Paragons of Waterdeep: Sesson 11

Our heroes and their allies battle hostile elves and their lupine pets!

(The Wednesday Night C&C group at All Things Fun hasn't met in about three weeks, due to Thanksgiving as well as some conflicts in my schedule. Therefore, we haven't had a session of my campaign for a few weeks. I'm definitely suffering from RPG withdrawal! I sort of expected this time of year to slow us down, but I've used the time to keep planning all sorts of diabolical stuff for my players to encounter. At any rate, session 11 was pretty intense. Read on below...)

At the end of the last session, the party had reunited with elven ranger Kale's wood elf clan. Her people were still migrating westward through the High Forest, with the goal of getting away from the recent depridations of undead humanoids. Kale, along with Lathanderite cleric Oisin, human wizard Keseim, and Milo the rogue, found the clan was in a haggard state. Everywhere they looked, upon entering the temporary clan encampment, there could be seen worried and/or wounded elves.

They were reunited with Breonna, the leader of the elite rangers called the Daughters of Mielikki (of which Kale is a member) and the current (temporary) leader of the clan since the death of the former leader/voantir, Elaya. Breonna confirmed that the vo'an, being burdened with protecting the clan's non-combatants and the slow progress through the dense forest, was being harried by ambushes and hit-and-run attacks by their enemies, the elves of the Autumn Blade clan.

The party quickly decided to help the vo'an by creating a diversion. They selected volunteers from among the clan's warriors, ten healthy and five injured fighters. The injured fighters were to be a part of a plan to trick the Autumn Blades into attacking what would appear to be a weakened group of stragglers that would lag behind the rest of the vo'an. Also a part of the plan would be two other Daughters of Mielikki, Rel and Karis (good friends of Kale).

The next day the group began to set their plan into motion. Then, as the vo'an began to move again, the party's group began to slowly lag behind the main body of the vo'an, in the hopes of luring at least some of the Autumn Blades away from attacking the vo'an proper.

The party's group came to a halt, and they waited to see if any Autumn Blades would take the bait. Sure enough, it wasn't long before there was movement detected in the trees surrounding the group. Then, a pack of feral wolves leaped upon the party, and battle was joined. The group fought off the wolves for the most part, and the beasts retreated into the wood again. Then there came a volley of many arrows that slammed into the party's group. This was followed by at least a dozen Autumn Blade archers stepping into sight.

What followed was a pretty intense combat, aided by using Player Jamie's wet erase grid and our mix of paper minis (some I recently downloaded from the internet as well as a good number that came with the "Black Box" version of D&D that I've had lying around for ages...it was pretty cool to finally break those out for some gaming) as well as glass beads and even counters from Jamie's copy of the D&D 4E Monster Vault! The image at the top of this post was taken during the height of the action!

The battle was great, with our group's usual combination of great tactics, clever usage of spells (props to Keseim's player Wes!), and their skill in acting in concert and maximizing their class abilities (for instance, C&C rangers are pretty deadly, even at low levels).

The party and their allies fought off the Autumn Blades, who retreated into the wood after having a significant number of their people killed or wounded. That's where the session left off, with four of the party's elven warrior's killed.

To be continued...