Embedded Files
Campaign Journal 51 -
PREVIOUSLY - CAMPAIGN DIARIES 50 - Cornered by the Duergar
The Owlbear League has decimated the forces of the duergar invaders, but they still have not found Jekk, and are not sure where Nalifern the spellcaster has gone to. Once again they killed all enemies, failing to leave one alive to question.
They open the back of a secret passage they had found and emerge in a minecart room.
This area contains the terminus of a mine rail, which descends through a passage in the north wall. An empty mine cart sits on a rail in the middle of the room, connected to a chain and a winch near the south wall. Beside the winch is a corridor leading south. In the western part of the room are four large, metal-bound wooden crates. The western wall has narrow 3-foot-tall niches starting 3 feet off the floor.
The League finds the crates are full of reddish chunks of iron ore. They manage to spy several duergar guarding a room down the hallway to the east.
They want to go after the guards, Lady D. cannot fit through the secret passage, so they are hesitant to move down the tracks to the lower level this way. They look through the arrow slits into another room to the south, and find a bloomery. The east wall of this 30-foot-high room is occupied by a 20-foot-tall vertical furnace. An array of ducts, which open in the upper part of the southern wall, allow air in. A stairway in the southeast corner climbs to the top of the furnace, and a bellows system is attached to the furnace near the northeast corner at floor level. On the west wall are crates for storing ore and shelves for iron buckets and shovels.
There are several barrels in the room, filled with freshly minted longswords, hundreds of them. They are intrigued by them, wondering how many Lady D could carry, and they take half a dozen. After a few moments they decide to go back down to the lower level and bring Lady D up the mine tracks to take out the eastern duergar.
The League proceeds back down the stairs to the north when they run into three more gray dwarves on the stairs carrying trays of food. They drop their trays as Nowhere moves to grapple one. The duergar is strong though, and he shouts and almost breaks free, but Nowhere uses her tail to get a good grasp on her opponent.
Seraphina casts sacred flame on the one Nowhere has grapped, burning the duergar with radiant damage, nearly blinding Nowhere.
Atlas grabs unleashes a flurry of blows at another duergar, pummeling the dwarf, but he manages to fend off a second round of punches.
Orryn uses his short bow to fire at the third duergar from the stairs, striking them in the chest and he cries out. He communicates to Lady D to hold position.
From back on the stairs, K'ronk casts fire bolt, but the attack goes wide and misses.
Dain is struggling in the rear, unable to move forward, so he throws a javelin between Orryn and K'ronk and just misses Nowhere's face, but it slices through the side of the duergar.
Immeral yells "keep one alive!" and casts chill touch. The skeletal hand of necrotic energy smashes the third duergar against the wall, knocking them out.
The first and third duergar turn invisible. Nowhere still is grappling with the first, but the position of the third becomes unknown. Seraphina takes a guess at the direction of the other duergar and casts faerie fire, casting it down the hallway west, but nothing appears, so it must have ran down the stairs to the north.
Nowhere doubles-down on her grapple of the first invisible duergar.
Orryn again asks Lady D to stay, and then nimbly cuts through the crowd and stabs the unconscious duergar, killing him.
Atlas dashes down the stairs, reaching forward as she runs, and gets into the room at the bottom of the stairs. The door to the north opens and stumbles into her invisible quarry, falling prone and likely knocking him down.
Dain grabs his javelin and rushes down the stairs to the same room as Atlas. She yells "He's in here!"
K'ronk grabbles the same invisible duergar that Nowhere is wrestling with to ensure he doesn't get away.
Immeral rushes down the stairs too, as Atlas yells "shut the door!" and Dain slams it shut as Immeral moves to block it too.
The first duergar starts yelling in dwarvish "let go of me" and tries to break the grasp of K'ronk and Nowhere.
In the lower level, the duergar swings his war pick, smashing Atlas, becoming visible and knocking her back. Atlas tries to grapple to duergar, but he brushes off her grasp.
Dain is worried he will become invisible again, and smashes the ground with an oil flask, covering his boots and pants. He then stabs at his legs with the javelin, but he misses.
Immeral casts fire bolt on the oil slick and it lights up and begins scorching the duergar. Atlas backs away from the flames.
Upstairs, Nowhere wraps her tail around the duergar's neck and asks Orryn to make him start talking.
Orryn says in dwarvish to the quickly pale-ing captive "She's going to kill you if you don't start talking." He looks terrified at the snarling tiefling.
Seraphina rushes downstairs, and finds Atlas and Dain stabbing at a burning slick of oil on the floor.
Lady D. ambles over to behind Nowhere. Orryn says "Don't move, or she will eat you."
He screams... "Which one? Which one will eat me? His bladder lets loose and the smell of urine rises in the hallway."
Seeing this is in hand, K'ronk rushes down the stairs to position besides Seraphina while dark smoke billows past.
"What do you want, I'm just a cook!" the duergar says "my name is Muber!" to Orryn as Lady D grabs hold of him with her massive claws. They look and he is indeed dressed in a dirty gray apron.
"Where is Jekk?" Orryn asks.
"I don't know who that is." the cook says.
"Don't lie to me, my owlbear is hungry."
"There are many prisoners, which one is Jekk?"
Orryn asks "Where are these prisoners?"
"They're in the mines."
"Why are you taking prisoners?"
The duergar says "To mine for ore. These are not my decisions, they are Nalifern's!"
"Is there a red wizard here?"
"No, the red wizards have gone."
Orryn asks Nowhere "do you think he could convince the others to stop fighting us."
Nowhere says "Probably not."
Orryn says "Take us to the prisoners."
The duergar nods.
Back on the lower level Immeral casts chill touch on the invisible duergar with the oily feet. A ghostly hand slams their foe against the wall, releasing gouts of necrotic energy, and a scream can be heard.
K'ronk throws another oil flask against the wall which splashes all around, and flames of fire climb up on the invisible being. K'ronk tries a fire bolt as well but it misses.
Dain piles on with another oil flask smashed against the ceiling above, and a mist of oil rains down and ignites when it connects with the flames below. The League steps back as the mist flashes, and when they look, they see the body of the duergar laying face-down in burning oil.
Atlas grabs the duergar by a shock of white hair and as soon as he is clear of the flames, smashes his scorched face into the stone floor, wrecking his skull and finishing him.
The other members of The League join them in the lower room with the lone surviving duergar now tied up.
Atlas asks "What's this guy's name?"
Nowhere says "Who cares?" as she snears at the duergar.
"Moober" the duergar says.
"Take us to the prisoners." Orryn says.
Moober leads them back into the hallways, through the door into the kitchen with the well in the middle, and through it back into the caverns.
They start to hear the clanging of metal tools on rock from the north and the party starts to move more stealthily.
The duergar points to the northwest and says, "Those are the prisoner cells", and then points north and says "The mines are that way." They go to the prisoner cells.
CAPTURE AUDIO FROM 1:19
The west side of this old mining cave has four tunnels branching out of it in a wide arc from south to north. The main area contains a restraining table and scaffolding akin to a gallows, with hooks and pulleys dangling from it.
Inside the area are three duergar warriors and a duergar in a cloak with armored shoulders, dressed a bit differently than the others.
The Owlbear League's prisoner yells "Help! Intruders" in dwarvish and the enemy turns towards them.
Orryn tells Lady D to kill him and Lady D bites Moober's head off in a single snap.
CAPTURE AUDIO FROM 1:21 (I'm f'in quad-lingual)"
The Owlbear League charges in and catches the duergar offguard.
Nowhere slices one open with Icerazor, and they start backpedaling. Seraphina casts sacred flame on the same duergar and it howls from the radiant damage, but it still stands.
Orryn attacks with the wand of magic missiles and launches six bolts of purple energy at the strangely garbed underdwarf - likely the leader. They scream as their body spasms from the damage, but the creature manages to stay standing.
Atlas races over to the first one and launches a flurry of blows, missing in the first attack, but redoubling her attack and beating them severely, knocking the duergar warrior prone.
Dain rushes in and moves to defend Orryn and Seraphina, and decides to toss an oil flask onto the floor before the duergar become invisible. The flask shatters forming a slick of oil around one warrior.
K'ronk moves in and casts a powerful fireball spell across the cavern, but worried about where the prisoner is located, aims it far behind the duergar. This puts Dain and Atlas and Nowhere at risk, but his command of evocation magic allows him to sculpt the effect of the spell to avoid his companions and the prisoner on the table.
The fiery blast explodes and the duergar are battered and burned. The strange looking one dives out of the way, into a side tunnel, but his flesh and clothes are still burned and smoldering. A second one dives out of the way too, but he manages to dive into the oil slick Dain created and with a whoosh of flame is lit on fire and is burning. He screams and falls unconscious into the flaming oil on the floor.
The third duergar warrior is exploded to death and bit of flaming flesh fly around the room, and Immeral covers himself briefly from the blast. As he drops his magic cloak back down, he releases a star and sends a volley of magic missiles after the duergar leader in the tunnel who is just turning back to the battle, still smoking. The violet burst of magical energy shoot into the gray dwarf and tear him and his smoldering robes apart.
The League starts to hear voices from down in the tunnels. The voices say "It's a rescue, we're saved!" and cries of relief start going up.
The last duergar warrior sees their situation is dire and turns invisible, trying to get away.
Nowhere runs over to where the duergar turned invisible and swings Icerazor wildly, but hits nothing.
Orryn orders Lady D. to block the exit, and the owlbear obliges, then the gnome runs down one of the tunnels, yelling for Jekk but not finding him. Various other halflings and humans are in prisoner cells embedded in the cave walls and call for his help to release them. Orryn momentarily ignores them.
Atlas looks to where Nowhere is swinging her sword, and begins searching the dead duergar, finding some gold on them.
Dain, skin still hot from K'ronk's shaped fireball, moves over to the closest prisoner cell and tries to bend bars, but the shoddy construction collapses and he frees a female halfling who rushes out and hugs him.
K'ronk moves over to Dain's area and finds another cell with a desperate human inside, and not seeing the keys around for the cell, tries to bend bars like Dain but he fails.
Immeral hurries over to the halfling being tortured on the table, crazed and screaming "get me off here!" and Immeral starts untying them.
Orryn is attacked by an invisible duergar who swings a war pick at the gnome and turns visible as the attack happens. The pick slams into Orryn and he is bleeding from a bad shoulder wound.
Nowhere runs towards Orryn, spinning her sling and lets a pair of bullets fly, but neither hit. Unfortunately the sling goes a bit wild and hits her in stomach, knocking the wind out of her.
Seraphina rushes over to Immeral and helps untie the screaming halfling prisoner.
Orryn activates the poison in his dagger of venom and swings at the duergar, but he defends successfully. Then Orryn swaps positions with Nowhere.
Atlas searches the leader duergar and finds a ring of keys and starts unlocking cells and stating "I'm Atlas. Pick up a weapon, fight the duergar for your lives! Praise Mizar!"
The first says "Thank you! I'm Geoffrey!" the second man says "I'm Pearsome!"
Dain asks his prisoner her name and she says "Clomey, thank you!" He hands the attractive halfling a javelin, then steps over to K'ronk and helps him rip open another cage. A halfling man name "Fromeer" emerges. Clomey looks on in awe.
Immeral steps to another cage and says "back up" and casts ray of frost at the lock.
The duergar goes after Nowhere and hits her brutally with its war pick stabbing into her side. She clenches her teeth in fury and pulls in a sharp breath.
Nowhere swings Icerazor through the pain and stabs the duergar through the guts and her enemy falls to the floor, unconscious. She finishes the duergar with a slash across the throat.
With all the duergar defeated, The League opens the cages and finds there are eighteen prisoners, all in various states of physical exhaustion, but Jekk is not among them. As they are gathering the group for an exit, a howl comes from Lady D, still blocking the entrance. She has been attacked from behind. The owlbear whips around and finds she is facing three duergar each riding a giant spider.
The first one had bitten Lady D and blood spills from a wound in her hindquarter.
The second misses, but the third hits and bites at her paws, doing more harm and Lady D emits a great screech.
The riders attack as well, shooting crossbows and one strikes Lady D soundly, adding to her wounds.
Nowhere dashes into the fray, and slashes Icerazor at one of the spider steeds, but he fails to wound it.
Orryn rushes to his owlbear companion, and lets loose an arrow, striking one of the spiders for some minor damage.
Atlas yells "In the name of Mizar, kill the duergar!" she races past Lady D and unleashes a flurry of blows at a spider, battering its legs.
Dain runs towards the enemies and tosses a javelin into the spider-kind, but it glances off a thorny carapace, so he's down to one javalin left.
K'ronk, wanting to end the battle decisively, casts fireball back towards the spiders and duergar. He directs it north of the pool of water against a column of stone which is just behind the enemy. The blast knocks the duergar out, and although the spiders survive the initial blast, the fireball shatters the stone column and causes a cave-in which buries two of the spiders and their riders.
Immeral casts ray of frost and hits one of the remaining spiders, nearly killing it, but it still fights on.
Lady D is started by the blast as she is about to charge forward, and misses her opponent, but manages to dodge from another biting attack of the spider.
Nowhere dives at the spider and rider and lops off a leg with her icy sword. She swings again chops off another leg, hobbling the spider, but it still fights on.
Seraphina and Orryn nimbly move towards the battle, but are struggling to get around Lady D.
Lady D swipes her claw at the spider, but it scrambles out of the way, but she manages to catch its face in her beak and she tears off the face of the steeder, and it drops dead. The duergar rider starts scrambling out of the saddle.
Atlas runs over to the duergar and pummels the gray dwarf with blistering punches and it stumbles as Dain races in. The dwarf barbarian swings his great axe, missing with his first blow, but pressing the attack with a second swing that eviscerates the duergar and it falls dead.Standing in the partially collapsed pool cave, the League discusses what to do about Jekk still being missing.
The prisoners volunteer that Jekk was taken yesterday by Nalifern for questioning. They assume he is with them, but they do not know where Nalifern is.
Frustrated they have not yet located Jekk, hoping they are close, Seraphina casts sending to telepathically communicate with the missing Dwarf. "Where are you right now? Owlbear League here to rescue you. Hang in there."
She receives a message back "The dungeons of Firehammer Hold. I am hurt. There is a spellcaster here." and she relays this to The League.
K'ronk says "He has to be close. Can you locate object on the armor he was wearing?"
Dain says "He had that sick codpiece with a face on it, and that great axe."
Seraphina nods and casts the locate object spell, instead thinking about the impressive boots she remembers.
Standing in the cave with the pond, she detects that Jekk is somewhere to the northeast of the pool cave.
Seraphina walks, pointing to the wall, and as she moves east toward the well room, her arm turns like a compass, and she points straight north from the well room.
"He must be close, just beyond this wall." Seraphina says.
Atlas asks "do we need to dig through the rubble?"
K'ronk replies "there was a door to the north back on the other side of the well room. Let's try that first." To the prisoners he says "Stay close, stay quiet, but yell if you see a threat."
The former prisoners agree. They pass through the utility room with the well, and the eighteen rescued humans and halflings follow tentatively. There is nobody in the eastern hallway, so they proceed.
Fromeer and Geoffry are given weapons to bring up the rear. Seraphina casts cure wounds on Orryn to bolster her comrade. They listen at the northern door in the long hallway and hear nothing.
They creep through an L-shaped hallway which has several sleeping rolls laid out along the eastern wall, but is currently unoccupied.
The hall turns to the west and ends in a door which Orryn listens to. This time there are clear voices, duergar talking in dwarvish. Atlas listens closely and understands there is some grumbling about how long they are going to have to stay cooped up in the room. Another replies "until Balcazon says so." There sounds like some pacing and rustling from in the room.
Atlas relays this to The League and they decide on a frontal assault. They line up and push on the door, but it is locked. K'ronk looks to Immeral "I forgot to study the knock spell, did you?"
Immeral replies "No, but I will take a look, and he dons his cloak of stars, entering the ethereal plane, and passing through the shady misty images of his companions and the far door. Within the room, there are four powerful looking dwarves, two dressed as clerics, two as warriors. They are passing time in a comfortable barracks. This barracks has a table with stools and a set of wooden shelves, on which are stored several mats, bedrolls, and blankets, as well as food and a few casks. Doors are set in every wall except the southern one.
Immeral passes through the western door, finding a short hallway. He traverses the hallway and peeks his head through another door, noting that the doors have been barred from within.
CAPTURE P2 16:50
The room within has a fireplace in the southwestern corner with a mantle adorned with a carving of a sword surrounded by two spiraling flames, over which a broken crossbow bolt has been painted in red. In the southeastern part of the room sits a large bed and a chest. A tall cabinet and an ornate desk with a high-backed chair stand near the north wall. Many metal instruments and glass containers sit on the desk, including a burner, spoons, bottles, flasks, and chemical apparatus'. In the northeastern corner is a set of shackles chained to the wall. Within those chains is a bloodied and beaten dwarf Immeral recognizes - it is Jekk.
Also within the room is a viscous duergar alchemist that The League combated earlier. He looks like he is thinking up new ways of tormenting Jekk.
Immeral removes his cloak and returns to the normal world with his friends exactly where he left. He quickly and quietly relates what he has seen and they discuss options.
Immeral says "We have to trick them to get in."
K'ronk nods "If we try brute force Jekk could easily be killed."
Atlas asks "Can we pretend to deliver lunch? We just passed the kitchen. It feels like lunch time."
Immeral says "How?"
Atlas replies "I say 'we have lunch' in dwarvish."
K'ronk says "I have the staff of charming."
Nowhere says "I can disguise self." and K'ronk adds "I do too."
Immeral adds "With that long hall, a fight might not be heard, but we can't take that chance."
K'ronk replies "Unless Seraphina casts silence."
Atlas says "That sounds like our plan. K'ronk and Nowhere disguise themselves as duergar delivering food, and once they open the door we block the doors and kick ass." The party nods.
K'ronk says "And Seraphina hits them with silence to make sure Jekk doesn't get killed."
Immeral says "We will have to cast spells from outside the area of silence."
The others nod, "let's do it".
Atlas hurries back for some of the trays and plates from the kitchen area, and they put the plan in motion. Nowhere and Atlas disguise themselves with spells that make them look like duergar workers holding trays of food.
Atlas pounds on the door and in dwarvish says "Lunch."
The room within becomes silent, then a chair slides, footsteps clatter and the door is unbarred. The duergar who opened the door glances out, then walks back to the table saying "It's about time."
Seraphina casts silence as the rest charge into the area of magical quiet.
Nowhere runs in and swings Icerazor at the warrior returning to the table. She slashes through his armor and he cries out in silence. He blocks a second attack, and she twists to try to pommel him with her sword, and his nose gouts blood.
Orryn rushes in, following behind Nowhere and launching a sneak attack from behind his companion, striking the other duergar sitting at the table, which looks like a spellcaster. He drives his rapier deep into the gray dwarf's side and he staggers to his feet, holding his wound.
Atlas runs to the western door and stands guard, wielding her crossbow and firing at Nowhere's opponent. The first bolt misses, but a second shot hits him with a bolt that pierces his chest.
Dain runs up to one of the spellcasters, bashing him with his shield, piercing him in several areas and crashing him into the table, all in the silence of the spell effect. The duergar manages to get to his feet to fight back, but is bleeding from several wounds. But Dain isn't done, he swings Bloodstorm and strikes a blow across the skull of the duergar, knocking him out and sending him crashing onto the table.
From the hallway K'ronk casts blindness/deafness on the other spellcaster duergar. Now blinded, the duergar pulls a dagger from his belt and starts swinging wildly.
Capture P2 42:20
Immeral stays by the doorway and casts witch bolt at Atlas and Nowhere's opponent. A beam of crackling, blue energy lances out toward the duergar, forming a sustained arc of lightning, burning and tearing into his skin. He screams in silence.
That same warrior swings his war pick at Nowhere and hits her brutally. She nearly collapses from the pain, but both stand and she dodges a second attack from him.
The second duergar warrior hits Dain with a javelin, piercing his armor a short way, and then the duergar becomes invisible.
The blinded spellcaster swings wildly in Dain's direction, but doesn't come near to hitting. He also becomes invisible.
Nowhere swings Icerazor again and her slash nearly cuts off the warrior's arm, and icy spiders release from her sword, clamboring over the duergar to bite him everywhere. She swings again at the startled duergar and guts him with a slash across the abdomen. He falls dead.
Seraphina skirts by Immeral, trying to find the invisible duergar by swinging her mace, but she finds nothing, so she moves to block the western door.
Orryn moves to the northern door to make sure they don't sneak out of the room.
Atlas swings her rope of climbing to try to find a duergar, but finds nothing.
Dain swings wildly in empty space, and manages to hit one shuffling along the wall, but its unclear what damage he inflicted.
K'ronk casts a fire bolt towards where Dain seemed like he hit something, but just manages to burn the wall.
Immeral shuts and bars the door.
The League still battles two invisible duergar. What will the vicious creatures do next? Can they get to Jekk before he is killed? What other mysteries does Firehammer Hold keep? And will they be able to get the prisoners of the duergar to safety.
NEXT - CAMPAIGN JOURNAL 52 - FLIGHT FROM FIREHAMMER
This adventure used material from the D&D Module "Scourge of the Sword Coast".
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