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Session 26, Hard Fighting to Evilville

Paldegora 

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Session 26 – 2023-07-29

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==== Detail ====

The Company started off the session where they left off last week. They were in the woods just south of the first village in the valley. They were scattered either on the road or to the east of the road. They were all headed to the east of the road when they heard the sounds of ogres charging from the woods to the west. There were two of them. They turned to meet the challenge. Cal-El, Xor, and Cassandra rushed to meet the enemy while Symon, Eryn, and Angelique prepared range weapon attacks. I was going to simplify the battle to just a single sentence but the Cal-El scored a natural 20 and max damage of 32 with an additional 3 from his second weapon for a total of 45 damage. Cal-El dropped one ogre in one round. That was impressive and required an honorable mention in the journal. They were able to put down the other one quickly. 

That is about the time that two more showed up. With them was a hill giant. He grabbed a rock out of his bag and hurled it at Cal-El hitting him. An ogre hit Xor and the other headed toward Eryn. Cal-El charged the giant while Symon boldly approached the ogre headed at Eryn. He cast "Color Spray" and rendered the ogre unconscious. Eryn seeing Symon was fine, moved up the road, still relatively close to the ogre, and fired on the giant. Cassandra helped Xor with his ogre before joining Cal-El with fighting the giant. Xor joined in on the giant a well. Angelique moved to a point where she could fire on the giant. But the main thing about this fight is that Symon took the giant down with his slingshot. That was an impressive shot that also deserved an honorable mention in the journal. Eryn ended the unconscious ogre and the battle was officially over.

They pulled the bodies away from the road and covered them with snow. Then they searched out their camp and found it. There was nothing of any interest there but it was a good place to rest and recover. They built a fire and rested. After they rested, they moved back to the road. Symon made Eryn invisible and she moved carefully toward the town. She used other tracks and foot prints to step in to avoid leaving tracks of her own to be found. She approached the town and then moved off to the west side of the road. As she moved around to the west, she found what looked like an old cemetery and a temple or church. There was lots of activity in the village. There were no tracks leading off to the east toward Coldspire. And only a few tracks leading towards the cemetery. 

She made her way to the south west side of the town and moved up to and between two buildings. She saw lots of separate groups flying their own banners. She expected they were separate military units. There were separate units of bugbears, gnolls, and draconian's, and lots of them, at least a hundred or so. She wasn't going to understand what they were saying so she didn't go into the area. She instead moved back toward the cemetery and saw that they could possibly pass through there and avoid the town. She made her way toward Coldspire. On her way, she noticed the field between the village and Coldspire was clear with no cover. It would be impossible to move through there unseen. Coldspire was cold and empty, devoid of life as far as she could tell. It was overgrown and what buildings remained were collapsed or in the process of collapsing. There was no way to survive here. She returned to the group as nightfall fell and reported what she had seen.

They discussed how they wanted to proceed. They decided to backtrack to the woods, where it flowed east and make their way along it. They did that and by the end of that next day, they had made good progress. They picked an area just tucked into the woods and did their best to rest. A couple of hours into the rest, Xor started feeling like he was being watched. It was very disturbing. He noticed movement. It was very fast and he couldn't seem to catch a direct look at anything. After a moment or so, trying to pen it down, he was hit. He suddenly felt not only pain, but he also felt weakened. He called out to wake everyone and they started to rouse. He finally saw something moving toward him and hit it. It was black but he can't tell much more than that about it. 

There appeared 7 more of these shadowy figures. Xor took another hit and was weakened more. Symon was hit as well, also weakening. Eryn was next to be hit and suffered the same strange feeling of weakness. Cal-El got hit as well. The group fought them, killing them one at a time. Angelique did try to turn one group but did not succeed. She tried to turn another group of them and that failed as well. They finally destroyed all eight of them. It was going to take about an hour before everyone was finally returned to their previous strength. Symon was concerned that we may need to leave this area or we'd likely be attacked over and over again. Angelique said she sensed that Coldspire was a city of the dead. The Company returned the way they came. About half way back to the road, dawn broke and they decided to stop and rest. They healed some and ate a couple of rabbits that Xor hunted. As they finished their rest, they began moving toward the cemetery. 

They took a shortcut making their way back to the site of Symon's great triumph over the giant. From there they headed north toward the town and broke off the road toward the cemetery area. It was evening when they arrived at the cemetery. There was a fence around it that was very old. The metal it was made of held up fairly well for being a couple of hundred years old. The construction reminded them of the construction in the crypt back at Stonebridge. There were graves with tombstones all of it covered with snow. The temple reminded them of the construction of the Stonebridge crypt as well. There was no lighting anywhere, no sign of anyone being present, at least no living someones. Angelique recognized the temple as one devoted to Naa. It was a very old design. Cal-El didn't see anything indicating there were people around. Eryn examined the gate for any sort of trap or alarm. Finding none, she opened the gate and made her way inside. It made very little noise and opened quite easily. She made her way cross the grounds, carefully. 

About half way across, two large skeletal monsters, carrying two handed swords, came screeching in her direction. They moved up to her and attacked before she could react. Xor ran up and attacked one of them hitting it. Symon cast a magic missile at the same one. Angelique attempted to turn them but failed. Cassandra made a run at the same one and hit it. Eryn hit the other one. Cal-El moved up on the first one and hit it with his first attack missing with his other attack.  The first one turned to attack Cal-El and missed him. The other one hit Eryn. Barreling down from the east were two more of these creatures. Angelique tried to turn these but failed again. They fought a hard battle. These things were difficult to destroy. The Company finally won and the undead were re-deaded. 

Eryn moved up to the entrance of the temple. She listened at the door and didn't hear anything. The door looked sturdy so she tried to pull it open. It opened a little before it got stuck. It was dark with moonlight coming in through the windows. The pews had long since rotted away. There were four caskets on all four corners of the main room. Eryn motioned for the others to enter. As they were looking around, Cal-El spotted a something hiding behind the north west casket. He ran across the room and around the back of the casket very quickly, lowering his sword at a goblin that was hiding behind it. He was of the Duzzt variety of slave goblins. The goblin screamed and shook, backing up yelling, "Don't make me go back! No! No!". Symon moved around to within view of it. He asked him why he coward there. He told him that he ran away cause they were going to kill his family. Symon asked who was going to kill his family. He replied, "All of them, all of them. A bad dragon, he come and kill us all!". Symon asked if he was the only one here. He said that just he escaped. He pleaded not to be taken back. 

Symon asked where he escaped from. He asked if he worked at the main stone building. He said that yes and that he worked in the mines. Symon asked what they were mining for. He told him for the dragon. The dig to feed the dragon. They don't dig enough and dragon is mad. Symon asked what the dragon eats. The goblin told him gold.  Then he added that some family tried to escape. They got caught. Now whole tribe dies. He finally told him that we weren't going to hurt him. He asked if we were not from the big stone house. Symon told him that we were not from the stone house but needed to get into the stone house. Eryn added, asking if there were people, like us, in the big stone house? He started to recover a little saying that we don't look like stone house people. He said again, "Don't make me go back there!". 

The goblin asked, why did we want to get in there. Symon told him, "That's our business! But we do need to get in there, unobserved. Is there a way to get into there without being seen?". The goblin told him that he came out through secret tunnel that they dug to get out. He said that the dracons don't know about it. Symon asked where the passage was. The goblin told him it was at the base of the mound the stone house was on. He said he could show us where it was if we let him go. Symon told him that if he got us in, we'd let him go. He said, "Gop will show you the way. If they get caught, he get put out with others to die in dragon fire.". They found a spot up the stairs leading deeper into the temple where he could draw out the castle layout and where the tunnel was in the dust on the floor. They all moved up there and he started to draw it out. In questioning him further, they discovered that there were no prisoners in the stone house or the town. His family was in a pen on the other side of the river from the castle. They were going to die soon. He reiterated that some of them tried to leave Grish-ta-nak and got caught. Now whole tribe will be burnt. 

While he was drawing out the floor plan, Angelique and Eryn noticed an old book on an alter on a pedestal further north. Eryn moved closer, looking to see if there were any traps or anything Angelique needed to be careful of. As she did, an ethereal looking ancient warrior appeared in front of her and two more appeared to the east and west. He asked, "Who do you serve?". Angelique answered, "I serve Naa!". The figures moved closer and the one spoke again saying, "Who do you serve?". Angelique answered again, "I serve the deity of Naa!". The figure spoke again saying, "You are violating the sanctity of this place.". Angelique said, "No, this is a temple of Naa!". He pulled out a sword an spoke again, "You have one more moment to declare who you serve or you all die.". Angelique said, "I'm sorry but I will not change my answer!". As he started to move forward they noticed their uniforms are like the uniforms they saw back in the catacombs beneath Stonebridge. They were the style of the warriors of the north. They don't get the feeling they were evil, only that they were like guardians. They finally decided that it must have something to do with Nordain and the Wolves of the North. They said they were allied to King Nordain. The specters said, "If you are allied with Nordain, then you are welcome here. This place is a refuge for the Wolves of the North.". As they said that, they slowly faded away. 

Angelique moved up to look at the book. It appeared to be a written list of all the major houses and families of Nordain. It listed the different knights, their names and details their brave deeds, their accomplishments, and how some of them died. As they flipped through they found the houses of Gregory and Harris. The name that really caught their eye was Blackmore. They looked at the map that Gop drew and it was a pretty good little map of the castle, complete with a circle indicating where the escape tunnel or secret entrance was. When asked where Grish-ta-nak was, he pointed out the thrown room. Symon asked if Grish-ta-nak was the only one of his kind there! Gop indicated yes but that Grizolo was much worse. Symon asked if Grizolo was there and Gop told him no, but he comes there to eat and to kill family.

That is where the night ended.

Start the recorder!

In all, they got 16 gold and 4 copper each. 

We scored 1,673xps with a 167 bonus to 1,840.

Cassandra and Angelique went up a level.