Session 11: We Found Some Gnolls
Dramatis Personae:
Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)
Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)
Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk (Way of the Sun Soul)
Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)
Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter (Champion)
Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest))
GM - Everyone Else
26 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 27)
We headed out from Erlin very early in the morning. The kids that had fled to the city to warn them of the gnolls had traveled six or seven days on the road and a day or two (or maybe more -- they were in a panic and not paying attention) off-road. They had been able to tell us where we should leave the road, so we knew what landmarks to be looking for.
As we rode along on the loaner horses from the guard, we talked about what we collectively knew about gnolls. In addition to the very common knowledge (they often travel with hyenas and there are multiple different kinds of them) - Elderron was able to tell us that because they are, literally, demon-spawn, they generate weird effects in the area around them. The effects vary but include roaming packs of hyenas, unnatural spoilage of food, freaked out animals, strange human behavior, etc. Gnolls are destroyers -- they leave behind a swath of destruction. They don’t loot or pillage, they simply kill and destroy.
We made camp after an uneventful day of traveling. As we were choosing a spot for our camp in a large grassy area with a stand of trees in the distance, we noticed that the stand of trees looked like giant skeletons, swaying in the wind.
Vinya, Elderron, and Mia went to look at the giant skeletons, while Aldalomiel, Marxine and Lamie stayed to set up camp.
As we got closer we could see that the trees were really birch trees -- deciduous, so their leaves had fallen by mid-winter. Elderron didn’t get the sense that they were magical or that there could be a magical effect that would do this. Vinya broke off a twig. Mia had never seen birch trees that looked like this and was suspicious.
But after a bit, we realized that there was nothing here but weird looking birch trees. So we went back to where the party was camping -- cold and dark because we were actually out looking for an enemy army and wanted to break camp early in the morning.
The night passed without incident.
27 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 28)
We broke camp really early to head out quickly. The first half of the day passed without any incident at all - the road paralleled the river (more or less) and it was all quiet.
About lunch time the road went through a gulch with cliff faces on either side of it. At one point, on opposite sides, we could see carved faces on the walls of the cliff. These were not like Annam’s Face (the giant face in the cliff we saw when we first emerged from the Fomori cavern system in this part of Urnod) -- Annam’s face is a natural feature that just looks like a giant face and took on religious significance (in deep history) because of that. These are really detailed carved faces, a la Mt. Rushmore. One of them had its mouth open and was yelling. The other had its face turned slightly away and its mouth closed. The faces were different -- clearly these were representations of different people. The faces were incredibly lifelike. Their eyes were open and they were looking at each other, but there was no indication of superiority or rank between them. Marxine got the sense that these were really old carvings.
At the same time, we heard a really low-pitched sound in the air -- so low we were feeling it more than we were seeing it and it was hard to localize the source of the sound.
We also saw some fortifications at the tops of the cliffs.
Vinya rode a few steps forward and said “Hello” in all the languages she knows (Common, Elvish, and Celestial). Everyone else in the party followed suit. There was no response from the faces.
We were on the main road from Erlin to Lonoj (and then on to New Arvai, one of the biggest cities on Urnod) and there is a fair amount of traffic along it. If there were any danger or threat in this, people would know (and the road would be somewhere else). Particularly because we were only a day and a half from Erlin.
We continued on our way and the rest of the day passed without incident.
We made camp out in the open, so we could see any enemies coming toward us. The night was dark -- the new moon is only a few nights away and there was little light in the sky.
The night passed.
28 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 29)
The morning dawned a bit warmer, but dry. This was an almost springlike day, but overcast. We proceeded through a stretch of trees and dense forest. Just off the road in the middle of this dense forest was a bare patch about half an acre in size -- in the middle of that patch was something grey and large. We stopped to take a look.
The large grey thing was a gargantuan statue of a winged lizard frozen in position. The bare patch was completely bare -- not even a bit of grass or the smallest start of the forest encroaching on it. The edges of the patch were very crisp and clear -- abrupt even -- and there was nothing inside it except bare earth and the statue. The statue was shockingly realistic -- or it was originally. It now showed signs of long-term weathering and rain but it was clearly of an ancient dragon. It appeared that an ancient dragon got turned to stone during the Giant-Dragon War.
Mia couldn’t get a good handle on what was keeping the ground barren but it was utterly so -- the earth itself was hard, ossified, with a texture like sandstone, though the statue looked more like granite.
Vinya climbed up the statue to see if it let her see above the trees, but it wasn’t tall enough. So Elderron sent Oda up above the trees looking for any sign of the gnolls. He didn’t see anything.
We resumed proceeding and the rest of the day passed. We made camp in the open after the forest thinned out -- dark and cold -- and the night passed as well.
29 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 30)
We broke camp on a cold and drizzly morning. Oda flew around to take a look while we were doing so. Mia was with the horses getting them ready and the rest of us were rolling up bedrolls.
Elderron, Elama and Aldalomiel felt the ground moving and a horrible, beaked thing, a bulette, came up out of the ground on the other side of the horses. Its giant beak snapped closed, but it didn’t manage to catch or hurt the horse it was near.
Aldalomiel took a shot at it, bouncing an arrow off the thick armor between its eyes. Elama cast a guiding bolt right in its face to try and scare it away -- hitting it and setting it to sparkling and glowing. That made it easier for Elderron to hit with his chromatic orb, which he had doing acid damage. Nice.
The horses, not being stupid, scattered -- the one next to the bulette dodged away and didn’t get eaten by the monster as it fled. Four went in one direction and two in another.
Without a horse to try and eat, the bulette attacked Mia and hit her, hard. Aldalomiel did a sharpshooter shot at it, hitting for a whole lot of damage. Marxine rushed up and attacked with the new battleaxe she’d picked up in Erlin but just missed with both her main attack and her action surge.
Marxine: I’m here to be bitten.
Elama, watching Marxine’s blows bounce off the thick armor, cast bless on Aldalomiel, Vinya and Marxine.
Vinya attacked and missed with her quarterstaff, but got in a good kick at it. Elderron hit it with a higher level magic missile.
Mia moved around so that she and Vinya were flanking it, then hit it with her shillelagh. In doing so, she was hoping to be behind it and not its target.
Unfortunately, it tracked her as she moved and it attacked her again, dropping her with a huge bite from its beak.
Aldalomiel took another shot at it -- getting a critical hit with an arrow to the eye that dropped it mere moments after it dropped Mia. The arrow went through the eye and well into the brain box.
Elama rushed over and performed CPR on Mia by casting healing word on her.
While Elama was helping Mia to her feet, the rest of us rounded up the horses. Fortunately they were well-trained guard horses and hadn’t stayed panicked for long.
Mia, Elderron and Marxine rested for an hour while Vinya, Elama and Aldalomiel soothed the horses and broke camp. Then we headed out on our way.
The day passed.
In the evening, we made camp. As we were setting up, we saw something the size of a small hill floating toward us from the east about 150 feet above the ground. It was once a hill with a human-scale tower on top, but now it was uprooted from the ground and floating upside down, so the tower pointed toward the ground. The tower was broken. It was floating in a sort of random walk, but was not drifting entirely randomly or blowing with the wind.
Elderron sent Oda up to take a look at it and report back. Oda’s report conveyed that there were no floors in the tower -- it looked like it had been hundreds of years abandoned. It wasn’t clear whether it had been broken before or after it began floating upside down. The top side of the hill (what would have been the bottom when it was right-side up) looked like earth that has been ripped out of the ground. There was no sign of vegetation or life on that patch of floating earth.
Marxine: This is some wizard naughty word.
Elderron and Mia agreed -- both of them had heard about wizards floating towers using some sort of high ritual magic. Clearly something had gone wrong with the ritual, which was why it was upside-down.
Elderron: I want to go up there.
Vinya: Me too! How do we get there?
We all wanted to get up to the floating tower, except Marxine who thought it was irritatingly whimsical, but we couldn’t figure out how to get up to it. The floating island moved out of sight while we talked about it.
The night passed without incident.
30 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 31)
The next day we woke to a much colder day with snow falling. As the snow accumulated on the ground it was red.
Marxine: That’s gnoll naughty word.
Oda went up to look ahead. He saw a semi-fortified ranch about a half a day south of us, with cattle inside the walled fortification. On the very distant horizon, he saw a wisp of smoke.
We mounted up and rode hard and fast to the ranch, getting there in a couple of hours, rather than half a day. We saw a group of people on horseback moving cattle toward the fortification. We rode up to them fast, waving our arms and yelling about gnolls.
As we rode close, we saw a couple of people with crossbows on top of the wall.
We told the people on horses, most of them human though there was a half-orc and the group was led by a tiefling, that an army of gnolls was coming and they should probably get out of their way.
Tiefling: Mr. Alzey probably won’t want to leave.
They took us with them to the ranch. Once there, Elderron sent Oda up to look again to see if the gnoll army had moved in our direction since this morning. The rancher, Alzey Telsom, pointed out that armies don’t move all that quickly, not even ravaging armies. They were probably two days or more away and it would probably take us about a day to get to them.
Marxine, to the rancher: Do you know of anything between here and there?
Mr. Alzey: Our neighbors, if you like. They’re in a less defended settlement. No walls.
Elderron: They’re two days away?
Mr. Alzey: If you ride as hard as you were when you arrived here, it’d be about a day. If you’re coming back we can give you fresh horses. [looking at Mia] We even have one that will do for you.
We accepted their offer of fresh horses and headed out, riding as fast as the horses could manage. As we got closer the smoke in the sky got clearer and nearer. We also noticed that the snow fell looking like normal when it first landed but it lay on the ground bright scarlet, then it crusted over with a red-black like a scab.
As we got close, just after sunset, we stopped and tied up the horses. We talked about what we need to know for Captain Althorn in Erlin -- he wanted to know numbers, location, armor and arms, movement direction, etc.
We decided that Mia (in the form of a hyena), Vinya (with invisibility cast on her), Elderron (with Oda in the air), and Aldalomiel would go sneaking to scout the camp and get the informaiton. Elama and Marxine stayed with the horses and made a base camp, basically by sitting down and declaring the space “base camp” and making it a space Aldalomiel could lead us back to. Elama climbed into a tree. Marxine did not.
Many of the people in the stealth party stepped on twigs or immediately found a patch of dry leaves and rustled through it. Mia, with hyena senses, realized that the gnolls’ hyenas smelled like smoke and human blood and she did not. She sat down. Aldalomiel and Elderron realized they were not being quiet and sat down with her.
Vinya, invisible, was more sneaky and she went into the camp and got a good look. She counted a total of 24 hyenas, 38 gnolls, 6 human-sized walking mouths (the description the boys in Erlin gave was very accurate) with 4 legs, 4 arms and a mouth that opens vertically downward.
There was no sign of human life remaining in the settlement. The gnolls were milling about burning things and eating what they found. As she watched, Vinya saw that there were some smaller groups within the larger assembly that seemed to stick together.
She figured out there were four groups -- the main body of the army and three splinter groups. None of those groups were patrolling at this time, but if they were to send out an advance band, it would probably be one of the splinter groups. Of course, it occurred to her that there might be an advance band on the move already. Some of the gnolls were surrounded by packs of hyenas. There did appear to be some leader-types. One appeared to be in charge of each of the smaller groups and one who was in charge of the whole army, who appeared to be in charge because he was bigger and tougher looking.
They had no siege engines or complicated weapons -- they were armed with spears and poorly-made longbows. There was no sign of magic, except the maw things.
They had clearly thoroughly sacked and destroyed the ranch and were probably going to be moving on before too long. Gnolls don’t loot -- they kill and destroy and burn. If there was any treasure in this ranch it would still be in the ranch when they leave.
Vinya circled the ranch -- it was clear that they’d come from the south and were heading north. They would get to Mr. Alzey’s ranch first and then Erlin a few days after that.
She went back to where Mia, Aldalomiel and Elderron had stopped and tapped Aldalomiel on the shoulder.
Vinya: Let’s go back.
Back with the others we discussed the situation. It appeared that the smaller advance bands would leave first, heading off on different tracks heading in the same direction. If one of the advance bands found something, they’d make a lot of noise and get a lot of attention, then the other advance bands and the main body would follow.
We talked some about what we knew of gnolls, based on general knowledge we’d gained in our lives. There are some special gnolls, the ones accompanied by hyenas -- if those gnolls kill someone and the hyenas eat what they kill, the hyenas will then become gnolls. This is how they reproduce. Vinya had seen four of those gnolls with the hyena packs around them. She’d also seen several that looked really scarily fast and some that looked like they might be stealthier or sneakier than others.
It appeared that each of the advance squads included 8 gnolls, 1 demon, and 4 hyenas. Of the 8 gnolls, one was a speedy gnoll, one was a sneaky gnoll, and one was a brawny breeder gnoll.
We also had heard that everything eaten by the Maw Demons, the proper name for the walking mouths, winds out in the gullet of Yeenoghu, the demon behind, and empowering, gnolls.
We sent the information we had on the dragon paper back to Captain Althorn -- including numbers of the whole band and the various special kinds we’d seen, the structure of the army as far as the advance bands (and the composition of the advance bands). We also included that Mr. Alzey Telsom’s ranch was in their direct line of march toward Erlin and was probably going to be their next target in a day or so. We said that we were going to be at Alzey’s ranch, but if they needed us to be elsewhere, including back in Erlin, they could let us know and we’d go where told.
After sending the dragon paper on its way, we rode as hard and as fast as the horses could manage through the night back to the ranch. We got back in the morning to find that all of the cattle had been brought into the fortified compound.
1 Blizzarin 749 (Campaign day 32)
We talked with Mr. Alzey about the defense of the ranch. He said they’d have ten people on the walls with crossbows, who would then fight if the gnolls got into the enclosure. There was also Mr. Alzey, his wife, and their grown son.
Elderron: How many people were at that other place?
Mr. Alzey: There were more people, but they didn’t have walls.
Elderron: Oh.
We talked with Mr. Alzey and some of the ranch hands about whether we could find a pressure point to ambush them before they got to the walls of the ranch -- at least in part because Marxine and Vinya wouldn’t be at their most effective fighting from the top of the walls.
After some discussion, three of the hands agreed to come with us to provide fire support. But they were not going to stand and fight. If things got ugly or turned against us they were going to return to the ranch as quickly as possible. The hands knew of a place between Mr. Alzey’s and the destroyed ranch with cover and a choke point so we could set up an ambush. It even provided places where the least stealthy among us could find cover.
They led us to a gulch two miles from the ranch -- about 20 minutes to half an hour, depending on how fast we moved. The ranch hands set themselves up on a bluff about 30 feet up -- it was not an unclimbable cliff -- an athletic person with a move and a dash could get up from the base, but it gave them a good vantage point and that would give them a chance to get away if someone started heading in their direction.
The party took up positions in the brush on either side of the gulch. Vinya and Elama were on the same side the ranch hands were shooting from. Elderron, Mia and Aldalomiel were on the other side. Marxine was in a patch of brush a little closer to the direction they were going to be coming from.
After a while the gnolls arrived -- there was a big, sharp-toothed guy with four hyenas around him (a breeder gnoll), a maw demon, a speedy gnoll, a sneaky gnoll and five regular gnolls. They were absolutely not expecting an ambush, so we had them surprised for a few seconds.
Aldalomiel, from cover, took a shot at the breeder gnoll and got a good hit to kick things off. Elama moved out of the brush and got behind some rocks then dropped a shatter spell on top of the breeder and the four hyenas, killing the four hyenas immediately. The ranch hands on the top of the gulch focused their fire on the breeder, seeing where the party was attacking, and each of them hit, dropping it.
Huzzah!
Mia cast plant growth on all the remaining gnolls, and the plants around and under them got hard and spiky, making difficult and damaging terrain around them. Vinya moved across the gulch and into the brush on the other side. Marxine moved out to the edge of the spike growth and dodged, waiting for one of them to cross the spike growth and come to her. Elderron cast a web spell on some of those in the plant growth -- to space out when they could come in our direction.
Aldalomiel took a shot at the sneaky gnoll from her position in cover. Elama cast her spiritual weapon next to the same one and shot a lightning bolt out of the storm cloud, but it missed. She then hit it with a sacred flame. The crossbowmen again followed Aldalomiel and Elama’s lead and shot at the sneaky gnoll. Only one hit, but that shot dropped it.
Huzzah again!
The gnolls started shrieking and gibbering and “laughing” like hyenas.
One of the regular gnolls ran straight through the heart of the spike growth toward Marxine, ripping himself apart on the thorns and spikes, dropping a few feet from her. Another one ran through the thorns and spikes, taking a great deal of damage on the way, but made it all the way to attack Marxine, hitting her with a spear. One of the regular gnolls and the maw demon were stuck in the web and remained there, struggling against the sticky webs. Another actually had a brain cell fire and it stepped out of the spike growth by the most direct route and ran around it to get to Marxine, attacking and hitting her.
Mia stepped out of the brush and took a crossbow shot at the speedy gnoll, stuck in the spike growth and web. Vinya stepped out of the brush and attacked the smart one that had skirted the spike growth with her quarterstaff and a kick. Elderron threw a cold chromatic orb at one of the ones stuck in the web -- it breathed in the ball of cold then coughed out a cloud of ice crystals as it expired.
Marxine hit the one in front of her with her new magical axe. Despite a great and damaging hit, it stayed, swaying, in front of her, nearly dead.
The speedy gnoll, the only special one remaining, managed to get out of the webbing, but didn’t think to avoid the spike growth (or didn’t notice it). He ran forward toward the party, ripping and tearing himself apart on the spikes and dying on the way.
All that was left were two of the regular gnolls and the maw demon -- and the demon and one of the gnolls were restrained in the webbing. The one that was free to move was clearly nearly dead.
Aldalomiel took her shot at the maw demon, hitting it solidly. Elama’s spiritual weapon hit it next the lightning bolt hitting it with a great deal of force. It sagged in the web then began to turn to a nasty slimy liquid that then evaporated away.
The crossbow-wielding ranch hands focused their fire on the restrained gnoll and dropped it.
The last gnoll tried to keep up the yipping and gibbering but looked distressed and didn’t manage much volume. He also didn’t manage to hit Marxine. Mia dropped it with a crossbow bolt.
In all, the advance party managed a round of the yipping and chortling. And, of course, there was Elama’s shatter spell.
We listened to hear if more were coming.
We heard that same shrieking and yipping coming from a path off to the right of the gulch, heading this way and maybe a quarter mile away.
We were discussing whether to try to take out another advance party here or retreat back to the ranch. (Note: I think we’d decided to retreat back toward the ranch.)
Dramatis Personae:
Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger (Hunter Conclave)
Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)
Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk (Way of the Sun Soul)
Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)
Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter (Champion)
Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest))
GM - Everyone Else
26 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 27)
We headed out from Erlin very early in the morning. The kids that had fled to the city to warn them of the gnolls had traveled six or seven days on the road and a day or two (or maybe more -- they were in a panic and not paying attention) off-road. They had been able to tell us where we should leave the road, so we knew what landmarks to be looking for.
As we rode along on the loaner horses from the guard, we talked about what we collectively knew about gnolls. In addition to the very common knowledge (they often travel with hyenas and there are multiple different kinds of them) - Elderron was able to tell us that because they are, literally, demon-spawn, they generate weird effects in the area around them. The effects vary but include roaming packs of hyenas, unnatural spoilage of food, freaked out animals, strange human behavior, etc. Gnolls are destroyers -- they leave behind a swath of destruction. They don’t loot or pillage, they simply kill and destroy.
We made camp after an uneventful day of traveling. As we were choosing a spot for our camp in a large grassy area with a stand of trees in the distance, we noticed that the stand of trees looked like giant skeletons, swaying in the wind.
Vinya, Elderron, and Mia went to look at the giant skeletons, while Aldalomiel, Marxine and Lamie stayed to set up camp.
As we got closer we could see that the trees were really birch trees -- deciduous, so their leaves had fallen by mid-winter. Elderron didn’t get the sense that they were magical or that there could be a magical effect that would do this. Vinya broke off a twig. Mia had never seen birch trees that looked like this and was suspicious.
But after a bit, we realized that there was nothing here but weird looking birch trees. So we went back to where the party was camping -- cold and dark because we were actually out looking for an enemy army and wanted to break camp early in the morning.
The night passed without incident.
27 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 28)
We broke camp really early to head out quickly. The first half of the day passed without any incident at all - the road paralleled the river (more or less) and it was all quiet.
About lunch time the road went through a gulch with cliff faces on either side of it. At one point, on opposite sides, we could see carved faces on the walls of the cliff. These were not like Annam’s Face (the giant face in the cliff we saw when we first emerged from the Fomori cavern system in this part of Urnod) -- Annam’s face is a natural feature that just looks like a giant face and took on religious significance (in deep history) because of that. These are really detailed carved faces, a la Mt. Rushmore. One of them had its mouth open and was yelling. The other had its face turned slightly away and its mouth closed. The faces were different -- clearly these were representations of different people. The faces were incredibly lifelike. Their eyes were open and they were looking at each other, but there was no indication of superiority or rank between them. Marxine got the sense that these were really old carvings.
At the same time, we heard a really low-pitched sound in the air -- so low we were feeling it more than we were seeing it and it was hard to localize the source of the sound.
We also saw some fortifications at the tops of the cliffs.
Vinya rode a few steps forward and said “Hello” in all the languages she knows (Common, Elvish, and Celestial). Everyone else in the party followed suit. There was no response from the faces.
We were on the main road from Erlin to Lonoj (and then on to New Arvai, one of the biggest cities on Urnod) and there is a fair amount of traffic along it. If there were any danger or threat in this, people would know (and the road would be somewhere else). Particularly because we were only a day and a half from Erlin.
We continued on our way and the rest of the day passed without incident.
We made camp out in the open, so we could see any enemies coming toward us. The night was dark -- the new moon is only a few nights away and there was little light in the sky.
The night passed.
28 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 29)
The morning dawned a bit warmer, but dry. This was an almost springlike day, but overcast. We proceeded through a stretch of trees and dense forest. Just off the road in the middle of this dense forest was a bare patch about half an acre in size -- in the middle of that patch was something grey and large. We stopped to take a look.
The large grey thing was a gargantuan statue of a winged lizard frozen in position. The bare patch was completely bare -- not even a bit of grass or the smallest start of the forest encroaching on it. The edges of the patch were very crisp and clear -- abrupt even -- and there was nothing inside it except bare earth and the statue. The statue was shockingly realistic -- or it was originally. It now showed signs of long-term weathering and rain but it was clearly of an ancient dragon. It appeared that an ancient dragon got turned to stone during the Giant-Dragon War.
Mia couldn’t get a good handle on what was keeping the ground barren but it was utterly so -- the earth itself was hard, ossified, with a texture like sandstone, though the statue looked more like granite.
Vinya climbed up the statue to see if it let her see above the trees, but it wasn’t tall enough. So Elderron sent Oda up above the trees looking for any sign of the gnolls. He didn’t see anything.
We resumed proceeding and the rest of the day passed. We made camp in the open after the forest thinned out -- dark and cold -- and the night passed as well.
29 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 30)
We broke camp on a cold and drizzly morning. Oda flew around to take a look while we were doing so. Mia was with the horses getting them ready and the rest of us were rolling up bedrolls.
Elderron, Elama and Aldalomiel felt the ground moving and a horrible, beaked thing, a bulette, came up out of the ground on the other side of the horses. Its giant beak snapped closed, but it didn’t manage to catch or hurt the horse it was near.
Aldalomiel took a shot at it, bouncing an arrow off the thick armor between its eyes. Elama cast a guiding bolt right in its face to try and scare it away -- hitting it and setting it to sparkling and glowing. That made it easier for Elderron to hit with his chromatic orb, which he had doing acid damage. Nice.
The horses, not being stupid, scattered -- the one next to the bulette dodged away and didn’t get eaten by the monster as it fled. Four went in one direction and two in another.
Without a horse to try and eat, the bulette attacked Mia and hit her, hard. Aldalomiel did a sharpshooter shot at it, hitting for a whole lot of damage. Marxine rushed up and attacked with the new battleaxe she’d picked up in Erlin but just missed with both her main attack and her action surge.
Marxine: I’m here to be bitten.
Elama, watching Marxine’s blows bounce off the thick armor, cast bless on Aldalomiel, Vinya and Marxine.
Vinya attacked and missed with her quarterstaff, but got in a good kick at it. Elderron hit it with a higher level magic missile.
Mia moved around so that she and Vinya were flanking it, then hit it with her shillelagh. In doing so, she was hoping to be behind it and not its target.
Unfortunately, it tracked her as she moved and it attacked her again, dropping her with a huge bite from its beak.
Aldalomiel took another shot at it -- getting a critical hit with an arrow to the eye that dropped it mere moments after it dropped Mia. The arrow went through the eye and well into the brain box.
Elama rushed over and performed CPR on Mia by casting healing word on her.
While Elama was helping Mia to her feet, the rest of us rounded up the horses. Fortunately they were well-trained guard horses and hadn’t stayed panicked for long.
Mia, Elderron and Marxine rested for an hour while Vinya, Elama and Aldalomiel soothed the horses and broke camp. Then we headed out on our way.
The day passed.
In the evening, we made camp. As we were setting up, we saw something the size of a small hill floating toward us from the east about 150 feet above the ground. It was once a hill with a human-scale tower on top, but now it was uprooted from the ground and floating upside down, so the tower pointed toward the ground. The tower was broken. It was floating in a sort of random walk, but was not drifting entirely randomly or blowing with the wind.
Elderron sent Oda up to take a look at it and report back. Oda’s report conveyed that there were no floors in the tower -- it looked like it had been hundreds of years abandoned. It wasn’t clear whether it had been broken before or after it began floating upside down. The top side of the hill (what would have been the bottom when it was right-side up) looked like earth that has been ripped out of the ground. There was no sign of vegetation or life on that patch of floating earth.
Marxine: This is some wizard naughty word.
Elderron and Mia agreed -- both of them had heard about wizards floating towers using some sort of high ritual magic. Clearly something had gone wrong with the ritual, which was why it was upside-down.
Elderron: I want to go up there.
Vinya: Me too! How do we get there?
We all wanted to get up to the floating tower, except Marxine who thought it was irritatingly whimsical, but we couldn’t figure out how to get up to it. The floating island moved out of sight while we talked about it.
The night passed without incident.
30 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 31)
The next day we woke to a much colder day with snow falling. As the snow accumulated on the ground it was red.
Marxine: That’s gnoll naughty word.
Oda went up to look ahead. He saw a semi-fortified ranch about a half a day south of us, with cattle inside the walled fortification. On the very distant horizon, he saw a wisp of smoke.
We mounted up and rode hard and fast to the ranch, getting there in a couple of hours, rather than half a day. We saw a group of people on horseback moving cattle toward the fortification. We rode up to them fast, waving our arms and yelling about gnolls.
As we rode close, we saw a couple of people with crossbows on top of the wall.
We told the people on horses, most of them human though there was a half-orc and the group was led by a tiefling, that an army of gnolls was coming and they should probably get out of their way.
Tiefling: Mr. Alzey probably won’t want to leave.
They took us with them to the ranch. Once there, Elderron sent Oda up to look again to see if the gnoll army had moved in our direction since this morning. The rancher, Alzey Telsom, pointed out that armies don’t move all that quickly, not even ravaging armies. They were probably two days or more away and it would probably take us about a day to get to them.
Marxine, to the rancher: Do you know of anything between here and there?
Mr. Alzey: Our neighbors, if you like. They’re in a less defended settlement. No walls.
Elderron: They’re two days away?
Mr. Alzey: If you ride as hard as you were when you arrived here, it’d be about a day. If you’re coming back we can give you fresh horses. [looking at Mia] We even have one that will do for you.
We accepted their offer of fresh horses and headed out, riding as fast as the horses could manage. As we got closer the smoke in the sky got clearer and nearer. We also noticed that the snow fell looking like normal when it first landed but it lay on the ground bright scarlet, then it crusted over with a red-black like a scab.
As we got close, just after sunset, we stopped and tied up the horses. We talked about what we need to know for Captain Althorn in Erlin -- he wanted to know numbers, location, armor and arms, movement direction, etc.
We decided that Mia (in the form of a hyena), Vinya (with invisibility cast on her), Elderron (with Oda in the air), and Aldalomiel would go sneaking to scout the camp and get the informaiton. Elama and Marxine stayed with the horses and made a base camp, basically by sitting down and declaring the space “base camp” and making it a space Aldalomiel could lead us back to. Elama climbed into a tree. Marxine did not.
Many of the people in the stealth party stepped on twigs or immediately found a patch of dry leaves and rustled through it. Mia, with hyena senses, realized that the gnolls’ hyenas smelled like smoke and human blood and she did not. She sat down. Aldalomiel and Elderron realized they were not being quiet and sat down with her.
Vinya, invisible, was more sneaky and she went into the camp and got a good look. She counted a total of 24 hyenas, 38 gnolls, 6 human-sized walking mouths (the description the boys in Erlin gave was very accurate) with 4 legs, 4 arms and a mouth that opens vertically downward.
There was no sign of human life remaining in the settlement. The gnolls were milling about burning things and eating what they found. As she watched, Vinya saw that there were some smaller groups within the larger assembly that seemed to stick together.
She figured out there were four groups -- the main body of the army and three splinter groups. None of those groups were patrolling at this time, but if they were to send out an advance band, it would probably be one of the splinter groups. Of course, it occurred to her that there might be an advance band on the move already. Some of the gnolls were surrounded by packs of hyenas. There did appear to be some leader-types. One appeared to be in charge of each of the smaller groups and one who was in charge of the whole army, who appeared to be in charge because he was bigger and tougher looking.
They had no siege engines or complicated weapons -- they were armed with spears and poorly-made longbows. There was no sign of magic, except the maw things.
They had clearly thoroughly sacked and destroyed the ranch and were probably going to be moving on before too long. Gnolls don’t loot -- they kill and destroy and burn. If there was any treasure in this ranch it would still be in the ranch when they leave.
Vinya circled the ranch -- it was clear that they’d come from the south and were heading north. They would get to Mr. Alzey’s ranch first and then Erlin a few days after that.
She went back to where Mia, Aldalomiel and Elderron had stopped and tapped Aldalomiel on the shoulder.
Vinya: Let’s go back.
Back with the others we discussed the situation. It appeared that the smaller advance bands would leave first, heading off on different tracks heading in the same direction. If one of the advance bands found something, they’d make a lot of noise and get a lot of attention, then the other advance bands and the main body would follow.
We talked some about what we knew of gnolls, based on general knowledge we’d gained in our lives. There are some special gnolls, the ones accompanied by hyenas -- if those gnolls kill someone and the hyenas eat what they kill, the hyenas will then become gnolls. This is how they reproduce. Vinya had seen four of those gnolls with the hyena packs around them. She’d also seen several that looked really scarily fast and some that looked like they might be stealthier or sneakier than others.
It appeared that each of the advance squads included 8 gnolls, 1 demon, and 4 hyenas. Of the 8 gnolls, one was a speedy gnoll, one was a sneaky gnoll, and one was a brawny breeder gnoll.
We also had heard that everything eaten by the Maw Demons, the proper name for the walking mouths, winds out in the gullet of Yeenoghu, the demon behind, and empowering, gnolls.
We sent the information we had on the dragon paper back to Captain Althorn -- including numbers of the whole band and the various special kinds we’d seen, the structure of the army as far as the advance bands (and the composition of the advance bands). We also included that Mr. Alzey Telsom’s ranch was in their direct line of march toward Erlin and was probably going to be their next target in a day or so. We said that we were going to be at Alzey’s ranch, but if they needed us to be elsewhere, including back in Erlin, they could let us know and we’d go where told.
After sending the dragon paper on its way, we rode as hard and as fast as the horses could manage through the night back to the ranch. We got back in the morning to find that all of the cattle had been brought into the fortified compound.
1 Blizzarin 749 (Campaign day 32)
We talked with Mr. Alzey about the defense of the ranch. He said they’d have ten people on the walls with crossbows, who would then fight if the gnolls got into the enclosure. There was also Mr. Alzey, his wife, and their grown son.
Elderron: How many people were at that other place?
Mr. Alzey: There were more people, but they didn’t have walls.
Elderron: Oh.
We talked with Mr. Alzey and some of the ranch hands about whether we could find a pressure point to ambush them before they got to the walls of the ranch -- at least in part because Marxine and Vinya wouldn’t be at their most effective fighting from the top of the walls.
After some discussion, three of the hands agreed to come with us to provide fire support. But they were not going to stand and fight. If things got ugly or turned against us they were going to return to the ranch as quickly as possible. The hands knew of a place between Mr. Alzey’s and the destroyed ranch with cover and a choke point so we could set up an ambush. It even provided places where the least stealthy among us could find cover.
They led us to a gulch two miles from the ranch -- about 20 minutes to half an hour, depending on how fast we moved. The ranch hands set themselves up on a bluff about 30 feet up -- it was not an unclimbable cliff -- an athletic person with a move and a dash could get up from the base, but it gave them a good vantage point and that would give them a chance to get away if someone started heading in their direction.
The party took up positions in the brush on either side of the gulch. Vinya and Elama were on the same side the ranch hands were shooting from. Elderron, Mia and Aldalomiel were on the other side. Marxine was in a patch of brush a little closer to the direction they were going to be coming from.
After a while the gnolls arrived -- there was a big, sharp-toothed guy with four hyenas around him (a breeder gnoll), a maw demon, a speedy gnoll, a sneaky gnoll and five regular gnolls. They were absolutely not expecting an ambush, so we had them surprised for a few seconds.
Aldalomiel, from cover, took a shot at the breeder gnoll and got a good hit to kick things off. Elama moved out of the brush and got behind some rocks then dropped a shatter spell on top of the breeder and the four hyenas, killing the four hyenas immediately. The ranch hands on the top of the gulch focused their fire on the breeder, seeing where the party was attacking, and each of them hit, dropping it.
Huzzah!
Mia cast plant growth on all the remaining gnolls, and the plants around and under them got hard and spiky, making difficult and damaging terrain around them. Vinya moved across the gulch and into the brush on the other side. Marxine moved out to the edge of the spike growth and dodged, waiting for one of them to cross the spike growth and come to her. Elderron cast a web spell on some of those in the plant growth -- to space out when they could come in our direction.
Aldalomiel took a shot at the sneaky gnoll from her position in cover. Elama cast her spiritual weapon next to the same one and shot a lightning bolt out of the storm cloud, but it missed. She then hit it with a sacred flame. The crossbowmen again followed Aldalomiel and Elama’s lead and shot at the sneaky gnoll. Only one hit, but that shot dropped it.
Huzzah again!
The gnolls started shrieking and gibbering and “laughing” like hyenas.
One of the regular gnolls ran straight through the heart of the spike growth toward Marxine, ripping himself apart on the thorns and spikes, dropping a few feet from her. Another one ran through the thorns and spikes, taking a great deal of damage on the way, but made it all the way to attack Marxine, hitting her with a spear. One of the regular gnolls and the maw demon were stuck in the web and remained there, struggling against the sticky webs. Another actually had a brain cell fire and it stepped out of the spike growth by the most direct route and ran around it to get to Marxine, attacking and hitting her.
Mia stepped out of the brush and took a crossbow shot at the speedy gnoll, stuck in the spike growth and web. Vinya stepped out of the brush and attacked the smart one that had skirted the spike growth with her quarterstaff and a kick. Elderron threw a cold chromatic orb at one of the ones stuck in the web -- it breathed in the ball of cold then coughed out a cloud of ice crystals as it expired.
Marxine hit the one in front of her with her new magical axe. Despite a great and damaging hit, it stayed, swaying, in front of her, nearly dead.
The speedy gnoll, the only special one remaining, managed to get out of the webbing, but didn’t think to avoid the spike growth (or didn’t notice it). He ran forward toward the party, ripping and tearing himself apart on the spikes and dying on the way.
All that was left were two of the regular gnolls and the maw demon -- and the demon and one of the gnolls were restrained in the webbing. The one that was free to move was clearly nearly dead.
Aldalomiel took her shot at the maw demon, hitting it solidly. Elama’s spiritual weapon hit it next the lightning bolt hitting it with a great deal of force. It sagged in the web then began to turn to a nasty slimy liquid that then evaporated away.
The crossbow-wielding ranch hands focused their fire on the restrained gnoll and dropped it.
The last gnoll tried to keep up the yipping and gibbering but looked distressed and didn’t manage much volume. He also didn’t manage to hit Marxine. Mia dropped it with a crossbow bolt.
In all, the advance party managed a round of the yipping and chortling. And, of course, there was Elama’s shatter spell.
We listened to hear if more were coming.
We heard that same shrieking and yipping coming from a path off to the right of the gulch, heading this way and maybe a quarter mile away.
We were discussing whether to try to take out another advance party here or retreat back to the ranch. (Note: I think we’d decided to retreat back toward the ranch.)
:gestures to the large wrapped shape on the wagon:
