Session Report – Barrowmaze – Session 7

[Bit of maintenance this session as the players make preparations for the future, but a surprising amount happens.]

[Also?  SPOILERS!  This series will spoil what’s in Barrowmaze, so take that into consideration before reading.]


PCs
Brock – male Dwarven Vaultguard, 3rd level
Radagast the Wanderer – male human Mage, 2nd level
Harkyn (the Hare) – gender fluid Elven Nightblade, 3rd level
Frank the Cleric – male human cleric of Silvanus, down to loot
Kord – male human Bard, 2nd level
Quillian the Green – male human mage, 2nd level

NPCs
Norman – male human guide, hired to lead the adventurers to Barrowmaze but not fight
Chick-Magnet – female war dog (0-level), actually a male man-at-arms cursed into a different form
Peldar and Nollan – professional torchbearers
Cormak, Gilgar, Barloc, Aris, Radar, Wermak, Ardar, Pelwin, Darmox, Sturgard – The Diggers
An army of 20 laborers and 10 guards to guard them.


Yggsday, May 4th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
Brock, Boris, and Radagast each discovered the rope they have was unnaturally aged and brittle.  With some thought, and consultation of the Shrine to St. Ygg, they worked out that all their rope was subject to mummy rot and they were very lucky to not have contracted it themselves.  [I had them roll saves with a target of 15+ and they all made it, Boris just barely.]  They decided to destroy all the rope and buy new rope at Turgen’s Trade Goods.

Quillian finally caught up with Tripp to see how things progressed on trying to purchase land for a manor.  Tripp explained he spent an evening gambling and wenching with Krothos Ironguard, Lord Ironguard’s wastrel son and officially the head of the village.  Tripp made a…positive…impression on Krothos, who sent his advisor, Ollis Blackfell to actually negotiate a deal.  [Tripp did awful while gambling, nearly as bad as Krothos, who decided in his inebriation that this made them buddies.]  Ollis offered a choice between two locations: the land adjacent to the cranky wizard or the land behind the town cemetery.  Quillian opted for the land behind the cemetery and told Tripp to secure the property.


Sunday, May 5th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
Tripp and Quillian met with Ollis and secured title for Quillian to the property behind the town’s cemetery.  With title in hand, Quillian unleashed a squad of engineers to start construction of his manor.  [He sent for the engineers earlier, but was waiting for Tripp to negotiate the land purchase for him.]  Quillian also asked the engineers to add a shrine to Silvanus to the property and allocated the monies to handle the additional cost.  The engineers started the land survey and placing orders with Turgen (as the representative of the Silver Standard Merchant Caravan Company) for the building supplies.


Moonday, May 6th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
Quillian went to the Mercenary Guild and requested as many guards and laborers, at a 1:2 ration, as Osen could put together.  Quillian wanted to remove the library of scrolls and tomes The Motley Crew had discovered in Barrow 30 and needed a large group of people to essentially pack it up and haul it back to Helix.  This would be on top of the 10 diggers, two torchbearers, Chick-Magnet, and Norman.

Osen thought for a moment and then told Quillian it would take a day to get a sizeable group together.  Could he wait a day, maybe until Noon tomorrow?  Quillian agreed to wait a day and would check in tomorrow to interview whoever Osen could find.

[Osen immediately sent a rider to Ironguard Motte to hire anyone available who could get to Helix by Noon the next day.  He also sent word to every guild member and wannabe adventurer currently in town for guards.  I made use of all the NPCs the players had provided during character creation for the guards.]


Hernesday, May 7th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
Quillian met with the ragtag army of laborers and guards Osen was able to put together.  Quillian hired all 10 guards and 20 laborers, telling them to show up at the guild building at dawn the next day for the trek into the Barrowmoor.  Once that was done, he went over to Turgen’s and bought all 5 backpacks in stock, plus three empty barrels and contrivances to carry said barrels.  He judged this sufficient for the effort [it wasn’t].


Magusday, May 8th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
At dawn, The Motley Crew [with Frank instead of Boris], Norman, Chick-Magnet, the 10 diggers, the 10 guards, and the 20 laborers started the march south.  On the way, they found a group of smashed skeletons.  While the workers filed past, the adventurers investigated and surmised that the skeletons had come across an animated statue or two and been pummeled to splinters.  They kept this opinion to themselves, but warned the guards to keep vigilant.

The army arrived at the field of barrows around Noon.  [The hike took longer than normal with the large group.  Quillian’s player only half joked about building a road between Helix and the barrows to speed travel times up.]  The group paused at Barrow 29 and dropped off the diggers, Norman, and Chick-Magnet so the diggers could get started.  They then led the rest over to Barrow 30 [only 100 feet away].

The adventurers went into the barrow first, to verify it was still unoccupied.  This verified, they led the workers down to the library and put them to work packing up as many scrolls and tomes as they could over the next four hours, before it was time to leave.  Quillian then gave the lead guard a sounding horn and orders to blow on it if anything untoward showed up.  The adventurers then went back to Barrow 29 to watch over the diggers.

Four hours later, the diggers successfully finished clearing the soil and sod from the entrance to Barrow 29.  The Motley Crew packed everything up and went over to collect the laborers and the guards from Barrow 30.  Quillian learned that they were just finishing filling all the backpacks and all three barrels and still had 70%-80% of the library to pack.  The laborers had also set aside two “fancy” documents for Quillian to examine, which turned out to be two holy writs [each worth 800 gp].  This was going to take multiple trips to completely empty, but was already profitable.

On the way back to Helix, the small army was accosted by five giant toads.  The adventurers had the guards continue to escort the workers while the adventurers formed a battle line to face off against the brightly colored toads.  One of the toads died to arrow fire and two were put to sleep by Kord [using a bard power].  The last two toads made it to the adventurers and started attacking.  One toad used its sticky tongue to pull in Chick-Magnet for a bite.  At first Chick-Magnet seemed OK from the bite, then he started spasming and foaming at the mouth before dropping to the ground – these toads had a poison bite!  [Yes, I know, it should be a venomous bite, but that’s not how the monster description reads.]

With a new sense of danger, the adventurers concentrated their attacks on the two awake toads while Kord kept playing his lute to keep the other two asleep.  They killed one of the toads just as one bit Harkyn and one bit Frank.  Frank made his save, but was down to zero hit points - Harkyn failed their poison save, dropping to the ground spasming and frothing.  Frank used his Laying on Hands proficiency to heal himself and then performed neutralize poison on Harkyn [he has two levels of the Healing proficiency] as the last conscious toad was killed.  Frank then attended to Chick-Magnet while the sleeping toads were slaughtered by the other adventurers.  Harkyn’s hips/lower back are damaged and as a result, they cannot force march.  They also need a day of rest to recover and some magical healing.  Chick-Magnet fully recovered with only some minor scaring and the need for a day of bedrest [along with some magical healing].

The entire group made it back to Helix safely.  Harkyn and Chick-Magnet went to the Shrine of St. Ygg to see if any curative magic was available.  With nearly the entire town going into the Moor as laborers, the shrine had held their curative magics in reserve in case something went wrong.  Brother Othar was very pleased that none of the laborers were injured and cast cure light wounds on both Harkyn and Chick-Magnet himself.  [He still required the 10 gp donative to the shrine for each casting.]


Cromsday, May 9th, 23rd year of the reign of King Shurik the Nimble
The entire group, minus Harkyn and Chick-Magnet [who both needed bed rest] returned to the barrows to pack up more scrolls and tomes.  The trip was surprisingly uneventful.  [It was late and I needed to get up early for work the next day.  I could roll the encounters and fight them at the beginning of next session, but really most things in the swamp will avoid an army of 30+ people.]

End of Session


[So the Mortal Wounds table has turned into a surprisingly entertaining thing.  It keeps mortal wounds from being 100% game ending for a character, but also imposes penalties for nearly getting killed.  I like the story effects of the table and the players like that they can do things to help get better results, so it’s not entirely random.  A nice balance.]

[Quillian’s player is exploring the beginning of the magical experimentation rules by getting a building with a lab set up.  At least I think that’s what he’s up to.  He might be prepping for use of the domain rules, possibly both.  He is clearly having an effect on the local economy with all his purchases and hiring large numbers of townsfolk.]

[NOTE: There will be no posting next week (June 5) as there was no game this week due to two of the players getting married.  Session 8 will happen next week and the session notes will be posted June 12.  Regular postings will continue after that.  Thank you for your understanding and "Congratulations!" to Geoff and Emmy!]


Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
Session 4
Session 5
Session 6

Session 8