Infiltrating and toppling a fortress at low level

[Coidzor]

Hmm. I wonder if a Tree Feather Token would work to jam a gate open so it couldn't be closed. Or even what it would do if planted there. I've been reviewing what magic items I can make and discovered Tree Feather Tokens and Catapult Feather Tokens both cost 400 gp, 200 to make. Since my idea of using shrink item + wood shape to block off parts of the ramparts/courtyard is a bit of a bust(but might work in a doorway or hallway), I was looking to alternatives to funnel troops away from us/delay them from reaching the walls. Possibly even force them to take on the brunt of the horde essentially in the open when it pours into the fortress.

Sounds like some serious real life getting in the way of the session Please poke the thread when things straighten out.

or just get them drunk and kill them all on the night before the attack, hide the bodies, walk in as the tech crew and spend the last day sabotaging what you can. Then, once ready to call the attack, switch faces to whatever's appropriate and start taking the lookouts off the walls.

I'm sorry. I find myself jumping mental hoops, trying to find the optimal way to inflict maximum damage without raising the alarm. That's also why I suggested poisoning the rookery - this way the communication system would die at feeding time, without you having to physically be there, allowing you to take out something else simultaneously.

That boils down to a simple question. Is the bugbear attack supposed to look like a "generic barbarian invasion" or as an attack by the asmodeans. If it's the former, avoid anything that would indicate otherwise (and confusing bird messages could be "a detail that doesn't fit the picture".) If it's the latter, scheme away - the truth will be revealed soon enough anyway, so no harm done.

The fire was a bit ago, it just took a while to get a new place to move into afterward and replace my destroyed computer, and unpacking is a tortuous process. Some of the information we received around the beginning of this questline was shared over Skype instead of roll20 and since I'm the primary note-taker due to my typing speed, well, some things the DM can't even remember what exactly we knew when.

That'd probably work, yeah.

That certainly makes sense, I agree.

Indeed! The session this monday got postponed, so I'll probably see the DM on tuesday or wednesday if he isn't sick and ask then. I've got a few questions that he's ruminating on already, regarding to gear and whether we're using the Downtime system at all, so I don't wanna just bombard him with too many questions in his queue at once.

[Braininthejar2]

So, how did it go in the end?

[Coidzor]

So, how did it go in the end?

We're in the Holidays now, alas, so our next session is going to be January 2nd or 9th.

We ended up saying screw it and murdered the patrol that went out to one place.

My main conclusion here is that our group is bad at planning together, since while I was using the restroom we apparently decided to just attack them as soon as they arrived instead of at least attempting to take them out after they'd stopped and made camp.

Rolled with that, but as a result, two of them almost escaped and there's now several horses loose in the countryside which might hoist us by our own petard.

Given the situation of the other players, it seems like advance planning is basically pointless, unless I can cook up something that will be easily adjustable once we learn the last bits of information in-game, all on my own, and then pitch it to them.

I give it... maybe one or two more sessions at our newly accelerated rate.

[Crake]

My group is actually also running way of the wicked, and we are up to the exact same place as you!

We've opted to take a different approach though. What we've done is use contagion (we're only a 3 man party, so we were level 5 when we got to the town, not level 4) to infect the town with blinding sickness, to stir up a frenzy, and blamed it on the town wizard, which we convinced a town guard to come investigate with us. And of course, when all the wizard's traps went off, he had a murder charge added on top of suspicion of infecting the town, so he's being brought in for questioning.

The rogue got into a little bit of trouble, because in our official story, he wasn't there, but then my character, Denny Crane, Asmodean Advocate and Attorney at Law, came in and got him off with a plea bargain, saying he was there to steal flowers for his girlfriend, and saw the whole thing, and was willing to testify in court in exchange for his charge of petty theft being waived.

So, while the town is suffering from people going blind every day, keeping the local clerics wasting their spells on remove disease and remove blindness/deafness, we also snuck in some contagion into Momma Giuseppe's food, so the guards in the fort will also be blinded. Once practically half the guard were disabled from that, as well as the wizard being back in town, being questioned, that's when we began our assault on the fort itself. We just snuck in at night, and have already murdered one of the level 10 (my dm informs me this is a hyperbole, but he was high level ) captains in his sleep, and are using him as a disguise to lure unsuspecting guards in for a quick and silent kill

Update: With a mix of stealth, guile, deception, and very liberal usage of our hats of disguise, in addition to very good disguise, bluff and diplomacy checks (I'm actually an asmodean advocate cleric, so I substitute bluff and diplomacy for a Profession (Barrister) check), we managed to lure and kill all the important people one by one, before wiping out the last of the guard by pretending to be the lord of the keep, asking them to line up for a role check so that we could "seed out the root of this corruption" and then just lightning bolting them all to death All in all, start to finish of our assault on the keep: Everyone dead within 2 hours. Not a single signal horn blown. Nobody any the wiser. When the patrol came back that day, we trapped them in the gate house and poured hot sand on them while our assassin pot shotted them from the murder holes. One of them wasn't inside the gatehouse when we locked it (not enough room with their horses), but a well aimed ballista shot and he wasn't an issue any longer

[Coidzor]

Spoiler: The fall of Balentyne draws ever closer

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Through a stroke of serendipity, our half-assed ambush of the rangers went off well, with the only survivors being some horses that got hopelessly lost in the woods, and that didn't come back to bite us in the butt over the next three days when we laid groundwork for framing the dwarves for being cultists and preparing a thieving and possibly murdering ritual to gain favor for their stonework in repairing the keep.

Our attentions turned to getting Mott and Eddarly to kill one another. Through some creative bluffing, we used the scene Mott and Caitlyn had at the market day as the seed of a rumor to make it back to Eddarly and used Sow Thoughts to put the thought in his head to buy the dress for her and to fight Mott for her. Turned out the next day when we opened up the mansion's front room as a storefront that we didn't need to bother to do anything with Eddarly when a soldier from Balentyne came with a bag of gold pre-measured to pay for the female courtier's outfit in the latest fashion before we got thrown in Branderscar. With embellishments and accepts of the finest seal pelt from our voyage with the vikings.

We also found out that, yeah, he was already having an affair with Caitlyn, so we sent a letter to Mott about looking for something hidden as a sign of his wife's straying, which lead to a huge scene in public with him storming back to the castle with his hand on his blade and a crying wife in his wake.

Followed him to the keep to see if we could do anything to make sure that the proper course of action was followed, but we were foiled by our lack of knowledge of the keep's layout. Ended up getting diverted to the kitchen and its pantry. Where we poisoned the beef we figured would be used for Mama Giuseppe's stew and then beat feet due to having a critical brainfart and being unable to think of any reason to go elsewhere in the keep.

In order to make sure that the two of them fought, though, we then went and staged a suicide by having our beefy antipaladin pretend to be Eddarly and cruelly stab her in the heart and our rogue fake it as if she had stabbed herself with her kitchen knife after writing a suicide note.

The day after that, it turned out that Mott had actually challeneged Eddarly to a duel, so our first plan had fallen through but our backup succeeded. Mott ended up dead, and Eddarly was being court-martialed that day. Otherwise spent a sleepy day using up spell slots to prepare various things.

Our Antipaladin also continued to train and inculcate LE values in his three disciples off and on over the course of all this.

The evening after Mott died, though, the rogueish types were sneaking over to the church to steal the stuff from there and possibly the lesser priest who maintains it when they noticed that someone was visiting the Reeve and they listened in and found that the last remaining captain, Captain Barholde(the innkeeper's brother who killed an ogre in single combat) and the keep's priest, Father Donavan had given orders to the Reeve to raise a militia to bolster the guards who aren't sick and under quarantine under suspicion of cholera(almost certainly our poisoning of the beef with a mixture of arsenic and belladonna[?]).

Reacting very, very quickly with frenzied speed, the pair rushed back to our mansion to let the rest of us know and that we needed to get out, now, to ambush them on their way back to the castle, as this was too good of an opportunity to kill that damned priest to pass up, especially after he snubbed us earlier when we were putting out feelers towards him about his efforts to cheer up the Lord Commander.

So our most recent session ended with us deciding which undead to take with us to make sure that neither of the two VIPs escaped our ambush and heading off to try to head them off before they leave the Reeve's mansion. Our tentative plan is to look like dwarfs in case one of them does escape, and then take advantage of the confusion over their disappearance and strike in the next day or so to make the fortress fall or frame the stone masons for the murder, set a bunch of fires, maybe kill the mage in the confusion, and open the gates for the buggabears while the fortress is consumed with fire-fighting efforts.

Oh, right, on the day we killed Caitlyn, we also dropped off a blackmail letter with the Alchemist who'd made a Flesh Golem. That night he went and checked on his flesh golem that he called his son and that he was almost ready for the golem to be properly introduced to the town and that it would make the Lord Commander so happy. Our Rogue wondered if perhaps the Flesh Golem's head looked like the LC, but it was not so. The Alchemist also was acting more nervous like a kid caught doing something naughty than a man who could be put to death for a crime by the state, too.

And he told the Mittran version of Little Red Riding Hood, where Little Red is a Gnome with fiery red hair and the big bad wolf is a werewolf who made a pact with Asmodeus and is really a parable about how leaving behind the heresy of Garl Glittergold and embracing the Light and Love of Mittras saved her and her grandma.

So, we're progressively getting more reckless, I think as a result of getting exasperated by our delays and previous tendency to talk ourselves out of action.

So close to level 5, though.

[Coidzor]

Spoiler: A belated update Part 1

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When we last left off, the party was rushing to set up an ambush, unable to pass up the opportunity to kill two VIPs from the fortress, even though it surely meant that our hand would be well and truly tipped.

Our Shaman ended up taking along his whole complement of undead, wanting to make sure that none of the VIPs or their escort escaped. 4 bugbears, 2 owlbears, and a boar waited by the side of the road, positioned to cut off possible escape routes while a pair of trip-wires and caltrops were scattered to delay anyone trying to break through to get to Balentyne.

Unable to think of a better plan, the party decided to disguise several of themselves as Captain Varning and a pair of his rangers, planning to give a story about having encountered a necromancer in the wilderness. However, due to a tactical miscalculation, one of the owlbear skeletons was slightly too close to the road and when the light of the escorts' magically lit halberds touched it, the bones reflected just a bit too much light, raising a shout of alarm and battlestations so that the apparently wounded soldiers in the road ahead of them were immediately forgotten and several of the soldiers rushed the owlbear.

Trying to salvage the situation, the bugbear skellies repositioned themselves to fire upon the soldiers, but the upgraded breastplates these soldiers were wearing meant that most of their attacks were deflected.

In the confusion, the disguised members of the party were able to draw closer, however, after Father Donnagin was able to move up without exposing himself and turn half of the undead force into dust with a single channel, our Gunslinger threw aside the pretense and took the shot to try to take out the most dangerous foe in the battle. Our Rogue managed to get in and dance with Father Donnagin while the sole remaining owlbear skeleton occupied Captain Barholde's attention to keep him from being able to link up with the cleric.

Our Antipaladin, alas, was unable to join the battle for another round due to having brought up the rear, but once he reached the Cleric after the escort had already branched off to try to mop up the remaining bugbear skeletons, he made short work of the Father working with our Rogue, and the two of them shifted to focus on Captain Barholde while the remaining soldiers, finding that it was a mutual contest in missing with the undead abominations, shifted their focus to attack our Shaman, disguised as he was as a Dwarven Necromancer, and our Gunslinger for apparently leading the treacherous attack.

This lead to a bit of Yakkety Sax playing as the soldiers chased our Gunslinger and Shaman and the bugbear skeletons chased the soldiers until finally a pair of lucky crits and a Slumber Hex working eliminated the soldiers, leaving the Antipaladin to finish off the Captain after our Rogue retreated to lick their wounds.

Due to running late, we couldn't think of a good thing to do, since there were slightly too many of them for us to impersonate them all and we didn't have a good explanation for the missing person or two. So we broke session after cleaning up the scene and disappearing into the woods with the bodies and their gear, added into the corpse crate while we discussed how to link this in with plot to frame the dwarfs as making human sacrifices to power their masonry work.

Spoiler: A belated update Part 2

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The next session, having come to no consensus, we went to the next morning as we took breakfast at the inn. Soldiers came in, essentially announced martial law and that the militia is to be mustered ASAP and that the fortress be alerted to any suspicious characters or anyone who is new in town. We all noticed our innkeeper pointedly look at us. We all kicked ourselves for not enacting the plan of replacing some of the town's citizens or using the Taliranean Inquisition as a cover.

The soldiers then proceeded to go up to the dwarfs' rooms and collect the dwarves who were currently off-duty as well as their personal effects. For better or worse, the semi-hidden journal of manufactured and damning evidence of the dwarves being cultists didn't seem to have been found.

After that announcement, basically everyone made themselves scarce from the inn after a brief flurry of gossip and we did likewise, figuring it was only a matter of time before our mansion was searched, so we promptly set about hiding our Asmodean paraphenalia and, having leveled up to Level 5 from the fight the night before, used Shrink Item to reduce everything but the Owlbear and what we had already stashed outside of town into an easily portable form. We'd just gotten the Owlbear skeleton to strike up a pose, ready to make it look like we had made a trophy out of one of our kills that had caused quite a stir with our last hunting trip as soon as anyone showed up.

We were right on the money, as the Reeve showed up and regretted to inform us that our place was to be searched and us placed under house arrest until we were to be escorted to the Fortress that evening to be interviewed by the Lord Commander. Due to either being lax or because we had gained his trust, the Reeve neglected to post guards *behind* the house, so we were able to easily steal away and enact Code Boom.

We promptly converted the abandoned warehouse into a firebomb factory and our Rogue collected our Antipaladin's group of recruits to work on that while our Shaman, Antipaladin, and Gunslinger went to check on the Fleshgolem, deciding that since we didn't really properly sync up with the man to blackmail or recruit him, it was time to sacrifice him as a distraction away from ourselves, especially since he was fool enough to write his name in the golem's flesh.

After a surprise revelation that the Golem could speak and seemed to have a child-like intellect, there was a brief philosophical inquiry as to whether the town's alchemist had just messed up when making the Flesh Golem or if he'd messed up so hard that he had created a golem with a soul and an actual intellect.

It was determined though, that the Alchemist had just botched the job and that we did not actually have a child's soul in a golem's body to corrupt to become a more useful tool later on, and so after several careful explanations and use of illusions, our Gunslinger set the golem to lumber into the town's center and to give the Reeve a nice, big, friendly hug. It set out at a surprisingly fast pace, and we had barely made it back to the warehouse when the screams started as the few townsfolk out on the streets and the patrols going along the main streets of the town noticed the creature.

Taking that as our cue, we lit the fire that had been built up in the warehouse, hoping for it to spread to the buildings on each side of itself, and taking the other firebombs to circle around the outer edge of the town, well out of sight of anyone, even spotting one of the soldiers from the watchtower in town go running up to the keep for reinforcements against the foul monster that had taken the town center and was heading towards the Reeve's mansion.

By the time we made it to the north end of town(having started in the southeast), there was a flood of people running out of town for the docks to the north or to the town church, one of the more fortified, stone buildings in the town's northwest, and snuck through the distracted townsfolk to plant more firebombs at the now-abandoned home of the Motts as well as in Timon's Meadery, the local brewer of mead.

Though it turned out the decision to target this was as much born out of the fact that there was no granary *in* town to target as it was born out of a misunderstanding of how flammable alcohol below a certain proof is. The building itself caught fire just fine, of course, and the stores of barrel-making supplies certainly helped. After that, we decided to sneak into the inn and make the innkeeper and his wife disappear in the confusion so that no one who knew of the secret passage could rat us out. Deciding that the owlbear skeleton was too bulky to sneak into the inn for this plot, our Shaman regrettably sent it south on a suicide mission to kill any and all armed humans it saw, as a crowd of the reeve's men and the remaining Balentyne soldiers from the watchtower were trying to keep the golem contained while waiting for the Lord Commander to come and dispatch it.

Fortunately for them, unfortunately for us, Barholde the innkeeper and his wife had already fled the town, and the inn was completely abandoned.

So, shrugging and hoping that we accomplished our mission before the Lord Commander finished off the Golem and either talked to Barholde or returned to the keep, we went down into the tunnels, breaking session right before penetrating the depths of the fortress.

Spoiler: A belated update Part 3

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When we last left off, our group was about to emerge from the secret passage into Balentyne proper.

First thing we did was disguise ourselves as Balentyne soldiers with our Rogue, having the best Bluff, wearing the guise of Captain Varning, the Ranger Captain. Although given that he wore fullplate when we fought him, we figured he probably didn't actually have levels in Ranger, especially since his horse didn't try to murder us.

Our first stop turned out to be the rooms of the various captains, and while we found some valuable clothing in Eddarly's now-vacated quarters, we only actually took the stack of love letters that somehow hadn't been confiscated when they searched his room after the duel and a silver and sapphire award from the Order of Alerion or Valarian or The Alerion or possibly just the kingdom of Talingarde from the wall of Captain Barholde's room.

Hearing voices at the end of the hallway, we elected to climb up the tower and eliminate the ravens before any more messages were sent.

We managed to successfully bluff our way past the first set of guards on the keep level of the tower when they noticed that one of our disguises was slightly off due to not selecting specific enough soldiers to impersonate. So we slaughtered that set of guards and took their identities, quickly cleaning up the area and hiding the bodies in Mott's bedroom, reasoning that no one was going to be going in there any time soon.

Upon reaching the top of the tower, we successfully talked our way past the guards, but then realized that neither they nor we had the key to the rookery. So another pair of guards fell before a combined assault of our Antipaladin's sword and our Shaman's Slumber hex.

Unfortunately we weren't quite quiet enough, and Mad Martin heard us through the door and was ready for us when we picked the lock.

Our rogue was quickly beset by several swarms of Ravens as Martin decried us as devil-worshipers and saboteurs and blew his signal horn. Fortunately our Gunslinger and Rogue were able to dispatch him quickly and the death of the man caused the ravens to instantly stop swarming and return to their roosts, cawing uneasily.

Technical difficulties lead to the session breaking at that point, right as a quartet of guards crested the stairs and saw the carnage before them, making it clear that there was no talking our way out of this one.

Spoiler: A belated update Part 4

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When we last left off, we'd just killed Mad Martin and had a quartet of soldiers respond to the alarm he raised.

Our Antipaladin showed what we kept him around for, though, when he quickly slaughtered two of them with a single blow, while our Rogue made the third become estranged from his kidneys and saw the final one off peacefully to his final rest after he succumbed to the Slumber hex.

Debating quickly, it was decided that we'd just have to kill the ravens the slow and individual way to make sure none of them were alive and unpoisoned if any soldiers should sneak by us and try to send a raven off to tell Gaston Hall that Balentyne had fallen.

Deciding that, similarly, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to set fire to the rookery and the vast supply of arrows in the level beneath it, we were caught in the act of arson by the next wave of guards responding to the alarm, who took slightly longer to dispatch than their fellows. By this time the level above had caught fire and we spotted several guards running towards the wall of Balentyne facing the town proper and sounding their horns for all they were worth.

Seeing that, our Shaman decided that it was time to call for reinforcements and used his necromantic blessings to raise a squadron of the guards we killed as Bloody Skeletons.

We reached the level of the keep and after accidentally shooting a fleeing servant with a readied action, met the leader of the dwarves in battle along with a handful of guards and his dwarves. Our Shaman lamented the waste of what could have been a useful resource after our Gunslinger blew his skull up with a massive critical, and the guards buckled and fell before us, some retreating up the stairs to the curtain wall, forcing the party to split in two and chase them while archers on top of the keep and in the gatehouse took pot shots at us.

Our Shaman took his bone squad along the south wall, taking almost a whole minute to chase down and eliminate their share of the archers on the wall and keep, while our Antipaladin, Gunslinger, and Rogue went north along the east wall, having a showdown with a knot of guards at the controls for upper gate's portcullis and chasing the sole survivor to the lower gate's controls and dispatching him there.

After it seemed no one wanted to leave the gatehouse to pursue us or shoot as us from the keep, we decided that we had only moments before the Lord Commander would appear on the path to Balentyne, riding hell for leather, so we quickly dropped the portcullis and disabled the controls for the upper gate and found that rather than a portcullis, the lower gate was actually sealed off with a massive, almost air-tight stone seal.

Just as we congratulated ourselves on that, our Shaman, Antipaladin, Gunslinger, and bloody skeletons were all fireballed from above. It seemed that the wizard had managed to return without our noticing him, possibly due to teleportation magic or the use of invisibility.

Our bloody skeletons collapsed into piles of scorched and bloody bones, and the rest of us began to panic as we were very badly hurt after having just healed up from the last string of fights. In a stroke of serendipity, however, our gunslinger did the unthinkable and managed to roll and confirm a critical for maximum damage, causing the wizard's wand to backfire and explode spectacularly, cratering the roof of the keep.

Healing ourselves back up and making a note to make sure we secured the fortress's supply of clerics and holy water before anyone who understood the ways of undeath could put our bloody skeletons permanently out of commission, we began to explore the area around the keep, finding the keep's doors locked and barred against us by the fleeing servants, the stables empty, and the church full of celestials who told us to get out or they'd fight us.

Electing to not deal with a fight now that they could have at their leisure after securing the fortress, our Shaman, Rogue, and even Antipaladin gritted their teeth and left the church. Our Gunslinger, on the other hand, in a fit of pique, scrawled the symbol of Asmodeus on the doors of the church after we shut them and went back to trying to deal with the gate of the fortress, since our Gunslinger had also elected to set fire to the empty stables instead of taking the ready fire-making materials for use in burning our way through the gate of the keep itself, or at least weaken them enough that our Antipaladin could just shoulder check his way through them.

Our deliberation was cut short by bright flashes of light and holy choral music erupting from the windows of the church as they shattered outward and an otherworldly, angelic figure flung the doors of the church open wide and proclaimed that for our heresy and desecration of holy ground, we would be cleansed.

Not even our Shaman could identify what this creature could possibly be, so in desperation, we just shot it, a lot, before having our Antipaladin try to cut it in half and our Rogue look to see if it had kidneys with their daggers.

It turned out that despite looking like a statue and being some kind of angelic force, it really didn't like having its stone kidneys carved out of its body, so it exploded into light and was no more, though it did almost take our Rogue into the next world with it.

At that point, we'd gone over time and broke session, again, about to explore our way through the church, since we were sure we'd seen a trap door in there and figured that there might be another way to get into the keep from the fortress below us.

Spoiler: A belated update Part 5

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When we last left off, our party had secured the above ground portion of the fortress, save for the gatehouse and the keep, but figured we had time to take it at our leisure, since even if the Lord Commander sent one of his men on horseback to Gaston Hall, they'd never make it back in time with reinforcements before the Bugbear horde had spread too wide to be contained at any chokepoints.

So we relaxed a bit and decided to explore the church, though curiously, we found no holy water anywhere in the church, but decided that if we needed to, the pews of the church looked solid enough to be used as makeshift battering rams.

Our Antipaladin stopped just long enough to destroy the main holy symbol on the altar, and then we descended into the level below the church, finding Father Donnagin's quarters and those of his under-priests and looting them, though there was so much sacremental silver for various religious rites that we decided we'd just have to make time to come and loot all that before summoning the bugbears but after taking the fortress.

Since we had keys to the priests' rooms, and the underpriests' cells were very small, our Shaman proposed that we could store those who we didn't want dead or that we might be able to use as hostages in them for now, as since we had the priest's keys, as long as we made sure to kill or capture all the underpriests, the only person with a key to them would have to just be the Lord Commander himself.

Going through the hallway to the next room, we saw just how successful our poisoning of Mama Giuseppe's beef stew had been, with 5 clerics tending to 22 men in various states of distress in a quarantined barracks.

Noting that the Taliraneans had a soft spot for their womenfolk, our Shaman urged the rest of us to not kill the women, since we could use them as a potential bargaining chip with the soldiers in the gatehouse.

The sick men and the male clerics, however, were slaughtered in an orgy of destruction as our Antipaladin cleaved through man and bunkbed alike, a whirlwind of death, leaving all but 4 of the sick men and their beds well and truly dispatched by the time guards responded to the commotion and broke through the locked and sealed door connected to the rest of the under-fortress.

Our Antipaladin's blendering effects continued un-abated and after switching place with our Rogue who was surrounded and badly hurt in the guards' inital attack, he killed all but one of the armed men with a single great swing, cutting through them until he finally lost enough momentum that the final soldier's shield could withstand his awesome blow.

At that point we had the entire under-fortress at our mercy and bound and gagged the two surviving priestesses and locked them in cells far apart from one another after confiscating their keys, though our Shaman was teased for having darker appetites and not being able to resist mixing business and pleasure despite his advanced age and cold-blooded, reptilian nature.

To which he responded that if they really wanted to start breeding half-fiends by the bushel, they'd probably need to run that large of a scheme by their master, but he suspected that waiting fifteen years for the first batch to be ready for battle would only help if this current scheme with the bugbears failed.

Searching the rest of the floor, they found a pair of servants hiding in the main storeroom of the fortress, being that they were not soldiers and were used to a servile existence, our Antipaladin and our Shaman offered them a deal, their lives would be spared if they surrendered to us and showed proper obedience.

Not being zelaots, armed, or competent fighters, they had no choice and cooperated with being bound and locked up. At that point we also recovered our Antipaladin's recruits, having left them to guard our escape route with the bugbear skeletons while the party proper used our Crowns of Disguise to at least attempt some subterfuge before everything went pear-shaped.

Quickly going over the resources at our disposal, we decided to build a massive fire in the kitchens below the great hall of the keep proper, so that it'd fill up with smoke. We underestimated the amount of time that this would take, however, and our Shaman was concerned about the fire spreading too far out of control and consuming the spoils of war or cutting off our access to our escape tunnel where we planned to stash the loot we didn't want the bugbears to know we had.

In the end, though, we set the fire and allowed Asmodeus to decide what the fire would do, while we went upstairs to collect our Shaman's bloody skeletons, the fire-building and waiting for the smoke to build up having eaten enough time for them to rise from their nap.

After a short rousing speech from our Antipaladin, his recruits were finally deemed ready and willing to prove their new conversion to obedience to their true lord and master, Asmodeus, by fighting with us against whatever waited for us in the keep.

With a great shout, our bugbear skeletons and Antipaladin broke through the main gate of the keep using one of the church's pews and found the Lord Commander himself waiting for us, with a squad of sergeants arrayed beside him.

He took up a battle stance and called for us to surrender, for we had no hope of beating him, and would only further damn ourselves in the attempt. Our Shaman told him that the time for words had long since passed, our lord's strength would be demonstrated here today for him.

Having learned from the previous encounter with the cleric, our Shaman wanted to maximize his skeletons' chance for survival by making the Lord Commander weigh his choices between healing his troops or channeling positive energy to destroy the undead, so a volley of arrows preceded our Antipaladin charging into combat and smiting the Lord Commander who, as we suspected, was a Paladin.

Badly wounded, the Lord Commander gave as good as he got, until it was clear that there was simply more blood in his body than in our Antipaladin's, even as the bugbears rushed in to support him and our bloody skeletons tied up the lion's share of his troops before dispatching them with the help of the bows of our Antipaladin's recruits.

In moments, however, the Lord Commander had reduced all of our undead minions to dust, save for the toughest of the Bugbear skeletons, while our Rogue used our wand of healing to stabilize our antipaladin before having to flee the wrath of the Lord Commander, only being saved from further pursuit by the infernal crack of our Gunslinger's pistol, the leering devil's face embellishing the barrel enraging the Lord Commander and almost causing our gunslinger to be disemboweled.

With a mighty crash, our bugbear skeleton smashed through the remaining Balentyne soldier, allowing our Rogue to shank the Lord Commander in the kidney before our Gunsinger managed to press his gun right between the Lord Commander's helmet and gorget and mostly decapitated him with another massive critical.

Our Antipaladin, upon being revived, went and completed the job, taking the Lord Commander's head and tying it to his belt, reverting to his actual form. Upon touching the Lord Commander's armor that initially burned him with purity, our group watched in amazement as utter blackness formed on the armor where our Antipaladin had touched it, and then spread, turning the once-gleaming armor into an utterly gothic, spiked horror in what could only be a miracle of Asmodeus, showing his favor to his faithful servant.

Meanwhile, our Gunslinger took up Ballinger, the ancestral sword of the Havelyns who had been instrumental in his family's defeat during the Civil War, and after a test of will against the blade's residual holiness where it seared his skin with utter pain, mastered it, driving out its goodness.

About that time that we had collected ourselves and our Shaman realized that without the Lord Commander's head, his collection of defenders of Balentyne to present to their master wouldn't be nearly complete enough, we were interrupted from heading up the stairs by the screams of servants who seemed to be burning to death beneath us. This prompted us to realize that we had never searched the pantry, having concluded that the servants who had fled before us had all gone into the keep proper.

Slightly embarrassed at our carelessness costing us what could have been another 3 or 4 slaves, we ascended the stairs to see just what the Wizard had been preoccupied with that rumor said had been found beyond the Watch Wall and brought here for him to study and to see if we could find out where Eddarly had been stashed, for our Gunslinger greatly desired to bear him the news of his paramour's death and use his grief to turn Eddarly to our cause, having been inspired by our Antipaladin's success and still mourning his failure to deliver Grumblejack the Ogre to our master for conversion from a beast of chaos into a powerful servant of Asmodeus.

What we found utterly perplexed us, for it was a pair of soldiers guarding a door. Our Shaman was chomping at the bit to get into that door after our Antipaladin, re-disguised as the Lord Commander and hiding the true Lord Commander's severed head under his illusion, and our Rogue sneakily dispatched the men. Just what could be important enough to leave men to guard while he fought not only for his life but Balentyne's very soul?

As it turned out, it was our Gunslinger's prize, Eddarly. Unfortunately for our Gunslinger, despite his philandering and not being a model church-goer, Eddarly's dedication to Talingarde was rock-solid, and refused to be swayed by a Barca Loyalist, even one who had survived the inquisition. Especially not after slaughtering our way through the men he had loved and served with.

Lamenting the waste of Eddarly's life, our Gunslinger promised him some time to contemplate his coming death before we came back for him.

After that, we discovered a mysteriously empty room and wondered what it could have been, before spotting a blood stain and holes where torture equipment had been, and our Gunslinger related that the Taliranean Inquisition used to have these at every military base or fortress in Talingarde, but with the current king being less zealous and most people figuring that the Inquisition had completed its task, a lot of the knights and commanders wanted to bury that past and pretend it had never happened, focusing instead on notions of chivalry and honor dug up and sanitized from the pre-Markadian era of Talingarde and the rule of the first Markadian.

We also found a loose stone, scrawled with a prayer to Asmodeus to strike down their enemies and signed with Asmodeus's symbol written in blood.

Going up, we found the Wizard's quarters and laboratory, and broke session after melting his pet Ice Golem into a rapidly evaporating puddle of water, just on the cusp of searching his lab for valuables, flush with greed after discovering a spare wand of fireball and his spellbook hidden under his bed.

Whew. And there we go.

We should finally topple Balentyne tomorrow, as we have one or two levels of the keep left to go through, the roof of the keep where the wizard's body is, and then the gatehouse itself.

If we do well enough, we plan to get all of the loot and our loyal servants on the road to our next destination well ahead of the bugbears before we finally deign to summon them, since we have several days left before the bugbears start to break up or word can even reach Gaston Hall to hurry up the relief force and Inquisitors that were going to arrive in three weeks.

Some of us want to really spook the bugbears by taking all of the bodies, so all they find is an empty keep where some fires have happened.

Our Shaman is also tentatively planning on using Stone Shape to open several holes in the wall of the fortress so that it can't be used as a fortress again without repair or another person that can cast Stone Shape.

[Braininthejar2]

Not the most perfect execution of this scenario I've read. Which makes it all the more fun to read.

Does your gunslinger have some feats for that, or does he just naturally crit on demand?

[Coidzor]

Not the most perfect execution of this scenario I've read. Which makes it all the more fun to read.

Does your gunslinger have some feats for that, or does he just naturally crit on demand?

Yeah, it's been kind of a comedy of errors with the violence of MacBeth.

He was just very, very swingy with his dice rolling. He kept rolling either really low or really high once we got into the fortress.

[Peregrine_Caged]

Does your gunslinger have some feats for that, or does he just naturally crit on demand?

Calyx, party gunslinger, loyal worshiper of Asmodeus, future ruler of a reclaimed Talingarde, here.

I love this line, heh.

While I don't fully recall that last critical against the LC, I was pretty on fire for a few sessions there (as well as the 5E game I DM for this group, to my players' frustration, heh). That wizard crit, though, that was pretty glorious. I was taking a range increment penalty, mostly just firing as we all ran to find a way to the roof to do something, not expecting it to work at all, then ended up critting him for something like 70-ish damage.

So the DM asks, How do you kill him? I think about it for a second and a thought pops in: "Now, I want to make it perfectly clear, I am specifically not doing this. BUT. If this were like an action movie or something, I'm just imagining Calyx shoots the wand in his hand and it explodes, killing him." DM, "Y'know what. That's exactly what happens!"

Damn me for breaking rule 0, but if it wasn't bloody well worth it in the end!

[Coidzor]

BALENTYNE HAS FALLEN.

So, in other words, that's all folks!

Spoiler: On to the details

Show

Having just melted the Ice Golem, we proceeded to search the Wizard's laboratory. We found notes detailing his investigations into the Ice Golem, which was what was found in the north by adventurers encased in a bigger block of ice that they brought back with them and left with the wizard due to not having the time, interest, inclination, or laboratory to study it.

Our Shaman's curiosity was momentarily piqued by who these adventurers might be before realizing that the weirdness that the Wizard had been studying was significantly less interesting than he had hoped. Though it did seem like there was another wasted opportunity to put someone else's golem to good use for a moment when the journal reported promise in being able to get it to accept orders, though this again proved shortlived when the passage went on to elaborate that *all* the Wizard had managed to get out of it was to guard an area.

We also noticed that there was a *very* finely made cauldron in the laboratory, which our Gunslinger promptly claimed.

From there, we readied to ascend to the roof, before remembering that there was another floor above us to go through, seeing as how we hadn't actually found the Lord Commander's chambers. First, though, we found the fortress's council chamber, with a banner of Mittras's sun crossed with a sword and a key that our Gunslinger rushed to tear down. Our Rogue, on the other hand, was immediately drawn to the large chest in the far corner, and even more intrigued when they found a magical trap on it. Swiftly disabling the trap, the Lord Commander's master key was inserted and opened the chest, revealing the fortress's payroll and petty cash all in one convenient location.

Flush with new riches, we went on and found the Lord Commander's quarters, which were, fittingly, spartan and sparse. Strangely, one wall was a shrine to some woman named Brownyn of Havalek, though the Havaland family bible quickly revealed details, sharing that this Bronwyn was the deceased wife of the Lord Commander, whose actual name was Thomas Havaland and who both had a son who had become another knight of the Alerion or Valarian or something along those lines and a brother named Samuel a Cardinal of Mittras and apparently disowned by the family for his name was all but completely blotted out in the family geneaology and the accompanying records.

Being curiously fascinated with the painting and noting our Gunslinger's personal animosity towards the Havalands based upon events that happened a few decades before even our Shaman was born, our Shaman decided to take the portrait of the Lord Commander's dead wife "for later use," though others did note that it was high quality enough and the lady pretty enough that it'd probably be of interest to art collectors as well for coin.

We also found a curiously well appointed chamber and couldn't make heads or tails of what it was for or why it was cleaned if no one lived there or used it, until it was brought up that sometimes dignitaries do visit the Watchwall to assess its strength and the like, even if the current king hasn't paid enough attention to it himself. Shrugging and moving on, we turned towards the trapdoor leading to the roof.

Finding it curiously unbudging, even before the brute strength of our mighty Antipaladin, we shrugged and started chopping through it, revealing that a huge block of stone had been placed on top of it. After some banter about whether the Wizard had done that or if the batch of archers we had dispatched had sealed themselves up there in the time between when the alarm was raised and they met us in battle, our Rogue and Gunslinger led the way to see if there was anything of use left on the wizard's corpse after the giant explosion that had claimed his life.

So we went outside, finding the amount of smoke from the fire below had grown significantly, and headed to the rear of the keep where the chimney provided a pair of surfaces to brace against and easily attached a grappel hook to the roof and promptly receive an arrow in reply as a pair of dwarfs and a trio of human Balentyne soldiers looked over the side of the roof and unleashed a volley of fire at us.

The token gesture proved useless, however, and our Rogue demonstrated their ability to sweet talk the arcane and promptly roasted four of them, while our Gunslinger and our sole remaining Bugbear Skeleton felled the odd man out.

The fireball apparently set something on fire up there, so everyone but our Shaman clambered up the rope and our Shaman sent his skeleton up to the roof to push the block out of the way. They discovered quite a few goodies surviving on the wizard and a great catapult which had quickly had hungry flame spread across it, clearly urged along by our Lord's dominion over the domain of Fire.

Full of swagger at having completely conquered the keep and opened up all the passages that had been denied to us, we turned our attention to the sole remaining source of opposition, the Gatehouse. As the smoke became horrible in the keep's ground level, we left our Antipaladin's disciples to lurk out of the way in the church, looting the sacramental silver and our last bugbear skeleton in the thickness of the smoke in the great hall of the keep while our Antipaladin adopted the guise of the Lord Commander and the rest of us took the faces of the men who had breathed their last at his side.

With the massive column of smoke rising from the keep and the doors leading to the lower bridge from the under-fortress, it was an easy enough matter to convince the gatehouse's defenders that time was of the essence if we were to save the keep from being unusable from the fire damage.

Asmodeus smiled even more upon us when we discovered that the defenders had graciously heated up vast cauldrons of sand and opened up murder holes for us, and even ran underneath them for us, allowing us to kill the last 9 of Balentyne with their own defenses, before we burned the last of the fortress's anti-siege weaponry, a pair of stone throwers and ballistae facing from the gatehouse out into the savage north.

Then, while our Shaman surveyed the extent to which the flames and smoke had spread beyond our expectations and rescued our captives from the smoke, the rest of us debated whether to summon the bugbears or break our clay seal first, before finally remembering that we were to break the seal once we had prepared the way and deeming that the fortress, devoid of life save for ourselves and those in our power, was amply prepared for the bugbears.

So we broke the seal, opened the gates, lit up the now night-time sky with the rocket's red glare, and gathered up the spoils we had taken for ourselves instead of leaving for the bugbears and the flames.

As if on cue, as we turned to bid the fortress adieu and beat feet before the bugbears finally arrived, our Dread Master's personal Deviless appeared out of nowhere behind us and congratulated us on going above and beyond the call of duty, seeming to actually demonstrate something approaching emotion and pleasure at the sight of the corpses and fires we had left in our wake, relaying that she had especially enjoyed our zeal in seeing Aldencross put to the flame. Though she did hope that our new pets were housebroken.

Our next task, she relayed to us, was to accompany her via barge far to the west to the City of Farholde, and that our Master would relay our next mission to us after we had rested.

So we did, enjoying our new shiny bars of platinum and the fact that our new slaves were almost terrified into unconsciousness at sacrificing the two surviving priestesses of Mittras, although our Shaman wasn't quite sure if letting the Deviless sacrifice the priestesses was supposed to be him doing her a favor or her doing him a favor.

Our Shaman was sure that it wouldn't come back to bite him in the tail, though, after all, his soul was already spoken for.

Our Rogue took the opportunity to finally reveal their name to us, too, telling us that they were a one Ichtaca, which our Antipaladin's disciples promptly revealed they were absolutely incapable of saying properly.