August 6th, 2017

The Journey to the Dwarven Quarry

From my left:

Chris playing Deckard the 3^rd/6^th level human ex-fighter/thief

Connor playing Niall Lightbearer (DM's prerogative. Deal.) the 3^rd level human cleric

Zack playing LaVeya the 6^th level human druid

Michael playing Ivan Lok'tar the 1^st level (Viking) dwarven fighter

Matt playing Mirin the 4^th level human spellsword

Nick playing Merrick the 6^th level human fighter

Thomas playing ????? the 2^nd level half-orc witch

Sarai playing Desorna the 6^th level elven axe-maiden

Hunter playing Flever Graveltoes the 1^st (2^nd) level gnome ranger

Paige playing Keeva the 3^rd level halfling infiltrator

and the kindly DM playing Ydee the 6^th level half-elf thief for the absent Catherine

At the start of the game the party was in Treefold and preparing to go look into the troubles that had been reported at a dwarven quarry a couple of days northeast of town. The quarry had increased production for the new stone buildings in Treefold and the troubles had slowed down the construction considerably. With a request for the party to investigate from the mayor, and another request from Deckard's . . . underground contact, the party prepared to take the journey to the northeast. Also the party was introduced to a very gruff and not quite pleasant dwarf named Ivan Lok'Tar who was going with them to make the journey to the quarry.

But first a slight rewind of time so that some players could level up. Niall, who the church had finally given a name after his first adventures, was ready to train for third level and Flever was ready to train for second level. Niall's training went well and he returned to the group ready to venture forth, but Flever decided that he would rather save his money, perhaps for future chicken-inspired purchases, so he only gained the basic advantages of increased hit points and spell points (and saves, which I forgot to remind him to adjust, so fix that whydoncha).

The party headed northeast along what was called the dwarven road, a very hard packed earthen road created by the very heavy stone carts that delivered stone from the quarry. It cut cross country and avoided following waterways to ensure that the heavy carts never got stuck in swampy sections along the way.

On the second day on the trail as the party left the edge of one of many stands of trees along the road they came into a relatively clear area. Continuing forward along the well marked road they were surprised when two boulders slammed into the group, knocking two of the party off of their feet. A quick look around showed the heads and shoulders of two giants over the trees on a rise off of the road to the northeast as two more rocks hit party members. Forgoing staying nicely grouped to make better targets for hurled boulders the adventurers spread apart, some charging forward to hand to hand combat while others stayed back to fire their long range weapons.

Flever, hoping to make the giants' lives more difficult, or at least hinder them from easily picking up new rocks to throw, cast an entangle spell at the giants. The giants were too large to be affected by the entrapping nature of the spell, but their boulder piles quickly became overgrown and they had difficulty picking up new boulders to throw as they had to wrestle the plants for a boulder. Most of the charging adventurers avoided the entangle spell's area of effect, except for Ivan who found himself momentarily trapped in the border growth. As arrows, crossbow bolts, and occasional spells rained down on the giants they moved to attack the adventurers. When they hit they did severe damage to their targets, but the fury of Merrick meant he did severe damage in return. With some buffs and some healing the party survived the combat and felled the giants. A large quantity of coins was taken from the corpses, but a worry surfaced as well as another giant had appeared on the near horizon near the end of the battle, but after taking stock of the situation it ran away, possibly in fear but possibly to take word to its tribe.

The adventurers reached the quarry the next afternoon. The quarry had been carved into the rocky hillside at the edge of a tall cliff that rose around a hundred feet above the surrounding hills. There were five terraced 'steps' down into the depths, each roughly ten feet high and twenty feet deep. A stone ramp that fit in the curve of each of the half-circle tiers allowed the stone carts to be drawn out of the depths. But the area around each of the top tier and around the ground level was covered by the bodies of dwarves and the sturdy oxen which had pulled the carts. Boulders similar in size to the ones the party had been pelted with the previous day littered the area. Most of the corpses showed signs of having been battered to death by large blunt objects like the tree trunk clubs the giants had been wielding the day before, but several corpses had been hacked to bits by a giant's blade instead.

On the first tier down from ground level was the remains of a large stone building against the cliff face to the left. It looked like it had been a barracks area but the place was now broken stone and collapsed in on itself. Half the party went down to examine it while the other half stayed up to watching for giants. The ruin looked destroyed, but LaVeya thought she heard a faint moaning coming from within. With ghostly lantern and turning into bird form she hopped in through one of the larger openings near the back wall to investigate.

Inside she found two dwarves who were still alive, though both grievously wounded and unconscious. One was barely active enough to be able to moan while the other was silent. With the help of several of her companions, both dwarves were freed from beneath the rubble and healed by the druid until they were able to move under their own power. After they had all rejoined their friends on the top tier of the quarry the older dwarf, a greybeard named Gander, could tell them the story.

The quarry had been hit by two misfortunes in rapid succession: first was that the fifth tier down, the newest and smallest bottom tier of the quarry, had breached two small fissures. Once enough stone had been quarried the narrow fissures were cave openings that didn't feel right or good to the dwarves. After sending messages to Treefold informing their contacts there of the situation and suspending operations until some response could be received, the dwarves finished the stones that they had already quarried and then waited. After a week and a few days of waiting impatiently, two groups of dwarves led by one of the shift leaders went to explore them and both groups had been attacked by unknown creatures that seemed to drain the very life from their targets, leaving them as little more than withered husks. As Gander told them of this, he pointed to the corpses in the bottom-most tier. The story continued from there. The leaders of the clan here, consisting of Gander, the other dwarf who had survived with him that used to lead one of the quarry teams, the dwarven cleric, and another dwarven fighter who led the second of the three teams had gathered to talk about their options. Over the preceding days the cleric had gone down and cast eternal rest on all of the desiccated dwarven corpses who had made it back to daylight from the tunnels, just in case whatever had killed them in such a manner might also reanimate them, and had cast spells to hopefully prevent those creatures within from coming out under the dark of night. They were discussing their options for the future and what to do with the fifth tier when several large stones slammed into the building where they were, killing the cleric and the other fighter and knocking the two surviving dwarves unconscious. Next they knew the party had arrived.

While this story was being told Merrick had noticed some movement in the trees on top of the cliff and off to the east. A giant's face was seen peering down at the group by the quarry before it vanished back into the treeline. Feeling that their clerical options might need to be reinforced before descending to the bottom of the quarry, and not wanting to meet a large group of giants after the problems they had had with the previous pair, the adventurers decided to head back to town to rest up, see what assistance they might be able to gain, and then to return at a later date to deal with either or both of the problems at the quarry.

The journey back was interrupted by an ambush of giants during the middle of the night, including a humongous one who must be some sort of leader. There were four total, the biggest of which wielded a giant-sized bastard sword. Most of the party was surprised by the attack as they were asleep and unarmored (with the exception of LaVeya in her bedroll of comfort*). Once dragged out of her sleeping bag and made aware of the situation she used a plant growth spell to erect a tall wall of brambles that the giants had to hack their way through before they could attack the group, giving them time to get fully equipped and armored before the giants broke through. Lucky for the adventurers! It also gave LaVeya enough time to cast her call lightning spell (which took longer than usual to form thanks to the less than ideal conditions) and blast a pair of the giants twice before they cleared the obstacle. Then the battle was on!

The giant leader had been one of the two damaged by the lightning, but he still was a tough fight for the adventurers who were arrayed against him. Finally he was taken down along with the other lightning-struck giant but a lot of damage had been dealt out to the party and the healers had been spending a lot of time trying to keep the front line upright. Then two juvenile giants who had been sent around to attack from the rear made their presence known, and the adventurers began to worry all the more.

Finally five of the giants were killed with the sixth, one of the juveniles, running away to fight another day, and perhaps take word of the defeat to any others that may have survived. The badly battered adventurers quickly searched the corpses and decided to try to force march their way through the rest of the night to Treefold. Hundreds of coins were added to the hundreds already in the bag of holding, and several magical items were found including the immense sword the giant had been wielding. Since a huge sword was not easily portable, the party did what they could to hide it by imbedding the point in the ground beside a tree in the woods nearby and then camouflaging it as best as they could. The other items the party took with them to town.

Arriving around highsun and looking quite a bit like stumbling zombies after a force march on inadequate sleep the party arrived in Treefold. The two dwarves said that they were going to send messages to others of their clan and see what reinforcements they could receive. Since this quarry was the only one in the vicinity and the stonework was needed for the new constructions it was essential to get it operational again soon.

With the battered party getting rooms at the inn (almost all of the rooms at the inn for that matter. That is a gigantic party) and preparing to rest and recover from their adventure, we ended there for the evening.**

Experience points for the party:***

Deckard: 5158

Niall Lightbearer: 3158

LaVeya: 5158

Ivan Lok'tar: 5158

Mirin: 5158

Merrick: 5158

(Thomas): 4000

Desorna: 1158

Flever Graveltoes: 1158

Keeva: 1158

Ydee: 2837

Footnotes:

*- The bedroll of comfort is a wonderful, wonderful item. Those resting in it are guaranteed to regain their full spellpoints after a good night's sleep, and they can sleep in armor with no ill effects. This can be very useful since trying to sleep in armor for most others requires a constitution test (roll under the character's CON score on a d20) with a penalty to the target equal to the base armor value of the armor. So a character with a 14 CON trying to sleep in leather armor (+2 base armor value) would need to roll under a 12 to get effective sleep while a character with a 14 CON trying to sleep in their plate armor (+8 base armor value) would need to roll under a 6 to get effective sleep. Characters sleeping in armor will have a penalty to all physical action rolls (including combat, thief skills, and the like) equal to half the base armor value the following day, even if they get effective sleep. If they fail to get effective sleep they will have the armor penalties PLUS penalties for exhaustion.  The downside?  Those sleeping in the magic bedroll sleep so soundly that they need to be under attack to have a chance to awaken. Preferably the attack is the toe of an ally's boot rather than a giant's club smashing their head open.

**- As the adventurers searched the corpses of the dead dwarves (don't judge. Murderhobos are murderhobos. Plus, the lawful good cleric wasn't with them as they did this) they discovered that their bodies had already been robbed of all coins. Interesting side note: almost every coin taken from the giants is embossed with a dwarven rune. The party will likely be expected to return a high percentage of these coins as restitution to the families of the dead dwarves the coins were originally taken from. How ugly they are about it may affect the percentage. But the party can happily let the new dwarf member of the party, Ivan Lok'tar, make that charisma test (rolling under CHA on a d20) for them.****

***- This is a good time to bring up the rule for leveling when one has enough points to level more than one level at a time. No one can level more than once after each full-session adventure. So while, say, Ivan the 1^st level dwarven fighter is just shy of 4^th level as far as experience points go, he can only level to level 2 after this adventure. He will have to go on another full-session adventure before he can get any of the benefits, even the ones that are almost automatic (i.e. hit points), before he can gain ANY of the benefits of level 3. AND that is one full-session adventure AFTER being trained! A character cannot gain any benefits of, say, having enough experience to be third level until after they have trained for second level and then gone on an adventure as a 2^nd level character. *****

**** For those who read these and aren't playing in the game, Ivan Lok'tar has a charisma of 3. Yes, 3. THREE. i.e. he has only a 10% chance to make that test. Also known as “Don't let Ivan talk to ANYONE! Not even himself!”

***** Mentioning no names of characters who may seem to think that paying to go up a level is a waste of money that might instead be spent on more items for his chicken-child FLEVER GRAVELTOES. You are stuck where you are until you pay to level. But don't worry. If you want to save money I am sure that Ivan will help by making that successful CHA test to reduce the costs.****