Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The Onslaught of the Orcs

Niema stood ready at the foot of the stairs, orc head severed and held high ready to taunt the orcs as they came rushing through the opening. Osertes and Ghanash stood at the back of the corridor now turned killing field, ready to face the onslaught. And Rudha-an waited to give the command to the construct both to open the gate and to lower the slab on the heads of the orcs as they came through.

The slab opened, Niema taunted and the orcs came, throwing hand-axes and charging. She turned and drop-kicked the head but failed miserably to connect properly and the skull came down on a pressure-plate and triggered the crossbow trap. Not a problem for Niema, she breached the 5 feet of wall back into the chamber and was out of they way before the orcs could get to her.
** DM Note: No rubble or obstacles in the killing field to slow them, tsk tsk

The orcs reached Orestes and Ghanash suffering some losses but none significant and the slab came down killing a few more. Now it was the turn of the front-men to show their mettle.

They fought bravely and Rudha-an assisted with area-effect spells through the crossbow slits, but missed more often than hit. Soon Osertes was close to death, but inspiring words from Ghanash kept him going.

Now was the time to put the next phase into action. Orestes held the hoard including the leader wearing a terrifying burnt cave-bear mask designed to strike fear into all around him. Ghanash fell back over the pressure-plates of the portcullis and the orcs were cut off. But so was Orestes.

One of the Reavers had joined Ghanash but he was soon killed. But, having died he, as was becoming familiar now, had one last dying strike. This time it was enough to drop Ghanash to the floor, who proceeded to bleed into the stones of the gatehouse.

Left to fight on his own, Oresetes pushed back his attackers, gave the order for Rudha-an to lift the portcullis, and squeezed back through before it came down again between him and the orcs.

Soon the orc leader was dead, but another orc took the large stone hand from his grasp and used it to prise apart the bars of the portcullis.

With Ghanash unconscious, Orestes close to death and no healer, it looked dire for the party. But Niema now transformed to demon took the front-line and Rudha-an as a vulture finally had success with his area attacks. Rudha-an, ominously perched atop the dying Ghanash administered healing to the Warlord.

From this point things turned in favour of the party. The orcs numbers had dropped and Ghanash now fully healed also healed Orestes, and they surged forward to kill the orcs before they even got into the gatehouse.

Success. But how long before one of them did die?

5 comments:

  1. Niema just shakes her head when looking at the half-orc and the dragonborn licking their wounds. The plan was to NOT engage in front of the portcullis but behind it and safely take them down one by one. But some seem to like pain more than tactics :)

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  2. Orestes shrugs, his tactics were as always to soften up the enemy, maintain his position until it became untenable and then withdraw.

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  3. It is a team game after all, and I think in this case your tactics worked out just right. Had Orestes not stayed to engage the orcs, they would have regrouped, lifted the portcullis and charged at all of you. Their specific tactic was to charge the less armoured enemies and you did well to keep the separation as it was.

    There would also have been more chance that you would have fallen back to the main room - and then you would have found the Automaton doing the bidding of Dzagor instead!

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  4. 'Charge the less armoured enemies'?
    Now I'm super glad the leather clad Vogir was absent!
    ;)

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