After walking back to Hammerfast from The Lost Mines of Karak, the party tells Geld, the Loremaster what they know about “The Four Courts”. He says he will do some digging, but in the meantime tells them of an old dwarven tomb that may have been invaded by some unknown evil.
The party sets off, having to navigate through the wildnerness and up into the mountains. Once at the tomb, they find the entrances guarded by a Bulette, an Oni Mage, and a Firelasher. Once these have been dispatched, the party enters the tomb from where the Firelasher came.
Inside, they find a crude mining operation with a group of Orcs and a Destracher. Leading them are two humans, whose bodies have been deformed with sinister magics. When wounded, a Slaad Abomination housed in their bodies reveals itself by ripping off the outer, human layer and attacking.
to be continued…
This adventure was included in Dungeon Magazine issue #162 (pages 4-26) and is part of the “Scales of War” adventure path. It works as a standalone adventure quite well.
As published, this adventure was designed for a group of five tenth-level characters. But since the party seemed to be walking through encounters recently, I opted to run it as is for my ninth level party.
Since I'm not a fan of Skill Challenges to begin with, I skipped the first one (“Investigating the Cult”) and went straight into the second one. Even so, all I really accomplished is that I confirmed that I don't like skill challenges.
I'm sure the players like them, though, since it's essentially free XP…
Nothing terribly unusual about this encounter. The Bulette wasn't nearly as effective as I'd hoped – primarily because the party did a good job of restricting his movement. Also, nobody got pushed off the cliff – which was no fun.
Aside from infecting Ibiza with Chaos Phage, this combat was unremarkable.
Afterwards, though, we learned a lot about how “Cure Disease” works when Oin nearly killed Ibiza. (By “nearly”, I mean she would have died if I hadn't used DM fiat to allow a “re-do” on the ritual).
| # | Challenge | Type | XP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Travel to the Fist | Skill Challenge/11 | 1800 |
| 1 | Oni Mage | Elite Lurker/10 | 1000 |
| 1 | Bulette | Elite Skirmisher/9 | 800 |
| 1 | Firelasher | Skirmisher/11 | 600 |
| 1 | Destrachan Far Voice | Artillery/15 | 1200 |
| 2 | Warped Cultists | Skirmisher/12 | 700 |
| 4 | Orc Miners | Minion Brute/9 | 100 |
| Total XP | 7,200 | ||
| (5 PCs) | 1,440 | ||