It’s been a long time since we’ve tuned in to the tales of the “Price of Honor” campaign, and a lots happened.
To sum up what’s gone before:
Two Years Ago: The Homely Hearth of Hyrmsmir was an Inn like many others: decent food, decent help, and a warm and cheerful fire lighting the walls and ceiling… Wait a second, that firelight is coming from outside the Inn; from the city walls, in fact. Are those screams you hear? The sounds of goblin battle cries? It doesn’t look like your going to get a chance to try the cook’s new dessert cake.
One Year ago: The city of Hyrmsmir had lost its treasured status as a small, safe port on the shores of Northsea. Hyrmsmir was well on its way to becoming a prosperous trading town until the armies came out of the mountains to the east and into the lands surrounding the town. Trade dropped off. Fewer caravans and ships arrived. Hordes of orcs, goblins, ogres, and giants marched as armies with order and discipline under the cover of night. When the armies came, Hyrmsmir was not prepared. The ?Battle of Hyrmsmir? was a massacre, able only to buy the inhabitants time to barricade off small portions of the city. Over the last year, however, men have returned to Northsea coasts, determined to reclaim their lost homes. Although the city proper is still held by the twisted armies of the conquerors, men have managed to gain a foothold in the ruined city, hiring adventurers to recover sections of the city, piece by piece.
Six Months ago: Our Heroes become entangled in the plots of the Duke of Hell behind the armies holding Hyrmsmir and are pulled into the 2nd plane of Hell itself, to the mirror-city of Harmsmire. After a series of (mis)adventures, the heroes narrowly manage to prevent the culmination of the plot that would have swapped the Hellcity with it’s counterpart on their home plane.
Six weeks ago: The group returns home, having discovered that their worlds the prizin an infernal contest — six Dukes of Hell are secretly competing to see who will be the first to conquer the Grand Duchy (or the largest part thereof) — they have set themselves against these hidden foes in hopes of stopping all of the other five Dukes of Hell and maybe even saving the world.
Background: The campaign takes place past the borders of the Duchy of Caer Maighdean, the shores of Northsea. More information on the campaign is here, and notes on the earlier game session and characters are here.
Today:
Following rumors of slave caravans and infernal activities, the group has left Hyrmsmir, moving north and gradually northeast along the lower foothills of the Peace Mountains, skirting the swamps of the Lizarim and moving into the Maighdean Forest as it climbs into the mountains — the altitude climbs as the temperatures drop, and the group finds out the the rumors of Devils in the Hills are true.
Two cornugon devils attack them on a mountain pass, and the group is tested (especially without their mage, who is on a personal quest creating several wands). They win through the fight, collect the booty and continue on to what looks like their bolthole in the mountains.
Unfortunately, the bolthold is guarded by a number of Ropers that have been modified in some manner to function out of doors. The party nearly overwhelmed, but manages to hold out… until Gebbet runs up and tries to open the door to the bolthole right away and triggers a trap that summons in another Cornugon. Oops. (He’d feel worse about it if Grim hadn’t told him to do it.)
The group camps out of doors and posts guards — convenient, since they’re ambushed in the middle of the night by hobgoblin troops that they handily dispatch even with Whisper staying wrapped in her bedding. The next morning they go through the hobgoblins things and discover that this operation is commanded from the hidden ogre city Denab Knur. They make plans to pursue this clue to it’s origin.
It wasn’t worth it for Whisper to get up, I mean after being in hell and fighting demons THESE little pissants come along??? Puh-leeze, Grim and Ran had them taken care of before she ever would have gotten out of bed.