One of the "fun" dwarven things I've had in my games for a long time is "Fizz Stone". It's a porous rock (like pumice) that when it gets wet, releases air so miners deep under ground can breathe. It's crumbly and easy to break off into whatever size chunk is needed. If a large amount gets wet it can actually make a fairly sizable blast of rolling wind.
Intrepid dwarves have also used it as a propellant in assorted weaponry and tools such as inboard motors, air powered triphammers, and spear throwers. As long as it's in an enclosed space that can be capped off, all that air force has to go somewhere and typically out the "back" end. It is also used in mining to widen cracks and fissures in the natural stone.
So the group ended up 7#'s of it and it works out to 1# is roughly 100#s of force and it goes up 125% for every pound afterwards in the same area - so the 7#'s of fizz stone, assuming it was in one place and got wet, would result in almost 13k#'s of force - enough to knock a pair of Ford F250's on their side. They used it to blow up a Causeway. It rocked.
Write up follows:
The first thing the group wanted to do was to make sure the main door to the keep was closed and sealed, and from the roof we could see the portcullis was down, but the doors under the barbican were still ajar. The fire was not going to go out for hours and we could hear the giant pig inside the keep squealing along with the cicada-like yipping sound of the kobolds.
The parapet led to the barbican and we could get to the parapet from the causeway by the Solar – it would mean crossing over the courtyard and the fire, but it was an option. So we crossed the roof of the first floor to the wall of the second floor of the keep, and between Sybil and Einar, they managed to climb to the roof of the second floor and extend rope down to the rest of the party to scamper up.
Once everyone was safely now on the second floor, we crossed to the Solar and listened. Outside of the fire, we heard nothing else. Assuming that none of the immature kobolds had hit the stairs as of yet, we lowered the rope and set it up so Dizzy, Sybil, and Einar made the trip down to the Solar and then crossed the causeway to the parapet. From there it was a solid run to the barbican and Dizzy climbed down to the Bailey and Courtyard. He entered the barbican and worked the door, digging it out on the bottom, until it closed. We needed a crowbar (run back and get one) and some help holding it inn place, but we got the door closed and the bracing lock bar dropped in place. No kobolds were getting out this way. Sybil dropped the two portcullis and we all scrambled back across the parapet to the causeway and then the Solar.
The rest of the party came down and we discussed options. The kobolds were not here now but they might be soon. We hadn’t heard the pig for a while and we needed to hole up and rest somewhere. The thought was either the “bird” tower at the north east corner, or the original one we entered by at the northwest tower. Staying in the keep was foolish as we’d be overrun at some point.
The group made their way across the causeway again to the parapet and then took it north until we arrived at the tower. The door was closed and we had to work the wire off the handle to unlock it – but when we did the door was opened to reveal the inside of the tower that had a set of stairs going down in a spiral to the floor below and some open area at the top. But the entire thing was filled with bird shit. Like years of bird shit. It was thick and muculent and viscous and trying to navigate the steps seemed like a foolish idea. So we closed the door and decided to cross the long parapet over the inner courtyard and to the other tower to hole up there.
We sent a few of us down to the Courtyard to gather some of the food using blankets and cloaks as bags while the rest of us were up top and kept watch for kobolds or anything else. It was here when we heard some giggling laughter from the woods and a few gnolls were there. Attracted by the column of smoke riding in the air, their leader, Jurius, wanted to know what was going on. We gave some song and dance, and a lot of bullshit, telling about the kobolds and their death and whatnot. The gnolls didn’t buy our words for too long before they asked for some payment to send them on their way.
The group was climbing back up the rope at this point back to the parapet as the gnolls were getting louder and ready to do anything. We effectively refused and one of them charged the wall, making it – we shot and slung out at them and they fired at us – and we realized we were “TERRIBLY” outmatched as their bows were picking us off the wall with brutal ease.
The count was 9 gnolls and we distracted them by saying “back into the keep, now!” meanwhile everyone stayed low under the crenellations as we raced towards the west and the northwest tower. The door was opened and Einar took the roof of the tower, watching the gnolls as three of them had slung hooks and were climbing the wall. Hjalgrim and Percy were the last to get off the parapet and managed to get inside the tower door before the gnolls climbed up and could see. The saw our abandoned food stores below and hearing the comment about “back to the keep”, they wrongly deduced that we had gone down to the courtyard and into the keep. So three of the 9 gnolls stayed up top while 6 other (Jurius the leader was one of them), climbed down ropes and made it to the floor.
They laughed as they went through the food and then went to the keep door and listened. We could see they were excited that there was some noise inside and they assumed it was us. So they opened the door and fired two arrows inside.
And then the kobold swarm started coming out. It began as 15 or so crawling all over the lead gnoll and then swiftly swelled to over fifty who managed to knock one gnoll down and were crawling around two others. Jurius ordered everyone back to the ropes and the gnolls tried to climb up to escaping the ever swelling number of kobolds clambering to eat them. One fell off and was overrun and another one had gotten so badly hurt that was unable to climb and was abandoned. This left 7 gnolls, 4 of them pretty hurt, to climb back down the wall of the keep and flee for their lives back into the woods.
The kobold swarm though was now in the inner courtyard and devouring what food was easily seen there as well as the two dead gnolls. We emerged from the tower and went to investigate. The decision was that Thalin and Merica were going to stop here at the tower and study up spells that we had now expended while the rest of the group took more of these kobolds out.
They were milling about and didn’t seem to have good long range vision because even when we called to them up above, they didn’t seem to be too interested. Dizzy and Sybil ad an idea of a dead crow on some fishing line and we used that as a lure to keep them around while we slung and dropped stuff on them. When the bird got too low, they managed to grab it and a few climbed up so it was a quick cut and we dropped the line.
We had a second crow on a string and some more dropped stuff but the hoard was spreading out and edging away. So it was a dropped flask of oil and a “Raging Fire” spell which consumed a 15-20 bunch and the crowd broke up and ran back to the safety of the keep and out of the courtyard.
With them all inside (100 plus?!) we then talked about what if they managed to climb the stairs and get to the second floor? They could cross the causeway and hit the parapet and then we’d be up the creek. So we wanted to drop the bridge. We took the Fizzstone and then made our way across the parapet to the causeway and then drilled a number of holes along the far side. We ground up the Fizzstone, filled the holes, covered them and then some water was dropped and we ran off the bridge and back to the parapet. The bridge hissed and rumbled and then BLEW up on the far side, the causeway fell over and collapsed to the fire below.
The party all regrouped at the tower and once there the mages finished studying and we all took watch and ate and rested. It was after midnight when we woke up and prayed. Healing was dispensed and we were pretty beat up but game. We wanted to get into the keep and do in in a way that we started on the 2nd floor and made our way down to the first – making sure there were no kobolds behind us and we could deal with the swarm properly.
There was lots of planning but we settled on some good ones. We made it to the Bailey and crept carefully to the area near the Solar. Then using a few of the ladders climbed up to there and we checked out the entire second floor – no one here. We took one of the armoires and a massive wooden foot locker to the stairs to act as a barricade if we needed to once more fall back to someplace and then made our way down. It was quiet, eerily quiet. They hall was empty but dirty and we looked in the chapel and library – both were a mess but no kobolds. In the Great hall we found the massive boar dead and partially lying on and open pit, lots of it eaten away by the kobolds.
Hundreds of tiny bloody footprints did lead down the hall to the same place we originally encountered them. The group was discussing heading that direction to see if they had all gone back to the basement.
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