp and weighs 50 pounds, but it would be invaluable to any constructions works on a fort like this one, or the growing structures of Pridon's Hearth.
A door remains closed at the southwest corner of the room.
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Tonny picks up the undersized bow before looking at Adrianna. "Umm, maybe we should return this to her?" he asks hesitantly. "Oh, wait, where did everyone else go?" Sliding the bow carefully into his pack, he rushes towards the room where Jonnah retreated to.
Tonny stifles his gag reflex as he sees the bodies, but his academic curiosity gets the better of him. "Are there any other messages left here, like in the courtyard?" he wonders out loud as he peers around the room carefully and gingerly pokes at the decaying bodies.
Better make a note of that crate for when we leave, the half-elf thinks to himself before another discovery grabs his attention. "Hey, over here!" he calls to his companions. "Look - a severed hand covered in scales!" A trophy from a guard's hunt? A third party in this tragedy? One of the guards spontaneously growing scales and chopping off her own hand in horror? "Jonnah, you don't know of any dinosaurs with hands like this, do you?" Just to be thorough.
Adriana makes an attempts to climb the palisade and although she doesn't fall flat, she slips off regardless. She wasn't as acrobatic as she could have been, and frowns, then sighs, and follows Tonny to look for a way up to the ramparts, ignoring the smell as best she can.
Ingolf held a cloth over his nose against the stench. When Tonny pointed out the severed hand, he stared in horror at the severed appendage.
Ebba refused to enter the room with the smell of death. She stood at the doorway, squealing anxiously, while she watched Ingolf.
The druid walked into the room, using his staff to move some junk from the floor and clean some space in front of him. "The stench of death, natural but unpleasant." He kneels beside a body and wiggles the spear for a short moment, "Another one here stabbed after their death. Perhaps your theory about undeath may hold water afterall."
Moving up to Tonny the druid looked quizzically at him, "Could very well be a hand of a lizardfolk. What worries me is how clean the cut is. This is not a cut like those small dinosaurs, this is something with far more power." He knew full well it was only a theory but it made sense in his head and while he would normally wait for full answers, it was clear to him that they needed some warning about what could be lurking near the bushes.
He moved toward the boar at the door, "Ebba was it?" Giving it a small nod he spoke quietly, "You do have a spark of intelligence in you. This room isn't a place for boars. Let us enjoy what little sun is left." He waited at the threshold with the gnome's bond.
As a reminder, the party leaves an unexplored interior door at the southwest of the training room.
Meanwhile, Tonny and some others approach the last building for inspection.
Broken halves of a large table lie askew in the center of this room. Half a dozen four-foot-long spears protrude from one half of the table, and brown bloodstains mar the floor. A basic map of the region covers most of one wall, hanging next to a picture of an austere-looking man.
The large map depicts the coastline and rivers in great detail, but labels little else beyond the fort and Pridon’s Hearth.
The portrait depicts Baron Utilinus, Grand Custodian of Sargava.
The spears embedded in the table are all Song’o.
Another door lays closed to the northwest.
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With no luck finding a way up and with one last real place to check within the fort itself, Adriana makes her way to where she saw Tonny heading to and enters the building.
She doesn't take more than a few steps inside before stopping entirely - from what she could gather, the fiercest fighting had happened here. Ambush seemed likely, and as she plucked a loose spear from one of the broken tables she focuses most of her attention on it.
"Another spear, looks like the others. Song'o, right?" She's sure it's the same, but a second confirmation wouldn't hurt. She ignores the portrait and instead looks at the map and considers taking it for the sheriff, deciding against it for the time being and moving to the northwest door carefully.
"Tonny, do you have the frog person's bow? If they're in here, I'd like us to return it. Hopefully make up for earlier."
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Splits the Leaves sees Adrianna walk in and her question, "Unsure actually. I am worried that they continue to stab things after death though and it worries me." He sees the new room that Tonny had entered and searches for a bit, unable to tell where the spears were from.
Feeling a small whistle of wind on his face, the druid moves toward the painting, its owner and likeness unknown. "There is something here." He moves the portrait a little and finds a small stash of petty cash.
"The fort's payroll perhaps? I'm sure someone may be missing this." If they were still alive. The last part was something he considered saying, but was unsure of how they would all react to the most likely truth of the situation.
Ingolf left the room that stank of death and followed Tonny into the room with the broken table. More Song'o spears.
He studied the map, but it told him nothing he didn't already know.
Ebba was glad that Ingolf left the death-smelling place. She sniffed around broken table.
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”Oh, well it would make sense to have a portrait of the Grand Custodian here,” Tonny mutters under his breath. ”What was his name again? Uta, Ute, Uti, Utilinus! Baron Utilinus!”
The half-elf nods absentmindedly to Adriana’s question, then again at her second. ”Well, I don’t think the Song’o - if it was them putting their spears here - thought the table was alive - well, I mean the wood was once alive, but trees don’t usually attack people, especially not once they’ve been chopped down and made into furniture...” he replies to Splits the Leaves. His eyes drift to the map on the wall. ”Do... do you think folks would mind if we took this map with us? We could even fill it in with more details, like that farmstead we stopped at on our way here.”
The group cautiously approach to the door in the Mess Hall.
Shelves bedeck the walls of this square room. A solid stone slab sits atop a waist-high counter at the northern edge of the room, covered with spoiled vegetables and rotting hunks of meat. A wooden door exits to the east, while a wooden ladder ascends fifteen feet to a second floor.
Apparently, the fort’s basic kitchen saw little violence. Fruits and vegetables are spoiled, but the westernmost pantry is closed.
As you start to explore the kitchen, a group of centipedes spring from one of the cupboards when you open it! It seems the kitchen has not been properly sanitized in recent times, because they are giant like a cat!
The worms take Tonny unprepared and bite him on the neck and his left arm.
Ingolf is as well surprised by the worms appearance that smack at him from the lower kitchen shelves.