May 8, 2010 - The Stormhammers take on a cave full of trolls to save some civilians and pilfered goods.
Huron, Vico, The Champ, Briggs, Gramps, Healbot
Gramps has been spending the last few months re-inventing himself - it turns out his asthma was getting worse and worse, and using two hands for a bow made it impossible to use his puffer. So he decides to turn himself into a melee fighter. He gets the Church of Kord to teach him how to fight in melee. While training there, he is often paired with the only other 7-foot tall student, a minotaur named The Champ, a monk. They spar a lot and strike up a bit of a friendship.
The Stormhammers, hearing that Gramps is nearly done his training, stop by to chat. Briggs is convinced that Gramps was actually away on a "Mexican Seniors Cruise". Gramps informs them that he's now ready to rock with a trident and grab-and-slam maneuvers, though he unfortunately contracted some kind of horrible disease (from a hooker) that makes him want to suck blood.
Rokk comes up to congratulate Gramps and The Champ on finishing their training. Briggs meanwhile eyes up The Champ and challenges him to an arm-wrestling match. Rokk immediately slams down an arm-wrestling table for them to compete. The Champ wins handily, but is surprised that such a little gnome put up such a good fight. Rokk then challenges him too, and The Champ destroys him. Rokk laughs and grabs his table and leaves.
Impressed, the Stormhammers are almost sold on inviting The Champ to the group. Their final test is if he likes meat on a stick. He says yes, and is immediately welcomed into the party.
Corey: (to Mark) What is with you and trying to put stuff up my butt?!
They go to see Alahind, who welcomes The Champ and tells him he'll fashion him an orphan's ring, but it'll take a few days. On their way out of City Hall they see the Mayor, who studiously does not greet them. Briggs however waves broadly at him and the Mayor stiffly acknowledges them back.
Next they go to the Church of Bahamut. While there they notice that The Champ's horns are slightly trimmed, and they discuss how funny it would be to go to a barber and ask him to take a little off the horns.
Jenya greets them, and remarks that it's nice to finally have to terrible disaster striking the town. The party immediately reacts with fear, afraid something horrendous is about to occur. They also know and have heard whispers on the street that many people in Cauldron are growing increasingly unhappy with the rapidly increasing taxes. The Mayor has decreed that taxes will be increasingly to finance an increased guard force and training, since there has been so many disasters and calamities striking the city lately. Many merchants and business-owners/employees have been muttering about how it's going to drive everyone out of business. Artem at the Tipped Tankard has told the party that they are just barely keeping above bankruptcy.
Alek Tercival is also at the Church, back in town for a few days before leaving on another divine mission. He welcomes the group and chats a bit about what is going on. Vico notices that his usual flawless politeness and proper manner is bit off today, almost like he is in a hurry or distracted. When asked about it, Alek frowns and says that no, everything is fine. He also eyes them up a bit and mentions how when he finds treasures or antiquities on his travels he always takes them to Tygot's Old Things, since he trusts Tygot to always give him a fair price.
Corey: (to Mark, again) Stop rubbing my leg with your little dagger!
Briggs suddenly tells the party that they need to go to Skie's Treasury. When asked about it, he sheepishly explains that the reason he and Skie broke up isn't because she got pregnant (Briggs is convinced the child isn't his), but because she MAGICALLY BRANDED HIM during his sleep so she can magically "page" him. The severity of the brand's pulsing tells him how urgent the summons is. Judging from the seriousness, it's quite important. So they head to Skie's after giving Briggs a hard time.
Skie greets them in a panic. She brushes off all astounded queries about the magical brand, and hurriedly tells the party that a shipment of magical ingredients never arrived. She scryed on the cart & workers, and discovered they had been attacked by something large and monstrous, ogres or trolls. Fearing for her workers' lives, she begs the party to go rescue them. She says she'll pay them 200g per person saved, plus an additional 100g per each of the five magical casks of arcane ingredients. If they save all three and all 5 casks, she'll throw in something extra from her inventory.
The party rushes off to save the three workers. No they don't. First they go to the stables where The Champ wants to buy two horses and a carriage. They decided to haggle on the price, which was 500g. Gramps steps up to intimidate the stablemaster, and does so by taking a deep puffer puff and RIPPING OFF THE MAN'S PANTS WITH HIS TRIDENT. Horrified, the man lowers the price by 50g, which The Champ agrees to. Huron, suspecting that they are trolls, gets everyone to buy two alchemist's fires. They ride off to find the kidnapped workers, skeptical that they might be still alive.
They find the destroyed wagon and wreckage, and easily track the kidnappers into the woods to a small cave. A rotting, fleshy smell emanates from the cave, which confirms that the kidnappers are indeed trolls. There is a brief discussion about pushing the carriage right to the door (the horses won't go anywhere near, due to the smell) and trapping the trolls in the cave. They dismiss this idea, afraid one of them will fumble an alchemist's fire and light the carriage on fire. The Champ grabs Briggs and charges into the cave, where he is met with two large trolls (one with Freddy Krueger-style bladed gauntlets) and a handful of smaller, juvenile trolls. He eeps and tries to turn into rat form, but it's too late - they spring to the attack.
The Stormhammers move in, tossing a few alchemist's fires to deal with the trolls' regeneration. Gramps grabs one of the large trolls and shoves it to the back of the cave, pushing it into a pool of fetid, stinking water. They quickly learn that the juvenile trolls regenerate even stronger than the large ones, constantly dropping and then rising again.
Vico is fighting one of the large trolls when the air erupts into poison gas around him. He looks around and spots the source - a large lizard creature lurking in the hallway leading out of the room. He teleports behind it, only to accidentally alert two more trolls in the adjacent room, a very muscular troll with sharp bone shards protruding from its arms, and medium-sized troll with acid dripping from its jaws and a pack full of javelins. Things look grim.
Frustrated with the lack of fire attacks, Huron grabs one of the oversized torches hung around the room and starts whipping it around as a giant flaming club. Briggs and The Champ do the same, and eventually they start pushing the trolls back and burning them to death. Gramps keeps pummeling and slamming one of the trolls into the water, trying to drown it or just keep it from doing anything else.
Meanwhile, Vico splits into a shadow clone and starts fighting the basilisk and new trolls, but the bone-shard troll mauls him horribly and starts ripping him apart. Vico uses his breaching armor to retreat back into the first room, and Healbot heals him up. Everyone is taking large amounts of damage, even from the juvenile trolls. The basilisk tries to retreat further into the back room, but dies from an ongoing thunder strike.
Gramps and Huron finish off the troll that was trapped in the corner, and Gramps rushes off to take on the newer trolls. He gets savaged though, and turns into rat form and runs off into a corner alcove to hide. As he proceeds further into the room, he spots a large troll atop a small ledge, sleeping, and Skie's three workers, who are being guarded by a carrion crawler. He also finds the casks of magic ingredients tucked away in a corner. Meanwhile, the first room's trolls start getting burned to death. Two of the small trolls flee. Briggs tries to giant-torch them to death, but misses with his awkward giant weapon.
The javelin troll quickly becomes known as a real son of a bitch, because of a 1/round at-will ability it has that lets it restart another troll's regeneration after it has taken fire or acid damage. The party tries to go after the javelin troll but it keeps retreating further into the cave, and spitting acid and poisoned javelins.
To make things even worse, it sees things going badly for the trolls and blows a horn, awakening the slumbering troll, who awakens in furious rage. Before their newest foe can come to them, Huron charges it and leaps up onto the ledge, battering & burning it with his giant torch. The Champ flashes through the cave, battering his way to the carrion crawler, and starts smashing it. Gramps sneaks through the melee as a rat, avoiding detection, and climbs up onto the ledge behind the raging troll.
Vico takes more heavy damage from the boneshard troll and falls, dying. Briggs runs over and stabilizes him, taking some hits to do so. He then Thunder Leaps through the boneshard troll and sizzles the crawler, killing it, before crawling up onto the ledge to join Huron & Gramps. Gramps smashes an alchemist's fire against himself to burn the raging troll, disabling its regeneration and allowing Huron to uses his dual khopeshes. Briggs unleashes a dazzling ray and burns half the raging troll's flesh off, but it manages to grab Huron with one claw and continues to try to grab him with its other hand. Huron rips his giant torch into two one-handed torches and starts dual-wielding torches against the berserker troll.
The Champ moves onto the boneshard troll, pummeling it faster than its regeneration can heal it. He takes some big hits in return though, and gets dangerously low on health. The javelin troll hurls its acid and javelins freely at everyone and heals up to full HP.
Huron is grabbed by the troll's other hand, and is bodily picked up into the air. Briggs tries to save him by FART CLOUDING the giant troll, but ends up missing the troll and hitting Huron. However, the cloud also lets him slide Huron out of the troll's grasp. Huron drops his swords and picks up his discarded torch, rips it in half, and starts dual wielding torch halves. He and Gramps team up on the raging troll and finish it off. Huron then leaps off the ledge and starts attacking the javelin troll.
Meanwhile, The Champ is dropped by the boneshard troll. Gramps runs down and Huron tosses him the bag of holding. Gramps digs out a healing potion and stabilizes The Champ. The two remaining trolls start edging towards the exit, but Briggs moves his FART CLOUD over to block the javelin troll from going anywhere, sliding it and Huron back into the cave. Huron finishes it off, and The Champ hops up and keeps smashing the boneshard troll, but gets hit again and falls, dying. Gramps gives him another healing potion and The Champ rolls over to the slowly fleeing troll and punches it in the ankles. Briggs arrives from around the corner, and together they whittle the troll down. Gramps finishes it off by throwing an alchemist's fire at Huron to hit it with the splash damage. Ironically, he crits on the throw (Huron has fire resistance armor so he does no damage) and the splash damage finishes off the troll. However, it then explodes into bony shrapnel, injuring both Huron and The Champ, and knocking The Champ back into negatives again. They quickly stabilize him, but there is some tense moments as everyone gathers around and tries to stop the bleeding before it finishes The Champ off. They manage in time, but only after about 5-6 failed saving throws.
They gather up the prisoners and discover a fourth, bound and unconscious prisoner, who looks like a mercenary. They free him, and he thanks them profusely and explains he was on his way to Cauldron to be part of the new mercenary guard force being mobilized. Seeing the blank looks on their faces, he shrugs and says someone named the Blue Duke was hiring mercs to form a new militia in town, so he signed up and was on his way when he was ambushed on the road by the trolls.
They head back (after discovering, much to their relief, that the carriage and horses are still there, and that the fleeing juvenile trolls didn't eat / kill / steal them. Skie thanks them (they are bitter and grumpy) and pays them, which alleviates their sour mood a bit. For her special reward, she gives them a set of magic dice, which let them "save" three d20 rolls which they can then use later that day.
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