Beholder Group - "Dwarrow's (T)Rusty Warhammer" - Fallen Fortress Session 8

22^nd July 2019, 7:30 – 11:00pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, Midsummer’s day +9. End of session, Midsummer’s day +10.

Having levelled up to level 3, our “Heroes” spend the day in Oakhurst performing levelling-up type tasks: communing with patrons and gods, practising new-found spellcasting skills and going out to hunt a bear. It’s also market day in Oakhurst, and, despite it being a little subdued – what with the recent disappearance of Bella, and the threat of a dragon nearby, the party manage to get a decent price for some of their jewellery-type items that they would not have otherwise managed in the Oakhurst shops, and they stock up on a couple of healing potions. Devon also conjures up an Owl as a familiar, in preparation for the night time travelling ahead. Alwaith makes the very-sensible-at-the-time decision that Dragonsboon should inflict acid damage, although the downside of being vulnerable to necrotic damage would prove to be a stroke of bad luck later.

Hiring a couple of horses, and using more gems for a deposit, the group head out towards where the map says they will find Belak’s Grove. Wanting to waste no time, with Boris’ health still not great, they set out at dusk, and travel by night.

A few miles out of town they meet Felosial, who is walking slowly next to a horse that bears a very injured dwarven member of the Watch, and a couple of large sacks draped across it. Felosial is also injured, and does not seem impressed with them, for some reason. As their paths cross, Felosial looks up at them and wearily asks them once again to confirm that they had no idea where the dragon was holding out. Drogan leaps in to answer again, and says that no, they don’t know where she is, just that she flew over them when they were near to the Fortress, heading northwards.

Despite the fact that Drogan seems to have convinced himself of this lie (Devon saw that Calcryx had settled down at the Druid Circle, and told the others this), he once again didn’t manage to convince Felosial that he was telling the truth. Her disbelief was explained further when she revealed the severed head of Calcryx in one of the bags, and she began to tell them the strange story of encountering the dragon at the stone circle, only to find that riding on the back of the dragon was a small kobold. When the few Watch members finally managed to bring down the dragon - but not before Calcryx had killed Helga (Felosial revealed her dead body in the other large bag on the horse) and badly injured Felosial and Burns, the other Watch member - the kobold survived, and ran off, muttering loudly – which Felosial wrote down – about how the party knew all along where Calcryx was, and that it was their fault the dragon was dead and that Drogan would pay. Felosial tiredly said she blamed the group for Helga’s death, for not reporting where the dragon was earlier, and that unfortunately there was no law against lying. She then turned and continued her journey back to town, leaving the party a little stunned (though Drogan tried a half-explaining, half-threatening repeat of his assertion, which Felosial just ignored).

Many of the party seem disheartened at the encounter. Some because they felt a little guilty at deceiving the townsfolk, others because they missed out on killing a dragon wyrmling. Drogan, being Drogan, just adds Felosial to his, now rather long, “People I Don’t Like Very Much” list, and moves Meepo further up the same list.

A little more dejected, the group continued on their journey.

At dawn, they arrived but saw no sign of a grove. A couple of hours searching, however, did reveal a small entrance-way in the side of a hill – not the “grove” they seemed to be seeking, but the only thing of note in the area, so they investigated further.

Being suspicious of the vines covering the entrance, Drogan stabbed one with the edge of his axe, which made it rear up and attack – it was another vine blight! Drogan’s caution meant it did not get a surprise attack in, and in fact Drogan got a good hit in first and raged. The vine managed to grapple Drogan and inflict decent damage, which Drogan’s new bear-like qualities managed to half. Devon and Alwaith managed to get further good hits on the vine, but the vines tentacles writhed around, making the area around it hard to navigate, and risking Drogan getting hit by friendly ranged-fire. In addition, the tentacles thrashed around inside of the cave, damaging a large patch of mushrooms growing there, and causing them to release many spores, all of which started screaming loudly, echoing deep into the cave. Another good hit on the vine from Drogan finished it off, but the party were pretty certain their presence had been announced to anything in the cave. Assuming it could be no worse than what had already happened, Drogan piled on through the fungi amassed around the entrance, setting off more screaming spores, but clearing a path through them, into the cave system.

Their presence announced to all and sundry, the party decide, for good or ill, that planning and tactics were irrelevant. Arriving at a large cavern, Drogan heads away from the rest of the group and once again walks in, spotting a rat in the darkness ahead of him and, after missing it with a ranged attack, presses forward to engage it in melee, oblivious to anything else. This meant he didn’t spot the other two rats waiting behind the entrance, and, more importantly, a bugbear also hiding there. Whilst Drogan despatched the first rat easily, he took some heavy hits from the bugbear and his rat ‘mates’. The others arrived to see the carnage and, with Dwarrowsteel quickly Blessing the others, they piled in to help out Drogan.

Devon finally realised what his own blood actually looks like when he took a hit from the bugbear. Drogan focussed on the rats, that looked big, ugly and disease-ridden. Dwarrowsteel’s “trusty warhammer” proved less than trusty as it missed. Quite regularly. With Devon and Alwaith hacking away at the bugbear, it finally turned and ran, and Alwaith finished it off as it turned its back.

Battered and bruised, and only one-room in, the party look around and see this is a cooking area. Dwarrow ascertains that it is probably for more than just a single bugbear, so caution is recommended. Drogan ignores the advice and grabs a nearby greatsword, before spending some time mounting the bugbear’s head on a javelin. He is keen to become known for more than just “firestarter”, though his new hobby may not be an improvement.

Devon, the cheeky little halfling rogue with new-found powers, decides to use prestidigitation to pretend there’s a twig blight in the alcove that Drogan and Dwarrow are checking out, confusing both of them. When Drogan discovers Devon’s trick, he ruffles the cheeky monkey’s hair and silently adds Devon to his ever-growing aforementioned list. Probably.

Believing that Alwaith had already checked out the next room (he hadn’t), Drogan walked straight into that room too. Devon’s previous little trick came back to haunt them as Drogan ignores the slight twig-cracking noises and walked straight into a couple of twig blights round the corner, who manage to get a hit on him before being despatched.

Unfortunately the twigs were not alone. Not only were there two other twig blights in the room, who managed to cause a little bit of pain to Dwarrowsteel, but, more noticeably – though only actually noticed by Alwaith, who was too late to let anyone know it was there - there was also another bugbear, this one looking decisively weird with bulging, purple veins over its body. A javelin launched directly at Dwarrowsteel caused decisive damage, and despite some big hits from the rest of the group on the bugbear, he seemed very resilient. Dwarrowsteel, in a moment remembered by all present (especially the bugbear), launched himself towards the purple-veined-one and engaged in mortal combat. Unfortunately, the monster’s next attack on Dwarrow was a bit of a surprise – he vomited purple bile all over him.

Not able to dodge out of the way quickly enough, the bile rotted away some of Dwarrow’s flesh – luckily the cleric’s resilience managed to stem the damage a little, but he was hurt bad. Luckily, so was the bugbear, and another big hit from Drogan brought him to near death, to be finished off with great flourish and vigour by Dwarrowsteel’s warhammer – just in time, as the bugbear was readying his, albeit pretty knackered, Morningstar to try to end Dwarrow’s existence. Alwaith tidied up the last twig before the party was able to relax. Briefly.

The room they were in seemed like a fungus garden. Lots of rotting matter, and rough ‘beds’ of different types of fungus. The group were not very interested in checking out the room though, and instead, Devon played with another new ability of his, mage hand, and he opened the exit doors from this room to check out where they led. The southern door opened into a corridor heading directly south, the eastern door into a wide hallway with pillars, tables, and doors leading off from it. The group decided to head towards more ‘civilisation’ and go east.

Acting stealthily, Devon scouted ahead, using his invisible mage hand to open the doors leading off from the hallway, and managing to spot some sleeping goblins, some active goblins, and some sewing goblins, who eventually spotted the movement of the door. Devon, not being Drogan, tried to calm the goblins and get them to not shout out. It was a valiant effort, and almost worked too, though let down by the fact that Devon was 1. Not a goblin; 2. Couldn’t speak goblin, and 3. Covered in blood.

As the rest of the group covered the other doors in an uncharacteristic moment of party planning, Devon’s attempt at friendly negotiation finally didn’t work, and they shouted out, alerting the other rooms. As goblins emerged from the other rooms, they were swiftly taken out by the prepared actions of the other group members, and realisation dawned that these goblins were not soldiers, and their nervous attempts to defend themselves with whatever they had to hand – scalpels, large needles and improvised sticks – were pretty pathetic. However, two of the goblins had the strange purple veins pulsating over their body and whilst one of them was taken out quickly by Alwaith (also taking out another goblin too, as his blade burst into flame and leapt to a neighbouring creature), the other managed to vomit towards Devon, but the rogue managed to dodge out of the way, and instead the bile hit another goblin, reducing his flesh to a bubbling mass of gunk. The remaining hard-working commoners were soon disposed of.

The rooms were checked and seemed to be functional areas – a sleeping area, a wine-making room, a repair shop, a weapon store and a garden tool store – the last two with exits leading out from them. The main hall seemed to be a makeshift laboratory, with some testing equipment, pestles, mortars, tubes etc, and cut up leaves, roots and fungi scattered about the tables. The last room contained a tied down diseased rat, with purple-pus filled tumours over its body. As it was close to escaping its bonds, Drogan quickly put it out of its misery, and took a look around that room – no one else was around to see what he may or may not have found in there.

We leave our “Heroes” deciding whether to push further east through the door in the weapons store, or head south-west into a small rift that leads from the back of the garden tool store. Alwaith is starting to realise that, with hindsight, his acid-protection-but-necrotic-vulnerability is not well suited for necro-vomiting monsters. And what exactly is the druid up to?