SESSION 49 – September 23, 2018
We rest up and prepare to clear the city of the remaining ogres and orcs.
Urman asks Otiben to disguise one of the dead ogre’s heads with The Seer.
Zho Ni refuses to heal any of us, “for betraying him and The Vale, by siding with the abomination that claims to be Otiben.” We use all the healing at our disposal and the chief gives us all the healing we have. We are far from our strongest for a toe to toe fight.
As we head up to the city, Zho Ni makes a circle of protection and remains behind.
We don’t yet know that Zho Ni and Embrek left the way we came and found one of the Blue Crows and one of Urman’s hirelings injured and he healed them. A giant black bird carried off a horse, and it was a troll attracted by the blood that hurt them recently, but they chased it off with fire. Zho Ni and Embrek get the Blue Crows to help them track it and they find its lair and slay it. Zho Ni takes the horses of all the party members.
In the distance in the city, Zho Ni hears the roar of a fireball, and the thunder from lightning bolt, and the reverberations of the horn of fear from our assault on the citadel in Orcarest.
We come to the surface and hear horns blowing and the remnants of The Seer’s forces flee towards the citadel.
We follow cautiously.
We come to a square before the gate to the citadel and see a tapestry with the symbol for parley.
We make up something with that symbol and Urman and Otiben step into the square with Batukhan and the 3 goblins, led by Puk riding his wolf on the right. The 8 orcs lead by the son of the orc chief to the right, and watching the rear is Ygritte and Grip and Hades.
Urman shows them the broken wand of The Seer and her “head”.
An ogre, not a chief speaks in broken common asking that we just let them go.
Urman asks how many are there, and he will not answer.
Urman then asks is there no chief to speak for the goblins. The ogre allows a goblin shaman to peek over the parapet and Urman charms him and says that he and the other goblins should bow to the new chief as Urman signals for Puk and the other goblins to ride out. The shaman says, “It would be nice to have a chief.” The ogre backhands the shaman and says he knows this trick as that is how they get the goblins to go along with them.
Urman then fireballs the ogre after yelling in goblin for all the goblins to flee.
The ogre steps back after being hit and Otiben scales the wall to see the doors to the citadel being closed. Otiben also sees two ogres, the shaman, and a few goblins killed by the fireball.
Otiben opens the gates and we rush in. Batukhan and Ygritte occupy the top of the gatehouse covering us with their bows, since they are both still hurt and not up to a stand up fight.
Otiben takes the orc chief’s son and half the orcs and the dogs up one set of stairs to the roof. Urman takes the goblins and the rest of the orcs up the other set of stairs. The goblins tell us that the towers have doors leading down.
There is a square area that has two doors. Urman’s group opens their door and finds weapons and all the loot The Seer’s forces have gathered from the city.
Otiben opens his door and sees a troll who has been fed the bodies of the dead.
The troll rushes as Otiben steps back and it misses. Urman casts lightning bolt and drops the troll as the angle is right for it to bounce off the stone walls and hit it a second time. A goblin that Urman ordered to start a fire when Otiben yelled, “Troll!” rushed up and we burned it while Otiben kept it down.
We go through the door at the back of the treasure room, and we are at the hallway at the top of the stairs where Otiben and Puk faced the ogres and goblins. It is empty.
We find the room of The Seer with a circle she must have used to do her seeing and a symbol of The Seer on the wall. Urman defiled the circle on the floor and the symbol on the wall.
We go downstairs and see that the door to the privy has been barricaded to prevent a repeat of our last foray.
We find the room where we last engaged ogres and goblins to be locked. Otiben breaks it open.
Urman blows the Horn of Fear, and the burnt ogre now in charge and a couple others and some goblins fled in terror up the door at the base of one of the towers.
Batukhan and Ygritte slew him by arrow fire as the ogres and goblins continued to flee.
Puk got off a couple of arrows before the rest charged in to prevent the ogres and their massive bows from firing into us.
While they focused on felling the ogres, Urman spoke in goblin, urging the goblins to follow their new chief Puk and fight the ogres. A few goblins backed away and knelt in submission.
Otiben then cast Wall of Fog and filled the huge room, making the fight last longer, but also making it harder for the ogres to hit us.
Puk continued to urge the goblins to join him in the fight to free them from their oppressors, while Urman told the ogres to surrender to the inevitable. Urman only had area of effect spells and he had a better chance to hinder our side than defeat the other side.
Slowly the ogres fell and goblins continued to kneel in submission.
As the fighting slowly ebbed, Urman and Puk entered the fog seeking wounded allies to assist so they did not bleed out. Urman wanted to avoid further strain on the limited number of orcs.
Finally, with the fight over, Puk led his new tribe to chase down the ogres and recruit the remaining goblins to his tribe.
We reviewed the loot gathered by The Seer’s forces and found several obvious and potential magic items, many orcish steel coins, some dwarf made coins, and many gems.
Urman will rest and learn detect magic. He will argue that we should leave as much as possible for the orcs as they will need all the help they can get to maintain control of Orcarest. His thoughts turn to possibly leaving Puk and his tribe to help them gain control and ward off the many trolls in the area. Will Ygritte’s people work with them? We are all hurt some much worse than others. We need a lot of rest with out divine magic for healing. What does it mean that Zho Ni refused to heal us? Is our band of adventurers at an end? We have much to do to keep The Vale safe. We need all the allies we can get. There is still Alosha to worry about and her nebulous machinations. In addition to what The Seer and Enchantress will do with the heart of the Soul-forged Colossus. Otiben is evidently true to his word, why would an undead creature work so hard to achieve one of our goals? Urman wrestles with teleporting back to his tower since he feels ready to unlock the secrets of even more powerful magic….
