Session 10 - Spider Manor

Having been hired by the shining hero, Captain Von Der Fule of Candlekeep to investigate the missing wizard brothers, Mordecai and Lucius Malvern, the party finds itself on a slight rise overlooking Malvern Manor.  But something is amiss!  Ain't it always?

Three sides of the manor are covered in thick, ropy webs, and a figure stands along the approach to the manor - one fingerless hand stretched out in the universal gesture of "Halt!", the other hand pointing back along the roadway.  A corpse, staked to the earth, and flayed of every inch of skin, it is an appalling sight.  It's also a warning the party refuses to heed.

Using the standard party tactic of hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle, they essentially assaulted Malvern Manor in a SWAT style raid.  On the porch they get slapped around by giant spiders that pack a punch but lack staying power - one hit and they drop.  The largest spider teleported back and forth, landing a few blows before being gutted at range by a highly accurate Grim the rogue.

Inside, the party lured a pair of starving guard dogs into a bathroom using a day's rations, and then barred the three headed beasts inside.  The ground floor echoed with bestial howls from the basement, and a thumping and moaning from the floor above.  Searching the living area for clues revealed...

Upstairs the party found a pair of nice bedrooms, one of which contained a starving, eyeless, fingerless, and tongueless brother, crazed beyond all sanity.  No attempts at first aid or magic healing could mend the wretches severed mind.  The party did find a journal written by  one of the Malvern Brothers that pointed the way to a hole to hell in the backyard of the manor.

The top floor was given over to four summoning circles that the party dared not touch.

The stairs down led to a small landing, flooded by six inches of water.  The water, the howls, and the dank oppression led the party back upstairs - nothing could be worth all that trouble.

The last thing to investigate - the back altar - would have to wait for the next session.

Session 9 - The New Guy

Two days after the slaad attack and assassination attempt, the caravan is startled by the approach of a half orc paladin astride a mighty charger.  Mordred, his name, a paladin in service to the Church of Torm, his profession.  He immediately approaches Aramis, the party's cleric and fellow servant of Torm, and inquires about riding with the caravan to Candlekeep where he is slated to meet friends in pursuit of a second caravan the cult is using the move The Great Hoard northwards. He proved to have been sent by Ontharr Frume, a member of the Order of the Gauntlet and an ally of Leosin the Monk.  

Jeb, the wagon train master, is a skeptic until Mordred offers a sword to replace those lost in recent adventures and notes that he will pay his own way.  At the sound of a free hired guard, Jeb changes his tune and welcomes the big ugly brute.

Gilgamesh and Mordred, the new guy.

The last of the perytons proved to be the toughest, only dying at the thunderous hand of the party mage, Gilgamesh, who cast a booming shatter spell.  The spell blasted the peryton into a cloud of feathers and gore, but also badly damaged the cultists cart it happened to be sitting on at the time.  The rear half of the wagon broke apart, spilling gold and loot along the road.

Aftermath of the peryton attack

While doing this and travelling ever deeper into the forest, your group was set upon by horribly mutated goblins and a great ogre abomination.  It was during this attack that Capt. Alphonse and his men broke a oath of their own by turning on the group and launching an attack against them.  But as it turned out, it was the Captain and his men that paid the deadly final price, being wiped out to a man!
And with that, the party stumbled out of the forest mists to crest a small hill overlooking a beautiful high mountain valley with a crystal blue glacial lake at one end and a most impressive Malvern Manor at it's shore.  From a distance, the house appeared...hazy.  And not in a good way.
A deeper investigation would have to wait for the next session...

In an effort to distance himself from the party members who have repeatedly blown their cover, Yolo takes a morning to make nice with Captain Alphonse, the leader of the cult on this road trip, at the next day's breakfast.  "Yo man, why those guys on the spice truck got it in for you?  All those stories, all the bad blood.  Don't you worry, bro. Things get tight, I got your back."  He's kind of a laid-back surf elf.  You know the type.  Alphonse wasn't sure what to make of it, but given that his 24 man team is down to 16, he didn't dare make yet more enemies on this trip.  Yolo was left with the distinct impression that Alphonse didn't want any help, but accepted he might need it.

Later that day, Perytons attacked the caravan.  Peryton's for those of you that missed that episode of National Geographic: Faerun, are half-stags and half birds of prey given to ripping out and eating the still beating hearts of their victims.  The foul birds swooped down from the sky, and lit into the caravan with a vengeance.  Aramis nuked one with holy fire, and Karren let fly the Dragonspear, felling another.  Meanwhile, Grim shanked a cultist in the confusion and successfully blamed a peryton for the death.  Yolo tried to assist by "accidentally" hitting a pair of cultists with friendly fire, to no avail.  



As the cultists scrambled to collect the gold and valuables, Karren made move to retrieve the Dragonspear, only to find it in the hands of Alphonse, the leader of the cult on this trek.  Yolo quickly negotiated a truce between the spice merchants (Karren, Aramis, and Gilgamesh), and the cult leader.  Karren gets the spear, and no more funny business until the gates of Waterdeep.  Down five more cultists following the attack, and with the loss of a wagon, the cult consolidated down to four wagons.

The next day, the wagon train halted for a moment at an odd sight.  A man buried up to his neck on the roadside - the standard punishment for oathbreakers in these parts.  The cleric and paladins refused to leave a man in this state and their trust paid off.  The poor soul proved to be Carlin Amenfall, Karren's contact with the Harpers.  In front of the crowd, Carlin claimed to have broken off an engagement rather than marry into a family of brigands.  Later, in private, he confessed to have been travelling with a loot caravan three days ahead of us, but there the cult found him out and left him neck deep in roadway.  He had left word.with the sleeping dragon innkeeper that he knows where a powerful artifact is, some sort of summoning stones, but the arrival of the slaads prevented the message from being delivered.

Two days later... Dragonspear Castle.  The first truly safe haven in weeks.

There, everyone was introduced to the garrison commander, the garrulous and slightly boastful Captain William Von Der Fule!  As the caravan at large settled in for a couple days of guarded rest, Capt. VonDerFule hired the party, as well as Capt. Alphonse and a few cultists , to travel a few hours into the nearby forbidding Great Northern Forrest to locate two of his lost patrols and check upon two wizardly brother allies, Mordecai and Lucius Malvern.  The two had recently gone missing.

Session 8 - Slaad Clown Faces, Part Two

Way behind on these write-ups.  Time is tight, and given the choice between actual gaming and talking about gaming on the internet, I'll take the former over the latter any day.  What do you think I am, some sort of RPG.net degenerate?

When last we left our plucky heroes, they had barely escaped nasty fight with a family of slaads with their lives.  In the aftermath of the fight, Grim the Rogue managed to secure the deed to the Sleeping Dragon Inn, and then retired to Beyd's Portable Watering Hole (a mobile tavern for the 14 wagon caravan) with Yolo the elven fighter for a nice comy rest.  Gilgamesh the tiefling necromancer and Karren the dragonborn fighter elected to sleep inside the inn's main room for the night - to better keep an eye on the known cultists abed upstairs.  The stench of the recently slain slaad would keep them alert enough to respond rapidly to an attempted assassination attempt by one of the cultists.

Big mistake on the part of the cultists.  The assassins - whose crossbow bolts from the dark shadows missed by a wide mark - fled for the safety of the upstairs room, but were quickly cut down by an enraged necromancer who had managed enough of a short rest to warm up a spell or two.

The scuffle alerted the rest of the wagon train to strange doings, and after long minutes of recriminations and counter recriminations, the wagon master had enough.  "We're leaving this accursed Inn in ten minutes!" he thundered.  And so the party, the cultists, and the story lumbered onwards towards the first safe rest in long weeks at a little place called Candlekeep.

Medieval Comparison Shot

One of the little challenges for old men like me who game with little men like these 6mm Heroics and Ros figures is finding a way to make it obvious from a distance which little horde is which.  One of my helpful solutions is to base the individual figures in easily recognizable patterns. They may not be historically accurate, but sometimes history takes a back seat to playability.

In the above shot you can see that the dismounted knights (left), the levies (center), and the archers (right) all stand in different patterns.  Three rows for the swordy dudes, four rows for the sharp sticks, and a checkerboard pattern for the the shooty guys.

Also, the edge of each base is painted a unified red to make it crystal clear which army they belong to.  Initially, with two armies, it shouldn't be necessary, but moving forward, if I can build up enough forces to play with more than two armies, that color code may come in handy.

Last Medieval Footies

Don't think I mentioned yet that this whole army is built from the fine medieval range of Heroics and Ros.  Today's offering is the poorly armed rabble called up from every mudhole village, handed a sharp stick, and pointed at the enemy.  What these levies lack in courage and training and armor and so on almost forever, they make up for in numbers and being too dumb to know when to run away.

More Medieval Troops - Archers to the Fore

The second couple of foot troops for my matched medieval armies is the shooter types.  Almost fifty of the little buggers on each stand makes for a fine visual show.  It might not be enough to blacken the skies, but it looks so much better than an army with a sum total of three archers.

Shifting Gears - Medieval Army Dismounted Knights

With things slowing down at work, there's finally enough time to start showing off the second Medieval army for One Hour Wargames.

First up, the dismounted knights.  Close ranked, heavily armed and armored, well drilled shock troops.