The Dragon of Icespire Peak Campaign Diary - Episode 9 - Who Let the Cows In?

The prep...

"Time for to fight!"

This was going to be a tough one. We had a farmhouse full of orcs. We had many rooms they could be hiding or lurking in. We had the potential for an ally or two, but this could go very poorly if the players didn't handle it right. As I mentioned the Druid was a planner, so I had faith that they would come up with something.

The adventure asks for roughly three orcs per player character. I did this, but kept in mind that I could reduce or increase the number of orcs as needed. I decided to have one leader among the group, not a chieftain from the Monster Manual but an orc with max hit points. I also made him a bit smarter than the others, he would order the others around.

I placed three orcs downstairs in the mess hall of the farmhouse gorging themselves on food. The remaining three/four would be upstairs in the gaming room playing cards and drinking. The ranch owner Big Al would be locked in the cellar.

One thing I forgot to do was roll up some loot for the orcs to be carrying. But I did include a note that these were not the Talos worshiping orcs.

The story...

The party took great pains to check out the entire ranch, moving quietly and carefully. The first stop was the barn, which was intact, if not a bit bashed up. They secured the three horses and the wayward cow in the barn and continued their survey. They examined the burned out smithy and made a very high Investigation roll. They determined that the fire was probably caused by accident during the battle.

They found the bodies of some slain orcs, as well as the bodies of three humans viciously hacked up in a fury. It looks like this had only happened a day or two ago. The players were on their guard as they finally moved closer to the farm house. This whole perimeter sweep ended up taking quite a bit of time, as the players were trying to glean as much information as possible about the events here.

When they arrived at the farmhouse they could hear the voices of orcs coming from within. They snuck closer and noticed that the cellar door was secured with rope. They spent a bit of time trying to determine if the orcs were keeping a prisoner down there, or if the orcs had been trapped inside. The Rogue decided to use her stealth to creep close to one of the windows and peek inside (after they both examined the well, which was clear of enemies). The Rogue got a look at the kitchen which was empty but trashed.

They talked a bit about sneaking into the building. Then I helpfully reminded the Druid that she had the Wild Shape ability, which she could use to gain additional information. She decided to focus on spell casting with her character, but one of the class' unique features is the ability to turn into animals. The character gains all the physical abilities of the animal, but keeps the mental abilities of the character. However the druid can not cast spells in animal form. They can maintain concentration on long duration spells after transforming.

This cow has her eyes on you...

There was a lot of discussion about what type of animal would be the best for the job. Since they are low level characters, the Druid was limited to the type of creature she could transform into. No creatures with swim or flying abilities. She decided that transforming into the cow they found along the road would work. If the orcs saw the cow they wouldn't think anything of it. I didn't tell them that the cow might make tasty steaks for the orcs.

So the Druid used her Wild Shape ability and transformed into the ranch cow. She carefully walked around the building, pretending to be a disinterested bovine. She peeked into the windows as she went, and finally spotted the three orcs in the mess hall eating, drinking and joking around. They didn't notice her. She also heard more orc voices coming from upstairs. She returned to the Rogue and Inverna and stamped three times to indicate three orcs.

The Rogue then moved to the cellar door and listened at it. This was great, because I didn't even have to recommend doing that. She rolled very high on perception and hard the sound of wood scraping against stone. Discussion followed with the Druid nailing it - someone is tied up in a chair and it scraped against the stone floor. The Rogue untied the door and peeked inside. They found Big Al, the head rancher, tied up in a wooden chair with a burlap sack over his head. The Druid, still in cow form, let out a soft "Moooo", to which Big Al whispered, "What in tarnation are you doing here Petunia? I told you to run! Darn cows don't have a lick of sense." The players got a kick out of the cow's name as well as my poor Yosemite Sam imitation.

"You ready for some sarsaparilla?"

I described him like an tall lanky old time cowboy, and the players said, "Oh like Sam Elliot." And I totally rolled with it. So now Big Al is played by Sam Elliot, and has a thirst for sarsaparilla (for all you Big Lebowski fans out there). When the players pulled the sack from his head he was startled by the Rogue's fiendish appearance. But was more concerned that "Petunia" was still on the ranch. The players had some fun messing with Al, before the Druid returned to her elf form.

Big Al offered to give the players his shirt of mithral chain mail if they helped him retake his ranch from the orcs. He explained that the orc leader was obviously smarter and tougher than the rest. It was his idea to hold Al hostage, and maybe ransom him to the people of Phandalin. The players agreed to help Al, but warned him that it wouldn't be easy, and Al was beat up al ready (only 9 HP at this point).

The characters moved back to the porch and discussed how to best ambush the orcs inside. Eventually they came up with a plan. The Rogue would snipe through one of the half open windows. Inverna and Al would burst in through the kitchen and go for hand to hand combat. The Druid would use her Web spell to block one of the stairways, to keep the orcs upstairs from moving in that direction to back their friends up.

The group managed to roll well on stealth and entered the kitchen. Al armed himself with a wicked meat carving knife and prepared. Inverna and Al burst in and gained suprise on the three orcs. The Rogue had some issues with sniping since I ruled that the orcs had some cover from the half closed window. The Druid got her spell off no problem.

Inverna unfortunately got ganged up on. The orcs got in a series of hits on the poor elf and she was knocked unconscious. Big Al got a couple of good hits in, but it was the Rogue who moved in closer to the window once the battle started, and removed the penalty to her target, that did the most damage. The three orcs were killed, but the commotion caught the notice of the orcs upstairs.

The Rogue stabilized Inverna using the Healers Kit they had purchased a couple sessions earlier. They put her in the pantry, out of the way. Meanwhile the orcs tried to go down the stairs but ran into The Druid's web. They heard a fierce voice shout a few orders and then it went quiet.

The orcs weren't going to come rushing down... but what could the players do to finish the job? I thought that was a great place to end the session.

The post...

Quote from Inverna.

The great thing about having planners in the party is that they take the situations seriously and give added weight to the overall story and world. The bad thing is that they can be overcautious and the game pacing may suffer. I had planned for this to be an intense battle filled session, but most of it was spent creeping around, peeking in windows and planning the next move. So yeah, I might have been a bit disappointed. But the players were really into it, and that was fun.

The bit of Sam Elliot humor broke up the tension a little bit, but I think it worked well in the overall scheme of things. The battle against the orcs felt a bit one sided. The characters surprising the orcs gave them essentially a full round to beat up on the monsters without being attacked back. Also the four sided dice hated Inverna. Each time I rolled to see which target the orcs were going after, it was always Inverna. The up side is that neither of the player characters were hurt. The downside is, their toughest character is now out of the game.

I think this session went very well, and the ending was great. A tension filled cliffhanger is always a good way to stop the session and keep the players wondering what is going to happen next. Looking forward to seeing if they plan for their next move in between sessions.

Up next...

Session 10: Bearly Surviving