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The most epic fight of our entire campaign happened this week. The PCs almost went down against a huge flying worg and his pack, but pulled it out thanks to a really lucky roll from the paladin, and some fine shooting from the gunslinger.
Spoilered for length, unless noted otherwise.
Really early in the campaign, three weeks into exploring the Greenbelt, the group ran into a random encounter with worgs near the Temple of the Elk, which they promptly killed. Two days later, near Oleg's, they had another random encounter, which ALSO came up worgs. The single worg in the second encounter turned out to be related to the ones in the first encounter, and came looking for the PCs to get revenge. He stayed well away from the party, howling in Goblin (a language that none of the PCs speak), leading them to believe he was summoning a horde of goblins to swarm them in the night. Since he was too far away for the witch to cast her hexes on, and too fast for the melee people to catch, the gunslinger took it upon himself to deal with the threat. At night, at range, through cover, it would have been a near-impossible shot - unless you were Krispos Marksley, son of the famous gunslinger Rex Marksley. His bullet struck the worg in the face, tearing off one of his ears, and forever marking him as the Scar-of-Leaden-Flame. The worg then fled and the Greenbelt was safe from worgs. Or so they believed for the next 18 months.
Cut to Spring 4712 AR, the party has founded their domain on the northern shore of the Tuskwater, and are building a road back towards Oleg's former trading post (he moved south with them when they made him their Councilor and Svetlana their Grand Diplomat). Their road and the associated settlements have come within striking distance of the South Rostland Road, and everything is going well as they begin preparations for their first Founder's Day festival, but suddenly, one of their marchscouts comes stumbling in from the north, covered in dirt and blood.
"Wolves! Dozens of them, they've swarmed down on the farms and destroyed the new village!"
The gunslinger (now the Treasurer) asks him if any of them were missing an ear. The attack was in the same area they had encountered the worgs, after all.
"They were ALL missing an ear!"
Cue the PCs riding north to go hunt a worg!
Several days later, they find themselves at the village. Wolf tracks are everywhere, but not nearly as many as they were expecting. Certainly not dozens of wolves. Later that evening, as they're getting their camp set up, the witch falls over asleep. Everyone else comes running, just to get grabbed by rabid undergrowth sprouting up around them.
They see a horse-sized worg, flying on bat wings, and missing an ear. He hovers there, laughing at them. As they begin to break free, he swoops down to attack, but they fend him off and he flies away cackling.
The party is quite confused, but they realize that this is the same worg from before. Over the next day, they go searching through the woods, and don't find a single trace of a giant worg. They do find the tracks of a large wolf pack. Ordinarily, wolves run in small packs, 3-6 at most, but this is clearly a large group of 8 or 12. They follow the tracks back to a cave in the side of a hill. Their scout and the wolves laying in ambush both miss each other, but the wolves find the rest of the party and attack.
They deal with the wolves outside easily enough, though they get flanked by half the pack that split off, and head inside. Inside they are assaulted by the overwhelming stench of sasquatch, and soon by the thrown stones of those same sasquatches. A pair of worgs also begins harassing them and retreating. The witch gets fed up with the whole thing and casts obscuring mist over the whole room. When it lifts, the monsters are gone, deeper into the cave.
The rest of the cave gets cleared out, and they make it to the final room, where Scar waits with his mates - a pair of dire wolves. The sasquatches have retreated here and are taking cover behind piles of stones and skulls. Lastly, a fat trollhound is lounging around.
Their halfling rogue, an Orlovksy, tries to run across the cave before anything else can catch him, but doesn't make it to cover before the sasquatches pelt him with stones. Scar, knowing that the rogue and the witch can both turn invisible casts faerie fire on the rogue, causing him to glow bright green in the dim cave. Meanwhile, the dire wolves rush the rest of the party and inflict horrific damage while knocking the PCs to the ground.
They become bottlenecked when Scar then casts deep slumber, putting the entire party save the rogue and the gunslinger to sleep. Krispos is able to wake everyone with a clever use of powder, taking a break from shooting Scar for the only time in the entire fight. Scar responds with glitterdust, but unfortunately only blinds the barbarian. This whole time, the trollhound has been trying to take down the Baroness, a paladin of Erastil, and they trade blows until the Baroness is on the ground.
Under heavy fire from the sasquatches, being pinned by the wolves and trollhound, everyone in the party is in dire shape. Several of them are unconscious, and those that aren't are close enough that the next solid blow could kill them outright. That's when the paladin decides to take a calculated risk and channel the holy power of Erastil to heal the party - and the monsters. It brings everyone back into fighting shape and they rally.
Monsters fall left and right as the witch puts them to sleep. A fusillade of bullets continues to tear into Scar, despite the swirling winds whiffling out of his wings. The barbarian, still blind, rushes out to rescue the rogue, who had been cut off since the beginning of the fight. The Baroness and the witch combine forces to dispatch the trollhound with sword and spell. Suddenly, Scar is left by himself, with only one sasquatch still taking pot shots at anyone he can.
Unfazed, Scar rushes into battle with the rogue and barbarian, dropping the barbarian again. He shrugs off the witch's hex and turns to eat the rogue, but the witch has taken the enormously risky move of walking right up behind the giant wolf, distracting him long enough for the rogue to scramble underneath and stick his sword into the worg's guts. Scar lets out an earth-shaking howl to let them know he's not done yet.
Krispos knows he only has one chance to finish the worg before it devours both of his friends, and lines up his shot. The halfling and the witch both present potential for collateral damage, but Krispos and his gun are one - and they only have eyes for Scar. His bullet flies true, and strikes Scar in the eye just as he lunges for the witch. The now lifeless body slumps to the ground and the entire party, too tired to cheer, breathes a sigh of relief.
Among the loot stolen from their village, they find the worg wearing a glass ring carved into the shape of a jabberwock, which gives the wearer better maneuverability and the ability to create a storm around themselves. The witch debates keeping it, as she'll be able to fly soon, but it is decided that they could probably get thousands of gold pieces for it in Restov or New Stetven.
Phew. That was much longer than I expected.
Next post: Actual Spoilers!
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My players - DON'T READ THESE SPOILERS
So as for how this fits into the actual campaign and such, I'm using many of the expansions people on this board have come up with. The political situation is heavily based on Redcelt's GoT thread, while I'm also using Dudemeister's RRR for many things. I don't remember who came up with the
As soon as they ran into Scar the first time, I knew I had to tie that into Howl somehow. What I came up with was that he WAS Howl-of-the-North-Wind before he got shot, then changed his name to Scar-of-Leaden-Flame. I also thought the worg encounter as written in RRR wasn't tremendously interesting, so I made Scar one of N's chosen ones, and gave him the fey template that gives wings and SLAs and such. Also made him advanced and decided that all the awesome he had now made him large instead of medium.
He has trackless step, woodland stride, and a bunch of cool spells, so I was planning to have him use that to play tricks on them for a while, but it didn't work out. What ended up happening was that after the suggested year of kingdom building, I rolled a monster attack in month 13. Since they were expanding into the hex next to his lair (up by Oleg's, not down south like in the book) I felt it was the perfect opportunity to reintroduce him.
Scar had been approached by Hargulka, and the trollhound was there as a gift/envoy/spy. Unfortunately, Scar got impatient when the humans got too close to his territory and attacked early. Hargulka is going to both deny he had anything to do with it, and claim that "This is what happens when humans and monsters get too close! The humans ruthlessly slaughtered a group of monsters whose only crime was living in an area that the greedy humans wanted to claim for themselves."
Gonna run the meeting with him at the Sootscale Cavern soon. They're involved in some politics up north first.
The major thing is that jabberwock ring. N gave one to Scar when she "upgraded" him. Hargulka has one, when the Stag Lord comes back at the end of Carnival of Tears he'll have one, Armag is going to have one, and King Irovetti is going to have one.
I have two questions about them: If I give the rings out, would the bosses be too powerful if I then give them mythic ranks? For instance, if I give Hargulka two tiers of champion on top of being immune to fire, would he be unstoppable? And should I give the Regent Noleski Surtova a ring as well? He's being set up to be a major campaign villain, as my players are quite excited about the politics of Brevoy - MANY thanks to Redcelt!
Thought from other DMs? Questions, etc?
I don't remember who came up with the ** spoiler omitted ** but I love them, so I'm using them too.
That was me. Glad you like!
Spoiler:The major thing is that jabberwock ring. N gave one to Scar when she "upgraded" him. Hargulka has one, when the Stag Lord comes back at the end of Carnival of Tears he'll have one, Armag is going to have one, and King Irovetti is going to have one.I have two questions about them: If I give the rings out, would the bosses be too powerful if I then give them mythic ranks? For instance, if I give Hargulka two tiers of champion on top of being immune to fire, would he be unstoppable? And should I give the Regent Noleski Surtova a ring as well? He's being set up to be a major campaign villain, as my players are quite excited about the politics of Brevoy - MANY thanks to Redcelt!
I don't think so. If a creature is badass enough to have Mythic ranks, ESPECIALLY if the PCs do NOT, they should be famous enough for the PCs to be able to do some research on them, either by searching through records or - more likely, in the uncivilized Greenbelt - asking the right questions. You've got lots of NPCs who can get them that kind of info: Tyg and Perlivash, Tiressia and Falchos, Melianse the nixie are all obvious, Grigori if they can get on his good side, Corax or Kundal might have heard rumors if the party can negotiate with them peacefully, ditto for Munguk or Vesket.
Once they can find out some info, they can (hopefully) discern some of his weaknesses and take him on on a more even tone. Just finding out he's immune to fire in the first place, much less that he's still vulnerable to acid, is an immense benefit to them.
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Orthos: I have this sneaking suspicion they just have figured out his weaknesses! ;) Also, those things you came up with are super awesome! Though I think I'm gonna modify something.
Instead of Armag, I'm gonna give one to Noleski. Armag is gonna be tied in with the story of the Old Gods that I'm gonna be using. I gave the players two parties once they got the charter to rule, so several of the second party characters have a tie to space aliens and/or mythos things. Since I don't really get Gyronna, I took every reference to her in the KM books and made it somehow tie into the cult of Yog-Sothoth or Shub-Niggurath.
EDIT: DM you're also awesome!!! The additions you've made to RRR have been a huge inspiration!