We took our long rest at the inn. We are apparently are a paranoid bunch: Grim set a trip wire outside the door AND we set up watches. Fortunately, to night passed uneventfully.
The next morning a group of seven riders rode into town. Artor greeted them. They were led by a man named Xolkin Allasander. It turns out, he was the one Bella was waiting for. Her flying snake delivered him a written messenger before returning to her. He then sent his underlings to man the guard towers. Grim, suspecting this was Zhentarim business, told them to mind the 32nd rung on the southwest guard house ladder.
We left the town to follow the peoples' trail to the cave. The almost certainly Zhentarim closed the drawbridge behind us.
Jethro scouted ahead and spotted signs of goblins ambushing the townspeople. Then he heard the sound of snapping branches and war drums. He didn't return to warn the party until he got a closer look and spotted a sizeable party of orcs. Then he returned to us.
We debated our course of action for a bit. Then we found it was a raiding party of 22 orcs. We decided to run away. We ran to town to hole-up behind the walls. Fortunately, the Zhentarim were willing to let us back in.
Ten of the orcs split off from the main group and tried to swim across the moat and climb the walls. Fortunately, we all had ranged weapons to pick off the hapless attackers. Hillary used one of the best spells out of Elemental Evil: ice knife. I brought this one up during that season last year: but it has an initial attack roll for 1d10 piercing damage, and explodes, doing 2d6 damage, save for half, against the original target and every other creature within five feet. Hillary criticalled on her initial attack the first time she used that spell. Jethro also broke out the spells: using hail of thorns on the initial group. Paul enjoyed using that as Sandi. It turns a normal ranged attack into a burst of area damage as well.
We managed to thin down that initial assault before the other contingent of orcs moved on to the motte. We quickly followed them when that break away party retreated to rejoin the main group. It turns out there was a big hole in the wall there: the draw bridge. At this point we realized that two of the orcs were bigger and meaner: a warchief and an eye of Gruumsh.
Fortunately, the hole onto the drawbridge also provided us with a choke point. At this point Jethro also broke out another of Sandi's old favorites: hunter's mark. This one adds some damage and makes it easier to track the target. It can also be transferred to new targets as the old ones die.
I'm going to pause to look at the new ranger build Alec is using for Jethro. Rangers have only two favored enemies, and their first is chosen from a smaller list, but it includes types like fae, undead, and humanoids. By the way, if you take humanoids, it's ALL humanoids. With that feature and his spell, Alec was consistently getting damage totals similar to Joseph, playing the rogue.
At one point I tried to break out a new spell: thunderous smite. It does some extra thunder damage to the target and pushes them back. The idea at the time was to move enemies around to allow Temerity to advance to cast a spell. Of course, the damage killed it before it could be pushed. Temerity did try to use Tasha's hideous laughter on an orc climbing up the bridge: the Eye of Gruumsh, but it made it's save.
Artor ended up dropping from a pair of lucky orc strikes, and the only other party member with any healing, Pusheen, only had cure wounds and couldn't get to me to cast the spell. She did use her Combat Wild Shape feature to turn into a bear and do some extra damage. I confered with Kyla about her spell selection, and we agreed she probably should have taken healing word.
We also got some support from the Zhentarim towards the end of the battle.
We dropped both the Warchief and the Eye of Gruumsh, and the last three orcs retreated. I survived. We also reached another milestone after the battle.
Of course, it was a long battle, so it was time to call it. What happens next?
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