This week, we had four player who sent their characters to search for honey in the ruins of Ansvell. Despite facing several horrible creatures and even several fights, everyone survived!
This week, the following characters took part:
- La Fleur, human wizard, 75 XP
- Roderick Clearwater, human rogue, 95 XP
- Tapio of Gareth, human fighter, 75 XP
- Dargoth the Daring, human fighter, 138 XP
Last week, we stopped when the group met some lizorc gathering herbs and roots, and continued at exactly this moment. The lizorcs offered information for food, and gave the party more detailed information about the area:
- Honey makes you crazy, the Beekeepers produce it.
- All the lizorc tribes are somewhat crazy, that is why this group remains for itself.
- A group of lizorc bandits raid people who try to barter with the Beekeepers. They have a fortified mansion beneath a huge pillar, which they use as lookout.
- There are plenty rats in the area, which the lizorc’s hunt.
- The lizorcs used to have a nice building, but fire beetles had dug into it recently and drove the lizorcs off.
The group offered to reconquer the lizorc shelter instead of paying with food, to which the lizorcs happily agreed. After quizzing the lizorcs about the shelter’s layout, the group came up with the plan to send Jules, La Fleur’s squirrel familiar, into the shelter to lure the beetle out. This worked rather well, and two beetles were lured into the trap and slain easily. Jules complaint about the beetles shooting something at him that made the walls bubble.
Tapio snuck down and took a look. He found four more beetles sitting at the far end of the cellar, eating something. The group hatched a plan: Everybody would sneak down, shoot at the eating beetles and hopefully kill them before they could react. This almost worked, but two beetles (one of them almost frozen) survived and retaliated by shooting acid at the party! Luckily, only one hit and caused only minor damage. Before the beetles could do anything else, the group killed them.
One player calculated the possible damage afterward and found that a better hit could have annihilated the whole group. The lizorcs had good reasons why they did not attempt to reconquer their shelter.
Afterwards, the group took some time to clean themselves and take a closer look at the strange sabre (kopesh, in rule terms: a scimitar) they found (in rules terms: they took a short rest). Nobody knew anything about the strange alloy, except that it was very similar to bronze. It was not magical either, but had an affinity to fire and was once exposed to strong magic. Meanwhile, the lizorcs cleaned their shelter and prepared some rats on a stick.
The group had really bad luck with their rolls this time.
The group decided to investigate the tunnel through which the beetles had come. Jules found a break in the tunnel which was blocked by some piece of wood. He also could follow the tunnel further, but that would lead him out of telepathy range. Tapio, Roderick and La Fleur decided to crawl into the tunnel themselves instead.
The piece of wood turned out to be a chest or something similar that could be moved (with a DC 8 athletics check). They decided not to, as they heard high pitched, grumbling voices behind. La Fleur cast ‘Comprehend Languages’ and understood that the voices were arguing about the rules for a game (the lizorcs would later identify these creatures as Ratiers, a race of rat-man).
If a certain company was not as strict with their trademarks as it is, these rat-man would have listened to Ska in a Van.
Tapio decided to crawl even further down the tunnel, as he had smelled something odd earlier. Finally, he reached a grid set into the stone atop and below the tunnel and saw a strange, scaled creature below of brownish-grey colour beneath which emited a horrible stench. He heard some noise from further afield, heard a human voice pleading, and then saw an elder, scrawny man tossed from the left into the cage. The stinking lizard quickly devoured the poor victim.
Tapio retreated and informed the rest of the group. They decided to leave these strange underground tunnels for now, and instead concentrate on the bandits, as they hope those might have some of the honey the group was looking for.
They walk along, passed a pile of rubbels in which they heard loud ‘ribbit’, and continued to reach a wide, open area. In the middle of that wide area they saw a pillar, which they (correctly) assumed to be the pillar the lizorc’s had described. They decided to use a combination of dusk and the sparse cover on the open field to sneak close to the pillar, which worked. Their attempt to sniper the watchout failed, though, and they retreated again when an alarm was shout.
We ended this game with a small scouting group leaving the mansion and circling it in search for the snipers.