Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Road to Kelvin's Cairn 1

The party start out in Neverwinter having had a week pass. They met Baelnar at the north gate to set out. Upon eating him they found him in conversation with someone in all black. This fellow was introduced to them as Morian, a half elf. The half elf was in all black, and the party could see leather armor beneath his cloak, and a rapier at his waist. They left Neverwinter for Ten Towns and Kelvin’s Cairn with the adventurer’s making small talk. The party soon learned that Morian was born in Neverwinter, and really only travelled to make money.

The trip North was unremarkable, until the party stopped in the early afternoon about half a day south of Luskan. Baelnar explained that Luskan has becoem an extremely rough town. It is said that it is run by the 5 High Captains, but that was not entirely true. In reality, they ran their territory, but the rest of the town was run by various gangs. The next morning they ventured into the town. Not long after entering, Morian whispered something to Baelnar and slipped away down an alley. The rest of the group made their way through town, eventually reaching the bridge that spanned the river. A “guard” was there, and told Baelnar it would be 10gp per person to cross. He eyed up the adventurers, wary that they might try to force their way across. Baelnar passed a leather roll of coins to the guard, and then crossed the bridge. While crossing, Baelnar pointed out the Host Tower of the Arcane on an island towards the ocean. He told them that it is said to be haunted by undead, and that no one goes near it anymore. They group made their way through the rest of Luskan, and Morian joined the group just before they all left town again. Camp was made about half a day north of town.

The party stuck close to the shoreline as the biggest dangers lied in the mountains. Gareth spotted some wolves during the night, but was able to chase them away with a torch. The next day Baelnar told the group that wolves were not uncommon here, but that they would not attack a party of this size. That same day the group noticed a large white object pass overhead, and discovered that it was a White Dragon passing by. It seemed to pay the group no mind, but Baelnar said that White Dragons did tend to live in the colder climate, and that they needed to be be wary of them.

A few more days into the journey the group crested a small hill and found themselves about 80 yards from a group of 3 Orcs. Both sides were surprised, but the Orcs still decided to charge into the battle. The Orcs threw javelins at Gareth, and hit him, but the wounds were minor. Everyone returned fire and eventually Morian and Nefresil engaged the Orcs in melee and finally felled the beasts. Baelnar said this was bad as Orcs almost never ventured this far out. The group concluded that this was a scouting party, and that it was likely that there were more Orcs. Baelnar said they were only about 2 days from Fireshear and that this could only bode ill for that town. The group took the Orc weapons and searched the bodies for anything else of value/use.

Gareth and Nefresil decided to track the Orcs, they spent a coupe of hours tracking the Orcs, but never came across any others. Baelnar informed then that they went directly towards Fireshear. That evening Nefresil healed Gareth, and the group decided to travel through the night, and rest during the day. They followed the path of the Orcs through the night, but lost it the next day. They decided to continue towards the town, as that would be a good place to rest, and get some more information about the Orcs.

As the town became visible the group noticed smoke rising from it, indicating that it had been, at least partially, burned. The group then noticed a party of Orcs moving out as if tracking the previous group. The party decided to try to hide in the rolling valleys and move inland to go around the town. As they did this they found that they had to crest hills from time to time, and that the Orcs noticed them. The group took a stand at the top of the hill and nocked arrows to fire into the Orcs. Nefresil correctly determined that their bow range would be much farther than the javelins the Orcs employed. As the Orcs got within bow range, the party unleashed arrows into the Orcs. The Orcs did their best to move into melee range, and threw javelins, without much success. The party continued to attack Orcs with arrows and spells before using melee weapons. Two Orcs were felled easily, but the 3rd put up a bigger fight. The group noticed that this Orc attacked more frequently and with more deadly blows. Gareth unleashed multiple magic missiles at it, as Nefresil and Morian were in melee combat with it, and suffered greatly for that. Nefresil took 2 hits from the beast’s great and fell. Then it turned on Morian and felled him in 2 hits as well. Baelnar came around and attempted to hit the creature, but missed. It was then that Gareth unleashed a final magic missile, finally killing the beast.

Gareth then went and stabilized Nefresil, and attempted to do the same for Morian, only to discover that Morian was dead. They loaded Morian’s body onto the wagon and decided to continue inland and make their way around Fireshear to head towards Ironmaster, which is only a few days short of Ten Towns. They all had the unspoken hope that Ironmaster and Ten Towns were not overrun by Orcs as well.

DM Recap
This session showed me just how boring travel can be if nothing is happening. Small talk may be interesting, but no one wants to role play several hours of small talk. This caused the session to go father than I expected, however, I don’t think it went off the rails from what I anticipated. I will say though that the second group of Orcs contained an Orog as the leader. I think it was a reasonable decision to have one, but I did not make it clear in the description that this Orc looked different, so the players rightfully assumed it was just another Orc. It was not until it did not go down as easy and started to take out players that they realized this was not a regular Orc. Thankfully, neither of the players died. Having said that an NPC did fall to overflow damage. Morian started with 17 HP then took a 16 point attack dropping him to 1. This was followed with a critical hit causing about 25 points of damage. That dropped him below his max HP in 1 hit causing an instant death. Thankfully, it was an NPC and not a player character as I don’t want my mistake as a DM to cause a player death.

Loot and XP
No XP will be awarded for this session as the players are not currently resting in a safe spot. This will be awarded at a later date. The players were able to recover 12 Javelins and 6 Greataxes from the Orcs. In addition, the player found a couple of gems, specifically an Obsidian, a Star Ruby, and a Jasper.