Company of the White Oak Campaign - Sessions 32-33

Prologue 2

Thorin the Dwarven Veteran had barely survived the injuries he sustained from the kobolds and Jake the Acolyte was seriously hurt, but at least they survived. No one else from that expedition into the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk remained.

It took Thorin three weeks to recover, physically, but mentally he developed an aversion to danger and had no desire to return to Castle Greyhawk, or continue as an adventurer.

A year and a half passed. Out of shame for having avoided him all this time, Thorin looked into reuniting with Jake, only to learn that Jake had continued adventuring, for a time, without him. Jake had even joined a new adventuring party and gone back to Castle Greyhawk, an adventuring party that was now called the Company of the White Oak, and had quite the reputation.

Though Jake had since retired, Thorin reached out to this company and revealed his connection to them. He wished to try adventuring again, but the company was unsure if they needed any more inexperienced help. Thorin countered that he could assemble an ‘apprentice team,’ fledgling adventurers that one or two senior members of the company could train on adventures during their downtime. This, everyone agreed, seemed like a useful idea.

Over the next few weeks, Thorin scoured the city and turned up two elves and a human companion who desired to see Castle Greyhawk for themselves. The elves were Alred the Elven Veteran and Draezen the Elven Apprentice Thief, plus Alex the Human Veteran.

Percy and Reed Underbough agreed to take them on an adventure. They leaned towards the Forbidden Caves of Grossettgrottell, but were overruled by the apprentices who badly desired to see Castle Greyhawk instead. And it was true, there were plenty of areas of the castle they had passed by on their way down to the third dungeon level. Unfortunately, Thorin “forgot” to come at the last moment, leaving a party of five (plus Reed’s hirelings, Herv and Muelarara) to forge ahead... 

Harvester 14, 621 CY
Castle Greyhawk

The drawbridge was down and the courtyard was empty. The adventurers discussed ways down into the dungeon from here, but Percy had another suggestion. There was a tall townhouse-like building on the east side of the castle, abutting the Chapel of Boccob, that they had never bothered with before. This was agreeable to everyone. So the cart and mules were left on the doorstep, and Herv forced open the front door.

Inside was a smelly room, the length of an audience chamber, but full of cheap furniture and trash. There were also rats -- and a giant rat! Herv, Reed, and Alred all fired arrows and bolts at the giant rat, killing it instantly.

Then a rear door opened and a man in tattered robes appeared, asking them to kill no more of his rats. His name was Denis and, though he seemed to definitely be insane, he seemed harmlessly intent on being a good host and providing them with stale bread to eat. No one touched their bread, but allowed Denis to open the doors at the rear of the room and leave them open under different pretenses. Soon, while chitchatting with them, he asked a favor of the party -- he wanted them to be food for his rats! Suddenly, more rats, ranging from normal-sized to giant-sized (dog-sized, really) came pouring into the room from the two doors.

Alex and Alred rushed the strange man, but found the slashes from their swords were not drawing blood or really hurting him much. Alex pulled back to deal with giant rats along with Reed, Herv, and Muelara. Draezen found the giant rats too dangerous, being seriously hurt by one, and pulled back to deal with the normal-sized rats. Even those proved dangerous; they seemed to sense he was injured and, whenever he failed to kill one, they massed and drove towards him until they finally overbore him and bit him until he lost consciousness.

Percy, suspecting what Denis was all along, started reading his scroll of protection from lycanthropes even before Denis transformed into a ratman. Percy rushed Denis and the power of the scroll repulsed Denis into the corner. Reed, Percy, and Alex rushed Denis and kept attacking him, with Reed’s magic dagger and Percy’s silvered mace being the only weapons that could hurt Denis. Alex eventually gave up and pulled back, and Percy stepped back only far enough to keep Denis pinned to the corner. The plan was to step back so Reed and Herv could take Denis down from a distance with silver arrows and bolts, but when Denis did a good job at dodging them anyway, they changed their plans yet again. Now Reed and Herv were going to grapple Denis, but Herv got bit. So Reed gave up on trying anything else and stabbed Denis to death.

Percy started casting a cure light wounds spell and saved Draezen just in time before he died.

This room was devoid of treasure, unless stale bread counted as treasure, but there were two doors at the back of the room. The side door led to a storage room with lamp oil and a spool of wire the adventurers claimed.

The door at the back of the first room led to a bedroom with two locked chests in it. Reed let the revived Draezin take a crack at picking both locks first. They managed to get the first chest open easily enough, and it contained 279 sp, 78 ep, 31 gp, a plain electrum necklace with an ornamental stone set in it, and a clerical spell scroll that Percy was quick to grab up.

The second chest was trapped and Draezin set it off -- spraying poison gas in his face that was killing him, until Percy cast his second cure spell and saved him again. The poison gas kept spraying out and threatened to fill the room, but Reed got right in there and deactivated the trap, only taking some damage from the poison gas. The reward for this was finding only an electrum medallion set with tiny gemstones and a pearl wrapped in a red silk kerchief.

Stairs led up to the next level, so the adventurers continued exploring. On the next level, they found it gutted and stained with urine and feces, and they found six more giant rats, that were quickly dispatched. Searching this level, they found no treasure other than a scroll in a scrollcase. This scroll was actually a letter, explaining that this building had long ago been a chapel of Celestian, the "Celestial Father," before the sole canon tasked with manning it decided to become an adventurer. The canon had mentioned in the letter seeing rubies, sapphires, and diamonds in the sky from the roof; Alex, hoping this was literally true, was eager to get to the roof.

Which seemed unlikely. From here the building was severely damaged, with holes in the floor on the third floor and the separate staircase up to the third floor looking damaged. No one trusted to try it, but Reed leaped up with his magic boots to the upper level and lowered a rope for the others to climb. And he was hoping they would join him quickly because a giant snake was sleeping up here.

Although a few people fell, most everyone was able to scale the rope, even wearing armor. Which was good because the giant snake was a fearsome foe Reed could not take down alone. Alred was bitten and poisoned by the snake, while Draezin was seriously hurt -- yet again. But the snake was put down before Percy even had a chance to climb up. Everyone knew there was a chance to save Alred by sucking the venom from his wound, but the only one would chance it was his boon companion Alex. Alex safely spat out the venom and both men lived. The room was strewn with broken weapons (the only intact room on this level was the empty armory the weapons had come from), though five javelins were retrieved and what appeared to be a ceremonial spear of excellent design.

There was a fourth level above them that looked even more precarious than this one. Reed leaped up for a look -- and right into the midst of a bunch of huge wasps! Not wanting to fight more venomous foes, he leapt right back down -- and they all decided to call it a day.   

Session 33

Harvester 28, 621 CY
Castle Greyhawk

Percy the Curate, Reed Underbough the Cutpurse, Rom Riverbluff and Gendri the Swordsmen, and Vask the Veteran -- along with their hirelings Bart, Herv, Muelara, and Vandur, and Gert the Bear -- all arrived at Castle Greyhawk, without any solid plan of what to do there. The original plan was to descend deep, maybe level three or four of the dungeon, but that was before several senior members of the Company of the White Oak wound up having other plans. The confidence of the assembled forces here was shaken a little -- could they survive the deeper levels with only one cleric and only a novice hireling for a magic-user?

They decided they could not, and that they would return to the first level of the dungeon. There was, after all, much of that level left unexplored, and some areas on the maps they had still unexplored. That would become their focus. But first, they left the cart and mules in the stables with Bart and Vundar to guard them.

For old times’ sake, they went down the trapdoor in the courtyard and past the old prison cells. They circled around the old brigand and orc lairs and made their way east, reaching the smashed laboratory where the stairs went up to the tower. Here they became curious again about the mystery lever on the landing in the stairwell, and resolved to finally pull it like they had long talked about doing.

But they took precautions. Percy figured out the right location to hammer a spike into the wall so they could loop rope underneath it, and pull the lever down from a great distance, outside the laboratory. They heard the sound of stone grating and, when Rom volunteered to check it out, he found a secret door had opened in the landing, a secret door that no one had ever detected there. Below was a 20’ deep shaft with metal rungs set into the wall, and a tunnel heading south at the bottom. With a rope tied around him for safety, Rom climbed down to investigate. The tunnel ran south 40’, turned southeast for 20’, and ended at a second ladder going up to a second trapdoor, only 10’ lower than the first one. 

Looking at the maps, there was clearly a large walled off section that could contain a large secret room. Everyone was eager to explore, but there were two problems. One, if there was anyone above the trapdoor, they would be hard to reach except one at a time by the ladder. And then there was Gert the Bear, who was very talented, but not talented enough to climb down a ladder. They needed another way into that space, on this level.

Further east was another room the company had never bothered exploring before. It was a narrow room that only seemed to serve as furniture storage, but they found a secret door in the east wall that led to another storeroom, this with four semi-valuable-looking portraits hanging in it. They rolled up the paintings to take with, but grew frustrated in their search for secret doors. They needed another one that would lead into that room, but there was no additional doors leading into that space. After much searching all around that area they finally gave up. Vask would guard Gert, while they were in that narrow room, with the door spiked shut behind them. And everyone else would go explore that secret room.

The secret room turned out to be a secret cave and it had one single resident -- Elspeth the Cobbler, a crazy woman the company had met seven months ago in the dungeon on this level. She did not remember any of them, but made the same offer to fix their shoes. She also revealed that she had stumbled upon this room, found nothing but an empty coffer down here, and was using this place to hide because there were more hobgoblins on this level these days, and she found them particularly scary. She also revealed that she was dangerously low on food and drink.

It was about this time that Gendri, standing off to the side, was attacked from behind! Something with fiery breath had bitten him and it turned out to be a huge, dark red dog with glowing eyes and fire in its mouth. As the Company fell in to attack it, it breathed a line of fire that injured three more members of the company. But once it was surrounded, it only took two minutes for the company to slaughter the huge beast.

The beast had clearly not been in here before, but had possibly jumped up through the open trapdoor behind them. And, while they were debating skinning the beast and Percy was casting a cure spell -- they noticed a human woman and a male orc outfitted like thieves had climbed up the trapdoor without being noticed until now. The intruders were shocked that the beast was dead. And while the company was trying to get answers out of them, they found there was actually another unseen intruder in the cave with them, an older woman who moved out of the shadows and backstabbed Gendri. Poor Gendri, targeted again, was bleeding out and about to die. Luckily, the gods were really paying attention to Percy today and they granted his spell quicker than normal.

That was when Reed told Muelara to cast her sleep spell. It put all three thieves to sleep, but also Rom and Herv and Gendri, just as he was recovering (and probably also Elspeth, who had gone fetal as soon as she’d seen the scary hound). At the same time, Percy was casting Hold Person on the backstabber, so that one was both sleeping and held. Luckily, since the battle was now won (again), it was easy to wake up the sleeping companions. But what to do with the prisoners? The paralyzed backstabber would be taken with as a prisoner, lowered gently into the tunnel and then carried between Rom and Gendri. Knowing that Percy, Rom, and Gendri were three of the biggest goody-goody’s in the company, Reed and Herv promised to take care of the other two while the rest of the company went to go check on Vask and Gert.

They did not get far, for three more people were waiting for them -- a young male and two even older women, old crones -- and all three of them were spell-casters. Gendri and Rom tossed the prisoner into the eldest crone, disrupting her spell, but Gendri, Rom, and Muelara were all put to sleep again. Percy was joined by Reed and Herv from above, using spell-disrupting missile weapons to help win this battle, just in time for the sleeping party members to be roused awake for.

Only the one prisoner was taken, but much treasure had been culled off of all six of them. They returned to Vask to tell him all he had missed. Because everyone but Reed and Vask were hurt, there was talk of returning to the city now, but they were convinced to press on a little further so Vask could get some much-needed experience. Returning to the map, they saw there was a series of rooms south of them, past the muralled hall, they had only half-finished exploring in the past (Herg the “Half-Goblin” had been encountered there, long ago).

One of those rooms had at some point become the lair of five glowing giant beetles. It was another short fight to squish them all, though one of them seriously hurt Percy with a vicious bite before it was all over. They had no obvious treasure, but thinking glowing beetles might be valuable specimens, rope was tied to all of them and they were dragged out behind the company.

The thief, a woman in her mid-50s, was the party's prisoner and she was no longer asleep or magically held (indeed, she had been tied and gagged for some time now). On the way out, the company stopped to finally interrogate her. She revealed herself as Idony, professional burglar. She was once an adventurer, like them, until she became lost on the third level of the dungeon and forgot the way out. She lived down there ever since, joining other lost adventurers, including the women who formed a coven of magic-users under the leadership of the Azure Enchantress. The Azure Enchantress never had them, but Idony and Sigrid (Sigrid had been the one struck with Idony) were the ones who had dreams sent by the Adversary, telling them to find and kill the Company of the White Oak, and sent them the barghest (the fire-breathing giant dog) to help.

But she refused now to tell them anything else that would help them. "I'd sooner die than help you. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing we took some of you with us."

No one understood that last part until returning to the stables -- Bart the Carter and Vundar the Elf were dead.