Diary of a real life Gestalt Game

[ksbsnowowl]

In the four days or so that the Druid//Ranger was gone, a trapper had come to town and reported an inflow of new beasts into the area.  The night before these “troll hounds” had come within sight of the village, and the local Wolf Berserker lodge was forming hunting parties to chase some of these things down.  The PC’s volunteer to go hunt as well, and the Hathran decides to give them one of the Lesser Vigor wands that the former party members had on their persons, she also scolds the Druid//Ranger for not giving her the letter addressed to the Hathran, that the party had picked up from the Uthraki they killed. (It was found on one of the corpses).

The party decides to head south, up the switchback road to higher elevation.  They begin to head down the side trail that leads toward a bound demon.  They notice a few tracks and follow them for a while.  They notice that there is something moving parallel to them higher up the slope.  Even though it is moving through underbrush, they only hear it occasionally, and it is keeping pace with them.

These troll hounds mechanically are Feral Varags (Savage Species and MM4).  They move at 70 ft per round, have a bit of fast healing, and an Intelligence of 2 – yeah, they’re basically feral animals, but more muscular than a man.

It turns out there are two of these creatures, and they “charge” down the slope to flank the party at the front and back on the road.  These creatures have Spring Attack, and that combined with their speed, and the underbrush, really makes this a tough fight for the party.  I don’t recall specifics, but everyone got somewhat injured, and the Rog//SpThf went unconscious with a Lesser Vigor active on her.  The trollhounds then start to drag her off, because they want to eat her.  The barbarian is frustrated at his slow speed going up a slope in underbrush, and his inability to charge.  They finally land a few good arrow shots, and are able to cut off the troll hounds’ escape.  I almost killed another character, and at her last game session before moving away.  They survived though, and return to town.

One of the hunting parties hasn’t returned yet, and so they head east along the coast of the fjord, and camp out for the night.  The next day they encounter the returning party – six men, two of whom are injured and hobbling.  They learn the location where one of these creatures has a den, and track it down.  They set an ambush at the mouth of its den, and ready actions as one of them throws a torch down into the den along with brush to smoke it out.  The hound sticks its head out and dies much more easily than the other two encountered the day before.  The party meets back up with the injured hunting party, and they camp out for the night.

[ksbsnowowl]

Okay, now for my first update in over a year... 

Where I left off with the party they were right around 3rd level and returning to town after hunting down some troll hounds.  I gave them about a week's down time in game to level, rest up, and get a few things commissioned or identified.  Thus begins the next major plot arch.

A trading ship arrives, bringing news of another near-by town (located in the same fjord system) being burnt out with no one around.  The Hathran Solveig is concerned, and sends the party via Witchboat to investigate.  They arrive at the town and it is as described.  All the buildings are burnt to some extent, and there are several corpses lying around.  The party looks around, and finds the remains of their Berserker Lodge.  One of the members was a Druid//Barb, and in a chest they find a journal that is mostly intact.  They investigate tracks leading off north and encounter a creature they've never seen before (a Tanarukk) gnawing on a human femur.  They attack it and kill it.

They return to the burnt town and collect a few items that hopefully someone from Levanger can identify as being from the missing people.  They peruse the journal they found, and the author describes a friend who had returned from his djamma complaining of hearing voices.  I forget exactly how much detail I gave, but I think the author near the end mentioned also hearing voices.

The party gets back in the witchboat to return and report what they've found.  Before they've even gotten back to Levanger, the Barbarian starts hearing voices.  (He just became the target of a Wendigo).

The next day the trading ship leaves Levanger.  That night a ship of slavers beaches, starts hurling lit torches on the roofs of longhouses, and create havoc in the town while trying to capture people as slaves.  The party did a decent job of foiling that, though a year later I cannot remember any specifics.  They interrogate a few surviving slavers, and discover that the burnt out town was also sacked by them, and a second ship has already headed west across the Ashane Sea (the "Baltic") loaded with 35 slaves, headed to a trading town called Niðarós.

The Hathran enlists a fisherman to pilot his small longship across the sea with the party and four other men (barbarians, but mainly acting as ship's crew) to retrieve the enslaved Rashemi.  On their trip along the fjord, they encounter some Merrow and a Sea Hag on the skerries, and the captain takes several points of strength damage from the hag's stare.

It takes four days to cross the sea (roughly 400 miles - the Longship speeds listed in the PHB are absolute crap.  Do your own research for real ship speeds).  They come upon the far coast in a dense fog, and the Archer sends his hawk out to explore the coastline. (They need to find a landmark before they know if they arrived north or south of Niðarós).

The hawk returns, and they follow it into the forest that follows the coast.  While walking, the Wendigo decides to just attack the party, and they dispatch it (yea for magic missile, if I remember right).  After about two hours the party arrives at the ruins of an old city.  They encounter an assassin vine and deal with it.  While exploring around they find a section that isn't old and ruined, and is inhabited by huldre folk (nymphs).  They later notice that all the pristine buildings are within a very large ring of mushrooms that seems to coincide with the transition from ruins to well-kept buildings.

I'll continue updating later tonight.

[ksbsnowowl]

The party enters the pristine section of the ruins (roughly the size of a town square or courtyard) and meets the individuals living there.  One of them happens to notice that the women have tails hiding underneath their skirts.

The huldre folk are friendly, but when questioned about their town, they are quite confused.  They lived in a full city, not a decrepit ruin, and they had fallen asleep after partying.  When they awoke the remainder of their city had fallen into ruin, and no one else was around.  That happened a few days prior, and then just last evening someone came and stole one of their infants.  They are all wary of leaving the ring of mushrooms, for fear of something happening to them like what happened to the rest of their city.  So they ask the party to find the thief.  One of their number had tracked it down a nearly overgrown roadway, and knew the child was kept in a cabin, but none of the Huldre could obtain the child, because the captors had planted a crib knife in the bassinet's headboard. (Crib knives were rune-etched daggers stuck in headboards and doorframes; they were believed to have prevented trolls and huldre from snatching away unbaptized infants.)

So the party trudges off to find this child amidst the foggy woods (light fog, 20% miss chance beyond 30 ft).  The archer follows the tracks to a small cabin alongside the road.  I think one of them might have peaked in the windows, and they notice a bassinet in a back room.  They opt to barge in through the front door and slaughter one or two eneko ("quarter trolls").  They make plenty of noise doing this, and by the time they get to the back room, the bassinet is empty.  The primordial giant eneko warlock "trollwife" fails at sneaking out of the room invisibly, and battle ensues.  She lays down an obscuring mist, might have leapt out the first-floor window.  In the end the party rescues the child and returns her to the ruined city.  During the festivities that ensue, the Barbarian//Warlock (the Barb reworked the rogue half of his character to be Warlock with Hideous Blow) succeeds in bedding one of the huldre women.  The Archer, who's player always made idiotic comments about pooping and peeing in his pants when he was scared*, relieves himself within the fey ring during the evening.**

The next morning as the party departs, the Barbarian's bed-mate uses contagion to inflict the Archer with the STD slimy doom while patting him on the back.  Sadly, this little lesson was lost on the player, and his excretory antics never stopped until he left the group.

The party returns to the ship, and the fog clears enough that they can navigate their way toward Niðarós.  Around mid-day they see a stone henge circle on a cliff near the shore, and by evening they come upon a small fishing town called Eyrrinberg.  They beach their ship for the night and make acquaintance with the "king" there (anyone with more land than a farmstead, and any influence of power often named themselves king in viking scandinavia).  Due to some good roleplay and the offering of Jhugild (Rashemi fire wine) to the king, the Barbarian//Warlock is named a Jarl (which the player loves, and plays up the importance of his "title" way more than it actually is).

The next day the party sails to Niðarós and are able to gather info on the slave ship.  They find one of the slavers who got off the ship and sold his share of the slaves here.  They chat him up over a few mugs of mead, and get info on where the slaves were sold.  They learn that 5 slaves are here in Niðarós, twelve had been sold to a merchant caravan heading west, and the slave ship had gotten news of call for slaves in Birka (much larger trading center south of Niðarós); slaves were needed for an upcoming celebration at Upsala - where they would sacrifice 9 male and 9 female dogs, 9 male and 9 female horses, cattle, ect, ect, and 9 male and 9 female humans.

So here I presented my PC's with a dilemma: Rashemi sold as slaves and headed in three different directions.  Which ever way they wanted to go, was up to them.  Smartly, they chose to rescue the five slaves in Niðarós that evening, and then shipped out under the cloak of night to hunt down the slave ship, as those Rashemi where in imminent danger.

The five slaves in Niðarós were women who had basically been sold as whores.  The PC's snuck into the building where they were being kept, but accidentally made enough noise to alert someone.  A battle ensued, with their footwork hampered by all the prone (no longer sleeping) forms on the ground.  The Warlock made good use of spider climb to enter through a window, though.  They ended up rescuing the five Rashemi, as well as three other women, and raced back to the ship and departed before anyone could catch up to them.

After four days of sailing the party catches up to the slaver ship while it had beached to allow the slavers to cook dinner.  This set up gave me a good opportunity to pace the battle, as no more than one or two of the slavers could get back on the ship each round to stop the party from freeing the chained slaves.  The party finally started to use some tactics, and captain Ythar swooped his smaller longship in alongside the slave ship, and the Barb//Warlock spider climbed up and started dealing with the handful of slavers that were still on board.  The Ranger//Druid actually made excellent use of entangle (though he didn't think of it until a second wave of 4 slavers had climbed back onto the ship) which bogged the remaining slavers down long enough for the party to steal the entire ship, complete with the slavers' sea chests (footlockers).  They knew they were going to need to capture the ship, as there were too many Rashemi for the small longship the PC's had traveled in.

Naturally, the Rashemi slaves wanted to keep some of the silver for themselves, to help with the fact that all their possessions had been burned to the ground, but the party still made out with several thousand gold pieces' worth of silver.

*

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In the early days of forming this group back in '09 I told a story I had heard about a DM who, after a week of in-game time, told his party that they all died due to sepsis, because none of them had specified that they had gone to the bathroom at any point in the game.  Little did I know that this moronic player would latch onto that and declare at least once a game session that he peed himself, usually in the middle of combat.

**

(click to show/hide)

Viking-era Scandinavians believed that peeing in a fey ring caused one to contract venereal disease.

[ksbsnowowl]

Six days later the party returns to Eyrrinberg with the slave ship and the freed Rashemi.  There is a feast, and the Barbarian secures horses and supplies from the king.  The barbarian also captured a few of the slavers, and gives them to his king as a gift.  Captain Ythar and his crew will take the Rashemi home, and the party tells him they'll be back in a week, so he can return to pick them up.

Of course, when they said that, they failed to realize that 10 days had already passed since they left Niðarós (and the merchant caravan had already left by then).  I'm not sure how they possibly thought they'd be back in one week.
They set out west the next morning (there is a road from Eyrrinberg that will connect with the main trade road further inland).  On the fourth day of travel, as they are skirting the south end of a mountain range, they notice signs of battle along the roadway.  They see a trail that leads up into the foothills, but opt not to investigate.

Sixteen days of travel beyond the battle site the party rounds the southern edge of a second mountain range and arrives at a kingdom on the western foothills near a large number of silver mines.  Some information gathering provides them with the information they seek: a slave merchant arrived just the day before and sold his slaves to the royal family.  They also learn that the king recently died, and the heir chosen to replace him has not yet been named.

The four party members (I kept the former player's character around as an NPC) head to the royal family's home (an overgrown mead hall with haphazard additional wings and a wooden palisade around it) to see what they can learn.  When they enter the hall they notice a Rashemi servant and touch base with her, learning that all the slaves brought to the city are here in the "palace."

The barbarian strikes up a conversation with a woman named Astrid, and learns she is one of the heirs.  They also meet her brothers; one older, one younger.  Astrid is a pretty smart lady, and she realizes the party members share the same accent as the new slaves her brother just acquired.  After she discusses things with her brother, who grudgingly agrees, she offers to sell the Rashemi slaves back to the party for 1 gp each, if they will help her younger brother on his quest.  The young brother, age 9, has been named as the heir by a local shaman.  But to be confirmed as the next king, young Thorstein must travel to an ancient site, alone, where he will perform a ritual and be anointed.  Astrid is of course worried about her little brother traveling on such a journey, as the world isn't exactly a safe place.  She enlists the party to help escort him to the destination site.  She doesn't know a whole lot of details, as they are told to the chosen heir by the shaman as the heir is chosen.  She is able to point them in the right direction though.

The party decides on their own to set out ahead of Thorstein, so that he will have the illusion of having done it all himself.  On the one hand this is adorable, on the other, well, it caused the party a lot of grief.

[ksbsnowowl]

The party set out ahead of the young heir to the throne, and did indeed clear the way for him somewhat.  They traveled about a day and half north-northwest of Rapolla to a fork in the trail.  Where the trail splits, there was a stonehenge.  The barbarian//warlock notices there is a woman inside the henge.  Thankfully he did not decide to investigate further, as the henge is surrounded by, and covered in Forbiddance spells.  He does toss a coin at her though.  This coin has been a subject of potential grief in the time since then, as I implied the creature trapped there (a demon) might be able to use the coin to scry the barbarian (as he was it's most recent owner).  The player takes umbrage with this, thinking that currency, by its nature, isn't 'owned' in the way other objects are.  I've never actually used the coin as a means of scrying him, but the possibility has lead to him making some wrong assumptions later on.

Along their journey, the party encounters a pack of hungry wolves that approach their campsite, and fight a pair of ogres.  After about three days' journey, they notice that their campsite is surrounded by people.  They are actually a volodni tribe, and they ask what the party is doing in the forest.  When the Barbarian explains that they are ensuring the safe travel of the heir, the tribe of volodni withdraw.  In the morning the party notices a small wreath made of twigs that is hanging from a branch on the edge of their campsite.  One of them decides to pick it up and take it with them.

They come upon a long lake, and travel along side it for a day and a half.  In that time they encounter a myling (Norse undead babies - I used the Unholy Child from the Creature Collection [2?] by Sword and Sorcery), as well as a Glaistig.  The Archer becomes infatuated with the Glaistig, and she actually causes them problems a few times.

As they are crossing the outlet stream from this lake, they are assaulted by a nature spirit of sorts (a Bijang from OA) which is a cruel version of a dryad, of sorts.  He uses his ability which freezes people in place, and despite every single person in the party having a good Will save, they ALL fail.  And this is after the fey creature used some gust of wind-type spell-like ability to unbalance them as they were using slick stepping stones to cross.  The NPC Spellthief actually got hit with the body-freezing ability while she was climbing out of the stream - I gave her some percentage chance to not have been caught with her head under water, and she succeeded.

The 3.5 update for that body-freezing spell is in the Spell Compendium, and it was updated to allow a new save after an hour.  At that point the Barbarian succeeds, and ends up pulling the other characters free (it is an area affect, and if someone can be pulled free of it, they return to normal). 

The party continues on, and that night they hear a horn, and baying hounds.  It continues for several hours, growing closer, and eventually they are confronted with a Wild Hunter and his hounds (Woodling Shadow Mastiff's or Woodling Yeth Hounds, I forget which I used).  They kill one or two of the hounds before the Hunter arrives.  One of them had decided to get that twig wreath out and study it earlier that evening, which was lucky for them.

All along the way, the Barbarian has been backtracking in the evenings to check up on Thorstien the royal heir.  However, he never noticed that Thorstien had a small twig wreath tied to his saddle, and tied to a tree near his camp fire each night.  This wreath is a symbol of an agreement with the fey king of this forest, that allows safe and unmolested passage through his forest.  Because the party didn't know this, and chose to set out ahead of Thorstien, they had a much harder time of things than they needed to.

So, the party learns of King Briarthorn, and have a short conversation with Briarthorn's Wild Hunter.  Surprisingly, this comes into play MUCH later in the campaign, without me having even planned it that way.

The party travels another day or two, and the land's elevation is rising toward a north-costal mountain range.  As the party is approaching a ravine with a broken bridge, they notice a group of humans hiding in the foliage near the ravine.  It is an ambush party, composed of a Barb//Rog leader, and some Barbarian and Rogue underlings.  The players dispatch them without too much difficulty, and discover upon the bodies a magic ring and a note telling the leader to kill the heir.

The ancient ruined city that is the target of this quest is within sight of the ravine, and the party gets across with a little help from the warlock's spider climb and some rope.  They go investigate the ruins, and encounter some glowing orbs.  The players had no clue what these were (they were Nyth, from Mosters of Faerun), and they were also confused when the orbs appeared to "scan" them, then start attacking.  The nyth can use magic missile every other round, and fire actually heals them (and makes them reproduce, splitting into two when the fire damage grants enough temporary hit points that their HP total is doubled).  This encounter is a confusing one for the party, and they end up retreating, but heading further into the city.

They come to a run-down but grand open-aired hall, with pillars running along the edges, much like the Parthenon in Greece.  Not far into the entry of the hall is an altar with a fire burning atop it.  At the "front" of the 200-foot hall is a raised dais, with a cracked and broken throne made of stone.  Below the dais, set directly in front of the throne, is a simple stone block; a bench wide enough for one person.

The Barbarian starts sitting in the throne, and then sits on the stone block.  When he does so, his body feels out of sorts, his vision doubles in a fashion, and while still seeing the ruins, he sees the hall in magnificent glory.  The throne is not broken, and upon it sits a beautiful woman.  She speaks to him and introduces herself as Tatiana.  They have a short conversation.  She hides that she is perturbed when she learns the Barbarian is not the heir, but she is intrigued and disheartened to learn that there were only two of the guardians (the Nyth) remaining.  She explains that the nyth are bound by ancient agreement to patrol the ruins and keep out any except those who carry the bloodline of the king.  She does not know what could have killed off all the guardians, but she suspects her cousin is behind it.

The barbarian ends the conversation, and upon standing from the stone seat, learns that his apparent five-minute conversation, to those watching from Midgard, actually had him sitting on the stone, appearing to mumble to himself for over two hours.  The party goes to investigate the fire on the altar, and discovers that the fire is actually continual flame spells (they got 4 everburning torches out it).  They then go see what is taking Thorstien the heir so long, and the Barbarian finds that he had tried to climb down the ravine (and then up the other side) except he had fallen, and hurt himself pretty badly.  They bring him to the top, heal him up, and all walk into the ruined city together.  The two injured Nyth approach and 'scan' them again, and when Thorstien says the party is with him, the Nyth just leave them all alone.

By this time it is starting to get dark, and the party escorts Thorstien to the throne hall.  Thorstien says he must build a fire upon the altar, and the party helps him.  He sits on the stone block and begins mumbling a conversation they cannot understand (much like what the barbarian did earlier).  About 20 minutes later, a dark shape enters the grand hall (a Shadow Creature Troll) and a great battle ensues.  The party defeats the troll, and shortly thereafter Thorstien ends his conversation with Tatiana.  By this point, the nyth have discovered that the fire on the altar is real, and they dance within its flames, and every minute or two they explode with magical energy, replenishing their numbers into the hundreds.

With the end of this session the player of the Archer and the player of the Cleric//Sorcerer leave our gaming group, and the Barbarian player and I spend a few weeks seeking out new players.  It was the best thing that could have happened; the group I have now is amazing.

[ksbsnowowl]

New Players: Week 1

I'm keeping the former player's characters around as minor NPC's until I can work all but one of them out of the story.

Recruited one new player, who decides to play a half-elf Barbarian//Beguiler.  He was originally planning to go with Sorcerer using mostly enchantment and illusion magic, but jumped upon the Beguiler when I pointed out its advantages (casting in light armor, more skill points).
As the party was leaving the ruins of the ancient Seelie city, they heard the mysterious sound of a fiddle.  After crossing the ravine, they followed the sound for a few miles down a trail toward the west.  Along the way, they found a half-elf frozen along the trail (also caught by a transfix spell).  They get him free of it, and he explains that he was trailing a group of men who had stolen his father's sword.  He had set an ambush, when a forest creature approached and trapped him.  While frozen, he had seen the pair of thieves approach, inspect, and walk around him; there was still time to catch them.  The barbarian//warlock thought this to be a very just undertaking, and decided to assist.  They track down the thieves, and the two barbarian players and the Archer NPC (rebuilt as a Druid//Ranger 1/Scout 4) assault and kill them.  In the process, they receive their first magic weapons of the campaign: the stolen +1 greatsword, and a +1 longspear.

At first the Barbarian//Warlock was unhappy that the weapon alloted to him was a longspear and not also a greatsword (which is what he had been wielding thus far.)  I decided to place a longspear in for various reasons, including that spears were actually quite common in Norse society, but mainly because it would allow the Warlock to use his Hideous Blow without having to make a concentration check.  This revelation didn't appease the player at first (not that he was sulking, but I could tell he was a bit disappointed), but within a few sessions of play, he grew to like the longspear, its reach, and the extra AoO's it afforded him.  (Though unrealized, it has also prevented untold numbers of AoO's against the player since he has acquired the longspear).  Writing this log several months after the fact, he has actually had the opportunity to keep and use a +1 Greataxe, but has opted to keep the +1 Longspear instead.

The rest of that evening was comprised of new character interactions, explaining what the party has been doing, and the new character agreeing to assist in escorting the heir back to his throne, especially since it appears there is an assassination plot in the works.  They continued to investigate the fiddle music, and heard it cut off.  They discovered a fossergrim laying delirious in his river, and a red misty cloud floating away (Vampiric Mist from the Creature Catalog).  They healed the fossergrim some, and defeated the mist, and were awarded with a Mithril chain shirt.

New Players: Week 2

Recruited a second new player before the next week, putting my player total at three.  Another gentleman in his 20's, who seems like a normal individual that one would enjoy being around for more than just the weekly D&D game.  Always a plus.
He decided to play a Fighter//Sorcerer, but after a week or two of game play, after seeing the NPC 'Archer' Druid//Ranger/Scout in action, he altered the character to be a Druid//Sorcerer.  (I'm the kind of DM that wants people to enjoy the game they are playing, so I don't have any issue with some major revamps to characters in the first few weeks that you play them, but after 4 or 5 games I start locking you into your choices, after you've gotten a feel for the character, and decide to stick with it or not.)

The "capital" town where this young Thorstien will be king is in the foothills of some mountains, and runs several silver mines.  We introduced the new character as someone who was 'prospecting' the foothills, looking for loose silver ore.  It's usually hard to come up with plausible stories to introduce new characters, especially while the party is in the midst of trekking through the wilderness.  Here it would have been less of an issue if the character was a Druid from the start, but so be it.

So the party of two players and three NPC's are traveling along, and start to feel the ground shake.  Then a male human comes running across the trail, fleeing for his life.  Everyone of course is wondering what's going on, and I explain that the fleeing individual is the new player.  I then show them what he is running from, and they all about crap their pants when I pull out the Huge Mountain Troll mini and set it on the table.
He was actually running from a Phaerlin Giant (Monsters of Faerun) "troll," but the CR 4 Huge giant still scares them.  They did surprisingly well against it, and felled it without anyone getting too close to death.  Of course, it has a movement speed of 20, so they could all outrun it if they needed to.

They also had a role play encounter that I had planned for the 'Archer' character.  Although the player had left, his character was the one NPC I was planning to keep around, partly because he was the brother of the Barb//Warlock, and also because the party would have no other means of healing (until the new player later decided to change Fighter to Druid).  They met a half-elf man tending to the Stonehenge circle they had encountered on the initial journey northwest.  They questioned him some about the stones and what they were (they learned they are prisons for demons, and that there is an order of half-elves that tend to the prisons to ensure the demons stay trapped).  This Master of the Yuirwood mentions that a few members of the party (the half-elves) have the blood necessary to join their order.  I of course play up the interest of the NPC Archer, though the Barbarian//Beguiler also shows some interest.

The party returns to Rapolla (Thorstien's town).  Things begin to take a festive air in preparation for the coronation tomorrow, but the Party discusses the note they found on the ambushers in the forest, and they tell Thorstien's sister Astrid about it.  She is concerned, and when she sees the magic ring the party also recovered, she realizes that it must have been her older brother Stephen that was behind the plot.  She hurriedly leads the party back to the family's quarters, and they enter Thorstien's room, just as Stephen is about to draw his sword and slay his younger brother.  The Beguiler made great use of Blinding Color Surge, Daze Monster, and Stay the Hand to keep Stephen from acting for several rounds.  Thorstien was brought to -2, but one of the party members stabilized him after a round or two.

I'll never forget when one of these new players was amazed that I didn't have some alternate plan to keep young Thorstien alive.  His staying alive was completely the doing of the party.  Stephen was a 4th or 5th level Barbarian//Rogue, and the party had to stop him from slaying a 1-HD character with 9 hit points.  They entered the room and rolled initiative with Stephen 10 feet from Thorstien.  The player was just astounded that their actions actually mattered, and if they hadn't saved Thorstien, he would have died.  I guess that's one way to make a good first impression as a DM.

The players then used the magic ring, which was one of a circuit of five Circle of Sound rings owned by the royal family, to set up three other spies Stephen had stationed nearby in the town.  They told them to meet at a specific mead-hall, and dispatched them in the alley behind the establishment.  The beguiler made great use of Legion of Sentinels (I allow classes like Sorcerer and Beguiler to gain one spell known and one spell slot a level early, so they gain access to a new level of spells the same level as a wizard), and they put all three barbarians down without too much difficulty.  Afterthought - it's sad that I haven't seen the beguiler use this spell much since then.  It would have been effective in several situations.

New Players:  Week 3

Recruited yet another player the following week, and he decides to play a Wizard//Rogue.  I'm envisioning that this will be a very effective character, but in truth I've been underwhelmed.  Not because the concept is flawed, but rather because this player fails to play the character to its potential.  As he has subsequently gotten higher in level (and gained access to Greater Invisibility) he has gotten better, but I think he literally went 3 or 4 sessions before he got a sneak attack.

All these new players came in with 10k XP (5th level), and I think I gave them a little less than normal for starting gold, but not too bad (I based it upon where the original player was).  However, this player didn't spend any of his starting wealth to put extra spells into his spellbook.  I don't recall all of what his three starting feats were, but I know he did take Spell Penetration (which has been quite useful, and was an excellent choice).

Unlike the other two new players, this character was actually from Rashemen, like the Barb//Warlock.  He was in the town of Rapolla (Thorstien's capital) and heard news of visiting Rashemi saving the heir's life.  The next morning he talked his way into the coronation, and met up with the Barbarian//Warlock.  He learned of the enslaved Rashemi that were now to be freed, and decided to join the group on their journey back to Rashemen.

Following the coronation, Thorstien made some judgements and proclamations.  He banished his brother Stephen (Banishment was a punishment from Viking times where anyone could kill you without fear of retribution, thus you fled, so people with grudges against you wouldn't have the opportunity to exact revenge without legal consequence).  He also announced that the Sorcerer//Cleric of Freyr former-player-character would join his court as an adviser.  He also set the Rashemi slaves free.

So, the new party set off to bring the freed slaves back the Rashemen.  The new party consists of:

Thordin, Barbarian 5//Warlock 5
Thud, Barbarian 5//Beguiler 5
Tyr, Druid 5//Sorcerer 5 (I think he was actually still a fighter at this point, but he changed soon after this).
Kimi, Rogue 5//Wizard 5

There was also still the following NPC's:
Baneskald, Druid 5//Ranger 1/Scout 4
Nissa, Spellthief 5//Rogue 2/Sneak Attack Fighter 3 (she didn't play much of a role from here on out, and has since returned to Rashemen with the freed slaves).

[ksbsnowowl]

Still in the first session of the newest player, the party takes off from Rapolla.  While they were in town, in and amongst all the assassination plotting, and coronation planning, they had overheard a report of several miners refusing to go back to work in the mines.  There had been an incident where several people died, and the survivors were refusing to reenter the mine.

As the party is escorting 12 newly-freed Rashemi slaves eastward around the southern tip of a mountain range, they come to a town where the people are scared and speaking of a black dog prowling the roads.  The party set the former slaves up with some lodging, and go out along the road to investigate.  They eventually encounter a large black dog (Beast of Xvim Dire Wolf) that howls, and frightens most of them into fleeing (Frightened for 5d6 rounds).  If I remember right, only two characters didn't flee, and ended up injuring the BoXDW and causing it to retreat.

Interestingly, the Beguiler player thought that frightful presence was rather unfair, and it's duration too long.  True, it will basically take you out of the fight, but at the same time, every single one of the characters at my table has a good Will save, and a Wisdom score of 13 or higher.

They continued to track the large wolf foot-prints, and they heard lots of howls in the night.  They encountered several more pairs of these frightful dire wolves, and eventually tracked them back to a shallow cave, where they fought (unbeknownst to them, even to this day) an advanced Greater Barghest in dire wolf form.  The Barghest is what had been released by the miners, and it killed and ate several of them.  It escaped and started building up a power base by magically* instilling some of its own power to Feed on life-force into a pack of dire wolves that it had found.  The Barghest did escape via use of its dimension door SLA (which has had consequences the PC's are facing now).

*my DM hand-waiving explanation of how the Beast of Xvim template comes into being.

The next session the two barbarian players couldn't make it, so I ran a small side adventure for the two players who happened to have the least amount of XP.  It started off with an encounter with several Forest Trolls.  Coincidentally, the trolls focused their poisoned javelin fire at the two characters whose players were absent.  Don't look now - a reason why these characters can't come on the main adventure of the evening!

They pull into the next town, find places for the Rashemi and their injured comrades to rest, and they try to negotiate with the local "king" for some pearls (they want to identify some things).  While waiting to talk with the "king" they overhear a young man trying to enlist the help of the king - his parents went to visit his sister at a near-by logging camp, and are late returning.  He wants some aid in traveling to see if they are okay.  The two PC's and the Druid//Scout NPC decide to help the boy, and set off to the logging camp a day away.

When they arrive they discover a small muscular old man having carnal relations with the corpse of the boy's older sister.  They literally catch him with his pants down, and dispatch him despite his hindered attempts to fight back.  They investigate the camp and find it empty.  A heal check finds that the sister was newly pregnant.  The old man was wearing a kerchief on his head that is damp with blood, and they are quite perplexed by the fact that he dissolved into a pile of goo after he was killed, leaving only a tooth, and his iron-shod boots.  They search around the camp, and find other corpses in the forest around the camp.  They have run-ins with several more Red Caps (I changed them from using scythes to using Longaxes), and the small creatures power attacking them with reach really surprised them and caught them off guard.  I think the highest-level one they fought had 10 HD, though I also statted them at 12 HD, with the Lunging Strike feat from PHB2, meaning as a full-round action they could strike 15 feet away.
Regardless, the 10-foot reach with axes, plus 4 or 5 AoO's each round really confounded and humbled my players a bit.

After killing all the red caps they helped the boy haul his family back to town, and buried them.  Too bad the players didn't know that the way my Red Caps reproduce is by fornicating with the corpses of pregnant women.  They've never learned this, but about a week after they buried her and left town, a new red cap burst forth from her rotting womb.

The players did get tons of XP this session though, and bumped the Archer NPC to 6th level, ahead of everyone else.

[lieronet]

Fascinating stuff, and helps a bit. I was planning on DMing a gestalt campaign with a few restrictions, notably that one side of all PCs must be straight cleric, so this is helpful to read through. The other restriction I am imposing is that their second class can't be a tier one or tier two class, they've got enough power from four straight clerics. My duders are going to start at level nine, any suggestions besides what's in the thread?

[ksbsnowowl]

Forgive me if I make an incorrect assumption on the tiers; I know what they are, but forget exactly where different classes fall in relation to them.

Will the Cleric side have to be straight cleric, or can they PrC into a cleric PrC?

I imagine you'll end up with a Cleric//Rogue in there somewhere.  Inflict Minor Wounds can be fairly painful in his hands.  He'll be beefier and have better AC than a normal rogue, so he'll have few issues staying in melee for most of a combat, getting flanking to turn that touch attack from one point of damage to 5d6+1.
They'll be even better served by Produce Flame and the necro version of Flame Blade (blade of pain and fear?).

A character like that above will also have all good saves, and with the amount of healing present in the party, they'll be able to keep going LOOONG after a normal party, and even longer than a "typical" gestalt party.  Even if they don't all have a Full BAB, you should probably treat it as if they do (for planning purposes); that many clerics, and they will always have Bless laid down in combat, and they'll usually have Divine Favor rolling.

Unless they are super-high-HD, undead will be a cake-walk for them.  Start combat with four turn attempts, and then see what's left (probably nothing).  Then have 10+ rounds to prep for their return.

[lieronet]

Cleric side has to be straight cleric, and tiers one and two classes are basically anything that gets level nine spells/powers/whatever, with a few exceptions.

For story reasons the cap on people is four. So far I know I have a warmage/swiftblade//cleric (I'm letting his warmage expanded knowledge hit any wizard spell because lol warmage) and a crusader//cleric, don't think I'm going to get a rogue actually. I do plan on being pretty mean with encounters, but you make a very good point about undead, I will keep that in mind.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Turn Undead sucks against actually dangerous undead, who either have lots of HD, or built in turn resistance.

Thanks for the diary, btw.  I love gestalt.  One interesting thing I've found with it is either 1) you beef up monster's levels to make up for players being gestalt, which raises saves and SR but leaves AC not much different or 2) you gestalt them as well, which results in better saves and more resistances/immunities.
End result: I have never seen games where magic and melee have been so well balanced!  On a run through the Underdark, which has a disproportionate amount of things with SR (and beholders with antimagic cones!), some with very high SR (like HD +15 or HD +18), the two PCs who decided to gestalt between two casting classes instead of being more well rounded were actually whining and complaining because there were literally a lot of encounters where they were failing to do anything at all!  These are veteran players well aware of how to optimize.  And their dual caster gestalts were being ineffectual while the other two PCs with martial adept on one side were using strike maneuvers and pwning everything.  Not that I want people to not enjoy the game, but being hyperspecialized like they were (one of them was building for dread witch and was capable of throwing up to THREE save or "become afraid" effects every round), I had a hard time feeling sorry for them, and just the moment in general made me so happy.

[ksbsnowowl]

StreamOfTheSky, I've also found that my player's characters tend to be more well-rounded.  As I've said before, none of them are weak in the Will-save department, which has been very beneficial for them.  They all have at least two good saves, and with the exception of the Rog//Wizard, they've all got pretty decent hit points.  I still have to chuckle sometimes though, as they will miss blatantly obvious opportunities to be effective (the most egregious being the Rog//Wizard who very rarely gets in any sneak attacks, even after having gotten improved invisibility).  The only dual-caster I have is a Druid//Sorcerer, and the Druid side is beginning to make him a melee monster (surprise, surprise).

There were two other sessions of continued travel, with some of the players not able to make the game, but writing 9 months after the fact, all I can recall of the sessions is that one of the BBEG's was an advanced Uthraki (Shapeshifter PrC, OA) who appeared as a dog, and followed the group out of the last village they were in.  The Uthraki ended up killing and replacing one of the Rashemi.  When he did it a second time, the party got wise, and I remember I accidentally used some stupid tactics that got the Uthraki killed, rather than allowing him to escape.

The second of these sessions ended with the party arriving near the location where approximately 8 weeks prior in game, the party had witnessed signs of a battle while following the merchant caravan with the slaves.  The party had since learned from the other slaves that one of the female Rashemi had been hauled off by some trollish creatures (Tanarukk).

When they got to the location, there was once again an ambush from some Tanarukk, which the party dealt with in excellent fashion.  This was shortly after the Barbarian//Warlock had gotten his Fly invocation, and he made excellent use of it here.  The tanarukk started up on some boulders, which was no impediment to the flying Barbarian.  The Beguiler also made good use of some spell (don't recall what), which forced several of the tanarukk to flee from their positions, and fall down the rocky slope toward the party.  The NPC Druid//Scout decides to stay with the group of Rashemi while the rest of the party back-tracked the Tanarukk to their cave, so they can learn the fate of the final slave.

By the end of that session another character had reached 6th level, and my party was composed of:
Barbarian 6//Warlock 6
Barbarian 6//Beguiler 6
Druid 5//Sorcerer 5
Rogue 5//Wizard 5

The next session the party arrived at the entrance to the Tanarukk cave, and a long evening of battles ensued.  Two or three little skirmishes of a party vs 5 or 6 tanarukk takes a LONG time at the table.  I used a fractal cave-making tool to make a natural-seeming cave complex that I liked, and it had lots of side passages, etc.  Basically I peppered this cave complex (roughly 40 squares by 30 squares) with a handful of campfires (maybe 4?), each of which had 6 tanarukk around it.  The party's average level was 5.5, and a squad of 6 tanarukk (each Gestalt CR 1) is an EL 5 (seven of them would be EL 6).

The danger of this type of set-up is always the chance that one of each squad gets away or yells for reinforcements.  My Beguiler dealt with this issue wonderfully, placing a Silence spell upon himself, and having the party approach under an invisibility sphere.  They caught the first group of tanarukk by surprise and crippled most of them fairly quickly.  One of their number did retreat far enough to exit the silence effect, however, and yelled for reinforcements.

The entryway into this "room" was fairly narrow (5 or 10 feet) and so the beguiler again used a great tactic to delay the oncoming reinforcements, by placing a Major Image of a Large dragon in the doorway.  (This was a bit of me being nice and allowing something the character had never encountered - as of yet they still have never met a dragon - It didn't really matter, as he could have made it some other large creature, and it would have had the same effect.)  This of course caused the approaching tanarukk to come to a screeching halt.  Some of them backed off to try coming around through a side passage, while three of them continued to deal with the apparent dragon threat.  My ruling for when the tanarukk had "interacted" with the dragon (and thus got a will save) was if they would have hit its touch AC (which I arbitrarily set at 12 or so).  Again, the beguiler player feels this is unfair (sensing a pattern?) but I figure if you strike an illusion, and your blade encounters no resistance - you get a chance to realize something is up.

Regardless, it takes a round or two before any of the tanarukk either "hit" the dragon or made their Will save, so it did its job to slow them down.  The Druid//Sorc player even aided in the illusion by placing his fiery bursts right in front of the dragon, to make it look like it was breathing on the tanarukk (this was their first encounter with tanarukk, and didn't yet know they were resistant to fire.)

The Barb//Warlock character decided to head around a side passage to try to take out the three tanarukk he had seen heading off another way.  He did deal with them, but sorely learned that they were immune to the effects of his Mortal Bane feat (as they are Native Outsiders).

End of session, followed by a long hiatus of people being gone on trips, etc.

when we returned in early October, they dealt with another band or two of tanarukk, and got themselves spread out throughout the cavern system while they mopped up the last of the tanarukk minions, and the Barb//Warlock head deeper into the cave, heading after the Tanarukk leader he had seen escaping down a back passage with a human female in tow.  The whole party catches up several hundred feet deeper into the cave and assists in dispatching the Troll-Blooded Tanarukk (Troll-Blooded feat - grants fast healing 1, it also has a level of scout and horizon walker, to make it immune to the fatigue caused by Troll-Blooded).

As they turn around and head back toward the surface they discover a problem...  The cave keeps going, and they do not find the tanarukk cave complex, nor the exit to the surface.  (Insert devious DM laugh here).

My players have fallen victim to a planar aspect of my world that they've never seen before.  That's not to say they don't know about it - I've alluded to this phenomenon in the background page I gave on the setting, but it's not my fault if they can't be bothered to read and remember it.  It's all the better this way anyhow, as the characters had never seen this before.  Basically, the connections between the Nine Worlds are not static.  They wax and wane, often in relation to astral phenomena (phases of the moon, solstices and equinoxes, etc).  Had they encountered that cave passage-way 5 minutes later, it would have continued on for a short distance and ended, all while remaining on Midgard.  However, when they encountered it, it was a connection point to a cavern passage in Nidavellir (the Dwarf realm).

This is not unlike the manifest zones from Eberron, where traveling through a high mountain pass during a blizzard might lead you to the realm of Jotunheim.  Same thing here, just within a cave.

So the party is investigating what the Hel* is going on, and decide to see where this cavern leads.  They follow it for quite a while (half-hour or so) and notice light up ahead.  They cautiously approach, and find a squat door in the side wall of the passageway.  The door has a small barred window in it, through which the light is emanating.  Inside, they see a short little man sitting at a workbench.  The Beguiler puts up a Silence spell, and the Wizard//Rogue uses his boots of short teleporting (forget the name - MIC, three charges, teleport 20 ft, 30 ft, or 40 ft, I think) to enter the workshop and lift the bar on the door.  Before the Midgard Dwarf (Frostburn) even knows anyone is there, the party is in his shop with weapons drawn.  They drop the silence and interrogate him about where they are and what has happened.

Now, dwarves in Norse myth were ever-devious, and never turned down an opportunity to use a situation to their advantage.  Oh, interestingly enough, Midgard Dwarves only speak Dwarven and Celestial.  The verbal interactions were quite interesting; luckily the Beguiler could cast both comprehend languages and tongues (on the dwarf).  Amidst the fun of roleplaying out that encounter, the party learns that they have crossed over into Nidavellir.  The Dwarf can tell them how to return to Midgard, if they'll just take care of this little problem of his...

The Dwarf explains that a nearby Stone Giant has stolen several items from his workshop (I forget what all they were, but they were magical items a Midgard Dwarf could craft; among them was a fiendslayer crystal [MIC]).  The Dwarf explains that he has cursed the giant, but even so, the giant would be too much for him to deal with.  If the party will return the items, the Dwarf will tell them how to return home.

What the players don't know is that the Dwarf screwed the Giant on a deal they had made, thus the giant stealing the items as retribution.  The dwarf is basically enlisting the party under false pretenses to murder the giant that is too big for him to deal with.

At this point one of my players, the Barb//Beguiler, started arguing that they should just stay and explore Nidavellir for a few weeks.  I only slightly side with some of the other players, who think that wouldn't be the best idea - the Rashemi want to ensure the freed slaves get home safely.  I was silently screaming "NO" in my head though, for two reasons:
1) I had already spent a significant amount of time prepping for the next leg of the campaign, which is an adaptation of the Red Hand of Doom adventure utilizing a Tanarukk army with demon support in place of a hobgoblin army with dragon support, and
2) The above events would occur whether or not my players were there to interfere with them or not.  If the party decided to gallivant through Nidavellir for a month, they would return to Midgard to find the Tanarukk army they didn't know about had already mobilized, caught the human towns by surprise, captured most of the humans in Nidaros and Eyrrinberg, and were in the midst of using ancient stone circles to transport themselves quickly up the coastline, sacking towns along the way.

Yeah, I'm that kind of DM.  Things are playing out in the world, and your decisions matter.

So anyway, the party decides to rest the "night" in the dwarf's workshop, and head out the next morning to hunt down the Stone Giant thief.  They head out and travel an hour or two in the direction the dwarf indicated, and the dwarf also told them the night before that he'd have a solution for communication when they returned from dealing with the giant.  They spot the Stone Giant in a side room, reading some runes carved in the wall.  The Druid//Sorcerer thinks he's all big and bad, and runs up, hitting the cursed giant with a touch spell.  Initiatives are rolled, and the Druid is in for a wake up call.  Despite being inflicted with a Bestow Curse (-4 to all d20 rolls) the Stone Giant still packs a mean wallop with two attacks dealing 2d8+12.  Several of the other party members rush in, at which point the Stone Giant's companion, a Fensir (Fiend Folio) sitting nearby behind an alcove, blasts the party with a fireball.

The party wisely pleads for a cease-fire.  The Stone Giant only speaks giant, but thankfully the Fensir does speak common.  Another interesting relayed conversation ensues with the Fensir working as a translator.  It turns out the Giant had done a job for the Dwarf, and his negotiated payment was the fiendslayer crystal that adorns his club.  The dwarf reneged on the agreement after the job was done, and so the Giant took his agreed payment, along with other items in the shop.  The giant says that all he really wants is the crystal, as there has been an increase in fiendish troll creatures in Nidavellir recently (never fully explained to the party, but they deduce that it is tanarukk scouting out pathways through Nidavellir).  He will give the party the other items, and tell them how to get home, if they agree to kill the treacherous dwarf.

I love putting my players in decision making situations like this.  They could have chosen to talk to the giant first, but they decided to go in intending to smack him down.  Then they discover they've been played.  They have to play friendly to someone to learn how to return home, but they can decide who they want to side with, as well as if they want to double-cross anyone.  The way for them to get the most LOOT would have been to kill both the giant and the dwarf, but is that what their characters would do?

In the end they decided to accept the Stone Giant's story, take all the items he stole except the fiendslayer crystal, learn the secret to returning to Midgard, and kill the Dwarf.  They already knew that several items on the dwarf's person were magical (yea warlocks), so they were going to make out like bandits regardless.  Part of this was me compensating for a recent lack in treasure, but it provided a good plot line too.

So, the two giant's accompanied the party back to the Dwarf's workshop, and the party successfully lures the dwarf out into the passageway, and they slaughter him in one or two rounds (with the help of the giants).
The Fensir then tells them that the passage to Midgard only opens during dusk in the few days surrounding the full moon, and tonight will be their last chance for almost a month.

The party loots the Dwarf's workshop, coming up with several gems, and magic items ranging from rings of protection and gauntlets of orge power, to scrolls of various random spells.  Then they high-tail it to the conjunction point, and nail a few clutch search rolls to locate exactly where the cross-over point will be (they find a footprint in the floor debris that is only half there, indicating the other half was made on Midgard).

*Haha, I made a funny.

[ksbsnowowl]

Another note on the Stone Giant and the Fensir.  Stone Giants are CR 8, which means to a gestalt party they are CR 7.  Add in the fact that he was taking a -4 penalty to every d20 roll, and I eyeballed his gestalt CR at 6.  Fensirs are CR 5 (they cast as 5th level wizards), meaning he was a GCR of 4.

A GCR 6 and GCR 4 creature combined make for an EL 7 encounter for a level 5.5 party - difficult, but not unobtainable should the PC's be rested (they were) and they play smart (that one is questionable).  It also had a chance of being their only encounter that day.  I backed off pressing the attack when they claimed "parley!" as the encounter could have been too much for them (due to the Druid character's actions, I likely could have killed him with one more full attack).

Balancing encounters is always a juggling act, and even more so in gestalt.  So, I caution DM's to play their encounters cautiously until you get a better feel for your party's abilities.  With my next update, you'll discover I found the perfect balance.

[ksbsnowowl]

I last left off mid-session as the party defeated the treacherous Dwarf, looted his workshop, got the needed info from the Stone Giant, and located the conjunction point between Nidavellir and Midgard.  Granted, the party knows that the alignment will happen during dusk on Midgard... but there is no dusk in Nidavellir, which has no "above ground."  So I have them make a series of Spot rolls, and they miss a few of them after the alignment takes place, but finally make one before the alignment ends, noticing that the stone wall before them display different rock formations, and they note the full foot-print where before they saw only the front half.

So, they return to the tanarukk cave fully prepared to have to fight their way out (the leader they followed to Nidavellir had regeneration; the others were a crossing of that sire and human females, which do not have regeneration).  They are happy to find that all the corpses are still dead.  They search around and find the side cave where the Rashemi slave was kept (they rescued her after killing the Tanarukk leader).  She alludes to the rape done to her at the hand of the tanarukk leader, but is understandably not very forthcoming.  The party also discovers a shrine of sorts to this tribe's former matriarch.  Her bones are laid out in reverence on alcoves cut into the cave wall.  The bones are etched with signs of acid (DM hint on how to kill them) and there are two wands laid there as well (the tanarukk trollwives have the Trollblooded feat, and have one level each of scout, horizon walker, and Warlock.)

Sadly, my DM hint hasn't done much good.  Sometimes players are just dense, I guess (or stubborn?).  Despite knowing all tanarukk are resistant to fire, they keep trying to Fiery Burst them (dealing on average 11 - 12 points of damage, save for half; not a big deal when you have Fire Resistance 10).

The party scavenges the rest of the cave, finding little troves of wealth hidden around, and then set out to meet up with the Rashemi group.  They return to the road and find them gone (keep in mind, more than 24 hours have passed since they left them).  The do find sign of their passing (one of them has Track, but I don't remember whom) and just decide to follow the way back to Eyrinnberg*.

*Eyrrinberg is the small fishing town where they met a "king" and stayed a night in his mead hall while hunting down the slavers, just before reaching Nidaros.  I hadn't taken the trouble to give it a name at the time, but now that it is going to feature prominently for quite a while, I figured I'd better name it.

They make headway, and encounter a pair of trolls along the road.  Somehow in the midst of all the adventuring and hunting down slavers, I missed the opportunity to run the party against a single troll at a level-appropriate time.  Anyway, having had experience with the regenerating tanarukk, they caught on, and dispatched the pair rather quickly (a flying barbarian with a reach weapon is quite a field-leveler).

Thus ended the final session before jumping into my conversion of The Red Hand of Doom.
Both 5th level characters reached 6th level, which put them right where I wanted the party to be for the start of RHoD.

The Red Hand of Doom is a war campaign where the PC's are the first to encounter and recognize the threat of a secret hobgoblin army that intends to sweep through the Elsir Vale, culminating with their attack on the city of Brindol.  You can read more of the specifics of my conversion in this thread, but for a basic summary, I'm changing the hobgoblin army to a tanarukk army, and substituting demon assistance for the RHoD's dragon assistance.  Also, rather than the culminating battle being at a city, it is at an ancient ceremony site where Hathran MUST perform a ritual on the Winter solstice to prevent a wave of demons crossing over from Niflhiem.  As there are bound demons on Midgard that would love for more demons to enter the world, they've bred with trolls (the only being generally capable of surviving the forbiddance spells placed around the demons' prisons) to act as their hand, and they've directed them to attack the ceremony site on the winter solstice to disrupt the sealing of the planar breach.

The Red Hand of Doom is designed for four 5th level characters, and takes them roughly up through 10th level.  Due to the nature of the creatures in my army (tanarukk are tougher than the hobgoblins in RHoD) I wanted my players a bit higher level.  With them all at 6th level, that's basically equivalent to them being a party of 7th level non-gestalt characters.  This two-level disparity gave me the power level I wanted to work with.

The only plot-line issue I have to deal with later on is the presence of the Hathran.  In RHoD, there is one 9th level wizard, in an out-of the way location, and when I played the module, we never even knew of his existence until the Battle of Brindol came about.  But, my Hathran will be busy doing things like making a city wall in an isolated location that didn't have a wall to start with (hurray Wall of Stone).  They will still see the party as an effective surgical tool they can send on errands and missions.

[ksbsnowowl]

I already wrote a recap of the Marauder Attack session in the above-linked thread about my Red Hand of Doom conversion, but I'll copy the bulk of it over here, and add a few extra thoughts.

The converted Marauder Attack encounter consisted of 4 tanarukk with bows oriented two to a side along the roadway, about 15 feet back, behind cover (fallen logs).  They are also positioned above a low spot in the road, so there is a steep embankment to negotiate to approach these four ambushers.

After the ambush starts, a second wave of 6 tanarukk arrive on the map, along the road, at the end of round four.  They also have a Winter Wolf accompanying them.  Within a nearby farmhouse there was a Tanarukk Archivist 4, a Tanarukk Trollwife (Scout 1/Hrz Wlk 1/Warlock 1), and a Fiendish Troll; these last would arrive on scene around the same time as the second wave.

I'll just say at the start that the gods were with me, as the combat was the perfect amount of difficulty for the party of 4 PC's (the NPC Druid//Scout is gone at the moment).  The combat finally ended (after 12 or so rounds - I lost count) with two of four player characters unconscious but stable (yea mass lesser vigor!), and the other two quite far down on HP's, and the wizard nearly out of spells.

Now, the ambush set up wasn't nearly as difficult as it was when I played through RHoD, because two of the party members were flying (Druid wildshaped into an eagle, warlock with fly at will).  Also, the ambush started against the Barb//Beguiller and the Rog//Wiz because they were the one's on the road, and the other two were out of the tanarukks' sight-line, obscured by the trees.  Funny enough, the druid missed spotting the ambush simply because he was flying too high.  If he'd been flying at 40 ft or lower, rather than 50 ft, he would have noticed them.

The light underbrush which normally provides such a great advantage to the ambushers didn't work out so well against a flying warlock with a longspear that completely ignored said difficult terrain, and the tanarukk couldn't threaten the warlock when he stabbed at them from above.  Then they couldn't 5-foot step to get clear of his reach to shoot him with their bows.  When the Barb//Warlock brought his attention on a tanarukk, it took an AoO every round trying to move or shoot him.  The Rogue//Wizard did an interesting job of using his teleportation boots to move through the underbrush, but was otherwise only moderately effective (I think they hadn't yet figured out that Tanarukk were resistant to fire).

A PC's well-placed fireball lit some brush on fire, and a few of the tanarukk loved using that to fuel their Healing Flames feat.
The PC's did dispatch them fairly quickly, and were mopping up the last two as the reinforcements came.

The second wave of tanarukk was more problematic, as they approached from farther down the road, and didn't start off hampered in the difficult terrain.  The Barb//Warlock dispatched the Winter Wolf in two rounds; it only got to breath once, and it only got the Warlock.  Hideous Blow + Mortal Bane is painful.  His hideous blow didn't do a whole lot after that, though.  He literally rolled a "10" on his SR check five times in a row.

A few fog clouds were laid-down by the PC's (Beguiler, mostly), which slowed down and hindered the second wave (and the bosses) in a moderately effective manner (remember that fog cloud causes a double movement cost - it even stacks with other difficult terrain).  A few of the scattered tanarukk, and the archivist and Tanarukk troll-wife warlock made use of the fog to back out of combat, return to the farmhouse, and heal up at the cook fire, before returning to lay the smack down on the PC's.  In the mean time the PC's were having trouble with the fiendish troll.  They did a good job of laying fire down on the fiendish troll, which only has fire resistance 5.  They had him down to 6 hp's before he took his first point of regeneratable damage.  The Barb//Beguiler dropped the troll with a bow attack, then approached it; the troll then regenerated enough to act, but had to full-attack from prone.  Despite the penalties, he struck the Barbarian//beguiler with both claws and got a rend.  The beguiler raged on his next turn, as he was looking in rather sorry shape.

A few coup de graces with acid flasks, melf's acid arrows, and acid splash spells and the troll was done for just in time for the druid to lay down a mass lesser vigor on all but himself, and with that the tanarukk troll-wife warlock showed back up with two tanarukk minions, and the buffed up archivist (divine favor, bless, barkskin, etc).  The minions got in the way just enough to force the PC's to bunch together in bad spots near the difficult terrain, and the archivist got some NICE heavy hits in, dropping the Barb//Beguiler into unconsciousness.  There was a moment of panic on the player's face until I reminded him that rage doesn't end if you go unconscious.  It was still a close one - the lesser vigor brought him up just enough so that when his rage ended, he fell back down to -8 hp's, but stable, and continuing to heal.  The tanarukk archivist next dropped the Druid//Sorcerer (the only healer in the party).  The tanarukk extra bite attack is just enough to make them nasty; the archivist was getting two battleaxe attacks, plus a bite.  He had an AC of 22, and an attack routine of Battleaxe +14/+9 (1d8+8) and Bite +9 (1d6+4).

The archivist and the troll-wife warlock were the last two to go down.  The PC's had seen one of the tanarukk pull out a potion and drink it, so the warlock searched the troll-wife's body and got a potion, giving it to the Druid, and bringing him back to consciousness (it was a potion of faith healing [9 hp]).  The druid then performed emergency healing on the Beguiler, which may have been instrumental to his aforementioned survival, I can't recall for sure.

I had also forgotten how long combats can take.  Holy crap, we started pretty quickly, and that still took the whole session - it was nearly a 4-hour combat.  But, when you've got gestalt PC's with tons of class abilities that need adjudicating (they aren't always the most rules-savvy), and 14 bad guys on the board, it takes a while.  I think it was 10 or 12 rounds in total.  But as I said before, it ended up being the perfect amount of difficulty and challenge, straining my party to the breaking point, without actually killing them.

In the next session they finally get into town, and get some backstory on what's been happening over the last few weeks.

[ksbsnowowl]

Another belated update...

The PC's loot the bodies of the tanarukk, and search the farmhouse.  In the farmhouse they find a leather-bound book.  The wizard gets excited until he realizes that although like a spellbook, none of these spells are useful to him (it is an archivist's prayerbook).

The PC's arrive back in Eyrrinberg, and are amazed to see that the town is packed with people and cattle.  Upon entering the town they are questioned by a couple of barbarian guards, and the Beguiler attempts to charm person on him.  The guard makes his save, and his attitude instantly turns sour.  Vikings felt very strongly about mind-altering magic and robbing a man of his free will.  The beguiler shrinks back to the rear of the party, and allows Thordinskald to deal with things.  They learn that Baneskald and the group of Rashemi slaves returned to town unmolested. (Story-wise, there was a problem with the tanarukk changing of the guard at the ambush spot, and no one was there at the time).  Thordinskald gets everyone in to speak with King Northri, and learn from him that the outlying farms have been raided, and so everyone that could had retreated to town.

The Barb//Warlock had told the boat captain Ythar that they would be back with the slaves in one week.  It has now been 70 days.  Ythar is not there.  So, Thordinskald enlists the help of the local Spirit Shaman to send some Animal Messengers to the Hathran, to send Ythar and his boat.  He also enlists the spirit shaman to make some talismans for him.

A problem now existed:  With all the cattle in town, there was not near enough hay to feed them all, and eventually cattle would have to be slaughtered (Vikings saw the slaughter and eating of cattle as a failure; you used them for milk and cheese, only killing them when they were no good for milk, etc).  That would be a hard knock to the farmers, and would harm their livelihoods for years to come.  He asks if the PC's could ensure that the farms are made safe, so the farmers can return to their lands?

Northri introduced the newcomers to one of his Jarls, Svala Ashildsdottir, and she helped explain that at least three groups of tanarukk had been seen, from north of town to south.  Northri, Svala, and the PC's all assume that it is one or two tribes of roughly 30 tanarukk or so.  Northri also points them to an old hunter and tracker named Jorr, and tells them where his small cabin is.  Northri had already sent his son along with a dozen men to try to resolve the problem.  That was two weeks back, and no one had returned.

Oh, a side point: Red Hand of Doom runs on a timeline, and the PC can affect that timeline through the decisions they make and the accomplishments they achieve.  As the big battle in my adventure is a hard date, this one is also on a timeline.  Making a timeline like that in RHoD is extremely helpful when there are important events happening off-screen that will happen at specific times, that the PC will learn about and probably try to stop.  Coincidentally enough, the PC's decided to march longer than an 8-hour day after returning from Nidavellir, and as such, the ambush occurred on Day 0, rather than Day 1.  Day 0 is October 13th.  This plot-line will climax on December 21st.

So, Day 1 the PC's and Baneskald hang around town and get Sumarlid the Abjurer to help identify their new magic items, and Day 2 they set back out from Eyrrinberg, and pick up Jorr on the way back to the ambush site.  I built Jorr a little more effectively than he was built in RHoD (gave him 3 levels of Rog instead of 2, and made Rogue his first level, instead of Ranger).  I otherwise played his personality much like Jorr is described in RHoD: eager to kill "trolls."

They return to the ambush site, and while looking around the ruined farm grounds, they find a trail leading southwest into the trees on the far side of a field with what appear to be tanarukk tracks.  They follow this trail for several days, having some random encounters, and finding Northri's son and his men dead along the way.  On the afternoon of Day 5 they find the trail has lead to an old tower keep in the forest.  There is also a VERY overgrown road that runs North-South through the forest, passing within a few hundred feet of the tower.  (This forest is located between two roads leading to Eyrrinberg and Nidaros; they connect/fork a few dozen miles to the west.  This road through the forest was so the former inhabitant could join the main roads north and south of the forest, to head into the two towns).  The tower is a stand-alone structure, with a courtyard wall with out-buildings surrounding it.

The two druids wildshape into the form of eagles, and do a few fly-bys and sit and watch for a bit.  They notice a tanarukk out in the courtyard, and notice something large in a top room of the tower (a large hole had been broken into the wall/roof, but it was very dim inside.) There was also a large creature inside another large outbuilding (an old smithy). They notice a tanarukk or two coming and going from one of the out-buildings (a barracks) to the tower.  They retreat, discuss with the party, formulate a plan, sleep, and reprepare spells.  Their plan consists of the two druids flying in and using stone shape to seal the doors shut on the barracks and the base of the tower (because they don't know exactly how many tanarukk are in each).

At some point, I forget if this was while scouting out, or while the party was getting into position before their assault, the beguiler was walking around invisibly (and possibly silenced), but attracted attention because the half-fiend troll in the smithy, and the winter wolves in the stables have scent.


Jorr and Baneskald (NPC Druid//Scout) position themselves up on the outer wall to fire at creatures in the courtyard, and the druids head to seal the doors.  Once the assault starts, the PC's get the two doors sealed, but the winter wolves exit the stables (to be met by they Druid//Sorcerer's brown bear animal companion), and the half-fiend troll flies out the hole in the roof of the smithy, and starts laying down Unholy Blights, because he could smell the beguiler, but couldn't see him.  Soon after that, Kolfinn, the Fiendlord Half-Fiend Ice Troll Warlock 4, flies out of the top of the tower, and strikes a few times with his eldritch blast (plus gloves of entangling blast), and flies down to strike with a poison-enhanced claw attack.  He got to strike 3 times with his poison SLA, but between the three, his initial damages were 1, 1, and 3.  The combat was over and poisons were being neutralized/assisted with Heal checks before the secondary damage came into play.

The Barbarian//Warlock was at a great advantage in this fight, and basically took out Kolfinn one on one.  Both could fly (but the player faster by 10 feet), and both had reach.  Both also had hideous blow.  I was actually disappointed with how quickly Kolfinn died.  Elsewhere in the battle, the beguiler nailed the half-fiend troll with blinding color surge, blinding it (or maybe just making himself invisible, I forget).  The half-fiend had a necklace of fireballs, and was able to drop a few of those on the party members.  Also, the PC Druid//Sorcerer placed a Mass Resist Energy on the party (but somehow forgot to put it on himself, but he was flying as an eagle).  Along the way to the tower they reached 7th level, so everyone had Cold resist 20, nullifying the winter wolves' breath weapons and extra damage on their bites.

A few minutes of tagging the half-fiend trolls with Fiery Bursts from the two players with the reserve feat, and they died crispy deaths.

The immediate threats over, and the trapped tanarukk in the barracks making almost no head-way on hacking through the stone over their doorway, the PC's decided to clear out the tower by entering the hole in the top.  Some flying and spider climbing gets them up there, and as they enter the top room, the fiendlord's lieutenant charges out of hiding, and attacks the Barb//Beguiler, power attacking with shocktrooper and combat brute, sundering the Beguiler's +1 greatsword, and then cleaving into the Beguiler for a big chunk of damage.  The tanarukk berserker lasted another round or two before dying, but he had served his purpose.

The PC's search the tanarukk and find he had collected the fiendlord's notes and maps, and they search the rest of the tower, finding a secret basement with a +1 mithril chain shirt, a +1 Berserking Greatsword (which is one of the items the beguiler specifically wanted) a Staff of Life with 7 charges, and five old spellbooks, among other odds and ends.

The demise of the trapped tanarukk waited until the next session, but they had successfully defeated the advance scout outpost (though there were still scouting/raiding parties out and about).

[ksbsnowowl]

It's hard to remember at this point if the party dispatched the trapped tanarukk that evening, or if they waited until the morning after they reprepared spells.  Either way, the party dispatched most of the tanaruk through the small arrow-slit-sized windows with a few scintillating spheres (an electrical version of fireball, from the SpC), and then merely had to deal with the one tanarukk adult captain who had the Troll-Blooded feat (Regen 1, fire and acid).

In the morning they left and headed back to Eyrrinberg.  Along the way the Wizard cast several comprehend languages spells.  With his 7 ranks in decipher script he was able to figure out what the notes (coded and written in abyssal) contained, and he translated the notations on the map.  Similar info as the PC's find in Red Hand of Doom:
This group was scouting out the region for a large horde of "trolls" composed of thousands.
There are four commander "Fiendlords" as well as a High Fiendlord who is off doing something else and will join the horde later (FYI, his other business is leading a similar army on the other side of the "Baltic Sea.")
The stonehenge circles scattered around the world seem of interest to the horde, as do some caves, and a bridge between Eyrrinberg and Niðarós.

The party (incorrectly) assumes the Tanarukk army is ~1,000 individuals.

An interesting note:  On the map* there are days marked on it, indicating days since the horde leaves its marshaling point.  I had placed the day count for the simultaneous attacks of Eyrrinberg and Niðarós in the sea at a point halfway between them.  The Druid//Sorcerer made the assumption that this was the day of the attack of Niðarós, and that the whole army was heading to Niðarós, then would cross the bridge north to Eyrrinberg.  I never dissuaded him of this notion, as there was nothing in-game to tell him otherwise.

*

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Given this information, while the party continued its three-and-a-half day trek back to Eyrrinberg, the Druid//Sorcerer wildshaped into an eagle, and went to scout out the army at its marshaling point.  He found the location, but found it empty,  scarred by the black smudges left by dozens of fires.  He actually had to fly quite a ways south before he "caught up" to the army; perhaps a day and half?  He caught up to them before they reached the road, and although he stayed pretty far back (about two dozen half-fiend trolls flying above the army, as well as a Nycaloth) he was able to estimate their numbers.  I had him roll an intelligence check.  He got something around a 12, which didn't hit the DC I had set, but was good enough he didn't doubt the number I quoted him, which is how it should be...  I told him there were about 2,000 total, between tanarukk, trolls of various kinds, winter wolves, and the fliers (and assorted odds and ends).  In truth, there were just shy of 3,000.

Along the way, I have the Rashemi Barbarian//Warlock start making one Will Save a day.  Long ago, when the Rashemi slaves were first captured, he had been stalked by a Wendigo, which had inflicted some Wisdom damage, and made him hear voices.  He assumed that this set of Will saves was the same, and persistently resisted for the entire trip back to Eyrrinberg.  Just before he heads to Rapolla, he finally failed his save, and the Hathran's scry attempt was able to work, and she was able to speak to him through it.  Thus, Thordinskald was able to warn the Hathran of what they had seen (and this character had the map, so the Hathran was able to see that as well.)

The PC's return to Eyrrinberg in the evening on Day 9 and relay this information to King Northri.  He does not take the news well, and becomes quiet and sullen, unsure what to do.  Also, the news that his son was found dead didn't help matters much.  The PC's enlist the local "Angel of Death" (a venerable half-elf spirit shaman) to continue to make talismans for them (Craft Talisman feat, OA; basically potions in another form; she had made some while they were gone at the tower) while they spread out to accomplish some tasks.  The Wizard player was missing, so the character spent a few days putting spells into his spell book, the Beguiler took a ship down the coast one day to Niðarós, to warn them that an army is coming, and that any half-elves will be targets, the Druid finally returns from his scout of the army, and the Barbarian//Warlock does something completely unexpected.

Thordin has the idea to go to the Fey King Briarthorn, whose forest he and the former party had travelled through while assisting Thorstien in his quest to become king.  The Barb//Warlock and the NPC Druid enlist the help of the local druid, Bram, who is a Master of the Yuirwood, to use the menhir circle ~1day north of town to transport them west to the standing stones Northwest of Rapolla.  There, the NPC Druid//Scout spends 24 hours "advancing" his wolf companion to a dire wolf, and the Barb//Warlock sets out to find Briarthorn.  He comes across some other creatures that are subservient to Briarthorn, and they head off to tell the King about the PC's.  After a total of about a day and a half, Briarthorn finds the PC, and Thordin tells Briarthorn of the troll army plot, emphasizing the danger to everyone.

When I played through Red Hand of Doom my DM added one aspect that worked very well in our game, and I was surprised to find it wasn't actually part of the adventure when I read it in preparation for this campaign.  In the city of Brindol, in the cathedral of Pelor, there was a secret, extra-dimensional storage room that was accessed by turn attempts (ala the rules in Defenders of the Faith), and in that store room was an "artifact" that the church had never used, and no longer had enough priests powerful enough to activate.  I forget exactly how my party-mates played into it, but our cleric probably played into opening the sealed storage space, and there was a ceremony involving two of the cathedral's priests, our cleric, and our druid.  The "artifact" was a magic item of planar ally, and it called an Avoral for the purposes of defending the city.  In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor boost, and didn't have a large effect on the Battle of Brindol, though it did help wear down the Red Dragon.

I had wanted to introduce a Wild Hunter, but couldn't find a realistic and justifiable means to do so.  It isn't an angel, so a divine "artifact" wouldn't really work.  Well, in steps my PC, who contacts the Fey King who happens to have such a hunter in his service...

So, the PC explains the threat, and Briarthorn (a Verdant Prince) makes a deal with him:  He will send his Wild Hunter as aid, but the PC must pay Briarthorn with a Hathran's mask before the winter solstice.  The player was quite conflicted on this deal, as he knows he cannot speak for the Hathran, and he doesn't know how many hathran masks there are to spare.  In the end, he agrees, shakes Briarthorn's hand, and feels the weigh of the agreement upon his bones (verdant princes have an ability to inflict penalties on a deal-breaker).  Briarthorn will have to send word to his hunter, but will send him to the stones, so the PC had to ensure someone was there the ferry the Hunter through the menhirs.

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Sometimes it just amazes me how players can inadvertently make the game a lot more fun.  I had given up on the idea of using a Wild Hunter, but as soon as the PC said he was going to Briarthorn for help, everything clicked into place.  I had a way to enforce a deal upon the PC's, for a long while they will feel the weight of their deal (as the Hathran do not have masks to spare, but are looking), they could get some assistance from Briarthorn, I got to introduce the creature I wanted in a realistic fashion, and unknown to the PC's even now, the means to fulfill their end of the deal will come into their hands, assuming they don't botch things (one of the BBEG's they will fight before the end actually has a Hathran mask; here's hoping they don't let him escape).

I was smiling and nearly giggling to myself at how this had worked out, and that made my PC's dread the deal that had been made even more.

The Beguiler's player was tired from a long week at work, so his role-play of trying to convince the "mayor" of Niðarós was a bit weak, but that happens to the best of us.  The mayor said he would send scouts to verify what the PC told him, and would act once the information had been confirmed.  The PC Druid and the Beguiler both return to Eyrrinberg the night before the Barbarian makes his deal with Briarthorn.

There was also some housekeeping of what things Asdis the Angel of Death was going to craft for the PC's, but that was it for the session.  Lots of role-play and story advancement, but almost no combat.

[ksbsnowowl]

The next session opened with some backwards time travel, as the deal struck with King Briarthorn in the previous session sped though a few days to get him and the PC in contact with each other.  So we opened with the Druid//Sorcerer returning with his eyes-on intel about the horde's numbers.  This of course disheartens Northri even further.

At this point the players know that there will be four days of in-game time before the Barb//Warlock returns from meeting up with Briarthorn, so the Druid PC wants to get some extra scouting done during that time.  Flying as an eagle he can hustle for an hour and continue flying at normal pace for 7 more hours before making any checks, which is nearly 82 miles.  The penalty for a forced march is a mere 1d6 nonlethal damage upon a failed Con check beyond that; savvy players realize that at 7th level, this will heal itself in an hour, and the fatigue explicitly ends when the nonlethal damage is gone.  So, he pushed himself pretty hard in those 4 days, typically flying for 10 or 11 hours each day before becoming fatigued (at which point he would stop for the night.  So, he was pretty much covering 100 miles a day on average.

The first day the Druid//Sorcerer wanted to head south to Niðarós to check out the bridge, and discuss matters further with the head merchant in Niðarós (being as how the Beguiler's trip last time was a role playing bust).  He wildshapes into an eagle, and flies south, noting the forces holding the bridge along the way.  He does a much better job of convincing those in Niðarós of the coming danger (they had sent out their own scouts after the initial report from the Beguiler, but none had returned).  The Druid explained that the army was coming straight for them, and suggested they all head north to make the stand at Eyrrinberg.  The mayor said it would take a day or two to get the town ready (moving that many people is tough, especially with children in the mix).  The player responded that this would be fine; there was a contingent of tanarukk holding the bridge between Niðarós and Eyrrinberg, so the party would need a few days to deal with that.  He instructed the mayor of Niðarós to move everyone roughly half a day south of the bridge, then the Druid would come get them once the bridge had been secured.

The Druid then took to wing once more, this time heading west, to get eyes on the horde again as it moved toward Niðarós.  He followed the road southwest for a day or so, overnighting in a tree (remember, my wildshape has no time limit on it), then found the south end of the overgrown road cutting north-south through the forest.  He spent a second night in a tree, and then continued following the old road north.  He got eyes on the Horde just after they had departed from Vigfus Tower.  He again performed a count of their numbers, and rolled well on his Intelligence check.  There were about 2000 creatures in the horde*, and he flew straight back to Eyrrinberg to meet up with the party (overnighting once more in a tree along the way).

Around the time the Druid got back is when the Barb//Warlock returned, in the late afternoon.  Although the sun set at just after 4:30 pm, the party decided they had better get a move on toward the bridge, which is ~25 miles south of Eyrrinberg.  They traveled through the dusk (~50 minutes' worth) and into the night for a few hours before someone failed a Con check, then set up camp for the night.  The next day they arrived at the bridge a little after noon, and assaulted it shortly thereafter (my notes say 1 pm).

The bridge set-up was similar to that in RHoD, but I had no dragon...  Instead I had a Beast of Xvim Winter Wolf with a fly potion.  Remember that group of Beast of Xvim Dire wolves my PC's fought long ago, just after seeing Thorstien crowned king?  Well, they didn't kill the barghest that had created them (and they never figured out that it was even a barghest).  It dimension doored away and escaped, later meeting up with the Tanarukk Horde, and imbued the Beast of Xvim template on a few of their numbers.  The nice thing was that it increased the damage dice of the winter wolf's breath weapon from 4d6 to 4d8.  Sadly my PC's were too smart, and seeing a total of three white wolves at the bridge (one Beast of Xvim, two normal, in place of the hell hounds from RHoD), the druid protected them all with a mass resist energy for resistance 20 each to cold.

Still, it was a hard-fought battle.  My bridge didn't have soaring towers at each corner, but rather 10-foot-high crenelated circular parapets, each about 10 feet in diameter.  I imagined them looking much like overgrown pulpits, of the type you might see in a Catholic cathedral.  Upon each parapet was a brazier with a fire burning, which would provide the tanarukk with a means to heal themselves via their Healing Flames feat.  It was otherwise set up much like the one in RHoD.  One tanarukk with a bow on each "tower," with a campsite on the first side with four more tanarukk grunts and a Troll-blooded Tanarukk Scout 1/Horizonwalker 1 "sergeant."  There was one normal winter wolf at each end of the bridge, and the Beast of Xvim one was near the campsite, and drank his St. Bernard mug of flying potion once the PC's became a noticeable threat.

The party (including Jorr, who they invited along) approached under two invisibility spheres, each centered on one of the druids' animal companions.  They then broke the cover of the invisibility and partial charged on the surprise round as soon as the winter wolf noticed them with scent.  That wolf lasted until the end of the second round.  Being on the outskirts of the group, and unable to get a shot it at the mouth of the bridge (which was 15 feet wide by 100 feet long), I had my DMPC attack one of the tanarukk up in the squat tower.  I thought I'd be bad ass and show them how it's done with my Lynx form wildshape combined with 2d6 skirmish damage.  Yes, he got three attacks each time he pounced on a charge, but the lynx's meager stats had him hitting about once a round.  Jorr also got into that action with his dagger...
I think that one tanarukk lasted for 5+ rounds, as neither Baneskald nor Jorr could hit the damn thing reliably, though in the DMPC's defense, he didn't any room to charge except for that opening round.

The flying Barb//Warlock, buffed with resistance 20 to cold, had little to fear from the Beast of Xvim, but was slowed in his work by the BoX's DR 10/Silver. (Note, all the PC's were high enough HD to be immune to its frightful presence)  His Hideous Blows layed out a good amount of damage each round, helping him make up for what the DR was soaking.  That damn longspear I gave him granting him AoO's didn't help, either.  Took maybe 4 rounds of back-and-forth through the air.

The tanarukk on the far side were quite an annoyance to the party as they were dealing with the second Winter Wolf.  This was also around the time my Barb//Beguiler player started having some bad luck with his dice**, so that made things last longer.  So the bridge was clogged up a dead winter wolf's body, and a live winter wolf that no one could take down.  All the while the party is dealing with the two tanarukk in the parapets on their end (remember the DMPC and NPC taking forever to kill that bastard?), the two tanarukk in the parapets on the far end, and the sergeant and four others, are pelting the party with arrows. 

A well-placed scintillating sphere by the Druid//Sorcerer got through the SR of two of them and the regenerating sergeant, wounding them (or not really, in the case of the troll-blooded tanarukk) for 13 points (damn outsiders and their good saves...)  The sorcerer kept pelting the tanarukk with scintillating spheres for three consecutive rounds.  Of seven tanarukk on the far side of the ravine, he was only ever able to hit six of them in the burst area each time, and each casting only got through the SR of three of the six tanarukk, and no more than two times per tanarukk.  Still, with the occasional failed reflex save, after three castings of scintillating sphere, three of the six regular tanarukk lay unconscious, and one was at 1 hit point.  The other tanarukk continued to fight on, utilizing the campfire and braziers to heal themselves, along with their one emergency potion of Faith Healing each.  Those three held on for quite a while, going up and down in HP's; the Troll-Blooded leader nearly regenerating back to full health before being beaten down with two Hideous Blows that knocked him unconscious once the Warlock was done dealing with the Beast of Xvim Winter Wolf.  Two coup de grace'd lesser acid orbs later, and the regenerating troll-blooded tanarukk sergeant was dead.

We ended the session there, with plans to retrieve the people of Niðarós at the start of the next session.

*The Horde split, 1/3 to 2/3 north of the forest.  One third of the 3000 member horde is headed toward Eyrrinberg (the smaller of the two towns), while two thirds are headed south through the forest, past the tower outpost where Kolfinn was stationed, and then east toward Niðarós, where there are more "supplies" (that would be people and cattle to take with them as food for the upcoming trek through Nidavellir).

**I'm writing this post 4 months after the game session in question, and in that time I have seen the absolute worst luck of the dice for this player.  Every time the roll doesn't matter, he'll roll above a 15.  Clutch situation against a hard foe? can't roll above a 10.  There have even been times when he'd hit by the attack roll, but the creature had concealment, and he'd miss due to the miss chance.  It's been uncanny, to the point that he bought new dice, and melted his old d20's in the oven.

[ksbsnowowl]

Next session, and this time the Barb//Warlock player is gone (the Wiz//Rogue was gone last time, the character staying back in town to scribe spells into his spellbook).  So I'm running the Barb//Warlock as an NPC, from memory...

So it's early afternoon, and the Druid//Sorcerer wildshapes into an eagle and flies roughly 12 miles south (takes about 40 minutes hustling) and locates a large campsite composed of the refugees from Niðarós.  I forget exact numbers now, but several of the townsfolk left in boats, so it wasn't the entire town.  Maybe about 500-600 people, with nearly half that being children and teenagers.  They pack up and follow the druid north, covering the 12 miles in about 6 hours, due to being slowed down by children and walking in the dark.  So around 8 pm they arrive back at the bridge and the party has them "set up camp on the north side of the bridge."

That quoted bit will be important later, and should serve as a lesson to tell the DM what you actually mean.

An hour or so later, the party Wizard//Rogue found the campsite, catching up to the group after having scribed several spells into his spellbook (and the player having missed two sessions).

Around midnight a scouting party of winter wolves and tanarukk crossed the bridge to harass the party.  This was a reinvention of the "Goblin Raiders" encounter from RHoD, but used a similar format, with waves of bad guys.  First across the bridge were four winter wolves.  A few area fire effects, as well as a sneak attack with a scorching ray, dealt with them pretty handily.  A few rounds passed between the winter wolves' deaths and the wave of five tanarukk, all of whom had been boosted by a Haste spell from the 6th level tanarukk wizard who stayed on the far side of the ravine.  Being hasted made the tanarukk mooks a bit more of a challenge, but only one of them survived to even need a third hit to kill it.

As the last tanarukk were falling to the party's blades and spells, that's when the hidden and unnoticed tanarukk war adept (Wiz 6) on the other side of the ravine made his move.  The party was clustered together at the end of the bridge, making them a nice target for the wizard's fireball.  I described the glowing bead streaking across the chasm and exploding right above their heads, and my player's eyes got real wide when I scooped up ten d6's and rattled them out onto the table.

See, the CR rules for adding class levels to monsters is... almost unfair.  It's based upon associated and non-associated classes, and the number of HD the base creature has.  In a situation such as the tanarukk, which is CR 2, but has 5 racial HD, that lets you get the first four levels of a non-associated class for only +2 CR.  So you get a Wizard 4, which 5 extra racial HD, as a CR 4.  Beyond that it adds +1 CR for each class level.  So I have my CR 6 Wizard 6 with 11 HD... and that lets me abuse Practiced Spellcaster.  That, plus the fiery burst reserve feat that the wizard has, means his CL for fire spells is 11.  (Which unexpectedly came into play later with scorching ray...)

When the party started to cross the bridge to deal with the caster, he brought down a Sleet Storm spell to slow them while he escaped.  It blocked them from seeing him, and with the entire bridge's width falling inside its area, the PC's had to try to slog through it at half speed, with the Barb//Beguiler failing several balance checks in a row, stopping and falling prone.  The Barbarian//Warlock that I was running for the absent player took to the air, evading the sleet storm, and casting an eldritch blast at the tanarukk, but failed to overcome SR (pesky how that gets higher when you add class levels...)

Seeing a potential for his retreat to be threatened, the tanarukk "war adept" cast a Mirror Image spell and backed up, which saved his bacon the next round when the Barbarian charged him, but hit one of the mirror images instead.  While the rest of the party was a comedy of errors inside the sleet storm, the DM-controlled Barbarian//Warlock kept pressing the tanarukk.  The tanarukk cast fly in order to escape, provoking an AoO that missed, and then flying backward and up 60 feet, provoking another AoO, which struck an image.  The flying barbarian charged again, since his warlock flight is only equal to his land speed of 40 feet, striking another mirror image.  The tanarukk flew 50 feet away, provoking another attack of opportunity that did not harm him, and pegging the warlock with both rays of his scorching ray.*  Between the 10d6 fireball and 8d6 of scorching rays, the Barb//Warlock was down from 80 hp's to 32 hp's, and found himself one-on-one with a foe who hadn't even been hurt yet (and had 59 hp's).  He flung an eldritch blast the wizard's way, failing to harm him, and let the wizard escape, returning to see how his land-bound party-mates were faring.

The session ended there, but the wizard escaping has had far-reaching consequences that my party still doesn't realize.  The wizard retreated as far as he could with his fly spell, then cast whispering wind to report what he had seen at the bridge to a winter wolf waiting several miles away.  He reported that there were dozens of campfires arrayed north of the bridge; the humans must have marshaled an army of hundreds to defend it.
The winter wolf took off at a hurried pace, forced marching himself for 13 hours before he became fatigued, where he collapsed.  The Horde comes upon the wolf about 10 hours later, and gets the news of an army defending the bridge.

The Tanarukk Horde is on a very tight timetable, needing to arrive at certain caves by certain times, so they may cross over into Nidavellir, and thus cover the ~1000 miles they need to cover before the solstice (two cross-over points in Nidavellir may be closer together there than they are here in Midgard).  Not being able to cross that bridge would endanger their ability to get to the menhir circle north of Eyrrinberg (which they were going to use to get closer to their main cave objective, and raid more towns along the way, picking up "supplies" for the three-week period they would be traveling through the dwarven world of caves and rock).  So, they decide to split the 2000-member horde.  Their tanarukk archivists cast Cloud Wings on several half-fiend trolls, so they can go scout out Niðarós and gather any food they can (they find cattle in surrounding farms that had been left).  Meanwhile, half the 2000-member horde will continue on to Niðarós as planned, and hope to cross the bridge with supplies.  The other half decides to backtrack past Vigfus Tower, and north of the northern road, to their "Plan B" location - a closer cave that connects to Nidavellir.  They realize they have plenty of time to backtrack to their fallback location, but need supplies.  Thankfully the Cloud Winged half-fiends will corral some cattle, and slowly walk them back around through the forest too, providing enough meager supplies to get this 1/3 of the original Horde through the sparseness of Nidavellir for over four weeks, and get them to the Niflhenge in time.

My party still has no idea this 1000-member army is still heading their way.

*I hadn't realized at this point that the tanarukk's CL for fire spells was 11, and so he should have gotten a third ray.  After the session ended and I realized my mistake, I rolled the third one, hit again, putting him under 20 hp's, and that just sealed in my mind I had made the right decision for the PC's character in letting the wizard escape at that point.

[ksbsnowowl]

All the players were present this time, so I recapped the last session for the benefit of all.  We left off last time with a Tanarukk Wizard 6 escaping after an otherwise failed raid against the party.  The tanarukk had grievously wounded the pursuing Warlock, which caused the warlock (controlled by me at the time) to break off pursuit.  The tanarukk would report back to the army what he had seen: dozens of campfires guarding the north end of the bridge.

That's when one of my players said "No, the people were in the forest far north of the bridge," to which I informed him, "That's not what you told me last week.  The people set up camp on the north side of the bridge."  He grumbled a bit, but accepted it.  Players, make sure you are clear in what you tell the DM.

With that, we pick up on the morning of November 2nd, the morning after the encounter with the Tanarukk Wizard.  The people of Niðarós set off on foot toward Eyrrinberg, and the party decides to hang around an sabotage the bridge.  They inspect the bridge, and either initially or at some later point (can't recall) one of them notices the weak spot, but they initially completely ignore it.  Their idea is to use stone shape to make large undercuts up the bottom side of the bridge, leaving only the barest solid shell on the sides and the top walking surface, so that they can take out these points while the front portion of the army is on the bridge.  They make two such undercuts, roughly 1/4 and 3/4 of the way across (at 25 feet and 75 feet, along a 100-foot bridge).  They also have the idea to hollow out some holes just beside/on top of the undercuts, and place flasks of acid in them, and then cover them back over with stone, on the idea that they will break open and aid in the destruction when they "take out" manufactured undercuts.

This is all well and good, and I play right along, allowing them to spend November 2nd and the morning of November 3rd setting this up with Stone Shape.  Between two druids over two days, I think it was 12 to 14 castings of stone shape.  The Druid//Sorcerer takes off in eagle form to get eyes on the approaching army, while the NPC druid//scout sticks around for one more day of stone shaping on the morning of the 4th, then heads off to ensure the people of Niðarós made it safely to Eyrrinberg.   The other three then sit and wait for the army to arrive, with plans of the Wizard//Rogue taking out the manufactured weak spots with some evocation-type spells.  They sit and wait through the end of the 3rd, the NPC druid leaves and they sit and wait through the afternoon of November 4th.  No sign of the army, and no word from the PC druid, and this starts to worry them.

During all the waiting the Druid//Sorcerer does his scouting, and the eagle's impressive speed lets him get eyes on the army by late afternoon of the 3rd, after having flown a zig-zag pattern 80 miles (as the crow flies) south-southwest.  He made the intelligence check to estimate their numbers, and he found there only to be 1000.  That is quite confusing to him, but he sleeps in a tree, and returns the next day, arriving back at the bridge in the late afternoon of the 4th.  Keep in mind that this is fairly far north, and there is less than 8 and a half hours of daylight (with 50 minutes of twilight each end of the daylight) by this point.  Around the same time, Baneskald (NPC Druid//Scout/Wiz 1) returns from Eyrrinberg, with news that they have experienced numerous raids in the last few days.  This information makes sense to the party, explaining why the army approaching Niðarós was now so small.

They now realize that their assumption that the army was headed to Niðarós first was in error; the armies will be attacking the two towns simultaneously.  They decide to blow the bridge now, and head back to assist Eyrrinberg.  The Druid//Sorcerer blows through eleven spells blasting the main part of the bridge, bringing it from 270 hp's to 117 (before accounting for ~80 points of damage from their undercutting seams.)  At this point, one of the players recalls that there was an eroded section under one of the bridge footings, and three lesser orbs of acid later the weak point had 2 hp's left.  Two very bad damage rolls of acidic splatter later, and the bridge was toast.

With the Druid//Sorcerer out of all his arcane spell slots, the party decides to sleep the night, and hurry back to Eyrrinberg the next day, November 5th.  Several party members are quite mobile, via barbarian or scout levels, 3 of the 5 have a base speed of 40 feet, and one of the others can wildshape.  Sadly, the party can only move as fast as its slowest member, so the Wiz//Rogue slowed them down to a pace of 7 hours and 20 minutes to get back (with one hour of hustling).  Adding in time to reprepare spells, and the party didn't arrive back to Eyrrinberg until after sunset.  Just as the last usable light faded away, a raid ensued.

This is another use of the "Goblin Raid" encounter, but done in a more tactically minded manner, creating an ambush.  The main force of tanarukk (including a wizard) waits in a nearby copse of trees, while the winter wolves take torches in their mouths and go set a near-by barn aflame.  The burning building gets the attention of the townsfolk (and the PC's), who head out to stop it.  By this time the wolves had dropped the torches when setting the fire, and have run up to encounter the approaching PC's.  After the sounds of that combat die down, the Tanarukk Wizard then casts dancing lights, targeting it on the back side of the barn (away from the approaching PC's), and causes the phantom torches to move about 20 feet per round back toward the copse of trees.

The PC's of course see this group of torches heading back into the woods, and rush in to kill the vandals.  Upon arriving at the copse of trees the party spreads out quite a bit, but when two PC's and an animal companion start approaching the Wizard (who was on the back side), the war adept catches them all in a Web spell (trees are great for that).  That hampered the PC's quite a bit, even "negating" the Warlock's ability to fly.  There were some scorching rays cast at the party, which set the web on fire (dealing extra damage to several PC's), and the Wizard activated his Burning Veil (MIC), which is an item the Druid//Sorcerer specifically had asked for, so his eyes got wide with delight.

The sorcerer caught three tanarukk in a scintillating sphere, dropping the two who failed their saves, and bringing the third below 10 hp's.  There was a lot of maneuvering going on through patchy areas of undergrowth, slowing down tanarukk and PC's alike.  The Barb//Warlock, unable to free himself from the Web spell, spent his time hovering inside the slowly-enlarging free space inside the web (caused by the spreading fire), blasting at the tanarukk wizard with eldritch blast as best he could with the miss chance imposed by the Web.

The NPC Druid//Scout/Wizard 1 got a few good shots in against the mooks with a skirmish-enhanced lesser orb of acid, as well as a lynx-shaped pounce.  He also "saved the day" by laying down a Murderous Mist (SpC) that damaged and blinded the Tanarukk Wizard, thus preventing him from escaping, because his means of escape was a scroll of Fly, which he could no longer read to activate.  The NPC Druid then laid down an entangle, so the war adept could hardly move, and that's all she wrote.

The party ended the session having defeated the raiders (one winter wolf did run away at the end of the first wave), and scored some nice loot, including a spellbook and a trove of more than 15 scrolls.

Thus ended November 5th.  The next session, November 6th, is the day of the Massacre at Eyrrinberg.  We'll start off with the Desperate Counsel role play encounter first, however, occurring just after the raid.