Saturday, June 1, 2019

session 26: The Boot of Kord

"Here's a note I took off a Vrock I slew" said Zandalf, unrolling a parchment on the bar. "Not a bad likeness."

"We were headed back to the old Dwarven ruins to see what further treasures we might find when we came to a bridge.  'HOLD,' I said, 'EVIL IS AFOOT'.  Probably saved a few lives right there did old Zandalf the Herald.  No sooner had I spoken than did this foul creature fly up from the chasm.  A demon rising from the depths!"  Zandalf glanced over at the barmaid.  "How'd you like to see my demon rise?  eh?  EH?" Getting no interest he went on.  "Anyway, under my orders we spread out in attack formation and began peppering the the beast with ranged attacks.  It shrugged most of them off with little damage, but seemed susceptible to Leena's fire bolt.  I had everyone back away from the edge to lure it into hand to hand range.  When it came in to bite and claw at us we fell upon it with axe and sword.  It was a hard fought battle but in the end it couldn't hope to stand before my might.  It did a bit of damage to some of the others with its shrieks and spores but Zandalf the Hardy was still ready for action.  I'm always ready, you know what I'm saying?"

"We headed back to our campsite outside the dwarven ruins and some of the lesser members of the party nursed their wounds for a time before we went back in.  Once everyone was done being a baby we returned to the large door on the second level that the others had failed to open previously.  This time, though, I took a greater part in the proceedings and under my expert guidance Amos was able to pick the lock.  Beyond the door, stairs descended to a small chamber with 3 statues of dwarfs holding axes.  Seeing gouges on the ground in front of the 2 obvious exits I sensed a trap and set the team to searching the room.  Zandalf's first option is ALWAYS the backdoor, you know what I mean?  Zandalf the Probing!  Sure enough, behind one of the statues we found a secret door, and used that to exit the room." 

"The door opened into a large throne room, occupied by three duergar who rudely threatened us.  No sooner do we step into the room than these guys turn invisible and charge at us.  One by one they pop back into existence as they chuck javelins.  Vanekas turns into a big ass spider and scuttles up a pillar, shooting a web like 30 feet onto the guy closest to us.  Let me know if you want to stage a reenactment in my room later, heheh.  So anyway, the fellas just walk up and hack this trapped dwarf to death, which he had coming.  The other two didn't fare much better, trying to hide behind pillars.  Gimmelstob and Dis just started walking up and chopping away.  Amos is sneaking around shooting guys and Vanekas actually bit one."

"Once those three were dealt with we decided to head south where we could hear a loud, rhythmic clanging.  We open these big double doors and there's 3 more of these mean little guys across a river looking like they're making a sword or something.  Figuring these guys are as shitty as the ones we just handled we decide to just open fire on them unannounced.  We peppered one guy but he didn't go down.  Maybe if we'd bought him dinner first, eh?  Hehe.  So 2 of the guys turn invisible again and you can hear them coming across the bridges.  The other guy starts slinging spells at us, 'shatter' and the like.  Gimmelstob charges across the bridge and goes after the wizard with Vanekas who is creeping across the ceiling.  Dis, Amos and Leena stay on the near side of the river and soon enough the 2 missing duergar show up and start going after Leena.  Amos and Leena are concentrating on this one guy and Dis turns to the guy standing on the bridge and just plants the boot of Kord right in his chest, sends him into the river and over the falls to his doom.  The two remaining guys didn't last long, unlike me, Zandalf the Vigorous.  I couldn't tell, but I think Vanekas was biting this guy too.  Real oral fixation, that guy."

"After sorting out those last duergar we searched the room and found some more treasure hidden in an old furnace.  There were a couple storerooms to the south but didn't seem to be anything going on there.  To the east was a big waterfall, the one the duergar went over.  There's a bit of a ledge that goes along the northern wall of the pit and you can just make out a ladder over there, going down to who knows where.  Still plenty of doors still to open on this level before we go further down."