Last session we made the journey to a 6 story tall tower located in the middle of the West Reach of Hollow. This location is the focus of Jacob's Fighter Class Quest in which we are to escort an engineer / architect to the tower, known as the Forest Tower Crown, so that he may study it unhindered for 24 hours. Although the late Kek Izaman was originally tasked with this quest about a year before, we could not complete it back then. However, this was not the first attempt as previously we had encountered multiple kobolds outside the tower and defeated them back then.

Likewise for the last sesssion, we defeated over 100 Kobolds and their leaders and took them prisoner but we did not attempt to enter the tower.

We are currently back in the bordertown of Iway which is the last stop in the 6 cities region before someone takes a journey or a pilgrimage to the Easterlands. There are about 4,000 people here. The party initially arrived by taking the long way around, where we hired 28 mercenaries of different specialties from each of the towns and cities along the road south from Mombafra.

Last session we left with our mercenaries and assaulted the tower, defeating the Kobolds.

This group uses class quests as an optional way to reduce training costs and we will be using the new initiative system next session.

Our lineup includes some additional characters:

• Orlando - Fighter (Bard) AC -1/2, large shield, MV 6“, Doors 1-4, Listen 1-2, 18/81,17,17,17,18,18 11 hp Human AL NG Mote age 17, used Method III.
• Delemir
• Jacob
• Josalyn
• Briiz
• Iona
• Thorgard
• Tatrin
• Fandillas
• Baldingo
• Honji
• Arusun

The party heads out from Iway back to the Forest Tower Crown with the engineer. Previously, when we asked the Kobolds about the dragon that was reported near the top of the tower, they did not know what it was, or they were being elusive. We did confirm that the tower was 6 stories high (or 5 stories if you are in the UK). At the very top are some levels that have some windows and there are some windows on the second floor.

Today is cloudy.

Orlando and Thorgard both purchase a horn for 1 gp (this is not a Gorsin horn) for alerting our mercenaries in battle.

We travel for most of the day and it is otherwise uneventful.

When the party arrives at the tower, Fandillas casts Strength on himself. By this time, 1/3 of the day has passed as we approach. When we arrive in great force at the base of the tower, Iona does not see any birds after studying the sky. There are no visible squirrels either.

We have our many mercenaries with us still.

The party approaches from the south this time and Iona climbs up the closest tree. As she climbs up, she can see through the windows on the second floor. There is a big window on the south side and though it is cloudy out, there is enough sunlight to see through. As she watches the window, she can see two bulky forms or silhouettes that are dark in color. They are large or thick in size and obviously not human and stand maybe 20' inside the room beyond the window. The windows themselves look old and are not kept up.

Iona scouts out from the tree that she is climbing, moving up at 24' per minute. She climbs up further and looks at each level. There are two levels that are circular in form and have no windows. Closer to the top is another level with windows. When she gets toward the 4th level…

Iona Moves Silently Climbs past the 5th level and reaches the 6th level. She can see that near the top of the tower are four landings with “teepeed” roofs. As she gets toward the top of the tower,suddenly the stone shifts on the very tower itself and some of the building material shifts violently and lifts off the edge of the tower as if reality itself is warping before her eyes. Then, a small creature like a dragon lifts off the tower and it has noticed her.

This creature can move 9” this round.

This dragon type creature is only a couple of feet long but regardless it seems intent on attacking her. It lifts off from the tower while Iona shouts down to the party to warn them.

Briiz can shoot due to his reaction modifier and must hit AC 2, Briiz hits for 2 damage. Thorgard is also shooting while Tatrin casts Light at the creature to blind it. Iona continues to climb back down. Orlando pulls out his short bow. And shouts “we mean you no harm” let us discuss things while Fandillas yells “Jump!” at Iona, “I got you”. Baldingo and the others go into cover and Delemir also tries to shoot it.

The creature moves 4 more segments and it goes towards Iona. Everyone can take their shots while Iona will jump when she hears Fandillas shout.

There are 3 hits from the crossbowmen and they do a total 5 damage to it. It immediately screeches and flies upward over the surface of the trees. Fandillas casts Feather Fall on Iona as she falls and meets with a rather soft landing. The dragon creature is now over the tree tops.

It can go 75' and is over the boughs now. Briiz readies his bow while Jacob says, “They did not have a true dragon, let's go in.” Everyone is looking upward toward the top of the trees and the tower, but nothing comes. It appears to have been scared off. They think it was a Pseudodragon.

Suddenly, the south tower bursts open and two large Owlbears emerge! Behind them is a woman fluttering around with faerie wings and she is about the size of an elf. There are two more Owlbears behind her.

Iona moves her full move back and pulls out her crossbow to ready a bolt.

Orlando says to the woman, “We mean no harm, we just come to look at the tower.” Meanwhile, Fandillas shoots his bow at one of the Owlbears and Baldingo tries to hide in shadows. Arusun will move halfway toward Fandillas and Honji stays back.

Delemir casts Sanctuary, Jacob moves to engage, Josalyn casts Prayer, Briiz shoots some arrows at the faerie woman, Thorgard moves to engage while shouting a battle cry and Tatrin casts Hold person on the faerie woman.

Hold Person takes 5 segments to cast and Delemir decides to cancel his Sanctuary spell. Orlando is calling out to parley but Briiz and Fandillas shoots their arrows first. They will hit random targets with arrows ALWAYS as there is no way they can aim their bows accurately. They are shooting at some random Owlbears that have AC 5.

Briiz and Fandillas both miss while the 11 crossbowmen fire. 5 of them hit one of the Owlbears doing 4, 3, 4, 4, and 3 damage. One of them must hit AC 9 for the faerie woman but it does not hit.

The Hold Person spell goes off and it does not work on any of the creatures!

The Faerie casts a spell on the adjacent Owlbear and it grows up to 18' tall and suddenly at the same time, the faerie woman goes invisible, which she can do at will apparently. The Prayer spell goes off as the melee combatants move in.

We all now have +1 to attacks, damage and saves while our enemies will get a -1 to the same.

Orlando draws out his bow seeing that his parley attempt has failed. Meanwhile Fandillas can shoot the 18' tall one easily while his retainer, Baldingo, stays stealthed behind a tree. Delemir charges in with Jacob and Thorgard attacks the gigantic Owlbear. Tatrin waits for the invisible faerie to appear while Iona fires her crossbow, but she misses.

Fandillas hits for 4 damage to the giant Owlbear. Orlando also hits for 7 damage and 1 of the crossbowmen hits for 4. Delemir can make an attack at the giant Owlbear and must hit AC 5 but misses.

In order to continue the fight, we must make Loyalty checks for the Mercenaries, the rolls are made and we are all good, they continue the fight!

Josalyn hits for 3 damage while Jacob hits a massive blow to the giant Owlbear for 10 damage. At the same time, Thorgard hits a devastating blow and does 13 damage. The giant Owlbear is LAID LOW! It falls forward onto the stairs, slain.

There are 3 Owlbears left and some of the Mercenaries charge in. Two of the horsemen hit and do 7 and 4 damage.

The 3 owlbears attack the 4 characters, avoiding attacks on the mercenaries. There is 1 attack on Delemir who has an AC -3, 1 claw hits him for 6 damage. There is 1 attack on Thorgard and his Ring of Protection fails due to his dwarven nature so now he has AC 1. Both the bite and a claw hit with the claw doing 2 damage and the bite doing a vicious 8 damage and the bite actually misses due to the active Prayer spell. We also recalculate the extra damage done by the Mercenaries. There is now 1 attack on Josalyn who has AC 0, and it hits on a roll of 15.

Jacob and Thorgard each get a 2nd attack. Thorgard hits for 13 damage which destroys one! Jacob also kills another one, leaving only one left.

The Hobillars are holding the door while Orlando runs to the west side. The Owlbear makes its attack but not before a Morale check. It will have a base of 77. as they attack on sight to the death, there is no Morale.

All the attacks are on Thorgard but they miss. Iona runs to the door while Jacob hits the last Owlbear for 10 damage, Thorgard hits for 12 and thus, the last Owlbear is slain!

Iona swings her spear around trying to find the invisible faerie woman, which I now believe is a Sylph. Delemir looks for evidence of her by the other doors but finds nothing. She must have flown away.

End of combat.

In the lowest level is a large chamber full of boxes and crates everywhere, the place is very disorganized. There are a few thousand coins of supplies lying all around including some weapons: longswords, footman's maces, 3 daggers, 43 arrows, longbows among other things.

Josalyn can cast Detect Magic on the items so she does. There is no magic detected. Meanwhile, Tatrin casts Find Traps but likewise, there are no traps in the area.

It has been about 20 minutes since the fight at this point. We go up the tower quick with the Find Traps spell going. We use the 10' marching order and head up the stairs. Across from where we come up is a landing and to our left is a set of double doors.

Thorgard, Orlando and Jacob are on door duty. We open the set of double doors as we attempt to clear each level. We come upon the chamber with the large window that Iona saw the tall dark figures (Owlbears) standing in. It appears to be the ruins of a workshop.

There are 5 human and 1 dwarf corpse lying in this room. They are stripped of all their belongings and have been partially eaten. Huge chunks of flesh were ripped off by something as if big crude mouths had eaten them. Some of their armor is still being worn. Of the bodies, 3 of the humans are unusually old looking for adventurers, withered and decrepit. All three of the old withered humans are wearing robes whereas the others had on armor. They appear to be too old for typical adventurers, maybe in their 60s judging by their remains. Delemir asks them if they were adventurers without realizing that they were already dead.

Detect Magic lasts for 1 turn, so it is over by now but Find Traps is still active.

We go up to the third level. Halfway up the stairs we can see that they empty up into a chamber. From our vantage point, we can see flickering lights at the top of the stairs. There are whites, blues and purples but we can't see fully into the room yet.

This is now the last turn of Find Traps. We head up into a big round room. There are no windows in here and there are a series of orbs floating around in the room. They are floating around central pillar and appear to have violent electrical energy. The orbs look unstable, as if they are peeling off and snapping back. The whole room looks to be charged with energy.

Tatrin does detect this as a trap so we carefully avoid entering in further. Delemir throws a rock inside and all of the electricity explodes it. Thorgard cuts open his waterskin and wants to throw it. He manages to find a way to do that and the water just passes through as the electricity goes through it and the water lands on the ground.

Tatrin might cast Dispel Magic.

Another rock is thrown and we watch it carefully as it exploded a few feet from the top of the stairs. It appears that the electricity zaps things after a couple feet inside the chamber, including a gold piece that is rolled across the floor.

Tatrin tries casting Dispel Magic on the center pillar, which would hit all 4 of the floating orbs. He has less than 30% chance to dispel it and it is NOT dispelled. Iona chucks a rock at an angle above the pillar. Once it gets a few feet into the room it explodes. It looks like the electricity expends a finite amount of energy to do this and we notice that there is an expenditure of energy each time something enters the room.

We head back down and check the bodies and then the walls of the 2nd floor. Unfortunately, we find no secret doors or coins, just the armor that was torn and bent.

We take all the armor to the area outside and then we consider it best to avoid trying to pass through the level with the electrical orbs. Instead, we will climb up the outside walls…or fly. Jacob and Thorgard will go up first using the Hippogriff. Thorgard and Jacob get to the very top of the tower and just before they would land, the Hippogriff must save versus paralysis.

IT SAVES!

The Hippogriff suddenly pulls away with alarm as it refuses to land at the top. Jacob and Thorgard did not notice that the entire top of the tower is covered in a thin spiderweb that is perfectly inlaid in the roof but the Hippogriff noticed it. They only realize once they see the reaction of the flying mount.

Jacob will toss a flask of burning oil onto the webbing. It catches fire and burns. The top of the tower has been cleared of web and the fire goes out. They drop the rope down so everyone else can climb up. Iona starts scampering up the rope quickly while Jacob flies everyone else up. All of us are now on the roof of the tower. There is no decent place to stand on but there are windows below. on the lower level from the top.

We climb down the rope to the 5th level with the doors. The oil flask had burned the webbing from all of the levels earlier so the 5th level is accessible.

We go to open the door and Find Traps is cast once again, but we finds no traps. At first, we fail to open the door but find that it is also locked. Iona attempts to deftly pick the lock but fails to open the lock on the door. We keep trying to open it but Baldingo manages to pick the lock on the north door as each of the four sides has its own door leading inside the tower.

Suddenly, Baldingo hears a voice, “YOU STAY OUT THERE OR I WILL BLAST YOU!”

Baldingo responds, “Do you mind if we study the tower?”

The voice inquires, “What about tower?”

“We have a guy that wants to study the tower for a day.”

“You just study tower?”

“Yes, but only if you help us look around.”

“Study tower, then you leave.”

The voice comes from a Kobold and he says we can inspect the tower for one day or he will blast us. Before we can respond, we hear a loud WOOOSH sound that ends in a WUUUMMMP!

With that, we go to get the engineer / architect and Josalyn joins us to cast Find Traps. We open the door.

As the door opens, the door openers must save vs paralysis as they discover that the floor beyond is gone and there is a big opening that drops down to the 4th level. Thorgard and Jacob make their save but Orlando did not make it!

Orlando falls 20' to the level below and takes 6 damage! He lands on the level below the 5th level and is now on the 4th level. He finds himself next to a table and some chairs. There is furniture and some tables placed along the edge of the room as if someone forgot to decorate. There is also a ladder that leads up to the next level to a trapdoor that is suspended in the air.

Other than the trapdoor that is floating in mid air, only connected to a ladder, the entire level of the 5th floor is an empty shell. Looking up we can see the bottom of a staircase where the ceiling would be. A circular staircase descends down from the ceiling and opens onto an empty space.

While we are talking, we hear a weak cough that is deep. A moment later a mans head peers over the edge, staring at us. He looks to be in his 60s and looks pretty malnourished. He looks at us with glassy eyes from above.

Iona pulls out a rope and attempts use a grapnel to secure to the staircase above. The man warns us to take care because, if the Kobold brings the level back while we are in there, we will be destroyed.

Iona and Delemir climb up to the chamber at the top using the rope that is now secured to a stair. Inside we find a chamber and the malnourished man. All the windows in here are opaque with blinds and there is only one man, emaciated and wearing nothing but a loin cloth.

His name is Zephryx and he has been here for about 3 months. He has been quite broken by the experience as he is actually only 32 years. He says that they (his group) were captured by a horde of Kobolds. He was kept here and forced to use a moss green orb that the Kobold possesses, periodically being made to empower the orb. For some reason, the Kobold is unable to do it himself and he is not the first one that has been here before.

Zephryx is from Elsewater and his group had a map that they were following when they were abducted. He has not been allowed to leave this chamber and he says that the Kobold can control creatures through the orb. Furthermore, the Kobold periodically takes the 5th level away through some kind of magical means and comes back later every few days. Zephryx also explains the the Kobold has a Pseudodragon and Ettercaps as guardians.

Baldingo unlocks the chains and Zephryx is now freed. Orlando searches the 4th level, checking on the tables and everything else, but does not find a switch. We escore Zephryx to the bottom of the tower.

We are required to rest at this point so we make our way to the lower floor and camp out with the mercenaries.

The evening goes by without incident.

Iona notices a couple birds and asks them what they have seen in the surrounding area. The birds respond that they have not seen much recently, since the big group of monsters all died. They says that they did see a big dragon thing flying around a bit. It went to the tower around the time when the sun went down.

“Why are there so few other birds?”

“The dragon eats birds. It is not nice place and we feel uncomfortable.”

Fanidillas planned to cast Strength in the morning and 4 pm comes, Fandillas's Strength spell comes and goes. The electricity in the room with the electic orbs is dispelled by Tatrin's Dispel Magic after which we explore the room. We did not find anything on the third level other than column that previously hosted the orbs. The Engineer now says he has everything he needs and we can depart if we wish.

We do not depart…instead, we get to our positions, some of us on the 4th floor and others, holed up in the top most floor where Zephryx was held.

In the middle of the night there is a big WOOOOMP!

Thorgard and Honji are awake on the top floor.Delemir is awake on the bottom floor. When Delemir looks up, the ceiling is back, magically returned. Delemir says out loud, “We are leaving soon but we want a reward.”

Thorgard is using a coin of Continual Light to see and he looks down the staircase and he hears some noise, then hears Delemir speaking from down below. Then he hears the same voice from earlier.

The Kobold curses at us using the Kobold language, and cries that we were supposed to be gone by now. Delemir makes for the trap door and says some things to try and intimidate the Kobold above. It does not seem to work.

The 5th level is now dimly illuminated. There are multiple figures in the room but Delemir cannot see much more than that. The figures, appearing roughly like Kobolds, start screeching. Delemir can tell that this Kobold is commanding his people to kill the elf!

From the upper level on the 6th floor, Iona holds her position at the top of the stairs with her crossbow ready and loaded. Arusun casts Protection from Evil on Fandillas while Honji aims his Wand of Fear.

Delemir casts Hold Person from the 5th level at the trap door.

Jacob and Briiz, both on the 4th level, have their bows trained on the trap door, leaving Delemir to handle the group for now. Josalyn puts on her armor on the 4th level.

Thorgard, who is also on the 6th floor, holds the stairs while Tatrin puts on his armor which will take 7 rounds.

Delemir can see and hear the Kobold's voice and he is focusing his spell on that figure. In order to effect the Kobold, he must overcome Magic Resistance. Unfortunately, the Kobold resists the spell.

Looking from our vantage point, Thorgard can see the trap door on the 5th level below. Delemir is casting while the figures in the dark charge him. Delemir has a -3 AC and 3 shapes that are attacking on the charge all miss! There are no hits on the first attack, nor the 2nd and 3rd as he avoids all blows. The creatures are big gangly humanoid creatures with fangs on their snouts.

The Kobold creature is riding on the back of the Pseudodragon and it attacks. Delemir dodges that blow as well as it must hit on a 20! As the creatures are now visible, he can see that there are 3 Ettercaps and a Pseudodragon mounted Kobold. Briiz attempts to shoot into the melee but shoots Delemir instead, as they fire into the melee swirl. The arrow misses. Two Ettercaps are also being shot, and Jacob hits them for 5 damage!

Delemir attacks a Kobold while Jacob goes down to the first floor to rally the men. Iona holds on the 6th level with Thorgard.

Jacob, Josalyn and Briiz start going down to the lowest level, leaving Delemir to hold off the monsters. Delemir is by himself for now. The Kobold misses Delemir and he must attack AC 7/7 to hit the Kobold. There are 3 sets of attacks on Delemir and he will be hit on an 18. 1 Ettercap claw hits for 3 damage and one bite hits him, he takes 6 more damage. Delemir must save versus poison or die…and he saves!

The Pseudodragon will hit with its bite on an 18 but it misses. Delemir is still fighting off everything at the top of the trap door. Although Delemir is now left in the dark, he has Infravision. For the next action he takes, Delemir was going to drink a potion.

Iona pulls out her own stone of continual light and moves down the stairs to help. She will try to fire a shot at the creatures and hopefully not provoke them.

The Ettercaps continue their attack on Delemir, with one claw hit for 2 damage. Delemir still manages to fight everything else off and manages to drink the potion which is a Potion of Speed ID 62. He must save vs System Shock or die! Luckily, he makes it! However, a side effect is that Delemir instantly gains 1 year of unnatural aging. He is now a 57 year old Half-Elf.

This round will finish, Fandillas will have on his armor. Jacob and his henchmen have alerted the hirelings. Orlando is awake but has on no armor yet. Iona is trying to come down the stairs with her Continual Light stone to get a shot.