The World of Telvar

Bazmar was rather unsubtle. His thoughts were that the Defenders were getting dangerous and inquiring about the assassins' guild, so something should be done about them pretty soon. He would have to speak with Sangster, one of patrol leaders of Garroten, about this. In the trees at midnight.

Lovely.

The plan: have an invisible Perry follow Bazmar to the meeting and see what he could learn. After Bazmar returned, kill him and the fake gnome and fake dog trainer, knocking out three assassins and the people watching us. This would allow us to reach the castle undetected. Halco the half-elf woodsman was also turned invisible.

Perry followed them to the copse of trees, and Bazmar said to Sangster the same thing the ESP picked up. In addition, he thought that they should start with "the halfling, then the druid. Then the warriors. The rest will be a mopping up action. We should probably start tomorrow."

Sangster replied, "The boss is coming back at noon tomorrow. All the plans need his approval. Sounds good, and I wouldn't worry about them."

In hindsight, when Sangster misses the call, he misses it BIG TIME.

About midnight, we crept toward Bazmar's room under cover of Cassian's _Silence_ spell. Perry picked the lock, and we moved in quickly. Unfortunately, there was a trap on the door, and a bolt was suddenly stuck in Felix... but it failed to penetrate his armor. In addition, a bell would have started ringing on the firing crossbow, had there not been a Silence in effect. Worse still, Bazmar was clearly awake and in a chair. However, we completely surprised him. Felix smacked him, and then Balinor finished him off, killing him instantly.

We moved quickly to the room housing the gnome and the dog trainer. There was a huge splash of white paint all over Felix as he entered the room, and they were awake as well. Irritated, Balinor helped the gnome's head cave in (less than -10 instantly), and Felix took down the dog trainer in two quick hits, preventing him from even drawing his broadsword.

Success!

We cleaned up the spill, apparently without anyone noticing. Then we left the inn and headed to the back entrance of the castle. Balmoro (the bard) had consented to watch the back entrance to see if anyone went inside while we were in there. In addition, we told him to keep an eye out to see who enters the town around noon-- that person is "the boss."

When we were ready, the earthen mound in front of us suddenly moved, and a dirt-encrusted man appeared out of the ground. Quentin introduced him as his friend, Martin. We had completely missed him before. Martin always mumbles and is incredibly soft-spoken, but VERY driven. "Wherever injustice and tyranny prevail..." the whole spiel.

We approached the entrance as planned, under cover of the light rain to mess up the guards' infravision (some of them are orcs). Another Silence spell was ticking. Felix tried to crowbar the door open, then suddenly noticed it was unlocked. Suspicious, we entered anyway.

We immediately descended down some stairs. At the bottom we are attacked on two separate occasions by a single ZOMBIE. Wow, this casual, oh yeah there's hideous undead in the basement, you'll need a cleric to get the wine, is really getting out of hand!

We passed down a corridor until we reached a door with a lever. Detect Magic revealed no magic, and Perry (with an Aid spell on him) was frequently listening and detecting traps throughout this place. We opened it and entered an alchemical lab with TONS of stuff in it. Nothing magical. We also discovered that of the stuff we had taken from Bazmar and the others, there was a magic amulet, dagger, and cape (or cloak?).

We continued through and ended up in a corridor with doors. We crowbarred the first door and opened it. A silent party sneaked in and knocked out the two sleeping people in the room. Clearly one of them was a cleric of Kord, and the other we suspected to be his mage lover.

The occupants neutralized (and tied and gagged), we made a quick search and found a set of keys. They opened several of the later doors, but not the really special next door. It was huge, iron bound, and had two nice locks. On two astounding rolls, Perry opened the door anyway, and we found a sheet-metal room. The floor was entirely magical, but that was all. There were five iron boxes about the size of a bed (5' long or so). All of them had two locks.

We hatched a clever plan. Felix drank half of the Flying Potion, and carried Perry into the room. Using the tuning fork (since the second Silence spell blocked the sound from leaving the room), we were able to open a signficant number of the locks. Between that and Felix's crowbar skill, we managed to open three of them. If I remember correctly, they all contained equipment of some kind (non-magical, right?).

We were unable to get the last two open, and so continued onward.

We opened a whole bunch of other doors. At the end of one hallway was standing a single bored-looking ogre. Martin surprised it and knocked it down, but not before it would have let off a yell. Noticing it didn't fall immediately, Morgan, who standing right behind it, gut stabbed it and finished the ogre off. In addition he caught the body and muffled the sound. Morgan became visible, unfortunately. That left Perry and Halco to scout ahead. In addition, the last Silence spell soon wore off.

We knocked out the apprentice of the Lord Mayor while she was sleeping (a "babe"), and a few moments later knocked out six people in a barracks of some sort. We tied them up in their beds, and tucked them in.

There were also two more people in a really scrubby looking area under the stairs. They were also taken out. That left 11 unconscious tied up people, and a dead ogre!

There were some empty cells, one with lots of rats. Quentin spoke with them, but they worry so much about the dogs that they don't venture into other areas of the castle. Apparently, "The dogs are vicious, and the big guy steps on us."

Having cleared the entire lower floor, we headed up some stairs and entered the main portion of the castle. We went through the kitchen, entryway (the main door is magical), and found a shrine to Kord. There were several magic things, but we avoided them, and found a secret passage in the back of the room. It led to what was probably the main cleric of Kord's bedroom. There were two HIGH magic lions in the room. We didn't enter.

Climbing up a ladder, we entered the room above. There was a door there, and Felix led the way. Then everything seemed to go wrong. A huge object swung through the door and partially hit Felix, doing some significant damage. In addition some bells rang on it, and some moderate amount of noise was made. Since there was no immediate reaction, we continued.

Upon moving inside, they found a room with two magical doors. In addition, one of the doors had a magical floor in front of it, and a magic dragon head to the side. Suspecting it's nature, Felix flew over the floor, and went for the door. Unfortunately, the dragon head turned to face him and breathed fire, doing some damage. Felix retreated.

Quentin and his Fire Protection tried again, this time walking over the floor. It seemed to Quentin that it took a bit longer for the head to react to him than Felix, but the result similar. In addition, the floor shot jets of flame at him. Quentin took some damage off of his Protection (20 points or so), but was fine. Unfortunately, he discovered that the door was locked.

Furthermore, the other door appeared to magically held.

We sent Perry and Halco down to check on the prisoners (we had moved them to the cells, the wizard and priest in a separate one). We left Halco down there so he could tell us if someone discovered them.

It appears our presence is STILL undetected. We searched almost all the rooms in the keep, and found no sign of the big three people we were looking for-- the cleric of Kord, the Lord Mayor, and Samster. Very odd.

(Gristla has one ESP spell to cast on someone, preferably Samster so we can find out who "the boss" is.)

Our suspicion is that either the Lord Mayor or perhaps the cleric IS "the boss." This would be quite bad. In addition, we think that the reason that secret door was unlocked was because they had left through it.

Hopefully they will return through that door, and we can nail them when they come back in. If the leader of the guild is really one of them, then they will not have much of an escort, if any, while sneaking in a back entrance.

An interesting problem we hadn't considered!

The plan now is take out the rest of the castle and prepare for whoever's arrival. This may involve knocking out the wall guards, then having Quentin shut the courtyard dogs up, then taking out the blockhouse. By our estimates, there should still be between ten and twenty people still here.

Well, that's where we stopped. So far, no casualties at all, almost no resources expended! We may pull this off really cleanly!

Joel/Balinor
Log Supplement IX: A Story or Two

An additional comment, and a funny point:

I'm not too clear on who the second mage is-- I might be wrong about the first two people we caught. They were definitely the patrol leaders, and there were LOTS of Kordian symbols, but that's all I'm sure about.

Martin, Quentin's friend, is not to be confused with Quentin's OTHER friend, Martin. Martin with the party is a high level ranger/woodsman. The other Martin we met upon arriving in Garroten-- he's the local druid Quentin speaks with.

Finally, a little anecdote-- when we were checking out the room with the coffins and the magical floor, we had Drew track, but he didn't pick up anything. Martin said that there was someone with cheap shoes who came through about 5 or 6 hours earlier...

Whatever.

Joel