Colonial Caerdia: Lark's Landing is a story being told through a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running at a local hobby shop called the Devil's Bench. If you aren't familiar with this ongoing story, you can follow this link to Once Upon a Tabletop on YouTube to hear the start of it or read the brief summary I wrote when I switched from video to blog.
You can find the previous episode here.
4th of Waxing Fall, 1AL
It is the middle of the night, and Port Noble appears to be under attack. T'Zaric, leaving his own house to find that the outer of the two palisade walls has been breached, flies off to meet with the rest of the 3rd Watch, guessing that they'll be on the way to join the fray. En route, he spots a number of the blue-green finned creatures quietly rising out of the limestone pool that serves as the village's water source - inside the inner wall. He spots Extang, Fiaeorri, Quib, and Logan running down the hill and reports to them what he's seen. They decide to head to deal with the creatures in the pool first, then head for the breach in the outer wall. As they run, Extang begins sending out magical messages to Patrick, hoping to let him know where the rest of them are going.
Patrick, on the other, rushes out of his home to see armed people running towards a fire-lit night sky, and civilians running the other way. He tries to get his guardian to join him in rushing towards the trouble, but Saul insists he's too and and heads into town. Unarmored and clad in a nightie, Patrick charges towards the trouble - until he gets a message from Extang redirecting him to the limestone pools.
The 3rd Watch arrive at the at the pool from opposite directions, finding what looks like a stealthy incursion by eight of these blue-green, aquatic, trident-wielding creatures - led by a large one with four arms. Extang hops into a roof with his magic boots, casting haste on Fiaeorri and Logan, while T'Zaric flies into the air and pelts the big one with fire and Patrick weakens a few with a curse. Quib dazzles almost all of the creatures with a spell, then Logan runs in and releases a blast of fire from his axe that kills 3 of of the creatures, following up with a swing of the axe that finishes off the big one with a blast of smiting energy. With half the enemies dead, Fiaeorri and the others step in and finish off the rest.
The conversation turns to methods for preventing more enemies from entering this way - with Fiaeorri diving into the water to find out more. She swims down, feeling along the limestone walls, and emerges to report that there are multiple large passages down below - as well as a strong current deeper down. They decide they don't have time to deal with this problem, so since there don't appear to be any other forces coming this way, they make for the burning buildings and the breach in the wall.
Knowing that time is of the essence, they go over the inner wall rather than going all the way to the gate - using flight and jumping magic. Once everyone has been ferried over, T'Zaric takes to the air, lobbing fire bolts at any of the invading troops he sees inside the village and guiding the others towards the breach. Then he sees a pair of large somethings flying towards him. As they get closer, he recognizes them as sharks and makes a beeline for his friends on the ground - tossing a fireball at the flying sharks as he goes - but they still reach him before he hits the ground, sinking teeth into him.
Seeing dark shapes in the sky accosting T'Zaric, and knowing his companion's own methods, Extang also launches a fireball at the sharks - trusting in T'Zaric to be able to survive. The second fireball is enough to kill the sharks, which fall to the ground, followed by a heavily wounded T'Zaric who looks very shaken. He drinks a healing potion and Patrick heals him a little, then they continue on their way - keeping close to the ground now.
They easily fight their way through some smaller groups of the creatures before arriving at the breach, which is being held by Hargrom and the militia. The 3rd Watch quickly augment the defenses with some spells, while T'Zaric peeks over the wall. He sees, off on the beach, a group of the aquatic creatures around three of the large, four-armed ones, and sends a powerful fireball at them. This kills off many of the smaller ones, but it also draws a lot of attention to T'Zaric.
Seven sharks of varying sizes - one of them huge - come flying straight for the breach, two of them with riders. Two go straight for T'Zaric, while the others attack the group defending the breach. Extang polymorphs Logan and Quib into giant apes, uses the magical coin he received on his birthday to turn invisible, and jumps over the wall to try to support T'Zaric's assault on what they believe to be the generals of the invaders - however, he needs to get much closer to see them in the dark of night. His magical gem that provides him with enough light to see marks him for his enemies, but, looking like nothing more than a disembodied light, he is hard for those he runs past to hit.
At the breach, the sharks are slowly weakened, but so are the 3rd Watch and the militia. Then one of the sharks goes down when its rider is killed, flopping uselessly on the ground. Inspired, they kill the rider on the largest shark, which falls - and is caught by the two apes, then thrown to block the breach. The rest of the sharks are fended off as the charging army comes up against this latest barrier. Fiaeorri uses her magic whistle to fly up to the top of the wall and attempt to put a group of the invaders to sleep - however, only one is affected by the spell.
T'Zaric peeks over the wall to see that the 'generals' have spread out, but he sees Extang's fireball hit two of them and their surrounding minions, and he sends another fireball of his own over to hit the same two. The one remaining of the three 'generals' retreats into the ocean - and, somehow, the rest of the invading force gets the message and begins to flee.
The two temporary giant apes vault the shark to pursue the fleeing enemies. Patrick summons up a storm, raining lightning down upon the beach. Fiaeorri flies down on the other side of the palisade and charms the sleeping blue-green creature, then wakes it up. Extang and T'Zaric make straight for the two dead 'generals', looting the treasures they have - and as the last of the sharks fly back down into the water where they belong, Patrick heads back to the limestone pool to find some treasure on the large creature defeated there.
And that brings an end to this week's game. Join us next week to find out what happens in Episode 57.
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