March 26th, 2017

The Battle For Rimwatch View

From Twinlakes to Rimwatch View and What Happened There

The adventurers of the day from left to right:

Nilo playing Arden the halfling cleric long enough to have him take a break and perform church service instead of tithing before changing to Kag the human neophyte magic-user

Nick playing Merrick, human fighter and slaughterhouse king

Chris playing Deckard Stormfallow, human ex-fighter now thief who prepares for threats as well as can be done

Sarai playing Desorna the elven fighter whose dreams are full of “forget...”

Hunter playing Strix, elven magic-user and offender of the God of Chaos. You want challenges and strife, mortal? Here you go.

Zack playing LaVeya, human druid who is a frustrating 23 experience points from second level. “23 points! Can I find a kobold and kill it for 23 points? Is Strix worth 23 points?”

And, as usual, the DM playing Catherine's half-elven thief and wealthy mercenary Ydee.

The party started in Twinlake Vale at the end of Strix's three week illness and recovery and training period. The absent members of the party returned from wherever they had been with various bits of news. Merrick refused to talk about what he knew, just that it was odd, and Arden, the long-time party healer, announced that he was taking a break from active adventuring for a while so he could serve at the church in Ruinheath where he had a fellow halfling cleric friend. In his place he suggested that the party take a magic-user named Kag that had just finished his apprenticeship and was looking for some fairly easy adventures good for a mage just out of training. Of course the party volunteered to help.

The first part of helping involved returning to Rimwatch View to see what news they had after the time they had spent away. Promising an easy journey, they traveled south along the trade road. The first day's travel went fairly well; pleasant weather and no dangerous encounters. However the night would provide its own challenges.

First watch. Nick rolls a 1 for encounters and the DM rolls a 100 on what. Oops? Anyway, Merrick was on watch as the night advanced toward highmoon when he heard almost simultaneous pained whimpers from Kag, Ydee, and Desorna. Curious he stood and went to look at them and found them all lying stiff on their backs and staring open eyed at the sky. Concerned, he woke them up. All three felt very disoriented and dizzy, and both Ydee and Desorna felt like there was a little water running out of their right ear. Kag felt more off than the other two, and Merrick coming over and staring intently at him didn't help Kag's feelings of extreme discomfort. Merrick thought he saw a faint area of distortion around Kag's right ear and proceeded to try to attack it. Kag, seriously freaked out at the fighter swinging around his head with a hand axe decided to buck and run for the nearest tree, figuring that he could easily outclimb the plate armor wearing fighter. Merrick chased after him, hurling his hand axe and his dagger after Kag in an attempt to 'kill' the odd distortion. Kag evaded and avoided and began to climb a tree. He was successful at first, but his vertigo made him fall out of the tree. Luckily, perhaps, Merrick caught him and stabbed the distortion area with his spear, killing the creature that was slowly burrowing into Kag's brain. Kag thinks the party is insane and Is reconsidering this adventuring life. Or at least this adventuring group.

The next day the party continued traveling south along the trade road. There was a wind out of the north and at one point Merrick turned to look back to see a thunderhead high above and moving quickly toward the south. It looked . . . odd. Using the eagle's sight powers on his Helm of Vision he looked closer and saw a sinuous figure within the thunderhead. As it got closer it was identified as a blue dragon, NOT a simple drake, and the party took cover under the trees in the nearby wood and hoped to be unobserved. The thunderhead passed on without stopping, and the party breathed a sigh of relief and continued south as well.

As they drew closer to Rimwatch View they noticed an odd haze, and as they moved closer still they saw smoke rising from the town. Worried, they charged towards town and saw that a swath 20 feet wide had been burned through the town, as if from the lightning breath weapon of a blue dragon. The Dancing Pony Inn and the Merchant's Exchange had been in the path, as was the small temple, though it only got clipped. At least two dozen had been killed and as many seriously wounded in the attack that seemed designed to kill the strongest townspeople and much of the town leadership. Luckily, Bill from the Pony was not killed, though he was very severely injured in the attack and incapable of participating in the town's defense. Earl wasn't in town when the attack occurred, and Galwopen the gnome minstrel and owner of the Merchant's Exchange was meeting with the mayor and wasn't in the exchange, though his apprentice and assistant Calliope was and had been very critically injured during the attack.

The dead and wounded were being brought to the center of town outside the mayor's house where they were being tended to by Lakmar the dwarven cleric and some other of the small temple staff under his direction. Bill told the group that the dragon had made a single pass before heading southeast toward the Valley and then turning east toward the mountains. The next concern was that there would be an attack from the Valley, so the party was sent to the south where the two watchtowers each in the angle of a palisade provided views to the south toward the Rim and Cursed Valley. There was a roughly half-mile wide clearcut swath between the palisades and the forest and roughly 200 yards from the palisades were six boulders staggered across the open plain, each having been enchanted with a continual light spell at some point in the past to provide some visibility of attackers to defenders. The party took places in the towers and watched for the approach of enemies.

As evening fell toward night, signs of movement were seen, some on the distant ridge top and then some in the edge of the woods. The adventurers had been reinforced by a little more than two dozen semi-trained militia from the town and half a dozen boys to act as messengers and runners, 2 in each tower and one on each flank. A score of the militia joined Merrick in the gap between the two palisades and three went to each flank with their messenger to watch for attacks from that direction. Then came a charge from out of the forests and the time of battle had begun.

Kag cast enlarge on Merrick to increase his strength and to make the heavily armored fighter a breaking point for the wave of attackers. As the attackers came even with the boulders it was obvious that they were lizard men and there were more than three score of them! Ydee, LaVeya, Kag, and Deckard began firing away with ranged weapons as soon as the lizard men were in range, and the defenders braced for the assault. There were six groups of a dozen attackers each and they charged full speed into combat as the few projectiles landed among them from the defenders. A fireball from Strix into the center of the formation dropped several of the lizard men in each of the center two groups while the rest thundered ahead. Four of the groups headed straight toward the gap where the enlarged fighter, the dual classed fighter-thief, and the druid now waited along with the 20 militia. The two outside groups split off to rush the flanks, and Ydee in the easternmost tower had her messengers run to warn the flanks of what was coming.

As the center four groups closed they hurled javelins into the waiting defenders, aiming for effect instead of for individual targets. Less than a dozen of the 48 javelins found a target, but where they hit among the militia they generally dropped their target, reducing the militia numbers significantly and killing one of the young messengers. Merrick bore the brunt of the charge as many of the lizard men stabbed at him as they moved past, looking to get in and among the militia to kill as many as possible before turning back, but several of the attackers worked to surround the fighter, and Merrick realized that two of the six attacking him were not lizard men but some sort of snake man (Yuan ti). The hands and weapons of the yuan ti leaders glowed with a dark light that just looked evil. As Merrick was hit by one of the attackers, he resisted the effects of the evil magic successfully, but even in success he had two points off of each of his physical ability scores drained away. Horrified by this turn of events, he made killing these yuan ti his primary concern.

Behind him the battle was not going well for the defenders. As the wave of lizard men crashed into the militia the much stronger lizard men hacked down the weaker defenders. Soon the militia were all sprawled in the dirt, bleeding and dying while the lizard men turned their attentions to the remaining adventurers. The battle on the eastern flank was going better as the druid had cast an entangle spell that wrapped up all the lizard men and a couple of the militia who were a bit too close. The remaining militia and the messenger backed away from the writing vines and Kag come to join them and used his sling to plink away at the ensnared lizard men.

On the western front things were not going quite as well. Strix had aided the cause by dropping another fireball where it would hit the attackers before they closed with the vastly outnumbered and outclassed militia. Desorna had come to join them evening the odds somewhat, but the fireball did more to help than anything else. As the militia were cut down around her Desorna found herself facing off against the yuan ti and the remaining lizard men. A successful attack by the yuan ti reduced Desorna's physical stats by three points each, but she valiantly fought on, holding the line as the attackers did their best to kill her.

Merrick and the others at the front line were suffering greatly as they were outnumbered. Strix, with no one left to target with fireballs as they were all in close combat, turned gaseous and floated away, intent on self preservation as she had been left all alone in the western tower. As the center battle grew worse for the adventurers, there was a sudden appearance of an old man with a primitive iron hook in place of his right hand, a hook which now seemed to glow with power as he slashed into the attackers, killing them quickly and turning the tide. As old Earl made his mark on the attackers, the adventurers fought on with redoubled fury, and finally the battle was won and the lizard men and their yuan ti leaders lay dead.

In the aftermath of the battle LaVeya ran from militia warrior to militia warrior, leaving the dead and working to stabilize the critically wounded. Many brave militia lives were saved by her actions, and when the adventurers were relieved of their posts by Earl and those few who had stayed behind at the mayor's house as a last ditch defense point of those who had been previously wounded, the adventurers helped transport the wounded and dead back to the town center and the mayor's house. Also the party searched the bodies of the dead attackers and found quite a few of the small gems they had taken from lizard men corpses previously. They also found roughly carved stone dragon claw pendants on thongs of human/demihuman skin around the necks of each of the yuan ti.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, with the expected second wave never coming. The heroes got some rest as best as they could and with the sunrise the next day they continued helping the survivors and guarding the town. LaVeya spent her spells to help those who were least wounded become somewhat active again and each of the warrior types took a watch at the palisades. The bodies of the lizard men and yuan ti were dragged further away from the palisades and scorched into infinity by several castings of the fireball spell by Strix before she limped back to town and rested again.

The next day a small council was held to determine what the next steps would be, though it was quickly decided that the trio of Merrick, Ydee, and Kag would return to Twinlake Vale and report to the Baronial Council on the attack and hopefully convince them to expedite Captain Carrick's unit departure to help defend Rimview. The trio left with all decent speed on their journey and the remainder of the group continued their own tasks. Deckard and Desorna each took shifts on the towers watching to make sure that there were no more attacks from the south, and LaVeya felt that she was ready for some refining of her skills. A older woman who was a druidic midwife and who lived out of town agreed to train LaVeya without pay as thanks for her service to the town, but LaVeya kindly paid her anyway. Part of her training involved continuing to heal the wounded in town, which the druid was happy to do.

Earl left before the trio who were going to Twinlake, saying that he was going to go and report to Avonlea the archdruid of the area. Deckard was anxious to go and see the archdruid, but Earl said not without approval first. So Earl left alone and Deckard hoped that this would lay the groundwork for expanding his contacts further.

Earl returned around the same time that the trio did, each with their own news. The trio informed the group that not only was the Captain's unit on their way, but they were coming with a dwarven artillerist/engineer to improve the fortifications and mount two ballista on platforms for better defense. Earl's news was that there was a blue dragon named Alcalcyx, sometimes called the Thunderhead, that lived off to the east somewhere. It is assumed that if the group in the Cursed Valley had a way to communicate with her, they could have bribed her to make a single pass at the village. Also, the Drake's Claw yuan ti seemed to be the power in the Valley, though it was thought that they might be answering to someone more powerful since it was unlikely that Ashbeak would serve yuan ti!

And with that grim news we stopped for the night.

Experience per character:

Kag: 1,684

Merrick: 1,684
Deckard: 1,516 (after dual class penalty)

Desorna: 1,684

Strix: 1, 684

LaVeya: 1,937 (after stabilization bonus)

Ydee: 842