rollohi-ch512-script

 When we last left the Great Company at the end of turn six underground on this second day, it had begun to split. A large rump consisting of Jack, most of the spears, all of the crossbows, and all of the bows, remain attempting to perform the tricky work of carefully removing slave halflings from Kylie's web while working its way towards the orc slave driver, which it firmly intends to kill before the alarm can be well sounded. We can expect a certain amount of scouting around the area to see if there's a way to come up behind that orc before he can get himself free because he is well to the rear of the web and thereby remove him permanently. 

Meanwhile, the vanguard consisting of Xantu, Dorgun, Kylie and Elion, Umbert and Ingle, all five halflings, Eryn and Rima, head further beyond the now looted chamber where they found two sleeping orcs. They quickly find that the passage that headed to the north, pretty much back exactly the way they came, but not uphill, will require an entire sub-team itself, because that too comes to a Y junction. While the passage beyond the now dead two reserve sleeping orcs also forms a Y. 

Now I'm sure you're all groaning and saying never split the party, but that is the way that the dice are rolling for the exploration. Since all the rearguard has done so far is move slowly to the front and begin operations with a torch. Now turn seven goes by resting. 

And for the meantime, turn eight begins for the vanguard. The northeast van, I'll call it northeast, although it's north of northeast, is Cied and Pod, Xantu and Dorgun, Gage and Umbert. Gage is one of the recent halfling recruits, just to remind you. The Southeast Van is Kylie and Elion, Ingle, Hilu and Bram, the remaining two halflings, and Eryn and Rima. Eryn and Kylie providing the Vanguard fighting line for that one, whereas with the Northeast Van, Xantu and Dorgun have to provide the fighting line, hoping that they don't run into anything too devastating. 

Before we go back to find out how the people trying to remove Halflings from the web got on, there's an immediate confrontation between the Southeast Van and an orc captain who has now wakened thanks to the ruckus of two of his subordinates being murdered, and is not surprised as they approach. 

Initiative for each: they draw. I think the range is going to be critical because there are some choke points in the passage leading to the orcs there. Three. Right, so that is Yes, that will enable the Orc Captain to rush to a choke point where he only needs to combat one person. So it will be sword to sword, shield to shield. Both Eryn and the Orc Captain wield a long sword and both have a shield, and therefore it's going to be very hard for each of them to crit and end the fight quickly. The Orc Captain is backed up by three normal orcs. He is by far the most potent with his longsword. I think the major difference, of course, is that Eryn can use reserve hit dice and they can't. 

So I've got a coloured d8 for Eryn and a clear d8 for the orc. Let's see how we get on with the first passage. The orc stabs his sword forward, grates off Eryn's armor. Eryn's mighty blow is parried away by the orc's shield. 

Round two. That's somewhat better from Eryn. However, she doesn't have the dexterity to make her blow adjust around the orc's defenses. Let me just double check what he has got. Yes, he's grabbed chain and he has a magic buckler. So AC4. His own hit of five is again not going to get past Eryn. 

Right, I've just stepped away to check whether an alarm would have roused any nearby occupants, and the answer is no. 

We're going to go with combat round three. That's a hopeless whiff from Eryn and a near miss from the orc captain. He rolled a four, Eryn's armor is two. I think Eryn's going to spend the first of her reserve dice. Nope, that's one reserve dice wasted. 

Round four. The orc is definitely getting closer. Striking three. Eryn is still nowhere near hitting. I think it's time to switch up her dice. That's a terrible dice. Alright, I'm now rolling a pretty green dice for Eryn. 

Round five is a nothing. 

Ah, round six finally gets us somewhere. In round six, Eryn does pierce the orcs defenses with a two. She immediately raises that to four from her strength and one from her magic sword for a total of five. This is of course an orc commander. He is not going to fall over from damage of five. He himself has nicked Eryn. He is wielding a magic sword, but it doesn't fight for chaos, so that's just it. A nick, one point. This is Eryn's first wound of the day. She falls to 24 out of 25 hit points. The Orc Captain is on eight of 13 hit points. 

Now that that entire turn has cycled through, I'm going to quickly check in on the Northeast Van, who may possibly be aware that the Southeast Van has got into some combat, and then head back to see how Jack has got on with that web. The Northeast Van, as I mentioned, had to go back a little further to the west before setting off to the north. Some 40 feet of passage intervenes before it comes to the first Y junction. A cavern opens on the left. This smells pretty nauseating. It's clearly been lived in up until recently. Although the party can't know this, this was the cavern of two of the ogres that they killed in the village. The orcs have, of course, looted it, so we can assume that though the party is going to search for at least a turn, they won't find anything. During that same turn, they will become aware that something in the south, like a combat, is audible. So by noting that the northeast van has jumped ahead one turn, Eryn has just cycled through turn eight, and whatever happens with the web, Jack and Company will take at least a turn, turn seven, probably through turn eight. Now, as for Jack, there is not really any equivalent to carefully burning halflings out of webbing without killing them. So I'm going to give Jack a roll against his intelligence. 

Splendid! He rolls a seven, as we know that Jack is a reasonably smart thief with intelligence of 13, is quite adequate. I'll say that all of the halflings he rescues have a single point of damage from small amounts of fire and are safely burnt out. And just for the record, I shall now roll those five D6s. Two began with one hit point and are dead. There are three remaining. And of those three, one of them has one hit point left. The other two have three hit points left. At the end of which he fully lights the rest of the web, giving the orc slave driver seven points damage. Jack immediately attacks with advantage with his short sword. And crits. That will definitely kill that slave driver orc. He has a shiny dagger, which Jack will in the interim confiscate. It's a particularly well-made dagger, possibly coming from some unlucky adventurer. 

I had not mentioned it before, and my apologies, but there was no extra side tunnel to get around the back of that web. Having killed and looted the slave driver orc, Jack and Company find the obvious slave quarters the Halflings came from, even if the Halflings didn't particularly want to tell them, that would be obvious. It's an adequate resting spot. They set up a shielded perimeter to end turn eight. And I think just to be scrupulous, I will say that they do have to rest during turn nine to be fully rested, since that was a fairly tense standoff. And they couldn't be sure whether more orcs or halflings would come from further to the west. 

Now that they have established that perimeter, I'm going to check on the halfling loyalty. They have just had two of their number burnt to death after all. Yeah. That's okay for now, but you know what they say about people who turn coats. 

So they are resting during turn nine, while in the northeast, the van up there, which had rested during turn seven, continues its exploration. However, we have agreed that it would take them to the end of turn nine to finish exploring the ex-ogre cavern, so I think we could go directly to turn nine for Eryn's vanguard. 

We can return to Eryn vs the Orc Captain, rounds seven through twelve. Eryn scores two nicks and spends two more reserve hit dice without success. The Orc Captain scores nothing on Eryn, he now is six of thirteen. Finally, we end with a CON check on Eryn. She rolls eight on her CON of twelve, so she is still comfortably in the fight, not suffering from exhaustion. 

Turn 10 begins. In the northeast, the van keeps checking for further caverns, finding that the passages towards one particularly large chamber seem to be spiked defensively, as though to keep something in. Glints of bone and rust can be glimpsed at the furthest range. But frustratingly, they can see further passages. If they work their way carefully through those spikes and slip just along the side of the main cavern, despite its many obstacles, they could get further north. 

And now we circle back to the ongoing third minute of the fight between Eryn and the Orc Captain. Each scores with a one on round one, and Eryn is going to try her fourth reserve dice to try and turn that into a crit. Finally, she rolls something that will get under the orc captain's armor. It's not a crit, but she can count it. The orc loses three plus Eryn's two, and the initial nick, a total of six, which is all of the hit point he's got left. The Orc Captain is dead, and the Orcs behind are dismayed. 

What's their morale like? Eight. Yes, they have fled in terror. From here, I think Eryn should take a rest. We'll see if she wants to. Uh no, she rolls a nat1 on her charisma, and she urges the others forward. Eryn and Kylie stride into what is a fairly tidy Barracks chamber. And I will say that Eryn's spirit is willing, but her flesh is weak, she rolls a natural 20 on her next CON check, and collapses as Kylie cold-bloodedly finishes off the Orcs with one hit, one reserve hit, and a crit. 

One of the spectators of the fight, Ingle, has noticed that the Orc Captain's shield took no damage despite Eryn's repeated blows on it. And he tells one of the others, I'll say Rima, to mind it for now. She replaces her own shield with that shield. The Orc Captain's sword has obviously been high quality, and is a long sword, so that also joins the loot pile. And there's an armor rack in the cavern among the three minions. None of the orcs had the time enough to don any extra armor. And the centerpiece of this armor display is a suit of plate mail. That will make a fine gift for the local seigneur. 

Because of Eryn's collapse, the party decide to make a rest stop in that cavern, dragging the carcasses of the orcs out of the way as best they can, and making themselves comfortable in what seems to be reasonably clean bedding. There's even an indoor toilet which isn't too offensive to humans. 

During this early rest, a runner with a torch catches up to them and lets them know what Jack is up to, and that he has found a moderately safe rest himself. All that remains is to unite with the Northeast Vanguard. It seems like they might have become detached. 

Following the principles of triple O exploration, which I have been using for this chasm dive, I set up the likely course of action as falling back to this other part of the vanguard to rest here, and less likely falling all the way back towards the starting entrance. Oh no, I got a twist. When I roll a 1 on a D6, that means it has elected to do something completely different. So one is necessarily extending their vanguard search. A very dangerous proposition. This will be turns 11 and 12 north. 

With severe difficulty, they clamber through the spikes in the passage, looking for an alternative route, and this time they do follow normal exploration principles and take the next left. This zigs back but then reverse S-bends around to the point where they come out at the southern part of what appears to be a very long cavern. They can see at least one other exit east. Slowly, the party extends its spacing and advances, exploring what, at first glance, is an empty cavern. There will be an encounter from the random encounter table. The random encounter table is a d8, and I roll an eight, and that is a d4 piercers. 

There is only one piercer. Let me roll which it strikes at. Number three, Xantu. Likes the taste of a tough old dwarf, does it? It's a three. It ricochets off Xantu's armor, just as the last one that tried it did. Xantu curses and smashes the thing with a crit as it tries to wiggle along the floor. 

Having checked the rest of the cavern and found that there are other exits, they set up a perimeter for their rest and then rest. So far, all of the fighting of the three elements of the party has been muffled to one degree or another by the many curves in these rather narrow passages. And so far they have been fortunate. The Orc Chief is unaware of their presence, and nor is the orc shaman. Can the party's luck continue? Or will their scattered positions, widely scattered, bear their undoing, find out next time on Rollohi?