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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4883965" data-attributes="member: 99">The PC's navigated their way deep into the swamp and located the lizardfolk village where the elven slaves were supposedly being held.  Landing the ship in a clearing a short hike away from the village, they approached with as much stealth as they could muster and managed to avoid any patrols on their way in.  But they were spotted by guards as soon as they set foot at the edge of the village proper.The group held up well under the continuous fire of blowgun darts from the tops of the guard buildings.  But they also found themselves confronted with much larger, black-scaled lizardmen with greatclubs.  These brought them to a halt and the battle was soon joined by a Lizardman mystic whose magic enveloped them with clouds of swamp gas.Astavian charged into a group of the enemy near the western guard post while Zanne and Eshik dealt with the ones to the east.  Mialain used the magic of her new bow to set the roof of the western guard post aflame.  Zanne waded in among them with her Armor of Agathys harming all who came near and the last of them near the eastern guard post fell to Eshik's twin blades.  They then pressed to the western post where Astavian was hard at battle against foes who were replaced by more minions faster than he could fell them.Finally, pressing ever closer to the palisade cage where they could see the elven prisoners, Eshik dodged between the groups of enemies and with a pair of powerful strikes he felled the Mystic and then sliced through the door of the cage.  Their spiritual leader slain, the Lizardfolk lost their nerve and retreated beyond the edges of the village.Upon their release, the Elves told the PC's that they had been frequently bled by their captors.  This blood was collected in large buckets and these were taken from the village approximately once a month by a trio of blue-scaled draconic centaurs.  Upon searching the party discovered that some of the Lizardfolk warriors wore leather thong necklaces with a single, large, blue scale strung on them.There was little time for talk however as they needed to evacuate the dozen freed Elves as quickly as possible.  They armed them with a few spears they gathered from the dead Lizardfolk and grouped the Elves into a column for the march through the swamp back to the airship.  Formed up like this and with Eshik acting as a rear-guard, they headed back into the swamps.They were barely beyond sight of the village when they were ambushed by another pair of blowgunners, one of the large, black-scaled warriors and another Mystic.  Zanne almost immediately engulfed the Mystic and his Blackscale bodyguard with the Hunger of Hadar, but they quickly retreated from it and were able to use it as cover.  Cancelling the spell revealed the Mystic doing some sort of ritual.  Mialain allowed him to complete only part of it before his concentration was disrupted by a pair of her arrow.  Eshik and Astavian found it nearly impossible to close with the enemy.  A combination of the shin deep water and mud beneath as well as the poisonous darts of the blowguns making them lethargic meant that they were sometimes only lurching forward a couple steps at a time.  Finally they managed to cover the distance and engate the Blackscale and Mystic while still under fire from the blowgunners.  Their combined might with that of the spellcasters was able to fell first the Blackscale and then the Mystic.No sooner had the Mystic's body fallen into the swamp than it began to bubble and seethe with greenish energy.  Seconds later a massive form of vines and roots erupted from the muddy water and attacked them.  Eshik was pulled entirely inside the creature and his unconscious body fell beside it after a moment.  Mialain rushed to his side and channeled her healing magic into him while Astavian chopped at the swamp thing.  Zanne continued to hurl fiery blasts at the creature and finally it fell back into the swamp.Exhausted and wounded, they dragged themselves back to the airship and got the Elves fed and given fresh water.  They took to the air but it was far from a comfortable flight.  In order not to interfere with Llyra and the trio of elven crewmen, most of the rescued Elves were crammed belowdeck.  Still, fatigued from the slog through the swamp and shaking off the effects of the Lizardfolk poison, the PC's fell rapidly to sleep.Their awakening was rather rude as the ship bounced and crashed along the treetops of the swamp.  As they cast about for what was causing this, Astavian immediately sensed that something was wrong.  His pack lay open beside him and many of the contents were laying on the deck.  The Seal of the High Priest was missing!They bolted up on deck and found the crew trying to get control over the ship.  Grabbing one of the nearby Elf crew they demanded an answer."Peren was on watch!  I don't know why he lost control of the ship but I saw his eyes glowing a weird green color!  He went over the side on a rope!"Llyra quickly got the ship under control but Astavian was at her side in an instant.  "Take us down, NOW!  That Elf took something of mine and I'm going after it!!"*******Ok so a good bit of stuff to comment on this time.So I came up with this notion that the most interesting part of the "rescue the prisoners" situation was protecting the fragile (minion) prisoners on the way to the airship.  So I made a Skill Challenge where, if successful, they could simply pay a couple Healing Surges to have already made it to the cage where the prisoners were held.  Then the rest of the fight would be them fighting a running battle from the center of the village to the airship.  Sound cool?  It did to me.They totally failed the Skill Challenge.They made like one successful roll followed by three really bad ones in a row.  I said to myself, "Well, they are busted."  And so they battled their way into the village rather than out of it.  Ah well, the best laid plans and all that.I still got a bit of what I was after by ambushing them in the swamp by a smaller force of Lizardfolk.  The somewhat amusing (if you're not my players) part of this was that they fought probably around 18 enemies in the village fight with no real problems.  About 8 of the 18 were minions, who would show up every round, 2 at a time, to join the fight until the Mystic was dead.  Regardless, they were up against tough odds and came through it fine.Not so against the 4 enemies in the swamp.  The Difficult Terrain combined with the Slow of the poison and the Immobilize and Daze effects the Marsh Mystic could unleash meant that the melee types had a hell of a time trying to close with the enemy.  Added to that was the fact that the dice went very cold on them.  It was a big pain in the butt and rather frustrating to the PC's involved.  Then of course was the Shambling Mound.  Fortunately I decided that since Mialain had disrupted the ritual (including a crit from her bow) that the Mystic failed to actually summon the Shambling Mound and instead would turn into one upon death and that it would only have half normal hit points.  Still Eshik would have died if he hadn't made the save vs. the Shambling Mound.  Finally they made it through that fight and got back to the ship.The bit with Peren stealing the Seal of the High Priest was handle via exposition.  That was pretty frustrating to Astavian's player, especially on the heels of that fight.  In retrospect I might have handled that differently given the circumstances but I reasoned that the PC's were really tired from all the fighting and also, with all the Elves crammed in around them, they wouldn't notice somebody rifling the pack.  Also I had the advantage of knowing that this was going to lead to some really cool stuff coming up while the players (especially Riggs) didn't.So it was a bit of a mixed bag from a GMing perspective but live and learn I suppose.</blockquote>

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