Viktor, Defeated

July 2, 2020

The group slowly works their way into the cave.  The search the top level and still find some old gear, ruined digging equipment, and camping items.  They don't find anyone, though, so they make their way to the shaft going down. 

After some discussion, they have Rickard cast invisibility on Rolen, who constantly forgets he's invisible and gestures for them to follow, and Rolen heads down.  He finds a lot of debris in the room below and several traps with trip wires and crossbows.  He disarms them.  Mostly.  Well, the accident didn't hit anyone.  He gets the other traps then leads them through.  The hallway beyond has debris on it, obviously to make noise.  Rolen clears a way then waves for them to follow.  Then when they don't, whispers.

Rickard finally says that from now on, they will give Rolen a count of ten and then they will follow.  Rolen says that's not enough, so Rickard suggests a count of thirty.  Rolen is fine with that and they keep going.  

A T intersection and they pick north.  After a hundred feet, it opens up into another area where digging was happening.  Wheelbarrows and other debris is in the area.  They check to make sure there are no surprised but then continue on.  Another passage, another cave where digging happened.  More wheelbarrows and tools.  Then, another chute, going down.  This one is much longer.  Before, they went twenty feet down, maybe twenty five.  This one goes at least sixty and keeps going.  

Again, Rolen leads and goes down.  After over a hundred feet of going down, there is passage that opens up into small room.  No, it doesn't open  up, it broke into.  The room was there and they dug to it.  Rolen sees something on the ground and decides to get the group.  

When everyone is assembled, Rickard looks at the item on the ground and realizes it is a teleportation circle.  He can't do anything about it at the moment and a door was found.  Looking into it is a chamber with a dead orc.  There is a blood trail leading up to it.  The blood is tacky, so this only happened hours ago, maybe a day.  Perhaps when they slept or when the orcs came out?  In any case, there was a warning in dwarven.  "In the year 345 DR, did Dwalin, of the Hammers, seal this place.  Do not break that which Moradin has sealed."  Figuring it's already broken, and maybe they need to reseal it, they go forward.  They follow the blood trail down the hallway.  

Another room, and more dead orcs.  The more the group checked the orc bodies, the more convinced they were that they the wounds were done by orc weapons.  

The northern door says "Emergency Exit."  The east door says "Only the Hammers should proceed.  Others beware."  

Another room and more dead orcs.  However, this time it's different.  

The ghosts of two dwarves appear before them and tell them to go no farther.  They are guarding the door to the south.  The group quickly looks at the other hallway and find the orcs may have rested in there.  

Rolen is ready to go back but Dio.  Dio wants to go forward.  The ghosts keep telling him to stay back.  He moves a bit forward.  Dio tells the rest that they spoke of the Hammers and so he will be fine.  And then the ghost tried to possess him.  He resists it but when the other ghost goes into Gorstag, Gorstag isn't able to resist and attacks the group!  Well, that confirms how the orcs died!  

Before Gorstag is able to resist, he does hit Dio several times.  They get out of the room and the ghosts don't follow.  Dio has Rickard do a spell to lock the doors and seal them.  He turns to the ghost and says that he hopes he can rest.  The ghost replies, "Duty does not let me rest." 

It takes them an hour but Rickard seals all the doors on the way back to the room with the portal.  They talk about activating the portal but Rickard puts a stop to that.  He can't do it right now and doesn't think even with rest that he should.  Sure, he's curious but not suicidal.  They head back up to the second floor.  They want to cover this.  The shut the trapdoor of the shaft and then get most of the used tools and debris and stack it in here.  They even take four hours to widen the cave and make it look like another dead end with a garbage place.  When they are finished they head out and rest.  Or would have rest but drag the orc bodies into the pyre they had made with the other bodies and light it.  When that's done, they head to their hidden camp to rest.  They fall asleep pretty easily.  

A group arrives while Dio is on watch.  Humans and they come to the orc camp, probably saw the pyre they had burned.  It got bigger than he Dio thought it would, although he knows Kossuth has blessed Kaji.  They look around and glance into the cave but find nothing.  Then they setup camp.  Dio had woken up the others and talks to them but they decide to wait.  The night passes and nothing happens.  The next morning, as they have a cold breakfast, they hear horses and soon another group arrives.

Viktor.

He has several with him and he stops and talks to the first group.  No one can hear what is said but they talk a while and then Viktor gets up on his horse and his group heads north east.  The group tries to come up with a way to approach the group still in the remains of the orc camp, They can't find any way to approach this group.  They are in the middle of the hills, ten miles from the nearest village.  There is no way to explain why they are out there.  Further, they finally saw Viktor and decide they want to chase after him.  

Viktor's group had an hour lead by the time they got their horses, got things loaded up, and were able to go after them.  It took a bit of time to find the tracks but between Rolen and Gorstag, they managed.  It took until late afternoon, when Viktor and the group stopped, before they caught up.  And again they wondered what to do.  Do they attack?  Do they let him lead them to the rest?  Dio wants Viktor to pay for what he did.  Eventually they decide to attack.  

They have a well planned ambush.  Rolen and Kaji are going to hit him with arrow and fire.  Maybe it was nerves.  Maybe it was the light behind them.  Whatever the reason though, three of the four attacks go wide and miss!  Even as Rolen does connect with his final shot, the rest are moving.  Viktor taunts them and shoots with his repeating crossbow.  The others are also shooting at them with bows, then close in with daggers.  Once Gorstag and Dio engage Viktor in hand to hand, Rolen and Rickard take out the others and Dio and Gorstag attack Viktor.  He is doing better than they would want when Kaji burns with the pure flame of Kossuth and raw elemental fire bursts forth, slamming into Viktor.  His clothes burn off, his hair burns off, and yet he keeps going but not much longer.  Rolen gets the final shot and Viktor goes down!

One of Viktor's companions survived.  They question her, a woman named Esma, from a small village to the south, one of the victims of Viktor's raid in the winter.  She tells them it was join or die, after Viktor killed the men.  She could at least fight and had it easier than some women.  She tells them Viktor would check on two sites with orcs and one with goblins.  She gives rough approximations of where.  Dio then keeps his word, let's her take her horse and to leave.  She does, gladly.  

1300 xp

GM Notes

• Not as many accents needed but I did a few.  
• I think even Marc knew that the ghost dwarves were not a good idea but he couldn't help it.  And really, it made sense for the character. 
• The fight with Viktor was probably not climactic enough.  Maybe it needed more energy or a few more minions with him?  They weren't hitting a lot or doing much damage. 
• They wonder about the group that went to the orc camp and think they should check it out.   
• Well, none of the images showed up on a save but the edit showed them there.  Bummer.   
• It's why there was weird indentation before I edited it. 
• I think I have to save them off as individual files and then put them here.  I can't save the full maps because they didn't see everything on the levels.   

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