GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Session 157, Cold Fens 15 - Hexcrawling the Cold Fens (Part II)

Game Date: 7/25/2021 - 7/27/2021

Characters:
Aldwyn Hale, human knight (345 points)
     Varmus the Hanged, human apprentice wizard (170 points)
Bruce McTavish, human barbarian (329 points)
Crogar, human barbarian (350 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (498 points)
Gerrald Tarrant, human wizard (418 points)
     Rahtnar the Skeleton (~125 points)
Wyatt Sorrel, human swashbuckler (354 points)
Ulf Sigurdson, human cleric (353 points)

We started off in the swamps of the Cold Fens, with the PCs heading towards the giant's lair.

The plan was to scout it out, move inland, and then come at them early in the morning to surprise the nocturnal giants.

That is more or less what they did. They moved inland, and quickly found a deadfall trap. They spent a good deal of time on it after Galen climbed up the tree to identify its trigger mechanism. They then put Silence down and triggered it with arrows. This cost them a good 20-30 minutes, though, mostly spent deciding how and if to disarm it. The mist really slowed them down, as they can't see more than a few yards clearly in any direction and not at all past 6-7 yards even at the best of times. They found yet another trap soon after - a pit, with a dead maned rat at the bottom, and a bent-back spiked branch ahead. They used Silence and set that trap off, too.

Once past it, they reached the giant's lair and backed off. They entered a Sanctuary and Ulf put Vigil on himself and Galen. Galen stayed outside all night, watching the cave. After a few hours of nightfall, they came out. They moved out into the night to the east, laughing and joking with one another. They were armed with swords and one carried a large rock. They were soon lost to the night and mist.

Galen stayed observing, and smelled smoke from the cave. He took a scout around the entire hill, and found a "back door" blocked with a mossy boulder but no other way in.

Come nearly morning, the giants returned, without rocks but one had an animal carcass over his shoulder and a bag of other animals over his shoulder. They headed in. Galen noted they now had mail gloves, and their mail curtain had been replaced with a single heavy animal hide curtain with no central divide.

In the morning the others came out of their Sanctuary. Galen briefed them, and they waited until 10 am and then headed in.

They made Galen, Ulf, and Wyatt invisible and buffed them with some other spells. The plan was they'd go in and kill all of the goblins while under a Silence spell. They headed to the curtain with Ulf dragging a stick to leave a mark so they'd know where he was. Galen had See Invisible on, and Wyatt followed the stick mark.

They moved in, sans light, sighting by the firelight flickering around the edges of the curtain to the kitchen. They reached it and heard goblin voices.

Ulf cast a 4-area Silence just this side of the curtain, covering much of the kitchen. They pushed the curtain open and saw two goblins. Galen shot them both down. Three others on the far end, outside of the Silence, could be seen to be yelling. Galen shot them all down, too, over the next couple of seconds, as Wyatt rushed the north exit to prevent them from fleeing (in case Galen missed them or another one.) Five down, two to go? But where were the two?

They split up a bit. Ulf stayed near the curtain. Galen moved forward in the Silence. Wyatt faced the curtain, listening.

Then the southern curtain opened up, and out charged the two giants, swords out, fully armed and armored. They started swinging at Galen. Galen dodged back and away, and managed to get behind one of the tables. He shot at them as he moved, but his arrows simply missed - Missile Shield, in all likelihood.

Wyatt didn't hear them - they were in the Silence - but caught them with a glance back a second later. He ran back after crushing a Walk on Air spellstone. Ulf backed off to the curtain. He was afraid to turn his back, so he ended up taking a few seconds to get there and grab the curtain.

One giant, in the black armor, kept after Galen. The other moved up and waited. As Ulf moved the curtain, he slashed across the hexes where anyone touching the curtain should be. Ulf dove prone under the blade.

Wyatt arrived just as the black armored giant moved away from Galen and toward the curtain. He was also still Invisible and used Run and Hit to stab the giant's eyes out. It was still up, but blind. It retaliated by attacking where he was, but Wyatt was able to avoid the attacks.

The white-armored one two took swings at Wyatt and rolled a 4, which Wyatt cancelled out with Luck, causing a miss. The giant's other swing was also a 4, though, and it chopped off Wyatt's left leg.

The white-armored one held his sword up to his eyes and it glowed. Wyatt tried to attack him but the giant defended, and then it stabbed still-invisible Ulf in the vitals. Ulf went down to -54 HP . . . with automatic death at -60. He narrowly avoided dying again.

The black-armored giant drew out a potion.

Galen ran up behind the giants and past them. As he did, he chopped the potion bottle and broke it. After that, he managed to get out of the curtain as Wyatt used a Levitation stone and then floated up, still prone, and attacked the giants.

Galen ran out and called for help. The others began to run in. Ulf remembered he could cancel a spell, and did so on the Silence.

The white-armored giant tried to kill Wyatt while backing off, as the black-armored one blindly stumbled to the north curtain.

The other PCs arrived, using spellstones and casting buff spells as they came. When they arrived, the white-armored giant had ducked out, following his brother.

Galen ran after them and opened the curtain, nearly getting stabbed by the white-armored one. He followed as he ran - and the giant quickly outpaced him . . . plus, in the dark, Galen couldn't see much once the curtain fell.

The eventually followed them to the boulder-blocked exit - it had clearly been moved and put back. The giants were gone.

The inside of the rock had runes on it. Gerry identified them as your standard "evil runes." Dangerous, permanent, and possibly passable with a password . . . which probably isn't knowable without divination magic.

They returned to the kitchen and then to the "main room." There, they pour 4 minor and 6 major healing potions into him, getting him mostly healed up. They searched the altar while discussing how to go about looting the place before the giants returned.

They found the statue on the altar was magical, and Bruce picked it up, all 500 pounds or so of it. Underneath was a cavity with a jug and two flat rocks carved to resemble crude claws. They took them all. Ulf tried Gift of Letters on the carvings but they weren't in trollish, despite the statue being a crude troll-like figure that was probably Old Father Troll. They put the statue back, since it clearly couldn't be broken easily. Dismissive Wave didn't clear any curse from the area.

As they did so, though, the curtain to the NW opened and in rushed the two giants, straight at Crogar, who stood guard in the middle. They were both Great Hasted. Crogar fought them off for a couple of precious seconds, while they destroyed his shield and cut off his left arm. He kept them occupied as Gerry buffed him with Shield +6. Bruce tried to flank them. Wyatt used another Levitation stone and floated at them. Aldwyn rushed them. The others mostly stayed away, although Ulf moved up closer as is his wont. Varmus tried Counterspell and failed a couple of times.

The giants kept fighting, backing off towards the front door, using their reach and multiple attacks to try and smother one foe at a time, but were forced to contend with two. The black-armored one crippled Bruce's arm, narrowly missing a dismemberment (by 1 point of basic damage!), but otherwise they didn't harm the PCs. The PCs didn't land any blows back. They kept backing off and then suddently started to hit, and then run back on their second turn. They reached the curtain before the PC. The black-armored one held the curtain for his brother, who ducked out. As he did, Galen, who'd been loosing 3 arrows a second the whole time, finally rolled a 4 and beat his Missile Shield.

They fled in two directions, the black one stumbling out one-eyed, and into the mist.

The PCs quickly beat it themselves, covered their track as they moved away and then popping into a Sanctuary in what Galen decided was an unlikely place for the giants to look.

They stayed 24 hours and then popped out, bushwacked to the north, and began to hike home.

I handwaved the hike home because of real-world concerns.

They made it back to Ulf Hollow in a few days, and then used Regeneration on Wyatt and Crogar.

Notes:

- the PCs wisely suspected Watchdog or something similar, and put Mage Sight on Gerry. But Gerry didn't go in and couldn't see in, so they don't know if that's what woke the giants. It's possible they just sleep lightly and in their armor, like PCs do. They just don't know because they didn't leverage their ability to check.

- again the giants proved a problem. The giants are canny. They fight and act like delvers - they use magic liberally, they fight in a coordinated fashion, they flee when it's not going well, and they heal up entirely (somehow) between fights. Only equipment costs - like the gloves the PCs disposed of in town - seem to be an issue. The PCs don't seem to have an answer for dealing with this any more than the monsters in Felltower and elsewhere have a solution for dealing with the PCs - where even killing a few of them doesn't change anything. The giants, same. It's a conundrum. I have thoughts but I'm reserving them for now.

- We had an interesting Luck interaction, which deserves its own post.

- We determined that if you're in a Sanctuary, you can't maintain spells on someone outside of the Sanctuary. You're in a different world, and thus when the spell needs more energy to maintain you're not there to provide it. So it just ends.

- I handwaved the trip back because I had a lot of stuff to do last night that couldn't wait. Real life saved the PCs some trouble. It happened back in the day, too.

- XP for both sessions was 2 for exploration, 0 for loot.

- MVP for the session was Crogar for fighting off Great Hasted giants solo for several seconds, at the cost of his arm and shield. It wasn't Wyatt, despite writing a song about the combat, which I shall post tomorrow.

- Gerry's player (and Wyatt's, and Galen's, and others) deserve a mention for not telling Ulf's player that he could just cancel Silence. They just waited, especially because they knew he couldn't be told because he was under Silence. It's tempting to just say it out loud, rationalizing that "he'd know that." Anyway, lesson learned - know your abilities!