Beholder Group - "Door Operation Now Sorted." - Fallen Fortress Session 4

Beholder Group – Session 4 summary

17^th June 2019, 7:30 – 11:15pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, Midsummer’s day +5. End of session, Midsummer’s day +6.

We last left our “Heroes” revelling in their new-found ability to open doors. Not just simple ones, but even complex ones with unusual mechanisms. They discuss taking a short rest – the mental strain of opening all these doors is taking its toll – but decide to press on for now and explore a bit more of the Fortress.

The room they find themselves in is a little strange. A simple, square room which seems to have been fairly untouched for a while, but has four, raised, stone pedestals standing before a door with a simple button on it and no handle. Carved into the pedestals, in Draconic, are words implying this is a test of strength, agility, intelligence and influence, and more words above the door, needing a bit of a clean to expose them, imply that only the worthy will be able to pass through.

Suspecting this is some form of test, and thinking that they may take some damage, the party abandon the initial idea of sticking Drogan on a pedestal and ‘just trying it out’, whilst the others wait in another room, and instead move on to explore further.

The next room was also empty of baddies, but did contain ornate carvings around the walls, flowing into some of the furnishings – notably a stone table and a dragon shaped fountain. In another flash of inspiration, Drogan fetched the set of small, jade dragons they stole from Meepo’s room back at the kobold den, and matched up one of them with the pose of the dragon in the fountain. Placing the statue on this fountain caused a potion to jet forth into the font, which Alwaith recognised as a potion of fire breath. Now that could come in handy. If they remember that have it.

Feeling this place seems deserted, the group head north, past a crossroads with a closed door – they’ll come back to that later as they still aren’t all that confident with doors that aren’t already open – and pause to check the dusty floor again – for traps in the case of Devon, and to get a better feel for how unused this place is in the case of Drogan. The barbarian has a better look this time, spotting that this section was once quite well used, but hasn’t been for a good many months, apart from some large rodent tracks, and a set of recent dwarven tracks, that head north.

Following these tracks in the hope that Drogan will find his lost friend, Karakas, the party are set upon by giant rats, appearing one by one from cells lining the corridor. They manage to deal with these rats pretty easily, though Dwarrowsteel took a fairly hard hit from one of them. Alwaith finally decided to use a ‘proper’ spell, casting Hex on a rat and the rest of the party are a little confused when Alwaith’s eyes change colour and a ghostly visage appears overlaid upon his already fairly ghostly features. The group would usually be slightly worried by this, but were busy killing rats.

Rats dealt with, Drogan sets fire to one of their nests. Drogan seems to be a bit of an arsonist. First the pile of rotting meat in the kobold’s den, then a rats nest. You’d think he would learn that fire in an enclosed space creates a lot of smoke. Well, he was reminded of this when the tunnels filled with smoke, as the others raided the nests for a few coins and cheap gems.

Ducking under the slowly dispersing smoke, Devon continued to scout ahead, spotting a room with a couple of pit traps that seem to have been disabled, and another dragon fountain. The party are now well-versed in these fountains and dig out the appropriate jade statue, placing it on the fountain, and receiving a cloudy, white liquid in return. Alwaith is unsure what this potion is though, so they collect it up and decide to check out the pit traps.

Devon trusts Drogan enough to lower and raise him into the pit traps on a rope, and manages to find a few animal bones, a dead goblin, scraps of cloth and animal droppings in the pits, but also a couple of gems and a nice looking dagger.

The adjoining room is awkward to get to, as it is on the other side of a pit trap, so only Drogan can initially get in there – his mighty frame blocking access for the others initially. The room looked very messy, was very smelly, but appeared empty. Until, that is, three giant rats leapt onto Drogan from amongst the mess and attacked. Devon used his small stature to get into the room too, whilst the others had to use ranged weapons to attack – which proved to be awkward as the rats were in melee with Devon and Drogan, and in fact Alwaith managed to hit Drogan with an eldritch blast whilst trying to hit a rat.

Despite the friendly fire, Drogan made short work of the three rats, and even when a very, very large rat with foaming mouth and large teeth crawled out from the large nest, Devon manage to take her down with some help from the others outside without her even getting an attack. The fight did not last very long.

Rodents taken care of, Drogan looked around the room he was in. With a very poor turn of phrase, the DM seemed to imply that Karakas, Drogan’s lost friend, was alive and well and just taking a nap on the floor. Confusion reigned around the table, but it was eventually made clear that in fact Karakas, along with a couple of goblins, were in fact dead on the floor, and half gnawed through by rodents. Elation turned to misery, but not for too long, as Drogan looted Karakas’ body, before dumping all the bodies - Karakas, goblins and rats - in one of the pits, covering them in oil and, yep, you guessed it, setting fire to them.

Surrounded in more smoke, and with the strong smell of barbequed dwarf and goblin flesh permeating around the Fortress, the party looked through their ‘loot’. They had finally found some decent gold and gems, along with a nice bit of studded leather armour to help out Devon, who seems to rarely get hit anyway, a big iron ‘dragon’ key and a small journal which outlined the Legend of Dragonsboon.

At this point the party decided they were a little knackered – they are not used to two battles in quick succession, after all, so they retired to the ‘puzzle room’ (as the party decided it was called. The DM prefers to call it the ‘death trap’) for a long rest – grabbing a now-conscious Meepo on the way.

There were no disturbances overnight, despite the number of bells, strings, pitons, whistles, fairy lights, motion sensors and snares they set up (if it wasn’t night time when they wanted to rest, it was by the time they had set up their perimeter defences). They awoke rested and re-spelled and asked Meepo about this area. He looked forlornly at the rubble in the corridor outside and explained that behind that was their main residential area, and that he had only once or twice ventured this way. He did start to explain about a legend of one of his tribal ancestors who entered the mysterious ‘puzzle door’, never to return, but the party were generally ignoring him again at this point. They are still unimpressed with Meepo, despite him managing to get them out of the forest to find the Fortress, to be inadvertent cannon-fodder for the twig blights on the stairs, and the stirges, to tell them which way to go initially – they ignored him – and how to open an unlocked door. And all this when he has been completely lied to about the location of Calcryx. Poor Meepo.

The party believe that Karakas’ key will possibly open the dragon door to the south, and they are still interested in the ‘puzzle door’, but they head back up (after spending half the morning removing their alarm systems) to the crossroads, and enter the door to the west.

A really helpful, iconised sign, scratched on the inside of that door in chalk, warned of possible rats to the north. Check. Pressing on, the next door opened into a short corridor with a floor covered in caltrops. Devon, the party’s designated door-opener, was not too surprised to see a couple of goblins at the far side of the corridor, half-hidden behind a low wall, gathering their weapons and readying an arrow or two. After letting loose a couple of arrows at Devon, they ducked back down behind the wall as the party readied their actions, carefully waiting for them to pop back up again. All except Drogan who, in what will soon become known as ‘typical Drogan fashion’ charged into the corridor, ignoring and avoiding the caltrops, and leapt over the wall, raging as he went.

The goblins got another couple of shots in before all of the readied actions let fly, taking one of them down, and then Drogan rage decapitated the other. That battle did not last long, and the party were confident they could deal with pesky goblins with ease. The party filled their pockets with caltrops (roll for damage every time they reach into their backpacks?!). They felt they didn’t have enough alarm systems and needed more.

Confident, that is, until they reached the next room. The brief, but noisy, previous battle, coupled with general chit-chat and possibly not helped by the fact that a few hours earlier the Fortress had been filled with smoke and the smell of burning flesh, seemed to have pre-warned the 4 goblins in the next room that something was amiss. This room had plenty of places to hide. Almost as if it had been set up for it. And the goblins were bloody good at hiding. Their tactic of popping up, taking a shot, and hiding again was perfect for this setting. The party’s tactic of ducking around the corner to avoid being shot at was a good one defensively, but did mean they had pretty much no idea where the goblins were when they popped back round the corner to take a shot.

Devon managed to expose one of them by setting fire to the bale of hay it was hiding behind, which allowed Alwaith to get a hit on him, but mostly the party were firing blindly at anything that looked like it may hide a goblin. Frustrated, the party rued having no area of effect spells. This was probably the first tactical battle they had faced, and it stretched out, neither side taking very much damage, both sides waiting for a good opening. When the last of the party decided to retreat round the corner, they heard one of the goblins head out of a door.

We leave out ‘Heroes’ in the midst of a tactical battle, knowing their presence is now well and truly announced, but currently ‘safe’ around a narrow corner. The sneakiness of goblins usurping beetles, rats and even doors as the bane of the group.