GACKS AAR: Session 5

GACKS AAR: Session 5

We had not one, but two sessions this week. The previous one ended on something of a cliffhanger, where the party was preparing defenses near the entrance to a dungeon overrun by undead.

SEEN posts that happened between the sessions:

Goblins Sighted in the South: Soon after the rumors about rocks with coin in them, goblins were sighted in the woods [104.050], banging on rocks with clubs and pickaxes. No goblins carrying any coin were sighted, however.

Dwarven Watch Tower: The dwarves are building a new watch tower to overlook the eastern edge of their settlement.

Shimmerleaf Forest Aglow: The scant news that concern Shimmerleaf seem to tell of a great host of glimmerfolk mustering in the heart of the forest, their lights setting the forest night aglow. What moves them to gather in such numbers, and their purpose, is yet unknown.

Session Recap

The steward of the dark dwarven fortress of Or-Tabram dispatched 20 dwarven warriors to assist the adventurers in clearing out the dungeons or, if they are dead, to do it themselves. In addition, the Steelwing Company added 20 of its own men to this small army. The PCs very much appreciated it, but they spent a lot of time arguing how to approach the battle. Since they made the various barricades and traps on the surface, they wanted to lure the zombies outside somehow. Eventually, after discarding some unhinged plans, they spent an entire day constructing pavises to walk inside in a combat formation that would, in their opinion, prevent any unneccessary damage.

That was a real-world hour and in-game day of preparation for them to go in and see that the dungeon is... empty. All the zombies were torn apart and thrown into the spiked trap pit. No loot was found, aside from 13 amphorae of wine. The mohrg's inert body was not in the pit, implying that it is still "alive." Do you really think the players thought that somebody cleared out the dungeon before them? Of course no. They believed that the mohrg is playing 4D chess - it killed its own zombies and hid somewhere, merely making it seem that the dungeon was cleared out by somebody else. The best thing is that they do not know if the mohrg is a player-controlled faction or a proper NPC, which makes them very paranoid.

The party also found a crack in the wall in one of the dungeon's rooms. The crack was to narrow for a man to squeeze through, but they managed to persuade one of the dwarves to try it. The dwarf failed. Eventually, they used one dwarven bomb to demolish the crack and open the way to a twisting narrow tunnel. The ranger PC with Absolute Direction went inside alongside a dwarf and a halberdier. About two hours later, they found another narrow passage, through which the ranger managed to squeeze through (even though he did damage himself doing that). On the other side, he found a large cave with a settlement of deep halflings who weren't hostile. However, due to the language barrier, they failed to communicate properly. This was entirely the result of ACKS random table rolls - we not have a new faction that isn't (yet) player-controlled.

When the ranger retraced his path back, the armed escort wanted to return to Or-Tabram. However, thanks to some incredibly lucky rolls of the "bard" PC and unlucky rolls of the commanders of dwarven and human troops, they were persuaded to come along and kill some goblin patrols. However, such a large group was easily spotted from afar, and all the goblin patrols simply retreated to the camp instead of engaging. Sensible.

The players weren't satisfied, however. One of the players wanted an open battle with the entire goblin camp, but the others talked him out of this suicidal idea. Instead, they opted to have the ranger and dragon shaman camouflage themselves and sneak closer to the encampment in an attempt to ignite the palisades. Note that this was happening in the late evening, when humans take significant illumination penalties. They got spotted because [hidden information], and the two PCs were assaulted from above - four fainil (winged drow-tanar'ri hybrids) lancers wielding heavy spears dropped on them from the dark sky. Two attacks were critical failures, but the other two impaled one of the PCs for 3d-1 impaling damage each. Surprisingly, the PC survived this, but it's take a long while for him to recover. The rest of the squad came in for help, but the fainil simply flew away. They did set fire to the palisades with a fire spell, but it didn't cause much damage - the goblins doused the flames relatively quickly.

Realizing that this raid wasn't the smartest idea, the PCs and their escort retreated back to Or-Tabram to lick their wounds. The raid wasn't useless - they did find out that the goblins were allied with the fainil, which is important intel. So, the players decided that it's time for another bear hunt. They went to the forest to the west of Or-Tabram, but instead of bears, the dice said that they encounter two mean and aggressive wyverns instead. They did injure the wyverns, but one of them snatched one of the PCs and flew away with him. RIP.

The party continued their search, but their Tracking attempt instead lead them into a domain encounter of another faction. A human-sized taint elemental was roaming on a clearing, where all vegetation was withered, and a hillock with a wide crack was implying the existence of a dungeon. The lone taint elemental was no threat, even though it did impart some corruption on one of the PCs (and even more, when the same PC decided that it'd be a good idea to rummage in the corrupted mud puddle left behind by the elemental). They decided to go down the crack, so I opened up Appendix A to generate a dungeon on the fly. I didn't have to do much aside from the starting room, because as soon as they went forward, they triggered wandering monsters, who were four tall mouthers. A lot of grappling in close quarters ensued, with one PC badly injured, but three of the tall mouthers dead and taken as trophies to Or-Tabram.

Now, the players have "mined" far into the future, until June 21st, so next week they are going to create a new party, probably for the glimmerfolk faction.