Beholder Group - "The end of Meepo?" - Fallen Fortress Session 7

15^th July 2019, 7:30 – 11:45pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, Midsummer’s day +7. End of session, Midsummer’s day +9.

Fresh from battle, our “Heroes” are keen to strip this place bare of anything valuable, and most things non-valuable. First they have a chat with the captured kobolds, asking them if they know much about the layout of the place. The kobolds are cautiously grateful for their release, and pass on any information that they know, which isn’t very much – unsurprisingly, as they are prisoners after all.

There's a brief pause, where Drogan tries his wily charms on the caged goblin female, who doesn’t seem to speak common, and for some unknown reason seems resistant to Drogan’s charisma. So they leave her where she is. Caged.

The party head back to the goblin ‘throne room’ and check out the other doors. One appears to be barred, so Drogan charges it, smashing through it and landing on the floor. Looking up, he sees in the order of 20 goblins looking at him, some with weapons drawn. In uncharacteristic fashion, Drogan pauses to survey the scene and realises that these are not fighters – they are common goblin townsfolk, scared and pretty harmless. So Drogan scares them some more by threatening their lives – men, women and children – unless they leave the Fortress now.

They have no choice but to depart, slowly collecting their meagre belongings and filing past a menacing Drogan, who growls at them occasionally, and a chanting Dwarrowsteel, who scans each one for magic items before they go. It’s a sorry sight.

They discover that Gripe was one of the goblin scouts, and his head is probably now adorning a mount in the trophy room, placed there by Drogan. So much for Devon finding out more about his contact.

Fully emboldened, having menaced a group of helpless villagers, the party decide they want to take on the ‘Challenge Room’ and head back there to reacquaint themselves with the challenge. 4 pedestals, all a little charred and with old blood nearby, and a threat that many may try, but all will be hurt if they fail. So they decide to ALL try. Nope, we won’t keep our healer back, just in case, we’ll all step up to the marks.

And so they step onto their favoured pedestal – Drogan takes strength, Devon takes agility, Dwarrowsteel takes what he hopes is wisdom, but actually turns out to be intelligence, and Alwaith takes influence. And they press the button together.

Each face their challenge simultaneously – pushing stone pillars, dodging falling stalactites, working out complex mechanisms, and trying to scare a stone face. Their first attempt was not good. Drogan manages to push his pillar up, though not overly hard, Devon’s dodging wasn’t great, Dwarrow really had absolutely no idea how the mechanism worked, and Alwaith did manage to scare the stone face, though only “Chucky” scared, not “Blair Witch” scared. As a combined effort, it wasn’t good enough. Lightning bolts crashed onto the pillars, striking everyone standing there for significant damage. The party (and, to be fair, the players!) stood shocked, as Drogan and Dwarrowsteel both fell unconscious, and Devon and Alwaith dropped to their knees, both just about clinging on to life.

After the initial shock, pardon the pun, Alwaith leapt to action and forced a healing potion down Dwarrow’s throat, allowing him to recover enough to cast Cure Wounds on Drogan, bringing the party all back from the brink. For the first time so far, the group were a little lost for words….. briefly.

Deciding that now would be a good time to rest up, they set up all their multitude of perimeter alarms and sensors, and had a good night’s rest, having cleared out anything dangerous from the Fortress, and forgetting about Boris’ critical condition for now.

After an uninterrupted rest, the party managed to crawl back most of their health, and, refreshed, decided to give the challenge another go. This time they, as a group, did much better. Drogan was still a bit groggy, and didn’t do such a good job that time, but the others fared better, and Devon, bolstered by the guidance of Dwarrowsteel, was so good at dodging the stalactite, that the stalactite had no idea where he had disappeared to. All in all a better show from the group, and, instead of lightning bolts, the door opened.

It had been a while now since the group had killed anything, and they were getting restless. So they headed to the room on the other side of the door with a little amount of reckless abandon. The four closed, and one open sarcophagi made them suspicious, and Devon checked out the floor around the table in the room for traps, without touching the table. Dwarrow identified the bones on the floor as kobold bones, and callously told Meepo – “There’s your ancestor”, at which point Meepo became a little distressed, fell against the table  with a loud sob, and caused all four of the closed sarcophagi to open, revealing four armed and dangerous skeletons, one of whom, strangely, was wearing shades.

The fight wasn’t long, but was interesting. As Drogan politely requested: “I would like to rage”, a skeleton got a critical hit on Dwarrowsteel, and then a shadow appeared from, funnily enough, the shadows, and wrapped its arms around Meepo, causing Meepo to once again fall unconscious. Dwarrow, true to form, felt he needed to Spare the Dying on Meepo in his first round, meaning it wasn’t until later in the fight that Dwarrow was able to try his Turn Undead ability, but not before the shadow had turned on him, draining both his health and strength.

What Drogan saw

What the others saw

The turning worked, though, and all remaining undead, including the shadow, were turned and ran from the room. The party were able to pick them off one by one with no further damage done, luckily, as they were all a little scared by the shadow’s ability.

The party then proceeded to strip the room, grabbing an ancient tome and crystal whistle from the table, rings from the now re-dead skeletons, and silver circlets, plus the pair of shades, which Devon worked out were able to allow him to see in darkness (see MagicItems for more info).

Meepo, healed by Dwarrow, started to carefully collect up all of his ancestor’s remains, and finally realised that the whole group had basically been lying to him about Calcryx’s location. Drogan once again threatened to knock him unconscious, or dead. None of the rest of the group came in to support Meepo, despite his previous distracting the shadow for a time. He had had enough. Even Meepo could only be pushed so far. He showed courage and determination the group had never seen until now, and left.

Believing that they had now well and truly cleared out the Fortress, the group headed to the levitating platform room that they had found earlier, summoned the platform, got on it and floated to the surface. As Devon checked out the small hop farm that the goblins had set up nearby, Alwaith marked the ground to show the location where the platform terminates, and then the group headed back to Oakhurst, arriving late in the evening.

A number of discussions followed, both that evening and the following morning. Devon tried to negotiate to sell the recipe for Goblin Brew to Garon at the Ol’ Boar Inn. Unfortunately his asking price was higher than Garon could afford, and so Garon refused, but went away happy as Drogan had let slip what the secret ingredient was, so he figured he could experiment and eventually come up with the right proportions. In gratitude at the accidental revelation, he offered free bed and lodgings to the group for the coming week.

Boris’ health seemed to be deteriorating, though Corky was focussed on trying to heal Hennan, a Halfling woman who, it seemed, had been attacked by Calcryx  the previous day and had severe frostbite in her arm. Dwarrowsteel put his healing skills to good use and managed to save her arm, though it will never be usable. Felosial appeared and asked if the group knew where Calcryx was. As seems to be their habit, they lied and said they didn’t know where she was, but that they saw her flying northward from the Fortress. Felosial was not convinced, but said she would set out first thing in the morning with the last of her Watch in town, to hunt her down. The party declined to help her, having better things to do. They did, however, give the Elixir of Health to Boris, in the hope that his condition would improve.

The following morning Devon took some of the dragon cult items to Vernor and had a more successful negotiation this time – selling the ancient tome and the jade figurines for 135gp.

Drogan chatted with Rurik at the forge, and he and Dwarrowsteel managed to negotiate a good price for a set of chain mail.

Alwaith found a couple of travelling wizards in the inn and the group paid them to identify the magic items that they had recovered – the sword Dragonsboon, the Dagger of Regeneration, the whistle – Nightcaller and the potion (which was a potion of cold resistance). They tried to identify the platinum rings worn by the skeleton dragon priests too, but the wizards could only determine that the ring had a faint necromantic magic aura, but nothing more. See the Magic Items for more info.

Following their overnight rest, and the day spent studying, meditating, practicing and buying and selling stuff, the party LEVELLED UP to LEVEL 3!

Boris seemed to have stabilised – maybe the Elixir of Health had helped, though Alwaith seemed convinced that they only had 3 days to save him, and wanted to head out as quickly as possible to the druid’s grove.

We leave our “Heroes” at the end of the day, fully rested and healed, but concerned that time is running out for Boris – it is now 9 days after Midsummer, keen to head to the grove – maybe hiring some horses at the stables?