The stockade mining town proved to be horribly boring, even to
the animals and hidden spies. So after feeding the Dire Bear a relatively innocent
villager everybody went up to the manor to investigate reports of goblin activity.
After dealing with goblin assassins, rangers, clerics, rogues, bards, engineers,
researchers, cleaning ladies, and mural artists the teams began to wonder - just
that the heck was going on around here, and where was that smell coming from?
The surviving teams returned with the information they needed. What was never
discovered was what, exactly, happened, how long ago it happened, and why the
village was so completely quiet and the people inactive....
- Shadowrun
Player: Alain Ackerman
Laurena (Elf Male Rogue 5 / Assassin 4 / Shadow Dancer 10) spent a good
deal of time at the beginning of the adventure lurking as only she was
able to. One almost wishes that her perfectly timed tumble directly
through the middle of Ghost Wind's party had been noticed just so that
something other than her shadows would have been able to marvel at the
sheer audacity and skill of it. Swiftly determining that the Manor was
where things were going to be interesting, she gave Twig a quick lift
up the hill, not seeming entirely disinterested in the wood elf's rugged
and wild nature. Finding the front door blocked, she circled around
to the back and broke in through a window, and was ambushed by a goblin
assassin/soulknife at the cost of one of her shadows. Providing tactical
intelligence and fire support for the others, she roamed the halls and
underground tunnels with a small pack of Horrible Goblin Doom, and pretty
much cleaned the place out.
Shadowrun survives to adventure again.
- Strength
Player: Jonathan Sternfeld
All hail Wolfie (Human Male Cleric 8 / Mighty Cleric of Kord 7), mighty
wielder of crushing Goblin death, unbarrer of doors, and almost destroyer of
unsturdy brick walls! Warulf Anivor took the fight right to the enemy. His
first advance broke the goblin assassin/soulknife's defense. Charging up on
the Warg's nest, he uncovered the hidden trap door into the tunnels and when
his back had been secured he waded with Twig and Shadowrun into the goblins
waiting down below. And when faced with a solid steel door with a steel beam
bolted directly across the front of it, a Mighty Cleric knows exactly what to
do....
Strength survives to adventure again.
- Flame Breaker
Player: Mark Jerard
Walls? What're those? The bricked over front door didn't even slow Octar
Thundrail (Half-Orc Male Fighter 6 / Planar Champion 9) down. He simply,
and dimensionally, slipped between the bricks, and beat up on some drunken
goblins in the middle of a card game. Taking the time to loot the closet for
a really nice feathered cloak, he moved into the fray in the main rooms,
catching the goblins off-guard and flanking them against the group coming in
through the back window. Taking a bit of extra time, he helped clean out the
main floor of the manor, picking up a little extra loot in the process. When
Ghost Wind located the heavy steel door, he was there with them trying to
open it. The door was winning.
Flame Breaker survives to adventure again.
- Twig
Player: Vanessa Wilcox-Swarez
When the villagers failed to provide any useful information, Lisonamit
(Half-Elf Male Druid 19) decided that the stop shouldn't be a complete
waste, and let them provide a little nutrition for his wildlife friends.
Proceeding with Team Shadowrun up to the manor, he stopped to interrogate
the local shrubbery for tactical information. His flame spells and devastating
ranged spells proved the perfect compliment to Shadowrun's minions and
Strength's trademarked Heavy Crushing Weight To The Head attack. Mostly
due to his flaming bolts to the faces of multiple goblins, the little
war party arrived in the main underground room just in time to stop Heartwood
from being repeatedly skewered.
Twig survives to adventure again.
- Ghost Wind
Player: Christopher J. Ford
Illiri (Human Female Sorcerer 16), Ja'Nek (Human Male Cleric 5 / Psion 1),
Melee (Dwarf Male Fighter 5), Thomas (Human Male Ranger 5),
Elizabeth (Human Female Sorcerer 5), Lyrin (Human Male Bard 12), and
Khevak (Halfling Male Psion 4) showed this time. As is Ghost Wind's typical
method of operation, they did just about everything. From full recon of the
village and the surrounding area, to chatting it up with the bartender, and
finally advancing into combat against the goblin rangers inside. With team
members stationed in central rooms as relays to convey information, everyone
moved in a well-coordinated manner, walling off goblins in their sleeping
corners, and blasting others to pieces with sonic orbs and bits of door
shrapnel. Oh, yeah, and walling Heartwind off in a side-wing to the manor
after the goblins has been cleared out, but nobody saw that. Discovering the
heavy steel door underground, the entire team converged to attempt to open
it. The bar was eventually torn off, the lock magically released, the door
forced open against damaged hinges. Inside was a room with goblin corpses on
pikes, a giant stone table with a heavy steel box bolted directly to the
stone, and large lettering over the back wall reading "No good can come of
this". They left.
Ghost Wind survives to adventure again.
- Heartwood
Player: Tom Leonard
Diana Heartwood (Human Female Paladin 15) spent several minutes early on
trying to cut to the root of the problem by searching for evil, but after a
quick shadow of a response, there wasn't anything that turned up in the
village. So she went to join the others fighting the assassin/soulknife,
harrying the assaulted goblin further. After that it was a race to get more
goblins than the others, which put her in the way of Ghost Wind and got her
walled off from the rest of the group until she could break through, and
eventually had her charging into the midst of several goblin rogues and
clerics without any backup. Heroic, but very nearly the end of the Paladin
if not for the timely intervention of Twig, Strength, and Shadowrun.
Salvation was for naught, in the end. When faced with the same heavy door,
gruesome corpses, and bold warning that Ghost Wind had discovered, Heartwood
opened the steel box, broke open the wooden box inside that, and snapped the
metal band welded in place around the deck of cards found within. Instantly
a magical sphere appeared around her, creating an impenetrable shield. After
all of this, her last words were "I'll draw four cards". She was
disintegrated on the spot, and her soul trapped within that abandoned room
for eternity. Not all that glitters is gold, not all cards are a Deck of
Many Things, and not all warnings should be ignored....
Heartwood meets a horrible end.
|