Miners Rescued

Session #5, February 2, 2018

The fighting in Bjergholde had left the party badly wounded and although all seemed quiet within the keep, it was evident that more than the number of swinemen they had seen were based here. They left the keep and retreated up the hill finding a good hiding place only a few hundred feet away where they could rest. Koriol found a hiding spot just 150' from the entrance where he could watch the approach to the keep and be within bowshot range of the entrance.

About four hours later Koriol spotted a column approaching and Forni joined him at the lookout point. As the column approached the party discerned five swinemen, three at the front, two at the rear and between them 8 men trudging along with their heads down.

Once in range the bowmen opened fire. The swinemen spotted their attackers quickly, but instead of returning fire they bustled the humans into the fortification. Allis and Haldora rushed down the hill toward the entrance with Forni and Koriol following quickly behind.

The party was greeted by a volley of javelins from the top of the steps when they reached the entrance, but charged up to attack heedless. Although they killed three of the swinemen, and wounded the swinelord in plate who had joined the fight from within the keep, the party ended up being overwhelmed, disarmed, and captured with only Haldora maintaining consciousness by the end.

The rest of the party awoke to find themselves with Haldora crowded into a room with the eight men who were being marched to the keep. They learned that these were what was left of the miners from the buried camp on Fjallisilfur. Runde Grimison, their leader and an older man, had been badly weakened by his treatment here. Hrolli, Baldi, and Singi had held up well and the others in between. Runde told that the mine holds fairly silver-rich galena that they have been mining for a year, extracting several tons, but only smelting a small portion, and cuppellating for the silver even less than that for lack of lime. Runde later confided he had seen moonstone in the mine as well.

When two swinemen opened the room in order to feed them men and march them back to the mine to work, they party, supported by Hrolli and Baldi, rushed and overwhelmed the pair. Taking their axes and javelins, and recognizing their location within the keep, they rushed back to the guard room and reclaimed most of their equipment before the remaining swinemen swarmed in.

The party and sufficiently healthy miners stood ground here, eventually defeating the seven remaining swinemen and their lord. A thorough sweep of the premises turned up a total 80 gold coins, 9 silver bars weighing a pound each, gems: a moonstone, onyx, sardonyx, star rose quartz, and two zircon worth 50gp each, a pair of fancy boots, two books: Absque Spatio Temporus and Plana Intrinsecus et Extrinsecus, and a sealed letter.

[My apologies for the errors.]

Bjergholde

Session #4, January 19, 2018

Play resumed at game time November 12, 837, at approximately 03:00. The previous play session had ended just after two tribesmen bearing another incapacitated pair had arrived in camp begging aid and Koriol had administered goodberries to the men and settled them on the floor of the bunkhouse.

Rather than attempting to track the two-headed dog that had attacked the tribesmen in the night, the party doubled watch for the remaining dark hours and planned to set out in the morning, leaving the tribesmen with the run of the camp. The grateful tribesmen tried unsuccessfully to give the party the fur cloaks off their backs, but the leader insisted they accept a necklace of silver figures on a leather thong. Haldora coaxed them into telling that their home hunting grounds were about 4 days north and east of here. The hunting had become extremely poor this season after many years of plenty, and they were ranging further south in hopes of harvesting enough game to help carry their steading of three dozen or so though the winter.

The thin, crispy snow left from a few days earlier proved helpful to tracking the dog from the site of the tribesmen's camp. The tracks ran Northeast to the shore of a river, presumed to be the Skinnende Elv (Shining River) which empties at Horgevik, 10 - 15 miles south of Amkedvik, then followed the tracks upstream. About 4 miles upstream from a branch in the river, the party came upon a brown bear fishing at a ford. Climbing the bank to avoid disturbing it, they continued upstream, matching the hill profiles on the map from the ruined village with the terrain on the far bank.

By early afternoon, after climbing out of taiga, forested hills, and eventually into rocky hills, the group spotted some sort of castle wall on the hill as described by the map. Reckoning it would be about sunset when they arrived there, they opted instead to make camp a mile or two back downriver and behind a rise. Koriol returned to the base camp, getting charged by a boar on his way back, but killing it after suffering a nasty wound from its tusks. At camp he provided herbs and treatment instructions for the dog bites to the grateful tribesmen, at least one of whom showed signs of the disease Koriol had suffered after being wounded by the dog weeks ago.

After eating and quickly sleeping, Koriol packed a few food supplies and made his way to the party's lean-to in the wee hours. True to their prediction, the overcast weather of yesterday developed into a light snow. Iorad began the day weakened from subsisting on trail rations (temporarily at -2 to STR and DEX) and would need to rest after half a day's exertions. They broke camp, backtracked to the ford where the bear had been, crossed, then followed the river upstream into the rocky hills and found the castle hill again. They approached the castle stealthily, coming around the back of the hill and over the top to view it from above. Here it became clear that the structure was merely a section of wall built into a near-vertical part of the hill. Wrapping back around to the other side they found a well-used track that had been used by traffic traveling away from the keep just a couple of hours earlier. The track went generally northeast from the keep and showed wheel tracks as well as bipeds'.

Following the track around to the keep's side of the hill, they found that 8' wide stairs led from the track up, behind the wall with no door or gate blocking the way. Taking the steps up, they found a hallway inside the wall, pierced on the left, away from the hill, with several arrow slits. At the top of the stairs to the right an archway opened into a small guardroom in which a swineman half stood, half sat with drooping eyelids. Allis rushed into the room, followed immediately by Iorad. The swineman was dispatched before he could raise his weapon or give a shout.

The guard room had a second exit on the south wall, and hearing nothing through it, the party went in, dragging the dead swineman in and leaving a trail of gore behind him. This room contained several empty wooden armor and weapon racks which looked quite old. Three other doors on each of the other walls were closed. The party heard a muffled growling sound through the south door and silence at the other two. Haldora braced one of the racks against the southern door. Checking the eastern door, it opened at the southern end of the arrow slitted hallway. Opening the western door, they observed a man reading a book while sitting in a chair upon a dais in a large audience hall-sort of room, with a two-headed dog sleeping on the floor before him. The dog immediately woke and lunged at the party.

Both the dog's heads bit Allis. The party managed to kill the dog before the man on the chair had even recovered from his surprise at their intrusion, but once he had, he blasted the party with a fireball which incapacitated Allis, killed Iorad instantly, and wounded the rest of the party rather badly. Despite these losses the party was able to kill the man before he delivered any more damage. The room was lit by a chandelier of six oil lamps and on the north wall had been written:

Vafthrundis
What secrets to the Gods belong
And to the gigantean throng
I will unfold  In evry world
I my banners have unfurld
Behold  nine traversd spheres above
Th extent of my researches prove
Beneath the shades of Niflhil lie
There the men of Hela die

After tending to Allis, Koriol noticed a pair of swinemen start to enter the chamber through an archway in the south of the room and immediately retreat back through it. The party quickly grabbed the man's coin purse and book and returned east into the armory room, then north into the guardroom as the door on the south side of the armory opened, breaking the armor rack braced on it, and swinemen began streaming through. The party took up a defensive position outside the archway into the guardroom at the top of the stairs which enter the keep. Here they fought the swinemen singly as they tried to force their way into the hall. Midway through this fight another swineman, this one wearing chainmail rather than hide armor as the others, caught Forni in the shoulder with a javelin from the south end of the arrow slitted hall. Forni charged him with his sword, wounded him badly, and managed to push him back a step. This forced the swineman to step on a pressure plate causing a dart to shoot from the wall and strike him, killing him immediately. By the end, 7 swinemen lay dead in the guardroom and hall.

Camp Found

Session #3, January 5, 2018

The clouds had been increasing over the past two days and on November 2, 837, the sky was fully overcast with a continued moderate west wind. Forni knocked together a couple of wheelbarrows to aid the excavation and then worked on building the camp.

As the rest of the party continued its exploratory excavations of the mountain slide, they spotted a small group of armed men in the distance. Closing and hailing each other, the two groups recognized one another as Viking and Suebi.

The four Suebi tribesmen were guarded, but not hostile. When asked if they knew of the mining camp, had perhaps traded with them last year, they said they did not and did normally hunt in this area. Uncomfortable around each other, the two groups went back to their business with no more discussion.

After a peaceful night, November 3 was warmer still, but with a light rain. Again the party went back to digging, but with Forni, as he had been yesterday, concentrating on building out the camp. In the afternoon the woman Haldora arrived in the camp bearing a small cask of mead. She was known to the men as she had been in Amkedvik this past year, arriving from a steading south and east along the coast. Unsurprisingly, a pretty woman walking into the camp with alcohol was welcomed with no questions asked.

The light rain kept up during the night, but early on November 4 cooler air arrived and it changed to snow. Unable to ignore the oncoming winter any longer the party paused its dig in order to concentrate on standing up a more protective camp. In four day's time, the 20' square timber bunkhouse was roughly completed with a fireplace to feed the smokehouse, a root cellar below holding 70# of smoked venison, and a wattle fence around the 80' X 100' compound.

On November 9 the party once again focused on the digging and began finding some more debris. Digging on the next two days also revealed likely mining camp debris, but on November 12 they final revealed crushed huts. The three stone, wood, and turf-built huts they found were partially crushed, but having voids within. Voids devoid of any miners, but including this:

Koriol employed his primeval awareness to ascertain the presence of anything unnatural within a 6 mile radius about their location and felt that there were elementals, fey, and undead present.

Late in the night, after the party had dragged their tired bodies back to the campsite for sleep, the four Suebi tribesmen returned, two of them unconscious and being hauled by the other two wounded men who begged for help.

[Once again weak memory, but slightly better notes. Please forgive any inaccuracies.]