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So Joseph made it back to our table. He rolled up a half-orc fighter named Tog. Tog is a little like Thok, Shannon also brought a new character named Hoggle. Yes, based off of that Hoggle. The race was a home-brew mixture of dwarf and gnome. And he's a bard.
So we had crossed the bridge, our new PCs fell through a plot hole and joined us. We did have some debate over have Tog along. Lydia did speculate that his ear might be worth 12gp and 5sp in bounty. Once the playful banter passed, we found that we had a door.
Phox kicked in the door!
There were more orcs. We had a particularly deadly opening turn before the orcs closed with our mostly ranged party and did some damage. We still managed to drop them without severe casualties, however. It was a barracks for the orcs and included a cage full of human prisoners. We freed them and sent them on their way back to town. Then we leveled up!
We moved on, finding a storage area and well. We passed that area and into more corridors with lots of options for doors. One of those doors had a cool statue of a dwarf holding a sword and a hammer in front of it. Hoggle went forward to examine it. It was, of course, trapped. The mouth opened and sprayed poison gas. That poisoned him. Vrinn disabled that trap while the poison wore off, and then took a listen at the door. There was some raucous shouting and cursing behind the door. We all positioned ourselves in the corridor outside. Except Hiro, he position himself way in the back so he had clear sight and access to another door.
Fuck.
We kicked in that door by the trapped dwarf statue. It was another orc barracks, and one of them was the bigger, meaner orog variety. But by this point, we were a well oiled monster killing machine. "We got this!" we all said.
Then Hiro set that door behind us on fire using the bonfire spell. It turns out there were more orcs behind that door, and they were upset that their door got turned to kindling, so they charged through, getting a little burned in the process.
Back on the western front (you know, the only one everyone cares about in American pop culture), Lydia and Hoggle discovered that shatter is a good crowd control spell on the second level list.
Hiro, however, tried get the RNG to help him conjure a fireball on that horde of orcs out of wild magic surge. Jeff, has, apparently, no experience with the RNG. Instead he had spend the rest of the session shouting. He did pull back.
Then, because in table-top games sufficient loud noises will pull more encounters, another door opened. Out stepped an ogre with a small hunting pack of dire wolves.
Hiro DID make a good speed bump for that horde of orcs. And they did make a decent roadblock for that pack of dire wolves and the ogre.
While they were busy killing Hiro, we killed the orcs in, then re-grouped in, the original orc barracks. You know, the encounter we had planned to pull in the first place and not the other two. Kyla went with path of the totem warrior for Phox, and chose Wolf as her totem. And let me tell you, giving the pack tactics feature to your allies while raging is amazing! And speaking of Phox, she blew that whistle and turned one of those orc corpses into a zombie, which, because Kyla is that kind of person, she named Herman.
Using Herman as a speed bump and the corridor as a bottle neck, we cleared the second pack of orcs and killed the ogre. With their boss dead, the dire wolves fled.
Bruenor drunkenly stabilized Hiro and we took a long rest. During that period Phox found some money and a potion of healing in the orog's bed. Then, in the ogre's room, we found more money and a +1 rapier. Finally, we visited the third orc barracks and found more money. Hiro, of course, just said, "Your welcome."
We finally got around to investigating the well. No gray oozes. No black puddings. Just normal, brackish water. We came at last to a stairwell with a locked gate nearby. Vrinn picked the lock and we found a swarm of stirges.
Hiro triggered another wild magic surge with a casting of ice knife, this one causing ethereal music to follow him around. Phox was in the explosion's area, but managed to uncanny dodge it.
At the north end of the stairwell chamber was an ornate stone door. We spotted spouts around it and a pile of charred bodies in front of it. When we left off, the rest of us stood well back while Phox sent Herman to open it.
Herman will die (again) as he unlived. Or will he?
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