Session 10: A visit from Captain Felrara

 

The Adventurers continue to work on Castle Calealan and receive expected visitors.

This is based on our August 9, 2023 session.  Since our group is scattered around the country, we used Discord for our voice communication and Roll20 for our virtual tabletop.

Continued from: To the Bandit Camp

Date: May 7th, 3517 I.R.  
Location: The Bristleback Inn, Zelcor’s Ferry

5:30 PM
Blaze tells the group what she got from the giant raven:

·         There is a Gnoll camp on the ridge west of the ford.

·         "Ford?", she asked.  There is a place to cross the river easily about 2/3 mile east of the lake.

·         A large Red Bear lives in a canyon in the forest south of Castle Calaelen, upstream from the lake.

·         There is something very odd about the forest southwest of the ford and southeast of the lake, the trees look wrong from above.

·         There is a large Red Dragon that lairs in an old fort on an island about 30 miles off the coast to the southeast.

·         About 20 miles downstream, on the far side of the river, there is another ruined keep, she often sees Humans camped there.

·         Downstream from the ruined keep, she sees a lot of Trolls, especially on the north side of the river.

Elron, our group’s banker, hands out loot; we keep some weapons.

After selling off the items we didn’t keep and deducting the cost of the pearls needed to identify the magic items (900 gp!), everyone on the expedition got 70 gp.

Items distributed:

Studded Leather Armor: Beneddar
Shield: Blaze
Splint Armor: Lark
2 Long swords: Beneddar and Lark
Dagger +1: Blaze
Hand Axe +1: Lark
Long Sword +1: Parahelia
12 +1 Arrows: Elron
Amulet of Health: Elron
Necklace of Adaption:  Artie
Ring of Evasion: Artie
Ring of Protection: Sinis

We had two hours left of daylight. The party bought  what they needed and will rested there overnight.

8 May, 3517
We have breakfast, then go back to Castle Calaelen. The weather was cool and cloudy.

We arrived back at the Castle with our six new horses, Cato the Cleric, and Talilia Greysky, and found Mortimer is injured; He was clearing up broken pottery in the tea party room and an explosion happened. Mortimer found a trap left behind in the room under crockery. Blaze healed him fully.

Elron set up an alarm system on the walkway on the perimeter wall.

Artie showed us his new owl familiar.

Elron is concerned about the nearby cliff that overlooks the castle, and is worried someone could get up to the top and attack us below. We put together a party to go to check it out. The cliff appears to be mostly unclimbable, but there is a box canyon leading to the interior; we checked it out and found a cave that smells like something died in it.

Five stirges suddenly flew out of the cave towards us. Benaddar put them all to sleep along with two more that were still in the cave. Breena started stabbing them all, and Elron killed the two in the cave. The smell in the cave is stirge poop and decay. We found bones in there. It’s the lair of something, maybe troll, killed and abandoned the cave; it has been gone a long time. Lark checked the box canyon and it dead ends.

Searching the cave, we found remains of bodies, 1 rotted pouch with 15 gp, and a ring on some finger bones. We continued around the hill, which is more of a mesa.

10:00 AM
Back at the castle, Talila and Cato are here. Cato is a cleric of a different faith than Parahelia; she is a cleric of Dame Torren, Goddess of the Four Winds, mostly worshiped by Travelers and bards. She wanted to reconsecrate the chapel upstairs. We’re happy to let her; it takes a couple days to clean up and a few hours to consecrate.

Mortimer and Brack have not been able get the bad smell out of the room where the goblins died. Maybe we should ask her to bless it, too.

We fixed the front gate, but not the drawbridge yet, and we have alarms on the walls. On the 2^nd floor, in the room with the canoe, we noticed there are more spiderwebs than we remember from last time, especially the large ones over the windows. We begin to remove flammable items from room before torching it to get rid of them.

Lark went to the blacksmith’s forge to get some buckets and a cauldron, took them to the gate with firewood, to place them over the drawbridge with water that can be heated and dumped on enemies at the gate if needed.

The rest of us were moving boxes, chests, broken chairs out of the room by tossing them down the hatch in the adjacent octagonal tower room. Benaddar looked into the hanging canoe and found a giant spider; Benaddar used Toll the dead on the spider who shrugged it off. Artie cast fire bolt and hit it, damaging it. It jumped down next to Benaddar and shot webbing at him, but missed, hitting the ceiling.

Sinis cast burning hands for fire damage and it squealed when the flames hit it. Parahelia who was in the hallway came into the room and hit it with a longsword, slicing it in half, dead. We tossed it out of the window onto the dry moat. We took the canoe down, and used a torch to burn the webs out. We put the canoe back upside down; Sinis checked the canoe, it’s in good shape. Blaze checked the spider’s sex and looked for eggs before disposing of it; it appeared to be male.

Benaddar wanted to clear the stairway of rocks so we would not have to use the ladder. We still need to clear the bedroom of bones where the goblin priestess slept. The chapel is cleared out and ready to reconsecrate; there was a statue of Orcus crudely made of stones and wood; we chucked it out of window into the dry moat next to the dead spider.

Sinis has the Book of Orcus, and The Faithful Volume of Wizardry, a spell book that Sinis and Breena are copying. He hands The Faithful Volume of Wizardry to Breena for now.

Six days pass.

11 May
Benaddar and Breena were on guard at the front gate when five riders came up the path to the drawbridge.

“Hello Castle; we heard that this castle had gnolls and goblins,” said the leader, a woman in her mid-thirties with the Eastreach Province crest on her tabard. She was armed with a battle axe and was wearing scale mail. She looked tough.

She introduced herself as Captain Felrara, and was accompanied by four deputies. The four deputies had short swords, bows, and leather armor. They have a camp 30 miles south of here that a large band of gnolls attacked and they were out looking for them. The gnolls, scavengers all, had taken everything not nailed down, even their tents. We’re pretty certain that they are describing the camp we rescued Cato from.

Blaze told them we fought off the gnolls and goblins and took possession of castle; also, that there is a gnoll camp on the ridge west of the ford. They thanked us and left. Lark went to Artie and asked him to have the owl follow them. Artie explains the limitation of his familiar, how he can only see through its eyes within 100 feet.

Elron decided to follow them stealthily. Elron tracked them to the east. They crossed the river at the ford that the raven had spoken of and went to the hills. They found a patch of trees and tied up their horses and continued on foot, stealthily.

They snuck up the hill and found the gnoll camp, where they attacked the six gnolls they found while Elron watched quietly from the trees. She was a very competent fighter, he observed. He recognized one of the tents from the bandit’s camp and was pretty sure Captain Felrara did as well. Some of the deputies were injured in the battle but none had any life-threatening wounds.

They looted the camp and then went back down to the horses and rode back to Zelcor’s Ferry.

Elron came back to the castle after checking the gnoll camp.

Lark was concerned that when they get to Zelcor’s Ferry, they’ll find the locals have some items we took from their camp and sold in town. But on further reflection, Talila’s crew and treasure showed up at the camp after this group left, so it’s possible they never saw the items to begin with; we’ll find out the hard way.
 

Continued in Investigating Captain Felrara and Fighting a Worg.