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| So peaceful |
Timekeeping
Introduction
Player Characters Present
Downtime
Session Report
Fully recovered from Halloween, the party the party plotted their next attack from the town of Guarda.
Sever now had a weather spell, I don't recall ever seeing one getting used, but in this case it proved very useful as they managed to dodge a hail storm by predicting when it would happen. The Pegasus regulars, with Sixtus the company cleric, flew out to Tora Bora and there he cast a Divination spell to determine the enemy's strength. As expected, there were several hundred men in the area, but also a strong force of Druids; something that confirmed speculation about the source of the strange explosives the Durka Durka tribesmen had used on them last session.
Checking on the readiness of the town's forces; one militia unit would take a day to be ready to move out, the other two days. The players decided to wait for the full force to be ready and so they set off with 50 contracted dwarves, 3 ballistae, 50 of their own troops, 200 Guardan militia.
The next part of the session saw a big failure of communication in exactly which section of the map we were talking about, and this required a retcon rendering a certain piece of good luck moot. Unfortunate but always a risk with online play. Anyway, by the 10th they had brought their army to the east of Bora Tora (see the map below) and set themselves up on the west, with some idea that Slippery Pete could sneak in and do something and then the rest of the party would drive the enemy into their own troops. I don't know how that would have worked out, but in the end the day of the 11th dawned and, not inappropriately given real world considerations, a rare weather event derailed everyone's plans.
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| Blame https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/weather/ |
Psychic Calm! I consistently use this website for weather in the campaign, and I've always leaned into the rare supernatural events when they come up; but was this going too far?
It was only a few moments before everyone realised that this was the perfect chance to send in a lone hero to try and take advantage of the opportunity. To be honest I never had much hope for Slippery Pete getting out alive again until this turn of events.
As you can imagine, the session became the Slippery Pete show while this was going on, but there was no way to really avoid that and the others were very good sports. After all, Fluid is always an entertaining player!
Not overly trusting of the weather effect in any case, the thief disguised him self as a Talibandit with his Hat of Disguise and also used a precious swig of his Potion of Invisibility to effect entry safely.
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| Fake map |
On a number of occasions his stealth failed to prevent him being noticed by the defenders, but, with the Psychic Calm in effect, they were not interested in responding violently. Somehow he kept finding his way forward towards his goal.
As you can imagine, I had never envisioned this contingency!
However, Pete did not have completely free run of the place, several times he was nearly killed by viscous traps; including a self-sealing spiked pit trap that filled with water. By pure intuition the Thief opened the door defended by this trap in a way that rendered it ineffective, good stuff.
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| Real map |
With the rest of the party unable to contribute, Pete continued on until he actually met Usama Loot Laden himself, who was taken in by his disguise and let the adventurer go. Finally he found a cell that most likely, until recently, had held the Countess Echellet. The place was empty now, the only item of interest here was a scroll hidden under some bedding.
Soon after this his luck ran out and he fell into a deep pit trap, only his Climb Walls ability allowed him to get back out with a few HP left. Retracing his steps out of the underground complex, Pete returned to the party with the scroll while the Psychic Calm was still in effect. This was just as well as, upon attempting to read the scroll, he became Confused. Given the supernatural weather, the confusion effect was fairly harmless, but otherwise could have been very dangerous if others had tried to read the scroll as well.
When he was back to normal, however, there was something he could read at the bottom of the scroll; scrawled in the hand of Usama's magic-user; "You are too late, the precious countess has gone to the dragon cult."
There were groans of disappointment over the chat, but they resolved to make the culprit pay dearly.
The next morning dawned grey and overcast, but the weather was otherwise normal. The players were pretty cranky at events which had taken up a large part of the session without getting to kill anything (much less the enemy they sought). Their army was right at hand on the other side of the mountains, but success was far from assured if they advanced up them. However, they also didn't want to just march back to Guarda empty handed again either. The compromise was to move the army north just a few miles into a small blind valley, where, for many long months without anyone investigating closely, a rumoured village lay. Finding here that although the place had been destroyed by a passing tornado, the position itself was relatively defensible, they moved in in force.
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| Session 53 Map |
However, the village was not actually abandoned at all, the remnants of a Gnoll tribe (whose men folk were swayed to follow Usama, until he betrayed them) were ready to vent their long frustration and man-hatred; they poured out of caves at the base of the steep mountains at the back of the valley to attack. The mass battle that followed was quick and brutal. In the aftermath the skies darkened, and, when rain began to fall on the vulture covered bodies, the party decided that smelly Gnoll caves were preferable to being outdoors when it was known that druids were about.
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Mass Combat #1 : 400 angry Gnoll feminists
Rounds: 3
Result: Party wins at the loss of some militia.
Highlights: Sever's Ranger bonus prevented the Gnolls from achieving surprise, and they went on to loose initiative on consecutive rounds. Sheamus blasted with his rocket cycle to good effect.
Session Statistics:
Wilderness travel: 20 Miles
Enemy Bases mapped: 1
Combats: 1
Combat rounds: 3
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