Session #12.6 - Meet the neighbors
After a long, comfortable rest the group left the temple of Nur. They closed the violet crystal doors behind them and proceeded back to the intersecting room with the thick brown mold growing on the ceiling. The only other exit was a hallway with a staircase leading up. Bommer scouted ahead and found that at the top of the steps the hallway continued another thirty feet and ended at a closed stone door. He crept up to it (climbing on the walls, of course) and could make out the grunting and laughing sounds beyond. Listening carefully, he couldn't make out the words but hazarded a guess that there were only a couple voices. He gave the door a quick inspection and concluded that it was probably not trapped and there was no locking mechanism.
Bommer returned to the others and filled them in on what he'd found. Based on the footprints Nigel had seen earlier (ogre-ish), everyone felt it was a reasonably safe assumption that whoever was behind that door was not going to give them a warm reception. Sneaking in was not likely to work, so they decided to take the direct approach - fling the door open and storm through.
Planning and execution are, of course, completely different animals. Rurik and Amblin were prepared to open the door and charge in first. Nigel would offer cover with arrows, Bommer would slip in along the wall, and Zalman would hold back for spell support. They turned the door's handle silently and tried to fling it open. The door opened a whole inch before hitting an obstruction.
From within the room came the sound of surprise and chairs scraping across the stone floor. Amblin and Rurik both threw their weight behind the door and managed to push it open just enough to squeeze through. Amblin led the way and two ogres promptly threw a couple javelins at him. One missed harmlessly and the other he deftly turned aside mid-air. Rurik managed to get himself stuck about halfway through the door while Bommer slipped in above him on the walls. Nigel, though the small gap in the door, caught just enough of a glimpse of one of the ogres to fire an arrow over Rurik's head. As always, the arrow struck home. Nigel savored to the delicious sound of electricity crackling off the arrow courtesy of his new magic bow Star Slayer.
Amblin engaged the closer of the two ogres, forcing it to grab the massive club it had left propped against the wall. Rurik finally squeezed through the door and joined Amblin while wielding his new axe Sleet. Zalman, from out in the hallway, summoned a couple celestial dogs to help harass the ogres. When the first ogre fell to the combined efforts of Amblin and Rurik's pounding, Bommer's flanking attack from above, Nigel's arrows, and a pack of dogs, the second ogre decided that things didn't look so good for him. He started pounding on the stone door opposite the one the group had forced open and bellowed for help.
The combined might of the group took down the second ogre with little fuss. They quickly took stock of the room's contents: a table with some coin and dice on it, three chairs, a couple stacks of javelins, a small wood barrel with water, a large stone barrel (blocking the door they'd entered), some chewed-on bones, and a pair of now dead ogres. The only exit was through another door, which Bommer was busy checking over. Like the previous one, it appeared untrapped and had no locking mechanism. In spite of the ogre pounding on it and yelling for help, neither Bommer nor Nigel could hear a sound coming from the other side.
"Continue?" Nigel asked.
"They probably know we're here," Zalman said.
"So there's no point in giving them any more time to prepare," Rurik said and started to push the next door open. Again, it was blocked from the other side by a large stone barrel. They were able to push it aside with some teamwork to reveal another dark hallway beyond. The hall made a sharp left and led up another set of stairs. At the top, it widened and firelight lit the ceiling and walls.
While the others waited downstairs, Bommer scouted ahead. The room above was long and somewhat angular, lit by a pair of torches set in the walls. An ogre was slumped over a round table near the far end of the room and two side passages branched off left and right. He silently slipped into the room and looked down each side passage, finding that both ended after a short distance in closed stone doors. He then crept up to the ogre, which he found to be breathing deeply as if asleep. A nearly empty jug of some foul liquor sitting on the table gave him a good idea that this ogre was not likely to wake easily.
Bommer noticed that Amblin had crept up the stairs behind him to see how things were going. The halfling motioned for him to bring the others up. Meanwhile, he carefully climbed up the back of the sleeping ogre's chair and quietly slit his throat. It was ruthless but effective, and he'd learned through years of scouting orc encampments that you never left a potential enemy behind if it could possibly be avoided.
When the others had arrived, Bommer checked and listened at both doors. Nothing. They checked the one to the left first and found a couple crude sleeping pallets and some personal effects. Nothing of any value or interest.
The door to the right led to another hallway running both left and right. To the right, the passage continued a short way before turning left. Down the left side, there was a door on the right side, a widened section of hallway, and then a T-intersection much further down. A couple lit torches were set in sconces along the corridor's length. Aside from the crackle of the torches, the only sound anyone could hear was a faint rhythmic drone coming from their right. Amblin poked his head around the corner down this direction and found another long hallway with four doors staggered along its length and an open room at the far end.
The group decided to continue down the left hall first. Through the door just across the hallway they found an old storeroom that had wide cracks in portions of the walls. There was little else of interest, so they continued on. The widened section of the hallway revealed a large stone door with Moradin's holy symbol inscribed upon it. Four huge steel beams embedded in stacks of stone slabs blocked the door shut.
"Hmmm, Moradin's symbol," Rurik pointed out. "I'm guessing dwarves are that way." Everyone else concurred that it was a good bet. They also agreed to inspect the rest of the immediate area first, though, as trying to get through the beams and stone would not be quiet work.
At the T-intersection, they found another corridor with many doors along its length. To the right, four doors and a collapsed hallway beyond that. To the left, five doors including one at the dead end. They checked the rooms to the right and found one to be unoccupied sleeping quarters, one full of collapsed rubble, one with rotting refuse, and the last to lead to a natural cave system. Nigel checked for tracks and found that there was considerably evidence of ogre foot traffic through the cave. Best guess was that it led to an exit above ground somewhere further inland.
They left the cave alone for now and checked the other end of the hallway. The rooms down here all appeared to be sleeping quarters, one of which was occupied by a sleeping ogre. Bommer dispatched him by climbing on the ceiling above and then gently floating down via his Ring of Featherfall. He thought it was clever, the others thought he was showboating. They said nothing, though, as he was ultimately successful in quietly dispatching the ogre.
Through the door at the end of the hallway, Bommer and Nigel could hear very faint sounds. Nothing identifiable, but it did not sound like conversation. Everyone gathered up his weapon and Rurik and Amblin flung the door open and charged. The room was long and rectangular. The only furnishing was a table laden with the rear end of a half-eaten horse carcass (it looked remarkably like one of the ones they'd left tied to a tree a day earlier). Two female ogres and a trio of infants were half dozing upon a pile of filthy rags and straw. They perked up instantly at the sound of the door opening.
There were a few moments of hesitation as the group wrestled with the moral implications behind assaulting a couple women and their children, even if they were vile ogres. The dilemma was soon resolved when the ogre females started shouting and moved to attack. Both were dispatched with minimal fuss and the infants were slain, not without a few pangs of guilt.
"Better go cover the hallway," Nigel said. "With all that yelling, anyone left is bound to come charging."
Next session: Someone comes charging.
Especially Nigel after his run in with the Dwarves of Mt. Goldforge. I felt I was given a double Christmas present since I was resurrected and not made to bring in another character. Up to this point my character had been whining about how many near-fatal encounter he had recently. I wanted to do something with Zalman's personality that would reflect a personal change due to the remarkable circumstances around dying and coming back. Z would need some "down time" where he was not fighting for his life every few minutes before he could decide what to do.
