Rappan Athuk Session 32 Open Game Sat Noon PDT GMT-7

[Griogre]

Rappan Athuk is a con open gaming room style campaign. Object is just to “sit down” and have fun exploring a huge old style dungeon. This is a dungeon crawl with “pick up” characters and players. Different character every session? Fine. Can only commit to one session? Great.

I’m looking for 4-6 players a session. If you are free and just want to play some D&D this Saturday come join in the fun at the "granddaddy of all dungeons". The current character level is 8th.

If you want to play jump on over here (https://www.fouruglymonsters.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=35) to my forum at Four Ugly Monsters and read the "stickys" for character creation, campaign details and to sign up for Session 32. If you are not a member of the forums at Four Ugly Monsters you will need to register to see the forums.

[Griogre]

Dooley, Grelk Halfblood, Parn and Albert head down to the shrine with Albert arriving at the last minute. The group returns back to where several of them confronted to some trolls the day before. They encounter some spiders on the way and Parn and Dooley deal with them handily. They do find their trolls and attack – or is it are attacked by the trolls?

Warned by their first brush with the trolls, the group tries to take them down in a hurry. The first troll goes down fast though not before getting off a sneak attack. The other trolls don’t want to go down at all. One troll initially chases Dooley, survives a trip attempt by Parn and actually jerks his spiked chain away from him. Parn settles into hit and run attacks against the troll which do little damage and the troll turn its attention to Albert. It settles into slowing wearing down the dwarf but then gets impatient and when Parn finally closes to melee with it, it switches its attacks to Parn and in a nasty sequence it manages to hit him three times, with one claw being a critical hit and finishes with a killing rend. As Parn’s body falls lifelessly to the floor the creature turns its attention back to Albert.

Grelk has meanwhile been battling the other troll without a lot of luck. The troll, at first, can’t hit Grelk either but finally gets in some good blows wounding him. Grelk returns the favor but it is Grelk who hits seriously wounded first. Dooley, despite being forced to move several times by Albert’s troll has been steadily pouring missile fire into whichever troll seems more wounded. Grelk continues to slowly wear down his troll – but then the first troll to go down, stirs! Grelk manages to drop that troll again when it stands up and then following up on Dooley’s archery takes down his own troll and coupe de graces the first troll. By this time Grelk is critically hurt.

As Parn’s body settles to the ground, Albert flys into a rage – drops his tower shield and goes at the troll swinging his dwarven war axe two handed. Both the troll and Albert punish each other until both are critically wounded and covered with wounds. Grelk moves it to help Albert as a massive set of blows rains down upon Albert. Albert staggers and stays on his feet, a dead man walking, up only because of his rage and die hard. Finally the troll falls and as it goes down the party is pulled back to the shrine with the body of Parn left in the dungeon. The Shrine Clerics cure Albert before he can realize he is a dead man, cheating death before his rage runs out.

* * *

There was a great battle at the end after a slow start because of the FG server being down and several players being unable to update to v2.0.11 (which was a shame). The battle could have gone either way with the party without both arcane and divine casters – a fact that lifted the battle from tough to outright dangerous. Towards the end whoever got the first good blows in was going to win. [XP for 8th level characters 2,100; for 9th 1,560.]

I’m still learning to use the combat tracker well and it showed the last round when I accidentally skipped Albert - but it made it more dramatic - because he got one more attack at the end and actually dropped the last troll with it. :p