Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Rel's Faded Glory Campaign (Thank You Old One!)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 930" data-attributes="member: 99"><p><strong>Assault on the Mountain Door</strong></p><p></p><p>They made their way back up the path until they were just out of sight of the orcs lookout post. There, Speaks with Stone cast a spell on Ilrath to give his skin the resiliency of an old oak tree. He then picked up a small rock from the path and cast a spell of illumination on it. Krase tucked this stone into his jerkin so that he could later pull it out on short notice. Rhys used his magic to grant each member of the party the ability to cling to the cliff walls like spiders. Unfortunately this required direct contact with the stone and each member of the party had to remove his boots and gloves. Needless to say, the group was anxious to get on with the attack so that they could once again have warm feet.</p><p></p><p>Speaks gave Arc the command to guard the path until he whistled for him. Then the party began to climb up and over the ridge of stone that separated the path from the crevasse. They moved as far into the crack in the mountain as possible in order to remain concealed from view of the arrowslits on the opposite wall. Once down inside the crevasse, they split up. Speaks with Stone climbed along the wall that contained the arrowslits until he was above them, remaining very quiet in order not to alert the two orcs who stood guard as they were now in view. The rest of the group crept inside using their spider climbing ability to remain on the ceiling.</p><p></p><p>Speaks positioned himself just above the outermost arrowslit and waited tensely. He was hiding right out in the open and had to count on the fact that the orcs probably weren't used to seeing a druid clinging to the side of the mountain.</p><p></p><p>Inside, the rest of the group noticed that there were another pair of arrowslits on opposite walls of the antechamber room. They crept quietly across the ceiling and into the alcove where the door was, carefully crawling through the partially open door and into the chamber beyond. In the faint light of the morning that managed to penetrate this far into the cavern they could just barely see that the rope-bridge extended around 30 feet to the other side of the pit. Beyond that, all was darkness.</p><p></p><p>They crept further across the ceiling trying not to look down into the gaping blackness of the pit. Just as they were above the opposite side of the pit, a voice called out from the darkness in a guttural language that Rhys recognized as orcish. They heard the thrum of bowstrings and the clattering of arrows off the ceiling around them.</p><p></p><p>Krase quickly dropped the light stone on the ground and then leapt to the ground himself. As he did so, he activated the amulet and sent a message to Speaks who still clung to the cliff face outside. The message was, "Go!". Rhys and Ilrath quickly followed Krase's lead, leaping to the ground and stepping forward to engage their enemies. A moment later Krase drew his short swords and stepped forward to attack one of the pair of orcs they could now see on the ledge. The orc died with a single thrust of his gladius. Ilrath quickly closed with the other bow-wielding orc and laid him low with a devastating cut from his great axe.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile outside, Speaks crept forward the last few inches until he could see inside the arrowslit. He then unleashed a fiery sphere inside the archery gallery and sent it rolling along the interior toward a group of orcs gathered in a guard room. The orc panicked at this entirely unexpected turn of events and ran screaming into a nearby hallway where the sphere quickly caught up and burned one to death.</p><p></p><p>The other three orcish guards who had been manning the arrowslits hastily opened a secret door that opened onto the ledge opposite of where the other party members had been fighting. Speaks was rapidly loosing sight of them and sent the ball rolling out the door where it burned another orc, knocking him down the pit.</p><p></p><p>All of this commotion had, of course, alerted the two orcs on guard duty outside. The quickly ran over and noticed the druid clinging to the wall, peering through the arrowslits and probably causing the screams of fear and pain they could hear from inside. Unfortunately for them, they were not armed with any missile weapons and were unable to strike directly at the druid. They quickly decided to go inside to offer whatever help they could.</p><p></p><p>With his flaming sphere expired, Speaks saw that the orcish guards were about to go inside. Not knowing what the status of his friends inside was, he decided that he should prevent those orcs from coming to the aid of their fellows. He whistled for Arc and moved down the wall to flat ground where he could engage the orcs with his long spear. Seeing that they now had a reachable target, the orcs doubled back and attacked the druid.</p><p></p><p>Back inside, the rest of the party was engaged in a very one-sided ranged battle with the orcs who had escaped the onslaught of the flaming sphere. The party had discovered that the side of the pit they were on benefited from a pair of large, floor to ceiling natural stone pillars that offered them excellent cover while the orcs on the opposite ledge had no such advantage.</p><p></p><p>Ilrath hurled a hand axe in the initial moments but then moved back to guard the pair of doors that lay at the rear of the chamber, lest the party be assaulted from behind. Krase had switched from his swords to his short bow and Rhys was effectively firing away with his crossbow. In moments, one of the two orcs was down.</p><p></p><p>Just then another secret door opened opposite of the first one and yet another orc scurried out onto the ledge with longbow in hand. He was quickly downed and the last surviving orc looked briefly back at the secret door where the flaming sphere had come from. He decided that while there might be another deadly ball of fire waiting in there for him, to stand and fight on the ledge against ranged attackers with good cover was certain death. He ran for the passage to the archery gallery.</p><p></p><p>Seeing that the enemy was on the run, Ilrath gave chase by climbing along the wall of the chamber using his recently granted spider climbing ability. Krase and Rhys were not far behind and elected to use the ceiling and walls, eschewing the possibly unsafe rope bridge.</p><p></p><p>Outside, Speaks downed one of the two orcs he faced with his first spear thrust. The other one was proving difficult, however. Even though Arc had arrived and attacked the orc from his flank, both of their attacks were seeming surprisingly inept. Fortunately for them, the orc seemed to be having similar problems. (Note: For four consecutive rounds, Speaks, Arc and the orc rolled nothing above a 6 on any of their attacks).</p><p></p><p>Ilrath had raced down the archer gallery in pursuit of the orc. At the end he found a small room with an open door that contained a stairway leading further up into the mountain. Unfortunately it was quite dark in the stairway and he knew that he wouldn't be able to fight effectively in such darkness. He stayed in the dim light afforded by the arrowslits and yelled out, "Need Light!". To the credit of the rest of the party, none of them offered an anachronistic product known as "Bud Light".</p><p></p><p>Krase and Rhys both skidded to a halt in their tracks at Ilrath's plea and then gazed across the chasm to where the light stone provided by Speaks lay where Krase had dropped it. Rhys immediately began scrambling across the rope bridge after it, reaching it moments later and tossing it across the pit to Krase. Krase raced down the archery gallery to where Ilrath was already engaging an orc with other beginning to pour down the stairway toward him.</p><p></p><p>Ilrath began to down one orc after another while his armor and bark-like skin protected him from most of the damage being sent his way by the opposition. Krase was frustrated at his inability to engage the orcs on the narrow stairway until he realized that the elevation would allow him to fire at those at the top of the stairs with his bow.</p><p></p><p>An orc near the top of the stairs noticed this and feeling that turnabout was only fair launched a javelin down the stairwell at Ilrath. Unfortunately for him, the javelin merely sunk into the back of the orc Ilrath was currently fighting, killing him. No further attempts were made to throw javelins down the stairs.</p><p></p><p>Ilrath, thanks to the help from the orc, had fought his way to the base of the stairs and found himself face to face with one of the veteran fighters among the orcs. This orc wielded a large steel shield that warded off blow after blow from Ilrath's great axe while his finely crafted handaxe found its way through his defenses a couple of times. Finally, Ilrath brought his axe down so precisely and with such force that it crumpled the veteran orc to the ground in a single blow. Atop the stairs, the other orcs nervously waited for the barbarian.</p><p></p><p>Rhys had meanwhile stationed himself at the secret door that lead to the guard room and archer gallery to keep watch on their rear. Before he positioned himself there, he cut through the guide ropes of the bridge to make crossing it a very dangerous proposition. Sure enough, a group of orcs soon entered the opposite side of the chamber through the double doors there. Although Rhys couldn't see far enough into the darkness there to attack effectively without the light stone, he did manage to keep the orcs pinned down by shooting any that stepped to the front of the ledge.</p><p></p><p>Finally having dispatched the last orc guard outside, Speaks took a moment to heal himself and then ran inside. Rhys heard him approach and got his attention, directing him to where Ilrath and Krase were fighting at the other end of the archer gallery. Speaks hurried off in that direction along with Arc while Rhys noticed that the orcs seemed to have retreated from the opposite ledge, back further into the complex.</p><p></p><p>They soon reappeared however, in the room that Ilrath and Krase were assaulting, bolstering the forces there. Ilrath made the top of the stairs to find himself surrounded by half a dozen or more orcs. He cleaved through a pair of them and stepped into the room. Krase who had put his bow away again, was now able to attack across the threshold of the stairway at one of the orcs that flanked Ilrath. They began to gain a measure of confidence when they heard a deep voice bellow, "Who dares challenge the Great Ulfe!?" Of course they weren't too shaken since they couldn't speak orcish and had no idea who Ulfe was in any event. Still, it was said with authority and the fact that the voice appeared attached to an enormous, barrel chested orc with a great axe in one hand and a pair of wolves on chains in the other did much to get Ulfe's message across in the universal language of fear.</p><p></p><p>Ulfe cried havoc and unleashed the wolves of war as he charged in with his great axe. Krase managed to down the orc that he had been cutting at around the corner of the stairwell and timidly stepped into the room to face the wrath of this mighty orc. Ilrath in the mean time managed to cleave through another of the orcish defenders and cut deeply into one of Ulfe's wolves. Fortunately for him, Speaks with Stone was just arriving at the bottom of the staircase and didn't see this brutal assault on nature's beauty.</p><p></p><p>Krase launched a series of cuts at Ulfe that were unable to penetrate his mighty armor while Ilrath managed to kill the last of the other orcs in the room and finish off one of the wolves. He then turned on Ulfe as Speaks with Stone entered the room and began to entreat the remaining wolf to attack it's master.</p><p></p><p>Ignoring the puny and ineffectual human wielding the pair of overgrown butter knives, Ulfe rounded on Ilrath and dealt him a devastating blow from his greataxe that could easily have felled anyone else in the party. Drawing on his inner rage, Ilrath swung back with fury and scored a minor wound on the giant orc. With Ulfe distracted, Krase managed to land one of his blades as well, scoring mild cut on his axe-wielding adversary.</p><p></p><p>Speaks with Stone was unable to convince Ulfe's pet to turn against him and decided that if somebody has to commit a sin against nature, it might as well be the druid. He sicced Arc on the other wolf and moved into position with his long spear. Moments later, Ilrath saved him the trouble by cleaving through the wolf and scoring another wound on the mighty Ulfe.</p><p></p><p>Ulfe was not quite as stupid as he looked and seeing that the last of his allies was down and that although heavily wounded, his opponents were still fighting hard, he decided to beat a hasty retreat, risking whatever attacks they might launch as a result. The party failed to connect on any of the several swings they directed at the fleeing Ulfe and he made it into the hallway beyond the door on the other end of the room.</p><p></p><p>Ilrath was too exhausted from his primal rage to give chase and none of the rest of the party felt much like fighting the mighty Ulfe at the moment either. Speaks used a bit more of his healing magic on Ilrath and for just a moment, they were able to breathe easy.</p><p></p><p>To Be Continued…</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Rel, post: 930, member: 99"] [B]Assault on the Mountain Door[/B] They made their way back up the path until they were just out of sight of the orcs lookout post. There, Speaks with Stone cast a spell on Ilrath to give his skin the resiliency of an old oak tree. He then picked up a small rock from the path and cast a spell of illumination on it. Krase tucked this stone into his jerkin so that he could later pull it out on short notice. Rhys used his magic to grant each member of the party the ability to cling to the cliff walls like spiders. Unfortunately this required direct contact with the stone and each member of the party had to remove his boots and gloves. Needless to say, the group was anxious to get on with the attack so that they could once again have warm feet. Speaks gave Arc the command to guard the path until he whistled for him. Then the party began to climb up and over the ridge of stone that separated the path from the crevasse. They moved as far into the crack in the mountain as possible in order to remain concealed from view of the arrowslits on the opposite wall. Once down inside the crevasse, they split up. Speaks with Stone climbed along the wall that contained the arrowslits until he was above them, remaining very quiet in order not to alert the two orcs who stood guard as they were now in view. The rest of the group crept inside using their spider climbing ability to remain on the ceiling. Speaks positioned himself just above the outermost arrowslit and waited tensely. He was hiding right out in the open and had to count on the fact that the orcs probably weren't used to seeing a druid clinging to the side of the mountain. Inside, the rest of the group noticed that there were another pair of arrowslits on opposite walls of the antechamber room. They crept quietly across the ceiling and into the alcove where the door was, carefully crawling through the partially open door and into the chamber beyond. In the faint light of the morning that managed to penetrate this far into the cavern they could just barely see that the rope-bridge extended around 30 feet to the other side of the pit. Beyond that, all was darkness. They crept further across the ceiling trying not to look down into the gaping blackness of the pit. Just as they were above the opposite side of the pit, a voice called out from the darkness in a guttural language that Rhys recognized as orcish. They heard the thrum of bowstrings and the clattering of arrows off the ceiling around them. Krase quickly dropped the light stone on the ground and then leapt to the ground himself. As he did so, he activated the amulet and sent a message to Speaks who still clung to the cliff face outside. The message was, "Go!". Rhys and Ilrath quickly followed Krase's lead, leaping to the ground and stepping forward to engage their enemies. A moment later Krase drew his short swords and stepped forward to attack one of the pair of orcs they could now see on the ledge. The orc died with a single thrust of his gladius. Ilrath quickly closed with the other bow-wielding orc and laid him low with a devastating cut from his great axe. Meanwhile outside, Speaks crept forward the last few inches until he could see inside the arrowslit. He then unleashed a fiery sphere inside the archery gallery and sent it rolling along the interior toward a group of orcs gathered in a guard room. The orc panicked at this entirely unexpected turn of events and ran screaming into a nearby hallway where the sphere quickly caught up and burned one to death. The other three orcish guards who had been manning the arrowslits hastily opened a secret door that opened onto the ledge opposite of where the other party members had been fighting. Speaks was rapidly loosing sight of them and sent the ball rolling out the door where it burned another orc, knocking him down the pit. All of this commotion had, of course, alerted the two orcs on guard duty outside. The quickly ran over and noticed the druid clinging to the wall, peering through the arrowslits and probably causing the screams of fear and pain they could hear from inside. Unfortunately for them, they were not armed with any missile weapons and were unable to strike directly at the druid. They quickly decided to go inside to offer whatever help they could. With his flaming sphere expired, Speaks saw that the orcish guards were about to go inside. Not knowing what the status of his friends inside was, he decided that he should prevent those orcs from coming to the aid of their fellows. He whistled for Arc and moved down the wall to flat ground where he could engage the orcs with his long spear. Seeing that they now had a reachable target, the orcs doubled back and attacked the druid. Back inside, the rest of the party was engaged in a very one-sided ranged battle with the orcs who had escaped the onslaught of the flaming sphere. The party had discovered that the side of the pit they were on benefited from a pair of large, floor to ceiling natural stone pillars that offered them excellent cover while the orcs on the opposite ledge had no such advantage. Ilrath hurled a hand axe in the initial moments but then moved back to guard the pair of doors that lay at the rear of the chamber, lest the party be assaulted from behind. Krase had switched from his swords to his short bow and Rhys was effectively firing away with his crossbow. In moments, one of the two orcs was down. Just then another secret door opened opposite of the first one and yet another orc scurried out onto the ledge with longbow in hand. He was quickly downed and the last surviving orc looked briefly back at the secret door where the flaming sphere had come from. He decided that while there might be another deadly ball of fire waiting in there for him, to stand and fight on the ledge against ranged attackers with good cover was certain death. He ran for the passage to the archery gallery. Seeing that the enemy was on the run, Ilrath gave chase by climbing along the wall of the chamber using his recently granted spider climbing ability. Krase and Rhys were not far behind and elected to use the ceiling and walls, eschewing the possibly unsafe rope bridge. Outside, Speaks downed one of the two orcs he faced with his first spear thrust. The other one was proving difficult, however. Even though Arc had arrived and attacked the orc from his flank, both of their attacks were seeming surprisingly inept. Fortunately for them, the orc seemed to be having similar problems. (Note: For four consecutive rounds, Speaks, Arc and the orc rolled nothing above a 6 on any of their attacks). Ilrath had raced down the archer gallery in pursuit of the orc. At the end he found a small room with an open door that contained a stairway leading further up into the mountain. Unfortunately it was quite dark in the stairway and he knew that he wouldn't be able to fight effectively in such darkness. He stayed in the dim light afforded by the arrowslits and yelled out, "Need Light!". To the credit of the rest of the party, none of them offered an anachronistic product known as "Bud Light". Krase and Rhys both skidded to a halt in their tracks at Ilrath's plea and then gazed across the chasm to where the light stone provided by Speaks lay where Krase had dropped it. Rhys immediately began scrambling across the rope bridge after it, reaching it moments later and tossing it across the pit to Krase. Krase raced down the archery gallery to where Ilrath was already engaging an orc with other beginning to pour down the stairway toward him. Ilrath began to down one orc after another while his armor and bark-like skin protected him from most of the damage being sent his way by the opposition. Krase was frustrated at his inability to engage the orcs on the narrow stairway until he realized that the elevation would allow him to fire at those at the top of the stairs with his bow. An orc near the top of the stairs noticed this and feeling that turnabout was only fair launched a javelin down the stairwell at Ilrath. Unfortunately for him, the javelin merely sunk into the back of the orc Ilrath was currently fighting, killing him. No further attempts were made to throw javelins down the stairs. Ilrath, thanks to the help from the orc, had fought his way to the base of the stairs and found himself face to face with one of the veteran fighters among the orcs. This orc wielded a large steel shield that warded off blow after blow from Ilrath's great axe while his finely crafted handaxe found its way through his defenses a couple of times. Finally, Ilrath brought his axe down so precisely and with such force that it crumpled the veteran orc to the ground in a single blow. Atop the stairs, the other orcs nervously waited for the barbarian. Rhys had meanwhile stationed himself at the secret door that lead to the guard room and archer gallery to keep watch on their rear. Before he positioned himself there, he cut through the guide ropes of the bridge to make crossing it a very dangerous proposition. Sure enough, a group of orcs soon entered the opposite side of the chamber through the double doors there. Although Rhys couldn't see far enough into the darkness there to attack effectively without the light stone, he did manage to keep the orcs pinned down by shooting any that stepped to the front of the ledge. Finally having dispatched the last orc guard outside, Speaks took a moment to heal himself and then ran inside. Rhys heard him approach and got his attention, directing him to where Ilrath and Krase were fighting at the other end of the archer gallery. Speaks hurried off in that direction along with Arc while Rhys noticed that the orcs seemed to have retreated from the opposite ledge, back further into the complex. They soon reappeared however, in the room that Ilrath and Krase were assaulting, bolstering the forces there. Ilrath made the top of the stairs to find himself surrounded by half a dozen or more orcs. He cleaved through a pair of them and stepped into the room. Krase who had put his bow away again, was now able to attack across the threshold of the stairway at one of the orcs that flanked Ilrath. They began to gain a measure of confidence when they heard a deep voice bellow, "Who dares challenge the Great Ulfe!?" Of course they weren't too shaken since they couldn't speak orcish and had no idea who Ulfe was in any event. Still, it was said with authority and the fact that the voice appeared attached to an enormous, barrel chested orc with a great axe in one hand and a pair of wolves on chains in the other did much to get Ulfe's message across in the universal language of fear. Ulfe cried havoc and unleashed the wolves of war as he charged in with his great axe. Krase managed to down the orc that he had been cutting at around the corner of the stairwell and timidly stepped into the room to face the wrath of this mighty orc. Ilrath in the mean time managed to cleave through another of the orcish defenders and cut deeply into one of Ulfe's wolves. Fortunately for him, Speaks with Stone was just arriving at the bottom of the staircase and didn't see this brutal assault on nature's beauty. Krase launched a series of cuts at Ulfe that were unable to penetrate his mighty armor while Ilrath managed to kill the last of the other orcs in the room and finish off one of the wolves. He then turned on Ulfe as Speaks with Stone entered the room and began to entreat the remaining wolf to attack it's master. Ignoring the puny and ineffectual human wielding the pair of overgrown butter knives, Ulfe rounded on Ilrath and dealt him a devastating blow from his greataxe that could easily have felled anyone else in the party. Drawing on his inner rage, Ilrath swung back with fury and scored a minor wound on the giant orc. With Ulfe distracted, Krase managed to land one of his blades as well, scoring mild cut on his axe-wielding adversary. Speaks with Stone was unable to convince Ulfe's pet to turn against him and decided that if somebody has to commit a sin against nature, it might as well be the druid. He sicced Arc on the other wolf and moved into position with his long spear. Moments later, Ilrath saved him the trouble by cleaving through the wolf and scoring another wound on the mighty Ulfe. Ulfe was not quite as stupid as he looked and seeing that the last of his allies was down and that although heavily wounded, his opponents were still fighting hard, he decided to beat a hasty retreat, risking whatever attacks they might launch as a result. The party failed to connect on any of the several swings they directed at the fleeing Ulfe and he made it into the hallway beyond the door on the other end of the room. Ilrath was too exhausted from his primal rage to give chase and none of the rest of the party felt much like fighting the mighty Ulfe at the moment either. Speaks used a bit more of his healing magic on Ilrath and for just a moment, they were able to breathe easy. To Be Continued… [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
Playing the Game
Story Hour
Rel's Faded Glory Campaign (Thank You Old One!)
Top