Session 45 - "It's A Trap!"

8th Apr 2022 - 20:00 - 11:30

In-game timeline: Start of session: 1489DR Uktar 29. End of session: 1489DR Uktar 29

Our "Heroes" leave the young half-elf Suriel with the teenage gnome, Lispeth, and they head out of the village towards where the cavern is reputed to be.

After an hour or so of travelling they reach a split in the path. Karoshi checks for tracks on the ground and discerns that there are lots of humanoid footprints on the left hand path, whilst the right hand path seemed to contain fewer, and more beast-like prints. So they head right, heeding the directions provided by Lispeth.

Another 30 minutes or so travelling leads them to a cave entrance. They carefully approach but see no obvious forms of life at the entrance, other than a strong smell. Karoshi heads inside, whilst the other wait near the entrance.

Karoshi is attacked! Three bears seem to be living in the cave and are none too happy at being disturbed. Two of them take swipes at Karoshi and one catches him with his claws and another with its bite, causing some deep scratches on the paladin. Karoshi responds with a Hellish Rebuke, causing one of the bears to be surrounded in devilish flames.

Jaxxi decides she "doesn't want to kill a bear" and decides to run in and drag Karoshi back out of the cave, taking a claw to the shoulder for her trouble.

Iwee uses her minor illusion to create the sight of a fire in the entrance, hoping to keep the bears at bay. It seems to work and the bears back off, remaining in the cave.

The group have bought themselves a little time, which they use to discuss whether these may be werebears, rather than bears, so they all try to shout out to the bears to convince them they mean them no harm.

Receiving no answer, the group decide to just kill the bears. Iwee dispels the fire illusion and the bears run out and attack Jaxii, who responds in kind. The others take pot-shots at the bears, whilst Jaxii kills the young bear that emerges from the cave with her parents. The dragonborn has completely forgotten her previous reluctance to kill innocent bears, and, under an onslaught of bear attacks, decides to rage and then take out both adult bears. Jaxii, bear-slayer, decides to try to skin one of the bears. She fails and ends up with five pieces of bear skin, only partially covered in fur and still attached to some bleeding flesh. She puts these in her backpack for some reason. They may come in handy.

The rest search the cave and find no obvious exits - this looks like a bear cave. Were they misled by Lispeth, or did she just not know the correct path?

With Jaxii low on health, and Karoshi also damaged, they decide to take a short rest to heal up a bit.

Pressing on, they return to the fork in the path and this time take the left hand path, eventually reaching the base of a plateau on the edge of a mountain. Sending Owl Pacino to scout on the plateau, Derrick spots two humanoids with bows standing at the entrance of a cave on the plateau.

The party scramble up the side of the mountain and approach the two humanoids, who challenge them. The party sensibly let Iwee speak, and she explains that they are here to help the villagers and mean no harm. One of the guards goes ahead into the cave, and the other tells them to sheathe their weapons and to head into the cave to see the villagers.

The cave entrance leads into a wide tunnel, well lit with torches every thirty feet or so. As Karoshi turns to ask the guard a question, he sees the guard's features change and he turns into a humanoid/wolf hybrid!

Trapped in the cave, and with their weapons sheathed, the party are initially on the back foot. The wolf-guard attacks Karoshi from the back, whilst the other guard, who also seems to have turned into a wolf-hybrid form attacks Iwee at the front. Not only that but someone, or something, is firing crossbow bolts at them from further in the tunnel.

The party fight back, Derrick quickly summoning his bonded weapon, whilst the others draw their weapons and attack.

Iwee takes a couple of bites from a wolf, and worries that maybe she may have been injected with some lycanthrope curse. Derrick also gets bitten a couple of times, but thinks that he manages to shake off the venom. Iwee successfully whispers into one of the wolves' heads and scares it away for a while - she slaps it as it runs away, for a total of zero damage.

Jaxii meanwhile gets angry and rages, rushing up to the wolf-hybrid attacking Karoshi. She swings her massive greatsword and clouts the creature with a perfect hit. Unfortunately the wound that the greatsword creates seems to close up immediately and doesn't seem to harm the creature at all. Jaxii is not a happy dragonborn.

Realising that Jaxii's sword was ineffective, Karoshi uses the silver pommel end of his magical warhammer, hoping that the silver would have an effect. It does seem to have an effect, and Karoshi works out that this is more due to the weapon being magical than the fact that the paladin poked him with a silver stick. Maybe turning the weapon round the right way for the next attack would be a sensible move, he concluded.

With Derrick successfully attacking one of the wolves using his magical weapon, Jaxii is worried that she will prove ineffective in this fight. The shame of being bested in were-killings by Derrick forces her to use her breath weapon, despite Karoshi being right next to the creature and likely to be affected by the breath of fire. She douses the werewolf in flame, Karoshi manages to duck out of the way, and is resistant to fire, so takes very little damage, so the plan was a good one.

Derrick, spurred on by Jaxii's triple-bear-kill earlier, swings at the werewolf in front of him and takes it down, following up with an action surge attack on the wererat that had emerged from the shadows. Jaxii grapples a werewolf, enabling Karoshi to attack it at advantage, which enables him to take the werewolf down while it struggled in his arms.

Derrick, not to be outdone, takes out the little wererat with his next attack. Two rats remain - Karoshi heals up Derrick and the fighter runs after the rats and softens them up enough for Karoshi to take them both down with two strikes from his warhammer!

The wolf- and rat- hybrids all seem to revert back to their humanoid form upon death, confirming them as lycanthropes.

The party continue into the cavern. A few hundred yards into the tunnel the cavern opens out. Beside a campfire a tent contains 4 dead bodies and a trail of blood. There are signs of an urn that probably contained tangleweed, and some 30 or 40 discarded cups.

After some searching around the seemingly enclosed and empty cavern, Derrick spots a possible hidden door in the wall, but none can work out how to open it. More searching around the cavern leads to the discovery of a square hole in the central stone pillar in the cavern. In a rapid spark of ingenuity, Iwee realises that the square hole would perfectly house one of the metal posts that hold the torches in the tunnel.

Using this, Derrick and Jaxii turn the column and the area of the wall that looked dodgy slowly opens, revealing another area beyond…