Session 64 - An Infestation of Bugbears

2 Sviftmont 1010

General Summary

The party, having time to explore the prison cells, spends some time chatting up each prisoner.  The first cell contains a human man, but it rapidly becomes obvious that he has gone through some horrible form of trauma, as he is continuously ranting about keeping his bones dry. Seraphina tries to help this poor soul with comfort and healing, but he seems quite far gone.  Seraphina barely manages to calm him down after Elincia mentions that everyone's bones are wet inside their bodies.
Tork moves down to the last cell, which has six Orcs in it, and starts asking them about the situation in the tunnels. The Orcs apparently sleep in the same area as they dig, rotating through shifts, of late working in a passageway south and east of the cell-block. When the number of giants supervising them suddenly dropped a while back (coinciding with the giants attack on the gathered tribes), the prisoners rose up, but were driven to one side of the complex by the giants. Tork asks if they would like to fight with the party, as they are here to free the prisoners. Apparently their earlier defeat has taken the fight out of these Orcs and they would prefer to be allowed to leave the way the party came in. He recognizes the Orcs as Blood Spears and explains what the party knows of the situation "outside" with the Blood Spears, including a brief rundown on the situation with the Gnolls (which Tork explains should be taken care of now). They seem disheartened by the news that the Blood Spear tribe may be permanently destroyed, but then plan to head east to try to join another tribe. When Tork asks if there is anything they can do to let the remaining Orc slaves know that they are the "good guys" they give their names and say to let them know Durgash sent them.
Meanwhile Seraphina, Stavos, Leo, and Elincia have been chatting with the human in cell two. This man explains that the guy in cell one has been like this for a couple months and he hasn't been able to make sense of his ranting. This prisoner however, one Talbot Callister, explains that he is an Engineer from Darokin. He was in the Cruth Lowlands looking for potential mining sites when his team was captured by the giants. He describes the way to the dig site as well. Apparently he has had it a little better than the other slaves, since he has some knowledge of mining and helped them to prevent collapses, install more buttresses, and the like. He believes it's possible that whatever the giants were looking for they had found recently, and maybe they are just keeping up appearances with the digging. He mentions that the Orcs rebelled recently when there seemed to be fewer giants around for a while, but this was put down. When asked about the other giants that were not Hill Giants, he thinks that they are not in charge, but more like they were experienced miners - directions on the digging seemed to have been fed from them through the guards who could speak Orcish and Common. When the party asks if he wants to fight with them, he declines, citing his only skills are as an engineer and miner.  The party asks him to try to ensure that the other human is able to get to help somewhere, which he agrees to; they suggest he heads southwest to Riverfork Keep.
They check out the third cell, which holds the remains of an unfortunate Elf, who is clearly long dead. They release his manacles and cover his remains with a blanket. They escort the prisoners to the tunnel exit they created and wish them all well.
Returning to the cellblock, they lock up the Bugbear guards in the Orcs' former cell and say they will probably let them out after freeing all the rest of the slaves. They then let curiosity get the best of them and break into the cell with the "magic skeletons" (the Bugbears had no key for this cell). Once Seraphina steps into the cell, the Skeletons rise, and begin to fight. To the party's surprise, these are relatively tough compared to the Skeletons they fought in their first adventure. Even still, they go down relatively easily with the party focused on them. Seraphina guesses that these were Wights, and not Skeletons, which means they could have done real harm to the party as they can "drain" life energy. Thankfully, that did not come up.  After all this, it turns out that the jewelry the Wights were wearing (which originally drew the party's attention) is just costume jewelry, so that is a bit of a disappointment.
Based on the information that the prisoners gave them, the party moves out of the main hallway down a long and wide main hallway southward. As they approach a T in the hall, they encounter another Bugbear guard, who immediately engages them (and seems unlikely to surrender this time). As the party works their way around the bend, they find more guards in a small room to the northeast of this hallway. One of those guards runs to a door to the North before anyone can stop him, and he pounds on the door and yells in Goblin, which nobody can understand. The party quickly kills these guards, but the alarm has been sounded. The rear-guard the party left around the corner announces that more Bugbears are headed south down that large hallway and Leo goes back to help. There are several bugbears coming for them, but Leo quickly drops Synaptic Static on them, and kills all but two stragglers. He and the rearguard, along with Elincia, work their way back up the hallway to kill the last of these Bugbears easily.
Meanwhile Tork, Stavos, Seraphina, Bert, and the other Half-Orc fighters push through that northern door, finding more Bugbears coming out to engage them. They quickly mow these Bugbears down as well, and Tork with his high mobility moves through this room to a hallway with five rooms attached - he can see MANY Bugbears equipping themselves for battle. He enters just far enough to scout the situation, then backs up to the room they just fought in, and chucks his spear at a random Bugbear.
Unfortunately for the dozens of Bugbears in the five rooms, the hallway between their rooms and the party is only 10 feet wide, creating a pinch point as they pour out toward the party. They quickly get into each others way, with Tork and Seraphina are preventing them from getting out of the hall to more effectively engage the party. A larger Bugbear in the back shouts some orders out, but the damage has been done by this point, and Tork uses the new trick he learned with his Spear, tossing it into the air where it magically replicates itself with Conjure Barrage and rains down on the hapless Bugbears in a giant cone in front of him, which hits nearly every single one of these bugbears, severely injuring most of them. Seraphina drops a moonbeam just a few layers deep into the crowd, and the Bugbears are terrified, as they have nowhere to maneuver. Some retreat toward the far eastern room here, but as the party soon finds out there is no escape from that room either. By now Elincia has been able to get back to the remaining combat, and adds a second Moonbeam to further panic the trapped Bugbears. Tork, Seraphina, Stavos, Bert, and Zarm are able to push the Bugbears back toward their doom with the Moonbeams and the narrow hallway constraining the Bugbears' ability to engage the party. It is a mopping up exercise now, and by the time Leo is able to get around the hallway to the action, there are just one or two left, and he (somewhat ironically) gets the last Eldritch blast off on the more heavily armored chief.

Report Date

05 Jun 2022