Session 34: All Norked Up!

Players Characters, Henchmen, Hirelings, & Animals

Ivar level 3 Neutral Evil Barbarian

Konan level 3 Neutral Good Barbarian

Oddjob level 2 Neutral Good Barbarian

Erik level 2 Neutral Good Barbarian

Chow, Doug, Garbage – sledding dogs of Oddjob

Tunga, bunga, Mex, Rex, Tex – tribesmen

Frost Giant named troll – friendly npc they run into

3 wolves – owned by frost giant

In downtime the party infects their 4 captured bandits with their captive female gryph. This kills the bandits, but produces valuable gryph hatchlings. They sell the hatchlings and use the gold value to help level up. Ivar, being above average intelligence for a barbarian, (the only one in the group) will also begin the process of learning to read and write, hoping to eventually learn common at some point.

The party is now beefy as fuck, with over 30 hp on average even though the highest levels are only level 3. This is explained in the lore of barbarians. The reason they have such high health and durability is because they survive in the harshest wilderness in the world. You’re not likely to run into a pitiful group of 6 orcs alone in this region, the dangers are far greater here. The barbarian’s brute strength is part of why they fear magic so much, it’s one of the few banes able to counteract their brute strength and fighting prowess. Tribal accolades and valor are awarded to those able to destroy magic. Though many fail to do so – as we will see in this session.

Fred, the chieftain of Fredricton, is going around finding suitable barbarian men to explore the Northeast in order to find out what has happened to the mammoth population. The tribe has been getting by on turtle, fish, and small game but caloric intake required to survive in this cold climate is very high. Without the big payouts from mammoth harvests the tribe only has about 2 weeks left of food before they will have to start refusing food to elders to keep the children fed.

Fred meets with the party and explains the situation. The Viking Raiders decide to go back to the mountains where they saw the smoke coming from to investigate. He mentions the tribe’s allies, the frost giants of the North, who may be able to help since their ice cavern is near that region. Not all frost giants are friendly to the Fredricton barbarians, but friendlies can be identified because they speak the tribal language.

Before heading off the party gives the tribe info about their turtle hunting spot. Erik gives the tribe 40 light spears and 10 heavy spears to aid in hunting the giant turtles. This way the tribe will have some source of food to sustain themselves while they are gone.

They return to the cave they visited last time that was surrounded by three mountains. Arbitrarily denoted mountains 1, 2, and 3. It’s a warm summer day in Brunswick, about 50 degrees, so the snow has melted a bit. They can see the melting icy tracks from last adventure they saw climbing up mountain 1, so they decided to start there.

The Raiders spend some time walking up the mountain. They come to a flat peak where a campsite was clearly made. There is a 30’ flag pole in the ground, an extinguished fire, and three wrapped Christmas presents. Oddjob goes to open a present when blinding gas sprays out of it towards his face. He makes his saving throw so he is not blinded, but another larger present opens up and reveals a shrieker that immediately goes off, but fails to alert a nearby monster. The party reacts and slays the shrieker before it can squeal again. The party is a little more cautious with the third present this time, so they use their detect magic abilities and find that it is magical.

Oddjob opens this box but to the party’s surprise it is empty. He tries picking it up and dumping it out but nothing happens. They put gold in the box, but nothing happens. They put a tribal handaxe in the box but nothing happens. Finally, they try a battle axe with a brass wedge connecting the handle to the axe head. When this comes out of the box they look and see the wedge is now golden! They detect magic on the axe and can’t tell if the axe is magical now. Konan has the idea of putting a piece of copper in the box and it comes out gold as well. The temptations are high to take all their copper and turn it to gold, but since they’re barbarians they play the role correctly and destroy the magical box with fire.

They turn their attention to the flagpole and decide to set a pit trap around the pole. Erik takes 6 spears and the party digs a hole around the pole and constructs a fake base so that anyone coming to put a flag up on the pole will fall into the spears. Ivar keeps watch while the trap is setup and notices smoke coming from “mountain 2” in the distance. They make their way down the mountain and towards mountain 2. Before they get there, Oddjob cuts down some trees to make a fire and they set up camp for the night. The party experiences no encounters but they hear the howling of wolves in the distance.

In the morning, they bury the fire to cover their tracks and approach mountain 2. They see a mammoth skeleton larger than they have ever seen before and Erik doesn’t believe it is real. He thinks it must be a fossil or something. He approaches it and pokes around and discovers it is bone. It may have been preserved in ice that has recently melted in the unusually warm summer days They’ve had this week.

This mountain has a series of plateaus that have a reasonable walking path between them so they start up the path. They come to the first plateau only to find wolf droppings, and some ribbon in a bush. They try to detect magic, but don’t find anything magical. Oddjob pulls the ribbon and finds 3’ of red ribbon similar to what the presents from mountain 1 were wrapped in. They search through the bush and find an empty cardboard box, but this time no one senses a magical aura to it so they keep moving up to the second plateau in search of who left the opened present here.

On the second plateau the party runs into a frost giant with three wolves on a leash picking at the last few scraps of meat left on a mammoth corpse. Ivar calls to the giant in his tribal language and the Giant responds in the same language. He is also interested in figuring out what happened to the mammoths and says this is the first one he’s seen in a month or so with any meat still on the bones. He is letting his wolves pick it apart. He came here because he noticed all the mammoth skeletons on this mountain so he thought maybe someone was bringing them here. Since this giant is allied with the Fredricton barbarians he agrees to help investigate this mountain with them for now.

They start walking to the less forested half of this level of the mountain and notice a shrieker at the base of the natural stairway up to the top. They skewer it with ease before it has a chance to go off and approach the open section at the base of the stairs. They see a big boulder at the top of the slope and are afraid the slope is trapped or something to have the boulder come down on them. So they devise a plan to use their barbarian cliff climbing abilities to sneakily shimmy up the side of the mountain and take a look at what’s up top.

Konan is the most dexterous of the bunch so he gives it a go with the frost giant below to catch him if he falls, which he does. He is wise enough to not yell out when he falls (rolled under his wisdom level) so he doesn’t make a noise loud enough to be heard by anyone not in the present vicinity. He tries again and makes the climb, but fails his roll to “hide in natural environment” (a barbarian skill.) So when he gets to the top and peaks out over the ridge he sees a group of 6 norkers sitting around a fire. They notice him and run towards a larger group that he can’t quite see from his position but can hear the sounds of many more norkers. He decides to shimmy back down to the group and let them know the jig is up and whatever’s up top knows they are there. The next half of the session will be consumed by the resulting conflict that transpires.

When he gets down, the party gets an uneasy feeling... A cleric has cast a curse upon them. They could have fled and came back once the curse wore off, but these brave barbarians felt insulted by the use of magic against them, and all charged up the slope to confront their opponent head on.

They get halfway up the slope before the next round starts, and the 6 norkers from before are now on the other side of the boulder. They fail their roll to push the boulder down the path. The party wins initiative allowing them to rush past the boulder and engage with the norkers in a fairer fight. (they’re still cursed though.) Now that they are on the peak in the center they can now see there are 6 more norkers at another fire to the west, 6 norkers near a pile of presents in the center of the plateau, and two mysterious figures on the other side of the presents.

The next round begins and the party loses initiative. (They will lose the next like 10 initiatives, it’s sad really). This allows the 12 norkers they can now see to charge them and keep the fight near the boulder. The Frost giant tries to roll the boulder towards the Norker’s at the fire but fails. The boulder rolls over to the side uneventfully. An arrows zips from over the presents and enters into Tunga’s neck, efficiently taking the tribesman out from full HP with a single shot from a +1 bow. The next two turns the party can hear the cleric chanting the vocal component of spells. Unbeknownst to the party the cleric has detected alignment on them, and having detected some barbarians of good alignment, cast protection from good the next turn. During this time the party is having trouble with the norkers, but Oddjob gets a couple good one hit kills with his halberd and the frost giant swipes with his club crushing through three norkers in one swing. The dogs and wolves also chip away at the norkers, but their tough skin that gives them 3 AC makes them no slouch in combat for a party suffering a -1 curse.

Despite the slow start, the heavy hitters in the party have plenty of health and it don’t feel as though combat is going too terribly badly… but the level 5 cleric behind the presents is just getting started and still has his most dastardly spells up his sleeve ready to go after his protection from good spell is completed.

He casts hold person, freezing Ivar, Konan, and Bunga in place for 10 rounds. For those who don’t know, a magically held person can be slain automatically. In this case, a norker will climb up the body of the T-posing barbarian, place his jaws around their throat, and clench down, piercing through the jugular and ripping the neck of the held person apart. This tragically happens to Ivar, Konan, and Bunga before the rest of the norkers are finished off.

The remaining party finishes off the last norkers and turn their attention to the fighter and cleric, but a devious spell is cast by the cleric, reanimate dead! This causes Ivar, Konan, and Bunga to stand back up, despite being drained of all their blood! The zombies are slow so it takes them a while to catch up to the party that has rushed towards the presents and engages in combat with the fighter and cleric. The Giant troll attempts to elbow the fighter but he backs up dodges.

The fighter gets bashed by Oddjobs halberd, and bitten by one of his dogs. The cleric desperately uses his last hold person which Freezes Odd job and Mex in place, but doesn’t do anything to Rex, Erik, the giant or the dogs.

The Cleric attempts to cast continual dark and slip away into a trap door, but the giant comes in with a massive club hit for 18 disrupting the spell, and a couple of dogs bite into him as well. Oddly, the cleric’s frosty armor seems to have frozen the club to him, and frozen the dogs jaws to him as well. This gives the Frost giant an idea, if he can grab the handle of the club stuck to the cleric, he can throw him off the mountain! Despite winning initiative the next round, the bad luck continues. Troll the frost giant misses his grapple on the cleric’s club, allowing the cleric’s cause fear spell to go off uninterrupted. He successfully hits the frost giant with the big scaries forcing him to run away at max speed for 5 turns, his wolves soon follow. The next turn he will have the ice on his armor shatter, releasing the dogs but causing some cold damage.

At this point the zombies have caught up to the party and execute Oddjob. Then Mex gets executed soon after. It is now just Erik and the friendly canines that are left among the party. The bad luck with initiative and to hit rolls continues however and the cleric chooses to retreat and let the zombies finish Erik off since the cleric is hanging on by just a thread after so much abuse from the giant and dogs biting him.

Erik realizes the battle is done, and attempts to retreat. All he has to do is survive a handful of opportunity attacks from the fighter and three zombies. The fighter misses with his bec de corbin, but zombie Ivar grabs Erik’s jaws from both sides from behind and with a quick motion snaps the cowardly barbarians neck as he attempt to flee. The party has been wiped.

Rankings

Ivar - D - Executed by norkers while held by norker cleric spell.

Konan - D - Executed by norkers while held by norker cleric spell.

Oddjob - D - Executed by Zombie Konan while held by norker cleric spell.

Erik - D - Executed by Zombie Ivar while attempting to flee.

TPK