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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3067057" data-attributes="member: 8158">OK, so here's how it went down:They encountered the half-orc Havarak, who volunteered to act as their guide to Xul Jarak (for a small fee). Instead of pitching the manticore encounter at them, I went ahead and had the wyvern go out for a night's hunting. It was dispatched without much ado.Once arriving in the vicinity of Xul Jarak, they opted for the disguise route. A handful of hapless orcs donated their raiments to the cause--posthumously of course. The party got through the gate. Fearing that the kenku would not pass for much of an orc, they had him brought in as a prisoner. Vhazaar called forward the party's nominal leader (the party rogue) along with the prisoner, and began asking the two some pointed questions. Then he belted the kenku with the flat of his blade and told the rogue to finish the job. Thus begain the rolling of initiative. Now, the party might well have died here with Vhazaar, the ogre, the sergeants, brutes, archers, berserkers, and warriors amassed in the courtyard (as per the reaction SoG prescribes for PC's attempting to enter as ersatz orcs) if it were not for a new party member--a 4th-level sorcerer with web. That held Vhazaar and many of the others down, and the party tore into the rest. Especially effective was the polearm fighter with Combat Expertise and Deft Opportuinist. The big problem was that A) in adopting the disguises, they had to don crappy armor, and B) the party's chief damage dealer (Cleric/Barbarian) had a pitiful AC anyway. Reduced to 12 after raging, he kept taking hit after hit. And being the party's only divine caster, he had nobody to prop him up. He died.When Vhazaar finally got loose from the web and flew into a rage, the swashbuckler and rogue made good use of Combat Expertise to avoid getting nailed, and wore him down over successive rounds. After all was said and done, there was one casualty, and one utterly depleted sorcerer. A quick search of the fortress' first level indicated they had practically cleared it out. The one big blunder came when the rogue saw the gleaming red gem in the statue of Gruumsh's eye. He checked for traps, but that didn't help him detect the curse of the eye. A failed Will save resulted in a sulking rogue who felt that a -4 penalty utterly ruined the character. insisting that he had to head back to town to have this problem curse removed post-haste. After numerous attempts to rid himself of the curse and convince the DM that the best thing for everyone would be if the problem just went away, the party finally pressed on, at which point they encountered the Zhent priest and his guard. I found it unbelievable that it genuinely didn't occur to the rogue that the priest might provide his salvation. After antagonizing the Zhents repeatedly, it was finally pointed out to him, at which time the gem (worth 5000 gp, though it remained unappraised) was offered as compensation. The Zhents accepted the deal, content to show some profit for this fiasco as well as depart with their skins intact. They also killed the Roving Eye mountain orcs. One they had captured and tried to interrogat it, but he knew little and was too feral to expect anything but death. Which he got. It was obvious the party was dumbfounded that such a huge encounter would take place so early on. They swung back and forth from raucous laugther to surly frustration. I probably should've stopped once the rogue got cursed so he got react with renewed gusto the next session.</blockquote>

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