Servants of the Wizard – 53

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  • Aros – Lightfoot Halfling, Rogue
    • Rubber Ducky of Inspiration
  • Galiena Erenaeth – Half Elf, Celestial Warlock / Druid
    • Dearbhán – NPC, Fairy Dragon (Galiena’s pet)
    • NPCs:
  • The Hollowing takes effect…
  • The party, in Chalice, hears the guard from Chalice, rushing back, out of breath, explaining that several packs of gnolls are marching on Greenhaven! (See Session 52)
  • The party agrees they need to rush to Greenhaven and warn them – the party decides to take the rescued slaves: Renoll, Talanor, Everith, Grenthor, Crestmoore, and Sarauan, as well as the young boy they rescued, Grotte Stonespring.
  • Racing as quickly as they can – between the weary slaves and the young child who doesn’t have the endurance – Galiena frequently picks up and carries Grotte in her arms, as does Waesyn to help keep the party moving as quickly as possible.
  • Thankfully they reach Greenhaven before the slow moving gnolls, which seem to constantly be laughing in the woods, drawing more and more to their clan/cackle (DM Note – It’s interesting that the official term for a group of Hyenas is either clan or cackle – specifically cackle, since this is the sound they’re known for making!)
  • Aros leads the freed slaves to the Inn, while Galiena rushes towards the mountain where Crescent the Moonstone Dragon hides from Lord Brenmoon and Razathorn. Galiena gets there, which is located just outside of Greenhaven, and there’s a small rebellion there in the cave with her – and tells Eric Crowfeather and the others that gnolls are marching towards Greenhaven and they’d gotten there just before the gnolls – so the gnolls are not far behind.
  • Eric Crowfeather explains they need to fight the gnolls in the woods – before they reach Greenhaven – because there may be spies for Lord Brenmoon – as well as some soldiers who have been posted just outside of town looking for Galiena still (See Session 31 for details on that Wanted Poster). He explains he’s worried that if the guards catch wind that people around Greenhaven are equipped – Lord Brenmoon may send his men and simply arrest everyone. And it’s a known fact that most who are arrested by Lord Brenmoon’s men are never seen or heard from again.
  • Galiena moves with the rebels, sticking to the woods, and avoiding going through Greenhaven. Aros meets her out in the woods along with Waesyn (who had to hide his weapons just outside of Greenhaven) and Balgun. The move deep into the woods to meet the approaching gnoll force.
    • DM Note: For the upcoming large scale battle – rather than slow it down with a bunch of NPCs, what I did is I gave the “clan of gnolls” a pool of health (250) and I gave the Rebels a pool of health (200). And what I would do is each round, in Initiative, I’d have each player rotate rolling – so for example, one round Aros would roll a D20 and I’d add the +3 to hit for the gnolls – then he’d roll for the Rebels and I’d add a +3. If they met one another’s AC (for example I gave the clan of gnolls an AC 15 and the Rebels an AC 15 as well. So it was fun making the players roll for both the bad guys – where they’d want a low roll – and then in the same initiative round also roll for the Rebels and hope for a high roll on the D20.
    • The way it worked is – each side (whether gnolls or rebels) – if they hit, they did a “base damage” of 5 damage to the enemy’s health pool. When the players attacked the gnolls, they would do their normal damage to the gnoll’s health pool. This allowed me to make it feel like a large scale battle without bogging down the initiative with 30 rebels and 40 gnolls – and also put it upon the players to be rolling which kept them engaged! This was, to me, a very fun way to do a large scale combat. And because Servants of the Wizard now just has two players, it was easy to rotate back and forth between Aros and Galeina to roll for the Rebels and the Gnolls – and it also helped keep the anticipation on the players, since they were rolling both.
    • In honor of always honoring Critical Hits and Critical Fails – if, for example the Rebels rolled a Natural 20, they double the damage done to the gnolls (so rather than 5 base damage, they would do 10 base damage) – however, a Critical Fail was 5 base damage done to their own force (for example if Rebels rolled a Critical 1, then it was 5 damage to the Rebels, explained as in the heat of moment mistakes are made!) As the pool withered down on each side, I would describe at moments, what the battle field was looking like, “The gnolls seem to have the advantage as they continue to swarm over the dwindling forces of the rebels…” Or, “Looks like the rebels have retreated slightly to catch their breath, this has allowed them to reinvigorate their attacks against the gnolls, gaining a foothold against the gnoll forces!”
  • As the majority of the gnolls fall to the rebel forces, the unusual gnoll that the party had seen in the tree before (See Session 48) makes itself known – and it now becomes clear why the gnolls marched on Greenhaven – this gnoll had tracked their scent probably to Greenhaven.
  • During the fight with the vampire gnoll – it leaps into the tree with Aros and begins tearing into him viciously – leaving Aros very, very, very bloody – Aros tries to spit oil on the beast to throw his torch on it – but his mask gets in the way and he ends covering his mouth piece with oil. He quickly discards his torch, having seen the gnolls sacrifice themselves against the rebels when they were on fire, catching rebels on fire during the fight.
  • Aros leaps down into Waesyn’s arms down below – and the creature chases after him, then goes after Balgun – that gives Aros the opportunity to finally land the killing blow.
  • They’re shocked to see that apparently gnolls can be turned to vampires as well.
  • By the time the battle against the gnolls had concluded, more than half of the rebels had perished in the fight (from a pool of 200, there was a pool 205). The Rebels gather their wounded, their dying and their dead, and make their way back to the mountain base. Eric Crowfeather thanks Galiena and Aros (and the others) for assisting and warning them of the approaching gnolls – because had they reached Greenhaven it would have been a massacre.

To Be Continued.