Saberstrath Campaign, Session 7: Cold War Escalation

November 11-27, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

The delivery from Durnovar took a couple weeks to arrive. In the meantime, the party divided attention between multiple projects. Herrohnin devoted several dozen disguised skeletons to housing construction, hoping to curry favor with the peasantry. Viserion and Sir Robin waited outside the city in the wilderness.

After a week or so, another patrol of giants arrived. This time there were four of them and they came with a company of dwarves. The party lured them to the location of several newly constructed huts and shelters -- full of traps and hidden skeletons! Two of the giants went down quickly, toppling into pits created with sapper magic. The other two pounded forward toward a fortified rampart atop one of the buildings, and began slamming the skeleton archers at the top. Meanwhile, the dwarves picked their way through the other buildings, discovering traps and skeleton ambushes led by heavily armored skeletons with darkness-enchanted helms.

Ice Giant (by chevsky)

After the fall of the giants, the dwarves quickly found themselves surrounded and badly handled by the skeleton horde. With their numbers reduced to only a couple dozen, their officers elected to surrender, ending what might otherwise have been a lengthy standoff between opposing lines of heavily armored foes shrouded in fields of magical darkness.

The dwarves agreed to accompany the party on an expedition to the frost giant stronghold, in exchange for being allowed to live. After arming more skeletons with the new shipments of gear, the party advanced to within 20 miles of the mountain spur and created a base camp in the temperate foothills below, using more sapper tunneling spells to create an underground complex of their own.

Roster

• Zelmar Krackiss, 5th-level fright knight
• Anatolia, 4th-level bladedancer
• Adoniram Hewer, 3rd-level mage
• Frigodria, 5th-level paladin
• Viserion, 4th-level white dragon
• Oin "Dirtface" Orinson, 5th-level dwarven sapper
• Sir Robin Silverfall, 5th-level spellsword
• Herrohnin, 5th-level summoner, and his scads of spooky scary skeletons
• Sir Rock Boulder Fist, dwarven 5th-level summoner

=> 6 PCs + 2 henchmen = 7 shares

Not appearing in this adventure:

• The very young white dragon, Namazu, reporting back on the frost giants
• Thorvald, 5th level spy
• Tu'a'than, 5th level spriggan

Casualties

A few skeletons that will be back in a day

Treasure

None (unless you count surrendered dwarves as treasure)

Total gold per member: 0 gp

Note: I'm still giving experience credit for the gold the dwarves were carrying, as though you "won" it by defeating them and then immediately paid it back to them to "hire" them.

Experience

Killed: 4 frost giants [4x850=3400], 81 fire dwarves [81x10=810]
Captured: Aksel Steelheart, 9th-level vaultlord [1300], 4 5th-level vaultguards [4x350=1400], 3 4th-level vaultguards [3x135=405], 2 3rd-level vaultgaurds [2x65=130], 2nd-level vaultguard [29], 18 fire dwarves [18x10=180]
Total:  7654 xp

Total experience from treasure: 9600 xp (captured dwarves)
Total experience from kills: 7654 xp
Total experience from exploration: 0 xp
Total experience: 17,254 xp
Total experience per member: 2465 xp