After quite a hiatus, we finally got to play again tonight...
Torgaash would have rolled out of bed in the morning, if he had made it to the bed. The hangover was less than pleasant, but he buckled down and made his way to the city's inner gates. Torgaash's reputation now seems to preceed him, as the guards at the inner gate kept a close eye on him. Likewise, Torgaash kept a close eye on the guards as he passed, just to make sure he wasn't going to have a spear-wielding lunatic run him through.
I made my way up the trail to the Dragonmaster's residence, semi-actively looking for Wyvren tracks. The logic behind looking for tracks was, "Dragons have hordes. Wyvrens are like small dragons. Maybe Wyvrens have small hordes!" No dice on the tracks, but there were a few very bloody splotches on the trail, further reinforcing the illusion that the party was brutally slain. That rather made up for the hangover.
At the massive mountain-fortress that the Dragonmaster calls home, the front door was wide open. As in, the front door was wide open without my having to make a skill check (be it hide or open lock). Just to be on the safe side, I did ask one of the guards before barging on in, and he seemed to be alright with visitors coming through. There was a great deal of temptation to start making slight-of-hand checks, once inside, but given that the Dragonmaster has some (and by 'some', I mean a '<censored>-ton of') caster levels, and I'm sure his contingent of dragon knights would not appreciate my "liberating" items of particular value from the estate. All the while, I never ran into any of the other party members.
That said, I asked a servant on the second floor where the Dragonmaster might be, and he just said somewhere in the upper levels, so I found the nearest stairwell and started walking.....and walking.....and walking..... On a lark, I rolled 5d4, and the DM decided that the result of thirteen was the number of minutes it took to ascend to the Dragonmaster's personal dining hall. Once there, it was time to make the sales pitch about an item that the Dragonmaster had already seen, but he decided that leading me on would be funny. I kindly informed him that the item was a statue that could be found in a chest that my dead companions would have had with them. A
locked chest, which they lacked the key for.
The Dragonmaster sent a couple of guards off to retrieve the chest, and we began to bargain. His initial offer was a scant 3000 SP (scant, even given the considerable lack of money in this domain). I added more to the description, which raised his offer ten-fold. I feigned consideration of 3000 GP, and told him of the composition and historical significance of the statue. At this point, Dreck approaches from behind, slams the chest down in front of me, and I swear a lot about him and how he was supposed to be dead. He feeds me a line of bull about the rest of the party still being dead (his untrained bluff check beat my untrained sense motive check), and how we've been tasked to drag this diamond to the Holy City [of something I don't remember].
Displeased, I left and headed back to town. The thing about not playing for three weeks, is I come up with some sick schemes, so I was compelled to go see a blacksmith after dealing with the Dragonmaster. Why? Well, I've got a bullseye lantern to act as a spotlight in dungeon-type environments. Problem is, I really, really like dual wielding. Solution? Sure, I could set the lantern down early in combat and draw my offhand weapon, but why do that when I can get my lantern attached to a helmet? The blacksmith was agast at the idea. His exact words were, "I just want to make sure you realize what you're asking... You want me to put an object containing, among other things, burning oil onto a piece of protective headgear?" Ten coppers and several hours later (I'll get to what's in the interim in a moment), the smith's tune had changed to, "
If it works, you can tell people I did it. If it doesn't, you probably won't be able to tell them anyway." I tried the helmet on, and it stayed securely on my head. Of course, tossing an extra five pounds on top of your head calls for balance checks in combat, but those should be fairly easy with my obscene dexterity.
Bellana (heal bit--err priestess) and Dreck came down the mountain and met up with me shortly afterwards to tell me that Lana had gone missing. Dreck had the bright idea that I could track people, including mounted people (and Lana's horse was gone too) because of my rangery-wootness. That's all well and true, when the surface I'm tracking on isn't bare rock. Needless to say, that was a fruitless venture, but at least it filled the time that my lantern was being worked on. I went back to town to get my new helmet and rest at the inn, while Bellana and Dreck spent another night with the Dragonmaster. The next day, Lana still hadn't turned up, and no evidence of her whereabouts was presenting itself, so we (Dreck, Bellana, and myself, as Gobi went missing, and Alex entered Dragon Knight training) decided it was time to make our way back to the port city, where we could catch a ship out to the Holy City (which is a 50-ish mile island, BTW).
Not long after departing the city, about eight bugbears jumped us. Two approached me and peeled about half my hitpoints off. I swung with my rapier and handaxe, missing with both. Dreck and Bellana both made hits against their targets, and both of them had nearly twice my hitpoints. The next round, I popped off my horse and moved around to flank the bugbears attacking Dreck. He scored a critical, basically chopping one of them in half, Bellana missed with her attack, and then it was my turn. I swung for a critical with the rapier and a normal hit with the handaxe, while flanking. The funny thing about dual wielding and sneak attack is that, when combined, you deal a ton of damage. Some math...
Code: Select all
2d6+4 -- Rapier critical (w/ STR bonus)
1d6+2 -- Handaxe normal (w/ STR bonus)
1d6+0 -- Sneak attack for rapier hit
1d6+0 -- Sneak attack for handaxe hit
5d6+6 -- Total damage
That's at level four. That's not counting my favored enemy damage (because I forgot bugbears were goblinoids somehow), or it would have been 5d6+12. That's a very dead bugbear. So was the second one that I did that to. The one that only took a rapier hit still wasn't too happy during the following round. Dreck's scythe critical was pretty impressive (8d4+4xSTR), but that was the second one he's gotten in the whole campaign. Besides that, it was hack and slash, but with these crazy sneak attacks, it was over in four rounds.
We each got 1600 XP for the bugbears, and then went for food. When we got back, we got 2300 XP for the hell of it. When it gives me a level-up, I don't typically argue. After leveling, we called it a night.
Oh, after the bugbears, we found a dog. It was going to be a person coming to save our sorry asses, but that proved unnecessary, so the person kind of transformed into a dog, and the transformation applied retroactively through time. I get to use my handle animal skill points in the near future! Hooray!
[edit]Three in the morning's a bad time to be adding dice... Fixed the sneak attack to reflect my sneak bonus at the time of combat, rather than after leveling up at session's end.[/edit]
With a little help from my employer (an annonymous stranger to everyone else and a serious badass in combat), the ogres died. The party fighter had about two hitpoints left at a few points in time, but between backstabs from myself and another party rogue, and crazy badassitude from that tall guy named Simon, all five ogres bit it, and we proceeded to the port city of Laan.
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