Feeling better, ran again last night.
Session 9: Ungoliath
We spent probably the first half of the session fooling around with hiring mercenaries and overland travel back to Bjornaborg from Ornhafen. The party accumulated around 150 mercs of various types in Ornhafen (sadly there were no war mastadons for hire this month). We had been softballing overland movement modifiers from terrain, but this time ruled that hills and forest stacked, which led to a much flatter, terrain-following path than usual. They followed the path of the river up to Thrinvatn, where they crossed it via ferry, then split northeast into the woods to Bjornaborg. In the woods they passed through two skoglander camps and attempted to hire them on, but reaction rolls were not great and nothing came of it.
They arrived back at Bjornaborg on the fourth day of the fourth month of play, with pay in hand for their garrison. It is now late summer turning to fall. They were running low on cash (not all going to be able to make the next payday), and decided to follow the treasure map to the gemstone mine in the Blighted Vale. It takes them two days to get to the edge of the Blight marching through the mountains above the treeline.
The blighted woods have a thick canopy of blackened trees, beneath which grow fungal underbrush. They also observed spiderwebs in the woods during their first day’s march, and as a result camped in a clearing and kept strict but uneventful watches.
They arrived at the mine around noon of their second day in the blight and noted a long-abandoned campsite. They entered the mine and found a skeleton with a a bag of gems and a note. It is approached very cautiously, but does not rise. “Trapped and out of food. The spider is too big to get in here.”
The party does a double-take and starts freaking out a little. Cue ominously deep chittering from outside the mine, which sounds rather like a laughing DM. Looking at their map, they decide to rest in the mine for the rest of the day, sleep, then forced march back out of the blight the next day, dealing with the spider if necessary.
The next day dawns and there is much discussion of who gets to step out of the mine first in case the spider is waiting above the entrace. Jhames bravely volunteers, steps out, and… no spider. The rest of the party follows shortly and they haul ass for home.
Two hours later, as they are marching through some low-lying ground, https://i.imgur.com/OmWYSCA.gif happens. The spider is the size of a bull mastadon or large house and is armored in spiked black plate, with great cleaving blades twice the height of a man attached to its forelimbs. Galinda is poisoned by its bite during the surprise round and passes out immediately, and Njall and Sindri take serious damage from the cleavers. Cass hits it in melee with a natural 20 and a magic bolt, against all odds. Njall rolls Fight to the Death on morale despite having 2 HP left, and several of the melee party members do decent damage with high attack rolls to the spider before it drops Skorne with poison. It fails to focus fire with its blades, which is good because a cleave-chain would mean a party wipe. Grytha is on Cure Light Wounds duty and helps avoid this outcome. The Elder Bear howls and bites his shield, activating shape-strength. Scarth uses the disintegrate scroll on it but it saves! Doctor Owl ( https://i.imgur.com/NqChVvA.jpg , via Jhames’ player, who arts!), in a show of unusual competence, picks the correct healing herb and neutralizes Galinda’s poison. Still, things are not looking great going into the third round…
Whereupon Scarth calls the remorhaz from his absolutely insecure position, with one line of melee fighters between him and the spider. If he gets hit, there will be a remorhaz on the loose in addition to a spider, and everyone will die. The spider’s AC12 starts to kick in as the party’s attack rolls regress to the mean. It saves against Galinda’s Choking Grip, and then fails to hit the Elder Bear with its poison bite (AC12 cuts both ways) but does nail him with a cleaver. The remorhaz gets a solid hit in on initiative 1, and Doctor Owl neutralizes Skorne’s poison with a natural 20 on healing (“Oh, I just did this! I can do this again!”)
In the fourth round, the spider bites the remorhaz and combusts, dying in a spray of magma-blood and narrowly missing Njall in its death throes. The remorhaz makes its save vs poison and awaits further commands from Scarth. The party works on healing up, but they hear hoofbeats coming and form up around Scarth, who still needs to concentrate for another seven minutes to avoid a rampaging lava worm killing everyone.
Fifteen skeletal riders on skeletal horses burst from the trees, lances couched to the extent that they are able. They are bound (at random) for the weakest side of the party’s defense, with Njall and Cass both badly-injured, but nobody is surprised and the riders roll poorly for initiative. Heroic measures are taken, with Jhames and the Younger Bear countercharging into the oncoming cavalry and Sindri leaping in front of Njall. Grytha rolls hot for turning/commanding via Black Lore and the enemy are turned against themselves. Ultimately the riders are put to rest with few injuries (Jhames does catch a particularly nasty lance hit but has like 40 max HP and is OK), the line holds, and Scarth’s concentration is not broken.
The remainder of the remorhaz’s stay passes quietly and it burrows back to whence it came without killing anyone. The party performs a little more healing, Njall extracts the spider’s poison, and they resume their forced march with newfound enthusiasm. They make it out of the Blight without further incident. During their rest day in the mountain peaks, a warm front rolls in and there is much rain. It is unpleasant, but so it goes. They march home in the rain over the following two days, arriving at Bjornaborg with 30000 gp in gems on the 13th day of month 4 of play.
Quoth Scarth’s player: “I need a cigarette. We used the remorhaz and didn’t all die.” Personally, I was quite happy with both the degree of suspense (as a result of delaying the spider attack until after they’d gotten the treasure and left the mine, having dropped hints beforehand) and threat (desperate measures were taken to avoid TPK; probably our ACKSiest session yet by that metric). But I still haven’t gotten a real kill this campaign yet >:[ and if a 20***HD AC12 monster with save-or-die-at-minus-four didn’t do it… well, I’m going to have to get creative.
Next session, they plan to pursue more treasure maps. One points to a destroyed village in the Cinderwood, the other records the probable path of a paladin with an absurd magic sword who never returned from that expedition.