Friday, May 31, 2019

Lark's Landing, Episode 69

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.


7th of Waning Fall, 1AL

Spurred onward by the bold knowledge that orcs were fleeing from them, the 3rd Watch decide to press on into the castle. The first descend the stairs they found into the lower regions of the castle, where they're surprised to find a number of dead orc not killed by them - and killed before they ever found the castle, as far as they can tell. They press on down the corridors, finding a room full of barred cells that Extang and Quib recognize. Something about this place fills Logan with dread and he begins looking everywhere for brains on legs.

They know that there's an entrance into a secret room on the far side, but they can't find a way to open it. Extang teleports through to open it, and they retrieve their immovable rod that has been holding the hatch shut. They head back out, exploring down a tunnel, finding another room with a summoning circle, then a room with statues of dueling wizards in opposite corners. While some of the others attempt to figure out what's going on, Logan gets bored and blunders through the room, dragging along Patrick who tries to stop him. As he crosses between the stone wizards, a blast of fire fills the room, spilling out into the halls and burning everyone.

After this, they advance with far more caution. Extang is able to mar the runes enchanting the statues, allowing them to pass through into the passages in beyond. After a little more exploring, they come across the corpses of some monsters that they did kill, and they realize they're close to the area where they were first transported down into these dungeons. They decide that they want to go back to the upper levels, but they need to rest and treat their wounds first, so they retreat to the secret room to do that. Then they head back up and quietly head across the wide hall in the direction they had seen orcs fleeing. They progress through two rooms and out into a hallway with multiple branches and more rooms. They find a room that looks like it had some kind of meal that had been interrupted, then progress down a hall towards a door in a curved wall, with a stone circle containing the image of a flame above the door.

Everyone else backs off while Extang begins ritually casting his detect magic spell, but before he finishes it, the door opens. The orcs inside seem a little surprised to find them, but several of them charge out of the room to attack anyway - and someone in the room sounds a horn that echos through the hallway and brings more orcs charging in from behind, surrounding them and trapping the 3rd Watch in the hallway.

The first wave of orcs is cleared fairly quickly, giving the group a bit of maneuvering room and opening a path for retreat, but more monsters come rushing in to replace the fallen. The battle is getting rough, but doesn't seem to be going too badly, until more orcs arrive from their retreat route - riding dire wolves, on one on the back of a large white wolf with a painful icy breath. Quib manages to stun some of the orcs and wolves, and T'Zaric is able to take out a number of them with a fireball, but it doesn't seem to be enough. Patrick falls unconscious, and the 3rd Watch decide that it is once again time to retreat. Extang calls this out and gets himself to Quib's side, and Quib teleports them out of the castle. Logan revives Patrick, who, seeing T'Zaric grab Fieaorri and teleporting away, uses his magic cape to teleport himself and Logan out into the dark of night.


And that brings an end to this week's game session. Come back next week to find out what happens in Episode 70.

No comments:

Post a Comment