Session 8: Into the serpent nest!

[Nowy keeps track of his adventures, battles and expenditures in journals, quickly writing a few notes when taking a break. The original writing style is minimalist with only keywords and shorthands. These journal excerpts are translated from his native goblin clan’s dialect, expanding his notes to full sentences.]


Almost died. The orcs were tougher than anticipated and I was forced to rush ahead without a sound plan. The inexperienced wizard lack of tactical insights put Kelen in danger, forcing me to commit to a suicidal charge to help my trusted comrade. It was not enough and we both fell.
Tufid revived me with one of my healing potions as I showed him and I revived Kelen with a second. The wizard neutralized the remaining orcs with a sleep spell. Good move now that we are on our feet but I saw him ready to run away as Kelen and I fell. He should not be relied upon!
I sliced the throat of the sleeping orcs to end the fight. We found nothing useful on the orcs, some gold (15GP) and two alchemical potions to analyze later. We are now resting a bit and we will start by exploring the smaller building near the entrance first.

Azlon, Irma and I found the orcs’ sleeping quarters in the building, with one asleep. We approached stealthy. I almost lost grip of my blade and ruined everything but I recovered and frantically cut him down before he could stand up. We searched the room for clues but we found none, only a decent amount of gold (27GP).

Tufid guarded the entrance from outside. His keen eyes spotted an archer waiting for us atop the guard tower opposing the entrance. Azlon and I rushed toward the tower and fought her, a well trained half-orc with a deadly bow but no match for the both of us at close range despite her poisonous sword. On the ground a gigantic ogre was attacking the rest of the group that stayed in the auxiliary building. Azlon rushed down to help Tufid, now transformed into a bear. However, I read enough about devouring ogres to know people of my size should not get close, so I stayed where I was and rained down the poisoned arrows from the dead archer on the ogre. Tufid got injured, but the fight was quickly won.

Looking at the archer’s arrows, I recognized their craftsmanship from the ambush at the cemetery and the one stuck in Noala’s head. Rest in peace Noala, you are avenged.

As I was searching her corpse, my comrades entered the main building and were immediately attacked by two air elementals. An annoying fight ensued with Azlon and I being mostly useless trying to reach the flying zephyrs, but nobody was too injured at the end of it. Azlon even ended up fully unscathed for once, a good omen for sure.

We are now resting in the lobby. Kelen needs some time to patch up the injured Tufid and Irma. In the room under the guard tower, I discovered the archer’s personal chest. Using her key, I found a large sum of gold coins (83GP) and a dagger my ring recognized as magic. Her services seemed to be expensive.

Irma’s familiar got agitated and warned her about something amiss outside, and came back with a bottle of high quality alchemical fire, telling her that more could be found outside. I went back to the top of the guard tower to investigate and noticed someone setting up a trap with them from the first floor windows of the main building adjacent to the lobby where we are. We overstayed our welcome and our enemies are preparing for us.

I climbed down and shared what I saw with my comrades. As I finished, we started hearing incantations from the other side of the door leading to the inside of the building. Irma confirmed my suspicion, someone is setting up a glyph to trap the other side. The glyph will be ready in 10 minutes, we still have a couple minutes to plan our next move but we cannot stay here forever.

Azlon and I devised a plan. We will launch a simultaneous attack. I will climb back atop the guard tower and shoot down the explosive trap to secure our back and create a diversion. Taking advantage of the commotion caused by the expected explosion, he and the rest of the party will charge inside and secure the next room.

How could it go so wrong? That’s not possible… I must have missed something. What were they storing in that damned building?

My arrow flew straight, but instead of the expected contained explosion, I was almost blown off the guard tower by the shockwave of a huge blast. Only a blazing inferno was left from the building adjacent to the lobby and the lobby itself crumbled down. I rushed down the tower from the outside, and found Kelen, Tufid and Irma still stunned in the middle of the rubbles. Coming back to his senses, Kelen incanted an area of healing spell to stabilize everyone.

Azlon was still missing. I started frantically digging the rubbles with my bare hands, soon finding scattered parts of him; he must have been pulverized by the blast. Kelen is a great healer, but this is far above his pay grade. What have I done…

We collected a piece of him and left quickly. We cannot stay, we need to fall back and recover. If Vilree and her goons are still alive, they will be too busy with the fire to come after us anyway.

Noala is avenged, but Azlon is dead. Dead because of me.