Seen as everyone here always has the best ideas I thought I might ask for a little advice.
I am currently DM'ing a party of 5 and we're reaching the end of book 2 with the implementation of Dudemeisters Monster Kingdom (kudo's for the write on that one, it's a blast). Our last session was yesterday and in it the party finally raided Hargulkas stronghold for some well deserved revenge. To begin with all was going well, that is until they decided to split the party a bit and ended up getting Nagrundi, Kargadd and two regular trolls into the fray at the same time. This proved a bit too much for them and they were forced to retreat. A parting fireball from a very angry Hargulka put the party on -3, 1, 1, 9 and 8 hitpoints, making retreat the only real option >:).
Now comes my question. Hargulka, Kargadd and one ordinary troll are remaining (although an extra could be added seen as they havn't explored the entire complex yet), they are sealed in by an army and the party plans on assaulting the fort again in 1 or 2 days depending on how much healing they can muster in the meantime. Hargulka obviously expects this and will be preparing accordingly. What can they do to make they assault more difficult, and mainly more interesting, for the PC's? I'm against them running in again and just running the encounters as written because it seems illogical to me. I'm also not sure about letting Hargulka escape some way because the party is really riled up and they deserve the satisfaction of setting ablaze the troll who almost destroyed their kingdom. Short of barricades and maybe a rudimentary trap I can't come up with much as the trolls lack the resources, space and intelligence to think up much else.
Any ideas to spice it up a little would be welcome :)
Im not very creative, but here we go:
Perhaps Hargulka could play an all-in backdoor attack to the PCs kingdom, trying to reach their castle and take it as his last bastion. This way PCs should siege their own castle, carefully about human casualties and material damages.
Hargulka could play his last Diplomatic trick then, offering a new deal. His life in exchange of a pacefully retreat south the greenbelt.
If Pcs decide to bring him the last chance, he could return again in next books. If not, they would fight in a dangerous environment where people from their own realm could end injured or killed, and with the possibility to damage their own castle.
Whatever they decide, there will be people criticizing their decision because the casualties and damage, or because making deals with an assassin troll. An interesting final (or break) for this charismatic guy.
Hope this help.
@edit: If you need a way to let him leave his own stronghold, he always could ask for some fairy help from Nyrissa ;)
Were all of the other trolls really finished off? None of them were left with just HP damage and could regenerate?
Hargulka could swallow his pride and attempt to surrender (maybe/maybe not with the hopes of getting revenge one day). He could off himself with his necklace, "Hitler in the bunker" style, to avoid giving the humans the satisfaction. He could go out with a bang, either attempting to push past the puny human defenders and break free (which seems like it might be possible given his capabilites, and Kargadd's, and the necklace of fireballs) or fortifying the lair against the inevitable assault.
The last two seem like the most interesting for the players. If he does escape, they would likely be the ones who would have to confront him after the scouts and cavalry chase him down. If he stays, that's a little less exciting I think, but still provides for a good fight. The trolls would use all the stuff in the lair - tables, supplies, etc. to barricade the door and be ready to attack when someone finally broke through.
There's also the whole Talonquake angle. Perhaps Hargulka is unable to pull of any great self-defence preparations during his extra time, but when the party returns to the stronghold they could find evidence in one of the rooms they've already cleared of a magical ritual based around a ring made from green hair, which links to the ring they can find on the flat troll in Talonquake's lair. They can conclude that the extra time they gave Hargulka allowed him to enact this act of vengeance on their realm from beyond the grave (well, from being imminently beyond the grave :)
It's GM Illusionsim, implying that if they'd pressed on and not given him time for the ritual the Talonquake attack wouldn't have happened when in fact it was always going to happen. You know your players though, so you can judge if they would be happy with that sort of thing or not.
On the subject of the inhabitants of the stronghold - have your players accounted for all the monsters that Hargulka might have recruited? Evil Fey from the Forgotten Keep, the Spirit of Stisshak from the lizardfolk village, Howl of the North Wind and his pack, the Forest Drake, Munguk the Wangering Giant? If any of them have escaped the players (or if the players haven't encountered them at all) you could reasonably have them hidden deeper in the stronghold and ready to beef up the opposition for the players' second incursion.
I had the session yesterday and I used a combination of the suggestions here. Just incase anyone was curious this is what I did. Spoilered for length and well... spoilers...
I had the remains of a ritual circle found in Nagrundi's room in the circle of heads already written in. The ring was complex, more than would be expected from a trolls and consisted of three rings each linking a plane. I'm using multiple add-ons, one of which is Realm of the Fellnight Queen where Rhoswyn has strong ties to Nyrissa (the details of which I'm still figuring out), and used this as an opportunity to foreshadow some ties. The three rings linked the Material Plane, The First World and The Shadow Plane in a similiar manner as in RotFQ and as soon as the wizard has had some time to figure it out it will pull the fey plotline to the party attention without really giving them anything too much to go on and make the add-ons seem more natural.
The circle was how Hargulka reinforced his defense with some help from his fey mistress. The party had put serious work into removing any possible external threats and was thorough in burning every troll corpse in the complex. But due to their hasty retreat they couldn't be suree that every inch of the trolls was destroyed. Hargulka collected these parts and, knowing that he didn't have time to wait for them to regenerate into full trolls, called upon the power of the planes to bind them. Creating a sort of troll body part construct tied together by shadowy thorn vines (again aimed at RotFQ) to boot the creature gained a pair of pitch black butterfly wings in fey style. Rules wise it was a troll with the Half-Fey template applied to it giving it flight and a few interesting spell-like abilities (such as short range teleportation to really annoy the spellcasters). It worked really well to creep out my players and make them realise that there was something more happening here behind the scenes. There were too many things which didn't completely match up.
The combat was also insanely close in the end (1 death and 2 dropped at the end), which is just how I like it for a end of chapter climax. Thanks for the help guys, the forum always gets my creative juices flowing.
Thanks for sharing! Sounds like it went well.
Wow! That's nice!
My players are really close to that point too (we stopped last session when they were about to win against Hargulka's defending army).
I found odd the fact that Hargulka, seeing his army lose, would retreat inside a cave he knew was a dead-end.
My plan was to have the PCs finding a hastily dug tunnel in Hargulka's room, along with some frightened kobold miners. That tunnel would lead to some king of "anchor" between the Material Plane and the First World, or some sort of fey artifact.
Hargulka would have preferred to make a last stand and protect that "thing" dear to his mistress Nyrissa than fleeing and save his life.
I found odd the fact that Hargulka, seeing his army lose, would retreat inside a cave he knew was a dead-end.
As Dudemeister has it written Hargulka is the general for one of the defending armies. If they're put on the back foot I doubt just running away would be a feasible option unless he has some sort of magical help. I know my party makes a point of watching for and chasing down notable combatants if they get the chance.
That being said, I like the idea of giving him a tangible reason to not leave and there are plenty of ways to tie in a fey artifact to either further the plot or intrigue your party as to what on earth is really going on here.
Depending on how quickly they fight through the fort after their assault they could interrupt Hargulka half-way through a lengthy teleportation ritual using the artifact/anchor to add the feeling of accomplishment from 'stopping his escape at the last moment'. If they succeed they're the heroes and if they fail you gain a plot element and you gave them a fair chance to stop him.