A new session of our BFRPG Campaign in and around Morgansfort. Resting, beaten up after our last delve, we spent the night in the forest. Suddenly Apoqulis, holding one short watch, heard strange noises.

He woke Nepomuk and went to investigate. Without success at first – but then the noises came again, and he shook up everyone, wounded or hale.

And so someone stepped out of the forest: an elf!
[a new player]

Vaeva was searching for the orcs, in order to sneak in and save the abducted girls. Vaeva had come to the village only a day after us and heard the same story, drew the same conclusions, and was ready to spill orc blood.

Imagine the surprise when we earnestly explained, to an elf no less, that the orcs were not the target. That there was a necromancer whom we had to focus on.

We joined forces for the next day.

Although, the day started badly: Alda the thief had died. Cold, dead – and weirdly discoloured.

That was cause for worry. So we decided to leave Nepomuk [player absent] with the body and Saril; to protect the latter from the possibility that the former may suddenly animate and attempt to eat the poor, friendless maid.

The rest of us pumped ourselves up as far as possible after healing as much as possible during the night. Then we went back to the orcs, where we kept the elf as their ancestral enemy somewhat concealed among our group, and Darion tried his best to convince Badushna to move with her tribe. Get away from the necromancer: If we escape, we have to tell the world about the necromancer. If we don’t escape, more people will come. And they will suspect the orcs if they don’t leave. Not to speak of the necromancer himself, who will need their dead for his troops.

Power of words

Badushna saw reason: No need for orcs to play meatshield for the necromancer, or to be consumed by his hunger for dead bodies. Alas, the ogre Onyg reacted like a primitive, raging and lashing out, then storming off into the forest.

But what does that say, actually? It says that he too saw reason. He only had to wrestle with it in his own time.

Hagu the orc, charmed by Rovan back when we first came here, was easy to convince to join our adventure. Not so those orcs who were still fully masters of their own senses. They called Hagu a fool and rejected our plea for allies.

Back into the dark

We ventured forward and were, at the second pit trap, confronted by four skeletons.

Darion had a plan for them: We had no beef with them and didn’t need to fight them, so we would lure them into the pit trap. That way they would either stop out of the way or fall in.

The plan worked out 90%: 

They really ran at us, Heidel and Darion blocked the corridor, and the bone-monsters really dropped into the pit trap, where they all perished from the fall.

Slight issue: One of them managed to land a hit before it dropped, and wounded Darion. Off to a bad start?

But at least the plan worked and we had four enemies down with very little effort.

The trap re-set itself above them as we watched. We moved west to shorten the trip and found the signs of yesterday’s fight. But not our poor Hobgoblin.

Him we found a moment later, standing guard in the next corridor, side by side with a zombie. He had been taken.

Struggle and Pain

We started one of our long fights with lots of misses, and once again involving a lot of standing in each other’s way.

Darion went into a horrible bad streak, again and again scoring abysmally on the to-hit-rolls, while mostly rolling really high on a damage that would not materialize.

The fights were going on long enough to draw reinforcements from the north: Two more of them!

Turning them failed for both clerics. Vaeva hit with the bow, but bows are not that effective against the undead.

Rovan put one of his trademark carpets of oil on the ground behind us to shield us from unpleasant surprises from there.

And then shit hit the fan:

Right after we beat the two first and were busy with the two reinforcements, Hagu the orc was slain by the undead, and then Apoqulis pummeled too, and then struck down by a second blow in the same round!

Now time was of the essence.

Hagu was down for good, and in retrospect the warnings of his tribemates had been wise after all. Heidel quickly tried to stabilize Apoqulis in the middle of the fighting. Rovan threw Holy Water at the zombies, missed, but got them with the splash damage … an indirect hit just like last session.

One of the zombies melted down wet from Holy Water, then Darion stepped between the other one and his downed friend, and finally managed a hit! A good one too, which cut the creature down.

We quickly poured healing potion down Apoqulis’ gullet and massaged it down his throat, praying to all the gods old and new that we would call him back from the abyss.

And with success!

He rolled just well enough on a Death Save — add to that boni from the whole team struggling to save him — and he actually came back to us.

Zoo of Weird

What next?

For a moment the idea of retreat came up, but Apoqulis laid on hands on himself and actually came back up to 5 HP … enough to warrant going on.

First we went east and found a sandy arena with an undead mutant-cat with snakes growing on top. We decided that not even the craziest of necromancers would find it interesting to throw a young girl into an arena with this abomination. We would not find Gwylain here. So we left the arena alone.

Then we went to the west, and Darion theorized that we would find our lady in the very last room. He egged everyone on, eager to prove his idea and get right to the center of everything.

Carefully checking for traps all the way we went directly to the last and final door. Here we found … Shrooms. Potentially dangerous, but nothing worthwhile. Theory falsified.

We quickly retreated. We went back and rolled up the rooms from back to front instead of front to back as intended by this labyrinth’s architects.
The next door that Darion pushed open held a nightmare creature chained to the wall. It started woke up as it saw as, opened its maw to scream in a shrill voice, and tore on its chains… the room held multiple interesting items, a chest among them, but nothing that warranted spending time with …. with THAT.

Darion simply looked, said: “nope”, and pulled the door closed again.
We left.

In the next room we found a couple of containers with semi-liquids. Red, brown, and green. Green seemed to be jelly. We pocketed red (?) and brown (honey?), stayed well clear of green, and left.

Well… that expedition had not turned up our missing lady either, only a selection of weird and creepy entities. But the place still had doors and rooms to explore.

Bon appetit

So we checked out the “Smithy”. Which was not a smithy at all.
It was more like a terrible nightmare of the senses that defied description. Therefore, a label must suffice: It was a dining room. But in a state that made Vaeva and Darion cramp and vomit.
Why had there been rhythmical metal clanging sounds yesterday? Better not dwell on that.

Inside was only one zombie, but that was plenty in our state. We fell back, and Rovan lit one of his fire-carpets. That was enough to bring the zombie down AND clear the air far enough to let us get our senses back.

Next we checked out the top left corridor.

And there Heidel with his dark vision saw us getting closer to a door with a horrid guardian: A mighty tall multi-limbed skeleton of a carnivorous ape.

Ape Hammer

Before he could formulate a useful warning, the creature already stormed at us with intent to kill.

It broke into our circle of light, and a very short, very furious combat ensued.

Heidel met it and smashed its face with his warhammer. Vaeve shot it with a solid hit right in the breast bone. Rovan’s slingshot hit it with a natural 20. Only Darion missed with the axe Slasher. Only the last in a seemingly endless parade of misses in this session.

We won initiative in the second round:

Rovan hit; Darion hit too! And the ape broke.

Darion lifted the axe to his lips and kissed it. “Thank you, baby!”

And there we stood in front of the door. It did not look like much… but with this creature standing guard in front of it, it had to be meaningful.

Is this the lair?

Go in?

Circle the area to see if there is a back door?

All that will be decided next time.

We end with a…

TIME FREEZE.

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