Invading the Kobold Lair | D&D Session #4.5

The Mürmaids Assault the Kobold Lair

Earlier in the fourth episode of the Mürmaids dungeons and dragons adventure, our intrepid heroes had just escaped the hold of the slavers' ship. They discussed what to do with the two ships they now had, and determined that it would be best to take what was necessary from the slavers' ship to patch together the River Maven. With the seafaring skills of their new friend Igrom "Bad Cheese", Horace was able to make the necessary repairs, and the party decided to double back to the knoll of the Great Man, where they would finally seek out the treasure left behind by the local goblins when they fled from the invading kobolds.

Backstory on the Kobold's Lair

Some few hundred years ago, when the war between the Foulbriar dwarves and the goblins of the Border Mountains began, a dwarven stronghold fell to the goblins near this tributary of the Great Northern River. For decades now, the goblins had been using it as a temple to one of their demonic gods, until Sleussill, a lizard man shaman, rallied a troupe of kobolds to his cause, and convinced them to assault the goblin temple.

The assault went as planned, and soon enough, Sleussill had a partially walled complex fully equipped with a demonic temple at his disposal. In his fanatical worship of the demonic Earth Dragon, he had come to believe that a certain ritual would wake the beast from its slumber, and he would be rewarded by a seat at his God's right hand. While using the kobolds to his own ends, he has convinced their own high-priest of the same, though he hasn't told the remainder of the kobolds this. His ritual, though, required a certain amount of souls to be slaughtered. So his work began, first, creating the weapon with which he would perform his duties. Once he secured the dagger, he began sacrificing the human and goblin captives his kobolds had captured, but when that wasn't enough for the Earth Dragon, he began picking off his kobolds as well. At this point, our heroes arrive.

The Halfling's Reconnaissance

Anchored at the Great Man Knoll, the Mürmaids left Igrom aboard and went ashore. They tracked the one kobold who escaped earlier in the session to locate their camp. The old dwarven fort was carved out of a hillside, making a low, horse-shoe shaped wall surrounding a small field with a squat, square building in its center. The complex faced from the west, and farther east, the scrub and brush of the forest surrounded the entire area. Outside the wall there was a loose encamnpment of a few tents, and inside were a few more, more densely packed. All in all, the group spotted roughly 50 kobolds milling about the place, and they spotted three possible entrances to the walled complex. First was the main gate, with two guard towers, one on each side. The second and third were collapsed parts of the wall, fallen long ago in the goblin war. Oliver saw a course with few kobolds watching, so he hatched a plan to infiltrate the low building and see if that is where the supposed goblin treasure was still kept.

He took some small amount of time to re-build his kobold costume from earlier in the adventure. He took the harpoon, hid his daggers within his rough tunic, filled a burlap sack with some other gear and trotted down as close as he could to the field with tents. While he moved forward, Guido took the crossbow they had acquired from the slavers, and Horace took his shortbow, and moved up as close as they could without breaking the treeline, Horace to the north, and guido to the south, both still within signaling distance of each other. Clyde stayed back, as his approach wouldn't be stealty. Meanwhile, Oliver trotted up to the northern-most edge of the kobold encampment and took a bottle of the moonshine they had found in the slavers' ship, and began to pour it casually over the edges of the tents he passed by.

After scouting out the area, and making it past the guards on the watchtowers, Oliver crept into the weathered stone staircase leading into the squat building. Within, he saw a well-lit chamber, with two rows of three stone columns apiece holding the ceiling aloft. At the other end, he spotted three kobolds, all with their backs to him, and one other reptilian creature, easily three times the size of a kobold. Larger, even than his big friend Guido.

The lizard man seemed to be leading some kind of ritual, and one of the kobolds, in nicer dress than the rest, seemed to be assisting. Oliver ducked to the side of the chamber, hiding behind one of the stone pillars. When he did so, he caught a glimpse of the altar and the great, 12' tall idol against the far wall. It was a horned beast, sitting with its legs crossed. In its hands it held before it a flaming firepot, bright enough to illuminate the entire expanse of the room. It's eyes, above the grinning, demonic face, were what really caught Oliver's attention, though. As they constructed the area to worship their demonic gods, the goblins had apparently installed two massive rubies, the size of the halfling's fists as eyeballs. His mouth watered with the want for the wealth these items could provide.

He started to make a plan, and as he first drew back the harpoon to hurl it at the lizard man, his eyes grew wide in horror as he noted the two kobolds who were not priests, blindfolded, were led up to the altar, where the lizard man slit their throats open to spill their blood out onto the altar without any emotion. Very faintly, Oliver felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.

The lizard man raised his hands in the air, silvery dagger still clutched in one fist, arm coated in blood, apparently giving thanks to some deity. Oliver thought his time was now, and trained the long, metal harpoon at the tall lizard, and steadied his arm to throw.

Disarray Between the Enemies

Meanwhile, Horace saw an opportunity to strike out against the kobolds still outside. He trained his shot, and raised an arrow against the guard in the southern of the two towers above complex' gate. With a solid shot, he dropped the beast with hardly a shout. The kobold's companions looked around, but not noticing their companion on the raised platform, had no reason to raise the alarm. He also wrapped an arrow in cloth, lit it on fire and fired it at one of the tents Oliver had prepared for him with the slavers' alcohol. It only took a few moments for the smoke to start to rise and the flames to begin licking the outside of the tent. From out of the tent, three kobolds ran, and hissed and barked their harsh language to nearby companions, so they all rushed over to the tent to extinguish the flames. As a dozen or so of them were distracted, Guido and Horace started picking off kobolds, doing their best to remain hidden. Try as they might, the kobolds eventually spotted the dead bodies of their companions, and in a frenzied, confused mess, they tried to counter the attack.

Oliver, however, knew that he would be found out. He only hoped that he would be able to slay the larger lizard man, and take on the final remaining kobold in the room by himself. He heaved the harpoon across the room, but unfortunately it skittered harmlessly off one of the pillars, and he was immediately spotted by both the lizard man and his kobold acolyte. They rushed forward, the kobold missing the nimble halfling with his ceremonial cudgel. The lizard man had a much different approach. he reached out with his clawed hand, and simply touched Oliver's forehead as he hissed out a prayer to his demonic god.

Oliver trembled as the earth began to shake beneath his feet. The ground then opened up, a great chasm sputtering lava and smoke from its depths. the chasm widened, and opened towards him, spreading apart as it inched nearer to him. He backed away, but it kept coming. He thought he could see in its depths the flawed fingertips of demonic creatures reaching out to grasp his ankles and bring him down to their hell. So, he did what any brave halfling would do in the face of plummetng thousands of feet into the depths of hell, he turned, dropped anything else he was carying, and ran screaming from the place. It was for nothing, though, as the chasm simply spread open wider, threatening to engulf him no matter how many steps he took away from the thing.

The Shaman Arranges the Counter-Attack

Clyde at this point had heard the ruckus from the kobold camp, and took that as his signal to head on in. He charged from the woods to the edge of the treeline where Guido and Horace were. From there, he was easily spotted by the kobolds. He also easily spotted Oliver, screaming and waving his hands in the air like some kind of fool, sprinting as fast as his stout legs could carry him in the other direction. Oliver ran past the kobolds, and for the life of him, Clyde couldn't tell what the hell the little bugger was running from. So, like any sensible dwarf, he tried to tackle his companion. Unfortunately the halfling is a slippery little fellow, so he escaped the dwarf's grasp, and continued on in his frenzied flight. Clyde shrugged, took a firm hold of his shield and sword, and continued his charge into the outskirts of the kobold encampment.

Meanwhile, Sleusill the lizard man was arranging what kobolds he could muster behind a wooden push cart. His acolyte, still in his robes, mounted the cart, and called for several of his kind to push the thing. With strong cover from the arrows of Horace and Guido's crossbow, they moved forward slowly, but surely.

Clyde Rushes in; Mobs of Kobolds Attack

Clyde charged ahead, straight west down the middle towards the gate, between his two partially concealed companions. The kobolds couldn't miss the grunting, charging dwarf. While Horace continued to pelt the group farthest to the north, by the flaming tent, they struggled to spot the source of the raining arrows. They grouped together, and moved closer to him as quickly as they could manage, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Sleusill continued to drive his small horde of goblins forward as well, crossbow bolts and arrows thunking into the side of the cart harmlessly. They also spotted Clyde, and began moving up the middle of the encampment towards him (and inadvertently Guido as well).

A third group, ahead of the push cart, immediately latched on to Clyde. They stopped him in his tracks, and piled on. He swung his longsword, but the kobolds clinging to his arm stopped its effectiveness, and he lost it into one of the neighboring tents. One grabbed his left leg, one his right, one climbed up, biting and clawing at his chest and neck, but none of them were able to bring the dwarf down to the ground.

Oliver had finally stopped his frenzied sprint, checked his shorts, and then turned to skirt around the edge of the treeline to the south, in an effort to get around all of the small mobs of creatures and back into the temple basement where he saw the rubies. He stopped as he passed Guido, who at that point had been spotted and was preparing to enter a melee with the kobolds surrounding Clyde, and communicated his plan.

The next few rounds of combat consisted of Clyde swinging his shield about like a frying pan, bashing kobolds away from him in droves. Horace was eventually spotted, and the three remaining kobolds near him squared off to face the half-elf. The group with the hand cart began to split up, trying to surround guido. Oliver, though, snuck on without notice. Eventually, he found himself behind the cart, and behind Sleusill. The Lizard man had suffered some small damage already, and as Oliver saw the group rounding on Guido, he decided he had to act. He drew a dagger from his belt, and took a few quick steps from behind a tree to right behind Sleusill's flank. With precision, he slipped his blade between his scales and up his rib cage, puncturing the beast's lung. When the lizard man reeled, he stood to his full height and swung around to attack Oliver with his sacrificial dagger. Horace and Guido saw the opportunity, and struck. An arrow and a spear coursed in and slew the beast and scattered the group of kobolds around him.

Many of the kobolds began to scatter at this point, with their leader dropped, a crazed dwarf clubbing through them in the center of their compound, a human and a half elf picking them off from the edges. The kobold acolyte wasn't so easily dissuaded, though, and he charged forward from the corpse of his leader to the nearest hero he could find; Guido. He was already busy with a variety of challenges, being surrounded by a small mob of kobolds, trying to help Clyde out of his particular pickle, and trying to manage keeping the way clear for Oliver to get through the crowd and get back to the now unguarded demon idol.

Some impressive theatrics happened next. Clyde clubbed through the remainder of those kobolds trying to overbear him. Horace rolled critically to shoot past both Clyde and Guido to slay the acolyte. Guido drew his short sword and sliced through a few monsters of his own. After several rounds of battle, the remaining kobolds fled, and the party rallied around Oliver, who told the rest that he had found rubies the size of fists. Of course they all agreed that they needed to go in there and pull their much-desired treasure out of the dungeon.

This has been an excessively long post, but the session wasnt even over yet. Since Session #5 was considerably shorter, I will post the thrilling conclusion of the assault on the kobolds at that point.

Until next time, be excellent to one another, and party on, dudes.