Beholder Group - "Any Old Iron, Any Old Iron" - Fallen Fortress Session 6

1^st July 2019, 7:30 – 11:30pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, Midsummer’s day +6. End of session, Midsummer’s day +7.

Our “Heroes” have just managed to open a secret door into an unknown chamber, having run away from strategically retreated from a goblinoid fight a short time previously.

Whilst Devon checked out the door, and doorway, for traps, and Alwaith and Dwarrowsteel looked around the room, Drogan “Steptoe” Saltbeard tried to work out how to smash the 10 foot stone dragon statue away from the wall, with a view to stripping the ancient, revered building of all its treasures, fixtures and fittings. Worthy of a true Victorian explorer.

As the party prepare to press on into areas unexplored, Dwarrowsteel hears some lone footsteps coming from the passageway they came from, followed by a familiar screech, which is cut worryingly short. Dwarrow rushes out to see Meepo, lying on the floor, an arrow protruding from his neck. As he runs over to Spare the Dying he hears the faint sounds of the crystal orb ringing in the distance – too far to adversely affect him this time. In his eagerness to reach the party that once again abandoned him, after successfully not being charmed by the Orb in the doorway, Meepo didn’t spot the pressure plate trap in the hall, and was hit by the flying arrow, taking him into unconsciousness. Dwarrowsteel dragged his still unconscious body back into the dragon statue room, where the others cursed poor Meepo’s name once again.

Ignoring the unconscious Meepo for now, the party head slowly and carefully into the next room, which seems to be a wide hallway, with impressive, life-size, marble statues of noble-seeming elves standing in six alcoves lining the walls. As Drogan contemplates how to fit one of them in his backpack to pawn later, Devon and Alwaith check out the rest of the room.

The room ends in a pit, with spikes seen at the bottom. Above the pit is a stone archway, leading to another room, where a small, eerie, green flame illuminates what they later find out to be a large sarcophagus. Above the archway, carved draconic writings imply that this is the resting place of a failed dragon priest:

"A dragonpriest entombed alive for transgressions of the Law still retains the honour of his position."

While the rest of the party contemplate and discuss what this could mean, and what horrors may lie in the next room, illuminated by its strange light, Drogan takes a running jump and leaps over the pit into the new room. Probably so he gets first dibs on any “salvage” he may find in there.

Somewhat alarmed at seeing a shadowy figure standing in the darkness of the corner of the room, he approaches slowly, and sees that it is an old, dusty set of plate mail on a stand. Back at the pit, the party rig up some ropes, to allow the others to cross the pit with relative ease. Alwaith suggests just leaving the unconscious Meepo in the corner of the statue room, to which Devon, in an uncharacteristic show of support for Meepo, stated that “Nobody puts Meepo in the corner”. But they did – they left him in the corner. Even Dwarrowsteel is getting a little fed up of Meepo’s liability at this point.

All in the sarcophagus room, they scout around carefully, finding no traps, but spotting the two candles that seem to be under a continual flame spell, and providing the eerie, green light. The sarcophagus lid is securely held down with iron clasps. After Drogan checks that the set of armour doesn’t come alive in some strange way when touched, he has the inspired idea of scattering the pieces of armour all over the room.... just in case!

It takes two people to break the clasps and lift the lid off the sarcophagus. No words, no ritual, just plain old tomb raiding. Without the Lara Croft, hot pants and pistols. At least I hope Drogan isn’t wearing hot pants. The lid falls open just as Drogan has the great, but delayed, idea of maybe putting oil in the tomb and setting it alight first – he hasn’t torched anything for at least an hour and is going cold turkey. Unfortunately that idea came a little too late as a troll emerged from the tomb, causing a ripple of surprise and fear to go around the party. Shit. A troll.

Luckily the troll had just woken up, and was a little dazed. Unluckily a dazed troll is still a force to be reckoned with, and Devon and Alwaith managed to let rip with their attacks as he was emerging, but both miss. Drogan got a good hit in with his axe, but the troll’s claw slashed down on Dwarrowsteel and did considerable damage, causing Dwarrowsteel to immediately need to heal himself before he got hit again. Pleasantly surprised that the troll was quite slow, and only managed a single swipe with his claw, Alwaith managed to burn the troll using the potion of fire breath that they obtained from the dragon font the day before. Drogan, in yet another inspired decision (he’s having a good day!) decided to grapple the troll and drag him towards the pit. The grappling contest was well-matched – the 8-foot tall troll was strong, the 5-foot tall dwarf equally so, and the dwarf won and moved the troll nearer to the pit. The troll decided to swipe at Drogan and scored a deep cut in his back, as Devon leapt in with daggers and managed to do his usual decent damage, but still not bringing the troll down. Dwarrowsteel also managed to get a dagger in its belly, as Drogan continued to grapple it. At that moment the troll pointed to the old armour stand, no longer containing any armour, and the party were disheartened to see the armour pieces start to move of their own accord, to reform in the centre of the room. Dwarroesteel managed to hold onto one piece of armour, briefly, preventing it from getting to full strength quickly, just as Drogan pushed the troll into the pit.

The troll took damage, but seemed to recover, and pulled itself up from the pit easily, to take another swipe at Drogan, but luckily missed, as Devon brought the troll down with another dagger stab to the leg. The troll fell to the floor, and Alwaith used another burst of fire breath to ensure it was not getting up again!

Meanwhile the armour was fully formed, and attacked Dwarrowsteel, slamming 

him for some significant damage before pretty much every other member of the party scored hits on the armour and brought it down. The plate mail collapsed in a heap in the room, and Drogan immediately wondered what it was worth. Drogan then wondered what troll body parts were worth. Matt Mercer has “The Mighty Neins”, I have to settle for “The Rag-and-Bone Men”.

Exhausted both mentally and physically from the fight, the party searched the room and the sarcophagus, finding some decent gold (“Woo Hoo! We can afford to level up!”), some useful scrolls – Dwarrowsteel refused to touch the Inflict Wounds scroll – and a lovely looking longsword, which the party assumed was Dragonsboon, and which Alwaith grabbed with enthusiasm (to be fair, he is the only member of the party keen to wield a longsword, so there were no complaints). The party then took a well-deserved rest, interrupted only by a single stirge that appeared, if only to demonstrate that resting in an occupied Fortress has potential downsides. The party shot it down without even becoming fully awake.

Refreshed and rejuvenated the following morning, the party greeted a now-awake Meepo with less disdain than usual – they were in a good mood. They even considered giving Meepo a shortbow, but when he held it upside down and notched an arrow in it the wrong way round, they changed their minds. Alwaith immediately switched to using Dragonsboon as his main melee weapon, casting aside his previous trusty longsword. Unaware of whether Dragonsboon was cursed or not. Too late now.

The Rag-and-Bone Men decided, after some discussion, to head back to the goblins. Approaching the Orb they had placed in the entrance, the party halted when they heard its faint tinkling. Drogan and Dwarrowsteel put cloth in their ears and immediately went over to pick it up, forgetting that touching it caused the music to get a lot louder. The rest of the party hadn’t taken such precautions and failed to resist the charm effect the music had, and started running away back the way they came, setting off the arrow trap in the passageway, but luckily all arrows missed them, even Meepo managed to survive that time. As Devon hurled the Orb outside, smashing it against a rock and causing its light to dim for the last time, Devon decided to disarm the pressure plate trap this time. Stable doors and horses spring to mind....

No harm done by the orb, the group head to the first ‘goblin door’, which appeared to have a note pinned to it. Unfortunately, it was written in goblin, so no one could understand it. So they ignored it, and pressed on.

The caltrop room was empty, as was the corridor to the target range, but the party did notice that fresh hay had been spread over the burnt hay that was Drogan’s legacy. Drogan led the way, and when he saw the floor of the target room covered in hay, this time ignored his temptation to set it alight, and instead ran straight towards a hay bale that had been left in the room in such an obvious place, that it either was a hiding place for a sneaky goblin, or a trap. Drogan thought the former. It was the latter. Drogan’s leg was caught in a hunting trap and he had to try to get his leg out, as arrows hailed from goblins who were hiding behind lots of hay and bits of furniture that had obviously been moved into the room with the intention of providing such cover. Drogan escaped the trap and raged towards the goblins, getting caught in another trap. The others joined the fight, but Dwarrowsteel caught himself in a third such trap, providing easy pickings for the sneaky goblins, who were doing their tried-and-tested method of fire-and-hide, and were being pretty effective. Dwarrowsteel blessed the party, which proved beneficial to their attacks, and once free of the traps, the party started to make short work of the three goblins in the room, killing two of them before a door behind most of the party opened, revealing 3 hobgoblins. Oops.

The Hobgobbos laid into the Rag-and-Bone Men. The hobgoblins were tougher than the goblins, and the party was split over the room, but the hobgoblins didn’t last long. The last goblin bolted, chased by Drogan, who had been freshly healed by Dwarrowsteel. This was a familiar scenario, as it had happened only the day before. It ended the same way too – Drogan ran into another ambush round the corner, but enraged he pressed on, arrows sticking out of his shoulders. Drogan and Devon piled into the room, Dwarrowsteel headed round in another direction to take the goblins by surprise, and Alwaith chatted to a tied up kobold. Eventually, the whole party joined in the fight, which consisted of not just the escaped goblin and his two mates, but also the chief hobgoblin and a wolf – whose bark proved to be much worse than his bite and he managed to land exactly only a single hit on Alwaith before being killed. The hobgoblin chief proved a bit more formidable, but with his entourage decimated, he didn’t stand much of a chance – his final shouts, in goblin, went unanswered and Drogan took an arrow and physically pushed it up into his throat.

And thus ended the great Goblin Battle of the Fallen Fortress. For now, at least.

Looting the bodies gave more booty, and the key to the iron chest in the throne room, giving even more booty and a note from the druid,Belak. Yep, old frog-man was shifty after all. The note also hinted at the reason behind the caged young goblin girl that Alwaith found with the kobold prisoners in the stockade room. It’s all coming together. There’s a fairly high level map to “Belak’s Grove” – looks like the map was intended for someone who knew the area, so the party may need a guide or some good tracking.

There are still a few rooms left to look into, and before the session ended, Devon did look into one of these, which turned out to be a micro-brewery, run by a trembling goblin called Trix. Scared, he was starting to look like another Meepo, but Devon managed to be such a persuasive character that Trix ended up sharing the secret recipe for Goblin Brew – it was written on a piece of paper, but in goblin. Trix did manage to speak some common, and explained that rat droppings were the ‘special sauce’ of the recipe. There was plenty of Goblin Brew to go around. Trix also revealed, when asked, that Gripe – the mysterious someone or something that Devon was supposed to trade with - was, in fact, a goblin, though he doesn’t know if he is still alive after the rampaging Rag and Bone Men onslaught.

And so we leave our ‘Heroes’, once again exhausted, but battle-lust sated for a while, and even Drogan hasn’t mentioned setting alight to anything for a while. Or selling anything. Mind you – he was busy putting all the goblin and hobgoblin heads on the trophy mounts in the trophy room.