I don't like to "march time forward" with a hand wave, instead playing out each day and seeing the party's choice and the organic growth of their adventure. So when I called for Marching time forward a few times this night, the party didn't trust me and wanted to play out each day - pointing out how this was not the norm and not in character to the game and DMing style they had been used to.
It's funny, but I just wanted to get to the "adventure" part of the adventure.
Write up follows:
The group went and spoke with the Bailiff, letting Youngston know about their thoughts regarding the K’Morat sightings and that they’d like to hold off on harvesting a few days as a possibility. The camp is in the black now – assuming we get 3-4 viable Firvin’s Caps back per day – we’re at this point running 8-9 days in the black – with the next 2 months and rest of the season a possibility to really ramp up the profits, so to speak.
The Bailiff was not keen on stopping the harvesting for now but the group had an alternative plan where we suspect the party might be watched all the time. So we should go out with a different number of people each time, eventually reducing it over the next 4 days until the following time the K’Morat were expected to show up we actually go out with the Randari and scout early and set up a few traps.
That was approved and we went to bed feeling proactive. On the 5th there were only 3 Caps found and Barb and Shim went out with the Randari, setting up a snare trap on the way. Nothing untoward happened and we returned the camp without issue. The next day was similar except we tried a different snare; this one that wouldn’t actually catch anything but had a pit dug nearby to trip up a few kobolds. We then wandered around south, exploring the area near the river as we looked around. After a few miles we turned back and returned to Base Camp.
The next morning saw Barb and Shim once again heading off with the Randari but a good 1,000 feet or so from the walls of the Camp, a boulder came sailing in and smashed Hornes in the chest, knocking the half-orcish leader down. The Randari looked about and in the dark another boulder smashed in – catching a Randari in the head and killing him.
Everyone dropped making the chance to be hit smaller; Barb was clipped and had a broken arm. Shim was dispatched to run back to Base Camp and get the Giant slayers. Meanwhile Barb could tell through the Ravenstone that the voices in the gloom were giants and they were laughing about hitting the orcs. Shim made it back to the Camp, the slayers were raised as well as the party, and some 15-20 people ran out and back to the Giants. The Slayers did their job and held the giants at bay eventually running them off while the rest of the party attended to the Rangers and brought them home.
Harvesting was put aside for today and Hornes lost ANOTHER Ranger. Anger was heavy, Spunifer came and healed up Barb and the entire camp stayed buttoned up for 2 days until the 9th when the group went out again. This time with was Barb and Darius who went out and set up a snare on the route back. Then they were working on another snare and a pit by the cut down point, sharpening some punji stakes when they were convinced they weren’t alone.
Glimpses in the forest, bits of signs something wasn’t right. Then there were the signs of kobolds and the two of them RAN – one of them getting clotheslined and Darius smashing one in the skull with a sling bullet. Realizing they were now surrounded by 30 of them and it looking grim, Barb managed to croak out a few words in their language thanks to the Ravenstone.
This caused the kobolds to pause. Food doesn’t talk, but she talks their language. Hence she isn’t food. They are an affront to the clan and need to leave or they will be eaten. Barb tries to get some information and hears something about “numerous as the trees on the mountain, as the stars in the sky” and figures out that the Base Camp has 5 days to disperse or the kobolds are going to fall on the stone walls (they actually made reference to the Camp, its location, and its makeup) and burn them down.
The two of them were allowed to leave and we ran up Furtham’s Peak where we joined the rest of the party and let them know what we had discovered and the kobolds. Holy crap – this was bad. We made sure not to let the Harvesters know what was going on and after 3 when the last of the Caps were gathered we began the trek back.
Around the same place where our traps had been set up (and now dismantled), was a K’Morat Fetish marking. A long stick festooned with skulls and feathers and scraps of cloth on a pile of rocks propped up bear a tree. The thought was to walk on by but Shimlagesh was offended by it and went to take it down. However he disturbed the rocks and three centipedes crawled out and up his legs. He danced back, fell over, and the fetish fell with him and there was a blast of black energy and he was knocked out.
We dragged him free, cut his pants leg open and killed the two centipedes there. However, healing spells seemed to stop at him and failed to work. Plus he was breathing shallowly and quickly, evidenced something was wrong. We wanted to get him back to Camp now.
So we kept going and saw another fetish. Darius spent some time slinging rocks at the damned thing, hitting the skulls until they were all broken and two of them had that same black energy look as what had hit Shimlagesh. We made it back to Base Camp by 5ish, filled the Bailiff on what was going on, and then had Spunifer come and try to help. Her own spells were stopped for some reason on healing the gnome and she was forced to use a Remove Curse scroll.
However, she wanted payment and Negan gave up his only 2 magical quills to the orcish druid who then removed the curse on the gnome and was able to heal him at long last. Shim awoke and we spent some time healing him properly and then discussed what happened and what it bodes for us.
Barb was adamant that the K’Morat she spoke to were serious about their 5 day abandon the place time limit. We were still under the belief that the Warren was on the other side of the Enderlyn River and based upon the time between K’Morat forays, most like 2-3 days away from Furtham’s Peak. That was a big area to look over and we still had not seen any obvious crossings of the K’Morat. The River was too fast to trust to swimming and the boats would have to start further upstream to account for the current.
This brought up Broken Tower Lake again. It is the only slow spot on the river anywhere near here, and Darius dimly remembered the Teamster Trentis mentioning seeing K’Morat on the Lake when we took our first trip up here a month and a half earlier. There was a slim but believable chance the K’Morat could be crossing there and it was worth a look. Plus, the Broken Tower was there and we suspected there would be some spell crystals we could snag for Avulstein’s upcoming transfer from wolverine to something else.
We went to the Bailiff and talked about us taking a detour to the lake to check it out. This gave us 4 days to go, check, and return before the K’Morat were expected to return.
No comments:
Post a Comment