Session 17
(OOC: Re-reading the “diary” entry from last week, the last time period should have been Day 1 of Month 1 of Year 2; and apparently the fresh snow of the new year didn’t make an impression on my players, ah well.)
Month 1
For the first time, the party splits - there’s still some distrust for Aella (WOMAN IN BLACK) and her army, so someone has to stay.
Chlodomer leaves all of his henchmen, the draft horses, crossbowmen, light infantry, medium cavalry, and wagons under the command of Haramer, with a few exceptions:
Agalinda, apprentice to Galagunde (hench to Chlodomer) now has 2nd level spells, so she is sent back to study. Amarante, hench and personal astrologer for Chlodomer, just acquired 3rd level spells, so she is sent back as well.
And each other party member leaves a loyal hench to keep an eye on things: Galswintha leaves Gurund (and his hench, Geofferic the hero); Vulfelind leaves Veneranda and her leveled war dogs and war hawk; and Shadagrunde trusts Aggulita and his now-fully-trained dire wolf mount.
The party, stripped to minimum load and rations, force-marches back to Orléans, utterly murdering a warband of orcs who happened to be traveling through.
Once in Orléans:
Those mages with new spell levels work on their repertoire. Everyone gives to the local temple of the Lady for luck (and gets to see their names and the Grim Fist ring symbol carved into the marble foundation listing Important Personages Who Gave A Lot Of Money To Our Most Holy Mission).
Chlodomer manages to find a mage of 9th level willing to put aside some time to enchant a suit of plate armor. Chlodomer puts Amarante in charge of managing the funds for the mage, and buys a small building in town as the Grim Fist’s base of operations in Orléans, where she (and they) can work from.
That done, Chlodomer looks at his suddenly shrunk cash supply and holds off on any further rash purchases (beyond the usual 2,000 gold for a champion living high on the hog in a city for a month).
Galswintha makes arrangements to have the extensive wardrobe she left in Châtel transported to Orléans - her henchwoman Merovia leaves with a squad of heavy cavalry and wagons to take care of that, and manages to return with the clothing by the end of the month. She also discusses the last efreet wish with the party.
… and then she discusses it with the efreet, because she wants to make sure that it will not cause him distress. He laughs. “Your first wish was to ensure that I would be treated well. That story alone will earn me respect. Make your wish.”
She wishes that, should the party successfully clear and claim the Pegasus Mountain domain, the land and domain will be blessed.
(OOC: Vague wording? Well, yes. On the other hand, we had already established that the efreet wasn’t going to screw them on the wishes, so long as they treated the efreet correctly … and they very much did treat the efreet correctly. So I decided to treat this as a 9th-level variant on Harvest, especially since they will still have to EARN the domain - but if they do, the assessed Land Value will be +2 higher and Domain Morale will be +1; and whichever six-mile hex Galswintha builds her sanctum in, the animals will be friendly to Galswintha as if it were an elven fastness. This will be essentially a permanent blessing; it can be countered with a reversed wish, and will end when no member of the Grim Fist rules.)
Then Galswintha spends the remainder of the month researching a new spell, swapping out wizard lock for speak equis.
Vulfelind buys two tigers for Baldaswind to train and work with, and has her hench Almalinda make a study in pegasus rearing and training. And then she goes recruiting, adding to the menagerie: two new thieves. Chadalinda d’Orléans is technically a lawyer, skilled in both the licit and illicit aspects of getting clients off the hook; Ustitia l’Hivernal is a belly dancer and fencer. This maxes Vulfelind’s henches out.
Shadagrunde does what Chlodomer did: starts with one exceptional leader type and then works down the levels to build out a small army of henches. His hench Merideth le Chocolat forms the central figure. He also hires Rinogand d’Orléans, a stout priest and sage of draconic history, and 19 light infantry henches for Merideth to whip into shape.
They then look at the heavy snow that has fallen and … decide to march back to Pegasus Mountain anyway. More wagons are purchased, and back they trudge.
On the way back, they encounter a lost merchant caravan trying to make it to Atanung. Shadagrunde fixes their maps and explains the ancient dwarven highway markers, then, when their guide still seems a bit lost, takes an extra day to accompany them to the closest marker.
The merchants are thankful, but puzzled at the lack of a toll: Chlodomer jumps on that, saying “We’re still clearing things out - we’re not going to charge a toll on our highway until we can be certain it’s safe.”
The party agrees after the fact that this was the correct thing to say … even if the highway isn’t technically theirs yet. It certainly satisfied the merchants and made them feel special, like they were getting a deal for being early adopters.
Month 1, alternate
Meanwhile, at Pegasus Mountain, winter has come, and the ogres have not been idle. Gathering unto themselves a small army of other Chaotic humanoids and beasts, and noting that a large force left the mountain, they plan a careful, stealthy approach up the mountain and then attack as night falls.
Ogres. Trolls. Hill giants. Goblins. Dire wolves.
And one powerful necromancer (plus his undead minions), who is pleased as punch that someone poured lava down his sanctum.
(OOC: I allowed the players to play their henches for this battle.)
Veneranda’s war dogs scent the trolls early on the chill breeze, and the war hawk flies out and spots them against the snow before being forced to retreat by a hail of goblin arrows. With little or no preparation to hold off the lower pass, the army and giantesses retreats. Gurund’s dispel magic reveals an invisible wizard, and Haramer’s spearmen expend one spear each to hit him - he falls, and chaos erupts among the ogre’s ranks as undead cease to be controlled!
A web is then thrown to cut off part of the force, and the hench army descends like the Lady’s Fist on an unbeliever, with Haramer taking a moment to light the web on fire.
The fight very rapidly simplifies down to one troll and two hill giants … against a phalanx of spearmen and clerics. Casualties are rough, but once the hill giants are down, everyone piles onto the troll, grapples it, and then drags it up the mountain, down the tunnel, and tosses it bodily into the magma, where Gurund webs it into place.
No one dies, but there are some harsh Mortal Wounds results, and some henches mutter and grumble about being left to fend for themselves in dangerous countryside. (Although Haramer points out: “When has the Grim Fist ever let one of us remain injured?”, which squelches the last of the serious protest.)
The giantesses also confer with Gurund about Galswintha and, as a thank-you gift for the clothing, vases, and numerous “giant-sized nice things” she brought them from human civilization, they spend the remainder of the month carving the rough outline of an embedded staircase up the side of the cliff toward the pegasi, although being careful to not get too close to the nest.
Month 2, Day 1
The Grim Fist returns and receives ragged cheers … and discovers the serious bodily trauma some of their henches suffered from the ogres.
Shadagrunde restores the worst case (broken spine at the neck!) and promises to restore another person each day until everyone is whole again.
Galswintha loses her mind over the staircase.
Chlodomer sits down with Haramer to plan a full-bore assault on what remains of the ogres, “They’ve proven we can’t leave them for later.”
Vulfelind uses tracking and manages to find the spot where the necromancer met with the ogres … and then tracks backward to find the portion of the lair where he holed up.
Ah, loot never gets old.
Especially when they discover that one of the necromancer’s items is a sentient shortsword of luck … that doesn’t like anyone and refuses to grant wishes, because “once I’m out of wishes, who would want an old, washed up shortsword? No, I gotta make these wishes count. Saving the world kinda stuff. Don’t even ask me for bigger muscles, it’s gotta be awesome or nothing.”
After some discussion of who has failed saves the most often, Vulfelind ends up with the sword, giving her more ordinary magical sword to Chlodomer, who passes it to Haramer, who gives it to the leader of Squad B for heroism in the line of duty.
There is also a powerful lady’s cane (mace +2, can cure disease once per day) which goes to Shadagrunde, who passes it on to Merideth.
The ring of fire resistance goes to Chlodomer, half as a joke.
Week 1
There is some discussion about longterm plans, and the potential Domain represented by Pegasus Mountain. It is revealed that Pegasus Mountain itself takes up almost exactly one six-mile hex; and that almost everything for two hexes in all directions is Hills and Woods, with areas of River scattered throughout, all heading away from the mountain.
A few very quick fights clear out the remaining known “bad” lairs on the mountain itself. One additional fight finally wipes the ogre village out.
Veneranda’s giant hawk is sent on some high-flying scouting missions, and establishes a list of probable monsters in a 12-mile radius. (OOC: We also talk about the numbers involved: an expected average of 90 encounters across 500 square miles.)
And the party makes their way up the stairs to guard Galswintha while she talks to the pegasi. That goes surprisingly well, although the pegasi are unnerved by the stairway (Galswintha does tell them that the Grim Fist now guards it).
Months 2, 3, and 4, partial
Using these guidelines, I ended up with 85 encounters. I used a LibreOffice Calc random function to get a bunch of d8,d12 rolls done. And then I started laying out lairs, rolling warband numbers, etc. Yowch.
The Grim Fist better like this spot, because I don’t want to do this again anytime soon.
I also decided that, basically, the Grim Fist can scout from the air, has detection spells up the wazoo, thieves packed in like a clown car, Tracking and other wilderness proficiencies all accounted for … given time, they will find every lair in a hex. So rather than spend the next two to three months of face-time plotting out where they travel each day, I’m letting the Grim Fist spend one season (approx. 1 day per six square miles) to guarantee all lairs are found.
We then did some simplified dicing (no real strategy, just reaction, then hits-and-damage rolls) for all of the easy ones, and then take the harder ones in order. The easy ones, I just did the rolling for and we handled what little party decisions were needed via email:
Around 50 antelope are spotted and noted, but left alone.
Bat swarms: A hollow tree; an ancient, shattered bridge across a dry riverbed; an abandoned, moss-covered tower; and a small cave. The party left the bats alone (“bat guano mining was a valuable industry, why would we destroy that?”).
The cave of bats also had five giant black widow spiders - those, they killed. Vulfelind intends to deck out her troupe with black widow armor like her own.
The Beast Friendship Lairs: two cave bear dens, a mountain lion, a boar, nine giant hawks, ten giant bats, and a giant owl. No one kills rabbits for XP in this party. There has been some talk of bringing the cave bears to Clothilde for training.
The party also encountered three dire wolves, whom Aggulita turned into henches. Aggulita now has four dire wolves: Gore, Fang, Guts, and Liver. Gore is Aggulita’s mount; the others are being trained as mounts, and Liver is likely to be assigned/loaned to Grizzba once training is completed.
Dead: 7 pit vipers, 3 giant pythons, 6 wyverns, 2 griffons (who would have lived if they hadn’t tried to eat the horses), 2 herds of hippogriffs (who would have lived if they weren’t the sworn enemies of pegasi and therefore target practice for Galswintha), 10 cockatrices (nets, 10-foot poles, and polearms were handy), 3 nests of stirges, a rhagodessa, 2 giant scorpions, 5 lesser hellhounds, 5 greater hellhounds, and 2 phase tigers.
My monster graveyard is starting to get ridiculous ;-).