Castle Assault, Part V

Before we managed to get our long rest, Dralmorrar came to us with another offer. He realized that we would have better luck taking out Pharblex with Sandi alive and well. So he offered to have has leave half the cost of a scroll of raise dead in escrow and allow us to use to bring Sandi back before we tackled the bullywug shaman in his cavern lair. We took the offer, drawing most of the funds from Sandi's treasure and dividing the remainder between Thok, Censura, and myself. After Dralmorrar made it clear that this was alliance of convenience, I decided to do the casting. While I did that, and Sandi was recovering from being brought back to life, Thok and Censura helped the remaining lizardfolk clean up the mess in the castle. Or at least, Thok helped while Censura tried to spend time with Daisy, only to chased off by Mrs. Pattinow.

Towards the end of the day, Green Imsa arrived riding on a hippogriff. She was still green, but she brought along the resurrected boy: Egan. He was now going to be serving as our page. He was an eager, if naive young lad. Thok and I did explain to him that adventuring is dangerous. I also took a moment to let the other party members know that we should not treat him like Nodwick. Imsa had another piece of good news: the elf prince had his curse lifted and had named us lords in his restored kingdom.

Dralmorrar gave us a map of the cavern beneath the castle. The most direct route to Pharlbex's lair involved a treasure crane. We decided to take a round about route before taking another long rest.

We took Egan, and two of our remaining lizardfolk followers: Snapjaw and the newly christened Slime-Eater, along with us. We explored a small side cavern, finding a gray ooze, which Sandi managed to finish off in one turn. The cave was also filled with treasure.

We wound our way through the caves, finding a big pool of mud the bullywugs used for ritual bathing (according to Snapjaw, anyway). We quickly dispatched a pair of bullywug guards stationed there. Past the mud pool, we found a room swarming with centipedes, but we were able to notice that they fled from fire, so we used lit torches to disperse the swarms before they could coalesce.

Finally, we came to a cavern with a large lake. We turned down a side passage toward a smaller body of water, only to find two more bullywug guards that were soon backed up by giant frogs the lake. Lots of giant frogs from the lake. Fortunately, we managed to protect our hirelings from the brunt of the assault. I can't stress enough how good area of effect spells are in these situations. And while our best AOEs represent our most significant investments of resources, they are worth it. None-the-less, the frogs did get some hits in, using bites to grapple and restrain Snapjaw and me. What was amazing, is that we had a grappling creature without having to read a second miniature rule book detailing how it worked.

The time progression certainly proves a key difference in play between 5th and 4th. In 4th, characters were more powerful, but progressed more evenly as they leveled. In 5th, the characters are much weaker at lower levels, but certain points in the progression lead to leaps in capability. The fact that reaching 5th level defines the start of the second tier in this edition has been proven out.

When we return, our heroes will have finally met Pharblex, and killed him.