[Our Side Trek to give Cliff and Kathryn some experience with the SW system continues. This entry is from Robert. As always, my GM comments in italics and brackets.]
After dispatching the orcs on the platform, a horn sounded, echoing from deeper in the cavern. Our presence was known. A narrow suspension bridge led into the darkness. Orcbane took the lead, carrying the torch, and we all carefully followed him across the unsteady looking bridge, Stori keeping an eye out in the back. The bridge led to a hole in the cliff face, which opened into a small room with some orc beds, and a hole in the floor with three ropes tied to spikes leading down. We dropped a torch to see how far down it went, and saw that it was 60 or 70 feet, the narrow hole opening up about 40 feet down or so. We all got down fine, but Stori thought he heard voices from behind us before he went down the rope.
[Heh heh…Cliff rolled “Snake Eyes” on his Notice check when I asked for one as Stori was about to be the last one to go down the hole. I have a feeling that since he and everyone else knew it was a failure, no one paid the voices much attention. The party pushed on without much thought to the voices that Stori heard. Sometimes a failure isn’t simply a failure to succeed…
Huh? No, of course I’m not going to tell you what the voices were!]
After the horn that sounded earlier, we had been hearing drums, and they were getting louder as we trekked deeper into the cavern. The ropes led down to a very large cavern, and after progressing a hundred or so feet into this chamber, we could clearly hear the drums, not just their echoes. To the right, there were steps carved into the cavern wall heading up to another bridge, which went across the room to a large ledge on the left, about 40 feet up. The drum beating got faster. The lower area ended, so there was little choice but to go up the stairs.
The drum stopped, and torches lit up, revealing many orcs on the ledge. Two of the orcs roll off the side, holding ropes. Ivarr quickly rushes to engage them as Orcbane and Mule cross the bridge. Orcbane waded into the thick of things, allowing himself to get surrounded by orcs, while Mule stayed close to the edge of the bridge. Gansi fired spells at the orcs that rolled off, but had a minor spell glitch. Stori stayed on the steps and fired arrows at the orcs on the ledge.
[Minor spell glitch translates as Siphoning. For most of our Hellfrost games, all of the spellcasting characters were clerics and thus did not suffer from the Siphoning. In the last few sessions, there has been a spellcaster subjected to Siphoning multiple times. It has been both sucking up Bennies to re-roll the spellcasting roll as well as actual Siphoning. Yet, the spellcasters keep slinging spells without much care.]
The orcs were frenzied, frothing at the mouth, and giving Orcbane quite a beating, but he was standing his ground. A better equipped orc appeared, apparently the leader of this group, and joined the fray. Eventually all the orcs were killed, but not before Orcbane was severely wounded. Fortunately, Gansi was able to heal his wounds.
[The party was fortunate that the orcs lost control. The beasts stopped attacking with much thought…even biting instead of using their axes. The leader, who kept using his axe, actually ended up taking out as many of his allies as any one individual in the party did (sweep). If the orcs had coordinated their actions a bit more, it might have gotten a bit hairy for the party. As it was, Mule continued to puree anything that got within reach of his axe and Todd kept forgetting to apply the bonuses from Orc Harvest. 😯
If the party does run into a group of more intelligent enemies, things could be a bit more difficult. Mule, for example, with his low Smarts and Agility is going to be in trouble if opponents start to use Tricks on him. Tricks are still something that the more experienced players aren’t using. Most disappointing, at least to me, was the lack of a single use of Gansi’s Knockdown power. Throughout the cave complex, the orcs were on relatively small platforms just asking to be washed away but, alas, this tactic was never even attempted or discussed.]
We then heard a sound from behind us. It was a human, who said he was here to help us. His name was Tyrvi, and he was a Eulogist of Scaetha, from the temple we came from. We followed beyond the ledge, which led to the storeroom of the orcs. There was barrels of ale, crates of dried meat, and a chest filled with hundreds of gold scields. On the floor was the partially devoured corpse of a woman, likely the one we were hoping to save. We decided we needed to bring her remains with us, so they could be properly dealt with, and we of course took the gold too.
[RJ joined us and so a new character, Tyrvi, joined the party. Tyrvi had followed the group from Hrafn Point since he just knows that the group needs his help.
The room was the “chief’s” quarters. The presence of the gold, ale, and jerky sparked discussion among the players of just what was going on here. There had been no reports of theft or pillaging by the orcs and Hrafn Point was the only settlement anywhere nearby. The group concluded that someone must have supplied the orcs with these things…someone that must have “hired” them.]
As we got back to the platform across the suspension bridge where we heard the horn, we heard a dry laugh from above us. “The master is going to be so pleased to have additional recruits,” the voice said. At that point, the orc bodies on the platform got up, undead! Stori notices a skeletal rat running across the bridge, with something in its mouth. Tyrvi showed his power by unleashing holy fire, quickly dispatching most of the undead orcs, and the rest were quickly dealt with as well.
Orcbane started climbing the ladder, followed by Mule. As he is climbing, the trap door opened, and the undead remains of Haerin, the person who guided us to the cave, was thrown down. He grabbed hold of Orcbane, who managed to keep hold of the ladder. Another body plummeted through, but simply splatted and the platform below. Another body fell through, again grabbing Orcbane. Orcbane was unable to keep his grip on the ladder this time, and began to fell, but fortunately Mule was able to grab him and hold on to the massive amount of weight. The undead fell off and splatted. A fourth body fell out the trap door, and it too, splatted. Mule heaved Orcbane back up to the ladder.
[Stori noticed a number of skeletal rats running across the bridge…not just one.
Vanilla Zombies just don’t have a very good Spirit die. Although RJ only rolled a total of 2 with his Holy Warrior Edge (he had -2 in order to affect all of the zombies on the platform), I rolled a 1 for all but two of the Zombies on their Spirit checks. Fwoosh…charred zombies.]
After that, though, we were able to get up the ladder fine, now carrying Haerin’s body with us as well. We got back to the entrance of the cave without event, but the ropes were not there. Fortunately we were able to use our grappling hooks and get up with no problems, where we saw that the ropes had simply been pulled up. At this point, it is quite dark out, but we decide to head back to Hrafn point post haste.
We got there very early in the morning, 2 or 3 AM, and reported to the temple, giving them the bodies of Haerin and the woman so they can be taken care of. We had Lord Obbi awakened so we could report our findings. Lord Obbi thought that with the orc threat diminished that he would be able to go out and fight the undead, instead of simply defending.
We got some rest, and awakened at dawn to find that there had just been an undead attack. Lord Obbi decided that he would have to stay and defend after all, which meant that we would be the ones to go out and investigate the burial mounds. When we arrived at the burial mounds, we first decided to scout around the edge of the woods. We could also see over the wall that the large central mound had been opened.
[Obbi took Ivarr aside to speak privately at one point. He had two things to say. First, he filled in Ivarr on Tyrvi’s rather stubborn, know it all, do it all behavior. Second, he admitted that he does not expect Ivarr’s group to come back if they do encounter a significant undead force. It isn’t that his group is unskilled in battle but that they don’t seem to have the heart for it…he had noticed that they seem more motivated by money than honor. Too many mercenaries hired by Scaetha that were in it for the money had broken when faced with the horrors Hela has unleashed on the world. Because of this, he would not devote any additional resources to the group at this time. Still, someone had to go investigate and he would pray that they succeed at the task.
There was also discussion amongst the characters as to what to do with their money recovered from the orc caves. The discussion was more along the lines of what could be done to secure it here at Hrafn Point. The other warriors that overhead this conversation started to be a bit offended by the implication that they would steal it.]
While scouting, we found a trail leading off into the woods. We followed it to a small orc camp, surprising the three orcs there, and quickly killing him. Gansi had another bout of the Siphoning, and became fatigued. Having learned our lesson from the caves, we cut these corpses up to reduce their likelihood of being raised undead. We returned to the clearing and continued to scout around the edge. We found another trail, which looked somewhat like a game trail, but had a suspicious feel to it. We followed it for a bit, before realizing that it was heading straight for the Withered Lands, so we returned to the clearing. We followed the trail right up to the wall, and that was where the warding salts had been disturbed.
[This is exactly one of those instances where spellcasting was overkill and its use resulted in some significant Siphoning. One of the orcs was already downed by Stori’s arrow. The other two had already charged forward and had missed on their attacks. Most of the party still had not attacked but Robert had Gansi shoot three Bolts. He could have waited (i.e., gone on Hold) to see if Bolt was even necessary (i.e., if the other PCs couldn’t take out the orcs or they posed a significant threat). It isn’t likely that magics were necessary at all…the orcs were outnumbered by more than 2 to 1.
Instead, Gansi is seriously drained now. It will be hours before he can use his powers again and the party is signifcantly weakened because of this. I’m afraid that if the players keep looking at it as just “another bout of Siphoning” instead of a serious consequence, bad things are going to happen.
There was no other trail leading out of the orc camp. It raises the question of just what were they doing there (or at least I think it should raise that question). The second trail, the suspicious game trail, was partly suspicious because it consisted of numerous small animal tracks. Even though no one in the party is a tracker or a woodsman, they could still tell that this was no normal game trail.]
Tyrvi climbed the wall to look around, and noticed doors on a few of the smaller burial mounds had been opened as well. Stori climbed up as well, so he could keep lookout, and noticed that inside the walls the ground is covered in animal tracks. We got back to the front gate of the wall, and prepared to enter…
[End of session. A few of the PCs (Ivarr, Gansi, and Mule) have enough XP for an Advance. Pat is going to be in town for the next session so there will be another character playing. It’ll be a full house with eight players…]
