Session 2 – A Good Day To Die
Campaign II, session 2. Previous: Session 1. Next: Session 3.
During the rest, Migs goes over her maps to confirm their accuracy. They look fine, but something niggles at her brain during maintenance. The next day, when the party approaches the citadel once more, she realizes why – there’s a side chamber with a bunch of murder holes on the side of the entrance tower. It’s visible from the outside, but there’s no (visible) door from the inside…
Realizing this probably means a secret door, the party spends some time searching for it. They can find what looks like the outline of the door, but no obvious mechanism to open it. After some discussion, Ander walks back outside and climbs up the exterior wall. Through a hole in the roof, he sees the skeletal remains of several humans collapsed over a wooden chest, as well as spotting an easy latch to open the door from the inside. Throwing caution to the wind, he climbs down the interior – and when he reaches the floor, the skeletons begin to rise with a soft hiss, a faint red glow emanating from their eye sockets. Unfortunately, the skeletons win the initiative, and he falls to their bony fingers with a terrific scream.
Hearing this, Migs slams her reforged body into the secret door, forcing it open with a splinter of wood and plaster. A pair of the skeletons reach out to grasp at her; fortunately her runeforged body kept her from death. Lord Espada smashes one skeleton to bits with his twin blades. The remainder of the party is unable to land a clean hit through the narrow opening.
The following round, Lord Espada calls upon his arcane power to cast fan of flames, causing one of the skeletons to crumble and searing the others. Migs and Cassion make short work of the remaining skeletons. Cassion attempts to revive Ander, but to no avail – the party has suffered their first death!
After Lord Espada and Vierath attempt to break open the locked chest, Migs reaches in and firmly pulls the lock off, opening the chest to reveal thousands of silver and copper coins!
Some additional discussion ensues about which way to go, but Espada simply picks a direction and expects everyone else to follow. This time, instead of kicking the doors, he asks Orrin to try opening them first.
In their first new room, they see a crude fire pit in the center, a broken iron cage on one wall, and an altar in front of that cage. Whimpering next to the cage is a small figure huddled under a bedroll. Espada prods the figure several times before it cries out, “What do you want? Leave me alone!”
The figure stands, a kobold armed with a spear and clearly distraught. Espada asks, “Where’s the key?” and the kobold responds, “You’ll never get it from me!”
At this, Espada decides he wants to stab this kobold through the heart, with several party members deciding they wanted to intervene. Fenmyra tries and fails to tackle the kobold out of the way. Migs tries and fails to push Espada back away from the kobold. Espada swings at the kobold and misses. Vierath pours a vial of military oil into the fire pit and lights it, shouting “Tell us where the key is, or you’ll be dinner!”
“The queen has it! The queen has it! The queen has it!” The poor kobold is reduced to a whimpering mess and quickly tossed into the cage (broken though it may be). However, the noise from his screams has alerted some kobolds from a nearby guard room!
The door swings open, revealing a chamber of nine kobolds. Cassion moves to attack them, to no effect. The kobold in front gets a lucky hit for maximum damage and drops Cassion; the second kobold steps forward to slit Cassion’s throat…
At this, the rest of the party is enraged – they will have blood! A few rounds later, and despite a decent hit, the PCs are victorious. The kobolds, for their part, hold their morale surprisingly well and fight to the last.
After the battle, the party scours the room and finds a quintet of jade figurines in the shapes of various dragons, and three jars of green paint (15 stone of pigment in all, at 10 gp/stone). They gather what they can carry, including the bodies, and limp back to town, preparing to advertise their loot in an effort to replace their losses.