Scene Notes – C01.S03.05
| Cycle 01 | Shield 03 | Scene 05 | Notes |
What happens in this scene?
Well I don’t exactly know… should we spent any more time in Fireshear? Probably not…. Should we spend a whole scene just getting to Tentowns? Probably… Maybe more than one scene? Not sure…
We have the certainty of random encounters along the Ten Trail. We also have news that Hundlestone is overrun by Duergars and is not safe to pass near. Question is… how far is not near? Should they circle around to Ironmaster? Or just go off-trail and give Hundlestone wide-berth? Or should they decide to risk following Ten Trail as it passes by the Hundlestone gates?
And who is they? Just Shent and Dawndra? Or would Shent recommend they travel with a caravan of others? Or… maybe there is alternate transportation… Griffons for example… that can get party straight to Tentowns?
The distance is approx 50 miles. In snow and ice, it is slow travel – between 3-4 days
Maybe bring in Dasharra? At 80ft speed, it is less than a day to get to Tentowns? But the cost… and can Griffons be rented? Some say no, but Dasharra may have her Griffons trained to accept guests?
What about a portal?
Or maybe there is an underground trail that only Spine Rangers have mapped well enough to travel?
Lets go underground. It should be fun for Dawndra… all that ducking and squeezing 🙂
Shent takes her North along the Ten Trail to the turnoff towards Ironmaster but then drops into an underground tunnel which cuts north and exits near the Ten Trail about ten miles beyond Hundlestone. It is potentially a dangerous route – but walking by Hundlestone is certainly dangerous. Gracklebacks will kill or enslave them on sight. And given their natural magic… they would not even know they were sighted until it was too late. Tunnels run throughout the underground of Icewind Dale – many are the result of extensive mining expeditions in the area, but many are seeminly natural or ancient pathways of long dead creatures. There are stories about Frost Landwyrms, dragon kin, which fed on miners foolish enough to delve in Icewind Dale. The clans of Ironmaster tell stories about great underground battles and annihliation of the wingless dragons.
What if… shortly after they begin the underground crawl, Shent feels a signal in the frozen ground. Marching boots, hundreds of them. Coming from the direction of Ironmaster. Are the Dwarves marching on Hundlestone? It would be the smart move… take out the threat of the Duergar while it is still a small nub. They threaten trade routes as well.
Question is, what will party do? Confirm the suspicion? Join in the assault on Hundlestone? Or just keep on the dangerous underground bypass?
Is time a factor?
We open on the morning of Merpenoth 25 and the games start Kythorn 20
The trek on Ten Trail from Fireshear to Bryn Shander is 4 days – the route to Ironmaster is five miles south of Hundlestone which is just about mid point on the journey – so by the end of day 2, they should be about 5 miles along The Iron Trail.
Oh… I need to dev Shents portal thingy
He has three gems which are connected to each other. One is woven into his beard. This is the control gem. The other two are endpoints for a portal. He leaves one of them in his boat and carries the other. He can place this one at any point within 100 miles of the other and use the control gem to open a portal between them. This allows him to sleep in his own bed aboard his boat every night and then portal back to where he placed other gem. He cannot take either endpoint gems through the portal – they stay where the portal opens
It can be tricky. Once the portal opened up inside the belly of a crag cat who had found and eaten the gem. The magic burst the creature to allow Shent to complete the portal, but he was miles from where he left the gem. He does a better job of hiding it now.
Where did it come from?
Shent might say it was “a gift” from a friend, and he would not be lying. It had belonged to his friend and fellow Spine Ranger, Faernina Farwatcher. She was his partner and companion for many years. He does not speak of her often because it is painful. Riandyl reminded him of Faernina, making the experience of being her guide for the Fray Game both pleasant and painful.
Farwatchers Portal Pendant.
It is the central gem with the power. If one or both of the other gems were lost, it has the ability to enchant two other gems (must be Blue Star Sapphires) with the same power.
Blue Star Sapphire
A translucent blue gem with a white star-shaped center. Worth around 1,000 gp. Black star sapphires are worth around the same as the blue variety.
Back to this scene…
Near the end of the second day of travel, Shent hears a thunder and surmises that the Dwarves of Ironmaster are marching on Hundlestone to take back the city for the miners and trade merchant who have lived and ruled there for centuries.
Choice – Observe (or join) the march on Hundlestone or continue through the underground tunnels. It seems to me, this even would be hard to pass up. Story wise I built up to this and to just let it happen in the background would be unfulfilling. It will be 400 Ironmaster Dwarves vs ~200 Duergar. It should be a clean mop-up but the duergar are tricky bastards.
Maybe… maybe Clan Grackleback knows the Ironmaster Dwarves are coming and realize they have no hope to hold Hundlestone so they resort to guerrilla tactics – pouring down into the mines and tunnels. Perhaps a group is heading towards where Shent and Dawndra entered the tunnels – combat encounter with a small group of 5 Gracks (but more are not far behind)
Perhaps that encounter is interupted by a monster … not a landwyrm, but maybe a frostspawn ambusher? (statblock) They have tremorsense and are probably attracted by the marching army?
Maybe… the large group of Gracks is about 50 in number… and they get attacked by a pack of ambushers – the sound of it echoing through the tunnels. 7 or so Gracks escape the ambushers and run into Shent and Dawndra. A single ambusher, maybe two, is chasing them down when the enounter happens.