Wealday, Desnus 14

So, since she was seeming a bit moody, we were leery of asking the remains of Miriana any more questions. This left us the problem of “how do we recognize Lamartar’s remains when/if we find them?” We figured the remnants of the Black Arrow were probably our best chance of a reasonable description. Perhaps there was even a portrait of their fearless leader.

And so it was that we started the journey back to the fort. Having horses sure does make for a shorter trip. Jakardos was able to tell us about a ring Lamartar had, and he and Vale also gave a brief description of the man. If he’s been tortured or disfigured, however, that description may be of little use. I have a feeling it will be a forensic identification rather than a personal one.

From the fort it is 20-30 miles to Hook Mountain. The closer we get, of course, the more steep the terrain becomes. There’s a good chance that we will need to go far up the mountain, which rises up well over 10,000 feet.

We decided against taking horses, figuring they would just become ogre or animal fodder in short order. Walking out will make us move a little slower, but it also affords us greater options for stealth and battlefield strategy should we find ourselves under attack. We estimate we got about halfway before darkness neared and we set up camp. Watches were Tekkad, by himself, then Nolin and myself, Avia and Rigel, and lastly Kane and Sabin.

It was during my and Nolin’s watch that we heard noise in the distance. It was not subtle, it was not hidden, and it indicated that thw producer of that noise was not concerned about being overhead. The gutteral utterances sounded like the trollspeak we’d been hearing much of lately. Quickly, we woke the group and we prepared ourselves for the arrivals. There appeared to be 2 smaller trolls — children or teenagers, judging from their size — and 4 adult size trolls.

It’s times like this that I wish I had the night vision of Sabin, becase I could have launched a preemptive fireball if I were sure it was safe to do so. But I’ve been controlling my pyromaniacal urges really well of late, so I was able to realize that firing blind into the wood at a sound was probably not as good as I could do.

So I waited a minute or two until they came into view, and THEN I fireballed ’em. Near as I can tell, I toasted four of the six. This did not slow them down. To the contrary, it apparently made the hunt all the more exciting, because they rushed to us. By the time they figured out that we had fire and fighters, it was too late to turn around.

It seemed like a vicious battle but truth be told, it was over in less than half a minute. We’ve become very efficient at fighting as a group and skillfully combining weaponry and fire. I was able to add a new twist this time — I enlarged Nolin and suddenly he was on even footing with the large trolls (something Nolin very much seemed to enjoy!) Kane added a new twist too: three small fire elementals to attack the trolls too.

The trolls dispatched, we resumed watch, and others went back to sleep. Nothing else of import happened that evening.

Oathday, Desnus 15

In the morning, we inspected the bodies for goodies but found pretty much nothing. We were able to discern from the tracks that the trolls came from the direction we were heading, so we were marching into the teeth of the beast. Following this trail, there came a time when the troll tracks became intermingled with ogre tracks, finally splitting off in a trail that appeared to keep about the same elevation, while the ogre tracks definitely went up the mountain. Since we were pretty sure we had to have access to the upper reaches, we elected to follow the ogre tracks.

The weather worsened as we rose and while I was in no danger of frostbite or anything, it was nevertheless decidedly uncomfortable. Finally we spotted some thick greasy smoke rising ahead. We slowed and carefully crept up on the position.

The smoke was coming from a cave, and as we neared the opening, it definitely smelled of ogres.

A quick conference and we easily decided it would be easiest if we lured the ogres out into the open. A listen to their conversations told us they knew of the fort, and the loss of the fort, and that lent itself to several ideas. Ultimately, we used the wand of silent image to create an image of two struggling and wounded Black Arrow rangers helping drag a barely-alive third ranger past the cave opening. I assisted in distracting by using the hat of disguise to again appear like Lucretia. (And it served to distract them again!)

Like butterflies to a flower, out they came to take care of the “helpless humans”. However one was closer and got taken down first, giving the second an opportunity to turn and raise an alarm. We got him under silence and finished him off, but we had to assume now they knew of us and were preparing something.

We retrieved from their bodies

[530] masterwork longbow
[531] 2 potions of cure moderate wounds
[532] +1 hide armor

but were quickly drawn to the huge displays of scrimshaw in this cave. What appeared to be the ribs of a blue dragon were embedded in the walls and elaborately decorated. They looked like they’d been here some time.

This was further supported by the presence of a 40-foot tall statue that was also in this chamber. Er, wait, no, that is not a statue. It is a (very big) individual in gentle repose and we definitely don’t want it to wake up. How long has it been here? It has around its neck a 7-dided sihedron which we recognize and know to be capable of producing and maintaining a gentle repose. Avia did not detect evil, but nevertheless …

We took the steps to the upper levels, and quickly discovered that, yes, an alarm had been raised. After climbing the stairs behind us, we discovered that to the east was a huge smoking pit, responsible for the greasy smoke we’d seen. It appeared to be an incineration pit, where one threw bodies that nobody wanted any longer. To the west there was darkness, but we could hear noises.

Good enough for me! I threw a fireball into the darkness and in its brief illumination it showed us several ogres approaching from the west … before scorching several of them badly. This set the tone for what would follow … fighters fighting, clerics healing, me tagging the targets with burning spheres and possibly additional fireballs.

Although the ogres were weakened by the fireball, the battle was again on and it took a while for us to dispatch them. I helped with a judicious Haste for all our fighters. But as we finished off what we thought was the last one, here came another dozen ogres to fight us. But a close look at these new recruits made it apparent that they were, in fact, not trained warriors but simply workers with weapons. They fought clumsily and, even more egregious to some in our party, the two remaining true warriors stood back while pushing these untrained ogres in front of them as cannon fodder.

Well, they were still ogres of great strength, and even untrained they could damage our party. But even I was surprised when the subsequent fireball I threw killed almost all of the untrained warriors, and seriously singed the two overlords. Tekkad yelled out in common that if they did not attack us we would reward them. One glanced at our well-armored party and back at his now weakened but apparently still threatening overlords and, without great relish, moved to close with us. The other did run off.

The unskilled worker was easily dispatched. While some fighters engaged the two warriors, others of us rushed after the one who ran off. Glark, as history would record his name, was suspicious of our motives and of his chances of survival. After we killed a dozen and a half of his racial brothers, why, imagine that. Still, we pointed out to him, he was still alive and we had not killed him yet, had we?

Glark, it turns out, was not the brightest torch in the camp, but then, he was already handicapped by the fact that he was an ogre. Still, we worked on him and he came to trust Tekkad, especially.

We learned this is an ogre stronghold (in which we had apparently dispatched a good part of the guard already) and that a giant named Carl Breakbones had assumed leadership of the ogre clan through formal challenge of the previous chieftain. Giant vs ogre didn’t last very long, no matter how skilled the ogre. So this was less of an alliance and more of a political takeover.

We promised Glark we would kill Breakbones and return control of his clan to ogres, and he burst out laughing. Laughter on an ogre is a bit grotesque to experience, although I’m certainly happy we could raise his spirits so. He stopped laughing, though, when we showed him the (actual) severed head of Lucretia, which Tekkad has been carrying around for weeks hoping for just this sort of opportunity. I tell you, he was very smug for quite a while afterwards. Glark’s face paled when he recognized her and he decided perhaps he WAS dealing with some powerful people.

Having been shown how powerful we truly were, Glark was happy to take some gold now, more later, a special “blessing” (enhanced with a temporary light spell by me) and the enchanted armor we stole off the other ogres as payment for helping us find both Breakbones and Lamartar. He thought the latter may have been given to “the sisters”, which I’m thinking might be related to Lucretia.

Glark was particularly impressed with my “glowy hand” and so Tekkad cut off the hand of his former boss and made it glow for him and it was just like a birthday to him, what with all the cool presents he got. He agreed to lay low for a few days before we would hook up with him again.

The only thing of note we found in the dead ogres was another potion of cure moderate wounds, bringing our total to 3 claimed today. There were some magic ogre hooks, and masterwork bows, but those are not of much use to us.

There were several passages in the main chamber that could even now be bringing reinforcements. We’ll need to secure those and move further in. I’d like to rest and recover some spells, but I don’t think we have a safe place to do that, and some modicum of surprise is still on our side. Best to move on.