We opened with the room stretched out before the Vikings. They crept up to a doorway, but found themselves discovered and prepared for. In a giant room stood an altar to Thor Odinson, god of thunder! But it was inhabited by goblins, including an axe-wielding berserker. Four archers had set themselves up on the raised portion of the altar, ready to pepper adventurers with bolts. Behind each archer was an assistant: a minion aiding the sharpshooters to give them +2s to hit.
They were led by a Elite Savage Berserker Skullspliter goblin, who enraged the vikings by humping the Thor statue. That can't stand!
Hermiad took the first action by firing his longbow at the Berserker, hitting and doing some decent damage. Then everyone rolled initiative. The goblins took the low end of the order, allowing Bartix, Rurik, and Hermiad to get more missile fire in. This Berserker was being taken down fast, but he needed to draw them into the range of his archer support.
The archers triggered their obvious trap (that everyone tried, unsuccessfully, to detect) by firing flaming arrows at charges in the ceiling. Two rockslide traps sprung on Hermiad, Rurik, and Varin, doing some minor damage. The other two fired directly at the adventurers with minor success. Next the Berserker leapt from the altar and charged Hermiad, whacking for 8 or so.
Mendas and Rurik responded to the Berserker, bloodying him. But this played into his hand: his damage output doubled, and he started responding to melee attacks with another attack! He may have done 50 damage in a round, including 25 to Rurik with a maxed damage roll. Bartix magic-missiled him, and Hermiad shifted away to nearly finish him with a longbow. With only one hit point left, Edgar did the honors.
Oddny, Edgar, and Rurik moved up to the altar to take out the archers.
Meanwhile, Bartix had heard sounds echoing through the dungeon. He could still understand Goblish, so he could understand them saying, "We've got them now, boys! We're the last chance!" Bartix positioned himself by the door, and readied his spells. Meanwhile Hermiad and Mendas set themselves up on the other side, ready to capitalize. Rurik used his Knight's Move to help Mendas get in position, which was cool.
The goblins charged in: five Skullcleavers and one Warcaster. Bartix let them into the room and released a Freezing Cloud. Three of them went down. Bartix them spent an action point and pulled a Thunderwave, sending another group of three back into the Ranger-Rogue blender (I think only one guy was iced and thundered). This generated four attacks of opportunity, killing the Warcaster and wounding the others. Ah, my warcaster!
Well, he had had another job besides casting spells or whatever, he was supposed to throw a snake! From his corpse, a small snake slithered from a bag on his belt. Once released, it instantly grew into a Deathrattle Viper which now threatened Hermiad!
Meanwhile two remaining untouched Skullsplitters went after Bartix. One rolled low, the other did serious damage. Everybody in the back of the room needed help. A fifth Skullsplitter escaped into the middle of the room, charging Varin!
Bartix was in the most trouble, as he couldn't take the heat he was facing. Rurik left the archer he was facing and shot across the battlefield in an action-point-fueled blur, charging one and hitting. These guys were pretty easy to hit, AC and all other defenses around 16, but they could dish out damage on par with the toughest PCs. As the goblins responded to the hits, Rurik was overwhelmed and fell down, at -3 hit points!
Oddny killed her archer but left the minion behind, crossing the battlefield to aid Rurik. Bartix kept backing up and firing, but he was threatened. Meanwhile, Hermiad and Mendas locked up the snake. This monster was hard to hit, but was cursed with terrible luck. I realized at some point that it was bloodied but that I had no idea what his attack power was, because he had yet to hit! With combat advantage established, the snake went down, and the two strikers went on to help with the remaining Skullsplitters.
Oddny switched from Medic to Hacker/Slasher, and Edgar killed the last of the goblin archers. The warforged then crossed the room to engage the Skullsplitters. Bartix was severly injured tried to gain some distance from the fray and used Expeditious Retreat to move back to the front of the room, apparently safe. But now the heavy fighters had ignored the goblin minions. A good tactical choice, but the wizard and the warlock were somewhat vulnerable. A minion charged Bartix, hit, and killed him! I informed Zach that this was the weakest enemy in the game, and for shame. Varin cleared the minion off the fallen wizard, and Oddny helped get him stable.
With multiple fighters and combat advantage aplenty, the goblins were falling fast. Mendas was sneak-attacking every which way, and Hermiad benefitted from his third crit of the night. At last, the only enemy left standing was one goblin minion, still rooted in fear at his original spot on the altar. Everyone's eyes fell on him, and he pleaded fervently for his life! Unfortunately, he was standing right next to a statue of Thor, who doesn't go in for that shit at all. What killed him, an arrow, a Dire Radiance, a Magic Missile? I can't quite remember; point is, dude is dead.
The vikings collapsed from the epic battle that had seen two characters below zero hit points and hundreds of points of damage dealt out. They had gone into it knowing that this was the last act of the adventuring day, and most of them had spend all remaining powers. A quick search of the room found some healing potions, gold, and a suit of Sylvan Leather Armor on one of the Skullspliters. Most interesting, however, was the inscription on the base of the Thor statue:
Everyone's religion and arcana rolls indicated that the words were incongruent with Thor, and that the shrine was magical in some way. Bartix studied the inscription closely and noticed that a letter came away with his finger and dragged across the surface of the stone. Everyone realized that this was an anagram puzzle, and sat down to figure it out. "THOR" was easy to find, but the rest took some doing. Finally, Mendas intoned "Armory of Thor!"
The stone split and opened, leading to a small room underneath the statue. Here everyone found cool stuff!
The vikings barricaded the room with loose rocks and bedded down for the night. There had been five encounters in the day, four of them combined into two encounters, so it was pretty tough day. For dinner? Roast snake!
All through the night the dungeon was silent. As far as anyone could tell, the goblin threat had been depopulated. In the morning the crew cleared the doorway and set out. They immediately came to a great opening to the north of the shrine. The pit was easily 90 feet across and fifty feet deep. A footpath traced the exterior, spiraling down to a small platform. Lighting the pit with spells revealed a doorway, along with several corpses. The adventurers could see two goblin bodies along with some ancient armored humanoid skeletons. This armor gleamed despite its age, perhaps it was magic! In the DM game, that's what we call Baiting the Hook.
Speaking of baits and hooks, Mendas volunteered to descend into the pit, secured by a line to Edgar. He carefully transversed the footpath with Edgar following above, ready to yank him up at any moment. When suddenly...
Casualties:
1 Elite Savage Berserker Goblin Skullplitter
4 Goblin Sharpshooters
4 Goblin Minions
5 Goblin Skullsplitters
1 Elite Frostborn Goblin Warcaster
1 Deathrattle Viper
24 beers! A new record for the campaign! Celebrating drunkenness is crass and at least eight years behind me, but USA! USA!
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