Wednesday 5 July 2017

Keep on the Borderlands - The Path of Evil - Session 51



SESSION 51: DAY 22-23 – CRAGMAW CAVE TO THE CAVES OF CHAOS

On the evening of the 23rd, as the rest of the party help the new guards to familarise themselves with their duties and the Cragmaw Cave, Malandir scouts outside the lair. 

He finds the most likely approaches to the Cave and sets the four bear traps. Chuckling to himself, he thinks this may make for some sport when they next return.

They rest that evening, which is uneventful, and the next morning they reform and head off to the Caves of Chaos. 

On their way, Lucien finds it difficult to take seriously this mission of rescuing a damsel in distress. He places no altruistic value upon her life or the mission, it is merely a means to an end, improving the party standing in the Burg so that their status can be leveraged for more advantage.

Lucien is careful only to reveal these musings to Malandir, Per, Kord and Talmark, and advises all to keep up the appearance of the dutiful heroes during rescue mission. He tells them of his beliefs when the men at arms are scouting forward and are out of earshot. 

Per nods in agreement.

Kord expresses his position much stronger. “Why search at all? Or if we do why would we necessarily bring her back? True that Berowalt is a useful ally at the Burg and this will be strengthened if we find Geneve and I guess that may be reason enough. None the less I’m am open to see how we deal with her and her captors once we have located them.” 

[DM’s Note: Random encounter check on the way to the Caves of Chaos: Roll d10 = 9 = no encounter].

They reach the Caves about four hours later. They decide that they will try to search out the hobgoblins and at least try to talk to them. 

Last time they were able to find the hobgoblins through the goblin caves but both times the party was repelled by hobgoblin defences. They take out their map of the cave entrances, that Lucien has been making, and realise that in reality they haven’t actually surveyed many of the caves as yet. 


“It’s a huge complex”, Kord mutters to the rest of the party. “We could spend some time scouting out the entrances to some of the other cave complexes or we could try to enter again through the goblin caves.” He turns to Lucien, Per and Talmark, “What do you think? Scout, enter through the goblin caves or just pick a cave entrance, and if so which one?” 

[DM’s note: It takes about 20 minutes to scout a cave entrance and, because of the danger of encounters at the Caves of Chaos, there is a random encounter check every hour]


DEW

8 comments:

  1. If memory serves, there should be the remnants or evidence of a pile of burned gnoll bodies nearby. We should remember to leverage that when dealing with others here.

    Lucien votes scouting the goblin cave, it is known territory for us, and the hobgoblins may be in the process of expanding into the now-vacated tunnels, potentially giving us the element of surprise more so than coming in some "front door" to their main cave (which Lucien suspects is Unknown Cave #1)

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  2. Eventually, we're going to have to verify that ogre (or two, three?) and clear that out also.

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  3. Per agrees with Lucien. "Your logic is sound," he says. "Far better to explore somewhere we know than heading off into uncharted territory. And, yes, we may well surprise the hobgoblins."

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  4. "Exactly what I was thinking. Other denizens may also have attempted to lay claim to the cleared cave, so may as well ferret them out. Hopefully not the troglodytes though, as they are probably in another cave. Should be easy to find if we follow our noses."
    Talmark pauses.
    "I wonder just how 'organized' these various groups really are. I mean, if we take down the troglodytes who have supposedly put all of these beasts together maybe whatever form of control they have will fall apart and the groups will go at each other? But somehow I doubt they are quite that under control."

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  5. Good considerations, though I doubt once the troglodytes were dispatched they would immediately go for one another's throats. We have not the time to allow for rivalries to fester to the point of action.

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  6. {{Lucien ponders the ways to leverage Berowalt once the mission is complete. Tempting as it would be to request or accept offered discounts on weapons and crafting, that might be short-sighted if Berowalt considers the debt paid after a time. With a long term goal of ruling this area, his continued sense of debt in our favor may be more valuable when that influence on residents is set against detractors that may arise from the Burg's present rulers.}}

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  7. I would be careful... If your not you could become Ogre stew... ;)

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    Replies
    1. Dead on Gary. The boys should probably be pretty cautious. In Session 26 they were almost toasted by a nasty ogre.

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