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Grilgoth curses Richelle and then lets out a long cackling laugh.
"Give up girl. You have no chance to win here and you know it."
Misfortune Hex (Will DC 15) or target rolls twice and takes the worst roll of the two rolls for every d20 roll. Cackling extends the duration of the hex by 1 round.
Torgen misses with both of his saps!
The girl feels the embrace and does not resist as she is still dazed.
The misfortune does not take hold of the girl!
Suddenly, from behind the boulders a Tiefling with horns appears without you all noticing anything!!
He thrusts his shortsword into Torgen’s back and hits a kidney!!
He looks at Richelle and orders, ”Kill him!! Now!!!“
Coming out of her daze, she hesitantly draws her longsword and slashes across Torgen’s chest.
Torgen is rather taken aback by the sudden appearance of the tiefling behind him. He spits out a mouthful of blood and glares at the newcomer.
"You'll need to try harder than that pal." he growls, before apparently reassessing his options and initially attacking Richelle with his Saps.
The first sap attack knocks Richelle out but the attack with the sap does not hit the Tiefling.
“You weaklings will all die!!“ the horned man shouts.
Fascili's arrow pierces the Tiefling's leg but Grigoth's bolt misses!
Evindyl misses the wounded Tiefling and the healing washes over you.
“Aghhh, you’ll never win!! We will destroy the town with our plan!!“ he cries out and attacks Torgen but can’t penetrate the armor.
“You weaklings will all die!!“ the horned man shouts.
"Well we'll all die at some point, just some of us sooner than others..." retorts Torgen, a glint of menace flashing across his eyes.
The saps, the flying dagger and the arrow all hit and let the Tiefling sink to the ground.
Torgen checks the tiefling . ”Hopefully he is still alive so he can answer questions and face proper justice.”
The Tiefling is still breathing!
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Torgen next retrieves a set of manacles and some rope from his backpack.
"I suggest we restrain them all first and then wake them up to see what they have to say for themselves. We probably want to keep this tiefling and the apprentices separate when we speak to them as he clearly has some sort of power over Tolwin and Richelle."
Torgen begins restraining the parties three unconscious assailants, searching each to see if they have anything of interest about their person.
You search them.
”The cave is definitely the next place to check. I seem to recall that journal we found mentioned a ‘beast’ in the cave. Let’s see what information we can find out about it from our tied up friends.”
Torgen takes one of the healing potions plus the bow and arrows.
”I could use these if no one else needs them.”
”Belayneh if I move our captives closer together would you be able to channel to help bring them round and also heal any of us that are still injured?”
Torgen thinks for a moment, rubbing his beard. ”Or if anyone has any smelling salts maybe we could use those to wake them up instead?“
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Grilgoth shakes her head in disagreement.
"I think that we should tie them up and leave them unconscious for now. They are lucky to be alive at all if you ask me, especially the Tiefling who is behind it all."
"Once we have explored the cave then maybe we can revive the youths. One at a time and tied up. The other one we should carry back to town unconscious. He is just too dangerous an influence and I do not want to see anyone dead at the end of this."
"It may sound a little brutal, but if we wake them up and question them then we always have the option to put them to sleep again once we've finished. We've already got them tied up and manacled, so knocking them out again if we need to would be fairly straight forward."
"As it stands we don't know much about what is going on and it's always best to go into a potentially dangerous situation with as much information as possible. We also don't know if there are other dangers other than the cave. Maybe the 'beast' isn't in the cave any more and has been unleashed on the town and it would be good to know about something like that as soon as possible."
"To my mind, in the worst case, we wake them up and they are still ranting an raving about killing us and we need to knock them out again. But in the best case we may get some useful information. I would suggest waking up one of the apprentices first, but we've got limited healing resources and I wouldn't want to need to use more of them if we end up needing to wake up the others, so I think channeling would be the most effective way of doing it. Plus I also need healing and a channel would help with that as well."
"What does everyone else think?"
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"To waste divine magic simply waking up the miscreants for information which is unlikely to be useful; not a sound plan. As a by product of using the magic to shore up the party's healing, well, what the heck, right? But I am more compfortable facing what we need to face, than adding the variable of awakening them."
You all move to the cave entrance.
This rock face towers nearly 30 feet and is punctuated in the middle with the dark opening of a cave mouth.
As you enter, the dank scent of moss hangs heavy in the air as the gloom in the cave thickens. Some daylight filters in to the mouth of the cave , but the caverns receding deeper in on either side are completely dark.
Torgen drinks a potion of cure light wounds to heal himself a bit, then draws his axe and a sap and heads towards the cave. Once at the entrance he has a look around for any useful clues.
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Grilgoth nods as the light spell goes up. She takes a position right behind Fascili as they enter the cave.
While not exceptionally perceptive she keeps her eyes open. Her familiar stays out of sight in his protective case. She loads her crossbow with another bolt and has it in hand should she need to use it.
These cramped corridors smell like fungus and rot.
You can hear a violent thudding sound as well as muffled roaring coming from deeper within the
cave.
]
No scents or other information of relevance.
After a minute of moving through the caverns carefully and exploring, you hear the loud *snap* of a chain breaking, followed by a bellow of triumph and loud, thudding footsteps.
Suddenly, a large, two-headed beast comes into view, wielding a nasty-looking flail in one hand and holding the dead, crushed body of an aged woman in the other hand.
The two-headed giant is wearing a large pendant that you clearly recognize as the pendant that was granted by the dragon to the town of Highdelve.
But you also see that strange cords are attached to the amulet and it is blood-covered.
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All over the Ettin’s body strange bloody runes are carved into its skin.
These are diabolic runes which could be used to protect giants from draconic beings with the right focus. And the amulet could serve as exactly that focus. Essentially, you assume that Aureliax would not have been able to protect the town as it would not have been able to harm this Ettin.
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"Diabolic runes!" Fascili calls out, pointing at the markings on Ettin's body. "Could be possible protection from draconic beings. The amulet is likely serving as a focus for the runes. Aureliax would not have been able to protect the town as it would not have been able to harm this giant. I suspect if we can disrupt the amulet or the markings, we could disrupt the magics protecting it!"
He lowers his head and holds tight to his morningstar. "Goddess of Fortune, guide my hand."
The projectile misses the two-headed giant!
Fascili prepares!
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Grilgoth moves up cautiously taking a defensive position behind an outcropping of natural rocks that serves as a wall near the bottom of the stairs. She shoots her crossbow bolt hoping that it will connect with this monstrosity.
She has a quick look at the runes as well as she has clearly missed her target.
"An Ettin, perhaps I should try to talk to it?"