So, after leaving the home of the town's Lord, we decided it was a good time to look up Elian the Old, so we head out back to the inn, to see if he lives up to his reputation. And there he was, bending over a pint of beer. We approach him and present ourselves as being Doven's friends, sent by Rebecca to try and find out about his whereabouts. He seemed a little suspicious until i showed him the old compass Rebecca had entrusted me, at which point he warmed up to us immediately.
However, he was not the fountain of information we had expected, being already rather old and overly fond of beer. He could not account as to why we should be suspicious of the townspeople, but he did inform us that Doven had indeed been in Winterhaven and had disappeared about a month ago. Apparently, he had been looking for some old ruins where a dragon was said to be buried on the way to Bort and hadn't been seen since. When asked about Wilf's Fair and the Old Keep, he tells us that it had been the locale of a fierce battle a very long time ago between the old Empire and cultists of an Evil God who had tried to open a rift into Hell, and that the souls of the dead still haunt that general area. None who had ever gone there had ever returned...
Having already heard of activitivies of an evil cult in the area from the cleric in Scart, we head to the local temple to see if Sister Leonora could shed some light on the matter. Apparently she had been tracking the cult's activities for some time and believed that the sudden appearance of the raiders was connected with them. She believed that the raider's presence in the region had been engineered by the cult as a means to keep the town aghast and allow them to pursue their agenda. Regretably, she couldn't provide any information as to what were their intentions, but she has had information that the cult may have a base in a cavern behind a waterfall southwest of the road to Bort, near some old ruins. Things were definitely starting to look entwined.. Perhaps Doven, while investigating the ruins had stumbled on something and had paid the price for his discovery... Definitely a place to check later on.
We leave Sister Leonora's temple and head out to the scholar Valtrum's house, in what turned out to be a waste of time. He did indeed know about the history of the Old Keep and Wilf's Fair, but what he told us was no more than what Elian the Old had already done. However, we couldn't help but feel that he was holding out on us, and that he knew more than he had shared. At this point, we believed we knew enough to go on and decided to go back to the inn for some lunch, afterwhich we would leave town to engage the raider blockade on the way to Bort.
When we were getting ready to leave, Doven's son Daniel, who we had decided to leave at the inn for safekeeping, insisted on tagging along. We ended up accepting the annoying brat's demands, as long as he behaved and stayed well away from the coming fight. And so we left, collecting our weapons at the gates, with Chuck at the head and Sora, Daniel, and the mules at the rear. After some time, we start noticing movement on both sides of the road, following our footsteps. Some of us manage to glimpse the figures of Kobolds, but whenever we tried to approach them to engage they would escape swiftly into the tangled woods. Thinking they were just small scouting parties, we moved forward until we finally reached our destination.
At one point of the road, we notice a large group of Kobolds who were securing positions using the large trees that grow in these parts of the woods as cover. Unlike the other groups we encountered on the way, this was a much larger group and did not seem intent on running, so we ordered Daniel to stay back and decided to attack them head on. Battle ensues as we advance towards their positions amidst a shower of javelins thrown by Kobold Skirmishers and Dragonshields. As we get closer, we are suddenly surrounded by smaller kobolds hiding between the trees, but they are quickly dealt with, while Chuck and Sora attempt to close into melee with the Kobold backline. With their smaller kin dead, we started pummeling on the Skirmishers and Dragonshields. At this point, the leader of this group makes his appearance, a Kobold Wyrmpriest, who starts flinging Energy Orbs everywhere.
At first the battle was going in our favor. We took down all except a few Dragonshields and the Wyrmpriest, but we had taken heavy damage in return. Suddenly though, things start to turn from tough to downright desperate as the Wyrmpriest calls for reinforcements. Sora and Ceteribus start to run low on healing and Chuck goes down, bleeding profusely on the floor, thanks to some vicious attacks from the Kobolds. Ceteribus uses his last healing on Chuck who is up again but in very poor condition to fight. In a matter of instants the whole party, except for myself, who was blasting from a safe distance, was on single digit hit points. Kralho was running around with 2 hit points, trying to sneak attack what he could, at a moment where both Sora and Ceteribus could no longer provide healing for the party. But finally, we were only up against the Wyrmpriest, who possessed of uncanny luck, had avoided most of our most efective attacks. Five against one, against an already wounded opponent, we finally managed to kill the bastard and win the battle.
Fearing further reinforcements, we collected the loot rapidly, finding on the corpse of the Wyrmpriest a curious amulet. Ceteribus examined it and determined it had the symbol of Orcus, the Demon Prince of Undead, one of the most powerful demons of the Abyss, a threat even to gods. Certainly something worthy of investigation. With all the relevant loot collected, we return to the place where we had left Daniel and the mules, only to see that they were nowhere to be found! Damn, somebody had kidnapped the kid and stolen our mules! Investigating the area, all we could find were tracks leading further into the woods in the direction of the waterfalls. In no condition to continue due to the previous battle, we decided to leave for town and come back next day to investigate that area. More on that, in the next installment.
No comments:
Post a Comment