Well the Dragon Turtle seemed somewhat dazed, confused by
some sort of monk it referred to inside itself. Though Ander the rogue shot
some arrows, it seemed to not notice them terribly much and after a seconds
reflection, party members back up along the ravine or spider climbed up it and
away, as it released a steam blast that cracked the very side of the ravine,
revealing a chamber and a dwarf inside, a trapped victim of a cave in who free
now, fled along with the party and joined them!
Deciding to approach the water cultists fort from land
rather than water, the party helped each other climb the cliff or just did it
on their lonesome as the new dwarf, Travok, did.
The approach to the keep involved the recently named bard,
cursed with looking like a child, and the paladin Rikarian trying to infiltrate
with the story he needed to drop off the ‘child’ as he was going to a dangerous
place. There might have been some confusion as to whether the rest of the party
was going on, because after knocking on the door Rikarian found himself walking
in with the ‘child’ and looking over his shoulder, seeing no one else
following. This ended up in a
negotiation with the boss of the keep, to which Rikarian only had to pay 20 gold
to get rid of the child – which he took from ‘the child’ to pay it. The child
was then immediately put on dish washing duty, so Rikarian bid his farewells
and started to walk out the door of of the bosses hall, only to see the rest of
the party being escorted in. Considering averting his eyes and walking past,
the party heartily greated him. Turns out they had gotten frisky and climbed
the north wall of the keep – and had promptly been found by a patrol. Curiously
with a few words they had avoided bloodshed and instead the patrol had escorted
them in. And now Rikarian found he had to turn on his heel and follow them
right back in before the boss of the keep!
The discussion went well as in there wasn’t a huge fight.
But by the same token it went poorly enough that the party was assigned to dish
washing duty along with the ‘child’ in the next room. Which they weren’t very
good at…Rikarian broke several plates. The guards tried to beat him with the
sides of their swords for it, but ironically he was wearing plate.
Pliskin slipped out and started investigating the base and
after some time the party was done with their washing chores* (the ‘child’
pleading for a break) and were told to leave. Which they took to mean ‘snoop
around our fort’.
Eventually they find a cave under the fort that takes a river,
deep into the earth. They steal a boat from the fort, pick the lock on the gate
on the cave front and start rowing…only to have their boat shaken by a force
from under the water! The ghouls show their presence, reaching for everyone in
the boat!
* Instead of having one player be the only one doing
anything for some time before the supposedly long plates chore was done, I had
the player do some investigation, then basically said time passed as the
players PC looked around and now the rest of the party were out.
Note: I kinda messed up and didn’t filter out a player do a
massively metagame thing that had significant character effect – ie, someone
making their character basically suicide for no reason other than they wanted
to play a new character (when they are free to simply bring a new character if
they want to. Previous character doesn’t have to die to do that). So I’ve
basically edited out of the story where the barbarian went to fight the dragon
turtle as everyone else backed away and the barbarian was killed doing it
because he wanted his barbarian killed. I fell into this error, not identifying
how it was going against what I wanted/a high character effect based on a
highly metagame effect – oh well, just keep it in mind to try and avoid next time
– live and learn!
