Session 65 - Manticore Massacre

2 Sviftmont 1010

General Summary

The party catches their breath a bit as they look through the Bugbears' belongings. They do find a fair amount of gold, silver, and copper amongst the corpses, but nothing of any particular interest. Once they feel a bit more refreshed from their break, they continue their search for the captured Orcs - starting with the east-most doorway on the east-west hallway where they encountered the first guards. Each of these doors has a bar on this hallway side, which Seraphina is able to open easily enough.
Inside they find a large group of Orcs that have been enslaved by the giants. The party introduces themselves and ask the Orcs what they know of the area, improving on their knowledge of the area, though only slightly. They explain that after they free more orcs (presumably in the nearby rooms), they can show the slaves the way out of the fortress to freedom. Moving down the hallway, they find a similar situation in each of the other two barred doors. Between the three rooms they find 40 Orcs, mostly from the Axe Handles. By the time they are talking to the third group of slaves though, another group of Bugbear guards comes down the hallway from the northwest, surprising Leo. Thankfully, the party is not too far from Leo, and is able to take care of the guards before anyone is seriously injured.
Whatever the Giants were digging to find is behind the piled up boulders further east in this hallway. Stavos, Seraphina, and many of the Orcs volunteer to help them excavate the passage, in hope of finding more of the missing Orcs. Meanwhile Tork, Leo, and Elincia explore back up the hallway where the guards had just come from. As they enter the area, they find three more cells with locked doors. Rather than dealing with the locks, Leo heads back to get Seraphina and "Liberator", her freshly renamed "Shatterspike."
Inside the cells are a few additional Orcs that have been imprisoned for whatever reason, most likely their participation in the revolt, and they are brought to the rest of the recently freed slaves.
The passageway meanwhile has been partially cleared, enough so that humans and/or Orcs can pass through. On the other side of the rock-pile, they find a couple of Orc guards that are quite relieved that the incursion is not from Giants, but actually people coming to rescue them. The party repeats the process, and the Guards explain that there are a large number of Orcs that are scattered throughout the caverns behind them, as well as a tribe of Troglodytes, a distant relative of the Lizardfolk. It seems the Orcs have displaced the Troglodytes, but they have set up trade for coexistence in the meantime, as the Orcs have taken control of the fungal caverns, and trade the edible fungus with the Troglodytes for water in return. They also show that they have put rocks in front of the door to the area the Giants had them excavate before. The Orcs found the altar area distrubing and it makes everyone quite uncomfortable to be near.
The remaining Orcs in the caverns are all brought back out and reunited with the others. All told there are about 120 now, which should be enough to form a new clan, or rejoin any remnants of the Axe Handles.
Before dealing with the altar area, the party wants to deal with the torture area which they could see just down the hallway to the West from the cells area. The party marches in with the intent of simply trashing all the torture implements but they find two Hill Giants, who wake up with their approach, and combat begins. Tork steals the show by stunning both Giants with just a handful of blows, which makes the Giants sitting ducks for the rest of the party. Seraphina is able to get off a few Smites on the southern Giant, basically soloing it, while the rest of the party takes down the other; the Giants never really even knew what hit them. The Giants out of the way, the party wrecks the torture chamber.
With that out of the way they return to the cavern and clear the path to the Altar area. As happened to the Orcs, once they are inside this area they have a sense of unease. The walls give the impression that something is moving but, if you watch, you can't see anything change, yet there is always in your peripheral vision the sensation of motion. The altar itself is at the far end of the room, with some steps down to a small niche. Elincia ventures into the alcove and senses that the wall is somehow reaching out to her, and she quickly backs away from it. This may or may not have been correlated, but the altar surface shifts and a strange hollow opens up in the altar. Leo recognizes this as matching the shape of the clockwork mechanism around his neck. Because of the strange, disturbing sensation, the party decides inserting the device into the altar may be a very bad idea. Before anything stranger happens, they decide they should reach out to Eliander Fireborn, and perhaps Ynyr, before further damage is done. They close up the door, fuse the outer bolt shut, and pile more rocks in front of the entrance, knowing they should be able to find their way back here in the future. Meanwhile, there is still a Giant problem to deal with.
The southwestern passage that remains unexplored has a bit of light spilling out from it; as they approach they can see shackled Dwarves working a forge. Seraphina moves to free them with Liberator, but as she passes into the wider area of the room, two enormous (perhaps giant even) Fire Giants loom over her to her left.
The Dwarves shy back in response and the Giants move to attack, landing two powerful blows on Seraphina, making her a bit unstable on her feet. Elincia immediately places a Bear Spirit totem to provide a layer of protection on the entire party, aiding Seraphina, and the party moves to do what the party does best. Tork is once again able to stun one of the Giants, reducing the damage dealt significantly, though these definitely hit hard. Leo calls on Elezar to restore health to Seraphina, and the party is able to take down the Giants without any of the "good guys" going down. Once again, the party decides it would be wise to take a brief respite before moving on. Leo drops a 5th level Cure Wounds on Seraphina to expedite the recovery, Elincia makes more Goodberries to share with everyone that took damage. They free the Dwarves, and loot the Fire Giants, who have change purses with 500gp each! All of the equipment in the area is giant sized, so nothing is worth taking for the party. They explain the situation to the Dwarves, who, similar to Talbot Callister, were exploring the area in search of good mining opportunities, though they come from Rockhome. Leo suggests that they head south of the Cruth Lowlands - he explains that there is a mining operation being set up in Saltmarsh that they could join, or depart from there to get back home if they prefer.
The party next decides it is time to move upstairs. Heading back to the main hallway, Tork notices some strange holes far up the wall near the staircase. Upon closer examination there is a false wall, which they are able to open up, revealing a secret room with a couple levers, and another set of giant-height peepholes. Leo sends up the owl to see what is on the other side of the peepholes, and his eyes immediately lock onto many coffers spilling out treasure! This panel, like the other, is a hidden door, but there are also two very large levers on the wall nearby. They try flipping the lever that is in the "up" first by trying to use mage hand, but it is not strong enough for this. Their second attempt is by tossing a rope over the lever and hanging on it. This makes a crashing sound on the other side, but does not open the door. Rather than trying either lever again, the party opens this second secret door, finding it moves easily.
On the other side, there is a large room. At one end is a barred portcullis. At the far western wall is the glittering treasure, but before looting the treasure, they decide to take a look around. On the south wall toward the far west, is another portcullis - in fact, two sets of portcullises. On the other side of the double portcullis is another room, with four large, lion-like creatures, but with humanoid faces. The party is wondering what they might be, when one begins talking to them, which surprises the party. Elincia recognizes these creatures as Manticores, and she is quite confident that they are absolutely bad creatures, who need to be put down. Leo starts a conversation with the Manticores, asking how they were captured. Apparently the Giants had traps and captured them up in the mountainous areas where the Giants were probably from. Leo asks if the party were to release the Manticores, would they return far into the mountains and stay away from this area. The Manticores seem agreeable to this. They state that they are quite hungry, so the party decides to go grab some Bugbear corpses. They cut them up enough that they can toss the parts through the bars, and the Manticores violently devour the remains. The party discusses things further and decide that releasing these Manticores in the region would be a very bad idea, but leaving them here would be a slow starvation. In the end they decide to kill the Manticores.
Leo transfers his Hex to the one he has been talking to and starts blasting. The Manticore screams in rage, "Liars! I will tear you apart, man-things!" Seraphina, Elincia, and Leo blast them with cantrips, and Tork throws his spear at them, but they aren't quite as defenseless as they look. The Manticores swing their tails around and start shooting back at them with spines. The party ducks around the wall to get cover, while Tork dances out in full view. The Manticores continue shooting spines at Tork, who catches one, laughing. The Manticores wise up and wait for the softer looking targets to poke their heads out. Even with held actions, the party is able to grind them down fairly quickly.
Once the Manticores have been dealt with, Leo walks over to the piles of treasure. Perhaps a bit unsurprisingly, the portcullises to the Manticore room both rise when he touches some of the gems spilled on the ground. He is also disappointed to find that the gems and coins overflowing their coffers are actually nothing but piles of rocks under some sort of illusion spell.
The eastern portcullis is still down, but the party sends the tiny Flametalon to scout behind them, finding a staircase, which appears to go up to somewhere in the middle of the Fortress. The stairs come to a room with no exits or windows, but there are no creatures there either. The party then explores the Manticore area and finds another hidden passage, leading to more treasures! This time when they open the first chest they find real coins, though they are copper. This chest of copper coins is massive though, with some 13,000 coins. They move to open the next chest, but Seraphina notices a possible trap mechanism. Leo attempts to disarm the trap, and though he is unsuccessful at fully disarming it, he does set it off harmlessly (in that the blade that swings out doesn't hit anyone). Inside this chest is a large number of silver coins (910). The next chest they all hope contains gold coins in similar quantities but, sadly, after dealing with more traps they find it contains electrum. Still, it is following the trend of escalating value, so they are excited at what might be in the chests they have not gotten to yet. The next chest contains 27 copper ingots - very heavy, but only moderately valuable. The remaining chests contain 11 valuable looking ivory tusks, followed by 325 small gems worth ~1gp each, a Potion of Heroism, and a pouch with 2 sticks of dull gray chalk, which seems very out of place - the chalk also feels tingly to the touch.
The party breaks there to think on how they will extract all this treasure from the keep.

Report Date

31 Jul 2022