If you are reading this journal, then I have fallen to the mighty foes that seek to conquer with dragonfire, devastating storms and the hobnailed boots of all manner of giants. Perhaps this will end as a trophy on some chief's shelf, perhaps stronger souls than I shall learn from the information herein.
Early spring, 4715 A.R., Trunau, Belkzen. Day 1.
My trusty steed Shadowmist and I arrive at the pile of rocks outside humble Trunau in the late afternoon. Originally assembled in Sandpoint, Varisia, the caravan makes it way southerly to Magnimar before turning east, finally arriving in Trunau.
Along the way we meet some new friends, always welcome in the frontier region of the Hold of Belkzen. Perhaps two years ago the bearers of the Sihedron slew Caldrikalsta, the blue wyrm that had terrorized the orcs of the Hold for several centuries until perhaps five years ago. Since then, something arose to fill that power vacuum - we just didn't know what. Not yet, not on the eve of a glorious day.
- Dramatis Personae
- 'Healbot', female human Life Oracle 1. We met about a month ago when the greater part of the caravan formed in Magnimar. Her parents are reputable Osiriontologists based out of Absolom. She followed in their footsteps, joining the Pathfinder Society, moved to Magnimar in wake of its recent ascension to prominence only to be sent to Trunau along with the most recent graduating class of Pathfinders to track down and report on the rumors of artifacts and other items of yore that recently surfaced in the Hold. Stunningly attractive with Garundi heritage and piercing green eyes, she is lightly armed and armored.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, male gnome arcane sorcerer 1. We came across this poor naked little cretin along the road to Turtleback Ferry. Severely delusional, he claims that none other than Nethys saved his life when he was an infant, blessing him as an Oracle of Nethys. Being quite the runt, he's the shortest male gnome ever heard of. Despite his indomitable beliefs, he is quite personable and an eloquent orator. I don't know yet if his forgery skills are as good as his speechcraft. His familiar is either a lizard or a scorpion, it's been hard to spot the little critter.
- Rudyard "Rude" Kipling, a towering male wyvaran barbarian 1 of reptilian rather than draconic heritage. His clutch of origin lies far to the east in a silver mine to the east of the Hooktongue Slough in the River Kingdoms. According to him, his father is one of the red wyrms from somewhere hereabouts. Given his druthers, he'll be fashioning matching luggage and accessories from his father's scaled hide.
- 'Skittles Emminnemm', female elf Unchained Rogue 1. Staggeringly intelligent and nimble of finger, she's been working as the greeter and counterpickpocket at the inn/tavern in Trunau, she won her hopeknife two years ago. Skittles knows more than a half-dozen languages, making her extremely popular when caravans arrive. To human eyes she's about 17 years of age. Interestingly, she has self-esteem issues despite her gifts and skills.
- Shadowmist, a 10 year old black charger from Sandpoint, equine smartass and always popular with the ladies and kids.
I've inherited a small cottage with an attached horse stall from my uncle here in Trunau, may he rest in peace. Chaucer sweet-talks his way into a hammock under the front overhang, but I manage to keep enough of my wits about me so that the little stomach doesn't eat Shadowmist out of hearth and home.
The rest of my new friends get accommodations at the main building in town.
Day 2
Today is Ruby's hopeknife ceremony. After the ceremony, the girl-now-a-woman ropes me and the rest of us into a tug-of-war against her brothers and four of the burlier militiamen. Things don't begin well, especially with Chaucer barely able to hang onto the rope behind Ruby with his little legs churning the air. Despite the best efforts of 'Rude' and I, we are inexorably dragged closer and closer to the marker. Ruby's father joins in, yet the tide continues against us. Three farmers jump in, crying aloud "Ruby shall not fall! TRUNAU shall not fall!!". Yet we are still mere steps from Ruby being pulled across the marker. Sighing at our puny thews, Shadowmist grabs onto the rope - to much cheering and delight by the onlookers - and with a mighty heave Ruby's team tugs four men across the point of no return.
The town celebrates Ruby's triumph over her brothers, staying up until the wee hours. Ruby heaps apple-y accolades upon Shadowmist before he cuts my drinking short after guzzling what seems to be several gallons of hard cider. I take him home, hold his head, brush him down and lean him against the wall of his stall. Chaucer staggered to his hammock a couple of hours later. The pipsqueak can hold his liquor!
Day 3
'Healbot' fetches us from the place they've been staying the past couple nights. Rodrick was found slain, his wrists slit with his own hopeknife! After his brother bade us investigate this horrible event as other than a suicide, we get to work.
Further investigation by 'Healbot', 'Skittles' and 'Rude' locate a receipt for the purchase of an engraved hopeknife by Roderick ... for Roderick?! The murder weapon - of this I am convinced - is unengraved.
After a quiet discussion, we collect our evidence, bade the guards refuse entry by anyone else and make our way to the smithy. En route a trio of not-right-in-the-head nearly-grown wolf cubs attack us. 'Skittles' whiffs mightily with a sling bullet whilst Chaucer begins the mysterious gestures and incantations of "invoking Nethys' blessing". One of the cubs nips Rude's heel and pulls her from her clawed feet whilst another gnaws bloodlessly on the tip of her tail. The third leaps up in an attempt to pull me from my saddle. 'Healbot' utters a true blessing upon us all that doesn't benefit the seemingly rabid cubs before Chaucer's entrancing magic sprinkles two of the cubs with glittering sand, sending them into a deep slumber. A moment later a patch of grease appears beneath the one cub that is gnawing on Rude's tail-tip before Shadowmist has had enough and smashes the gnawing nipping cub into the ground whilst the instincts drilled into me by my uncle found my warhammer whirling through the air to shatter the diseased cub's skull.
Finally recognizing that the cubs have been poisoned by parties unknown, Rude and I securely bind the surviving pair of cubs to detour to the 'animal shelter', wherein animals are being trained to aid in Trunau's defense.
Dramatis Personae updated:
My nomme de guerre has been corrected to fit the theme of the rest of the group.
'Healbot' is now Mary Shelly. I expect her to acquire a pet flesh golem at the earliest opportunity.
A new player is slated to join, a grippli by the name of Piers Anthony. We're expecting a plethora of puns and at some point a scene of giants throwing logs and perhaps attempting to run him down in an oversized animated carriage. ;)
Trunau, Belkzen, Days 3, early spring, 4715 A.R.
Dramatis Personae
- Mary Shelly, female human lame Life Oracle 1st
- Piers Anthony, male grippli archer Ranger 1st
- Rudyard 'Rude' Kipling, male wyvaran Barbarian 1st
- Geoffrey Chaucer, male gnome arcane Sorcerer 1st
- Miguel de Cervantes, male human Order of the Sword Cavalier (beast rider gendarme) 1st
- Rocinante, bka 'Rocky'
Some hours pass as we chase down the clues and leads to solve the murder of a beloved town leader. Naturally, they point to the haunted, half-burned ruin nested against an enormous boulder on the outskirts of town.
We rest on the eve before we plan to explore said ruins when assailants accost us, clearly intent on adding to Trunau's murder count.
Rocky is stabled for the night while myself, Piers and Chaucer are making our evening offerings to Cayden Cailean. Rude is accompanying Mary to their accommodations.
Double Ambush!
While three sneaky human bad guys have just picked the lock to our shared ground floor condo another pair of sneaky human bad guys ambush Rude and Mary. The latter do not fair well against the 7' tall winged great axe wielder, as she cuts one in half from crotch to crown after they make the tragic mistake of attacking him first with their mysterious alchemical ice blades infused with debilitating poison. The second doesn't survive long enough to consider a retreat.
Our trio gets the drop on everyone but Chaucer, who flips the small table to gain cover against the intruder. The carnage ensues, with several grease spells slowing them down somewhat while Piers climbs to the rafters above and rains 2' iron-tipped shafts into them. I take several down, but their superior teamwork spilled my guts onto my previously clean floors.
Once Mary and Rudyard return, dragging the intact deceased and bisected deceased in a gruesome trail from the ambush to the flat - Mary dragging one half whilst Rude dragged one-and-a-half deceased.
My fellow devotee of Cayden Cailean, the grippli Ranger, has semi-adequate first aid skills, but it took Mary's significant reserves of channeling positive energy to return us all into fighting shape for the morrow.
Once our three assailants were stabilized and conscious, Chaucer made an acid-based example of the one that stabbed him.
After recovering my insides back where they belong, I heft my still-gruesome warhammer while Rude strategically positions their other comrades, still steaming in the cool evening air, where they can see them and she re-secures their bindings.
Tossing the hammer into the air, catch, back in the air, catch ...
"You have my word of honor that you will receive a proper trial if you tell us what you know. If not, I'll execute you both right here and find someone to interrogate your corpses."
Day 4
Wherein we explore the majority of the ruined ground level of the haunted church, I forget about the utility of the Mounted Combat feat, impale a (large) rat on my uncle's lance, and we wind up narrowly escaping being digested by a ginormous transparent gelatin blob, the killing blow dealt not by mighty arcane magic, not by the massive-thewed barbarian's great ax nor by way of a jell-o splattering blow from my trusty war-hammer. No, the jell-o monster was dispatched by ... Mary Shelly's cestus.
We return to town laden with loot, reveal the evidence to the victim's brother, are put up in our own suite in the floors-are-not-bloody part of town and pass out in an ale-induced fugue.
Day 5
We advance to 2nd level, eat a hearty breakfast, toast our success to Cayden Cailean, identify the magical loot, sell the swag, divide the rest and pick up a few goodies available in town when, just after lunch's requisite mug of ale washes down lunch...
Trunau is being attacked. Time to stab bad things in the face with a long, pointy steel-tipped stick. Rocky's looking forward to it more than I am.
I do not make idle threads, my good Sir Hamster. I make promises. ;)
Dramatis Personae
- Piers Anthony, male grippli archery Ranger; pony: Flutter.
- Rudyard 'Rude' Kipling, male wyvaran Barbarian with an axe fetish; no pony.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, male gnome "Oracle of Nethys" self-delusional arcane Sorcerer; pony: Jack.
- Mary Shelly, female human lame Oracle of Life; pony: Dash; pack mule: Cranky.
- my mount Rocinante, Charger; ponies: Spike and Macintosh.
The funeral for Our Dear Leader has just concluded when the sky darkens and the alarm for an attack upon Trunau sounds. Mary and Chaucer conclude that this could well be the foul witchcraft of a hag coven working for the orcs. Worse, it seems that Rudyard contracted filth fever from one of the rat bites incurred previously in the accursed church squatting against the boulder outside the town walls.
We are bid to sound the beacons about Trunau to signal our allies and friends that once more the ravenous hordes of Belkzen once more descend upon us.
Approaching the closest beacon we find Brinya, just bereft of her love, surrounded by malcontents agitated by the town's cleric of Abadar.
"You bigot, orcs assail our walls whilst you blame the innocent solely on the basis of race. Make yourself useful to Trunau or so help me I'll run you through."
The priest ignores me, likely due to my voice cracking. Puberty it seems has not let go of its hold just yet.
Mary Shelly and Chaucer demonstrate the value of diplomacy over intimidation, a lesson I take to heart. The crowd disperses, muttering dark things to the Abadaran about making himself useful on the wall. Brinya's would-have-been father-in-law passes by and berates the man for his procrastination. "Get thee hence to the walls or I'll throw you off the tallest one myself." The crossbow-toting bigot makes himself scarce, we light the first beacon and make our way towards the transitional district of the city.
Evidence demonstrates infiltration of Trunau by the bad guys. Orcs are rampaging throughout the city under cover of the mystically conjured darkened skies - skies so dark that Mary and Chaucer repeatedly use orisons of light upon my helm and shield to illuminate the immediate vicinity.
A giant or giants are lending the orcs siege engine support as too many boulders are thrown too accurately at far too rapid a rate of fire for orcish catapults pummel several of Trunau's defensive works.
We first encounter a home ablaze, a beam having fallen upon one of the occupants, her wife about to foolishly enter the structure in an attempt to rescue her. Rude and Piers heft the beam off the woman whilst I drag her out, Chaucer extinguishes the unconscious woman's smouldering garments and Mary washes us all in a restorative pulse of life energy. A trio of axe-wielding orcs are messily dispatched by a combination of froggy arrows, a raging lizardarian's greataxe and a lance to the face. In gratitude they bestow a bejeweled necklace upon Piers for his unsurpassed feat of amphibian strength in hefting a burning beam from the poor woman.
Our favorite pub, the one with the roof that is opened during rainstorms to wash out the place, has been sacked, three mercenary scum drinking our tavern's ale!
No one desecrates a sacred site of Cayden Cailean in this manner and lives to brag about it. Not in my town, not in my home!
Two of the thugs take positions with longspears to resist a charge by barbarian or lance. The third takes a position a few paces behind them and downs a potion. 'Rude' charges, shrugs the 8-foot spear aside and swings wide, his footing off-balance from avoiding being made into a shish-kabob. Unfortunately for the thugs, a patch of conjured grease beneath their feet sees them slip-n-slide to a "prone and unable to brace with their long spears" position. Mary invokes a mystical bless upon us all before Rocky leads the charge with myself astride him - my lance runs the 'boss' through from armpit to armpit while 'Rocky' pulverizes the other thug.
The tavern keeper emerges, relaying that a large group of marauders went 'that-away' to loot, pillage and plunder. And probably eat any babies they came across. Bastiches.
With an effective "Stealth bonus" of -6 from 'Rocky', we're easily heard at least twenty yards off, if not considerably further. We sally forth once more to do battle with the enemy.
A trio of homes have had their doors booted in, the din of looting and pillaging emanating from within. I take position to charge any of the three doorways, 'Rude' takes position a few yards from the center of the three homes while Chaucer, Mary and Piers are in support positions behind us perhaps a dozen paces. Once more Mary blesses us all. Chaucer's blessing graces me with enhanced resistance to the terrors of the world.
The orcs come boiling out of the homes, eager to continue to slay, loot and pillage ... and probably worse once they espie Mary and Chaucer. Most wield greataxes, two wield spiked chains and a few more wield falchions, wickedly curved two-handed blades, albeit not a match for an elven curve blade from what my uncle used to tell me.
Four surround Rudyard, hewing him with their axes and falchions, setting him to reeling and bleeding profusely. The one in dangerous proximity to Rocky is shot in its right eye by a bolt from Mary's light crossbow whilst another is mowed down by Piers' piercing shafts. Free of having to dispatch the one orc, myself and Rocky dispatch a pair of orcs moving into flanking positions against Rude. Two of these, the ones wielding spiked chains, charge me - the first somehow manages to impale itself on the business end of my uncle's lance. This last the other spiked chain wielder takes advantage of this to disarm said lance.
An axe-wielding orc charges Chaucer astride his pony Jack and seemingly cleaves him in twain, the gnome collapsing on the ground in a boneless heap. Mary shoots this one in its right eye for his temerity, dropping the invader stone cold dead with a single bolt. Another pair charge, attempting to cleave Mary and Piers, wounding Mary whilst missing the nimble ranger, who hops back 5' and shoots the one attempting to hack our font of life with a perfectly-placed 2' shaft through its heart.
That one doesn't last long in its futile attempt to slay the dangerous grippli, swiftly joining the ranks of the messily deceased for its trouble.
Meanwhile, I rampage in the rear ranks of the main group of orcs, who hack the barbarian into a twitching mass of bleeding scales and fangs before attempting to surround myself and Rocky. To their chagrin, Rocky and I have already felled near a dozen this day. The Iomedaen longsword and Rocky's iron-shod hooves fell one of the four. An arrow and a crossbow bolt thud into the backs of the three survivors whose weapons are deflected by my shield and armor - apparently they deem me the greater threat. A mistake, I think.
Reeling from the projectiles that slammed into their backs, I lop the top of an orc's skull off with my blade whilst Rocky shatters the other orcs' skulls with his powerful hooves.
Yep, Rocky's a bad-ass. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Licking our wounds and making use of the three "pixie sticks", Mary and Piers check on Rude and Chaucer, the latter we thought surely slain.
Amazingly, Chaucer's plain wood holy symbol of Nethys wholly thwarted the lethal blow (albeit knocking the gnome thoroughly unconscious), being now imbedded into his chest as a brand.
Once resuscitated, Chaucer's response: "All hail, Nethys. I told you I'm an Oracle!"
Refreshed of our wounds, we make our way to the guard tower atop which the second beacon awaits us to ignite. From atop the tower we can hear orcish drums rebounding upon the stones. The open door shows several orcs milling about inside.
Piers attempts to garner their attentions by missing with an arrow. The bastards shut and lock the guard tower door. Another blessing and resistance, we move into position near the door. "Get upstairs!" Mary makes out from within in Orcish. Relaying this, I ride up to the door and use the guard key acquired earlier in the aftermath of an earlier incident involving a dose of the old ultraviolence upon the enemy.
One orc is dispatched after not-so-nimbly falling from the ladder leading to the roof. They drop the trap door upon us, so I hit upon the idea - while Mary once more applies dollops of pixie stick juice to Rude after he once again gets hacked into chunky salsa - to send Piers to carry the runt gnome oracle Chaucer quietly climbing up the side of the tower to wiggle his fingers and invoke the blessing of magical slumber upon the enemy atop our roof.
I command Rocinante to guard Mary while I step outside once more to harry the invaders atop the tower, to little avail, although I was successful in getting the ponies to hie away from easy death by arrows, one of which attempted to find a weak spot in my hekko armor. My reciprocation via hurled chakram was equally ineffective against the archer-orc.
I return within, climb the ladder, affix my smokestick to the bottom of the trap door (atop which a couple of orcs seem to have stood upon to thwart us from simply scaling into their midst).
Just after I fire a fiery crossbow bolt into the smokestick to set it alight, Piers and Chaucer poke their tiny heads into a crenellation at the same time as the curious orcs have their guards peering down to discern our location. An attempted sleep miracle from Chaucer downs but one of two orcs, so the grippli sets him atop the roof just away from the menacing guard whilst he occupies said guard with rude gestures.
The orcish skald attempts a series of spells to shatter the resolve of Rude via fearsome scrolls of fell necromancy that inverts the normal bravery of the target to mewling fright. Even an ear-piercing scream upon Mary only annoys her. In the meanwhile, Rudyard ascends to the top of the ladder, flings the trapdoor open and hews a guard's legs off at the hip to permit her properly violent access to said rooftop very near the skald war drummer.
Piers and Chaucer to this point have driven off all but four of the skald's guard-orcs. Rude hacks one of them into chunky salsa when the drummer mistakenly takes position adjacent to the trap door, apparently believing that only Mary stands between him and potential escape (or a juicy 'war bride' to be claimed). 'Rocky' stood a bit further than the viewpoint from the trapdoor availed him or mayhaps he would have chosen a different tactical position. He was momentarily safe there from the gore-encrusted war axe of the lizardarian.
A blow from said ax, a shaft from Piers' lethally accurate longbow, even a bolt of force from Chaucer's new wand failed to bring the war leader low.
Unfortunately for him, I was within a swift movement to mount Rocinante and from the height of his saddle impale the bastard from below with my uncle's lance. Thusly the invader died squealing, breaking his surviving troops' morale.
The three survivors attempted to flee, to be slain by severing ropes, the last mowed down in a hail of arrows and bolts. Good times.
All throughout this day my senses seem to only sharpen during the heat of battle. Ordinarily most would not call me keen of eye nor sharp of ear. This seems to change when it comes to the riddle of steel.
A cleric of Iomedae bade us and the wounded citizens of Trunau take advantage of a magical scroll, something about the stacking of naps, to rest and recuperate as if having taken a full night's rest in a mere two hours. Truly wondrous magic! Mary Shelly uses her-not-inconsiderable reserves of life energies to replenish as many as possible to full health or very nearly so before the Iomedaen initiates the stacking of naps. As it so happens, Rudyard's armorer had just completed his custom-made suit of breastplate-and-chain armor and brought it with him on the chance the lizardarian survived the chaos of war this today.
May Cayden Cailean guide our hearts and our sword-arms in defense of Trunau. Trunau must not fall!
An exciting report on what sounds like an invigorating battle. One imagines if you prove valiant enough in combat you might recieve many free drinks in the tavern.
An exciting report on what sounds like an invigorating battle. One imagines if you prove valiant enough in combat you might receive many free drinks in the tavern.
Truly invigorating, Sir Ghufufin! 'tis a day of trials such as this that tests heart and soul, revealing whether one is selfless or selfish at the true core of one's being. Pharasma may well know our dooms, I care not. For today we saved those that we could, slew those that we must and raised a toast to the fallen. Time enough for funerals if we survive.
raises a mug To Trunau!
After three hours' of "stacked naps" and prayers by our oracles while myself and Piers performing our morning ablutions to Cayden Cailean, we sally forth to do battle with the invaders once more.
The roaring fires to our left bathe us in heat and light, smoke obscuring much of the area. We make our way towards the barricade when we come across a few homes, someone intimidating someone else.
We chase off the murderess and head infiltrator, resulting her capture, interrogation and swift execution after some debate as to whether or not we should toss her into the raging fires to die by incineration.
The merchant, grateful to have been rescued, forks over a very costly scale, heads off around the smoke only to be mauled by three dogs and brought down by a javelin. Chaucer's sleep took two of the dogs out of the fight while arrows and bolts downed the third. The orc ranger expressed her dislike of humans by way of attempting to put a javelin through my face. We expressed our hatred of invading scum regardless of species by way of arrows, bolts and Rudyard's 'axing' her a question.
We resuscitate him via pixie stick, hand him a curative elixir - one of the grape flavored ones I think - before once more sending him on his way.
When we finally make our way to the barricade, we find it unguarded save for the inebriated to almost-dead guard captain Omast. We pour a combination of soothe syrup and alchemist's kindness down his gullet, getting him sober and able to not-die.
A smouldering boulder as big as a horse is in line with the gates that the Twisted orcs' battering ram is booming against. Two bundles of logs await deployment in lanes to either side of the gates themselves. Orisons providing guidance from the heavens prepare us for the carnage that is to come. Chaucer conjured that grease of his in front of the two gate doors to slow down the invaders. Two sets of restraining bands hold each of the log bundles in check, so we sever one set on each bundle in advance.
THOOM!
Chaucer begins.
"This is where we fight!"
THOOOM!
"This is where they die!"
THOOOOM!!
"Give them nothing!"
THOOOOOM!!!
"Take from them everything!"
"KILL 'EM ALL!!"
The battering ram shatters the southern gate door completely from its hinges as it bounces onto the killing field. Two orcs roar only to be shoved prone atop the patch of grease by those behind them. Mary has our three light crossbows cocked and loaded next to her.
Rude heaves mightily and sets the boulder swiftly bouncing past Chaucer who tosses a spark onto the projectile, setting it alight. Most of the orcs are crushed and burned outright, the survivors mowed down by arrows and bolts.
I maneuver outside to the north, out of line of sight from the lost portal until something comes into my killing lane. Piers and Omast take up a position north of the fire-boulder's path through the first barricade whilst Chaucer and Mary, allied spellcasters, buddy up on the southern side of the same lane. Rude takes up the killing guard position, daring further invaders to come within reach of her axe, her bow strung and knocked.
Several orcs have cobbled together a wheeled mantlet providing complete cover against projectiles from ahead of them, they get mired a bit in the grease but someone of their number is advising them. A combination of flour, carpeting and less identifiable materials coagulates the grease into a non-issue.
They're not getting away with paying their toll.
I charge forth, whirling the masterwork warhammer we'd earlier acquired, charging the mantlet and shattering it with a mighty blow!
Arrows and bolts thin their numbers a bit while three charge me atop Rocky, hewing me sorely . I bid Rocky to return me to Mary Shelly, then whirl my hammer and shatter one skull before blacking out.
As it turns out, I didn't fall out of the saddle and made it back to the life oracle's side due to Rocky's hooves, Omast's bravery and a roaring charge cleaving the final orc in twain.
Piers and Mary applied pixie sticks sufficiently to bring me back to consciousness still in my saddle. I down the potion of cure moderate wounds in order to return to battle.
Eager to perforate our oracles with javelins, the half-dozen orcs backed up by a grenadier and more orcs due to arrive shortly, managed to do just that with great success. Feeling rather woozy, Shelly moved to emit another one of her awesome bursts of positive energy, healing pretty much everyone substantially.
Another half-dozen invaders are variously pulverized by deploying the log piles atop them after they perforate our beloved oracles with volleys of javelins. Chaucer at this juncture makes use of a scroll of summon swarm, conjuring it as near to the gate as he could, even being plastered with a smokestick. An orc grenadier's fuse grenade is tossed in before one of the log piles was deployed only to be hoisted by his own petard when Piers flings it back to him with that slimy prehensile tongue of his.
For the most part I charged hither and yon in the killing field between the first barricade and the outer walls beneath that grim overcast sky. At one point I wind up too close to that hungry swarm of flesh-eating bats after they chew on the grenadier, so they attempt to eat me and Rocky, distracting me quite thoroughly but Rocky was wiser, swiftly removing himself from the swarm. A few flasks of naptha put paid to that swarm. The remaining intruders are either hewn in twain by Rude's greataxe, mowed down by arrows and bolts or skewered by lance.
We are relieved by defenders that had mopped up invaders that had made their way further into Trunau. We finally enter the lower area of the town, alight the final beacon (albeit in a fiery explosion) via Chaucer's spark.
Making our way further into the lower ward, we're about to round a corner when a ballista bolt fires ahead, skewering something or someone beyond easy hearing. From the sound of the engine, it has a full crew and plenty of ammunition. Chaucer moves close to the corner and begins the chant that previous experience tells me he is either going to put them asleep or conjure some flesh-devouring horror from beyond the veil.
I charge around the corner at speed, drawing the gunners' fire. Cayden rewards bravery and reasonable recklessness as the engine's bolt glances off my wooden shield. Success!
Chaucer's spell puts two of the three gunners asleep, Piers' arrow flits past my shoulder and sinks into the third before I impale him on my uncle's lance. Mary swiftly disables the engine before we continue on our way.
Emerging from between a couple of homes near the water supply for most of the town a cave giant bedecked in manacles spiked into his limbs, chains with bound orcs dangle from his limbs. The orcs at his legs are slain, a combination of embedded arrows and bolts telling the tale of their fate. The orcs tugging on the monster's arm chains still live.
Piers recognizes the giant as "Crusher", the same giant that slew his family years ago. "I am Piers Anthony. You killed my family. Prepare to die." An arrow is knocked and loosed to bounce off the giant's thick hide armor.
"Kill those two orcs, the giant's pretty unstable already."
Piers climbs atop the 15' home to our east, Rude strides forth and sinks an arrow into one orc, Mary Shelly skewers that same orc with a bolt while I trot forth and sink a second shaft into the other orc.
Rude eats a Vital Strike boulder from Crusher after it advances ten paces, driving her back to Mary's side. Chaucer unleashes a pair of magic missiles, one into each orc, slaying one and nearly finishing the last. Rude sinks an arrow into the last one alongside an arrow from Piers, slaying it while Mary pokes her with a pixie stick.
Bellowing in maddened fury, the giant charges forth, whirling the corpse-laden chains into the building atop which Piers has perched himself, dropping him to the ground. Attempting to not-die, Piers is pummeled by the flailing chains of the rampaging monster.
I end up making three passes against the beast, scoring a hit each time and eating a hit once. Power Attack and Vital Strike are not a pleasant combination, as Rude found out, at one point her and Piers were within a few hp of unconsciousness.
Reeling on its feet after axe and lance and Chaucer's final pair of force bolts, the giant peered bleary-eyed at the grippli.
"My name is Piers Anthony. You killed my family. Now, you die." A natural-20 confirmed critical hit slew the cave giant with an arrow through the temple sinking fletching-deep into his skull, the earth shuddering at the corpse's impact. Piers yanks out a molar to be made into a trophy .
We find Ruby's unmoving form at the mouth of an entrance that the giant had just smashed out from behind one of those white swords about town, the murderess' betrayal reaching out from the Boneyard.
Aghast at someone so much of a cur that would hew a girl down from behind, Chaucer, Mary and Piers poke her with pixie sticks.
The girl's body shudders as it draws a deep breath, coughing up blood and crying as the magic returns her insides from where they were lying outside moments before. She describes her killer, an alchemist from the sound of it.
Packing her off to her family, we talk to Omast and the others.
"Dissamble that ballista, bring it down here, reassemble it - and if anything comes out of that entrance, waste it with extreme prejudice."
Completely depleted of spells and life energy, the guard establishes a ballista-armed cordon about that entrance and pack us off to bed.
We wrapped up the session there. Everyone got a laugh out of the use of the ballista to guard the entrance into those catacombs or whatever they are.
I forsee death therein.
Egads! What terrific trials in Trunau! Another rousing report with promises of perils to come! Excellent...
Nice writing on the story. Want to ask though does the human cavalier have a plan for dealing with dungeons or other such areas where mounts can't be used, or even taken with you?
I've seen all kinds of things mentioned concerning mounts in other threads (spells, "companion armor," feats like Narrow Frame).
Wouldn't bother me personally if there were a lot of situations where you couldn't go mounted, but I wouldn't like not being able to bring my companion at all.
Glad that you're enjoying the story, sunbeam!
From what I've gathered and what the GM has indicated, only Kingmaker is more suited to playing a mounted cavalier than Giantslayer. Even the dungeons are generally going to be large enough to accommodate a mounted Medium character most of the time.
It's perfectly okay that the cavalier can't be mounted all of the time. The barbarian will shine in those situations, which makes me that character's flanking buddy. I'll probably bring along a reach polearm or something for the catacombs and see how that works out. If it works out reasonably well, I'm probably looking at upgrading to a quickdraw shield or something similar once we return from the catacombs to make this tactic work.
The biggest concern I know of for all "companion characters" is that they have to split their loot. The mount/companion needs enough gear of its own to survive, diluting the main character's gear. From what I can tell, by mid-to-early high levels, the mount won't begin to come anywhere close to having a high enough attack bonus to contribute meaningfully , so my plan as the player is to emphasis the mount's AC, saving throws and movement. One of the nice things about the Charger archetype is the fighter-like benefits it grants regarding armor/barding. Reasonably soon-ish I'll be able to clad him in Medium barding without the nasty penalties to speed and whatnot that come from medium armor.
As for how to bring Rocky along in smaller spaces, I've made no specific plans for such. The only solution that might work is the Companion Figurine feat, a precious commodity that I presently don't have room for in Miguel's "plan-o-gram".
For the catacombs, Rocinante waits outside with the guards manning the ballista. If my cavalier lives to attain Rocky's 4th companion HD, said mount is gaining a 3 INT with his native language being Infernal. The horse will have Stealth to accompany his Acrobatics. ;)
Frankly, I'll be amazed if Miguel survives Chapter 1. Against the mundane foes he'll do reasonably well most of the time. Against the kinds of nasties that inhabit catacombs, dungeons and tombs ...
Hmmm did you have room for UMD in your build? You could get some of the first level spells on wands (Mage Armor, Shield, Expeditious Retreat).
The UMD wouldn't really matter I guess you could give them to the gnome and label them as animal use only.
Once I have sufficient funds, wands of expeditious retreat and mage armor are definitely in order. A wand of shield won't work as shield is a personal spell - the gnome'd surely appreciate one though! Later a wand of ironskin is hopefully 'on order' for the life oracle to poke the horse (and everyone else) with.
While Miguel has a decent Charisma (going to 15 @ 8th), that's the end of my intentions for Charisma. Given that I'm "taxed" with Handle Animal, Ride and Diplomacy, there's not a whole lot of room left. I rather like the idea of being able to Climb even wearing armor, and currently a few ranks have to go into Linguistics to pick up Orcish and Giant. The grippli will be training all of us that are able/interested in Grippli while Miguel is training interested parties in Infernal. The background skill ranks have been going primarily into Knowledge (engineering) and Profession (engineer) given his backstory. That, and mowing down a giant with a ballista just sounds all kinds of fun.
Stealth is probably going to be a good idea ... but I have no idea how I'm going to make that fit. Well, not unless we get ahold of a stack of tomes of clear thought +5. Ironically, as in our Shattered Star campaign, none of the characters are particularly focused on Intelligence, so such a windfall wouldn't be as upsetting of apple carts as it would be with a group featuring alchemists, investigators or wizards.
We're (mostly) hoping to succeed. I still anticipate burning through all 3 of Miguel's hero points in the upcoming 'catacombs'.
Sadly, seasonal events result in our next session on Black Friday.
The good news is, it's a holiday/day off for all of us, so we can log another long session of foolishness, mayhem and a healthy dollop of the old ultraviolence!
And Mary Shelly won't have me taking over her character just yet. <grin>
Short Version: We came, we saw, we kicked butt. Played with the GM's deck of minor things, resulting in two PCs with 0 hero points going to Chapter 2.
Detailed AAR to follow, probably on Monday.
Alas, poor Miguel, he fared rather poorly with the deck of minor things, aging past the point of usefulness. Oh, he tried and tried, nearly dying several times. In the end Rocinante was far more capable than his rider.
Me? Oh, hi. I oversaw the burial of Miguel's uncle a few years back. Made my way to Freedomtown. Made myself useful. Animating the occasional scroll caddy for money.
It's an interesting place. As in "this dump is a wretched hive of scum and villainy without the courtesy of featuring a decent waterfront" interesting.
Amazingly enough, when I first ran into Miguel in Freedomtown, I thought Miguel had his uncle resurrected. Nope, the poor bastard was an old fart.
Being a gnome is awesome. We don't die of old age, we die of boredom.
He introduced me to the rest of the group he's been adventuring with attempting to kill off all the orcs and giants that are making life miserable for us squishy folks. So we're going to wipe 'em out. Me, I need some large, strong silent types with a penchant for killing stuff when I tell 'em to.
"You are one huge kobold."
"I am not a kobold!" he replied, snapping teeth angrily in response.
"Please don't eat me."
My poppet de Sade conveyed in Draconic, "That is no kobold." "How was I supposed to know? Everyone knows kobolds do weird dragon-y things. Why, I've heard the purple-scaled ones are extra-douche-baggy!" "Shaddap."
Fine, fine, fine.
We find ourselves downriver a ways about 10 miles east of the fortress full of naughty giants and orcs that have been diagnosed with a serious case of Needtodieitus.
We make our way a few miles inland when a boulder-chucking hill giant and his four orc mini-onions attempt to bushwhack us. Ol' eagle eyes Ayne Raynd or something - a male half-elf Slayer, very fond of chopping things into apple slices with a pair of kukri - spots the big thug with his pile o' boulders.
The ambush begins with Randy whiffing mightily with his arrow. The giant, whom I dubbed Lolli, tagged Chaucer square in the kisser with a perfectly thrown rock.
The beat down commences. Randy gets whacked with a big club. Kipling gets whacked with the same big club but not as thoroughly. Four orcs are swiftly put down, with Lolli taking a slumber nap.
"No decapitations or dismemberments." "What, why?" "Zombies don't do us much good if they are missing appendages and especially their head."
Giggling more than some would consider mentally healthy, I hop off my Pony with No Name, slap my onyx-infused grape swirly lollipop on the side of his head and proceed to animate my first. EVER. .
SO AWESOME!! "Arise, Lolli!"
Yay! A ginormous brute wearing armor and packing a club! He smells better and everything!
Elated, we trundle onwards to the semi-ruined castle crawling with bad guys. Giants. A dry moat with its water supply blocked by a dam with a big gate that would let all the water from the adjacent lake in to drown a gaggle of filthy orcs. After a couple of hours or so, we devise a brilliant plan.
Send Lolli into the drink to release the floodgate and drown a bajillion orcs. The ensuing distraction should give us enough time to sneak in and kill us some bad guys.
Instead, some big fishy thing ATE Lolli!
....
<.<
...
>.>
Which of course means I HAVE to get whatever ate him as a replacement.
Turns out, a mere rope lashed about a tree with a hook imbedded in a deer carcass isn't sufficiently up to the task of catching the big fishy.
"So uuhh, Chaucer, how 'bout that mount spell you keep on about. How long do summoned horses stick around for?"
"Out of the wand? Mmmm, couple hours."
"Great!"
We braid four coils of rope into a ridiculously strong super-rope with a grappling hook 'hook' on the end with a big buck skewered on it as bait. The braided rope in turn is hooked up to twenty - yes, 20 - mounts. In goes the bait, hiyaaa! goes the +30-something opposed Strength check and Zombie Fishy lands ashore, takes a nap, takes a dirt nap and my trusty reanimator's walking stick brings us a Fast Zombie Fishy.
We have Zombie Fishy take up position, pop the floodgate and I order Zombie Fishy to kill everything in the water once we're not in the water ourselves.
Shooom!! Off goes Zombie Fishy, terrorizing the Baalzebulb out of those green tusk-faced booger-nozzles. Giants are generally laughing it up at the booger-nozzles' expense.
In the meanwhile, we infiltrate the gatehouse, raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, rescue some poor sheared-beard dwarf from the clutches of a dire bear and her three "cubs", patch him up and send him on his way to his sister a short ways off with our ponies.
Next we make our way to the next gatehouse under cover of invisibility and most of us being decent at the fine art of sneaking around so the things that need to die will give up their stuff before they know we want it.
Kipling and Randy make their invisible way over behind a trio of ogrekin mutants guffawing and taking potshots at any orcs that make their way into firing range from within the moat without outright drowning or being eaten by Zombie Fishy.
Kipling and Randy make short work of the mutants when we see a hill giant atop the next interior center defensive building hucking rocks at my pet Zombie Fishy. Little does Chuckles here know of his fate.
I flit over via flight and invisibility with Chaucer, quietly drop us on the roof behind the big lug, put him to sleep and one coup de gras via inflict light wounds from the reanimator's walking stick prepared Lolli's first replacement.
A giant with a disturbing sounding sense could be heard below us in a stable of some sort going on about art and hands and horses. Weirdo.
We enter what turns out to be a mess hall with attached kitchen. A gorgeous giant undead HAND was waiting in there. Chaucer sends a horse in, it gets pounced on by Mr. Hand and the gibbering hand-munching idiot of a giant with a meat cleaver and no flesh left on his left hand - 'cause he ate it off already - came out to collect more hands with which to make some 'art'.
Two of Chaucer's summoned horses kept Mr. Hand busy for a bit before I brought it under my command. Yay, a pack-hand! Welcome to the fold, Mr. Hand. A brilliant illusion by Chaucer kept Cleaver busily sucking on a figmented hand while Kipling and Randy flanked him, killed him dead and yay, my second replacement hill giant corpse is ready to go. Oh yeah.
Current undead minions: Zombie Fishy, Mr. Hand
Future undead minions: Choppy, Chuckles.
Added bonus: two cauldrons filled to the brim with green slime. Perfect for Kipling and Randy to administer some death from above, screaming death style.
Oh, and this weirdo Harrow deck showed up while I was pondering the wonders of having big strong dead things do all of the heavy lifting. Drew a happy Joker, Jack of Spades and the King of Clubs. Feel funny, but a good funny rather than "my spleen is about to explode" funny.
Wonder what's up with that?
Hiiiiii, it's been a while my little poppet.
Sooo, at this point we're staring across a mountain valley filled to the brim with an army of giants, a dragon hanging around somewhere plus attendant beasties and critters. We're staring across the valley at a huge temple to some deity of smithing or something that we really need to get into.
I've one teleport left. Hopefully we can sneak in, do what we have to do and steal some goodies.
Oh, and we probably need to let the smaller folk hereabouts know that the giants have a big ol' army stashed in here.
Hrm ... a few well-placed earthquakes would bottle these big buggers in here for at least a little while.
Party composition:
- Rudyard "Rude" Kipling, semi-dragon wyvaran barbarian 10th;
- Geoffrey Chaucer, gnome sorcerer 10th;
- Ayn Raynd, half-elf Slayer 10th;
- little ol' me, Gravewalker Witch 10th.
Sadly, Zombie Fishy, Mr. Hand and several other zombified giants have up and died on me. On the plus side, I have a bloody skeleton pried from a stone giant recently. On the down side, Mister Leaky is just a gawdsawful mess to have around.
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In today's episode, we
- teleport into the top of the central tower with a mistaken minimum of preparatory magic up and running. As it turns out, a juvenile red dragon still sports a 200' fly speed. Despite an evil eye and a slow, the big fryer got away in short order. Sadly, Rude's attempt to tackle the dragon by way dumping Mister Leaky on it from above missed by that much.
- We explored the lower levels, rescued a couple of Medium Folk from horrors, fed them, got them black-out drunk and stashed them in a somewhat safe spot with an endure elements to keep them warm.
- We heard the dragon return, spelled up, dimension door'd back up top thinking we would catch the dragon returning to its napping spot - only to find it expecting us to return to the spot we originally arrived at a few minutes prior. This time the dragon did not escape - we bled it before Rude ate its heart.
- We returned to the bottom floor of the tower after looting the loot we found on the way back down (again). Via slathered invisibility spells and yet another set of haste and something-or-other else we snuck up on a couple of stone giant sergeant types. Rude makes short shrift of one of the two giants whilst I succeed with a temporary retribution hex on #2 immediately followed by being blinded courtesy of a guest-appearance by a GMPC "basic healing oracle". The second guy lasts a bit longer as it takes a tag-team of Rude and Chaucer to eliminate Sergeant #1 thanks to entering nappy-nap land via my slumber hex. The second giant is fanatically loyal to The Cause. We glean enough useful information to collate with the copious piles of documents and maps to realize that the surrounding nations are in deep kimshie if this big purple bastard of a storm giant is able to realize his evil machinations. As he talks smack about how Medium and smaller folk are fit for nothing more than slaves and food, I promise him he will be of use to me after his death.
As the bound-and-helpless monster knows what's coming - I don't try to hide it - I slide a vampiric touch coup-de-grace into his left ear canal.
Just before death claims his worthless soul, he utters "Hail Volstus".
Not too long after we have collated and collected all of the information collected on Volstus' Evil Plans - including the location of the Frost Giant Training Encampment - and are discussing our plans to disseminate the information regarding what the big bad guys are up to when Chaucer notes footsteps slowly trundling up the stairs from the chapel below.
We take up ambush positions - including myself and Chaucer sitting atop the corpse of Sergeant #2 (my intent being to animate his bones into an exploding skeleton) - when the sharp-eared giant picks up on Chaucer's quiet utterance of a spell.
As it turns out he is the Keeper of the Forge or some such thing. Poor bugger's been the guardian of this dump for about 900 years. He's old, sports a rather large smithing hammer and as it turns out has the same objective we have: relight the forge here and get something or another done (I forget what, exactly). We have to bail in the morning, but he informs us that the quietest time during the day in the cathedral is an hour after high noon.
We abscond to the upper floor with our rescuees and the corpses of their fellows (these stashed in one of the magic bags) after I release Mister Leaky from my command. Keeping them fed and hammered after the horrors they endured, we burn off my three prepared teleports the following day to attain the following:
- *bamf* to Kaer Maga, deliver the rescuees and their dead buddies to Appropriate Authorities - we run into Miguel (above) who has attained a respectable training position and sees to getting the information we have duplicated and widespread as quickly as possible to anyone of 'interest'.
- *bamf* to where we stashed the Spark Stones.
- *bamf* back to the Cathedral and help relight Da Forge.
The spectacle of the re-ignition of the centuries-dormant forge - which is a Major Artifact - is a Lawful Evil thing that churns my innards something fierce.
Then the Big Old Veteran Giant of Minderhall demands Agrimmosh from Rude, who promptly refuses.
"Will you accept a duel in an hour's time, or do I kill you all now?"
"We accept."
I am so turning this big bastard into a self-propelled land mine.
Next session - which is hopefully next weekend - we have been instructed to advance our characters to 11th level prior to a four-on-one duel with this chapter's BBEG.
Awesome write-up! It's great to read your crazy exploits again :)
Thanks, carborundum! It is good to see you about the boards again too. :)
We are in for a Hell of a slobberknocker. The GM gets to unleash a fully prepared Chapter-BBEG against us. My guesstimate is that we're facing a stone giant with 12-14 levels of Oracle, hand-made in time-honored Turin tradition.
We need to bring our A-game for this one. The Slayer may or may not make it, making the "GMPC" oracle a desired presence.
Anne will be going in minus a 3rd level spell and 3 5th level spell slots ... but at 11th I "unlock" 6th level spells. Fun part will be choosing the 6th level spell(s) she prepares for the big-bad.
I'm hoping the BBEG has a strand of prayer beads - we'll need the bead of karma to properly mummify Rude if he bites it. Otherwise it'll be better to simply raise him. Making him into a ghast or ghoul would be rather entertaining - paralysis per-hit is rather nasty - but mummification is shockingly effective. Apply a liberal interpretation of the retraining rules to swap CON to CHA afterwards and I think we'll be celebrating winner, winner, chicken dinner style.
I give us one chance in three. ;)
The gods are big meanies. >:(
First, they let the love of my life become disgusting giant toe-jam. Then this jerk Menderhall enables the duel between us and the smith-priest slag giant in a "do or die" demiplane in which the Forge of Its Name is present.
Buttkickius Personae
- Rudyard "Rude" Kipling CG male wyvaran with pronounced draconic tendencies Barbarian 11th;
- Geoffrey Chaucer CN male Tiny gnome 'Oracle of Nethys', Arcane-bloodline Sorcerer 11th with a fondness for (shadow) spells;
- Heimish, NG male hobbit GMPC Cold-blooded Life Oracle 11th;
- me, Neutral with questionably Evil tendencies Gravewalker Witch 11th.
The Dead One, my beloved poppet, does not let me down. I shall have my vengeance no matter the cost!
We enter the giant's dueling arena willingly courtesy of Minderhall Itself - some 30 feet high with a nameless minion working the forge on one side while we square off on opposite sides of the 'arena smithy'.
Minderhall ensures that all sides are fully healed with all spell slots available. The downside is that we cannot *bamf* out of the demiplane. We defeat his champion fair and square, or we get turned into lawn ornaments. Not that any of us have plane shift to begin with.
Spells are cast in rapid succession by Heimish the Healer (Cold-blooded Life Oracle, GMPC), myself and Geoffrey Chaucer (self-styled 'oracle of Nethys'/Sorcerer).
As we get down to casting short-duration 'buff' spells (such as haste and prayer), the nameless smith-giant minion off to the side finishes up the project it has been hammering out in the Forge.
As each of the short-lived spells is cast by the four (us and the Venerable Smith-Giant who challenged us) the smith's hammering takes on a more urgent tone, sparks cascading. We await the smith's extinguishing of his work into a trough of special water.
Sooner than we might have liked, HISSSSSSS WHOOOOOOSH
FIGHT!!
Chaucer's haste and Heimish's prayer fire off and combat begins!
Our enemy casts a blade barrier of whirling heated blades in an attempt to bisect Rude, Chaucer and I - we step towards the enemy as part of our successful Reflex saves - before Rudyard roars forward with mighty Agrimmosh arcing towards the slag giant smith-priest's skull.
With a wry grin and a cock of his head, he merely stands there, amused at the draconic wyveran's rash charge before he halts unexpectedly some few paces away from the giant courtesy of an anti-life shell.
"My turn," before he overran Rude and closed with our three squishy-ish spellcaster-y selves, but not too far from Rude.
Blasphemy!!!
Luckily for us the GM rolled once to determine the weakness penalty and duration. 4 Strength penalty puts Chaucer into nap-land (since he has a 3 Strength) and very nearly puts Heimish under (leaving him with 1 Strength). Being the awesome gnomish Gravewalker that I am, my 7 Strength only drops to a 3 - and I have a +2 Str for encumbrance purposes which keeps me well within the adjusted Light encumbrance limit.
I fail to dispel the anti-life shell and the mutual beat-down begins in earnest.
The fight went on long enough that Chaucer has to cast haste again, Heimish cast prayer again and the bad guy cast all THREE of his blasphemy spells in the course of the fight.
Hexes and ill omens flew thick and fast, a half-dozen hungry pits were littered about the field of battle. The third hungry pit succeeded in entrapping the giant-smith within its bowels, into which I cast both cloudkill (which sank to the bottom) and atop it I cast a barrow haze.
The smith-priest, while within said hungry pit cast delay poison on himself, 1 or 2 heal spells and another spell before dispelling the pit to release both cloudkill and barrow haze into the middle of the battlefield.
Funny thing about barrow haze is that I can see through my own perfectly fine.
Near the end I had my aura of desecration up and running. After the smith-priest beat Rude to 1 remaining hit point and had outright slain Chaucer the round before, Heimish asked for direction: do I save Chaucer, or attempt to slay the enemy?
"Save Chaucer", Heimish restores Chaucer to the living via breath of life and a super-cool permanent loss of 1 channel energy/day to double @ max the hp restored. Chaucer burned his last hero point to "pay" for the lost channel/day, so Heimish gets to keep his otherwise permanently lost channel/day. We're gonna need it in the adventures to come, of that I am sure.
It came down to me, the enemy within my aura of desecration going after me in intiative order.
As my action I brave the enemy's attack by flying through his reach to deliver a vampiric touch that brought him very, very low. We honored our mighty foe by coup-de-grace'ing him in the Forge of Minderhall before returning once more to Golarion adjacent to the Forge.
For loot we receive a +2 inherent bonus to our "primary" ability scores each (INT for me and Chaucer, STR for Rude, CHA for Heimish) and a philosopher's stone that majority vote determined be made into cash.
We *bamf* back to Kaer Maga to recover, retrain, spread the word about the (literal) Big Bad Evil Giants' plans and get our magic items on. Mommy needs a headband of vast intelligence +4.
Winter Wonderland
-or-
We Frickin' Hate Snow
Buttkickius Personae
- Rudyard "Rude" Kipling, CG male draconic-wyvaran Barbarian 12th;
- Geoffrey Chaucer, CN male gnome "Oracle of Nethys" Arcane (sage)-bloodline Sorcerer 12th;
- Heimish Watson, NG DMPC male hobbit Oracle of Life 12th;
- me, N/NE (depending on whom you ask) Gravewalker Witch 12th (Death patron)
We *bamf* into a big ol' high-altitude mountain slathered in blizzards and crawling with smelly big meanies.
Giants, snow monsters, all of the usual - by which we mean "things that can see through snowstorms just fine" - horrors that make horrible catapult fodder.
We waste a bunch of those, eventually breaking the morale of the frost giant training camp at the lower-ish end of the mountain's altitude scale before we finally make our way to the entrance into the Lair of the Frost Worm, attaining 13th level during a fitful night's sleep in an improvised igloo.
The nastiest fight by far was against a cold oni - a demon native to the Tien lands across the Crown of the World to the north - with a pair of cold-infused animated wooly mammoths of doom. The mammoths went down fairly quickly ... the yai oni, not so much.
I don't recall all of the nitty gritty details of this fight, but this time Rude went down to the oni - but only to "mostly dead". A chocolate-slathered walnut and a breath of life from Heimish put him right as rain (mostly) again before Chaucer and I took him out.
In this case, a hero point for an extra standard action, a hex curse (-4 save penalty) and a sleep hex - which is a total gamble as I have no idea if this thing even sleeps at all being all outsider-y and what not - sends him to nap-nap land.
I cackle horrible things in its ear to keep it asleep before Rude gets back up and shatters its skull into chunky salsa.
Three of them, frost worms, that is. We left off in media res with a trio of these big bastards burrowing through the ice towards us.
We know that they don't give a fig cookie about [cold] and that they explode when they're killed. And, based on the cracking of ice tearing the air apart ahead of us, that they burrow.
Jooyyyyyy .... critters that explode. I won't be able to reanimate them!
*pouts*
Lair of the Frost Worms
Buttkickious Personae
- Rudyard "Rude" Kipling, CG (CN?) male wyvaran barbarian 13th;
- Geoffrey Chaucer, CN (CG?) male gnome arcane (sage) sorcerer 13th;
- G. Orwell, CG male Medium Humanoid sword-devil ranger 13th (archer);
- me, N/NE female gnome Gravewalker Witch 13th (Death patron)
A trio of frost worms erupt from the stone-hard ice floor of the vast tunnel leading towards our mysterious goal here in the frozen mountains.
One of the trio I manage to briefly paralyze via hold monster - and all three take full damage from a rod-Maximized fireball from Chaucer.
The other two slither closer and attempt to popsicle us by way of their powerful breath weapons, vast cones of arctic cold. Chaucer's rapidly growing fondness of emergency force sphere absorbs the twin waves of boreal energy intent on turning us into crunchy meat treats.
Orwellian archery ... okay, just what would this really look like? "Papers? No?" *thwpft*thwpft*thwpft*thwpft* "Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow." ... begins to take its toll on the closest hero-munching monsters whilst Rude does his level best to pulverize them.
First one, then the second are beaten unconscious - and much to the GMs consternation they have a sufficient Con bonus as to stabilize reliably on their own accord when reduced to negative hit points. The third Chaucer possesses, burrowing ahead on a reconnaissance "run" whilst we repair to a safe distance before Orwellian archery sends them to the Boneyard for 'reeducation' by way of exploding deaths.
Chaucer's reconnaissance is short-lived as he runs afoul of an unhallowed altar-plinth buried in the frozen mountain - its magic circle against good penetrating twice as far as usual, forcing him out of his "exploding meat shield".
We enter close to the aforementioned unhallowed altar chamber. Therein a fiery grave knight awaited our arrival, eager to acquire our heads for a lime-filled basket to present to his bosses.
Chaucer noted the presence of combustible loot in the form of a wooden chest and a set of large shelves behind the altar to Minderhall at which the grave knight had been praying.
"Mental note: NO FIREBALLS."
This was no ordinary grave knight giant. This is a mighty frost giant champion, brutally slain by dragonfire centuries ago, returned to Minderhall's service upon the awakening of Da Forge.
"This guy's immune to cold, electricity and fire?"
"Ayup."
"Alrighty ... so we wreck him the old-fashioned way. Kinetic energy!"
As it turned out, the Mighty Grave Knight had a quartet of zombified giant minions and a quartet of witchfires at his behest. We held firm to our purpose: smashing him to pulp.
Minderhall's will thwarted mine, its fell influence laughing at my feeble attempts to hex his mighty champion.
Unfortunately for this mighty champion, Minderhall is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Orwell proceeded to methodically 're-educate' the zombies. Rude gave better than he got, although I burned a hero point to ensure Rude received a proper heal spell during the fight so that he came out on top.
Once the champion fell and the zombies were messily dispatched, we agreed that it was a simple matter of "kiting" the witchfires until they were destroyed too.
Rude received a +4 manual of bodily health, Orwell received a +4 manual of quickness of action, Chaucer and I each received a +4 tome of clear thought and Heimish Watson, despite his absence, was to receive a +4 tome of leadership and influence along with some other nice loot.
We *bamf'd* out of there with a sack full of intelligence documents on Lord Purplemort's activities, war plans, training camps and a second sack full of loot both mundane and magical.
Over the following month we trained, advanced to 14th level and acquired our hard-won goodies. I got myself these adorable magical ankle tattoos with cute zombie kitties that also act as boots of the earth without the 5 pounds of encumbrance. Also, they're so cute!
For once this month has concluded, it is felt that we are racing against a clock to prevent Lord Purplemort from stomping all those smaller than Large sized into toe-jam, stew ingredients and generally being a tyrant, conqueror and all-around meanie.
As it turns out, for some reason Rude's character sheet had been "locking" his Constitution at 17. This was fixed. No longer is Chaucer and Heimish attempting to keep a mere 180-odd hit point barbarian alive and kicking. When raging, Rude sports a staggering 385 hit points.
Ohhh mmmyyyyyy ....
Since we had agreed to a longer-than-usual game session, we begin the "trench run" commingling Chapters 5 and 6.
We arrive about an hour's walk / overland flight away from what we perceived to be the least-guarded entrance into the Volcano of DOOM. Once we can clearly, albeit barely, make out the seemingly unguarded entrance, we begin the minute-per-CL "buffs" that are so vital to not-dying.
"Fee Fei Fo Fum, I smell the butts of Gnomes!"
More than 80 human paces ahead emerges a GINORMOUS hill giant. By ginormous I mean COLOSSAL. Its club is a solid shaft of adamantine forged by way of shoving a great oak into the ground some forty feet, firing it, then pouring molten starmetal into the "mold" so created, then removing it once it cools. In addition to this 48,000 gp club it sports a pack full of REALLY BIG ROCKS and a REALLY BIG ROCK in its off-hand.
Initiative Order
- Chaucer and I thanks to battlemind link
- Da Giant
- Rude
- Orwell
Chaucer casts haste, which makes the GM grin evilly as displacement has proven much more effective on Rude than anything but shadowform. And I prefer displacement, but I'm not Chaucer. I attempt to magically blind the giant, to no avail.
"It was worth a shot! Besides, we're too far away..."
Da Giant hurls a mighty boulder that (fortunately for us) is not a critical hit via Greater Vital Strike, smacking Rude right in the gut for somewhere around 130 damage, divided between Chaucer and Rude as a result of shield other.
Rude charges Da Giant with intent to smoosh via Agrimmosh. "Agrimmosh MINE!!" Da Giant drops his immense club and disarms Rude of Agrimmosh, claiming the artifact as his own. "HAH!!" Rude whips out his trusty +1 longspear and finishes his charge with it, scoring a still-impressive 40-odd damage.
Orwell finally realizes just how awesome being a Sword-Devil Ranger with the Archery combat style and an adaptive giant-bane composite longbow is. For three or four - I believe four - consecutive rounds he uses Rapid Shot and Chaucer's haste to great effect, scoring well north of 400 points' of damage against Da Giant, in no small part due to confirming at least 3 critical hits against it. Out of 20 attacks only one misses his target, 2 of which are nat-20 auto-confirmation critical hits plus a third nat-19-and-confirmed critical hit.
He did eat a tasty boulder the size of a cottage once, wiping out about 2/3rds of his hp.
Belly laughing the whole time, Da Giant attempts to pulverize Rude with a mighty blow via Greater Vital Strike while wielding Agrimmosh - for which Chaucer found himself immensely grateful that Rude's charge to engage Da Giant severed the shield other link due to requisite distance - that was narrowly avoided thanks to displacement.
Just before the session wrapped up Heimish Watson, hobbit Life Oracle extraordinaire, *bamf'd* in to aid us. Seems that summon player ally expired sooner than expected.
GM: "I'm having too much fun with this. Let's get a proper healer on-line for this fight." Copious channeled positive energy topped off most of our hit points for the fight to resume at the start of the next session.
We left off in media res with a foe that has not yet been dealt more than half of its hit points despite several solid rounds' worth of "Gatling Gunning" by Orwellian Archery and a skewering from Rude. Even reduced to his +1 longspear, thanks to heroic proportions Rude is literally Huge, dealing 3d6+35 damage per stabbing with that thing and a BAB of +14. Pretty sure the giant's 34 AC isn't going to hold up for long against Rude and Orwell.
All we have to do is keep them from dying.
40 racial HD, Colossal ... that is gonna be one hellacious zombie ... nnngggrrrrlllll