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Welcome to Even More Wyrd (DnD3.5)

15:05, 28th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Even More Wyrd (DnD3.5)

Eight years ago (in 584 CY) armies of orcs, goblins and their kin, led by powerful giants, swept out of the Barrier Peaks and the Crystalmist Mountains to lay waste to the puny kingdom that humans called the Grand Duchy of Geoff. Cities, towns and villages burned and the humans and their allies were slain or enslaved. Those were glorious days to be a goblin, orc, giant or one of the numerous other evil races that cheerfully joined in the fun.

But good times never last, do they? The rot started last year (in 591 CY) when the Fire Giant King Mogthrassir was defeated and slain in his own fortress at Pest's Crossing by a motley group of adventurers – humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and even lizardmen! It is even rumoured that some of them were our own slaves that had escaped from one of our mines in the Crystalmists, built up their skills sneaking and fighting their way east through occupied Geoff, stealing powerful magic weapons from our leaders who had rightfully won them from the humans by glorious conquest.

That was just the beginning, though. Within a couple of months there were rumours spreading like wildfire that claimed the whole glorious invasion of Geoff was organised by a bunch of cloud giants way up in the clouds. Those awful human Knights of the Watch started pushing out from their lair at Hochoch, way over at the eastern end of Geoff. They claimed that same accursed group of adventurers had killed the cloud giants way up there in the sky! They even trotted out a dozen stinking cloud giant heads as their so-called proof, and the rest of the giants believed them! The stone giants had already walked out after Mogthrassir died; his death had left the rest of the fire giants squabbling over who should be the new king, so their grip on the orcish and goblinoid armies had slipped anyway. Then all the frost giants abandoned the cause completely, carrying three of the cloud giant heads with them and spreading the tale of defeat as they tramped back across the land all the way back to their old homes in the Crystalmists.

Ever since then things have been getting worse and worse. Armies of humans and elves have been advancing from the east. Bands of Knights suddenly appear by magic deep within occupied lands to strike by surprise and wipe out one stronghold after another. Orcs and goblins have started attacking each other at the slightest provocation. Ogres and hill giants have been slaying anything that looks edible instead of just the slaves kept for that purpose. The last remaining fire giants have been ranting and raving and beating orcs and goblins to death to make the rest stand and fight to hold onto the stinking carcass of the not-so-Grand Duchy of Geoff despite the obvious futility of that cause.

Enough is enough! You are one of the last survivors from your squad, war band or tribe and it clearly isn't safe to stay here anymore. You have only survived as long as you have because you were smarter, stronger, faster, more experienced or just plain luckier than those who marched beside you before. It's time to go. West is best, back to the mountains where you were born. Maybe you can team up with some other like-minded survivors you can trust on the way; there's still safety in numbers, after all.




The story so far ...

Day 1
The adventure started at the northern edge of the Oytwood. This group was part of the occupying evil humanoid forces that had been in position at the edge of the forest hoping to ambush the Knights of the Watch because they only move forward during daylight hours when your forces are at a disadvantage.

Coalface is the nickname of the fire giant in charge of the evil humanoid troops in this part of the war zone. Uberthudd is one of his ogre overseers.

It was about 10am when the confrontation with Uberthudd happened.

The group headed due south toward the heart of the forest. 10 minutes later and not much more than one mile south they ambushed their orc pursuers and accidentally started a forest fire.

The orc leader that was killed in this battle was called Feng, usually known as Black Feng because of his armour. The names Black Feng and Hellblade (his red-glowing greatsword) are linked but Dregz can't remember the rest of the story.
By the end of the first day the group had travelled something like 20 miles south from their initial position at the northern edge of the forest, which would put them at least a quarter of the way through the forest, where they find an abandoned human outpost. The huts and cabin are haunted by undead Raiments and Minmorc and Riza were attacked and almost killed. The party cleared out three haunted huts, discovered the main hut is occupied by Xander Xalus (kobold necromancer) and his skeleton companion and also discovered a shrine to the nature god Obad-Hai disguised by illusion.

Night 1
The party slept the night in the barn and one hut of this outpost.

Day 2
Rested through the day and repaired the palisade around the outpost in return for a healing wand from the kobold. Joined by Raven as they departed.

Night 2
Travelled south again. Fought and killed several wild boars in the middle of the night.

At dawn they arrived at a huge wall of thorns around a giant oak tree that is home to giant insects. They set up camp outside but a funeral party of 12 wood elves turned up to inter a dead elder up in the branches of the giant oak.

A wood elf scout discovered the group's campsite nearby but was killed. However his death cry alerted the rest of the elves and they pursued the group southward for an hour before there was a fight. The group had to stop (some fatigued) when their path was blocked by a 100ft-wide marsh-filled valley. Most of the group took cover down at the marsh but Minmorc, Riza and Nurzhan fought the elves. Half of the elves were dying and Nurzhan dead before a truce was called. The elves agreed to let them leave as long as they never return to the forest.

While the battle with the elves raged at the edge of the forest, the rest of the group discovered a hidden cave down by the edge of the marsh.

Day 3
The cave turned out to be half filled by a pool of stagnant water with a large frog statue submerged in the middle, and thousands of frogs clustered around the edge of the pool. It was some sort of frog temple to some unidentified frog deity.

The group slept there through the day. Bulldust the bugbear fell victim to a frog curse delivered by the kiss of a frog, then the curse transferred to Moffdust when she kissed him (inspired by the tale of the frog prince).

At dusk the arrival of a giant frog at the entrance was fortunately defused by Jurz's druidic animal empathy skills and the group hurriedly left the frog temple.

Night 3
Travelled west around the marsh then south again through the forest. Arrived at the southern edge of the forest at dawn.

Day 4
A rocky outcrop just south of the forest turned out to be a lookout post manned by 4 ogres. The ogres demanded all their 'shinies'. The group killed 3 ogres. The ogre leader Die-Arda gave them the name 'Arda-Nuff' and walked off toward Gorna, leaving them in charge of the lookout post. The group found some valuable elvish items in the midden heap and rested through the day.

Night 4
The team travelled overnight to the ruined city of Gorna where they were met by a goblin scout called Slipznotz, who soon persuaded them to employ him as their guide in the city. He took them to Two-Fer-One the half-orc trader, who trades any magic items on a two-for-one basis. After their first trip to the markets the team was ambushed by a pack of gnolls but it was the gnolls who were virtually wiped out by Team Arda-Nuff.

Day 5
Slipsnotz lead the team to a ruined temple in a graveyard which provides a safe place for them to rest, thanks to the ghouls and ghasts haunting the graveyard.

Night 5
Then back to the marketplace again to trade for magic items and other gear. Just as they are ready to leave they are confronted by a squad of ogre guards lead by Die-Arda himself. They have been sent to bring them before the ogre-mage priestess, Queen Moldavite, who is the current ruler of the city. She is not happy that they wiped out a whole patrol of her gnoll scouts and archers! They are taken before the queen and when she finds out they killed her ogres at the lookout as well Grakk the minotaur volunteered to take over that lookout duty and was swiftly escorted away to that duty. The rest of Team Arda-Nuff was given the choice of execution at dawn or cleaning out the sewers under the city (something comes out from the sewers and kills her troops while they sleep). So down they go to find and wipe out a band of redcaps lead by a renegade drow priest. Among the drow's treasure they find a short black rod with a strong magical aura, although no one knows what it could be yet. They also rescue a tiefling prisoner called Shelby Wright. It was he who had found the black rod a week earlier, lodged in a tree struck by lightning. The dangerous black rod was promptly handed to Dregz the goblin priest for safe keeping. Shelby Wright turns out to share Minmorc's dream of a Bloodbowl competition in honour of Nuffle, the god of that deadly contest. When they deliver Shelby to the queen he manages to convince her to set up her own team of ogres in red spikey uniforms for a future Bloodbowl tournament to be held in Gorna in one year's time with a golden trophy as the prize. Minmorc and friends are ordered to spread the word and gather a team of orcs and tell other races to send teams for the ogres to compete against next year.

Day 6
The next day is for rest and recuperation back at the safe temple in the ghoul-infested graveyard. However their sleep is interrupted by a blood-curdling scream outside the temple window. It seems that a thief was trying to sneak into the temple and got ambushed and killed by the ghouls instead. The team fought off the ghouls and ghasts to recover the thief's possessions and found he had another two segments of black rod already joined together. Dregz's dreams showed him the arrival of that thief and the command word 'Wyrd!' that activates the black rod.

Night 7
After finishing their interrupted sleep Dregz adds the third segment of black rod to the other two and the team are ready to depart from Gorna. However, Raven the kenku (or birdie-girl to the rest of the team) announces she is going to leave and go back to the giant oak tree in the Oytwood instead.

Everyone else gathers round Dregz and when he speaks the command word they are all teleported away in search of the next segment of the black rod. They suddenly find themselves behind a big tent somewhere among the sand dunes of the Plains of the Paymins. They sneak out of the camp to make their plans before launching their attack on the tribe of Paynim nomads whose campsite they had landed in. After a long and bloody battle Team Arda-Nuff is triumphant. The fourth segment of the black rod is found on the tribe's shaman. After rounding up the survivors the team now has scores of prisoners, horses and weapons that will be worth a fortune if they can be taken somewhere they can be sold. Fortunately, one of the tribe's slaves turns out to be a captured human merchant Abbu bin Dhehr. In exchange for his freedom he will show them the way to the town of Kester that controls the pass into Ull at the southern end of the Ulsprue Mountains, where he can help them sell the Paymin captives as slaves and trade all the horses and other goods for whatever they might desire.

The next four nights were spent travelling to Kester with all the prisoners, horses and other loot.

Day 12
Abbu bin Dhehr was true to his word and helped Team Arda-Nuff get a good price for all the slaves, horses and other goods, allowing them to buy other items they might have struggled to obtain without his aid.

Night 12
Half an hour before sunset the team gathered in the marketplace at Kester and Dregz spoke the command word again. This time they found themselves teleported to a ruined temple in the Sea of Dust south of the Sulhaut Mountains. Raven dreamed of looking down on their arrival at the ruined temple and somehow, when she awoke she found she really had returned to Team Arda-Nuff. No one knows how this could have happened. Together they explored the basement of the ruined temple and discovered a party of adventurers (gnomes and dwarfs) searching for treasure there. Those treasure hunters had already found the next piece of the black rod. Team Arda-Nuff managed to defeat them and secured the fifth segment of the black rod. After resting again and loaded up with treasure from the adventurers and from the temple's treasury they used the black rod to teleport away before dawn in pursuit of the next segment of the black rod.

This time they arrived on a mountain ledge outside the locked gate of a mine tunnel with a fort on the ledge behind them. Half of the team entered the tunnel while the others scouted around outside the fort and find that the fort is occupied by orcs. The next segment of the black rod was lodged in the face of the cliff high above the tunnel gate. Jurz the goblin druid transformed into an owl to fly up to find it but also discovered a dozen elvish archers on a higher ledge ready to shoot their arrows down at the orcs in the fort. Half the team were now inside the fort meeting the orcs and their leader, orc cleric Kurjan Sawtooth, who is building his own small army of orcs and undead. While they were there a dwarf traitor called Makkal arrives to warn Kurjan that a human knight called Sir Jolimont Thrumble is planning to attack the fort at dawn with 40 human troops and a dozen elvish archers. Team Arda-Nuff had the choice to stay or leave straight away but chose to stay and help defend the fort. The unexpected activity in the fort confused the elves into opening fire too early. The team managed to wipe out the elves before the human attackers had even crept close enough to realise what had happened. So when the human assault began at dawn there were no elvish archers left to keep the orcs off the walls of the fort and Sir Jolimont's attack turned into a disaster and all of the humans were killed or captured.

During the battle the team's goblin shaman, Oopses, had been captured by one of the pair of trolls in charge of Kurjan's slaves, although the rest of the team knew nothing about that yet.

Following the battle Minmorc told Kurjan and his orcs about the future Bloodbowl tournament and Kurjan agreed that if Minmorc and friends came back next year with a magical way to transport the orcs to Gorna and back he would allow his orcs to form a Bloodbowl team (the Rust Orcs, because of the rusty armour from the ruined temple in the Sea of Dust that Team Arda-Nuff sold to them) and compete in that tournament.

Following the battle the team camped outside the fort to rest and recuperate through the day. The sixth segment of the black rod turned out to be the first part of the head of a mace. The black rod they seek is actually a black mace.

Night 13
At nightfall they saw Oopses being marched into the mine tunnel in a chain gang with other goblin and human slaves. After the troll guard had come back out the team sneaked into the mine and managed to rescue Oopses and the goblin slaves, leaving the human slaves behind to continue mining gemstones for Kurjan.

Then they snuck away and followed Minmorc who had gone ahead with Makkal the dwarf to the town of Marikest where they would be able to trade all the armour, weapons and other loot they had accumulated from the battle and the ruined temple.

The next day Minmorc and Makkal took care of the trading in Marikest (orcs are accepted as part of the community in the Sultanate of Zeif) while most of the rest of the team rested outside town. The strangest purchase of all was the folding boat that Oopses bought from a merchant who was struggling to find a buyer so far from any sea or major river.

Night 14
The next night they teleported again in search of the seventh segment of the black mace. They found themselves outside an old temple atop a step pyramid in the Amedio Jungle and were attacked by the five great apes that lived there. Inside the temple they discovered an inscription on a wall saying,
  The golden god with one green eye
  Stands in darkness, waiting.
  The golden god with two green eyes
  Comes forth to rule the world.
  The eye is lost, terror rules all.

A trapdoor in the floor of the temple leads to a shaft down into the pyramid where two large, emaciated devils keep watch on a golden statue of a winded serpent with one large, uncut emerald in place as one eye. The team battled and defeated the devils but now we wait to see what this unpredictable group will decide to do next!