| Session 28: The Kobold Kerfuffle | |
|---|---|
| [[|250px]] | |
| Real World Date | Mar 7th, 2015 |
| Game Date | Jun 19, Year 0 |
| Location | Zyne Vul |
| Enemies | kobolds, and Nam's bloodlust |
| NPCs | none |
| previous Session 27: A Dragonless Dungeon |
next Session 29: Spirits and Sphinxes |
Synopsis[]
The Party continues to explore the Octopus Temple. They find kobolds. It does not go well for the kobolds.
Full Account[]
To recap! The Party just killed a night hag, climbed a staircase, and found a belt and another staircase.
Down this staircase is a fairly well-preserved passage without too much rubble. A little ways along, the path forks in two directions. The right goes steeply up, while the left one goes down. A pile of rocks lies at the intersection. The rocks appear to have fallen from along the right path. The heroes ascend in order to find what could have caused this implied motion. The path terminates in a vertical shaft lit with more fungus. The bioluminescence reveals that another passage, above the heroes, leads off perpendicularly from the shaft, but the column also continues upward into darkness. Recon with Namfoodle proves that this is the same shaft that the party found in the beginning of the dungeon. This is the bottom of that shaft. So the party retreats to the previous fork and decides to go down instead. This is at this time the only unexplored path.
There are many caved in paths branching off from the main avenue, but none that allow passage. This avenue forms the stem of a T-intersection with a large, high-ceilinged road made of stone. Light comes from the left, while darkness lurks to the right. The party goes left and begins to hear murmured conversation from around a bend. Namfoodle sneaks ahead and sees a couple of kobolds hunched in the ghostly light of a fire. They are playing a dice rolling game and one is accusing the other of cheating. It sounds like there are many more kobolds just out of sight.
Isaac uses a scroll of Disguise Self to make himself look more dragon-y. Then he and Namfoodle (The Party’s Draconic speakers) take point in an intimidating diplomacy attempt to see if the kobolds can be useful to them. The others follow silently behind, trying to form a threatening posse of “bodyguards” for the squishy diplomats.
The squad bursts into the room and try to keep their composure. They are now surrounded by twelve kobolds and their two dire weasels. They are too panicked for diplomacy to work.
“Release the sacred flower!” one squeals.
“No, you do NOT release the sacred flower!” Isaac growls. But it is too late!
Fire erupts around our heroes’ feet, damaging them. Namfoodle casts Ghost Sound and bellows in Draconic that the kobolds must stand down. The little lizards look around, bewildered, while Namfoodle explains the party’s motives. The kobolds remain wary.
“If you wish to remain peaceful, then go back the way you came!” one of the kobolds says, brandishing its quarterstaff.
“We can’t do that,” Namfoodle asserts.
“Yes-you-can!”
“What’s beyond this room?”
“Stuff!”
Vic tries to calmly mimic Namfoodle’s Draconic phenomes using his diplomacy check. But he ends up just cussing them out.
“I am going to count to seven.” The kobold says. “And when I am done, you must be gone. One. Two…”
“BEHOOOOLD!” screams Isaac, who really wishes he was a dragon.
“Five,” the kobold continues, unperturbed. “Eight.”
“Wait,” Isaac says.
“Fifty-one. ATTACK!”
The weasels snap their leashes and launch themselves toward the party. Isaac calls for a choke hold at the small entrance the party came through, in hopes of baiting the kobolds into a suicide run. However, these kobolds know magic, and they try their best to sabotage the adventurers’ movements. One casts Web to ensnare the party. Namfoodle counters with a fireball, but it also sets the web on fire while Isaac and Emilie are still stuck in it. Hm.
Namfoodle takes damage from spells and bows and finds himself at a scant 6 HP. Vic blocks the gnome from the archers, but chooses to attack a nearby weasel instead of healing Nam. And he misses. No hard feelings though because Vic is being proxied by Namfoodle’s player. But still, Nam is at 6 HP.
“Things are looking grim for our gnomish fleeyeh!” Emilie’s player said in a radio play narrator voice. “I couldn’t come up with a noun in time so I just made sounds.”
Nam launches a cluster of kobolds into the air with a magical field of black tentacles. A kobold at the fringe tries in vain to pull his friend down from the tentacles’ grasp, its tail pathetically pierced by one of Emilie’s javelins. Kal kills it. Its grappled friend screams in physical and emotional agony until it is crushed to death. It’s okay. The party tried to be diplomatic. This is the kobolds’ fault. Shh.
The remaining kobolds surrender with horrid shrieks. Nam mercifully dismisses the tentacles. There is silence, save for the crackling, hissing fire that feeds on the dying remains of the web.
“What lies beyond this chamber?” he asks. They are silent. Nam repeats himself.
“Big worms.”
Well, fuck. Whatever that means, it’s bad news. Most likely, it means Illithids.
The party scouts out one of the three exiting paths. Namfoodle sneaks ahead and finds a baby kobold snoring adorably in a tent, clinging to a spellbook.
“I coup de grace the kid,” Nam’s player says.
After urgent protests from the rest of the players, Namfoodle chooses instead to just take the damn book. The kid critically fails its wake up check. Cool.
The Party retraces their steps and takes the next open path. But the kobolds cry out for them to stop! It is scary there, they say.
They seem sincere, so although the little gremlins have no apparent motive to help, The Party heeds their warning.
As a result, they almost fall into an enormous spike pit. But Namfoodle uses this as an opportunity to loot the corpses already lying in the pit by using Spider Climb on the walls.
Emilie asks the party to scream and smash their fists into the walls. They do so. The kobolds mutter and snicker in the previous chamber. The party snickers too. It’s so fun to be in the know. The joke is definitely on the kobolds, because Namfoodle also got a really amazing amulet out of that foray that stabilizes an unconscious and dying user. There’s also an antidotal salve.
The kobolds are horrified to see The Party alive again. Namfoodle mocks them, and they bribe the heroes to go away. Emilie urges Namfoodle to reject the offer since they’ve already hurt the tiny dino people so much. Namfoodle hesitates. Ultimately, he takes the gold and promises that the party will leave, and if they return it will only be in passing. The kobolds are not happy with this deal, but they don’t have enough power to do anything about it.
The party saves the “scary” path for later, and decides to explore the dark path from the other side of the earlier T-intersection. Then they will camp in the intersection and press onward and eastward in the morning.
Notes[]
- Vic was proxied by Namfoodle's player