Actual Date: 2/2/2025
Game Date: 12/12/2024
Weather: Cold, clear, dry.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (335 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
Amlaric, human squire (125 points)
Persistance Montgomery (303 point knight)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)
Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, Dortmund, Ernie, Ferd, Grunlark, and Hansel, human guards (62 points)
Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers (62 points)
Honest Charles LeGrand, human squire (125 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (298 points)
We started where we left off three weeks ago. The PCs were in a big fight with a bunch of mechanical knights and the Iron Witch of Cornwood (an iron-bodied wizard).
Thor was fighting with a single knight, Percy four or five of them, and Vlad (armed with Chop's club, eventually), Chop, and Duncan another. As the session began, Thor broke away from the knight he was fighting and ran around the melee to reach the Iron Witch. Percy kept fighting the knights surrounding him, backed by Agar's Wand playing defense. Percy systematically crippled the hammer arms of the knights (he kept saying, "sword arm") and taking out their legs. They kept after him, shield bashing from seated or prone position. They hit him a fair number of times, but never managed to inflict any damage through his DR. He was briefly spiked in the back by one before he was able to cripple its arm. This kept him busy for most of the action.
Thor got around to the Iron Witch and slashed her in the chest with his meteoric iron long knife, cutting her but not deeply. She ran after tossing a Stone Missile at Thor that he blocked. He followed. In a few seconds, it was clear he was falling behind - his Move 6 vs. her Move 7.
Vlad and Duncan pounded away at the knight in front of them, and Duncan eventually nailed it with a hard shot with a Stone Missile in the right arm and finished it off; it dropped, motionless.
Chop moved up and got off a long-ranged Stone to Flesh and restored Hannari. Hannari took off after the Iron Witch, throwing a meteoric iron kama at her foot to cripple or trip her up. It hit, but did so little it didn't do more than dent her and didn't stick in or hinder her. She kept running, now pursued by both Thor and Hannari. Hannari quickly broke off the chase, because he figured he couldn't really harm her. Thor did a few turns later, after she ran around a corner, because he was just falling further behind.
As they headed back toward Percy, the door to the stairs down - which was right in the fight area - opened up, and a mass of gnolls burst out and attacked Hannari and Thor. They ran back to the other PCs, pursued by gnolls. Backing the gnolls were cultist wizards - those same five guys they'd tangled with repeatedly before (putting the firm lie to the tentative belief that they'd "killed" one in a prior delve).
The gnolls rushed the PCs. Percy broke off from the crippled knights and moved into the fray, launching three strikes at the lead gnoll . . . and hit him three times in the skull, taking him to below -10xHP. Thor and Hannari got into a rough line with Percy and Agar's Wand. The crippled knights started to crawl up behind the PC line. Percy and Agar's Wand went to town. Thor managed to slash one gnoll and wound him badly. Hannari put one down (I think not fatally). Percy killed or knocked out nine of them, and Agar's Wand three more.
As he was doing so, the five cultists emerged from the stairs. Two were briefly within two yards of one another so Hannari threw a Magebane grenade. One dodged out of the gas cloud, the second was caught in it and lost access to his Magery. Hannari ran up to the cultist wizards, and spiked one point-blank in the face with his meteoric iron kama. It knocked the cultist out, and so his Explosive Stone Missile went off. Hannari wasn't able to dive away and took serious damage, as did a gnoll that was too close to the both of them. Another cultist threw an Explosive Fireball that hit the floor right behind Hannari, lighting him on fire (and the gnoll, as well) with 10 base damage. A third threw an Explosive Ice Dagger and further injured Hannari.
Thor ran up and ran over one of the cultists with a slam, only to get caught in a 6d Explosive Acid Ball ("I should start regarding my outer layer of heavy plate as disposable.") He turned after the fireball cultist, and knocked him down and into the stairwell. He was zapped with Explosive Lightning but his Resist Lightning kept him from harm. Chop healed up Hannari with a long-ranged Major Healing.
Even as all of this happened, the disabled knights kept crawling up. Duncan retrieved Thor's flaming sword, and Chop backed off from the knights.
That's where we left it - the Iron Witch of Cornwood had fled, the mechanical knights are down to five or six badly mauled constructs with non-functioning weapon arms and and at least one non-functioning leg, and a few gnolls are still up. The cultist casters only have two still standing - one affected by Magebane and fleeing down the stairs, another backed off to a T-intersection and readying a (presumably explosive) Ice Dagger.
Notes:
- This writeup was a wee bit more detailed, but somehow, when I closed it out to do other work I managed to lose a chunk of what I wrote. So you get the summary of the summary.
- Several players wanted to do another turn or so, just to finish the fight. Maybe, but who is to say what's finished? Will they grab bodies and leave? Stop and try to rest? Try another "rest at the entrance" and regroup to come back after the remaining dwellers in the dungeons? Way too much to resolve . . . and from my perspective, even if finising is a quick 1-3 more turns of fighting, that leaves the players 2-3 weeks of planning their healing spells, discussing ways to maximize their looting, etc. complete with all of the questions they'll ask in between. I'd rather they have to make quick decisions quickly, not with weeks of planning based on certain knowledge. Not since it'll take the whole day anyway even if we don't start in combat. So ending "early" (a little later than our usual time) was better from my perspective. If everyone was gung ho on finishing it I might have, but it wasn't unanimous for continuing, either.
- MVP was Percy for killing/knocking out 9 gnolls in a handful of seconds; Agar's Wand took down 3 in that same time. 12 out of 16 went down just from Percy and his gear. Agar's Wand got right into slaying the evil gnolls, even as it wouldn't pound away at the mindless automatons they wanted it to fight.
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