Game Setup Characters spent over a year in circulation. The bureaucracy of Corrive is thick. They have each been tortured or imprisoned in at least half a dozen facilities. They are now at “The Last Point”, a recycling center where captives meant for death row who are either deemed “not important enough” to execute publicly, OR “Too disgraceful” to execute publicly are sent to be tortured and then killed. The place seems to operate on sort of a “well, we have too many so some have to go now” policy. There are no official deadlines for killing. The PCs have been here for many months, during the fall and winter things shut down and people stopped coming as storms and winter made travel difficult. There is little heat in the towers, and it has been insanely cold. Several people have frozen to death over the winter. There are fireplaces, but you have been kept in the top of the tower. You know little outside of the tower. There are no windows, only stairs down. The level below is the torture level. The level below that people don’t come back from. In the top floor are cages for all of the prisoners. Some have been here a long time. Rumor is that people are killed based upon the taste of their flesh, but you know little else beyond that. Rumors also say, because this location is so out of the way, there are relatively few guards underneath. All of you know when winter breaks. The nights stop being constant pain. You have slept relatively unwell for the past… who knows how long. After a couple of weeks where the nights are no longer torture sessions unto themselves you realize spring is either here, or has been here for some time and you are just now finding out about it. Either that or they are using spells to mess with your heads. For a people so adamantly opposed to wizards, what they deem “natural” magic such as the powers of priests and druids seems completely okay to these crazy backwoods militaristic lunatics. The guards are mostly hobgoblins. If anyone comes in who is a dangerous mage, they are instantly processed, interrogated, and then butchered. The Other Captives Reeta: Human from Dravens, political prisoner, short-tempered. Nuggle: Goblin, rants about his powers, loudmouth. Uhgragon Fronsgorron: Goliath. Quiet, really dislikes confinement. Seems compassionate. He seemed quite resistent to the cold weather, along with Lord Quarlton and Lady Alerie. Lord Quarlton of House Burdyck. Elf with redish hair. Somewhat pretentious but also amused. Pain seems to affect him little. He is from the north and has powers over fire. During the coldest nights, he and/or Lady Alerie would create bonfires around the tower for heat. He would purposefully not put it too close to himself so the jailors would suspect someone else. Sometimes he would should across the room at Lady Alerie, both of them speaking in Infernal. Unkown Triton female. She rarely speaks. Lady Alerie of House Burdyck. Human with reddish hair. She seems a bit more cruel than Quarlton. She also receives more torture than he does, doesn’t seem to care. She also seems to have some kind of power over fire. Yoli , gnome. She looks mean. Claims to be a powerful warrior. The idiot Corrive have imprisoned her for her natural magic but a weapon in her hands is far more deadly. Dennis. Nondescript elf, quiet and easily startled. Numba. Halfling from the Ralarth, says he is a political prisoner. During the coldest, darkest nights, they would notice Numba slipping off his shackles and leaving the top tower for hours at a time. They highly suspect he could leave whenever he wants, if there was any place to go. Gillia, human of from Dree. Also says she is a political prisoner. Olga, human from far off. Dark hair, spends much of her time alternating between crying and sleeping. Arran, human from Dree. Says he is a political prisoner, also spends his time alternating between crying and sleeping. Quiet bald headed human man. Is missing some teeth. Claims his name is Rivwan. Is courageous and seems difficult to rattle. He is also mentally much more competent than many of the people in here. He is a little scrawny. He gets tortured more often than the rest. Compared to everyone else, he doesn’t seem bothered by their predicament. Golsteer a tattooed dwarf. He is quiet. Opening The game began, with Olovar “Bardman” SomethingSomething having been put in an anti-magic cage a couple weeks before. Up until then, they didn’t realize he was a magic user. He communicated a little bit with the rest of the captives. The party noticed a few things: The anti-magic cages were not magic, but made of some different material that apparently has anti-magic properties. When forced to leave the cages occasionally for some refreshing torture sessions on the floor underneath, the jailers would put manacles on them that had the symbol of Tiamat written in blood among other symbols, they believe the manacles only suppressed magic for a finite period of time. By protruding hands and part of the mouth outside of the cages, they could cast cantrips, but still not 1st level spells. They had 3 jailers, Thud the Half-Ogre brute, a cultist of Tiamat, and Gregory a Corrive Druid. They also noticed the grate in the center of the floor went down each level, to the bottom floor where they think it opened into a bar or tavern because they could occasionally hear singing or brawling. The real action started when the party heard sounds of combat from the grate in the center of the room, likely coming from the bottom story. The battle upset Arran who began screaming about killing them if he could escape, throwing an epic temper tantrum (he was likely barely sane by this point). Rivwan corrected him with “No, you can’t kill anyone. Settle down.” and Arran began yelling threats at Rivwan. The players decided it was now time to try and make their escape. Bardman started talking with Yumba, trying to convince him to give him whatever he used to pick his own manacles. Yumba offered to just pick the lock for him, but they heard Thud coming up the stairs. Thud walked in and declared “Good news! New people arrived. Now we can make space, Thud need volunteers. Anyone volunteer for Thud?” Arran now switched to screaming at Thud. Thud said, “Oh, good! We have volunteer.” And walked over to Arran, unlocking his cage and pulling him out with a giant hand. He was walking back to the stairs and asking for more volunteers when Bardman tried to lift the keys from Thud’s belt. He failed, and Thud angrily took out his battleaxe and began banging the side of Bardman’s cage. Helios took the opportunity to use thaumaturgy to make the ground quake and cried out “What’s happening here?” Thud looked in bewilderment at his battleaxe, the cage, and the shaking ground. Nikon cast mage hand to try and get the keys while Helios, created a bonfire by the top of the stairs [Create Bonfire gets the award for most spell used in this session]. The Lord and Lady likewise made bonfires near the top of the stairs. While this was going on, Bardman tried to convince Thud bad things were happening. Thud, frustrated cleaved Arran in two with his battleaxe. Then he noticed the mage hand and Nikon casting spells, and moved to his cage. At this point the players were all trying to distract Thud, including Nikon making the sound of a female half-ogre screaming from down below. Bardman did manage to get the keys, unlock himself, toss the key to the large magical cages to Helios, then toss the rest of them on the floor but they instead went into the great. Bardman shouted, “Thud, you dropped your keys.” pointing at the grate. Thud now thoroughly confused, bewildered, and a little frightened retreated to the story below by diving over the stone wall around the stairs into the area beneath. The players began releasing prisoners by using the key and Yumba’s help with some bone lock picks he’d fashioned over several months time. Bardman directs Yumba to release Rivwin before Yoli who says, “You’ll regret that motherfucker. I’m going to kill these guys.” Nikon got too close to the grate and got blasted by the Cultist in the floor underneath. While attempting to free the other prisoners, Olga got blasted by the cultist, while Bardman and Urghagog make it over to heal Nikon. Nikon approaches the grate and zaps back, as does Lady Alerie who walks to the grate then causes a massive thundering boom in the room. The cultist then retreats. At this point Rivwin has a chain as a weapon and Yoli rips a femur off a skeleton. While the party is finishing freeing everyone and discussing what to do, Yoli went running to the stairs and leaps into the stairwell over the side of the wall. Bardman followed along with the rest of the party. On the third floor is the torture chamber. Rivwin ditches his chain for a chain with a hook on the end, Yoli drops the femur and grabs a mace and starts towards the stairs down. While everyone is discussing what to do Helios said to “Yoli, you don’t intend on taking them all on by yourself do you?” Yoli responded with “The fuck I don’t.” and went charging down the stairs. The party followed, down on the second floor, Yoli went after two hobgoblin guards and Thud. Yoli killed the guards in the first round, then going after Thud. The party used ranged spells, and Thud was quickly dispatched. As the party searched the floor while Bardman, Urghagog and Yoli were fumbling with the door on the 1st floor of the tower (but not the ground floor of the structure). Yumba crawled through the grate into the central chamber of the floor underneath, on top of an altar of Tiamat. As the players entered the central chamber, they could see down into the tavern area in the stronghold below. Down there the cultist and Gregory the evil druid were telling hobgoblins about the escaped slaves. Bardman kept exploring the level, looking for his personal effects, meanwhile Yoli had already made it down to the entrance to the tavern, Nikon not far behind her. She began to try and singlehandedly take on the hobgoblins, while Helios was starting bonfires, meanwhile the evil druid retreated. Helios noticed that the cultist and hobgoblins were funneled to try and engage Yoli in melee were standing in between some alcohol casks and an active still. Helios set the still on fire, rolling enough damage to burn through a seal on the first try and the still exploded in a 10 foot radius around it (it was a 10 x 5 foot) incinerating all the hobgoblins but one, as well as incinerating the cultist. Yoli was blown off her feet and thrown back 5 feet, taking full damage. Nikon helped extinguish her with his cold breath. [Finishing up quickly] The party discovered some sailors/pirates on the south side of the combat, and had it out with the Hobgoblin Captain, who went down once being surrounded by Yoli, Ughagog, and the Triton monk (who previously got her ass kicked by the captain). The party discovered the sailors were trying to leave but the hobgoblins at the front door were unwilling to let the captain and his 3 sailors leave. Yoli changed their minds with her new longsword she looted off a hobgoblin corpse. At the end of game, Bardman and the others were negotiating a deal with the captain to take them in their ship. This is where we’ll begin next game.