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We interrupt your regularly scheduled Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden to bring you an entirely new mini-campaign! It’s the Forge of Fury (from Tales from the Yawning Portal), with guest DM, Heather.
Starring:
Snigbat, level 3 goblin beastmaster ranger (and Piggie)
Gazz, level 3 goblin armorer artificer
Owla Din, level 3 owlin paladin of glory
Vasool, level 3 loxodon druid of the moon
Recter, level 3 elf way of the drunken master monk
Deeper into the dungeon we discover a room full of angry orcs. Suddenly we’re in for the fight of our lives, and not all of us will make it out.
After some embarrassingly bad strength checks, we finally manage to bust down the door on the other side of the bridge. Through a dark hallway, Vasool and Owla are spooked by noises of running orcs and opening doors. They both run back to close the door behind us, and Vasool even drops a Fog Cloud to cover our tracks.
The hallway leads to a small room of broken crates and bottles, and two disheveled prisoners held behind a magically locked cell. They yearn for freedom, but more pressingly they plead with us to rescue their sister, Dresda, who was taken yesterday.
They indicate the winding hallway to the north. Recter sifts through the crates to discover an entire crate of Genocider — score! Snigbat curiously approaches the closed iron doors to the east, receiving a painful shock in response. North it is!
The tiny hallway ends in a T-intersection. We had no idea which way to go. The left plunges into another long, dark hallway, while the right path ends in a door.
Snigbat flips a coin and Piggie takes us right, towards the door. Despite being literally shocked by the last door he touched, Snigbat and Piggie stride right into the unlocked door, finding a makeshift barracks with a handful of orcs, and a pair of horribly diseased-ridden orcs covered in pulsing warts.
Roll for initiative!
Vasool acts first, casting Moonbeam on the other side of the door. This little orbital death laser racks up a ton of damage as the orcs heedlessly rush toward us. The impossibly lucky Snigbat dodges almost every attack, and the nasty disease orcs can’t reach us yet.
The rest of us rush forward, swinging our weapons. Gazz emits a sonic blast (Thunderwave) from his battle suit, knocking several of them back into the room, where Vasool can Thorn Whip them into the Moonbeam. C-C-Combo!
In just one round we knock out three orcs. We got this, right?
Wrong.
One critical hit from an orc’s greataxe drops Gazz’s hit points from a full 24 down to 1.
One of the corpulent, diseased orcs rushes forward and sinks its claws into Snigbat, downing him. He would not be the last.
Owla strides forward, greataxe in hand, and a divinely-powered smite on her lips as she looks at the Nurtured One of Yurtrus (the nasty, bloated orcs). With a history check Gazz thinks he recalls something important about these creatures, while Recter, seeing its large, pulsing body, yells not to kill it while we’re all surrounding it.
But Owla is determined. She swings her greataxe and connects for max damage, then drops a nearly max-damage divine smite to sear the creature for about 30 damage.
Then it explodes.
Owla quickly uses her Channel Divinity to throw some temporary hit points onto Gazz, temporarily saving him from the explosion of 4d6 poison damage thanks to a successful saving throw. Piggie dies, Snigbat gets another death save failure, Vasool loses concentration on the Moonbeam, and everyone is poisoned.
Gaz drops another Thunderwave on the remaining two orcs and Nurtured One. A tiny bit of extra damage via Fury of the Small kills one of them, huzzah! Vasool revives Snigbat with Cure Wounds. Only two orcs remain, including the second Nurtured One. Can we strategically deal the killing blow while it’s not around all of us?
Doesn’t matter! The remaining orc downs Recter with a critical hit as the warty orc rushes into the middle of the hallway and explodes himself! Oh crap.
Recter gets a failed death save from the AOE blast. Gazz goes down. Owla goes down. Snigbat goes back down (having only just been revived!). Only Vasool is still conscious. Oh my.
Four death saving rolls in a row. Owla and Snigbat succeed, but Recter fails, gaining a second failure. Gazz, however, rolls a nat 20, auto-reviving himself, huzzah!
Vasool hears the sound of orcs approaching from the west. Great. He casts Fog Cloud directly on us, hoping to shield us from the enemy.
It works. The one orc can’t hit in the cloud, and retreats into the room. Two arrows come wizzing at us from the west but can’t hit either. Vasool low-key the MVPC with all these clutch spells!
Another round of death saves. Owla auto-revives with a nat 20 — the second time someone rolls a 20 on a death save in a single combat encounter! And probably the only reason this isn’t a TPK.
But the joy is cut short as Recter rolls his third failed death save, dying right in front of us. RIP you sweet drunk bastard.
Gazz uses his final spell slot to revive Snigbat with some Electro-shock Paddles (Cure Wounds), and begins stomping towards the barracks. At this point it’s the safest place to be!
The Fog Cloud continues to protect us from the approaching orcs firing arrows as we retreat into the room. The one orc from the barracks tries to hit Gazz but misses. Those of us who are still alive are all around 1 hit point, so every attack roll is incredibly tense.
Snigbat revives Piggie using a spellslot, hops back on, and charges at the orc. Miss!
Owla casts Wrathful Smite and swings at the orc. Miss!
Gazz charges his Thunder Gauntlets and swings. Hit! Thank goodness, a killing blow.
All the original orcs are dead, and the way is clear. But we’re still in severe danger as a pair of orcs with bows have charged in from the west hallway, and one of them manages to shoot Vasool, downing our final party member who had yet to go down.
And, more distressingly, we lose the Fog Cloud.
Over the next round we rush into the now cleared barracks. Snigbat uses Piggie to grab Vasool’s dying body and we shut the doors behind us, with a pair of orcs still on the other side. Everyone is either dead, dying, or sitting at one hit point with little to no spellslots.
Will we survive this encounter? Or have we just delayed the inevitable?
Live post-session discussion:
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