The party reached the top of the flight of stone stairs and emerged into
the light; not far off, under the eaves of the wood were the elves.
Gullhar took the crystal and handed it over to them. With barely a
sound, they vanished into the trees and the party was alone again.
They needed to think about what they were going to do next. Everybody
had a different idea that they wanted to follow up. From their vantage
point, high on the cliff, they took the chance to look out to the
distant horizons. To the north was a range of mountains, their tops
capped with snow, glaciers snaking down their flank.
To the west were more rolling hills covered in forest. To the
north-east were more lakes and forests and beyond them, mountains,
though free of ice and snow. To the east, the Golden Hills stretched
away into the haze and to the south, more peaks.
Olaf pointed to these last mountains and declared that the time had come
to bid the party farewell. His quest to take the clan medallion of
Thorgrim now took precedence and with that, he shouldered his axe,
checked his pack and strode off.
There followed a discussion between the various remaining members of the
party. Although Alurax had the bones of the Knights of the Star bundled
up, with every intent of returning to town eventually to find out how
to lay them to rest, his interest was drawn by the wintry vista to the
north. He wanted to see if he could find frost giants, huge polar bears
and the treasure that they must surely guard.
Alagon, on the other hand, wanted to follow up the rumours of the mighty
Holy Avenger, the ultimate sword of paladins. He thought there would be
information about this in the town archives. Similarly, Gullhar thought
that was the place to locate facts about the Knights of the Star and
that this was their priority, since they had made a promise to the
ghosts of the Knights.
Debate was long and turned often but in the end, the party decided that
they should return to town since the mountains would still be there when
they had done what they needed to do in the archives. Alurax agreed to
this but the call of the mountains was still strong and many a backward
glance he cast until they were finally out of sight.
(DG note – I have now decided to keep a more stringent track of time in
the campaign, since it can’t be summer forever and seasonal changes will
affect the wilderness more than if the adventures took place in a city.
I have therefore, very roughly, calculated that this session’s first
day was August 2nd and I’m going to work from there.)
So, the party set off eastwards, retracing their steps as well as they
were able. They skirted the southern edge of the lakelands and it was
not long after they had set off that a familiar sight appeared in the
sky above them. A shimmering golden creature descended and landed in
front of them; Elysia recognised it at once as the Ki-Rin (the dice had
ordained its appearance, almost as if they were running this adventure,
not me). The noble creature hailed the party and said that it had heard
of their success in the dungeon and offered its congratulations. It
wanted to know if there was anything that it could do to help them.
Alurax explained that they wanted to return to the town, far to the east
and although the Ki-Rin could not carry them all, plus horses, it could
use its magical abilities to cast a Teleport spell which would take
them to the western edge of the Centaur Woods, more or less where it had
found them, give or take a day. Everyone agreed to this, since they
were keen to make progress and so all joined hands and touched the
Ki-Rin.
The next thing they knew, they were at the eaves of the Centaur Woods,
it still being the 2nd August. The Ki-Rin bade them farewell and rose
gracefully into the sky again. The party watched it go and then plunged
into the sylvan forests. The leafy peace of those arboreal tracts was
not to last long; Gullhar caught a distant sound, something heavy and
large crashing through the undergrowth. The party deployed for action
and waited to see what was coming.
It turned out to be four ogres; what they had been doing in the Centaur
Wood was anybody’s guess but what they were doing now was serving as
target practice for the bows of Team Adventure.
The first fell to a single arrow through the eye from Alurax’s bow; the
second took several more shots from the other members of the party. One
went right, another left. Alagon pitched in to take on the one in the
centre. It was a short but bloody battle in which none of the team took
any damage and Alurax carried out a memorable stunt, swinging down from a
tree, attached to a rope, trident in hand, striking down an ogre and
then dropping to the ground and scrambling back to his feet to carry on
the battle.
In the end the four ogres were swiftly despatched and just as quickly
looted. The party pressed on again, camping in the very heart of the
woods. They were not disturbed that night but the next day, Gullhar’s
keen ears brought news to the party of the approach of something that
rode on hooves. Everybody thought they might be about to meet the actual
centaurs but instead, five white horses with horns on their foreheads
rode into sight.
The unicorns stopped and watched the party, who cagily tried to initiate
contact; it was only when Relic volunteered his services that the
beautiful creatures were able to communicate. They had little to say,
apart from warning the party about a larger party of ogres, who were
heading through the forests eastwards. The party thanked the unicorns
and continued on their way; some hours later, they picked up the trail
of the ogres, fresh and muddy, chaos and destruction wrought amidst the
trees. The team members discussed whether they should avoid the ogres or
launch an attack; the latter option, championed by Alurax in the main
won the day and they began to step up the pace as the afternoon
lengthened into evening and the shadows grew thicker, on their way to
becoming gloaming.
They were now very near the edges of the forest and ahead, they could
see the first flickerings of the camp fire that the ogres had set up.
The party moved into position, Elysia readying a Stinking Cloud to cast
on as many as she could, whilst Alurax, Ferros and Alagon prepared to
take on the brunt of the action. Zanurax, who had not done that much so
far readied his bow to provide missile support, accompanied by Gullhar.
Battle was joined and to begin with, the action went well, with three
ogres falling helpless to the ground in the midst of the vile and
noxious gas caused by Elysia’s spell. Zanurax set to with his bow whilst
the fighters and the doughty cleric moved into attack. Alagon ended up
with four to fight, Alurax three and Ferros, who had chosen at the last
minute to keep using his bow, found that two were headed towards him.
The battle was a lot harder this time, thanks to the increased strength
of the opposition but the strong armour of the team and their good
fortune with their attacks meant that their enemies were soon falling.
Gullhar switched from bow to sword when it became clear that he would do
more damage that way; he helped out Alagon and Alurax and the team were
finally left facing a lone ogre who they surrounded and hacked to
pieces. The three ogres in the Stinking Cloud were despatched by Elysia
with her dagger.
Having finished off the wild raiders, the party rested up overnight just
outside the eaves of the woods and in the morning, set off across the
rough lands that lay between them and the distant Moat House. Using
Relic for aerial reconnaissance, they were soon aware that they were
heading for the same large war party of orcs that they had avoided on
their journey west. This time, the hot-headed Alurax wanted to avoid
avoiding them, being keen to wet his trident points in orcish blood.
Wiser heads tried to prevail but he was having none of it and was soon
scouting out the area of the orc camp, set up around three high bluffs.
Each appeared to have at least a score of orcs atop it, with more
between the bluffs and a central area where more were camped.
It was getting towards evening by the time Alurax was in position and he
moved in to climb the nearest bluff. Alagon had decided to come with
him, thinking that he might need some support. Gullhar and Ferros were
lingering at the foot of the bluff, with Elysia and Zanurax keeping an
eye on the horses. Alurax and Alagon reached the top of the bluff with
little sound but this caution was soon to be thrown away as Alurax
attempted to hurl an oil bomb into the midst of the orcs, only to
mis-throw and have his missile land in a flare of fire on the slopes of
the bluff.
This was not quite as disastrous as it might first have been thought,
since quite a few of the orcs rushed over to see what was going on,
giving the two heroes a chance to rush in undetected and start laying
into their enemies. Despite their best efforts, they soon realised that
they were horribly outnumbered and the orcs came rushing at them,
determined to fight off this attack from the darkness. Soon, Ferros and
Gullhar joined the fight and so began the Battle of the Three Peaks.
The orcs blew on their war horns and from other parts of the camp more
orcs began to move into action. Several of the small picket groups began
to circle the bluff, only to come across Elysia and Zanurax, who
withdrew into the darkness in an attempt to draw off some of the
opposition. With the use of magic missiles and the ever-handy Stinking
Cloud, they did some considerable damage on the orcs who had come after
them.
On the bluff-top itself, our heroes were fighting off orc after orc, the
bodies starting to pile up. Although the orcs were finding it hard to
land effective blows on their opponents, they did get lucky on several
occasions and weight of numbers started to tell, with Gullhar felled
three times (although brought back into action by Ferros) before the
cleric was taken out and the elf followed soon after. Finally, Alagon
was brought down by his orcish foes, leaving Alurax to bear the brunt of
the attacks. A few even managed to get their swords and spears past his
magical armour and draw blood but this was not enough and finally, the
trident-wielding fighter was left alone on the bluff top, surrounded by
the bodies of eighty orcs. The rest of the orc band was somewhere out in
the night, wary of approaching in case they shared the fate of their
fellows. Alurax descended the slope of the bluff to see what had become
of Elysia and Zanurax and if he was the only one of the party left
alive. The magic user and thief were still alive – and had accounted for
another score of orcs - and quickly scrambled back up to drag their
unconscious comrades to safety.
The party was reluctant to linger long in the area, especially if there
were more orcs with vengeance on their minds. They loaded their injured
comrades onto their horses and rode hard eastwards, mindful of the
threat from the darkness.
As the dawn came up, they saw in the distance the old watch tower that
they had cleared of trolls (twice) and where they had killed the frost
giant. They figured that this was a good place to rest up since the
night ride had left them with no chance to recharge their spells or
health. While Alurax checked the place out to see if there were any
unwelcome guests, the rest of the party crawled inside, Alagon using his
paladin healing to bring Ferros back to full consciousness so that he
could heal others of the party. They then took turns to keep watch and
rest to recover their strength. They were going to need it since towards
the end of the afternoon, a distant cloud of dust on the horizon
signalled the arrival of unwelcome company. The orcs had followed them
and were now closing in on the watchtower.
Alurax decided that he would not sit idly by and wait to be attacked. He
moved out into the open as the orcs split into two groups, starting to
circle the watch-tower. Alurax was to be disappointed because the orcs
had learned from their previous encounter and kept out of trident range,
firing arrow upon arrow at the eager fighter. Out of forty arrows,
three actually hit him...
 |
| One does not simply get shot with three arrows and die in this game |
...and he was shocked to find that the orcs were
slightly more dangerous than he had thought. He managed to kill one but
then decided that it was safer inside than out. The party members with
bows took up positions on the ramparts whilst Elysia and Zanurax stood
guard at the door to the tower, ready to try and repel any orcs who
tried a frontal assault.
The daylight was now fading and although Gullhar could see in the dark,
so could the orcs and they were now starting to lay their plans to take
their revenge on the Kin-Slayer and his friends.
