Chapter 15: Defending Darktower
15.1: Arrival in Darktower
Soon after finally arriving at Darktower and settling in, the party met with Lord Drake and his allies against the Hobgoblins, the Knights of Darktower. Amongst their number were a powerful cleric of Pelor, Ambrose the White (and old adventuring companion of Drake's), his dedicated follower, a paladin named Cedric Wyrmsbane, two dwarven warriors named Ivan Bloodaxe and Baromir Longbeard and their adventuring companion, a wild wild barbarian from the north named Marcus Strongarm, and Elias Skycloak, a half-elven bowman.
Drake revealed that he and his companions had been busy harassing the supply lines of the hobgoblin army. Since the hobgoblins numbered at least 10,000 and Darktower's defenders numbered around 200, direct military assault was impossible. Attacking the supply trains of the hobgoblins was the best way to keep them on the defensive. Drake hoped to force the hobgoblins to hold back and reinforce their supply route long enough to allow several hundred mercenaries to arrive at Darktower. He hoped that with enough mercenary support, Darktower would be able to hold until the winter storms locked down the hobgoblin troops.
In the meantime, there were other opportunities to thrwart the hobgoblin's plans, but Drake did not have enough reliable companions to take advantage of all of them. That's where Morgrim, Hork, Daergel, and Magnus came in.
15.2: Investigating the Silver Mine
Drake's first mission for the group was to head east and investigate the dwarven silver mine in the mountains there. Darktower had been unable to make contact with the dwarves for some time, and Drake suspected the worst. He asked the party to go to the dwarven mine and assess the situation. If the dwarves were still alive, they were to be offered an escort back to Darktower. If not, the party was to wipe out what hobgoblins they found at the mine, and attempt to bring back what silver ore they could find.
Magnus suggested waiting until the next morning to begin the trek, so he could prepare his teleportation spell again, "just in case". So, the rest of the day, the party got re-acquainted with Darktower. Unsurprisingly, they spent most of the evening at the Black Boar Tavern. Morgrim, Daergel, and Magnus chatted with Ivan and Baromir, while Hork and Marcus had a brawl and then went drinking together.
The next day, by the time the party was ready to hit the road, they found out that Drake had arranged for some of the less experienced adventuring groups around town to range ahead and clear the road east of hobgoblin skirmishing parties. As a result, the journey to the dwarven mine was mostly uneventful, allowing the party to save their spells and energy. They passed a number of wounded but successful adventuring parties, and burned hobgoblin camps, but faced no resistance.
At the silver mine, they made quick work of some bugbears and hobgoblin archers manning the old guard tower, then had a more damaging encounter with a war wizard and four bodyguards hiding in a cave. After taking out the war wizard, Morgrim made use of his command of the goblinoid language to convince the remaining hobgoblins in the cave system to leave peacefully. Around 50 hobgoblins cautiously skirted the party and fled. Many of the hobgoblins were noticeably thin, and the party discovered the remains of several of the large blue riding lizards in the caves. It was clear the hobgoblins had run short on food. Apparently Drake's strategy of attacking the hobgoblin supply lines was having some effect.
The party then made their way into the carved cave system which had housed the dwarven community as well as the mine. They found dwarven skeletons strewn around, and no sign of survivors. They found the chapel of Moradin defaced, and the living quarters stuffed with low-grade silver ore.
When the party started heading towards the mine itself, they were attacked by a large hulking figure covered in the shredded remains of slaughtered dwarves. It turned out to be a formidable construct. Although Hork was left helplessly retching by toxic breath emitted from the thing for much of the battle, the party managed to eventually cause enough damage to bring it down.
When the party explored the rest of the mine, they found confirmation of the fates of the dwarves. They discovered the skeletal remains of the rest of the dwarves mindlessly mining silver and dumping the ore closer to the entrance to the mine. Magnus and Morgrim turned the skeletons to dust, and the party left the cave.
They spotted a mass of figures coming from the north, and made camp on a ledge overlooking the valley where the entrance to the dwarven mine lay, watching. Soon, Daergel spotted something in the sky to the north. As it got closer, it was revealed to be a hobgoblin riding a rotting carcass of a large white dragon. The hobgoblin had markings on his face in the shape of a skull. The dragon corpse landed in the valley, where the hobgoblin animated the corpses of the fallen hobgoblins and questioned them in some strange tongue. He sent the dragon aloft to look for the party, but they hid amongst some bushes and remained unseen. Eventually the strange hobgoblin re-mounted the dragon and left, at which point Magnus teleported the party back to Darktower.
15.3 The Next Mission
Their next mission was to infiltrate a hobgoblin stronghold about 100 miles north of Darktower. Besides housing nearly 1000 hobgoblin soldiers, it was the headquarters of a contingent of powerful hobgoblin mages and war wizards whose duty was to respond to attacks on the hobgoblins' supply chains by teleporting in and retaliating against the attackers. They had made the recent forays of the Knights of Darktower extremely dangerous, and Drake wanted to take them out when they least expected it.
However, the whole stronghold was guarded by powerful magic wards which prevented scrying and unauthorized teleportation, and dispelled any active magical effects on any creature or thing passing into the area of effect. The wards were maintained by a powerful hobgoblin shaman who occupied a temple within the stronghold. After Mork developed a spell that allowed their scrying magics to partially penetrate the defenses of the stronghold, Drake confirmed his suspicion that killing the shaman would drop the defenses.
His plan was to send Daergel and company into the stronghold (hoping Daergel's stealth would be sufficient to allow him to take out the guards undetected and sneak the others in) to assassinate the shaman. Once the magical wards were thus negated, he and his comrades would teleport into the quarters of the mages and war wizards and slaughter them all before they had time to mount any sort of defense.
15.4 Infiltrating the Stronghold
Daergel requested a trip to the stronghold to scout out the defenses and the lay of the land, so Drake teleported them both to a cave about 800 feet from the fort. Drake made Daergel invisible and granted him flight, and Daergel had a quick look around, trying to spot a weakness in the defenses. Eventually he discovered a sewer tunnel draining out of a cliff face below the keep. It was only big enough for Daergel to squeeze through, but would offer an undefended (although disgusting) way into the stronghold.
After some discussion with Drake and Mork, he came up with a plan. Potions of reduction could be used to shrink the others down to Daergel's size to make it through the sewer tunnel, but they would revert to normal size once they passed under the wall and into the area of effect of the defensive wards. To avoid having his companions crushed by the walls of the tunnel, Daergel would (with Mork's help) excavate a slightly larger section of tunnel directly under the wall. This would give the others room to revert to normal size, drink another reduction potion once inside the ward's effect, and then continue up the tunnel.
After a long night of digging, Daergel had still not excavated enough of the tunnel, so the following night Morgrim was talked into going with Mork to finish the job. Upon each of their return, their clothes were thrown out and they were scrubbed down by an unlucky stableboy at the inn near Darktower's gates. Still, the smell of hobgoblin waste could not be completely removed, and a lingering odor remained.
Finally, when the tunnel excavation was completed, they executed their plan. While Drake and his companions waited in the cave, Morgrim, Hork, Daergel, Magnus, and Marcus made their way into the stronghold. With a little luck, the group managed to emerge from the outhouses at the other end of the tunnel without being seen, and made their way to a secluded spot behind the temple. There, they made use of some 50,000 gp worth of scrolls, potions, and other helpful magic that Drake had provided to aid them in the upcoming battle, including the power of flight. When they were ready, Magnus used his Dimension Door spell to teleport them to a floating position under the peak of the ceiling inside the temple.
15.5 The Assassination and the Escape
The temple was around 200' long by 100' wide, and lined with thick stone columns carved to look vaguely like rib bones holding up the ceiling. The sides of the temple, beyond the columns, were wreathed in shifting shadows. At the front of the temple, a tall, dark-skinned hobgoblin seemed to be overseeing some mystic rite on a dais. Six acolytes stood in a circle nearby, chanting, and in the middle of the circle, on an altar, was what appeared to be the still-living remains of some humanoid creature that had been amputated, skinned, blinded, to an extent that it was hardly recognizable. It screamed in anguish over the chanting of the hobgoblins.
Morgrim, Hork, and Marcus wasted no time positioning themselves near the ceiling directly above the shaman. Meanwhile, shadowy humanoid and canine forms began to take shape from the shadows lining the hall and swarm towards Daergel and Magnus. Marcus swooped down to grip the shaman in bear hug, preventing him from casting any somatic spells, while Magnus blessed the area with a prayer. Hork swooped down to strike the shaman, but missed and decapitated the poor thing on the altar.
Meanwhile, Magnus destroyed a number of the shadowy creatures with divine light from his holy symbol, but the rest continued and swarmed him. He staggered as his muscles withered away and his face grew pale and gray. He destroyed some more of the creatures before dropping, unconcious, to the floor below.
By now the shaman was struggling out of Marcus' grip, through some magical means. Luckily, Daergel struck him down with a crossbow bolt tipped with sleeping poison, and as the shaman's head drooped, Hork finished him off with a savage sweep of her axe. Daergel was swarmed by the shadowy figures, until he had no strength to move, but managed to activate a magical ring Drake had given him to teleport him safely back to the cave. Upon his return to the cave, Drake and his comrades teleported to the stronghold's central headquarters to wreak havoc on the mages and war wizards.
Meanwhile the battle continued in the temple. Morgrim began blasting away the shadows with his holy symbol of Moradin, but not before they swarmed Hork and drained her strength to next to nothing. All she could do was scoop up the fallen body of Magnus and fly out the temple window and away to safety (barely dodging the arrows of the hobgoblin soldiers as she flew away). Morgrim also got swarmed and had to teleport to the safety of the cave. Magnus appeared in the cave as well a few minutes later, none the worse for wear.
They waited, watching explosions from the central headquarters of the hobgoblin keep through the wind and rain, hoping Drake's plan would go smoothly and the others would all return alive.
15.6 Holding the Gate
However, they hadn't been waiting long when, with a flash of light, Ambrose appeared amongst them. He healed them with another flash of light, then told them they were being sent back into the battle. The surprise attack was going better than expected, and Drake and his allies had finished off the war wizards. Now they had decided to mop up the rest of the forces in the keep. Morgrim, Marcus, Magnus, Hork, and Daergel were to keep the panicking troops from escaping through the front gates of the keep until Drake and company could finish off the defenders in the headquarters building.
With that, Ambrose was gone again. The party flew down to the front gate in time to keep all but the first few dozen soldiers from escaping. While Marcus and Hork laid waste to hobgoblins in the courtyard within, Morgrim invaded the gatehouse and closed the portcullis, trapping the remainging soldiers inside. The party proceeded to slaughter as many hobgoblins as possible, until Drake showed up in the sky above and began bombarding the remaining hobgoblins with swarms of fireballs.
Soon afterwards, the temple where the party had fought the shaman, which had been crumbling slowly ever since their battle, finally collapsed, and out of its ruins rose a giant creature made of flame and darkness, around 60' tall. That was all the motivation Magnus needed to teleport the party back to Darktower, leaving Drake and his comrades to deal with the monstrous thing.
15.7 The Incident with the Head
After the party returned to Darktower, Daergel, Magnus, and Morgrim harassed the staff at the merchants' inn by the town gates again, first getting scrubbed down by the stable boy, then getting baths in the inn's bath house. Meanwhile, Hork and Marcus bathed in the river, then took the hobgoblin shaman's head out of the bag of holding, and started playing with it. That, it turned out, was not a good idea.
The head started chanting in some strange language. Hork attempted to chop the head into bits with her axe, but to no avail. Marcus ran away like a little girl. Finally, Hork stuffed the head back in her backpack. She yelled for help for a little while, but none of her comrades were within earshot. She took the head out again to stuff a rock in it's mouth, at which point she got a throbbing headache and the sensation of another presence in her mind. With half-orcish stubbornness, she fended off the presence, and stuffed the head back into her backpack.
Around this time Marcus, who had snuck back and gathered his armor and weapons, attacked Hork, thinking her possessed by the shaman. Daergel and Morgrim arrived during the brief battle, and once Hork had bean beaten unconscious, Marcus dropped his hammer and enlisted their help in healing her. When she came too, he panicked, hit her again, and ran away screaming.
Hork, Morgrim, and Daergel enlisted Mork's help in destroying the head, and eventually found Marcus. He later explained to Hork that he had once been possessed by a hobgoblin shaman, and ended up slaughtering his village. Hence his panic upon hearing the dead shaman's chanting.
15.8 Guarding Darktower
Eventually, Drake's comrades returned from fighting the 60' demon. Elias the half-elf archer had been slain, as had Drake himself. To make matters worse, it turned out the demon was one who fed on magic, and it had consumed Drake's soul before being banished back to hell by Ambrose. As a result, Ambrose had been unable to bring Drake back from the dead. He proposed that he and his companions delve into the bowels of hell itself and retrieve Drake's soul. In the meantime, Morgrim, Hork, Daergel, and Magnus would have to stay behind in Darktower and assist Mork in the town's defense if the hobgoblins attempted to retaliate for the destruction of the fortress and assassination of the shaman and war wizards.
Luckily, no attacks came. 10 days later, Drake emerged from his tower, with deep shadows under his eyes, but otherwise seeming none the worse for wear. He thanked the party for their assistance in the recent weeks. He was fairly certain that the hobgoblins would now be regrouping, and would be unable to launch any major offense until the winter storms set in. In the meantime, he and his companions would continue to harass the hobgoblin supply lines and outposts. Morgrim, Hork, Daergel, and Magnus were free to go.
15.9 The Return of Jimmy
It was during this time that Jimmy made his long-awaited, and dramatic, return to Darktower.
Daergel awoke one night to the sensation of a finely-serrated blade cutting across his throat. Jimmy was crouched by his bed, holding the handle of the dagger. He smiled as Daergel awoke, and removed the knife. He criticized the security of the party's house in Darktower, and warned Daergel that Crane could be after them. He called the dagger "the Teacher", and noted that it leaves scars that never fade. He also sliced Daergel across the cheek. That one was for mentioning the Crane problem to Lord Drake.
After that, they rounded up the rest of the party and went for drinks at the Black Boar. Jimmy revealed that the business he had in the dwarven lands which he had mentioned the last time he met the party in Stonehome was actually to assign a guard detail to Morgrim's family. He had done likewise for Daergel's family in the gnomish hills, on the hunch that Crane might go after them to force the party to keep off his trail. He had been correct, and his agents had captured one of the would-be kidnappers.
Jimmy revealed that he had the kidnapper in custody in Darktower, and with any luck should be able to "convince" the captive to share whatever information he had about Crane's whereabouts. He left the group to enjoy their drinks, heading back through the kitchen door of the tavern. About an hour later he returned, wiping blood from his dagger with a smile, and informed the party that Crane was holed up in the deserted wizard's tower in the Black Forest -- the same tower Crane had accompanied the party to the previous fall.
Now that the party's business in Darktower was done and they knew Crane's location, they decided it was high time to go after him.