rollohi-ch508-script

It is day seven of month two of Spring. New moon exactly. When we last left our great company, which has now returned to the rift, following an early morning descent, it has come under attack by white-eyed humanoids, clearly extremely hostile, rushing to do battle, not to be negotiated with. 

These are an OSRIC monster named Grimlock. Probably quite familiar to those who have played in 5th edition Out of the Abyss. In this edition, they are quite tough. They'll take a deal of killing each. The rough equivalent of their morale - OSRIC uses a percentile system - is 8. 

At first contact, the nearest Grimlock has moved to within 20 feet of the front of the party. The company is quite drawn out, it's 30 feet further back to the rearguard, floating coracles bearing halflings, each equipped with a deadly shortbow. But for those archers within range, the cry goes up and arrows are duly delivered. 27 damage is done before the Grimlocks can make contact, two fall dead. That's an ominous sign. That kind of damage would be enough to kill an ogre.

The Grimlocks test their morale because they haven't quite made contact, and roll a six, they keep coming. 

The Grimlocks that are able to make contact in that round, just two of them, although further movement can be sensed or seen further back, cut for three and five. The three succeeds, the five fails. Mesk it is, who takes three damage past his big pavise. Xantu gets underneath the Grimlock's guard - they're using weapons, not tooth an claw - and with his magic mace of extreme destruction and his own strength, does a total of nine damage. Xantu is being backed up by Eryn and then Kylie. They can either help him or each other. Eryn chooses to back Xantu up, stepping through to help the injured Mesk and killing the Grimlock with a three plus her extra strength and magic damage. Kylie misses with an eight. At present, she's keeping her reserve in reserve. By round three, the Grimlocks further along, that as I said, could be sensed or just seen, are moving and are targets for the archers, and all archers can now let fly. Two crit. It's a total of 30 damage and 15 from the rearguard. Two of these strange creatures die, and one more is heavily wounded. But again, I roll morale six and they come on. Melee is joined. 

Xantu is critted, six damage. He and Eryn have advantage though. So he manages seven in reply, and Eryn also gets six in reply, killing that last Grimlock from the first wave. Kylie is back organizing against the second wave. 

Round four, three Grimlocks attack. Rann takes two damage. Eryn managed to reply seven, and Kylie misses again. Xantu hits for seven. Question, does Kylie burn her reserve? Yes, and crits, killing the remaining wounded Grimlock. That's it for the rearguard of the Grimlocks. 

During rounds five to six, the forefront of the party, or Vanguard, checks the two ledges they seem to have come from. There's nothing to see. The two sets of Grimlocks were clearly some sort of exploration party that just got here. Apart from their iron weapons which have sunk into the river, they don't seem to have had anything of value. 

It's turn six. The vanguard now has arrived at the door. And there is a random encounter. Ten horrid little stirges, which in this ruleset are quite big, fly up and at the party. Here, the ability to parry is paramount. Stirges, once they attach, can do a lot of damage. 

It's the higher level characters, not the spearmen and retainer archers, that can really provide the defence needed against stirges. 

In these variant rules, a parry is by rolling the same or above on your weapon dice, or perhaps with a makeshift swat like a shield. This is the party's first real experience of stirges in this environment. And experiment it is. 

Eventually Xantu finds that his magic shield is just as much use as a mace, but Eryn and Kylie find their longswords are very adept at slicing stirges out of the sky. 

It does cost them all of their reserve dice, but the three in the Vanguard deal very effectively, not letting any stirges get past to suck the blood of their retainers. 

It's turn seven, time for a rest around the door. Ingle uses his staff of healing on Mesk and Xantu. Under my Cursed by the Gods campaign rules, crits are serious and that axe crit into Xantu really needed to be dealt with. 

During turn eight, Jack checks the door. But he has very disappointing news. It's fully blocked behind, although water can still get under it. This spoils the plan that Ingle and Umbert had in their minds. They were fairly sure that the halflings were pulling back behind this door. If that is the case, they've done a really solid job of engineering, making sure that they cannot be attacked from this particular entry. That means that the southeast, the way that they've already explored previously, is an option. There's a little more to see around the door, and that blind passage that led to Green Slime off to the west, but not much else. 

During turn 9, the company makes the reverse movement. 

Turn 10, it continues, moving slowly across, retracing its steps and beginning to turn southeast. 

Turn 11. A random encounter. Five giant crabs have found their way into the water system, perhaps washed down by the flood, and object vehemently to being disturbed. They are hungry. Unluckily, or at least unluckily for the normal way which the company would deal with hostiles like this, the order of march is still reversed. The halflings are paddling coracles, hopping out occasionally on the ledges to check. After all, it was Cied and Pod and Hilu previously that explored that nook off to the southeast and know a lot about the secret passages behind the caves. The only good news is that the crabs are completely visible in this very shallow water, shallow enough to let a halfling wade along safely. 

Round one, the crabs advance into torchlight and become normal range targets. Cied and Jack manage to penetrate between cracks for a total of four. Archers near the rear also get a crack, and a couple do manage to get through those hard shells for four total. There are cries of alarm as the crabs begin to close in. 

At this desperate juncture, Ingle signals to Umbert, and with a slightly mad gleam in his eye, the magic user points and a red bead appears. Fireball! It's a save versus spells representing the water's protection for the crabs. One crab dies, one seems relatively little hurt, and the others are a rosy pink, signaling that they are quite badly scalded but not out of the fight. 

I roll morale six, they are still coming on. Kylie decides not to draw her sword or bother using her bow as she's more or less completely blocked. Instead, she begins focusing for the spell Haste. 

Round 2. Melee joined. Each crab rolls 2d4, but they're at disadvantage because of the pavises. One spearman, Mesk again, receives two damage. Vanu, another spearman, receives one and then another two. A third spearman receives a crit for four. That's Karo. Xantu, fighting at the front, is hit for three. Or nipped for three, perhaps I should say. But in response, Xantu damages for four. Eryn, who's got back to support the rear by that time, misses. Kylie casts Haste at the end of that round. 

Round 3. The first line makes a fighting withdrawal, swapping in the second line. Ophi, Ramn, and Maro. The crabs continue nipping and nipping and nipping with those deadly 2d4 claws. Now Eryn and Xantu are trying to make most of the running so that the spearmen are not in such danger. Eryn takes a total of three and Xantu a total of five damage. In response, Xantu finishes the one he damaged last round, and Eryn manages a hit for five. That one was the least wounded crab, now having eight hit points left. The Hasted second round of attacks from the player characters sees Kylie join but bouncing off. Eryn also finds her sword bouncing off, but Xantu crits, killing another. Two remain, they have five and eight hit points respectively. 

Round 4. Now the last two crabs are scoring on the spearmen. Ophi and Rann take one and three damage respectively. But Eryn and Xantu both crit. The crabs are dead. 

Kylie seems unusually pleased, saying something about monster hunting, as she often does. She begins to assess the powerful nippers to see how they could be extracted of meat and used as armor. But Haste remains and she's pulled away. The company moves on southeast during turns 10 and 11.

Turn 12, they arrive at a bench area. Fanning out rapidly. It's evident the halflings have abandoned these benches.

Turn 13. They arrive at another section of bench, and remember that there is a pit trap. But spears are still being used to probe, so there's no real danger from it. This is quite a broad, long running bench, and they rest here, repair damaged pavises and make a cresset check. Fuel has been significantly reduced now. That's disappointing, all the more so since they didn't make good use of the stores that they could have recovered while rescuing Billy. 

Turn 14. The party moves northwest, finding a new area to explore. They have not been through here before. 

Turn 15. They explore slowly, finding Y-junctions and winding tunnels. One particular area, the larger of the various winding passages or broad areas, contains quite a number of discarded looking barrels and crates. The party begins carefully sifting through it, but bearing in mind that there have been some disturbance in the order, some of the party is leading where it probably should not be leading. Jack, for example, is quite near the front, looking for traps. The halflings quite near him because of their disturbed position at the rear guard, which ran into the crabs. 

Searching through the crates and barrels for something that could be useful, such as fuel, disturbs a dozen giant centipedes. These things both bite and try to seek crevices in armor, particularly non-flexible armor, to run up and tuck inside next to the skin so as to keep nipping. The immediate vicinity affected is Jack, Clover, and Rann. 

Nine centipedes make successful bites. Rann fails and receives a painful centipede poison sting. These centipedes don't kill, but they reduce movement to half, and there can be no other physical activity. Walking wounded, in other words. Clover succeeds her save, and Jack fails his save. 

To determine how much further afield the 12 bugs run, I roll a d12 to find out how many in total could be affected. And there are eight. I'll assume that the other bugs are squashed before they can get into armor. The next area around the first three are Daro, Xantu, Mesk, Trubrag and Elion. Of these unfortunates, Xantu and Truebrag and Elion all save. 

In the third round of this chaos - and my goodness, the Orc Chief has really missed a chance here -  chaos, as I say, continues as Ingle rushes to heal characters and retainers as they are being partly denuded of armor and partly struck hard on their armor, giving them half damage, to try and squash those biting bugs. 

By narrow margins, Clover, Elion, and Rann all survive, but only just. It took quite a lot of pummeling to kill all of those centipedes. You can imagine the disgusting mess that has to be pried out and scraped off armor. Clearly, the party will have to reform and even make a big decision about whether it's worth carrying on, as the poison renders so many of its company ineffectual. 

As they do reform, and the more adventurous types explore the perimeter, they find a series of murder holes that they haven't plugged up yet, and these afford them some view of what's behind that blocked-up door. It's a flight of steps leading down into a fully flooded area. This changes things because those halflings didn't live under water. Perhaps the flood simply rendered the area inoperable. It means that the company is not necessarily seeking a passage to what lies behind that door. 

As the company settles down for an enforced early rest, a few coins are found amongst the detritus left by the centipedes. It's of very little comfort to those bitten. Still unsure of where it can safely rest, the company recoils from the detritus and checks some of the other broad areas. And it runs into more trouble. 

As it explores a west trending gallery, four piercers that have recently moved in and therefore are quite small drop onto the vanguard. The area underneath the piercers is currently Xantu, the spearman Karo and Maro, and then Clover, Cied, and Pod. Maro is hit by a piercer, but it won't kill him. Poor little Clover, who is quite sturdy, gets a crit and is killed outright. Pod is hit hard, but he can stand the damage. Xantu alone is relatively unharmed, the piercer simply caroming off his solid armor. Once on the ground, of course, the piercers are relatively easy to defeat, especially by Xantu's mace, which can do an enormous amount of damage. 

The party has now lost Clover and has several walking wounded. The obvious course is to pause, reorganise, and scout with those fit to scout. Six of the eight votes go to continue on this chosen course. Pod is the deciding vote, choosing to scout once he has been healed. Ingle heals all of his current damage. 

During turns 19 to 20, a new exploration scout group featuring Eryn, Kylie, Xantu, the archers Elion, Cied, Pod, and Bram, protected by Pavise men, Rima, Enonny, Vanu, and Ophi, set out, leaving the remainder encamped. 

But, there remains a question. Orcs Stationed quite near this gallery had become aware of the party's approach. They in turn communicated back to their Chief below. And word was sent:

Does the party get its night rest? Or do the orcs make a foray? We shall see... next eposode.