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<blockquote data-quote="the Jester" data-source="post: 4551649" data-attributes="member: 1210"><p>Back through the woods and onto the Dawn Way Jorr leads our heroes. Beneath the boughs of the trees the day is cool, but the air is still and a little bit stifling. The group walks along the trail. Jorr, though brusque, is willing to talk about the plants and animals they pass along the way, which is an endlessly fascinating topic for Kifla. He points out various types of flower, fern and bush, gestures to point out the groundhogs and shushes the others so they do not disturb the feeding of a porcupine. The trail meanders through the woods, circumventing falling logs and thickets of vegetation. The land begins to dip and grow wetter. “We’re coming up on the causeway that crosses Cold Creek,” Jorr announces. “Blackwater Causeway, they call it.”*</p><p></p><p>Soon the group comes upon a small vale. A wide expanse of water has flooded the central depression, leaving a roughly 20’ wide expanse of slow-moving, dark water. Boggy ground surrounds it, with tall marsh grasses and cat tails poking up. Many large reaches of the water are still, almost stagnant zones, choked with algae and thick lilies. Frogs croak in the water, accompanied by the buzzing of insects. A rickety wooden walkway extends from the end of the path out over the water. It seems to lead for a couple of hundred feet, to the far side, only a foot or so above the surface of the water. The wreckage of a wagon lies on its side, half-sunk in the flooded forest about thirty feet from the causeway.</p><p></p><p>“Look!” Barouk barks, pointing. “Eyes! I think there’s a crocodile in the water.” He pulls out his crossbow and drops a quarrel in it. Siting carefully, he fires into the water. <em>Think!</em> The bolt strikes home, and the eyes vanish under the surface.</p><p></p><p>“Should we investigate?” asks Severin. </p><p></p><p>“We’re kind of on a mission,” Kifla says. “But if there’s someone in there, we should try to help.”</p><p></p><p>“There’s no one in there,” snorts Barouk. “The crocodile ate them already.”</p><p></p><p>Kifla’s face scrunches up. “That’s mean!” she exclaims.</p><p></p><p>The dwarf shrugs. “It’s not me, it’s the crocodile.” He strokes his beard thoughtfully. “But there might be <em>gold</em> in there. It’s probably worth a look.”</p><p></p><p>“Is this an old wreck, Jorr?” asks Severin.</p><p></p><p>“Nope,” the party’s guide answers. “Never seen it afore.” He squints at the wagon. “Don’t think I recognize it; it might be from a traveling merchant. It’s hard to tell from here, with it half-buried.” </p><p></p><p>The party talks the situation over. Nobody really wants to go into the bog and check the wagon, but they all want to know what’s in it and what happened to it. Finally, Severin sighs. “I’ll go,” he says, and slogs his way in. </p><p></p><p>When he reaches the wreck of the wagon, Severin frowns. “Hey, there are hobgoblin bodies here,” he calls to his companions. “And it looks like they were driving the wagon. I wonder-”</p><p></p><p>He is cut off as a huge beast suddenly rears up from under the surface, sending a spray of swampy water all over. It screams a challenge from two of its heads. “Uh oh,” Severin gulps. </p><p></p><p>It’s a hydra- a dinosaur-like beast with six heads at the end of long, flexible necks. Brown and green and black in color, with beady dark eyes and wicked teeth as long as a man’s finger, the hydra roars another challenge from two different heads, and then all six heads are screaming at once. </p><p></p><p>“Get out of there, boy!” shouts Jorr, sending an arrow at the hydra, but it just bounces off the monster harmlessly. But before the ranger has a chance to try to escape, almost as if it understands Jorr’s cry, the hydra reaches down and bites him on the head, dazing him!**</p><p></p><p>“Oh no!” Kifla cries. “We have to save Severin!” She casts <em>haste</em> on Jorr and his dogs, since the party is too spread out for her to catch more than one of them otherwise. Jorr keeps firing on the hydra, while it keeps biting at Severin. It catches him on the arm, ripping along his shoulder; another head comes in and tears a piece of his leg open. He shrieks in pain. But then one of Jorr’s arrows hits the hydra in one of the heads, and now it is the beast’s turn to be dazed!*** </p><p></p><p>“Severin, go!” shouts Kifla. She runs up until she’s in range, and casts her other <em>haste</em> spell on him. Severin nods in thanks and limps back a few steps. Then he shoots a rapid succession of arrows at the hydra. “No, run!” Kifla shouts. </p><p></p><p>Barouk, meanwhile, has quaffed a <em>potion of mage armor</em> and drawn out and loaded his crossbow. But his bolt bounces off of the monster’s thick hide. He utters a Dwarven curse, but notes, <em>At least our guide seems to be able to hit it some of the time.</em> Indeed, Jorr is keeping up a steady stream of bow fire at the beast, and his dogs rush in.</p><p></p><p>The hydra snatches one of them up as it comes, lifting it from the ground and crushing the dog in its massive jaws. With a yelp, Jorr’s trusted companion dies. He screams a wordless cry of rage and keeps his attack up. </p><p></p><p>Then the hydra snaps down at Severin again. One mouth catches the ranger’s right arm at the wrist and tears it off. Another sinks knife-sharp teeth into his neck. Blood fountains up and out in a wide spray. A third tears a huge chunk of meat from his belly. Severin doesn’t even have a throat left to scream with as the hydra tears him to pieces. </p><p></p><p>“Oh no!” cries Kifla.</p><p></p><p>The hydra drops Severin’s ravaged corpse and hisses. A quarrel from Barouk’s crossbow sinks into one of its heads, and that head turns to glare in the monk’s direction; but the other heads are focused towards Jorr, who is continuing to sting the monster with his arrows. The creature begins lumbering towards him. </p><p></p><p>Kifla blasts it with a <em>steam jet</em> and then retreats (hopefully) out of reach of the great beast. It keeps moving towards the guide, tearing up the other dog as it goes. Jorr fires two more arrows into the head that Barouk shot, and that head wails and dies. The party cheers, and Jorr falls back a little. <em>That hydra is tough, but it’s slow,</em> notes Kifla. <em>We have to take advantage of that. Oh, Severin! Another friend, gone!</em></p><p></p><p>The party keeps firing, but suddenly things get more complicated. </p><p></p><p>The dead head rots and withers away in only seconds. And from the stump, in only a few more seconds, grow two new heads. Hissing and snarling heads, as baleful and dangerous as the others. </p><p></p><p>“We probably need fire!” shouts Kifla. </p><p></p><p>“We probably need to get out of here,” replies Gorsh. </p><p></p><p>The party decides that this is a good idea. The hydra, as Kifla had noted, is slow. The party runs off, leaving it behind when they exit the causeway. It doesn’t really need to pursue them; it has already gained a meal.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Having lost Severin, the group makes camp a few miles away under a tall tree. “We’re <em>not</em> going back to bury his body,” Barouk firmly tells Kifla. “No.”</p><p></p><p>“There won’t even be a body,” Gorsh opines. </p><p></p><p>Kifla settles for a quiet ceremony and saying a few words about their dear friend. She cries a lot that night. </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>In the morning, they talk about whether or not to go on. Jorr snorts. He makes his opinion quite clear: the goblins aren’t going away on their own, and they’ve already taken quite a few lives and caused quite a bit of trouble. If nothing is done about them, Drellin’s Ferry will continue to suffer their depredations.</p><p></p><p>Kifla is melancholy, but she nods. “You’re right. He’d want us to go on.” </p><p></p><p>“Well, then, let’s get to this Skull Gorge place and see what we see.” Barouk stands up, and the others follow suit. They break camp, douse the ashes of their fire and move along their way, up the Dawn Way. Jorr explains that they’ll probably reach the gorge in a few hours. “If we travel hard, probably before noon.”</p><p></p><p>The track the party is following winds deeper into the woods, growing dimmer under the canopy of the trees. As the party walks, they come to a spot where a wide trail leads away from the trail to the west. A strange, massive effigy, 15’ high humanoid effigy made from a sagging, moss-covered frame, stands at the junction, looking almost like a crude, giant-sized skeleton. Birds nest in the barrel that serves the effigy as a head. </p><p></p><p>“What do you make of that, Jorr?” asks Gorsh.</p><p></p><p>Jorr frowns. “Giants,” he says. “It’s a marker of their territory. We want to be careful around them.”</p><p></p><p>“We don’t need to go there at all, if you ask me,” grumbles Barouk.</p><p></p><p>He’s right, the others agree, and they continue towards Skull Gorge. The ground begins to rise, and after a few more miles the forest itself peters out. It’s not quite noon; Jorr’s estimate was right on. Ahead is a stretch of barren ground almost sixty feet wide that ends in a gorge. The gorge looks like it’s about 100’ across at its narrowest point. A massive stone bridge crosses the gorge; at either end are a pair of massive towers. On the far side is a goblin encampment. </p><p></p><p>And atop one of the towers is a green dragon. </p><p></p><p>“Whoops!” exclaims Barouk.</p><p></p><p>Gorsh pulls everyone else back into the woods. “Holy crap!” he hisses. “A dragon!”</p><p></p><p>“I think this situation just got a lot more serious,” whispers Barouk. “I think we should report back to the town council.”</p><p></p><p>“I think you’re right,” Gorsh nods. </p><p></p><p>Quietly, quickly the party retreats.</p><p></p><p><em><strong>Next Time:</strong></em> Vraath Keep! Goblins even closer to Drellin’s Ferry!</p><p></p><p></p><p>*For those keeping track, I moved this encounter one river north from how it is in the <em>Red Hand of Doom</em> adventure. This is because I went to a great deal of effort to make a full sized color battle map for the hydra encounter, and the pcs promptly went off the path to find Jorr, bypassing both it and Vraath Keep. So I moved it one river north so I would still get to use my cool props. I blush at my audacity and the meanness of my motivation. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>**Critical hit!</p><p></p><p>***Another critical hit!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="the Jester, post: 4551649, member: 1210"] Back through the woods and onto the Dawn Way Jorr leads our heroes. Beneath the boughs of the trees the day is cool, but the air is still and a little bit stifling. The group walks along the trail. Jorr, though brusque, is willing to talk about the plants and animals they pass along the way, which is an endlessly fascinating topic for Kifla. He points out various types of flower, fern and bush, gestures to point out the groundhogs and shushes the others so they do not disturb the feeding of a porcupine. The trail meanders through the woods, circumventing falling logs and thickets of vegetation. The land begins to dip and grow wetter. “We’re coming up on the causeway that crosses Cold Creek,” Jorr announces. “Blackwater Causeway, they call it.”* Soon the group comes upon a small vale. A wide expanse of water has flooded the central depression, leaving a roughly 20’ wide expanse of slow-moving, dark water. Boggy ground surrounds it, with tall marsh grasses and cat tails poking up. Many large reaches of the water are still, almost stagnant zones, choked with algae and thick lilies. Frogs croak in the water, accompanied by the buzzing of insects. A rickety wooden walkway extends from the end of the path out over the water. It seems to lead for a couple of hundred feet, to the far side, only a foot or so above the surface of the water. The wreckage of a wagon lies on its side, half-sunk in the flooded forest about thirty feet from the causeway. “Look!” Barouk barks, pointing. “Eyes! I think there’s a crocodile in the water.” He pulls out his crossbow and drops a quarrel in it. Siting carefully, he fires into the water. [i]Think![/i] The bolt strikes home, and the eyes vanish under the surface. “Should we investigate?” asks Severin. “We’re kind of on a mission,” Kifla says. “But if there’s someone in there, we should try to help.” “There’s no one in there,” snorts Barouk. “The crocodile ate them already.” Kifla’s face scrunches up. “That’s mean!” she exclaims. The dwarf shrugs. “It’s not me, it’s the crocodile.” He strokes his beard thoughtfully. “But there might be [i]gold[/i] in there. It’s probably worth a look.” “Is this an old wreck, Jorr?” asks Severin. “Nope,” the party’s guide answers. “Never seen it afore.” He squints at the wagon. “Don’t think I recognize it; it might be from a traveling merchant. It’s hard to tell from here, with it half-buried.” The party talks the situation over. Nobody really wants to go into the bog and check the wagon, but they all want to know what’s in it and what happened to it. Finally, Severin sighs. “I’ll go,” he says, and slogs his way in. When he reaches the wreck of the wagon, Severin frowns. “Hey, there are hobgoblin bodies here,” he calls to his companions. “And it looks like they were driving the wagon. I wonder-” He is cut off as a huge beast suddenly rears up from under the surface, sending a spray of swampy water all over. It screams a challenge from two of its heads. “Uh oh,” Severin gulps. It’s a hydra- a dinosaur-like beast with six heads at the end of long, flexible necks. Brown and green and black in color, with beady dark eyes and wicked teeth as long as a man’s finger, the hydra roars another challenge from two different heads, and then all six heads are screaming at once. “Get out of there, boy!” shouts Jorr, sending an arrow at the hydra, but it just bounces off the monster harmlessly. But before the ranger has a chance to try to escape, almost as if it understands Jorr’s cry, the hydra reaches down and bites him on the head, dazing him!** “Oh no!” Kifla cries. “We have to save Severin!” She casts [i]haste[/i] on Jorr and his dogs, since the party is too spread out for her to catch more than one of them otherwise. Jorr keeps firing on the hydra, while it keeps biting at Severin. It catches him on the arm, ripping along his shoulder; another head comes in and tears a piece of his leg open. He shrieks in pain. But then one of Jorr’s arrows hits the hydra in one of the heads, and now it is the beast’s turn to be dazed!*** “Severin, go!” shouts Kifla. She runs up until she’s in range, and casts her other [i]haste[/i] spell on him. Severin nods in thanks and limps back a few steps. Then he shoots a rapid succession of arrows at the hydra. “No, run!” Kifla shouts. Barouk, meanwhile, has quaffed a [i]potion of mage armor[/i] and drawn out and loaded his crossbow. But his bolt bounces off of the monster’s thick hide. He utters a Dwarven curse, but notes, [i]At least our guide seems to be able to hit it some of the time.[/i] Indeed, Jorr is keeping up a steady stream of bow fire at the beast, and his dogs rush in. The hydra snatches one of them up as it comes, lifting it from the ground and crushing the dog in its massive jaws. With a yelp, Jorr’s trusted companion dies. He screams a wordless cry of rage and keeps his attack up. Then the hydra snaps down at Severin again. One mouth catches the ranger’s right arm at the wrist and tears it off. Another sinks knife-sharp teeth into his neck. Blood fountains up and out in a wide spray. A third tears a huge chunk of meat from his belly. Severin doesn’t even have a throat left to scream with as the hydra tears him to pieces. “Oh no!” cries Kifla. The hydra drops Severin’s ravaged corpse and hisses. A quarrel from Barouk’s crossbow sinks into one of its heads, and that head turns to glare in the monk’s direction; but the other heads are focused towards Jorr, who is continuing to sting the monster with his arrows. The creature begins lumbering towards him. Kifla blasts it with a [i]steam jet[/i] and then retreats (hopefully) out of reach of the great beast. It keeps moving towards the guide, tearing up the other dog as it goes. Jorr fires two more arrows into the head that Barouk shot, and that head wails and dies. The party cheers, and Jorr falls back a little. [i]That hydra is tough, but it’s slow,[/i] notes Kifla. [i]We have to take advantage of that. Oh, Severin! Another friend, gone![/i] The party keeps firing, but suddenly things get more complicated. The dead head rots and withers away in only seconds. And from the stump, in only a few more seconds, grow two new heads. Hissing and snarling heads, as baleful and dangerous as the others. “We probably need fire!” shouts Kifla. “We probably need to get out of here,” replies Gorsh. The party decides that this is a good idea. The hydra, as Kifla had noted, is slow. The party runs off, leaving it behind when they exit the causeway. It doesn’t really need to pursue them; it has already gained a meal. *** Having lost Severin, the group makes camp a few miles away under a tall tree. “We’re [i]not[/i] going back to bury his body,” Barouk firmly tells Kifla. “No.” “There won’t even be a body,” Gorsh opines. Kifla settles for a quiet ceremony and saying a few words about their dear friend. She cries a lot that night. *** In the morning, they talk about whether or not to go on. Jorr snorts. He makes his opinion quite clear: the goblins aren’t going away on their own, and they’ve already taken quite a few lives and caused quite a bit of trouble. If nothing is done about them, Drellin’s Ferry will continue to suffer their depredations. Kifla is melancholy, but she nods. “You’re right. He’d want us to go on.” “Well, then, let’s get to this Skull Gorge place and see what we see.” Barouk stands up, and the others follow suit. They break camp, douse the ashes of their fire and move along their way, up the Dawn Way. Jorr explains that they’ll probably reach the gorge in a few hours. “If we travel hard, probably before noon.” The track the party is following winds deeper into the woods, growing dimmer under the canopy of the trees. As the party walks, they come to a spot where a wide trail leads away from the trail to the west. A strange, massive effigy, 15’ high humanoid effigy made from a sagging, moss-covered frame, stands at the junction, looking almost like a crude, giant-sized skeleton. Birds nest in the barrel that serves the effigy as a head. “What do you make of that, Jorr?” asks Gorsh. Jorr frowns. “Giants,” he says. “It’s a marker of their territory. We want to be careful around them.” “We don’t need to go there at all, if you ask me,” grumbles Barouk. He’s right, the others agree, and they continue towards Skull Gorge. The ground begins to rise, and after a few more miles the forest itself peters out. It’s not quite noon; Jorr’s estimate was right on. Ahead is a stretch of barren ground almost sixty feet wide that ends in a gorge. The gorge looks like it’s about 100’ across at its narrowest point. A massive stone bridge crosses the gorge; at either end are a pair of massive towers. On the far side is a goblin encampment. And atop one of the towers is a green dragon. “Whoops!” exclaims Barouk. Gorsh pulls everyone else back into the woods. “Holy crap!” he hisses. “A dragon!” “I think this situation just got a lot more serious,” whispers Barouk. “I think we should report back to the town council.” “I think you’re right,” Gorsh nods. Quietly, quickly the party retreats. [i][b]Next Time:[/b][/i][b][/b] Vraath Keep! Goblins even closer to Drellin’s Ferry! *For those keeping track, I moved this encounter one river north from how it is in the [i]Red Hand of Doom[/i] adventure. This is because I went to a great deal of effort to make a full sized color battle map for the hydra encounter, and the pcs promptly went off the path to find Jorr, bypassing both it and Vraath Keep. So I moved it one river north so I would still get to use my cool props. I blush at my audacity and the meanness of my motivation. ;) **Critical hit! ***Another critical hit! [/QUOTE]
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