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PREVIOUSLY - CAMPAIGN DIARIES 46 - FOLLOWING JEKK
The sun has set and the Owlbear League explores options to secretly penetrate Firehammer Hold and rescue Jekk Ironfist from the clutches of an invading duergar forces.
From the woods across the road, Immeral sends his hawk familiar Syldan to scope the area but finds little of interest, except that the northernmost door looks to be solid bronze, heavy, and solid dwarven construction. The middle door is stone with an ornate carving of a blazing maul carved in relief on it. There is wooden plaque next to the door that says in dwarvish "Welcome, rest easy until audience is granted."
Syldan flies up to what looks to be the main entrance to the south. It is a pair of twelve food high, ten foot wide double doors set in smooth stone walls. There is a massive knocker of stone set to the center of each door about four feet off the ground. There are two 9' high bas-relief carvings of stone warriors seemingly carved into the cliffside to the right and left of the entranceway. The warrior carvings have braided beards and axes, and the doors have the flaming hammer icon seen previously.
They cautiously walk up the entrance road with Lady D. and stop at the first door where the duergar they had seen dumping bodies earlier in the woods had returned.
They approach the northern door, listening to the door. From within they hear faint voices.
"Karrig, it's not in here.
Amnar brought the keg here earlier.
Those quipper kissing north room guards..."
They push on the door, which has no obvious opening mechanism, but it does not budge, and it feels incredibly heavy and solid.
They look to Lady D, but even owlbear seems inconsequential against the great metal door.
In the meantime, Immeral sends Syldan off to the middle door and the nearby arrow slots. In the nearly pitch black room the hawk can just make out bunk beds and a chest.
He moves to another arrow slit and finds a similar room. Seeing no other ways to peek in, Immeral telepathically tells the avian to return.
"Let me try it." Dain says
Immeral adds "Try your best to be quiet."
Dain tries to push the door, but there is no movement whatsoever. They decide to move to the middle door.
A walled structure juts out from the natural cliff face. On the southeastern corner is a 7-foot-tall carving of a female dwarf leaning on a shield emblazoned with two interlocked rings. The outer door is made of stone, the stylized symbol of a blazing maul carved in relief on it. A wooden plaque reads in dwarvish, “Welcome. Rest easy until audience is granted.”
They push the door, and it opens easily. Inside, the room appears deserted, and as they enter, Nowhere notices that the locking mechanism for the door seems to have been removed hastily, as the stone is scuffed and scratched.
Beyond the entrance, the living room of this apparent hostel has wood-paneled walls, a fireplace, a fine table with stools, and a well-worn carpet on the floor. There is a thin layer of dust on all things, not having been cleaned recently. There are doors to the north and south.
The party and Lady D squeeze into the room, and look around for secret passages. They find none.
Nowhere listens at the door to the south, and hearing nothing, opens it.
This room has wood-paneled walls, and it is furnished with two bunk beds and four small chests, confirming what Syldan had seen.
The chests are opened and empty, but they find nothing of interest.
They search for secret passages and find nothing, but Atlas finds a carving in common on one of the bedposts and it reads "We're doomed."
They move on to the northern door, Lady D waiting inside the door to the outdoors. Hearing nothing they go in.
This room contains three bunk beds, three stools, six small open chests and an empty wooden bookcase.
The party searches the room and Immeral finds the bookcase has a peephole in it, and he finds the bookcase is attached to the wall and there is a slight draft from the peephole.
Orryn comes over and examines the bookcase, withdrawing his thieves tools to work some sort of mechanism just out of reach, and after a few moments unlocks the secret door.
Behind is a narrow passage heading west into the heart of the mountain, and some 40' away is seemingly the back of another secret door.
Immeral realizes that Lady D. cannot fit in the narrow space. Orryn looks around in the passage without opening the door, and finds nothing. He decides to open the secret passage and looks within.
The secret door opens on the landing of a ten foot wide hallway. There is a room to the north at the bottom of some stairs, and there are more stairs to the south heading upwards.
Orryn hears dwarvish voices to the south and sees someone short in warrior-garb walk by the bottom of the stairs.
"It's not in here" one says. Then a bit of shuffling and the same voice says "Karrig, I thought you said it was in here."
Another says "Amnar had it earlier, it was a keg, a full keg."
The first says "Those kipper-kissing north room guards didn't get their hands on it, did they?"
Then more shuffling around.
Orryn steps cautiously down a stair or two to try to get a few and spies a couple of duergar before backing away. Orryn shuts the door stealthily and updates his companions.
They discuss a few options for addressing the apparent invaders of Firehammer Hold, when K'ronk asks if they could be lured up the stairs and potentially attacked from behind when they pass the secret passage.
"Maybe I need to check out what's upstairs first," the gnome rogue says.
Orryn sneaks out of the passage again and heads up the stairway which is lit with torches in sconces along the walls. When he comes to the top of the stairs he sees the hall behind two great stone doors has a 10-foot-high ceiling supported by four pillars. Six large stone basins along the west and east wall collect rainwater from a drainage system in the ceiling. It looks to be a great entrance and there is a large bar across the door.
Orryn heads back into the secret passage and offers to go back to the entryway to call down and lure the duergar. He tells Lady D that she should rest in the room until they return.
K'ronk asks if Seraphina can cast silence and she states that she can "with the blessing of the Raven Queen".
The League threads their way back into the secret passage with Seraphina in the lead, and K'ronk and Immeral bringing up the rear.
She sneaks out into the hallway and casts silence as the rest of the party rushes down the stairs. As the martial fighters rush down the stairs to meet the surprised, silent duergar in combat, Immeral steps down a stair and casts chill touch and the spell imparts necrotic damage onto the first duergar he sees.
Dain rushes at a different gray dwarf than the one Immeral attacked, and while releasing a silent battle cry, swings his great axe and strikes the guard with two vicious slashes that decimates his opponent. He is bleeding out, but still standing.
K'ronk releases a fire bolt down the stairs, but misses the one Dain had struck.
Atlas streaks down the stairs towards the one the Immeral attacked, and unleashes a series of blinding fast punches including open-hand strikes which knocks the duergar prone.
Orryn rushes down to the fight and stabs his rapier at the one Dain wounded, and the vicious stab kills his opponent.
Nowhere dives onto a duergar and attempts to grapple him, but the duergar is strong and fights off her grip, but she redoubles her efforts and wraps her tail around his legs, latching onto him.
Seraphina casts sacred flame at one of the duergar, but the spell misses.
The duergar that Atlas is fighting which has fallen to the floor turns invisible, Atlas yells to her companions, but it goes nowhere in the soundless space of the silence spell.
The duergar that Nowhere has wrapped up starts magically growing in size, quickly doubling and breaking her grip as he expands to eight-foot tall.
The last of the four duergar turns invisible also.
Immeral curses from the stairs, casting ray of frost against the enlarged duergar, and it hits freezing his flesh with an icy beam of cold. The dwarf cries out silently, and the spell slows him slightly.
Dain unleashes an inaudible howl of rage and leaps at the enlarged duergar slamming into it with his great axe, cutting through armor and gray flesh and knocking the duergar out. He immediately brings his great axe down again and decapitates the giant which quickly shrinks to normal size.
From the southern stairs Kronk pulls a ceramic oil flask from his pack and tosses it onto the floor on the north side of the room, hoping to reveal the invisible Duergar. The prone one on the floor is splashed with oil, but it doesn't reveal the standing one. He casts fire bolt at the one on the floor, killing him and setting his body ablaze. The smell of roasted flesh fills the room.
Atlas runs up the northern hallway, hoping to run out of the area of Seraphina's silence spell to hear the footsteps of the invisible one. The monk digs into her Ki and enhances her dash up the hallway, and she indeed hears footsteps in front of her after about 20 feet. Atlas lashes out with her short sword but misses the fleeing, invisible, duergar.
Orryn, seeing Atlas rushing up the hallway and swinging wildly, throws another oil flask up the corridor where Atlas is racing, and the splash covers the hallway, but it fails to reveal their opponent.
Seraphina drops the cone of silence and casts faerie fire, outlining her companion Atlas in a glowing light, but it fails to reveal the escaping invisible enemy.
Nowhere casts spike growth in the hallway at the far northern end. The ground in a 20' radius twists and sprouts hard spikes and thorns in the hallway and into the next room.
It is near 9PM in the depths of the Firehammer Hold and the Owlbear League still has invisible foes to battle. Will Nowhere's spike growth spell reveal her enemy? How many more duergar will they have to contend with? What has happened to Jekk and the residents of Firehammer Hold?
NEXT - Campaign Journal 48 - Invading the Invaders
This adventure used material from the D&D Module "Scourge of the Sword Coast".
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