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Aftermath - Campaign after the War
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<blockquote data-quote="Rybaer" data-source="post: 1104" data-attributes="member: 118"><p>Session #4.4 – Night in the Witch’s Guest Room</p><p></p><p></p><p>By the time the fight with the half-fiend ogres was over, it was pushing late afternoon and the group was exhausted and substantially beat up. They returned to the tower with the trap door and went down the ladder to the hallway beneath. Here, they took assorted bits of old cookware, weapons, tools, and armor that they scrounged from the store room and barricaded the doorway that led to the room that the rust monsters had occupied. They also littered the hallway with bits of junk, making it difficult for anyone to approach quietly. Rurik and Zalman were already resting in the store room.</p><p></p><p>Boaz wandered off through the school’s main entrance to start fetching the horses that they had left outside earlier that morning. At this point, they somewhere between eight and ten horses…having decided to take extras from the fallen orc cavalry after they had lost two to the ankheg attack just a couple days into their journey. So, a couple at a time, he led them back to the tower. The group decided to cram the horses into the main level of the tower rather than leave them outside to the whims of whatever other nastiness the ruined school had to offer. While fetching the last pair of horses, a middle-aged human woman appeared before him near the main entrance. She was dressed as if a peasant and slung over her back was a small sack.</p><p></p><p>Boaz asked the lady who she was and what she wanted. She replied that she had this sack of food that he should take back to his friends and share. This seemed perfectly reasonable to the half-orc, and he gave no further thought to who she was, where she had come from, or what ulterior motives she might have. (He also failed to realize that she’d nailed him with a Suggestion spell.) So, he toted the sack back to the others who were resting under the tower. As he entered the small room, he unslung the sack and mentioned that the nice lady had given him food to share. Alarmed at Boaz’s unusual behavior and inability to explain why he just took this total stranger’s word at face value, they became highly suspicious and tried to take the sack from him. He was persistent that it was just food to share and he couldn’t understand why they were so suspicious. Finally, Amblin got the sack away from him and took it outside the tower. Deciding it was a bit too light to toss over the wall, he instead deposited it in the small stream that meandered through the courtyard. Boaz pestered him the entire way and briefly considered going in after it, but finally gave up.</p><p></p><p>(DM note – they were wise not to open it as it contained a home grown colony of a nasty little mold that would have exploded in a cloud of toxic spores had they opened the sack. The mysterious lady was, of course, the witch again.)</p><p></p><p>With all the horses inside the tower, they shut the door to the courtyard and blocked it as best they could. Hooty, Zalman’s familiar, took up a perch on one of the statues inside the room with the horses to keep an eye on anything trying to get at the group through the trapdoor. Amblin’s three dogs were all left in the hallway under the trap door. Everyone else piled into the small storeroom off the hallway and closed and blocked the door. Exhausted as they were, they still set watches. Several hours after the presumed sunset, Nigel heard that something had attracted the dogs’ attention by their sudden restlessness. They weren’t barking or growling, but they were clearly interested in something and it sounded like they were near the far end of the hall by the trapdoor. He roused the others before opening the door to take a look. In the hall, they found that the dogs were enthusiastically eating something on the floor. Amblin raced over to check on it and found that a large chunk of meat was lying there. This couldn’t be good as there was no explanation for its appearance. Sure enough, all of the dogs started gagging and vomiting. Two were dead only moments later, while the third one, Gunther, was clearly ill but hanging on. </p><p></p><p>They looked for any indication of how the meat got there but could find nothing. Zalman made a quick inspection of the meat and confirmed that there was evidence of some sort of herbal poison on it. Hooty gave no indication that he had noticed any disturbance or activity from above the trapdoor. Paranoid, the group went back into the room, bringing Gunther with them but leaving the two deceased dogs in the hallway.</p><p></p><p>Things settled back down for a couple hours and most fell into a restless sleep. Then the noises began. Everyone was instantly wide awake when they heard growling and scratching noises just outside their door. They hadn’t heard any of the metal bits fall or be knocked around out in the hallway and Hooty empathically indicated to Zalman that things were still peaceful up above the trapdoor. It had to be Amblin’s dogs, they decided. Something had brought them back from the dead. </p><p></p><p>Forming a quick plan, they all took up positions around the door. Zalman was going to drop a quick tanglefoot bag outside the door and then Nigel and Boaz were going to hack away with their swords. On cue, they flung the door open and – nothing. There was absolutely nothing there and the sound stopped. Both fallen dogs were still lying at the other end of the hall where they had fallen. Again, the witch had succeeded in tormenting them. Much as she’d have liked to just do them all in, though, she lacked the direct magical firepower to do so.</p><p></p><p>The group unbarricaded the door leading to the rust monster room, dragged the dogs’ bodies into it for proper disposal the next day, and then re-barricaded the door. What little was left of the rest of the night passed uneventfully.</p><p></p><p>The following day, Rurik healed what he could of the group’s remaining injuries and then went back to resting. For his and Zalman’s injuries from the stirges, only time could repair that sort of damage. The others helped graze and walk the horses about the courtyard throughout the morning while remaining highly vigilant. Nigel noticed a very suspicious looking raven perched on the tallest tower near the mirrored sphere. He was convinced that it was watching them. Amblin continued to remain suspicious of Boaz, suspecting that he might still be possessed.</p><p></p><p>After a quiet morning, however, they started to let their guards down a bit. They brought the horses back into the tower and most went back downstairs to continue resting. Boaz was the last on the ground floor with the horses when he heard a familiar voice…the mysterious middle-aged woman again. She was peeking through the hole in the door that they had made the previous day while trying to chop their way out. She politely asked him if he wouldn’t mind giving her a hand with something outside. Boaz, failing his second save against her Suggestion, thought this seemed the perfectly reasonable thing to do.</p><p></p><p>She led him outside and indicated that he was to walk over toward the water. Once behind him, she polymorphed into an umber hulk and launched herself at him. He was quick to catch on, but not quite quick enough. She raked the her mighty claws across his back and side, leaving him severely injured. Something far in the back of his mind told him that this lady had somehow tricked him again, probably with one of those magic spells, and this infuriated him. And so, as only a huge half-orc can, he hacked at her with his sword and landed a furious blow. The witch was first surprised that he was still standing after her first attack, then horrified at how badly he had injured her in return. Boaz’s battle cry alerted Nigel and Amblin who were both in the hall below the trapdoor and they hurried up to his aid.</p><p></p><p>The witch swiped again at Boaz, but he was a bit better prepared for the attack and only a minor hit. A minor hit from an umber hulk is nothing to scoff at, though, and he figured one more minor hit would drop him. Boaz was far from willing to retreat and launched another brutal attack with his sword and connected. The witch/beast dropped. Amblin raced out of the tower just in time to see the half-orc hack once more into the body of a non-descript middle aged human woman before collapsing himself from several deep and bleeding wounds.</p><p>Amblin, with Nigel close behind, tended Boaz’s wounds sufficiently to drag him down below the tower where Rurik continued to watch over him. Then they returned upstairs and proceeded to burn the witch’s body. Keep in mind that Amblin was quite upset with her, assuming (correctly) that she was to blame for the death of two of his dogs and nearly a third as well. They burned the body by tossing it into the run-down remains of some servants quarters tucked away against the west wall and torching the place. While watching it burn, Amblin thought he heard a faint, feminine voice call out for someone from within the blazing inferno, but he paid it little heed. </p><p>After seeing to the horses, they all went back to the storage room below the tower, closed up the doors, and had a pleasant and uninterrupted night of sleep.</p><p></p><p></p><p>-Rybaer</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rybaer, post: 1104, member: 118"] Session #4.4 – Night in the Witch’s Guest Room By the time the fight with the half-fiend ogres was over, it was pushing late afternoon and the group was exhausted and substantially beat up. They returned to the tower with the trap door and went down the ladder to the hallway beneath. Here, they took assorted bits of old cookware, weapons, tools, and armor that they scrounged from the store room and barricaded the doorway that led to the room that the rust monsters had occupied. They also littered the hallway with bits of junk, making it difficult for anyone to approach quietly. Rurik and Zalman were already resting in the store room. Boaz wandered off through the school’s main entrance to start fetching the horses that they had left outside earlier that morning. At this point, they somewhere between eight and ten horses…having decided to take extras from the fallen orc cavalry after they had lost two to the ankheg attack just a couple days into their journey. So, a couple at a time, he led them back to the tower. The group decided to cram the horses into the main level of the tower rather than leave them outside to the whims of whatever other nastiness the ruined school had to offer. While fetching the last pair of horses, a middle-aged human woman appeared before him near the main entrance. She was dressed as if a peasant and slung over her back was a small sack. Boaz asked the lady who she was and what she wanted. She replied that she had this sack of food that he should take back to his friends and share. This seemed perfectly reasonable to the half-orc, and he gave no further thought to who she was, where she had come from, or what ulterior motives she might have. (He also failed to realize that she’d nailed him with a Suggestion spell.) So, he toted the sack back to the others who were resting under the tower. As he entered the small room, he unslung the sack and mentioned that the nice lady had given him food to share. Alarmed at Boaz’s unusual behavior and inability to explain why he just took this total stranger’s word at face value, they became highly suspicious and tried to take the sack from him. He was persistent that it was just food to share and he couldn’t understand why they were so suspicious. Finally, Amblin got the sack away from him and took it outside the tower. Deciding it was a bit too light to toss over the wall, he instead deposited it in the small stream that meandered through the courtyard. Boaz pestered him the entire way and briefly considered going in after it, but finally gave up. (DM note – they were wise not to open it as it contained a home grown colony of a nasty little mold that would have exploded in a cloud of toxic spores had they opened the sack. The mysterious lady was, of course, the witch again.) With all the horses inside the tower, they shut the door to the courtyard and blocked it as best they could. Hooty, Zalman’s familiar, took up a perch on one of the statues inside the room with the horses to keep an eye on anything trying to get at the group through the trapdoor. Amblin’s three dogs were all left in the hallway under the trap door. Everyone else piled into the small storeroom off the hallway and closed and blocked the door. Exhausted as they were, they still set watches. Several hours after the presumed sunset, Nigel heard that something had attracted the dogs’ attention by their sudden restlessness. They weren’t barking or growling, but they were clearly interested in something and it sounded like they were near the far end of the hall by the trapdoor. He roused the others before opening the door to take a look. In the hall, they found that the dogs were enthusiastically eating something on the floor. Amblin raced over to check on it and found that a large chunk of meat was lying there. This couldn’t be good as there was no explanation for its appearance. Sure enough, all of the dogs started gagging and vomiting. Two were dead only moments later, while the third one, Gunther, was clearly ill but hanging on. They looked for any indication of how the meat got there but could find nothing. Zalman made a quick inspection of the meat and confirmed that there was evidence of some sort of herbal poison on it. Hooty gave no indication that he had noticed any disturbance or activity from above the trapdoor. Paranoid, the group went back into the room, bringing Gunther with them but leaving the two deceased dogs in the hallway. Things settled back down for a couple hours and most fell into a restless sleep. Then the noises began. Everyone was instantly wide awake when they heard growling and scratching noises just outside their door. They hadn’t heard any of the metal bits fall or be knocked around out in the hallway and Hooty empathically indicated to Zalman that things were still peaceful up above the trapdoor. It had to be Amblin’s dogs, they decided. Something had brought them back from the dead. Forming a quick plan, they all took up positions around the door. Zalman was going to drop a quick tanglefoot bag outside the door and then Nigel and Boaz were going to hack away with their swords. On cue, they flung the door open and – nothing. There was absolutely nothing there and the sound stopped. Both fallen dogs were still lying at the other end of the hall where they had fallen. Again, the witch had succeeded in tormenting them. Much as she’d have liked to just do them all in, though, she lacked the direct magical firepower to do so. The group unbarricaded the door leading to the rust monster room, dragged the dogs’ bodies into it for proper disposal the next day, and then re-barricaded the door. What little was left of the rest of the night passed uneventfully. The following day, Rurik healed what he could of the group’s remaining injuries and then went back to resting. For his and Zalman’s injuries from the stirges, only time could repair that sort of damage. The others helped graze and walk the horses about the courtyard throughout the morning while remaining highly vigilant. Nigel noticed a very suspicious looking raven perched on the tallest tower near the mirrored sphere. He was convinced that it was watching them. Amblin continued to remain suspicious of Boaz, suspecting that he might still be possessed. After a quiet morning, however, they started to let their guards down a bit. They brought the horses back into the tower and most went back downstairs to continue resting. Boaz was the last on the ground floor with the horses when he heard a familiar voice…the mysterious middle-aged woman again. She was peeking through the hole in the door that they had made the previous day while trying to chop their way out. She politely asked him if he wouldn’t mind giving her a hand with something outside. Boaz, failing his second save against her Suggestion, thought this seemed the perfectly reasonable thing to do. She led him outside and indicated that he was to walk over toward the water. Once behind him, she polymorphed into an umber hulk and launched herself at him. He was quick to catch on, but not quite quick enough. She raked the her mighty claws across his back and side, leaving him severely injured. Something far in the back of his mind told him that this lady had somehow tricked him again, probably with one of those magic spells, and this infuriated him. And so, as only a huge half-orc can, he hacked at her with his sword and landed a furious blow. The witch was first surprised that he was still standing after her first attack, then horrified at how badly he had injured her in return. Boaz’s battle cry alerted Nigel and Amblin who were both in the hall below the trapdoor and they hurried up to his aid. The witch swiped again at Boaz, but he was a bit better prepared for the attack and only a minor hit. A minor hit from an umber hulk is nothing to scoff at, though, and he figured one more minor hit would drop him. Boaz was far from willing to retreat and launched another brutal attack with his sword and connected. The witch/beast dropped. Amblin raced out of the tower just in time to see the half-orc hack once more into the body of a non-descript middle aged human woman before collapsing himself from several deep and bleeding wounds. Amblin, with Nigel close behind, tended Boaz’s wounds sufficiently to drag him down below the tower where Rurik continued to watch over him. Then they returned upstairs and proceeded to burn the witch’s body. Keep in mind that Amblin was quite upset with her, assuming (correctly) that she was to blame for the death of two of his dogs and nearly a third as well. They burned the body by tossing it into the run-down remains of some servants quarters tucked away against the west wall and torching the place. While watching it burn, Amblin thought he heard a faint, feminine voice call out for someone from within the blazing inferno, but he paid it little heed. After seeing to the horses, they all went back to the storage room below the tower, closed up the doors, and had a pleasant and uninterrupted night of sleep. -Rybaer [/QUOTE]
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