When last we left the Graverobbers, they had attacked a prisoner of war camp run by the sadistic succubus Galvessa. Monty, the armor-plated dwarf, had fallen under her sway and been granted an infernal boon to his strength, but soon broke free of the evil demoness' influence and turned his axe on her. She teleported away, abandoning the POW camp to the adventurers. Among the rescued prisoners were Sir Hugo of Granz, a Kaldish knight, and Cole Diaz, an old acquaintance of the twins Kat and Daphne. He had been captured while trying to search them out in hopes of impressing Daphne with his wizarding abilities. Armed with a crude map of the general area of the bandit queen Thalestra's domains, the party decided the best course of action would be to turn south and assault Castle Drenn. Long ago, you'll remember, the Kaldish Emperor had charged the Graverobbers with retaking that very castle, promising the knight Sigrid and her paladin husband Hardrig lordship over the fortress and any surrounding lands they could conquer.
After resting and reaching level 10, the party heads south along the road to Castle Drenn. They reach the bridge that they bypassed last time and decide to cross it, partly because they feel sorry for the lonely bridgekeeper, partly because they now have a small force of 16 freed prisoners of war trailing behind them. The bridgekeeper comes out, eyes them appraisingly, and asks ten gold per head to cross. Kat tells him, "Look, we're heading to Castle Drenn to kick Thalestra's butt. My friend Sigrid back there is gonna be, like, queen of this whole place! If you let us cross, we'll make you a baron." Sigrid instantly objects, saying she won't make a promise she can't honor. Kat backpedals, using her foreign accent to feign misspeaking. Hoping to hurry things up, Rikkette walks up to the bridgekeeper, reaches into her coinpurse, and pulls out "SURPRISE COLOR SPRAY!" The blinded bridgekeeper reels back, fleeing toward his hut and calling for 'Trillby'. From beneath the bridge, a hulking river troll pulls itself up onto the wood, growling menacingly. "You pay now or Trillby smash!" it growls in Kaldish. Rikkette runs off, clutching a gem, then slumps over, apparently passed out with fright. What she did not tell the party was that she took magic jar when she leveled up. Unaware of Rikkette's plan, the party lays into Trillby. Monty and Sigrid fire flaming arrows. Zel enlarges Cameo, and the now elephant-sized bird swoops in and claws at the troll. Kat casts dancing lights in the troll's face, and Cole hits it with as scorching ray. When Rikkette's mind finally finds its way into the troll's body, the monster is unconscious. Cameo drags the troll off the wooden bridge so they can properly blast it with fire. One flame strike later, Rikkette wakes up in her gnomish body, having experienced death for a second time. The party passes on, leaving the bridgekeeper to mourn his monster.
 |
| The saddest scene in Return of the Jedi, © 20th Century Fox and Lucasfilm Ltd. |
That night they make camp, and Zel sketches out a map of what she remembers of the castle when she flew over it in bird form. They plan their strategy long into the night before retiring to their bedrolls. Sigrid wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of weeping. She finds Sir Hugo kneeling next to her, dagger in hand, silently crying "I can't do it! I can't!" as he is wracked with painful spasms. She wakes Hardrig and they confront their reluctant assassin. He explains that during one of his recent interrogations, the wizard Xericos - Queen Thalestra's lover - had cast a geas on him to kill anyone who rescued him. He fights the compulsion, but his body is wracked with pain and weakness. At this point Sigrid realizes that Monty's bedroll is empty, and he's left his weapons and armor behind. Leaving Hardrig to talk to Sir Hugo, Sigrid mounts Flokki and speeds off, following the dwarf's obvious tracks through the snow. She catches up to him twenty minutes later. Monty, naked except for the helmet he has fashioned from the skull of his archenemy, runs heedlessly onwards, obviously under some sort of magical compulsion. "She's waiting for me! I must go to her!" he yells at Sigrid. Sigrid suspects that 'she' is Galvessa the succubus, and spurs her horse back to camp to awaken the others.
Rikkette casts fly and haste and speeds off into the night sky, soon to be overtaken by Zel riding her roc Cameo. Once they catch up to Monty, Zel urges Cameo down to grab him, but Cameo swoops down and catches a nearby rabbit. Rikkette lands in front of the charging Monty, braces herself, and at just the right moment casts resilient sphere trapping the dwarf. She repeats this every 8 minutes (Rikkette still has 2 negative levels from that time she died and came back as a female svirfneblin), but soon realizes that it is not a permanent solution. The next time the resilient sphere dissipates, Zel summons a satyr, whose enchanting music implants a suggestion that cancels out Galvessa's. They return to camp for some much needed sleep. That morning, shortly after breakfast, the satyr's suggestion wears off and Monty sprints away again. Considering that he's going in the same direction they're going anyways, the party decides to just roll with it and follow him until the spell finally wears off.
********************
Castle Drenn rises before you; 30-foot high walls surrounded by a spike-filled moat, a square keep poking out above it all. The wooden drawbridge from the gatehouse leads to an otherwise ordinary looking town partially enclosed by a wooden palisade. You can see men, women, and children bundled in furs and leather going about their daily business amongst buildings that look like shops, taverns, houses. It seems so ordinary after all this fighting.
The party arrives near Drennton, the small village just outside of Castle Drenn. To better plan their assault, Zel turns into a dog and goes to investigate. She wanders through Drennton, listening for snippets of conversation:
"Price of grain went up again. Damn army's eating it all up."
"Is it colder today than it was yesterday?" "No, I think it's about the same."
"Dolf used to be a great guy. I ran with him, back in the day. But then he raided that tomb, and ever since he’s been a mean sunnovabitch. Rolls with a whole new crew now."
"Ugh, Galvessa showed up in the castle a few nights ago."
"Hey, have you tried the new ale at the tavern? They brew it with spruce tips!"
etc.
Then she wanders across the drawbridge, over a 30-foot deep, 40-foot wide moat of sharpened wooden stakes, and through the castle gatehouse, noting the arrow slits and spear-holes along the way. In the castle courtyard, her dog nose quickly identifies where the toilets are, but she also notices the smell of ogres. After having a roll in the poo (to maintain her cover), she discovers within the walls a small encampment of ogres and cyclopes led by the wanted bandit leader Grist Halfogre. She returns to her companions to report her finds, and the spend the rest of the day planning.
The next morning, they strike. On silent wings, Cameo carries Sigrid to a perch on the castle - the battlements of a rounded tower just outside the smaller square fourth floor of the keep. They are both invisible. Sigrid sounds a battle horn; the signal to begin the strike. Zel, again in the form of a dog, creates a wall of fire down the castle courtyard, right through the ogre camp. Many ogres are seared, and flee up onto the wall to escape the heat and their burning tents. Rikkette, Monty, and Hardrig dimension door up onto the wooden hoardings that surmount the external curtain wall. Meanwhile, Sir Hugo, Kat, Daphne, and Cole lead the freed and armed POWs in taking and securing Drennton, eliminating the guards there and cutting off any escape from the castle.
Rikkette enlarges Monty, who hops down from the hoardings onto the wall and starts hacking through archers. Hardrig attempts a similar hop, but falls flat on his back. When he stands, he is struck by a scorching ray from a toliuq shaman (one of several conscripted into Thalestra's service and present in the castle). Then a cyclops lumbers up onto the battlements, and Hardrig rushes into battle against it. It scores a critical hit against him, but he combats it bravely. Monty finds himself the target of many archers and another shaman, some of whose attacks even manage to penetrate his armor. Then Grist Halfogre climbs onto the ramparts and charges Monty, striking him with a giant-crafted bastard sword. Grist froths at the mouth as he hacks into Monty, mighty sword rending through the dwarf's usually impenetrable armor. Monty gives as good as he gets, cutting at the raging barbarian with his serrated waraxe Orcgutter.
On the other side of the wall of fire, Cameo has swooped down on an ogre and, breaking her invisibility, slashed into him with beak and talon. Soon, another ogre and a cyclops come to the aid of their companion, all of them aiming their blows at the mighty roc. Zel, still a dog, comes to her assistance by calling lighting down out of the sky. Cameo tears one of the ogres apart and bites the throat out of the cyclops, but one of the shamans atop the wall takes note and strikes the bird with a lightning bolt of his own. Cameo goes down in a cloud of singed feathers.
Rikkitte remained perched on the wooden hoardings that formed half a roof above the wall. Before Grist charged Monty, he chucked three spears at the svirfneblin sorceress, two of which sailed over her head and the third stuck so deep into the hoarding that its head poked out the other side. Squeaking, Rikkette casts resilient sphere on herself, then pulls out a sapphire and casts magic jar. Her mind falls into a cloudy non-space and she becomes vaguely aware of the nearby presence of forty-some creatures whose souls are dimmer (4 HD or more lower) than hers, thirty-seven who are about the same brightness (within 4 HD of her), and one which is brighter (more than 4 HD more powerful than her). She tries to possess the brightest one but her mental probings are rebuffed. She then attempts one of the ones of about equal power, but whatever it was made telepathic contact with her and told her "NEVER. DO THAT. AGAIN," and Rikkette woke up again in her own body.
From her position at the head of the drawbridge, as the assault on Drennton began, Kat saw fire and lightning erupting from behind the castle walls and, not wanting to miss any of Zel's "bitchin' magic", decided to abandon Drennton and go join the exciting fight. Changing her glammered armor so it looked like a torn dress, she ran up to the castle gate just as the drawbridge was about to go up and cried, "They're attacking the town! Let me in! Help me!" She managed to bluff her way past the guards, but her attempts to get into the gatehouse were rebuffed. She went up onto the wall, but was again told that it was too dangerous a place for a civilian during an attack. She barged her way past an archer and walked up to an unarmored person (another Toliuq shaman) who was straining to see some of the action that was taking place at the other side of the castle courtyard. Kat whipped out her bouzouki and played a fascinating tune to get past the shaman, and proceeded down the wall toward the action. Meanwhile, Rikkette casts magic jar again, this time successfully. She finds her mind in the body of an archer a little ways away from the main battle, and further down the wall she sees Kat approaching another archer. Thinking fast, she runs up to that archer screaming about how the battle is lost and it is all over. The other guard, who has also been watching the battle, says, "Calm down, Klaiv, just wait it out. If they win, we can surrender. But if we run and they lose, Thalestra will kill us for deserting our posts!" Without any way of communicating to Kat that she is Rikkette inside the guard's body, Rikkette does the next best thing. "OH NO, A WIZARD IS DOING SOMETHING TO ME!" she yells, then dimension doors herself 100 feet in the air above the moat of spikes. The body of the archer falls and Rikkette experiences death a third time. She is starting to enjoy it.
From her position atop the tower, Sigrid decides to scout the keep. She enters the fourth floor via a nearby door, discovering a hallway with many doors. Within, she hears footsteps and the opening and closing of more doors. Still invisible, she slips down a spiral staircase. The third floor of the castle features a corridor running around the outside perimeter, allowing access to windows and arrow slits, but Sigrid is more interested in the doors that lead inwards. She tries one of them, and is greeted by a voluptuous naked woman with long brown hair and olive skin, cowering in apparent fear by the fireplace and wrapped in a bearskin rug. "Who's there?" she asks. Invisible Sigrid pretends to be the wind, but the woman is not fooled. "Can you help me?" she asks. "Are you a prisoner here?" asks Sigrid in turn. "Yes," replies the woman, but Sigrid feels something magically grasping at her consciousness and, totally wigged out, slams the door and runs around the corner. She opens the next door and sees a wizard's laboratory: bubbling alchemist's lab, arcane books and scrolls, a tiny contraption of spinning wheels and globes, a large glass decanter filled with a silvery liquid that slowly roils and pulses of its own accord... you know - the usual wizard stuff. In the center of the room, enclosed in a large circle of glimmering powder, stands a forlorn looking little girl. She looks up and stares right into invisible Sigrid's eyes. "Help me! Please?" Sigrid slams the door and runs again.
She has almost given up on doors now, but the mystery of the two remaining doors gets the best of her. Behind one is a library full of writing desks and cabinets of books. Behind the other is an apparently disused room stacked high with old furniture and all the assorted detritus of a castle. A number of large banners - red and blue with a gold imperial eagle in the center - catch her attention. With her knowledge of nobility, combined with what the party has learned about the history of Castle Drenn, she realizes that these are the banners of the pretender Emperor Otto. Twelve years ago, when the current emperor Heinrich IV came to the throne, his uncle Otto rebelled, claiming primacy through descent from Heinrich’s grandfather, Otto IX. Otto was defeated after a year-long civil war. Castle Drenn was one of the last holdouts of his supporters. After Otto was captured, the exhausted imperial forces were unable to mount an effort to retake Drenn. The barbarian hordes took advantage of the situation and captured the castle themselves.
Satisfied with her explorations of the castle that would soon be hers, Sigrid took a potshot through an arrow slit at the cyclops her husband was battling, then went downstairs and attempted to join the battle. When she got out, the battle was over.
Bleeding badly from the halfogre's furious blows, Monty steeled himself and took one last swing at the bandit berserker. His trusty Orcgutter struck true, cutting in under Grist's breastplate and hacking through his spine. The powerful bandit captain fell, giant bastard sword clattering against the stone battlements, and Monty wheeled on the shaman that stood behind him. The shaman threw up her hands in surrender, and Monty demanded that she heal him. Hardrig, keeping himself alive by laying hands on himself, cut down the cyclops and demanded the surrender of the archer and shaman behind it. Zel, meanwhile, has blasted the remaining ogre with lighting. With all the heavy hitters down and the badass Grist Halfogre slain, the remaining men and women on the wall surrender to the Graverobbers. As Sigrid walks out of the castle, the wall of fire dies down and she sees a line of fur-clad archers and warriors throwing down their weapons. The shamans want nothing more than to leave the castle and return to their woodland huts, but some of the archers appear open to fighting for good coin, though Hardrig points out that many of them are Evil.
The Graverobbers force the shamans to expend all their healing spells, then loot the corpses of their fallen foes. They decide that Grist's massive sword will look really good hanging on a wall in the castle. Monty takes Grist's belt, which turns out to be a Belt of Ogre Strength. Sigrid also takes a belt off another ogre, but this one turns her into a man. Mortified, she closes the visor on her helmet and does her best to avoid her husband.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ah, the good old Girdle of Opposite Gender. The Belt of Sex-Changing. The Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity. Whatever you want to call it, it's a damn fun item to sneak into a pile of treasure. If you're like me, you first encountered this classic cursed item in Baldur's Gate, triumphantly looting it from the first ogre that you kill in the game.
The first time I used this on a player, I was running a one-shot adventure of my own devising called The Great Blue Ziggurat. The party thought it was a Belt of Giant's Strength (like you do) and they argued over who would get it. My brother-in-law's character, a dwarf ranger, won the argument and happily strapped it on. I told him, "Well, you don't feel any stronger, but you do feel a lot less... penis-y."
Now poor Sigrid is stuck with this deviously delightful DM's device. It's poetic, really, since she began this campaign pretending to be a boy named Sigurd. At the time, such an item might have aided her disguise, but now that she's a happily married woman who happens to be adventuring alongside her husband, it's a little awkward.
A cursed item like this is fun because it represents a roleplaying challenge rather than just another negative number to add to your character sheet somewhere. There is no gameplay difference between men and women in D&D/Pathfinder, and this item imparts no mechanical penalty. The consequences of its transformation are whatever the player makes of them. Rikkette, for instance, has grown to accept her reincarnation-induced change of gender. Sigrid, on the other hand, will want her original sex back as soon as possible, hoping to avoid as many of the comedy-of-errors wacky hijinks that are bound to occur as she tries to keep her husband from finding out.
Speaking of castles, I have maps of all four floors of Castle Drenn, but I won't be posting them here yet because the party has not yet fully liberated the castle yet, and I don't want them to get a sneak peek of the layout.
-your crenelated d20 despot
Ahh the good old belt of sex change! Brilliant!
ReplyDelete