A Sundered World: Episode 108

Cast

• Iron Jack (male human warlord)
• Lothelle (female moon elf bladesinger)
• Danh (male goliath serpent shaman)

Surrounded by a legion of dwarven skeletons, backs to the wall. Literally. Iron Jack opened his mouth to speak, but was immediately drowned out by shouts of, "Death to the intruders! Glory for Moradin!" The usual dwarven fare of battle cries. With diplomacy down, up the wall they went. Despite Lothelle's light spell visibility was considerably hampered by the rain, so all they could see was that they were next to a trebuchet and a single path that they figured lead into the dwarven keep. With some of the skeletons trying to scale the wall, and others heading into the keep to cut them off, Iron Jack figured that the trebuchet was ironically the least suicidal plan.

The trebuchet loaded with party members he aimed it at the mountain, used something that would be insulting to label as guesswork to determine a trajectory, and fired. They launched through the air for well over a thousand feet, colliding with the mountain just after a hundred foot descent. Luckily trees, mud, and the occasional hard rock broke their fall. An arm, a leg, and some ribs broken between them, they set some splints and began searching for shelter. Danh managed to quickly locate a carved passage into the mountain, which they neglected to explore until they got some rest. They ate the last of the boar meat, which healed Lothelle and Danh's wounds, and thankfully managed to get what they assumed to be a full night's rest.

They delved into the mountain and found a chamber that split two ways; one path was partially collapsed, and despite the rain, thunder, and wind could hear a kind of rhytmic rumbling, and the other seemed reasonably clear of debris...until they started traveling down it and found countless remains of crushed and diced orc skeletons. What they assumed was the handiwork of clockwork horrors was merely a ridiculously trapped corridor that even Acererak could appreciate, complete with scything blades, spike-filled bits, and crushing ceilings. They managed to get few with only a few scratches despite Iron Jack's broken leg, and were rewarded for their curiosity and lack of caution with an untiring, armed and armored stone vehicle which they used to scale the rest of the mountain in just a few days.

Their journey to the top complete, the session ended as they surveyed the destruction of a ruined city, crushed under the corpses of many primordials, with a pillar of light emanating from somewhere within the ruins.

Behind the Scenes
I am not sure why Josh pitched the trebuchet plan. I guess he assumed that the dwarves were going to murder them to death no matter what. I had intended for a NPC to show up and stop things, but...hey, rule of cool.  They ended up taking 50 damage and lost a bunch of healing surges. I also had them roll for body location to determine what sort of lingering injury each would suffer. I had intended to run it like a disease track seeing as Kamon's character had access to magical healing, but I had forgotten about the magical super-healing boar meat they stocked up.

Good thinking on their part.

The slaughterstone behemoth was because I do have a couple directions for this particular leg of the adventure to go, but also because I figured they were getting bored climbing a big-ass mountain for the past few sessions. This allowed them to just take a vertical route and get onto something more interesting.