Will the fight ever end?
Date: 12/21/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.
Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)
We picked up where we left off, at around second 52 of the fight.
Rogar was down, Hannari chasing down some escaping Gith, Thor cornering an axeman, Percy bashing thorkers, and Chop dodging thorkers. Duncan began to move to put up a wall to seal off the room from the "south" (screen down) entrance.
Things went sideways immediately. A number of thorkers rushed out to assist the Gith that Hannari was after. Others stood up from where they'd fallen, healed up enough to get back into the fray.
The PCs pulled back a bit, as Thor finished off the axeman and Percy downed a couple of thorkers. Duncan put up a wall of earth and then immediately tried another, to seal another corridor into the room, but failed. Chop followed, feeding him energy with Lend Energy and drinking paut as fast as he could.
The PCs fought the advancing new thorkers off for a couple of seconds and Duncan sealed off that side, too. Meanwhile, thorkers retreated back, in response to some unhead command, and dragged off some fallen Gith. Hannari and Percy and Thor rushed over, with Vlad providing arrow support, to try and stop them. A tossed sleep grenade by Hannari put one down, but another escaped with two bodies dragged behind.
Duncan turned two of the earthen walls to stone, and then rushed over - still fed energy by a trailing Chop - and sealed the last one off.
They rapidly began dragging corpses of the Gith to the hallway, rescued the fallen Rogar and began to heal him, and prepped to get out. As they did, a few thorkers stood up, and needed Percy to put them back down. Hannari dragged one to the GFS and threw him off the landing and down the deep, deep, deep put to the "domed city" level far below.
As they dragged corpses, though, the "west" wall disappeared - the Gith leader had dispelled or dissolved it, somehow. Thorkers rushed in just as Thor was dragging two bodies. He quickly let them go and ran back to the party, grumping the whole way but knowing the plan was grab and go. They fought briefly in the entranceway before walling it off - Hannari dive-rolling into the safe area and grabbing a sleeping thorker - put to sleep in Part I - to keep him on their side of the earth wall.
Duncan got the wall off, turned it to stone, and they fled with their loot - four dead Gith, and one sleeping thorker. Left behind was probably a dozen fallen Gith, easily a score of fallen thorkers and norkers, and everything they dropped during the fight (like a Wand of Fireballs, Rogar's axe, and some thrown weaponry.)
From there, it was a quick trip back to town . . . no wandering monsters turned up (yes, I roll, Felltower is DF on hard mode.)
Notes:
Short crew today - no players for Rogar, Chop, or Percy, but Vlad and Duncan's players, respectively, stepped in for the last two. Rogar was unconcious until the very end. Normally we don't allow PCs to come along without the player, but we do cover for players who can't make all of a multi-session delve.
Finally, this grindy, epic fight ended. It was a grind but not a slog - it really felt like every turn was a decision point . . . and we ended on the 70th turn for most of the PCs.
The PCs didn't nearly get the loot they "earned" but they did get a lot. Four suits of magescale, a magical Gith longsword, chameleon clocks and stealthy boots, and a live thorker to hand over to a "sage" - vivisectionist - for research. The cost was high - a lot of consumables, a dropped Wand of Fireballs with 14 charges, a number of weapons - but no PCs were killed or maimed. They almost certainly killed a number of enemies - a few decapitated or skull-smashed Gith and norkers, for sure, and maybe some of the thorkers. The enemy will be more ready, but have they taken such heavy losses - dozens of their number down - that they can't muster such a hard-crust defense again? We'll see. The PCs will be back, eventually.
MVP was Duncan for the walls.
XP was 4 xp for loot, +5 XP for 5 extra sessions, for 9 xp each. Not bad, oh, and $22K or so in cash, each, after Duncan took the suit of Magescale in best repair.
Fun stuff! Like I said, this was long, but man, I enjoyed every session. I think my players agree, but they'll be happy to do one-session delves if they can pull them off.
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