Session 4 - Between an Ogre and a Hard Place
June 21, 2008 - The party battles their way into the depths of Kazmojen's fortress.
Huron, Pimchi and Ping Pong, on their way back from the secret treasure room, find another secret door in the hallway outside. They open it and barge into the forge, accidentally hitting Lord Humphrey with the door, who had just finished his "four sword shuriken" masterpiece and was walking over to show Morate, who was resting in the corner. The party watches, stunned, as Humphrey tumbles back into the open forge fires, knocking over the barrels of scummy water onto himself, simultaneously smelting and quenching himself into a man-sized blackened husk.
The party rests. IN THE SAME ROOM.
They wake, and decide to go through Yothob's chamber. He warns them not to go to the west side of the adjoining room, because when the skulks were initially exploring the ruins, one of their number was crushed by an invisible force on that side. They fled and it has been off-limits ever since.
The party goes into the room, which appears empty. Huron tosses a rock over into the west half, and it clanks off something metal in mid-air. There is then the whirring sound of gears and servos coming to life. Ping Pong throws his remaining half a bag of flour at where the rock bounced off, and the billowing cloud reveals an automaton, but this one with a massive maul hand and no "sonic" hole in the front. It slowly activates and advances. Ping Pong runs away back to Yothob's room.
Meanwhile, Huron sees that a bit of flour landed on something else behind the machine. He then takes out the dust of dryness pellet and throws it at the automaton, and the pellet explodes into a flood of water which crashes around the room, knocking the machine off its feet and spilling into the hall and Yothob's room. It also reveals and knocks down the second invisible figure, a gnome who starts coughing and sputtering up water.
The party attempts to destroy the automaton, but their attacks keep bouncing off its metal shell. Huron abandons his weapons and picks up a giant rock and starts bashing the machine with it. It then CRUSHES Huron with a mighty blow, taking him out of the fight in a single hit. Meanwhile, Morate helped the gnome up, and the gnome tries helping them, eventually remembering that these machines obey voice commands spoken in gnomish. He shouts out a stream of "stop" commands in gnomish, and when he shouts out "HALT" the machine grinds to a stop. Morate heals Huron, who continues smashing the machine with the rock.
The gnome introduces himself as Thrust "The Crusher" Splathappy, a gnomish courier who works (worked) in Gnomeregan. He is surprised and shocked to learn of what's befallen his city, and he doesn't believe it at first (but soon realizes by looking around that SOMETHING has happened and he's clearly been out of it for a while.)
They return to the rooms they rushed past earlier. They go into the alchemy lab and are immediately attacked by another pile of rags, but it fails to do much at all. They search the room and find some antitoxin and universal solvent, and an intact high-quality alchemist's lab which Thrust estimates to be worth 480 gp.
They briefly explore the room Pimchi firebombed, but find nothing other than some burned centipede husks and empty nooks/shelves in the wall. Oddly, the room is filled with an ever-present thick mist that prevents them from seeing anything - instead they have to feel their way around it.
They decided to explore the rest of this floor later, and return to Yothob, poking around an old woodshop on the way back. Huron finds a bunch of valuable gemstones in a chest.
They ask Yothob for directions or a guide to the lift leading down and to Kazmojen. He calls for a skulk, who leads them through the invisibility room and into a strange large chamber with illusory trees, bushes and birds chirping. The skulk seems unconfortable in the room, and after some brief exploration they continue on.
They pass by a bathing pool room, and see a body wrapped up in spiderwebs dangling above the pool. Fresh water is being fed into the pool through a spout on the wall. They ask their guide, who says the body is the skulk they sent into the room to check it out. That happened, so they marked the room as dangerous and haven't gone back since.
(note: did the party enter the bathroom?)
The skulk takes them to a locked iron door, and tells them that the lift (and the 2 guards who guard it) are through the door and down a hall. The party debates asking the skulk to pretend they are prisoners and trying to fool the guards, but in the end decide to just go in. The skulk unlocks the door and leaves.
Ping Pong and Huron position themselves to attack as soon as the lift door is opened. They converse briefly with, and then ambush two hobgoblins in the room beyond. (A circular room with heavy wood floor).
The two hobgoblins manage to pull a lever in the wall before the party downs one and injures the other. The remaining hobgoblin then "turtles" in the corner, blocking their every attack. The lift starts to descend, and finally Huron gets pissed off and just grabs the shield and yanks it away. The hobgoblin then immediately surrenders. They question it quickly as the lift descends - it seems unwilling to betray Kazmojen. They decide to tie it up and then...takes its javelins, stick them into the chute wall above the exit, and then place its tied-up form on the javelins so it's on a javelin "shelf" above the door.
Outside the lift the walls are made of black, shiny stone. The chamber has two 5 ft x 2 ft metal cages hanging from the ceiling by thick iron chains, dangling about 5 ft above the floor, a strange spiky stone sculture inbetween the cages, a regular wood door and some double doors. Ping Pong decides to scout and sneaks stealthily through the room to the double doors. Each one has a sliding viewhole - Ping Pong, worrying about noise, messily splashes the peephole with oil to grease it. And critically fails. So when he slides it open it makes a horrible SCREEEERRREEEEIIIIIIIICCCCHHHHHH" noise.
The hobgoblins inside, however, do not hear, because at that very moment one of them sneezes loudly (critical fail on listen check). One however thinks he's heard something, and starts looking around. Ping Pong desperately pulls out one of the light steel shields he was carrying and puts it up against the eyehole, hoping that the hobgoblin won't notice the difference. Before he put the shield up he saw four hobgoblin guards, two with bows and two with sword & shields. There was also a nine foot tall statue of a dwarf in the center of the room, draped with a lot of spiky, barbed chains.
Seeing his predicament, Huron stealths through the room and approaches the wood door. He sneakily opens it a crack...only to see an ogre humming to himself inside, its back to Huron. Huron gently closes the door in fear.
Ping Pong watches Huron, and while looking back into the room spots a strange discolouration on the wall halfway through the room. He gestures at it to Huron, who scuffs his feet and makes a bit of noise as he runs over. This awakens the weird stone sculpture in the middle of the room, who lashes out at Huron with long, earthy stone spikes.
What happens next is very chaotic and frantic. Thrust ghost sounds voices saying in giant "______", hoping to enrage the ogre, who after struggling with the Hold Portal-affected door, smashes through and tumbles to the ground, rolling right into the one hobgoblin who heard the noise and has come to investigate.. His momentum is so great that he doesn't enough notice the greased area in front of the door (also from Thrust, a grease spell). The ogre gets up, exchanges uneasy glances with the hobgoblins, and turns to go back to his room...and slips in the greased area and falls to the ground. The hobgoblin makes a save to stop himself from laughing...and critically fails. The ogre is furious and gets up and starts attacking the hobgoblins, and the battle quickly carries back into the hobgoblin room, where all four hob guards are frantically trying to fight back. They shut the iron door but the ogre just charges through it, knocking the door off its hinge which flattens one of the hobgoblins. The ogre tumbles into the room and knocks over the statue of the dwarf, and the chains animate and come to life, lashing out at the ogre with iron hooks and spikes.
Meanwhile, Huron is booting it down the secret hallway, with Morate following close behind. It opens up into a small armory with weapons and armor, and then a second secret door opens into a large forge area, with three goblins working by an anvil with a shackled female dwarf. Two shackled halflings are on the floor piecing together chain links. Huron and Morate charge in and pulverize the goblins, including Huron bodily picking one up and hurling it into the white hot forge flames. The female dwarf tries to help by throwing the javelin she was working on but she misses. The last remaining goblin tries to flee but the halflings throw the chain shirt on the ground in front of it (or in its face, I don't remember) and prevent it from getting away.
Thrust and Ping Pong have stayed behind to watch the ogre fight. The ogre is winning handily but the chains are scoring some small hits and the hobgoblins are surviving. That is, until the animated chains score a critical hit and rip off half the ogre's face, causing it to fly into a berserk rage. (However its rage would prove to be a bad thing, as because it was full power attacking each round, it missed every swing from that point on except one, which will be addressed momentarily).
Ping Pong sneaks into the ogre's room during the confusion. It's a mess, full of smashed furniture and junk, but there is a large chest in the corner. Ping Pong tries to pick the lock but fails. He goes back to the doorway just in time to see one hobgoblin scrambling away from the ogre's rage. The hobgoblin, wounded, sees Thrust and grins, seeing a supposedly easy target. It draws a shortsword and limps towards Thrust, only to be cut down from behind by Ping Pong emerging from the ogre's room.
The ogre is slowing now and bleeding from a lot of wounds, but only one of the other three hobgoblins is left. Ping Pong charges into the room and kill-steals the last hobgoblin from the ogre. The ogre, seeing Ping Pong and the chains, swings randomly (50%) at one of them...and crits. It DESTROYS the chains with a massive blow that, if it had been directed at Ping Pong, would have killed him instantly. Ping Pong finishes off the ogre and starts looting.
Thrust rejoins Huron and Morate as they talk briefly with the prisoners. The female dwarf tells them that Kazmojen's main hall is just around the corner, through a four-way hall/intersection. Huron cracks the door open into the hall but doesn't see anyone,
Meanwhile, Ping Pong opens the door in the dwarf-statue room, which actually opens up into the same 4-way hallway, but he is looking the other way from Huron. He ducks back out of the way as two hobgoblin archers across the hall nock arrows and shout in alarm. To the side, Huron hears this.
One of the hobgoblins ducks through the door it is guarding, and muffled hasty discussion can be heard, followed by a loud grating voice "You handle it, I'm busy." The hobgoblin returns to the fight. It's a very short fight though, as Thrust, Morate and Ping Pong all unleash ranged attacks at one hobgoblin, and Huron criticals the other one with a spear, actually decapitating it and sending the bloody head bouncing into the room beyond.
Experience points awarded: 700
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