Frontier Pathfinding - Sunday, May 19th, 2019

This week we started with Locke and Schmidt continuing to argue about how to dispose of the bodies, but the agreed to just dump them near the ogre's body. However, Schmidt stipulated that the legs be removed from the bodied before they were dumped.

Hauling four gnolls, four dire rats, twelve zombies and sixteen skeletons up the secret stairs and through the rubble pile in the corner of the old bandit hideout took some doing. When they had most of the bodies out, they heard an ominous moaning coming from the northwest corner of the room they had initially entered through. None of them could find anything significant when they investigated, and eventually the sound died down.

After they finished hauling the bodies out of the basement, they decided it would be best to head back to town to heal up. When they arrived at the temple of Iomedae, the cleric was able to treat Locke's wounds, but was unsuccessful with Schmidt or Deserea's. But resting overnight in the cleric's care addressed their wounds.

That morning they returned to the ruins. Sneaking in through the broken wall the bandits had mostly been using, they were able to make their way to the south wall and partially block the one arrow slit facing south from inside the building. That left the route through the collapsed wall nearly undefended for future approaches to the building.

Once they were satisfied that the arrow slit was reasonably covered, they returned to the basement through the stairs in the pantry. They gathered the debris from in front of the two doors to the west, and piled it up in the northmost of the ten-by-ten rooms the zombies had been in.

When the doors were cleared, Schmidt tried picking the locks, but was unable to do so.

Locke pulled the head of an old warhammer out of the debris and brought it back over. Several solid (and loud) blows with the hammer head finally cracked the door sufficiently that Locke and Deserea could pull the door apart. Looking through the door, it appeared to be a store room. Locke and Schmidt stepped in and found bundles of spears and pole arms, some axes, several suits of leather armor, and seventy cloaks with the flaming yellow eye emblazoned upon them.

For the moment, they left the room as it was and moved to the adjacent door to the south. Using an intact axe this time, it took Locke less time to get trough this door (and less noise), despite the fact that he missed the first two times.

This was also a store room, but it is also where the remaining dire rats had retreated to. The rats backed into a corner and Locke and Schmidt each took a swing, taking out one of the rats. Deserea loosed an arrow into a second as it scurried under a shield.

Locke and Schmidt tried again, but the rats were making good use of a that shield. Schmidt grabbed the shield and flipped it out of the way, and Locke was able to take out the remaining two rats.

Then they heard an odd, rhythmic thumping sound. Deserea confirmed that it came from the direction of the ogre's room. The group carefully made their way, opening and checking behind each door on the way. They made it all the way to the bandit's room at the top of the secret stairs without finding anything that could have made the noise.

At this point, they decided to send Deserea back to town to see if she could get Leve and his wagon to come out to haul off the weapons, or if she could just buy or borrow a wagon from someone.

While she was gone, Locke and Schmidt carried all the equipment that was in the two store rooms back up and across the old drawbridge. This included two barrels of salted pork, two casks of brandy, and a number of small steel shields, arrows, and crossbow bolts.

When Leve and Deserea arrived pulling the wagon, Schmidt and Deserea had the same concern. If you have weapons to arm an army, then you are probably planning something. Either the village was the army, and this was their weapon cache for something, or there was a group planning to attack the village for some reason. In either case, taking the weapons to the town and selling them was probably not a great idea. In fact, since someone had come out here other than them on at least two occasions, there was someone in town in with whoever was running this place...

Eventually they decided to cover the equipment in the wagon with inside-out cloaks (so they were just black cloth) and stash the remaining cloaks somewhere hidden in the woods between the ruins and the road. Then they took the wagon into town at night and straight across town to the temple where Locke and Leve were sure they could trust the clerics.

After stashing the equipment in the temple, and donating the salted pork to the needs of Iomedae, the group spent the night in the temple again.

The next morning they went back to the ruin and in through the rubble pile into the old bandit's room and down the secret stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Locke was startled by a bugbear opening the secret door to go further down underground.

In the moment of Locke and the bugbear's hesitation, Schmidt leapt past Locke and gave the bugbear a good slice. The bugbear stepped between Schmidt and Locke, giving lock the opportunity to hit him again and he fell.

The second bugbear who had stepped forward to engage Locke saw his companion drop and took a step back. Locke stepped after him and Schmidt followed. Deserea started singing encouragement to her two companions.

Seeing the two warriors coming after him, the bugbear quickly withdrew down the stairs and into the darkness. Locke and Schmidt pursued quickly, cornering the bugbear who swung at Locke, but didn't penetrate his armor. Locke and Schmidt were able to take him down quickly now that he was cornered.

And now they were in the basement, in a corner off a junction in the corridors...

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