[DM: I want to point out that I rolled like utter [bleep] this session. My miss ratio was pretty far on the wrong side of the standard deviation on a d20. I only had one natural 20, on T’Balktu of course, and a bunch of 1′s, 2′s, 3′s. ]
The tower taken from the forces defending it our band of heroes takes stock of the situation. And the phat lewt. They recover a magic staff, set of robes, some fire arrows and bolts, a couple of healing potions, a stack of what they’ll eventually discover are alchemical bombs and a set of signal flares.
Based on Keri’s notes they know the cave trolls are sent around the island around dawn to help with the construction efforts. This gives them about 6 hours before then so leaving Biminey to begun work on repairing and re-tuning the airship. A couple of hours into it he realizes he’s going to have to replace the broken boards of the ship before it’ll be flyable again.
He wakes the others and gives them the bad news. They decide to go back to sleep and deal with it later. Biminey joins them in sleeping leaving Torn, Kane and Dash on watch. Hirelings work well for that.
As the sun peeks up Torel and Stak go look at the avenues of approach to the tower. On the far side of the chasm separating the tower side from the rest of the island is a extending bridge. They crank it over and investigate the far side. A couple of smaller buildings are under construction on that side. Torel preps the area by liberally splashing gallons of oil in the places where attackers might take cover.
A couple of hours after dawn, the compound forces start wondering where the cave trolls are and send a couple of sailors up to find out what’s going on. They holler and hullabaloo for awhile but the good guys don’t respond. One of the sailors twists a rod like the ones that are in the tower and a flare of light flies way up in the air, sparking and sputtering, visible for miles in all directions and then head back to the compound at a jog.
[DM's Comments: I'd planned out a number of scenarios, even had maps ready but the group's actions as happens quite frequently took a turn that I hadn't planned. Their scheme for the lumber was sneaky and scheming and my possible scenario's didn't quite get that sneaky on their behalf. I'd envisioned them possibly ambushing the first people up to see what was going on by either setting up in the partially built houses on the far side of the bridge or leaving the bridge down and luring them over to the tower. But it just really proves yet again one person will never be able to accurately predict what other people will do, 100% of the time no matter how long they've known them.]
Now that the bad guys know something is up, although not what, the group decides to hunker down and prepare to repel an attack trying to come across the chasm and wait in vain for rest of the day with nothing happening although they do spot a sneaky person scouting them out.
[Torel rolled a natural 20 on a perception check or they'd of not spotted him. After the slavers knew something was up they sent up an assassin who wisely decided not to try anything during the day. The slavers are expecting another ship of reinforcements which would include at least an overmage if not another ubermage. They also have some high level captives that they've been lead to believe will be highly ransomable. The captives lied by the way to gain time, there's no one left to ransom them. Hence they're not going to try to frontal attack a tower that they have to try to cross a 25' gap with a 50' fall into jagged rocks. They're going to wait for nightfall and sneak across under the cover of darkness.]
As the day continues to wind down the group decides to send Stak and Dash, both fairly sneaky bastards over to scout the compound. They know from Keri’s notes that there is a building under construction over there which should mean there’s lumber. The two are supposed to try and steal the lumber. And rather than going around the island they cut across the harbor, using a small cask to carry their gear and to rest with on the mile or so swim. They’re given two signal flares to use if they need help.
Stak and Dash get over and find no way to get to the lumber, the slavers over there are scattered, hiding in nooks and crannies while several are guarding a building that Keri marked as holding slaves. Discretion prevails and they return the way they came. Stak unfortunately failed in his attempt to climb the cliff so they shout for help and then are pulled up the cliff.
They report their findings to the rest.
Our five leave Kane, Dash and Torn to watch the tower as they’ve come up with a plan to not go after the lumber at the compound but instead take the ship and de-construct part of it for the lumber they need. They get ready and slither down the rope and into the warm salt water and start dog paddling.
[It's about this time that the assassin makes it across and starts scouting the tower section of the island. He's not sure what to make of the three men that he can find, assuming they must be tougher than they are if they were able to take the tower and goes back retrieves most of the quality forces from the compound and they assualt the tower while our group is slowly swimming across the harbor. The attack on the harbor kicks off about the time that the group gets to the ship. The three hirelings immediately know they're heavily screwed and set off two flares. They three are all level 6 though and they do cut a swath through the attackers but are eventually taken.]
The group reach the ship, Stak going further to steal the longboats from the shore. Elisssa hits the deck of the ship first due to bad timing on their part but has no trouble killing both slavers on board. One swing of her axe at the end of a charge cuts the slaver’s arm off which is holding a signal flare. She spins and takes the head off the other one in the same motion.
The rest climb on board to find the ship is theirs and Stak comes up with the longboats.
The signal flares go up from the tower but there’s just not much they can do for them except continue with the plan. They wait till down though which isn’t far off and use the ballistae on the ship to let the forces on the shore know they’re there. Keeping the slavers on the shore occupied, they strip lumber off the non-visible side of the boat.
Lumber in head they set the ship afire and start rowing back to the tower. The tower forces are waiting for them but aren’t too concerned as the cliffs are almost impossible to climb and it would be very easy to just drop rocks on anyone trying to climb them and knock them off.
Unfortunately for the slavers they don’t know about Biminey’s Ladder ritual. As the ladder springs up and Torel starts climbing his butt off the two at the top realize that things may not be going as planned and start yelling. They drop rocks but they miss and Torel is able to reach the top of the cliff, Biminey right behind him.
A fight breaks out and both sides are reinforced as forces rush in from the tower and up the ladder but when Torel uses the Deamon Heart to walk the assassin off the cliff and Biminey drops the ladder as he’s trying to climb back up. Battered, bruised, ribs cracked and leg broken the assassin limps off vowing to come back and kill them all in nasty ways. Right as Biminey’s firebolt, charged with lightning enters his skull from above.
The fights just clean up this point between the guys the hirelings killed, the loss of the ‘boss’ of the island forces and the fact that the slavers can’t seem to hit a damn thing it’s quickly over.
They capture one of the slaver alchemists and get information from him. They go back and strike a bargain, one sided, with the remaining neophytes in the tower (all minions) and make them leave. They recover their battered and beaten hirelings.
Hauling up their construction supplies Biminey and a couple of others get to work repairing the airship while the rest traipse across the island and intimidate or kill the remaining slavers.
In the captive hut they rescue a dwarf noble woman and her retinue. She has a tale of her city being overrun by hobgoblins and her father putting her and the rest on a boat with a few guards while they stayed to defend the city. They were picked up by slavers not long after setting sail and brought to the island. To buy time and preferential treatment they let on to the slavers that a huge ransom would be possible. The other slaver ship on the island went off to collect said ransom.
Air ship repaired and drivable they take a minor detour to burn the slaver compound to the ground from the air and head back. They try to investigate one of the small farming villages on their way back, one of the ones that has lost contact with the city and Biminey has a test of wills as something tries to take over control of him through the airship control amulet, forcing him to land the ship. He breaks free and they flee back to the coast.
Leaving biminey and most of the noble woman’s following on the ship the rest are dropped off outside of town walk in. They get inside and learn news of the hobgoblin threat and get information from Sushanna of good news. The Eris researchers are constructing a battle standard that will duplicate the weakening effect of the Larkson wardings for a small area. They also find out from Sushanna that the wardings of the city are powered by the life force of people born in the city. This was uncovered in the research into the standard which after use requires a ritual and life force to recharge to enable it to work again.
We leave our group getting cleaned up in the temple’s sauna’s and breaking the fast. They have plans for to meet up with Biminey in two days time, who’s currently flying the ship out of sight of land and above the clouds and making offers of employment to Visra’s, the noble dwarf’s retinue since she obviously won’t be able to pay them. On the flip side, Visra is going to try and find them employment in the town.
Elisssa, getting a little tired of the group’s actions preventing her from killing who she wants to when she wants is going to depart the group for at least awhile, taking the gold and valuables she’s garnered from their adventures. She has thoughts of packing up her relatives adn friends on a ship and sailing away from this danger zone now that she knows there are cities to the south, albeit under the threat of hobgoblin attack but at least she won’t have to worry about her mind being consumed and her body used to kill innocents.
