Team MeFight Thirty-Fifth Session

Nik and the Sable Drake

• Having learned a bit about their plight, the group decides to retrieve Nik and company
• While rowing in on the remaining dinghy, three very large sharks attack
• Gil and Kib swim out to engage. Two sharks start on the dinghy (destroying it, of course), the other makes a beeline for Gil
• They resist damage, and they change shape. Weresharks!
• Gil gets bit, but manages not to catch lycanthrope. Nik and his remaining crew manage to keep from dying immediately. Anise summons a porpoise for Kib, who rides it out to engage the weresharks (to distract them from the very vulnerable others)
• Thoven lets fly with Magic Missiles. Gil wails on his shark and kills it with critical hits. Anise does steady (small) damage, as does Thed.
• One of Nik's remaining crewman dies horribly. The Doctor starts drowning and is left alone (he lived). Kib manages to get out and is immediately beset upon, taking massive damage and very, very barely resisting contracting lycanthrope.
• Unable to do any damage, Kib withdraws, bringing a wereshark with him. The other engages Tenpence, who manages through amazing grace of Alexandria to stay alive.
• Thoven lets fly with an electric scorching ray, then with fire, finding that fire is just as unresistable.
• Kib on the porpoise swims back out to distract the other wereshark, leaving the one to engage Gil. He takes more damage, then jumps onto Tenpence just as the porpoise disappears.
• Rays and magic missiles defeat that wereshark, and the other falls to bolts and Gil's axe.

Journey Across the Archipelago, and the Goblin Redoubt

• The team rests up and manages not to be molested.
  • There is now an almost embarrassing amount of heals to go around, with Tana and Marrwyn
• They head East, fashioning a raft to cross longer stretches to aid the bad swimmers.
• Eventually, they run into a group of Goblins.
• The Goblins insist that they are actually Gnomes, cursed with Goblin form. Alexandria knows if this is truth, or a story they have accepted. In any case, they're very friendly.
  • Their way of life was started by a gnome they refer to as "He Whose Name Is Too Long To Remember." He is the one who taught them of their curse, retaught them the way of their people, and offered them hope of redemption and return to gnomedom.
• They exchange some words with the group, and offer to take them home
• The party arrives at the Redoubt, which is evidently a magically warded fortress created by He Who... The leader is called the Goblin Oracle and is tremendously old for a goblin. perhaps as old as fifty. She probably has an actual name, too.
• Triggers historical knowledge in Kib & Tana:
  • The Elves used to have naval bases everywhere throughout the DemiPantheon age, although the power of their nation was broken after the Prophet's War. The various ruins and structures of this place are likely one such base complex. Most likely, the base was wiped out during the Prophet's War by the Dwarves.
  • Although sparsely covered in the Canon proper, the Seaborne Siege is a reasonably well known aspect of Dwarven history. During the earliest parts of Prophet's War, the Dwarves ponderous floating fortresses were trapped in port by the superior equipment and discipline of the elven armada. Knowing the dwarves could never match the elves on the open seas, the dwarven command stumbled onto a uniquely dwarven solution. All of the magical metal of the realm was scrapped and reforged over the next several months into a giant chain was forged of steel, mithril, and adamantine, enchanted with powerful dwarven runes of abjuration and transmutation. When the chain was complete it was miles in length, and a cadre of dwarves enchanted with persistent Fly spells ran the chain across the Nedrik Sound, where it was attached to a specially built fortress complex. Most likely, (despite dwarven artistic depictions of the event) the chain links were no more thick than a man's arm, yet that line was enough to cut off the armada from its bases on the Sea of Tears, suddenly cutting them off from command and immediately placing them deep in enemy territory.
  • Later in the war, an adamantine wench system was devised, allowing the chain to be raised and lowered. The entire system was scrapped for resources in the Dark Age that followed Alexandria's Crusade.
  • To add insult to injury, a cabal of Dwarven wizards was dedicated to maintaining Teleport Wards over key elven bases. While the ward prevented the elves from escaping, thus denying the armada many elite marine and sailor reinforcements, the main base was never taken, requiring constant attention and manpower that drew strength away from the main front in the City States and the Sidhe Forest (now Alexia and the Valley of Dust).

• Long conversation happens both before and at the Redoubt:
  • Sahuagin appeared about fourteen days ago
  • Was an explosion from faaaar to the East over empty water a couple of weeks before that.
  • Has killed roughly 50% of the Gnomegoblins. Steady attrition since then, no victories on the Goblin side
  • Wards evidently keep the fortress hidden. Gnomegoblins have no doubt that they would perish if the Sahuagin found it by non-magical means.
  • Other locations of note:
    • Tower of Light, slightly South and East, "Mysterious Haunted Lighthouse" (the Gnomegoblins can't fathom a use for a lighthouse). It is visible from the Goblin redoubt, although the light is not - it is constructed so that the light shines east and not west.
    • Ruined Shipyard and Drydocks, Central Interior
    • Elven Temple Complex, South
    • The Stink, once the elven supply dock area now the smuggler settlement. Any ships or ship related parts will probably be here.
      • Seen by the team earlier and now completely overrun by Sahuagin.
  • Sahuagin are looking for something. Gnob's Folly confirms, mentions the Table of the Stars. This name has no meaning to the Oracle.
• Kib resolves that the mysterious, haunted place that nobody is supposed to go to is the natural next location to visit, being both close and a place the Sahuagin have evidently not overrun, making it a likely location for more information about the Table.
• The group spends the rest of the day at the Redoubt. Kib tells Nik to make himself and his crew completely available to the Gnomegoblins, and to try not to get killed. Kib also involves himself heavily in strategic and tactical discussions with the Gnomegoblin leadership.
  • Kib can inject some much-needed expertise into the situation. His primary goal is to keep the Gnomegoblins out of skirmishes when possible, by organizing optimal exploration routes, providing tips for technique (aided by Anise, if she is willing), and setting up the beginnings of drills and other organizational systems to begin shaping up Gnomegoblin discipline ("more than zero" being preferable to "zero", if it's possible). His secondary goal is to have the Gnomegoblins perhaps win a skirmish or two, training them to recognize odds and to engage only when they are absolutely overwhelmingly in the Gnomegoblins' favor. His tertiary goal is to set up a framework to actually turn the group into passable guerilla fighters to support the inevitable conflict ahead, which means a lot of things, including setting up duty rosters (including those for training and sparring), and extensive discussions with the community elders to identify leadership talent and formalize a command hierarchy.
  • Along with all of the above, Kib will want to make Gnob's Folly's presence as non-obvious to the Sahuagin as possible. While a drastic shift in the way the Gnomegoblins are conducting warfare may be perceivable by the Sahuagin (given some time), that won't really give them what they need to know about the nature of the Gnob's Folly threat, and Kib would like that to be hidden for as long as possible.
  • Kib will also take this moment to get a complete inventory of Gnomegoblin resources. This includes:
    • Food sources, availability, stores
    • Weapons, including proficiency of the various troops (expects this to generally be "none", but is happy to be surprised)
    • Magic-using capabilities
    • Non-fighting skills (construction, cooking, procurement, etc)

Awards

The sharks:

• 5s: 500
• 6s: 350
• 7s: 300 (150 for bot-Thoven)
• 8s: 300
• 9s: 225

Finding the Redoubt:

750 flat