Thursday, January 25, 2007

Noah's Game: January 24th

Featuring

* John as Rathnor, a half-orc paladin. Grumbles a lot.
* Tanya as Gadfly, a (male) human wizard. Fashionable, yet assumes all creatures have golden hearts.
* Triften as Arden, a human paladin of law. Only one who has no way of seeing in the dark.
* Jake as Böbō, a dwarven barbarian. Takes care of his pony.

Also With

* Lt. Horowitz, the as-yet undescribed Unfortunates dispatcher. Thoroughly bored.
* Mak-Tak, aka Mak. A kobold trader from Rothgab. A little bossy and callous, with a weird scratchy voice.
* Chief Biren, a kobold chieften. Has a history with Mak.

Summary

Pregame: The party were all recruited into the Unfortunates, and arrived in the city less than a week ago. The date is Throgsday, Grune 14th, Year of the Evil, Evil Monkey.

The party is summoned to see Lt. Horowitz. He tells them they'll be escorting Mak. They meet Mak, and head out of the city, exiting into a mountainous area. The gate vanishes behind them into rock. They escort Mak (& his 20 or so ponies) down to the valley floor, where Mak points out the entrance to the mine they'll be going into. He leads them away from the entrance, saying it's not safe, and into the mines through a crack in the mountain a little ways away. He blindfolds his ponies first, so they don't panic. Böbō is forced to leave his pony outside.

Once inside, everyone can see fine, except for Arden, who can't see anything. Gadfly uses his familiar, a bat, to see for him. At one point, they are attacked by a dire bat, which the party quickly kills. One of the ponies is injured, but is able to continue.

Eventually, Mak leads them to the more developed part of the mine, where there are chambers. He yells at a door in Draconic (which only Gadfly understands, of the PCs), and argues for a while with a voice on the other side. After ~15 minutes, the party is let in, and escorts Mak & his ponies through a crowd of ~50 kobolds to a large chamber, where Chief Biren is waiting for them.

Biren and Mak bicker about the price of the coal Mak has come to buy, and the crowd clears out. After they agree on a price, the chief and his guard clear out, and the party is left alone in the room with the coal and the ponies. Arden helps Mak (actually, Arden does all the work) load the ponies panniers with coal, while the rest of the party waits for the chief's betrayal. Mak tells them that the chief tries to kill him every year. Suddenly, Böbō and Gadfly hear something moving near the sacks, and rush to attack it. It's a grick, which the two of them quickly finish off. The rest of the coal is quickly loaded and the party heads out. After a few rooms, they hear cries of sorrow behind them, presumably for the grick.

The kobolds are nowhere to be found, but the passage that the party took in has been blocked. Mak leads the party out through the front entrance to the mine, where Rathnor is ambushed by an ogre. The ogre manages to knock Arden out, and shrugs off Gadfly's attempts to beat it with his staff. Rathnor manages to kill it, and then revives Arden. The ogre seemed to have nothing of value, so Böbō retrieves his pony, and the party escorts Mak back up to the hidden gate and into the city. Mak parts ways with them, and does not tip. Horowitz gives them each a 1gp bonus for combat duty. Arden goes to a temple for healing.

1 comment:

Triften said...

For a party of 4 nth level characters, an encounter with a CR n monster will use up about 25% of their resources.

Ogre: CR 3
Human paladin: 25% of the party's resources.