20171013 Recap Against the Slave Lords - The Fall of the Stockade Level 9

Against the Slave Lords – Fall of the Slavers Stockade  20171013


Delving deeper into the dungeons of the slaver stockade, the party gets past a cunning magnet trap, risk the wrath of the spider goddess by slaying a number of huge spiders, and make it past the lair of some boggles (small teleporting humanoids), when our heroes are joined by Walster, who has become separated from the allied team heading back to the surface.  

So, Raistlin (Elf Wizard – Arthur), Bannor the Bloodguard (Human Fighter – Brendon), Cyrano (Drow Rogue - Kenji), Souldun (Human Warlord – Vic), Grid (Human Monk – Art), Mantis (TriKreen Barbarian – Ross) and Walster (Mul Barbarian – Jeff) rest a moment and move further into the stockade.  Breaking down the door at the end of the hall, the group sees a large chamber and many goblin guards who are torturing a number of slaves.  Gird, Walster and Mantis rush past Bannor just as a huge fiery explosion of oil hits the doorway, lighting Bannor and Cyrano on fire.  Raistlin posts himself on a ledge overlooking the majority of the room, allowing him to blast one group of the guards, wounding several and killing one of the slaves.  Gird and Walster make their way toward the back of the room as each of them down two of the guards, while Bannor and Mantis are not far from the bottom of the stairs where other guards attempt to hold them in place and still more further back use slings and bows in support.  Mantis and Bannor each down two guards and start moving further into the room as Gird and Walster are attacked by several large wargs that attack from open pens from the east.  Gird is a blur of kicks and strikes and quickly downs the first warg as well as an additional goblin.  Walster is fighting off the second warg when a secret passage opens up in the hall and two elite hobgoblins attack Cyrano, Rastlin and Souldun.  At about the same time, a frail looking woman appears and slices Mantis with a quick and deep strike, then vanishes.  Raistlin teleports away and blasts the hobgolins with magic while Cyrano keeps trying to put out the fire.  After the fire subsides, Cyrano manages several strikes on the first hobgoblin.  Bannor moves back toward the stairway and engages with the second hobgoblin.  Meanwhile, Mantis is fully engaged with the remaining guards and downs two more goblins.  Gird downs the second warg and his forth goblin while Walster downs the last warg.  Souldun encourages the drow and fighter to keep swinging as the warlord inspires them to ignore their wounds.  The warlord moves up and distracts the elite hobgoblins, allowing Bannor a few extra strikes as Bannor downs the first hobgoblin.  Bannor and Souldun wound the second hobgoblin and Cyrano finishes it off.  Cyrano throws a dagger in Walster’s direction and downs a wounded goblin just before it strikes the Warden.  Mantis downs his seventh and eighth goblins, effectively ending the battle as the frail woman has vanished and is nowhere to be found.  The party loots the room, finding some gold, a really nice cross bow, some nails and planks of wood and a secret passage inside the iron maiden.      

After a short rest and giving instructions to the rescued slaves, the party finds a misty cavern.  Cyrano causes a few of the piercers to fall, and Mantis crosses the ravine, passing a rope to the rest of the group.  One by one, everyone crosses with Raistlin teleporting across.  

The group finds a side tunnel with some cheese casks and cheese cloth.  Not long after that, Cyrano disables a trapped door and they are attacked by angry bees.  The bees sting everyone but Raistlin’s magic seems to have great effect.  Gird squashes a lot of bees allowing Walster to smoosh one swarm.  Raistlin uses fire to scorch the remaining two swarms.  After another short rest, the party continues on.

The tunnel widens out and after a bit, Gird and Bannor are caught under a net.  The monk steps aside and sees a number of warg riders charging toward the group.  Bannor and Souldun cut and slash to free the fighter while Mantis moves up to fill the gap in the line.  Gird and Mantis each down a warg as the second wave charges in.  Raistlin blasts the bunched up goblin riders, downing one, wounded three and downing a wounded warg.  Gird downs a wounded rider and then another rider.  With the second group of riders down, a third wave charges in.  Walster downs a rider while Mantis hangs from the ceiling and stabs downward, killing his second warg.  Bannor wounds a warg, allowing Walster to finish it off.  A forth wave charges in and Gird downs his third and forth riders.  Seeing that charging into the prepared heroes is useless, the remaining warg riders and wounded wargs retreat.  The group takes a short rest, finds some small bags of herbs and moves on.  

Everyone except Cyrano is wearing a small bag of herbs that tells the wargs in the area if the being is a friend or an enemy.  Unfortunately, Cyrano is in front when he passes by the guard dog area and they bark loudly sounding the alarm, allowing Markessa’s guards to grab their weapons and take their positions.  The group puts down both guard dogs and moves up to the doors beyond.  It is here that an epic battle ensues!  

Markessa the Slave Lord and former royalist general is at the rear of the room.  She is flanked by archers on either side who are on a covered balcony surrounding the room.  An elite goblin warrior guards the eastern stairs and a few goblins on the main floor stand ready to block the doorway.  The entire group except the drow, is blasted with lighting and knocked prone.  Bannor is able to stand up quickly and moves to the west and downs one guard.  Gird moves in and downs a second guard.  Mantis moves up to the western balcony and Cyrano and Raistlin move up to the eastern balcony.  Walster rushes in and engages Markessa in hand to hand battle and is suddenly set upon by a small dark dwarf, whom the party later finds out is an Ogre Mage Lord.  Souldun tries to shoot Markessa with the magic cross bow and it blows up instead.  Several goblin guards rush to Markessa’s defense.  A huge Green serpent busts out of the wall, partially blocking the doorway and Markessa summons a fire elemental to block the other side.  Bannor rushes by the fire and moves to assist Walster.  Raistlin ignores the huge serpent and summons a pair of tentacles to pin Markessa in place but she teleport to the eastern balcony.  The ogre mage bashes Walster again and vanishes.  Cyrano downs a goblins with a dagger to the head and downs another that Bannor had been exchanging blows with.  The green serpent moves to attack Walster and the warden spins and downs it with a mighty chop.  Walster then rushes up the stairs and downs Markessa as a huge black serpent busts through the other northern wall.  The fire elemental vanishes and the remaining six goblins flee.  The group, as a unit, gang up on and down the lone remaining serpent.  

The party searches the room and find some gold, some jewelry and a book with lists of slave merchants and a map to an entire city dominated by the slave lords.  The map leads to a narrow mountain tunnel that leads to a crater and the walled island city of the slave lords.  The group rests and head back to the surface where they learn that the other allied teams have lead the vast majority of the slaves back to the surface.  All of the orc and goblin guards have either been killed or have fled.   The large number of merchant caravan groups camped in front of the stockade, seeing the chaos, refused to aid the fleeing stockade guards but did provide shelter and aid to fleeing slaves.  The forces friendly to the barons go with one of the larger merchants to a nearby village that is protected by an aging wizard.  There the heroes re-organize, rest, train and barter with the wizard and the merchant for upgraded equipment.