Old and New Come Together

November 12, 2020

The fight is over.  The group recovers and then starts looking at the buildings.  The main building has furniture strewn everywhere.  Marks on the floor show where more furniture sat and moved.  All that is left is a collection of broken benches and chairs.  They might be salvageable.  The shed is empty but for some shelves built into the walls.  Hooks in the walls and some remnants of chain show that this was a holding spot for slaves.  The stables have fresh hay and horses were probably here in the past two or three days.  The main building and the shed have trapdoors going down.  After searching, the group decides to go down the main house trap door.  

Opening up the trapdoor with the keys from the people shows a ladder descending into darkness.  It's light enough out that nothing is seen after twenty feet other than the ladder.  As they discuss, they can hear breathing from down there and movement.  Nothing more than boots on stone moving around.  A voice calls out, "Why you want?"  

"To talk," responds Dio, looking at the others.  Shrugging, he gets on the ladder and starts descending.  The first few rungs hold his weight.  The third rung creaks and bends but holds it.  The fourth creaked as well.  At the eighth, the creaking turned to a loud SNAP as the rung gave way and Dio fell to the next one.  That one also snapped.  More and more snapped as Dio fell.  As the guys above watched, the rungs above him, ones he had already stepped on, snapped and the whole ladder fell apart.  Dio grunts as he hits the ground and looks around.  Two large guards, not human, not orc but something like that, stand in the hallway.  The stare at him.  

"What you want?"  

"We are here because we heard slaves are on this property and we aim to free them."  Take note.  This is not something to say to slavers when they know more friends are around and only one of you.  They attack.  

Dio is hard pressed and is soon surrounded.  The group above drag some of the furniture over and tie a rope around it.  Gorstag manages to come down and help but it takes another round or two before Rikard and Kaji make it down.  Rolen just watches, hearing the fighting.  He sees the movement but doesn't have a target.  

Four attackers at least slowed the press on Dio but not for long.  Two, three, five more of them come join in the fight.  Then more come from the south.  Kaji turns to smoke and goes into the slave cell, who stare open mouthed at him.  Then they start asking if they are to be freed?  Kaji mutters they are trying and creates a wall of fire, singing the newcomer badly and they move out of the wall.  Dio had moved into a bigger room but that just meant more of them could attack him.  Gorstag slowly made his way next to Dio but they still have a lot.  

Rikard and Kaji take down several who had backed off but Rikard is still hacked down.  Gorstag almost goes down and does Dio.  Rolen finally makes it down and attacks with his short sword, not having room to use his bow.  He's pushed back against the wall against and defends himself well.  

They probably would have beaten these enemies but then their allies show up.  The Fey'ri!  One blast of lightning takes down Gorstag and sizzles Dio.  At this point, the feyri asks for the fighting to stop so they may talk.  Dio, seeing Gorstag down, Rikard down, and Rolen injured, nods.  They all file into the big room and go to opposite sides, healing up.  

After healing, the feyri talk about a truce with the group.  They are willing to let the group leave and take half the slaves.  The leader of the slavers isn't happy about that until he talks to the leader of the feyri, then he slowly smiles and nods.  All are healed on both sides.  Somehow Rikard is brought back.  That's all still strange as he collapsed into a heap of bones under a robe but with some negative energy, formed up again into a skeleton.  The group is hurting.  They used a lot of power and while the slavers aren't fully healed, they are all up.  Sure, they might go down with only a hit but there are now a dozen feyri, fresh and ready to go.  Dio is out of healing ability, Rikard is down some, and Kaji is also down with his powerful spells.  Maybe if they start the fight with a big fireball?  However, Dio realizes that if they do that and it doesn't work, that's it.  That's all they have.  

Dio agrees to getting half the slaves and goes and gets them.  When he gets back, the rest of the party had been herded out to the hallway to another trap door.  The slavers open it and step back.  

"There is your exit," the feyri coos.  "Go to it."

"What about-" starts Dio but realizes the shaft from the main house is blocked.  Unless they want to start a fight with slaves who don't look like they can fight and would just die, he stops.  He mutters fine and they slowly file down into the trapdoor.

A ladder goes down thirty feet before it comes to stairs.  There might have been a bigger room or something else here but as more file down, Dio starts heading down the stairs.  Stone spiral stairs that keep going down and down.  Dio thinks they go over five hundred feet down before it comes out into a dark room.  Fortunately, Kaji has light as the slaves are all human and wouldn't be able to see otherwise.  They find themselves in an anteroom.  A bigger room opens up and looks familiar.  There is the circle they saw before that led to the low road.  Before they head out into it, the group figures they had better see what they have.  

The slaves have decent enough clothes and the caves are not too cool, so that isn't a problem.  The group is tired but it's still morning and Kaji doesn't think he would sleep.  Maybe they could rest for a bit, now that the fighting is over but that's about it.  The stone doesn't look too inviting a place to rest.

4500 xp

GM Notes

• I'm really torn at this moment between simulation and drama, between PF1 and 5E.
• I get that PF1 can be a bit fiddly in how the game works.  Tracking attacks of opportunity can be annoying. 
• I think 5E went too far in only having OAs when someone moves away.  And no OAs during spell casting or using other abilities.  
• One player canceled and very early into the game, a different player lost Zoom.  While he still had connection to d20Pro, I'm not running it through d20Pro.  Fortunately, he found a way to connect to the zoom meeting and we could keep going.
• I don't think announcing to slavers that you are here to free the slaves is the best way to go but that is what Dio (and maybe paladins in general) would do.  Perhaps waiting until the others were down there with him. 
• I tried a new accent for the feyri but had the slavers be a generic gutteral. 
• The new accent didn't work.  I don't have that hook into it yet to be able to use it well. 
• If there is one bad thing about zoom, I can't do weird voices, whisper, or shout as it just distorts or is too quiet for the mic.  I'm trying to use descriptions at least. 

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