Wizard Mountain Summary #11: Destroying the Hook Horror and Giant Frog Kingdoms
Party Roster:
Halacar, 6th level halfling fighter, 65 hp, played by Joel
Standish, 6th level half-orc fighter, 63 hp, played by Katherine
Brigling, 6th level halfling thief, 36 hp, played by Katherine
Browork, 5th level dwarf cleric, 36 hp, played by Joel
Schreck, 3rd level half-orc fighter, played by David Bjorlin
Klash, 1st/3rd level human fighter/cleric, 18 hp (?), played by Mark
Tolangardh, 3rd/3rd level elven mage/cleric, 9 hp, played by Jay
A summary #10 may be scribed by Katherine, as she, Jay, and David Bjorlin were the players for that one. A mace+4 was retrieved in that adventure, and Crusher the Goblin won another arena battle against a hobgoblin.
(Pardon my inaccuracies in advance—I’ll edit this with any corrections people want me to make)
The Larry Consortium Official Treasury continues to bounce up and down wildly. This disturbing flux of funds caused the party to seek out additional treasure once again.
We decided that with the increase in our melee power, we would finally attempt to eliminate the two groups of hook horrors that we had encountered.
We set out for the first group, in a gaping hole dungeon in the side of the mountain. We decided to make sure that the old nearby ettin lair was still clear, which proved quite wise…
The party for the first expedition was Standish, Brigling, Halacar, and Browork. We were suddenly beset by some sort of mutated troll being. It leapt at the front of the party and dealt out incredible punishment to Standish, who stood his ground but collapsed with stunning quickness, and was pulled to the side and restored by Browork. Halacar attacked with uncharacteristic ferocity and greatly injured the creature. Cromwell the war dog got into the action as well. But the most spectacular moments were when Brigling managed to sneak up behind the creature and bury his magical sword in its back TWICE. Although Halacar sustained a beating, Brigling brought the creature down, and we anxiously poured acid on it. It stayed dead.
We staggered back to town. And found a fantastic set of magic items!
Standish gained a bastard sword +2 (now named Badass—his reptile hating sword is named Bastard), and a bracer of wounding—it increases damage by 4 (for purposes of wounds also). We attempted to trade the unnamed bastard sword+1 for a magical falchion, but had no success throughout the adventure.
We then breathed a sigh, picked up Tolangardh and went to check the warrens section near the hook horrors. A giant tick bounced off of Standish, but we couldn’t kill it before it slithered up the wall, and we gave it no notice and moved to the hook horrors.
We decided to attract the group by making lots of noises banging things and yelling. Some bats flew, and the characteristic clicking sounds were near… but eventually they just stopped. The silence was eerie.
We advanced into a side passage and found a “chimney” room, in the sense that the ceiling is open air and high up. In the center was a figure in armor with a magical mace (determined via Detect Magic). There was some thought this might be another lair of the dragon, and we noted holes higher up the shaft all along the walls, but didn’t immediately make the connection.
We were going to move in, but then the hook horrors came at us from the other direction. We pulled entirely into the passage to fight them one at a time, but this proved unfortunate, as we heard sounds coming FROM the chimney room.
Soon it became clear that we had stumbled on a massive hive of hook horrors. We clearly needed to cut our way free. The back of the party was held by a valiant combination of the guard dog Hinton, Cromwell, and eventually Brigling, so that Browork and Tolangardh would remain free to keep the fighters in the front alive as they slowly chipped away at the hook horrors.
Standish and Halacar engaged, Standish inflicting tremendous punishment, and Halacar simply chinking off the armor and nearly destroying his weapon. Slowly we began pushing our way out, one at a time, Standish finishing a creature off, and Halacar running to fill the gap.
Unfortunately, in the back things were going poorly. The guard dog Hinton actually survived a first attack, but was finished off by a second. Cromwell jumped in and slightly injured one before going down hurt. Brigling jumped in the way and for a while danced effortlessly around the creatures, Tolangardh closing his wounds. Finally, Brigling sustained major damage and began to bleed badly. Browork stepped in and took a number of blows, avoiding wounds with great luck. But the front was nearly clear…
The final cure was placed on Cromwell, and the party took off at a run as the fourth hook horror went down in the front. Halacar then ran to the back of the party to hold off the hook horrors charging while the rest of the party scrambled back bleeding to the entrance. When it became clear Brigling was in trouble, Browork dropped a Death’s Door on him and we carted him out.
We escaped successfully.
We were also mad. And we wanted that mace.
So we returned a few days later. This time, Brigling and Halacar moved invisibly and silently (thanks to a potion and spell respectively) to the lair, and managed to loot all the corpses in the chimney room, running off with what eventually turned out to be a footman’s mace+1, dwarven field plate (put on Browork), a jade helmet with a crystal visor (valued at 2000 gp), and a silver/cold iron wraught hammer (given to Tolangardh).
Tolangardh was also allowed to use the horseman’s mace +4.
Oh, and yeah, there was ANOTHER magical bastard sword, this one +2/+3 and double dice vs. giants. This one is now known as “Bigass”. (Standish enjoys the alliteration)
We decided to go for smaller pickings, and went for the known smaller group of hook horrors in their lair. This time, the battle went quite well. We isolated one hook horror in a room and Standish demolished it. Then we fought three more in a lair, and Standish inflicted SEVEN TIMES as much damage as Halacar, who barely outdamaged the clerics, although he did managed to drop the falchion on his foot and cost himself 100 gp in armor repairs.
In case it isn’t clear, Standish is a wrecking crew, and Halacar is nearly invicible in terms of defense. It’s a nice split, as long as Halacar can attract the attacks, as it allows Standish to rip through hordes of enemies.
After another lecture on how Halacar “just doesn’t get formation fighting”, and a quick stop in town to pick up Klash, (and a side trek to see Crusher handily slay a giant beetle in the arena) the party continued it’s exploration of the hook horror environs. We found no more of them, but we stumbled onto what for a while seemed like the Plane of Giant Frogs.
We first encountered them in groups of five. They were completely invisibly camouflaged, and jumped all over Tolangardh, nearly killing him. They are all offense and no defense though. And they all wear leather belts, a fact which has mystified us to this day. And they don’t speak any language that we do. They fight with claws and teeth.
We killed the “boss frog” and felt that we were finished with them, but we were QUITE wrong. First we dodged some pit traps and false doors with no apparent purpose. Having disposed of about 15 of the frogs, we found a room with a pool, guarded by particularly nasty frogs with teeth crossing each other out of the mouth completely, giving them a mean look. Klash tried to imitate the noise they make, and to our surprise, they leaped over the entire front of the party to start killing Klash. They managed to drop him, but we destroyed the frogs and brought Klash back up.
We noted some large eggs in the stream, and figured this was their nursery, which would explain the ferocity of the attacks. Figuring we were done but wanting to pull any stragglers, Klash made the noise again.
And about 50 frogs came pouring at us. Standish fought and killed about 25 before turning it over in sequence to David’s fighter, Halacar, and back to Standish, as the heals slowly drained out and the armor took large amounts of damage. We tried to sleep for spells, but waves and waves of them continued to appear. Finally, with about 140 frogs slain, blocking much of the passageway, Standish skinned a number of them, and we had 800 pounds of frog legs, and 30 pounds of eggs to bring back. We also found a room with weird “art” made from coins crushed against the wall, showing that the seemingly mindlessly aggressive creatures have some intelligence. Unfortunately, they hurled themselves at us and committed self-genocide, so we may never know what they were doing. Or what the darn belts were for, as they had no other gear.
The exhausting fight, however, was over. Two other rooms with pools with holes in them were found, but no portal to the plane of Frogs was encountered. Nor were any more frogs. The silence and the death toll were shocking.
In the end, we returned to town. And Standish made a significant profit making frogskin shoes for Klash’s dancing troupe, and the frog legs and eggs sold for about 3000 gp total.
And Crusher, in a closer than usual, but still successful fight, eliminated a human convict with a club, bringing his record to 9-0!
It was bizarre, but in the end a successful adventure!
Joel/Halacar/Browork