Cattle Driving Necromancers-Bizarre Campaign Journal

[Kaveman26]

Underworld War Part 5-

Spoiler: undefined

Show

Seraphim: We send a skeletal dwarf as a messenger with a treaty pinned to it. We include a map showing where Dog is being held and a request for a verbal face to face parlay. I will arrive to the meeting via skeletal proxy and they are invited to do the same in whatever format they are comfortable with. Make sure that we tip them off to the soon arriving Frost Giant push. Simple quid pro quo agreement. They hit the larder which they can reach via stealth and we make a food-for Dog exchange. We will get Dog free and make a switch.

Doc: And when they backstab us?

Seraphim: Neither of us can afford a backstab. They are going to be extended holding off the giants and we are going to be extended killing giants.

Hades: Why not just offer to combine our forces against the Frosties ?

Seraphim: Neither of us will honor an agreement for that length. I also don’t want a full scale attack against that force. If they have to split between us that is to our benefit. If they can push everything against one combined force I don’t think we take that even when combined with the drow. If we keep things chaotic and unpredictable no one will be able to organize a strong counter attack. We just need to keep things crazy for a few more days. Then we can relocate out of the library and make them look for us or fight each other until they are ground to dust.

Azzie: I fink they might go for that.

Seraphim: If they do then we need to find a way to let the Frostie’s know its coming.

*blink blink*

Doc: Come again?

Seraphim: We want both these sides in disarray. If the drow waltz in and just pillage their larder without any real opposition that still leaves them in good strength. We want them to meet resistance.

After some lengthy debate they arrange for a random dwarf skeleton to approach the drow stronghold with details of their proposal. In short order a drow archer comes under flag of truce to treat with Seraphim who spells out their proposition. The matron via her proxy agrees to the terms and they establish a rally point where the parley occurs.

Seraphim: Oh btw…expect a heavy push against your position later today from the giants. Word is they are planning to hit you hard tonight.

The U.C. arrange a similar messenger that greets the Frost Giant legion and alerts them to the imminent raid to occur against their storeroom.

Once they set the wheels in motion they resume their intelligence gathering and witness additional troops deployed to the storeroom and to the prisoner’s holding pen.

Doc: Damn, they are probably thinking the storeroom raid is a feint covering for a prison break.

Seraphim: It kind of was supposed to be. Is there anything of value that is now light on protection?

Ares: Not really. Storeroom is heavily guarded now. Prisoner Is heavily guarded. They are mobilizing a lot of their warriors and trolls for a frontal assault into the teeth of the drow.

Hades: What about any barracks? They must have established an area for soldiers to rest, cant have everyone going 24-7.

Ares: There is a barracks of sorts kind of in former gnoll territory. We actually have a secret door from one of the access tunnels that comes pretty close to it. It will skirt us close to the main action, so if either side has found that tunnel we are probably cooked. It is also nowhere near to being on point for the prison break.

Doc: Have we identified anything resembling a chief?

Ares: Best we can tell they are doing it by committee. Ackshale, Jaykon, Ravin are their three chiefs.

Doc: Any of them left behind?

Ares: Nope, all three mobilized to the front.

Doc: Guess that rules out trying to create a leadership vacuum

Seraphim: So either we make a blitzkrieg against a barracks, or we stick with the agreed upon plan and try to spring Dog.

Pluto: I think we stick to the plan and go for the prison break.

Seraphim: That means basically leaving the library unguarded. *

Hades: We are going to have to sooner or later.

With considerable trepidation, they vote to make a full scale all in attack against the prison room and try to rescue Dog from the giants. Their gameplan is to go in hot. Attack full scale and aggressively to eliminate as many opposing forces as possible and then grab the drow and run. Ideally they want to leave no survivors, but if they can snatch the elf and get out clean they intend to do so. The whole group, undead giants and all mobilizes and makes their way via the backdoor route to giant country.

Almost immediately upon getting into hostile territory a duo of guards not earlier there spots them coming around a bend in the hallway. The first guard immediately raises an alarm from a horn, and the second moves to block off the hallway with a massive tower shield.

Ares: Well that is a less than stellar beginning. Let’s try to take out the guards before reinforcements arrive, worst case we bag two and retreat.

They launch a series of fire spells into the tower shield’s vicinity and send in their skeletons at a full charge. Ares is hot on their heels and Doc is right on his flank. AS they create one heck of a rugby scrum reinforcements seem to arrive very quickly as a phalanx of trolls with longspears nearly a dozen strong comes to back up the slowly backpedaling giants.

Seraphim: I am thinking we just need to cut from here and bug out.

The witch turns to get Azzie’s opinion and sees the bard slumped against the wall, lights out with a dart sticking out of his neck. A pair of drow are smirking at her as they move into a flank position on either side of her.

Seraphim: Oh…well that is just cruel.

The twins turn to see the witch in a very bad position and they redirect a pair of giants towards her while shouting the development towards the rest of the group. For her part Seraphim whose action is now is, takes a five foot step to avoid full flank and proceeds to attempt an everation into the teeth of the attacker that can reach her. She eats a longsword attack in retaliation and from the initial cut instantly recognizes the blade as being poisoned.

Ares and Doc are holding back the troll and giant force, but without the twins washing their giants, their skeletal offensive line is starting to falter. Ares puts a channel smite into a scimitar swing that crits and kills a troll outright. Doc makes a similar crunching swing from his axe and puts the tower shield giant into critical condition.

The pair of drow maneuver to resume their flank and make a full attack against Seraphim who eats a handful of attacks that drops her to low single digits for health. They then immediately withdraw and begin to retreat as the twins and other giants are coming to bear. Not to be denied a measure of payback, she jumps to the closest giant and uses him to launch a Wall of Ice cutting off the drow retreat.

They swarm the pair of drow and quickly disable them, stopping short of killing them and instead grab their prone forms and pull a full blown runner to escape the giant patrol force now gearing up to pursue them. Five giants, a Svathurim, and 15 trolls are all forming up and a few hail mary style pot shots come from troll crossbows.

Seraphim throws her half elf body over the shoulder of her Skeletal proxy and leads the escape. They try to slow their pursuers with fireballs and cones from Ares, but they are not breaking off their chase, if anything the flames seem to be egging them on.

Doc: If we don’t kill them or force them to back off they are going to know our backdoor route.

Hades: That may be unavoidable at this point.

Seraphim: Let’s try to kill them. There is a chamber coming up with some wiggle room. Tuck a cleric into each corner, line up a half circle of skeletal giants and put me and Ares right in the center. Let’s smoke these guys with both barrels. If we can’t break them so be it, but let’s try.

At first the trolls try to chip away with bow fire from on far, but when Seraphim sets a flaming sphere to burn at their heels they are forced to wait the spell out and come in force. They start blowing through spell slots as quickly as possible and when a new scrum emerges at the center of the room they begin to exploit their fire immunity. Seraphim fireballs right at her own feet to burn everything within twenty feet of herself. The twins drop their remaining flame strike’s and eat the divine damage as a side effect on their own undead. Health totals are swinging wildly as both spear and axe land with gruesome ferocity from the giant’s attacks. Fire vulnerability takes its toll and the butcher’s bill starting seeing debits from falling trolls and badly charred Frosties. Before they sustain too heavy of losses the trolls and company fall back and retreat, abandoning 1 dead giant, and 7 dead trolls in the process. A freshly woken up Azzie manages to drop an 8th troll with a snap of his bowstring, and the ever pragmatic cowboys russle up the full array of corpses and start dragging their kills back to the library.

Doc: Are we killing the drow? Or hostage exchange?

Seraphim: Neither. We are crippling them and stashing them away.

Doc: They are going to notice the two drow missing. Not too hard to figure out that we ran into them.

Seraphim: Right. I have no intention of exchanging them and I don’t want them escaping. So hamstrings, Achilles, patella, pretty much anything that lets them move is getting crushed or severed. I want them around for when I finish my switch to vampire.

Ares: Explaining this to the drow is going to be a problem. No Dog, we didn’t even reach him.

Seraphim: We met much greater resistance than we expected, including a pair of drow assassins. Let them explain that away.

Later that evening, they meet as arranged with a drow party waiting for the recovery of their missing kinsman. When the skeletal proxy Seraphim arrives empty handed they are less than thrilled.

Drow: This was supposed to be an even exchange Dog for Provisions. I don’t see Dog.

Seraphim: I don’t see our provisions, apparently they are both invisible.

Drow: We weren’t prepared to bring everything until we had proof of life.

Seraphim: No matter. We didn’t recover your friend. We met much stiffer resistance than expected, on more than one front.

Drow: What do you mean?

Seraphim: A Pair of your warriors ambushed us from the rear as we were engaging the enemy force. We were quickly swarmed and your friends were captured by the giants. I presume they are now being held in the same place.

Drow: Yes…we were afraid something misfortunate like this could occur. Two of our scouts were on reconnaissance where the bargain was struck. They were not provided this change of circumstance and may have simply struck out in self defense.

Seraphim: Oh well glad that is cleared up then. Good to know. We will try again tonight to save your comrade.

The two bicker back and forth for a while and eventually leave. Sera reports back in and alerts them to the “miscommunication” that triggered the ambush. They figure it will be easy to verify if this actually happened. Ares goes to their captive drow and removes a gag from one.

Ares: The matron says you went rogue and acted on your own accord. Told us that since you violated our agreement we are free to cut out your hearts.

Drow: You lie! We were given orders to attack.

Ares: Right…thank you for that information. Yeah…they definitely are trying to sabotage us a bit.

Hades: That is fine. Was to be expected. Can we turn it to our advantage though?

Azzie: Well let’s tell the drow we are going to attack right up the gut and draw the giants away from the prison. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that they ambush us as we try to take on the giants. So instead of attacking them we let the giants know the drow are coming for a counter attack and we hit the barracks from the secret tunnel.

Ares: I like this plan…

[Traab]

Arent they aware that the drow likely know about their "secret tunnel" already? They are dealing with an entire race of freaking near invisible scouts and spies. They almost HAVE to assume the drow have been following them all this time, learning everything they can. Hell, they are probably going to be ambushed no matter where they attack from, as its likely there will be stalkers following them the moment they leave the library. (Which also means the drow are fully aware the party has their people) They need to work a full scale Paranoia game here if they want any chance of outthinking the drow.

One thing I would personally do is use the orb to find out if the drow even actually attacked the giants at all. Is there any sign of combat? Or losses attributable to a larder attack? If not, the drow and giants may be working on setting THEM up too. If that seems to be the case, they may be better served by just attacking the damn drow and crippling them as much as possible in a full scale blitzkrieg. Weakening them at least to the point where the drow cant hold off the giants anymore. Those drow are just too damn dangerous to deal with. The giants at least are fairly straightforward. You have an army to deal with. Thats a problem, but its not one that requires three hours of contingencies for contingencies because you are dealing with sneaky invisible backstabbing assassins. At least seraph has her head on straight with keeping a couple drow handy for when she goes full vamp. Two drow vamps are going to be terrifyingly good at sneaking around.

[DireSickFish]

I've got a bit of a layout question. I know that the library is a good place to hold the line, and this area has a lot of chambers yet to be fully discovered. What at this point are the UC's options for pressing further in? Much like how opening Moo Door was a game changer a place to retreat from known danger into unknown danger might be an option.

Killing everything behind them also might just not be worth the effort after a while. The Giants and the Drow are threat #1&2 right now, but they have a host of enemies that have been offscreen for a while. Not to mention the Vampire int he prison that could bust out and wage war.

[GnomishPride]

Wouldn't it be funny if this thread got necroed?

[blacklight101]

Wouldn't it be funny if this thread got necroed?

What, again? I hope it's not me again this time, i'm nearly out of onyx.

[runeghost]

Wouldn't it be funny if this thread got necroed?

What spell would you use for that? Raise Thread?

[Traab]

What spell would you use for that? Raise Thread?

Please dont, Pern is a long way away and we dont have the right kind of dragons here.

[Zelphas]

Please dont, Pern is a long way away and we dont have the right kind of dragons here.

I'm sure Veritas will take care of it. Sure, he can't go between, but he's a firebreather, so I'm sure it'll be all right.

*goes back to lurking*

[GorinichSerpant]

Wait, have they attempted to open the big gate with their psionic powers?

[Kapow]

First things first: I apologize for getting everybodys hopes up for a new post of our favorite campaign-journalist.

I just wanted to say thank you Kaveman, for all your work. I finally finished reading every journal you wrote I could find. They are great!
So great, that I left the lurk-mode first time in ages.
And you made me understand what is so great in high-fantasy. The bulk of my role-playing experience comes from a far more low-magic System, and while I like DnD/PF, I was never attracted by the higher-fantasy stuff - now I want it.

I hope you find time to continue this.
Thanks again

[Kaveman26]

Wait, have they attempted to open the big gate with their psionic powers?

Yes, it had no effect.

Somebody said it would be funny if this thread got necrod, I think it has been already necrod twice.

[Traab]

Might be a silly question, but in a necro's pets get "killed", after the fight is over, can they reanimate the carcass again? If not, whats the in game justification?

[SkipSandwich]

Might be a silly question, but in a necro's pets get "killed", after the fight is over, can they reanimate the carcass again? If not, whats the in game justification?

The standard in-game justification is that damage to objects/creatures w/o CON is all 'structual' damage, so that reducing a zombie/skelleton to 0HP represents smashing it into so many pieces it's no longer a viable platform for animation.

[Fable Wright]

Might be a silly question, but in a necro's pets get "killed", after the fight is over, can they reanimate the carcass again? If not, whats the in game justification?

They cannot; the problem is that non-Bloody skeletons and zombies explode into grave dust when killed, so there's no corpse to reanimate.

[Traab]

Ah thanks guys, I figured it was something like the "smashed to pieces" thing.

[Dromuthra]

Just gotta say that I discovered this thread a couple of weeks ago and have been enjoying it immensely.

[Ajmes]

Yea, I check for updates a few times per day, every day. lol
Kaveman I need my fix! Going into withdrawal! Haha =P

[Demidos]

Updates pretty please?

[dramatic flare]

Uh oh, Kaveman. You have fans now.
Addicted fans.

[Tenmujiin]

Uh oh, Kaveman. You have fans now.
Addicted fans.

Can confirm, I'm going crazy without my kaveman fix

[Inevitability]

Can confirm, I'm going crazy without my kaveman fix

Have you considered trying to control your cravings with carefully measured doses of The Big One?

[Fable Wright]

Have you considered trying to control your cravings with carefully measured doses of The Big One?

Too late. Snorted The Big One in one sitting. Was a great ride, but I'm kinda regretting not taking it more piecemeal.

[Tenmujiin]

Have you considered trying to control your cravings with carefully measured doses of The Big One?

I ran out of Necromancers in the hiatus and devoured the rest of Kaveman's journals over the next week.

[GnomishPride]

I'm going through withdrawal. Must... get... updates!

[Kaveman26]

I am more than a bit behind on next update. I have been putting free time towards Tucker's experiment.


within a few days I will be back on track

[Traab]

I am more than a bit behind on next update. I have been putting free time towards Tucker's experiment.


within a few days I will be back on track

Well who said you could do that?! Here we are now, entertain us!

[Tenmujiin]

I think most of us are just happy you're still there. You had us worried for a while.

[GnomishPride]

*undead cricket chirps*

[Mith]

Damn. That cricket got my hopes up. I just got on the Kave(man) Wave a few days ago. I really wish that my group could play like this.

[GnomishPride]

*cheesy elevator music as we wait patiently*