- Aasimar Pal4, Scion of a Fallen Kingdom background*
- Human Knight4, Hero of the Peasants, apprenticed by a Knight who occasionally fought in the Paladin's dad's service.
- Human Warmage4, Veteran of the War, "barbarian" slave who was pressed into service as a soldier in the Paladin's dad's army
- Dwarven/Les Experience Thief-Acrobat4, (no background, but basically experimental stock), creation of the Paladin's Dad's crazy wizard advisor, has extra joints in arms and fingers, giving increased dex.
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Second Session-First Game
The party was told that, "Well, fortunately, there's a handy social mechanism for getting powerful, potentially troublesome nobles out of the court where they could fuck up plans, it's called adventuring. So the Paladin's uncle sent you guys off, saying, basically, 'Just, go. Out, there, somewhere, I don't give a shit, I hear there's a minotaur ravaging the country side, or something, Go, slay it, help people, whatever.'"
They'd been doing that a few years, the Uncle having taken the throne 5 years ago.
They found themselves in the Manor estate of Lord Naerver. As they poked around a bit, they found that a lot of metal had gone missing in the village, and that the house staff of (the absent) Lord Naerver's manor had heard something scratching at the kitchen door last night, but didn't check it out because, well fuck, it's not like it's going to get it, so who cares? Upon the warmage checking out the tracks, they learned it was a rust monster. They set up an ambush that night, with some broken pots and pans the butler brought them as they were all standing outside trying to figure out who was going to give up equipment as bait.
So, the dwarven lab experiment scales the wall and waits in the shadows, the warmage leans against the manor wall until one of the servant girls brings him some ale and takes him back to bed, the paladin standing out near the bait, and the knight sitting on his damned horse, holding a torch.
Also the entire house staff on another balcony watching these idiots.
The rust monster comes wandering up, and the dwarf shoots it with a grapple-bolt, and the paladin with an arrow, causing it to let out a horrendous screech, which causes the warmage to come running back out, with his sword and not a damned thing else. The warmage hits the beast with a scorching ray, the paladin kicks it, and manages to not have his boot rust off (he wanted to take it alive so they could be led back to it's lair), and the knight just skewers the thing.
So, the rust monster menace is gone, and the knight starts trying to browbeat the steward into giving everyone lodging saying "Hey, we saved the town! You guys won't starve because the farmers ain't bringing you crops because they have no tools!" Which didn't work at all, because, well, a Lord beats some random upstart knight who was given his title by his dying master, and the villagers hadn't complained, and the manor staff didn't even know their was a problem. So the steward told a stable boy to make the knight comfortable, and offered the paladin a guest room, because the paladin's actually the prince.
Next day, they decide to track the rust monster, in case there were more. Going out to the town with the intention of finding a hunter, they go into the tavern and loudly announce that they were looking to hire a woodsman. The tavern owner looked up from polishing the bar and told them the woodsmen were all out in the woods, hunting, mentally adding "duh, you fucking idiots." So the then decided to wander out into the woods and find a woodsman (I am not making this up). I gave the dwarf a roll to notice a rust monster track in the town, and they were able to at least follow it's meandering path into the woods, were they found a woodsman, made him miss the deer he was hunting, and hired him to track the rust monster. He led them to a den in the Lord's section of the forest, and noticed all the wolf tracks around. He got the hell out of there when he noticed that some of said tracks were the size of his head. The knight fires a flask of alchemist's fire from his modified crossbow of "The dm doesn't give a shit, sure, why not" into the den, where it breaks about ten feet in because IT'S A FUCKING DEN. After the flames die down, and they start trying to figure out what to do now, the dwarf decides he'll crawl in. Takes a doused torch (club), and his buckler, and some rope, and starts shimmying in. After about 20 feet, he finds where the den opens out into a roughly 15' diameter chamber full of wolves. And by full of wolves, I mean three are in his face and a giant one in the back stands up, while the rust monster in there keeps it's ass on the floor, knowing to let the wolves do their thing.
So the dwarf start's backing out after getting bit in the face, followed by the wolves, in an attack (miss), move, repeat routine. Meanwhile, outside, the warmage has enlarged the knight and paladin, and is holding the action to cast a fireball. The knight grabs the dwarf when able, and pulls him out of the hole, and the warmage fires his fire ball bead in, failing to miss the mass of wolf filling the hole, and hit far enough back to actually hit everything in the den. The wolves all take a bit of damage, the rust monster continues to stay the hell out of it.
Long story short, wolf form werewolf monks (Were Dire Wolf Monk2, 3 Werewolf Monk1s) rock the party, mostly thanks to the were dire wolf having Rapid Blitz and 8hd. As they're nearing a TPK (they did manage to take out one normal pack member), the leader signals his pack to stop attacking and try to intimidate, trying for all the world to act like normal wolves defending territory. The party starts backing up, taking defensive actions, healing, etc. The warmage drops enlarge, knight gets on his horse and turns to leave and the lead werewolf turns to look at the last three as if to say "take the fucking hint." Of course the knight stupidly decided to just feint and turns back around to charge with a lance. He fucking misses the Clydesdale sized wolf, and gets his horse reduced to 1/3 it's hp, and himself knocked unconscious for his troubles. I decide a warhorse probably tries to leave battle if his master goes limp, and the horse wanders away from the big scary predator that just headbutted it in the chest. The rest of the party decides that now's a good time to leave, and does so. In all the fighting, the warmage would have contracted lycanthropy, but has a periapt of disease protection, so, there goes that hint.
The party heals up on the way out of the forest, and tries to play it off like "oh, yeah, we totally won. Um, don't go back there. There's a giant wolf, leave it the hell alone, or send your Lord when he gets back, or something." They set up to bait the other rust monster that night. The warmage gets bored after five minutes and goes to his nice warm bed. No rust monster shows. They're all pretty much prepared to write it off and leave, when the Lord's daughter comes in from the village because the staff went and got her when adventurers showed up to talk to the lord, since he's off on business elsewhere, not living in his manor like a normal noble. She thanks them for their (completely unneeded) help, offers them all rooms for the night, they tell her about the rust monster and "keep the pointy sticks handy, and, oh, hey, that might be a werewolf, so keep the silver handy too." They decide to stay another night, because, hey, free room and board.
Yeah... that night, as the dwarf waits for a rust monster again, the werewolves enact their actual plan. The pack goes for the village, while the leader heads straight for the manor to grab the daughter, planning on turning her at midnight to be his mate. The dwarf alerts the party with the bait pots. The warmage runs out wearing only his harness of weapons, the knight runs flat out for the stable for his horse, and the paladin starts running down the stairs. The wolf attacks the dwarf, jumps up to the balcony, avoids a trip from the dwarf's whip, is missed by the warmage's spear, and.... rolls a one to bite the fucking warmage, falling to the ground. Next round, same basic thing, but he leaps back down because, hey three attacks, Paladin makes it out the door, and sees a big fuck all wolf in front of him. Round three, the dwarf leaps onto the wolf's back, the paladin gets a flanking bonus, because, hey, technically, and the wolf just fucking jumps up to the balcony where a staggered warmage can't do shit. Wolf moves inside, and the paladin runs back in. Wolf runs in, dwarf attempts to hogtie, wolf breaks rope. Wolf throws dwarf off as the dwarf fails to maintain grapple, and stands up from prone. Just as the knight shows up, hears the crashing on the second floor, and leaps his horse on to the balcony, fully prepared to ream the wolf in a very literal way. The paladin smites the wolf, dropping it.
Party levels up as they basically breath a moment before the run off to protect the town, where screams having been coming from for the last few rounds, and we end for the night.
