Hey everyone,
So my PCs stormed the fort last session. Bypassed exploring the bog for now and didn't even enter town.
They went in stealthy and invisible, levitated up to the third floor, dispelled the window covers, and stormed in. Best fight was with stroon. He force walled the party into 3 groups and only had to face the party monk, whom he disintegrated, then died to the party as the wall came down that same turn.
The baron was a joke and they "rescued" the baron's mistress. They then challenged the guards outside to an honorable duel of best warriors winner takes all. The guards agreed since they really didn't stand much of a chance, and chose one of the giants to fight the party's Pali. Didn't last long, giant dead at the pali's feet, the guards filed out of the fort and the city, the other giants attacked the party out of anger for their fallen brother.
The part got 22 liberation points that night alone and have claimed the town (not incorporated into their nation yet though).
Good night for them. How many other parties did something similar, storming the fort and bypassing the town.
Mine did much the same thing. They talked the giants into heading into the town (nice bluff check that free beer was being handed out), then ran into the baron, where one of the PCs (background: the baron's niece) tried to talk him down, which didn't work (background unknown to the player: baron had murdered his older brother way back when and was interpreting "I am your niece" as "I should have your place"; the player's rather rambling and fumbling approach didn't help much) and that turned into a battle, which the PCs were winning when Stroon appeared.
Stroon was flying outside the windows and had a wind wall up. He had his familiar open/close shutters while he threw fireballs, walls of fire, etc., into the room. Quite an epic battle. PCs eventually cleared out the wind wall and then pincushioned Stroon. The familiar flew over there, pulled out a teleport scroll, and used it. (Stroon would come back for a couple of major encounters with the players later, and I'm still not done with him).
They negotiated with the guards, and then they had to deal with drunken giants rioting in the town, but overall it was a very fun encounter all around.
(This is one of the areas where the KM path seems to assume that the PCs _will_ follow a certain path -- especially at high levels, players DON'T do that, and can get away with not doing it, much more easily than adventure designers like to think. In this case, with Drelev fingered as "the guy who invaded us", the PCs weren't inclined to do much but strike directly at the source of the problem.)
My players tried to get Drelev to let them in by asking nicely. That failed. So they sat outside the keep's front door and annoyed the ever-loving hell out of the keep. Terrible violin solos. Wretched poetry and theatre recitals. Extremely off-key singing. Bad bad bad bad bad jokes.
This eventually prompted one of the guards to throw the first punch. The players, now satisfied/justified (if only to themselves) that they'd been attacked first and any actions on their part were proper retaliation/self-defense, proceeded to rout the gang of guards who had jumped them in Bellweather's.
Meanwhile the party Spymistress went out giant-hunting at nights after curfew with Satinder Mourne (now an Inquisitor) and Kisandra Numesti (I rewrote things a bit and my players jumped the gun on BFB two months early, so Kisandra is both still in Drelev and a capable combatant).
The day after the guards threw the first punch the whole party meets Mourne and Numesti for the first time, Mourne points them toward the tunnel entrance beneath the keep, and the party raids the place from the bottom up. Ends with the cavalier General bull-rushing Hannis Drelev out a window and the Magister hitting Lady Marae with a chain lightning as she tries to fly away.
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Good stuff, I'm thinking of giving one potential hook to the players to have Satinder and some other Calistrians offer an *ahem* distraction to several of the guards to allow a more easy access through the castle. Maybe some cover identities as well.
Not entirely sure just yet.
Also got a surprise encounter in the tunnels with some Umber Hulks just cuz I miss them. That should also have my players chuckling after the Slaad infestation among the Boggards I had previously.
Throwback monsters ftw
My players have rescued the hostages (I made some changes to the layout as I'm dropping the attack by Pitax and using the Tiger Lords for the mass combat) and did their best to make it look like Drelev had done it, including killing off the one person at the bandit camp who recognised them (Goody Niska, who escaped from them before and went to join the Black Sisters).
They're now waiting to see what happens between Drelev and the barbarians before they make a move, and insist on using NPC spies rather than going anywhere near Fort Drelev themselves. I think I need to pressure them with a one-off opportunity (perhaps all the elite guards have been sent to smooth things over with Armag) or they'll never go to the fort in person.
My guys got into town (fairly easily) and finished up at the Velvet orner :) Satinder gave them use of a roomT which as a based for their reconnaissance etc. Our Sorcoress got to know it better than any other place in town and they eventually finished up using it as their teleport destination in the own for the next couple of adventures.
Which lead to some fascinating encounters with various of Satinder's clients. Eventually they paid to hire it for a month or so :)