Session 18 – Ogre? I ‘ardly knew ‘er!

Campaign II, session 18. Previous: Session 17.

Dreblem spends the whole time in Teryk complaining about how the PCs should kill that ogre to make it up to him for killing his friends. “That thing keeps trying to eat us! Getting rid of it is the least you could do”

The party heads back to the oak. Finds a pool of water, drinks it – regrets it! Spend a day recovering from the runs and dehydration, this time taking care to boil the water before drinking any more.

While they rest and recuperate, they have an eerie encounter – a cluster of giant luminous beetles crawls out of the ground and begins “sniffing” the group with their antennae, particularly focusing on Vierath. Too exhausted from their ordeal with the bad water to resist, the group simply watches with trepidation. Before long, they wander off. ‘Rath, familiar with various species of insects, surmises they were just looking for food, and could possibly be tamed under other circumstances.

After a day, Cresilde does a health check on the group. Everyone’s in fighitng shape, but Zydell seems to be coming down with something longer term.. She’ll know more about how to treat it when he becomes symptomatic.

The group descends once more into the hole beneath the oak, and sees that the grasping roots to their east have begun to regrow – and the group hits on a plan. Cresilde makes Vierath invisible, and he squeezes forward to the next chamber and begins pouring military oil around the exits that the ogre came from previously. Once he’s doused a sufficient area, he backs off and calls the group’s fighters forward. Zydell, Vezhka, Grath, and Mireya push through the vines – though Vezhka loses a quiverfull of arrows for her trouble. Finally, Fenmyra begins smashing at the roots with her hammer, triggering the trembling that had previously summoned the ogre.

Sure enough, moments later they hear a familiar booming voice singing “I like gnomes… I like eating them… I wanna crack their bones…”

The massive creature turns the corner and moves to smash Vezhka with his giant club. Mireya lights the oil as he approaches, and the ogre fights on for a few moments, getting off one good smash before the fire and the party’s attacks finish him off.

The group waits for several more minutes for the smoke and fire to clear, after which they notice another trio of gnomes, apparently coming to investigate all the ruckus. Dreblem calls out to them, “Hey, look, these guys killed the ogre for us, isn’t that great!” He quickly runs over and joins them, asking to be taken back to their home, and soon they disappear in the distance.

The PCs want to find this ogre’s lair and take his stuff, so they begin walking down the hallway he came from. They come across an archway carved with a skull motif and a skeleton laying beneath in a pool of dried blood. The equipment (badly damaged chain mail and sword) suggest a warrior, and Cresilde is able to identify the likely cause of death as a wound to her side. The party spends some time searching for traps and but doesn’t find a mechanism. Eventually Zydell just decides to step through the arch; nothing happens. Several of the party members follow: Cresilde, Vezhka, Mireya – snikt!

A scything blade swings out and cuts Mireya deeply. Cresilde begins performing first aid, while the rest of the party on the other side, directed by ‘Rath, go find the ogre’s body, and drag it over, heaving it into the archway to trip the pressure plate again; the blade snaps forward and gets stuck in its flesh.

With that resolved, the party pushes forward into a grand hall, with statues of ancient kings along the left wall. ‘Rath hears some muttering ahead in the dark, something about being “late”, and drags Zydell forward and calls out to see who might be there.

They have a brief conversation with a man in blue mage’s robes, who calls himself Hazrad. Hazrad is looking for his jars – “not the jars filled with tiny people, that’s just weird. I’m much more interested in regular-sized people.” The party informs him that they’ve slain the ogre, and asks if there are other dangers he knows of. Hazrad brushes them off, “Hey, you guys are the ogre slayers, what even is dangerous to you?” Eventually Hazrad tires of the conversation and wanders off to the north.

The party then inspects the other exits from the room. To the southeast, the follow a short passage that turns, pass a few weeping statues Zydell licks their milky tears; nothing seems to happen.

Beyond the statue is a large room with a metal floor. There’s a boulder to the left, six levers on the far wall, and a large plaque stating “Authorized personnel only!”

Zydell and Mireya walk in, and Zydell immediately pulls the first lever – which tilts the floor of the room and sends the boulder rolling past, injuring them both. Stopping to think a moment, Zydell ties a rope to the next lever, and pulls it from outside the room. One by one, he pulls all the remaining levers; nothing seems to happen again until the last one – a whirling purple vortex appears in the room. Zydell tosses a piece of meat into it, which vanishes. Cresilde has heard legends that sometimes such events could randomly teleport people and objects that get caught inside.

Exercising extreme restraint, Zydell and Cresilde are persuaded not to jump in immediately – first we need to find this ogre’s lair and take his stuff! Retracing back to the hall of kings, the party checks the next door and finds it locked. ‘Rath makes an attempt to pick it, but fails, so the party moves on to the next door, which is slightly ajar with some glowing lights coming out from it.

Within, they find an array of bedding, four caged mutants (Cresilde senses that they are almost people). When approached, they hoot and shout, snarling, but never quite speaking coherent words. Zydell ends up stabbing them through their cage bars to ensure they don’t get free and cause damage. Beyond, the party finds an alcove with the ogre’s stashed goods – a large array of ogre-sized boots and several sacks filled with humanoid organs. Between them, the sacks also have several hundred gold pieces and a rune-carved black skull. When Cresilde picks it up, she hears it whisper, take me home…

Conversing a bit with the skull, Cresilde learns that it belongs to someone called Huugul-Barathk (she immediately starts calling him Lord Huggles) and he wants to be reunited with his body, somewhere within the old city of Vedycaer.

As the party finishes their search, they hear sounds approaching – a group of fishy, froglike humanoids (also, almost people). Mireya approaches and draws her magic sword, speaking its command word - “Sainë” – and focusing on the nearest troglodyte.

The creature happily hisses and gurgles at the party. “We ssseek one of our own called Old Greg. He killed the bossss. If you sssee him, find usss and we’ll make sssure you are rewarded like a good trog.” The party asks again for more information about the dungeon, but the creatures shrug. “We ssstick to our own; you ssshould do the sssame.” With that, the creatures shamble back out – and the party notices one of them is dragging a heavy, bleeding sack.

The characters make their way back to the hall of kings and try another exit. This time, they find an archway carved with vines, and a dead dwarf in scratchy leather armor with a dark vine wrapped around his neck. They toss his body into the archway, hoping to trigger a hidden pressure plate, but nothing happens. Peering beyond, though, they see an ivy covering the walls, Cresilde is able to identify it as a strangleweed of some kind, possibly able to reach out 5’ or so to choke its victims. The group tries to burn it with fire, but to no avail – it seems to be immune.

Retreating for now, the characters find yet another exit from the hall of kings, this time spotting a giant spider lurking on the ceiling. It lunges and Vezhka, who splatters it quite heartily across the wall. Further down, the passage narrows into another arch, this one carved with serpents. The party uses the spider’s corpse in an effort to trip any potential pressure plates, but nothing happens. Peering beyond, though, they see the statue of the huntsman flanked by mirrors that they encountered in their previous visit.

With that, they turn back and try once again on the locked door. Failing, they wait for Vezhka to batter it down with an axe. Through the next passage, they open into a large chamber where a ghostly lizardman is fighting a ghostly human warrior in deadly combat. To one side, there are a pair of black skeletons flanking a metal sheet that seems to be blocking a passage on the wall. As the party enters, the skeletons animate and begin approaching.

Vezhka rushes forward and crushes one skeleton quickly. The rest of the group follows suit, and soon the other skeleton is also smashed up. When Zydell finishes it, he also steps over and cleaves into the ghostly human, who staggers and collapses, bleeding. They begin striking out at the lizardman as well, who strikes out at Lirra before falling to party’s blows.

Cresilde rushes in to check on Lirra, who is badly hurt – the creature’s claw severed her foot! Cresilde’s efforts to stablize her fail – unless the party can find someone else to help within the day, she’s likely to die of shock and blood loss…