The World of Telvar

First, salvage tax was paid on the items recovered from the Khargish ruins. The Shield of the Wyrm, Felix’s old shield, was given up along with the Token of Boulder. We retained the Ring of Toad Control, Token of Armor, Token of Door, and Shield of the Stallion. Felix is now using the Stallion shield, and his strength has risen substantially. In addition he is capable of moving 9” in full plate. The plan is that during the next nighttime ambush against us, Felix will use the armor token to create full plate for him, and from then on will wear it. The armor token was not taken on the following mission, though.

The mission we eventually decided on was suggested by the Petethalian navy:

Our job was to assault a fortress of goblins on an island near the Korinn Archipelago. 5 Eagle warships, including our old friends on the Eagle 13, plus an Ark class ship were the assault force, there to draw out most of the goblins, and divert them from our longship based ground landing on the beach. The plan was for us to charge the fortress and prevent the goblins from escaping with the treasure.

Of course, there was an expectation of a good number of low level witchdoctor types, who would have both low level wizard and cleric offensive spells. Hold Person, Light, Command, Magic Missile, and Lightning Bolt were our greatest fears. We were so worried about Lightning Bolt that Thunderstruck was left behind, since it attracts lightning and does extra damage to the wielder. Under other circumstances, combined with Protection from Lightning, this could be a devastating combination though…

In any case, we didn’t feel like getting shot at by ballistae, crossbows, and having tons of spells hurled at us, so the plan was for Quentin to use two Obscurements to hide our progress up the beach and onto the palisade of the fortress, though we would be unable to see more than a few feet, even with infravision. Of course, this works both ways, so…

Reinforcements would be provided via the Horn of Valhalla, or whatever it is. In addition to providing extra targets, this would reduce the chances of being swarmed by goblins.

Reward: 1000 gp, 3-5% of the recovered gold, and some percent of the magic items.

We accepted.

We were stationed on the Ark warship, which carried several longboats for the assault. On October 12th, we arrived at the goblin fortress. Combat began, and the main fear of the Ark was that it had to go into trebuchet range to launch the longboat. There were two trebuchet in the fortress, in addition to some catapults and numerous ballistae. We were lowered into the water on cue, although a trebuchet shot came frighteningly close to hitting the Ark in the process. The longboat was launched, and we rowed toward shore. One ballista shot came close to hitting Quentin, and one damaged the boat slightly.

A fast ship with about 20 goblins was fast approaching, and the lieutenant on the longboat became worried they would overtake us. Donald threw a Sleep at the boat, and it listed to a stop as about 75% of the rowers fell asleep. We landed successfully, and Felix began blowing the horn while Quentin cast the first Obscurement.

The ballistae took advantage of this to shoot at Felix, but missed. The Obscurement went up, and after a minute Felix stopped blowing the horn. Balinor and Kodo were in the lead, and apparently almost walked into Valhalla or something. They felt cold, and hear chimes in the distance, and saw a large black building up ahead. Hastily backpedaling, they rejoined the party, and Felix told them to attack the goblins on the palisade. They sprinted ahead and we lost sight of the nine warriors we had called. They were creepy, with huge axes and weird black armor. We shrugged and moved on.

Reaching the end of the obscurement, a second was cast, and we moved up to the palisade. It turned out that our climbing preparations, including rope ladders, half a potion of climbing, and a levitation spell were unnecessary and we headed up. As we were climbing, we could hear death cries as the extra-planar warriors started trashing goblins. Of course, we couldn’t even see each other except for the person right next to each other, so virtually this entire battle was fought in confusion. Quentin’s direction sense helped, but the rest of us were very confused.

As Quentin reached the top, suddenly his Protection from Lightning dropped. Suspecting a Dispel Magic, Quentin grew quite annoyed, but relieved that it hadn’t dispelled the fog.

Suddenly Phoenix and Kodo were bowled over by something and fell off the wall. Quentin went back to help them, while the rest of the party continued. Donald cast Levitation and whipped out the Wand of Paralysis. Felix turned left upon cresting the palisade and engaged a few goblins, slaying them easily enough. Lightning bolts were coming into the cloud, and pretty soon we were disturbed to note about 6 of them had passed in a minute or so. The stream continued, and Felix was hit by one.

Balinor suddenly came out of the front of the Obscurement, where he got one good view of what was happening. About nine goblins, presumably witchdoctors, were Webbed (thanks to Donald), and Donald had apparently been dodging Magic Missiles thanks to the Shield spell. He had managed to paralyze the one with a big staff, but it was being taken by another goblin. The Light spell was resisted, but Balinor was frozen in place by a Hold Person.

The rest of the party had partially regrouped near the top of the wall. Quentin had passed a damaged but still strong Kodo and went to look for Phoenix. Phoenix was bleeding to death, but was saved by a strong Cure Light Wounds from Quentin. Phoenix trailed behind and remained in hiding below the top of the palisade, just trying to stay alive.

Felix had stepped out of the Obscurement and been blinded by a Light spell, and was taking massive damage from various attacks. Morgan suddenly found Balinor and dragged him back into the mist, just a ballista bolt missed him.

Unfortunately, Balinor was in range for the next Lightning Bolt, which pasted him. Of course, he didn’t say much.

Morgan had also been singed but was in better shape. He and Alduin were trying to determine what had happened when both of them got hit as well. Morgan was ok, but Alduin fell down bleeding, quite badly. The lightning bolts were locating people when they shouted.

It was later noted that the lightning bolts killed whole bunches of goblins, which was due to very bad aim and apathy on the part of the crazy witchdoctor, who would yell, “Woo-hoo!” every time he fired a bolt.

A number of lightning bolts continued to zing over the party, which seemed odd at the time. Donald was out of spells by this point and regrouped with Quentin, Phoenix, and the blinded Felix. Quentin saved Alduin with a Cure Serious Wounds, and then Dispelled the Hold on Balinor.

Kodo, hoping to light the Web on fire and kill some of the goblins, as well as free three of the trapped extra-planar people, had moved up with a throwing dagger wrapped in a flaming cloth. He emerged from the Obscurement, threw the dagger… and knew no more. No one knew what happened to the Web.

Balinor was determined to look for him, but wanting backup, Morgan downed the potion of healing and they went in search of Kodo. Balinor was more careful this time and managed not to stumble out of the Obscurement, but couldn’t find Kodo. When a Lightning Bolt nailed him again, he was in sad shape, and the two started to retreat back to “base camp.” Suddenly, something smashed Morgan from behind, nearly dropping Morgan, and two RAN back to base camp. There was no sign of what had attacked him.

Suspicious, Quentin threw a huge area Faerie Fire, thereby revealing the invisible four armed creature attempted to swing at Morgan. Morgan whirled, and thing vanished into the fog again.

Donald thought it might be some weird Inner Planar creature, perhaps an aerial servant or something. He also mentioned that on his last trip up, Donald had suddenly just fallen out of the sky and bruised himself.

The entire party took cover slightly below the level of the palisade and decided what to do next. There was no sign of Kodo, who was presumed dead. We were all bedraggled except for the uninjured Quentin. We were mostly out of spells. And there was some weird Inner Plane creature trying to kill us. It DID have a fresh minty smell to it.

It was looking desperate. The new plan: Donald would cast Sleep off of scroll, and Balinor would run up, light the Web, and start killing stuff. He downed the rest of the potion of Extra-healing, but in order to survive that long, he decided to drink the Potion of Invulnerability. The results were spectacular.

Donald cast his Sleep, and Balinor came roaring out of the fog. Meanwhile, the invisible creature popped up behind Phoenix and Donald and tried to kill them. It swung fast and nearly sliced Donald in half, but Donald was conscious long enough to grab the Wand of Paralysis and point it in desperation at the creature. The Wand crumbled.

The creature dropped!

Alduin started sawing it to bits with the +2 dagger.

Donald collapsed. Quentin was only able to bring him up to stable consciousness with a Cure Light, but it was good enough if we lived through this.

Balinor took two direct ballista hits, and numerous crossbow shots. He grinned at the ballista crew, and then lit the Web.

Immediately the extra-planar warriors broke free and started slaying goblins. Balinor ran to join them, when fifteen goblins, clearly an elite group, came around the corner.

Nearly forgotten in the whole mess, the sleeping Kodo finally woke up and sprang into action again, joining Morgan and Alduin in destroying the trebuchet in the pits below.

Balinor and three warriors engaged the goblins. The three warriors fell, but not before killing eight goblins.

In a disgusting series of attacks, Balinor plastered six elite goblins. One of them was the local commander, wielding a magic scimitar, which could actually affect Balinor. Despite being stabbed repeatedly by spears, shot by crossbows, and hit by about a half-dozen ballista shots, Balinor just grinned a bloody grin and ran at the goblin with the magic weapon. They met in a clash of weapons. The creature managed to scratch Balinor, who bashed it six times in rapid succession, finally dropping it.

The rest turned to flee, but Balinor caught two and turned them into paste. Getting struck by ANOTHER ballista bolt, he whirled and headed for the crew. He charged up the stairs, and the goblins all leapt off the side down into the pits below, except for one. He drew a short bow and fitted a magic arrow to it, and fired. He BARELY missed, and Balinor ground him into a small fine powder.

Morgan, Kodo, and Alduin continued to work on the siege weaponry, when Quentin emerged from the fog and scooped up the lightning bolt staff. He accidentally fired one of into the air while figuring out how to activate it, and then ran after Balinor.

Balinor had crested the ridge and noted two boats, one undermanned and the other one close to shoving off. He ran yelling at them. He managed to dodge the Light spell, but then fell over when told to “Die.” Quentin crested ridge and noted a group of goblins coming at the fallen Balinor. Tightly packed.

Grinning, Quentin fired a bolt at the group, incinerating all of them.

Balinor got up, and Quentin continued blasting the merchant boat, while the little boat shoved off without the group that had just been slaughtered. A few of the merchant ship goblins tried to escape into the rowboat, but Balinor took them down. Quentin blasted the merchant ship twice, and it became apparent it was sinking.

Balinor fired his double-shot crossbow once to discourage the goblins from reaching the deck, and then smiled and watched it sink.

A little bit later, a Petethalian navy boat landed to see Balinor pulling bolts out from all over his trashed armor. We had reassembled, and somehow, nobody had died!

However, there was one tragic thing to come.

Phoenix was so weakened by his collapse that he lost his combat abilities entirely. He will retire to become a non-combatant cleric in the church of Silban.

Out of game, he set the record for the worst single permanent damage ever. He lost 13 hp permanently!

Well, we still don’t have a cleric, but we did have an extraordinarily successful mission. The treasure was (including our 3-5% gold) approximately 5000 gp, plus a choice of magic items. The items recovered were a helm that allows the wearer to see through natural weather, a medium shield+1, a cutlass (scimitar)+1, 7 short bow arrows +1, and potions of Water Breathing (and swimming), Healing, and an unidentified one.

We will probably take the potion of healing and either the 7 arrows or the scimitar. It’s tough, since we have a proficient non-fighter using both of those weapons—Quentin for the scimitar, Alduin for the arrows.

As to what we’re doing next:

Orc Island—there is an island which was occupied by primitive orcs, which is believed to be recently taken over by some mysterious leader, who is actually taking out ships. The mission would be to do major reconnaissance, and hopefully take out the leader, preferably without a confrontation with the other thousand orcs on the island.

Petethal—the good old X on the map. No information about this one, really.

Take out the gnolls—Katherine has suggested at least part of a plan for this. We might consider fleshing it out. In all likelihood such an attack would take place during the winter months (which are coming up soon) when rain will prevent good bow fire from the gnolls and allow the use of Call Lightning.

Join us next week!

See Jeff’s next cleric, the 6th in party history!

Joel/Balinor