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| ** The Mythic World of Urd Campaign Page ** |
After rest and resupplying and the dwarven mine, the party is left with the choice of returning to the keep (and likely having to fight their way past a horde of gnolls) or returning to the unexplored caves in search of the bugbears and gunpowder.
Celestina is able to take a look at the night sky and perform some astrological calculations that indicate the keep is indeed under siege, but the way to the bugbear lair is clear. The party elects to raid the bugbears while they can. Doncha, feeling the siege to be a more pressing matter, takes his leave.
The party reaches the entrance to the bugbear lair to find a crude arch and doorway has been installed in the cave mouth. It is not locked, allowing them to enter quietly. Jessup and Hagle scout down the first corridor and discover three bugbears posted in a dimly lit room. The rest of the party advances but the bugbears hear them coming.
A fight erupts in the corridor, including gunfire, which draws a large mob of more bugbears from somewhere deeper in the cavern. However, the party prevails largely unscathed. One bugbear manages to flee and avoid death for the moment. Before anyone can give chase, Jessup hears calls for help in the opposite directions and notices a set of keys hanging on the wall.
Searching around, the clerics Hedemar and Volker find two cells of prisoners, whom they promptly free. Among them are a pair of merchants and their two guards, a human warrior, three kobold from Hagle’s tribe, four orcs (the last remaining survivors of the Yellow Tusk tribe that were slaughtered and reanimated by the necromancer Viktora Ash), a huge bugbear, a female dwarf, and a male elf.
The bugbear is Huggz, the former leader of the bugbears. He has been deposed by the troll, Ilezal, sent by the Troll King in the wake of the goblins’ and hobgoblins’ defeat. Huggz is angry at being made to share the blame with the leaders of the other groups, stating the bugbears did their jobs effectively. He wants to kill the troll and the bugbears who didn’t stand with him.
The dwarf is Inghilde Irongrit, the sister of the slain patron of the dwarves. She stayed behind with her brother to cover their clan’s escape when the mine was attacked by the bugbears and was captured. Huggz killed her brother, but she begrudgingly agrees to a truce to help the party deal with Ilezal and remaining bugbears.
The elf is Jadai, a wandering aesthetic who was captured while traveling through the forest. He, along with the humans, kobolds, and orcs also want to help and agree to fight, although the two merchants can only serve as torchbearers. The large group follows Huggz as he leads them to his former chambers, where he assumes they’ll find the troll.
They come upon the passage leading to their destination to find it lined with a maze of gunpowder barrels. As the group begins to carefully negotiate the obstacles, a group of bugbears emerge from hiding farther up the passage and begin shooting with arquebuses. But they aren’t shooting at people; they’re shooting at the barrels!
One bugbear manages an accurate shot and two gunpowder barrels explode, killing three of the orcs and one of the human guards. The three kobolds flee back to the entrance and abandon their new comrades. The rest of the group are able to make it through barrels and reach the bugbears before any others can be detonated.
The bugbears had concealed themselves in an alcove with a door. As the melee begins, the door opens to reveal a female bugbear - Kizzes, the former mate of Huggz. Behind her is the troll, Ilezal. She fires her arquebus at the nearest target, killing the second human guard and Ilezal begins chanting a spell. A few seconds later, he engulfed the entire alcove with a fireball.
When the conflagration ends, only Jessup, Roderick, and Harald remain standing, along with Inghilde, Huggz, and the sole surviving orc. Inghilde continues to battle with the last bugbear in the alcove while Huggz and the orc (Duluk) join Harland in an attempt to fight their way into the adjoining room. Huggz seems particularly enraged by the betrayal of his mate, Kizzes.
Roderick is able to apply magical healing to Hagle and Jadai, but only enough to keep them from bleeding out, not get them conscious. He then heals himself to get back in the fight. Jessup tends to Hedemar and Volker with healing draughts and gets them back on their feet to attend to the other wounded. Inghilde kills the last bugbear.
With an evil laugh, Ilezal casts another spell, creating two duplicate images of himself that make it unclear which is the real troll. The group finally fight past Kizzes and into the room. Each strike against an image causes it to disappear, at last leaving the real Ilezal revealed, but not before he can attack Roderick one last time. Surrounded, he attempts to turn invisible abs flee, but he is not fast enough as Harald and Roderick cut him down.
Huggz says he’ll make a bargain with the group for valuable information if they make him an offer. His tone telegraphs that fed up enough to accept a pittance that will allow him to divulge some secrets. For a gold piece he tells them they are welcome to all of the bugbears’ loot, stored across the corridor and he shows them a secret passage to where they stashed all the gunpowder. He doesn’t know if it’s still there. He then departs.
The merchants and the orc, Duluk, decide to accompany Inghilde back to the mine and to hold the loot for the party until they can claim it, leaving the party to heal its wounds and decide their next move.
