Game Night Tales from around the gaming table

 

Continuing from the last episode of Welcome To The Party 2.

 

We are also revisiting a third PC, Clyde.  He was barely started in another game, and so we moved him to this game, with more active players.  As I had already decided that there was someone with the Treants, I replaced the NPC with Clyde.  We were also missing 2 other players so we talked and figured out how best to proceed.

 

 

 

 

 

Clyde, the watcher who had been travelling with the treants, decided to join this group after he heard Dougal's speech, so he stood and introduced himself and pledged his services.

 

There was much to do, and after a heated debate about how best to start, the group split into 2. Clyde and Dougal would scout out the nearby lands on foot and then return to the settlement that sat in the shadows of Haring. The rest would go directly to the settlement and prepare it the best they could.  Once done, they would know better what their situation here was and what best to do.

 

Later that day Clyde and Dougal were attacked by 6 mounted Orcs from another band -- this one with a bloody skull, with arrows shot through both eye sockets, for their symbol.  Clyde called up a minor air elemental to block the Orcish arrows from hitting, which forced them to close the distance.  He then called upon the plains themselves to rise up and entangle the Orcs -- this worked exceptionally well, pulling 5 horses and Orcs to the ground, pinning them there.  The remaining one, most likely their leader, drew his bow and took aim from the far side of the writhing mass of grass.  Dougal drew his own bow and was a touch quicker in his shot, slamming a pile arrow into its chest and fouling the shot at Clyde, then he did it again when the stubborn thing turned and took aim at him.  Now fully enraged, the Orc forced his horse to leap the entanglement area.  It partially succeeded, the horse made it halfway across and the Orc dove over its head to gain their side.  With the shock of the leaping horse and Orc, Clyde and Dougal had to dive to either side to get out of the way.

 

Now Clyde, with his spear, faced the Orc with its long sword and Dougal still had his bow out.  The Orc hesitated briefly before turning to face Dougal, who fired another arrow at it and missed.  Clyde also threw his spear and missed, but not wholly, his spear neatly pinned Dougal's foot to the ground but at least whacked the Orc in the face, stunning it for a second.  Dougal grimaced and fought through the pain, managing to fire off 2 more arrows into the Orc at point blank range -- once in the femoral artery and once through the armpit and out its back.  It looked on in shock before it tumbled to the ground, dead.

 

Cylde used the last of his elemental powers to heal them as best he could.

 

Then, in a moment of sheer genius, they hatched a plan to set the two Orc tribes at each others throats.  They slaughtered the 5 trapped Orcs and then dressed one of them in Dougal's Orcish armour and then spent time to stage the area making it look as if the two bands had met in ambush, they took the three remaining horses and stripped the Orcs of anything of value and left the two differently marked armours hacked apart along with the Orc bodies.  They rode the horses all over the area, trampling the ground to make it look like the slavers in the woods had done this and created a long obvious trail heading back toward them.

 

 

After making camp and setting up watches, the night went on quietly until a large pack of wolves began to prowl the edges of their little camp just before dawn.  Luckily Clyde knew how to speak in basic terms to wolves.  He found out that the Alpha male's mate had been wounded by smelly "two-legs" and needed his aid.  Clyde agreed just as the other wolves cried out that they had spotted "Long Ears"!  The rest of the pack leapt off into the woods and Clyde travelled with the Alpha a short distance to where his mate was and healed her.

 

After returning to camp, just as they were starting breakfast, the Alpha returned bearing a large rabbit that it dropped a Clyde's feet.  Dougal was shocked at the intelligence in these animals, which Clyde just laughed at as he roasted up the rabbit with some herbs and berries.

 

After that delicious beginning, Clyde asked Dougal to take him to the blighted land he had seen during his chase after the slave girls -- Dougal had mentioned it last night at the fire.  It took them most of the day, but in the end they found it.  It was an evil place; Clyde could feel the Evil and Unholy vibrations coming from this area.  It was so bad that even Dougal could feel that something was not right there.

 

As they were looking around, they heard a faint clacking of bones behind them.  They turned only to face a skeletal thing that was slowly crunching its way towards them.  They fought this undead and another one to boot, until each one was turned into a brittle pile of bones.  The odd thing was, both things were mostly broken before the fight even started.

 

They travelled until almost dusk when they came across a second 60' diameter area of defiled ground.  At least this one bore tracks that led East.  Clyde needed to continue on to find out what had done this, so they followed the tracks until nightfall where they were forced to make camp on the open plains.