Since we began gaming together in 2004(?) or so, we’ve played through four campaigns in our homebrew setting. The setting is fairly low-magic, low-power, and low-level. Most of our characters are now level 8 or 9, which puts us only a few levels behind some of the huge, epic leaders we’d run into. As my brother Patrick began the fifth campaign, it was clear that our characters were getting too big for the setting. We’d met all the major powers and been at the center of four major world events. Were were whales in a swimming pool. Patrick suggested that the fifth campaign should be our last with these characters and this setting. The campaign was a sort of final battle of good and evil. The idea was that all of the threats popping up (the four previous campaigns we’d played) were the result of the powers of evil gaining influence in the world, the precursor to the final cataclysmic showdown between good and evil. Evil was going to pour into our world and use it as a battlegrounds against good. Regardless of which side won, it would most likely wipe out the mortal realm, which would not only kill all the shopkeepers in the game but also greatly devalue all the property we’d acquired. Clearly this just wouldn’t do.

There was a prophesy (of course there was – there is always a prophesy) that predicted this would happen, and that mentioned that when the time of evil came there would be some heroes that would rise up to face the challenge. Having been at the center of the four previous major threats, the player characters were obviously the intended heroes.

Last Saturday we had the final session of that final campaign, and brought the story, the setting, and our characters to a complete and final close. I know some gaming groups have characters that live on for years and years, reaching level 20 and beyond. Our group agreed that we didn’t want to go that route. Aside from the fact that we would no longer fit in the setting as epic characters, we wanted to explore other games and settings, as opposed to playing these guys for the next decade.

The final battle was pretty interesting. On our side we had our characters – all of our “alts” and abandoned characters and several prominent NPCs, each leading their own group of 100 soldiers. On the other side was the forces of mucho evil, of similar size but different makeup. (We had a lot more ranged units.) The opposing forces were led by a very large and evil looking dude, who turned out to be a Mind Flayer with a bunch of levels in Awesome Evil Mojo Powers.

It was the largest fight we’d ever been through. Patrick devised his own system for mass combat, and it worked really well. It was a battle of about 4,000 individual units, represented on the hex grid in groups of 100. There were three types of groups: Magic, Archers, and Melee. They formed a nice paper-scissors-rock relationship that brought some rewarding strategy to the game. It also allowed for rolling lots of handfuls of different dice, which always makes me happy. It was fun, varied, and tense. Note that I hate long combat the same way a reasonable man might hate lengthy dental procedures, so I want you to realize just how amazing it is that I managed to get through a four-hour battle and enjoy myself in the process.

Once the army of evil was crushed (and it was very close, as the kill ratio was not too far from 1:1) the mass combat ended and it was down to a fight between the PC’s and Captain Squidface. (Note to other GM’s, always name your antagonists, because if you don’t, your players will. And you will not like the results.) None of the player characters died, but it was very, very close. Several of them went down and were in negative HP when it was all over. The dice could easily have killed us there.

I’ve mentioned before that I like stories that end. It’s one of the reasons I like anime and generally loathe American television. It was great to see our story come to a close, nice to end it on a high note, and even better that none of us snuffed it there in the Last Battle.

The group is still set on exploring other games and settings. Originally the plan was for me to run a Star Wars campaign, but it looks like I’m going to be working on an indie game, and so I don’t think I should make that kind of commitment right now. I had a bunch of notes for the Star Wars game already written, along with a map and some other details. I might post them here so they don’t go completely to waste.

What would have happened if they didn’t free Mordan?

This is a question all of the players and a few readers asked. The short answer: not much.

This whole campaign was a gamble that hinged on them being tricked into freeing Mordan. If they had skipped Crossway, travel on the roads would have been impossible. They would have met a large group of solders (so many that they wouldn’t think about fighting) and would have been arrested and dragged back to Crossway, where Noreeno would make them a deal in exchange for their freedom.

But if they had traveled in the wilderness, they could have eventually reached Telwin Port. Assuming they were willing to leave Endo behind, they could have escaped the campaign altogether.

If they went south, but continued to look for Endo, they might have gotten arrested or met trouble elsewhere. In order to save the campaign, I could have used some yet-unwritten NPC (maybe some other survivors from the ship) to free Mordan, and then had the Queen try to enlist their help. This would have been far, far less interesting. The real hook of the campaign was that they released Mordan, and although it could have played out a lot of different ways, the choces they made in the end were the best, story-wise.

How much were they “on rails”?

I am guilty of passive railroading. I know the guys I game with, and in many cases I can say “If I put them in situation X I know they will do Y.” Once in a while I’m wrong, but very often I can predict how they will react to a situation before I introduce it. The freeing of Mordan was one such case.

I knew they probably wouldn’t abandon Endo. (But just to be clear: Endo is my character when I’m not the DM, and I was fully prepared to lose him if they didn’t. I would never have forced them to rescue him.) Once they recued him he gave them the quest hook of looking for the prince, and I suspected they would bite. It took them a while, but they did. I gave them the book of Norvus, knowing Enoch would translate the sucker.

So I’m a little guilty of “steering” them by putting situations in front of them that will turn them the way I want them to go. The first four sessions had a lot of steering in them.

This isn’t railroading in the sense of telling players “You can’t do that”, but putting them into situations where there are only one or two reasonable choices could still be considered a form of subtle railroading. I leave it for the reader to decide.

I certainly never would have told them, “You can’t do that, I don’t allow.”

Isn’t his name supposed to be Eomeir?

Yeah. Once I got into the habit of spelling it wrong it was hard to stop. My bad.

Any plans for another campaign?

Well, I don’t have a group right now. Even if I did, I’m not sure I would try this again. It was too hard to prepare for the next game and log the last one. I certainly couldn’t pull it off while putting out DM of the Rings.

One solution might be to record all of the sessions and transcribe them once the game ends. Actually, that is probably the only way to do it. I could even edit out the useless stuff and turn it into one of those podcast thingies, which wouldn’t have the DM notes but wouldn’t require a lot of work, either.

In any case, next time I play I plan to take better care of the audio recordings. I can’t believe I lost them.

Still, step 1 is getting the band back together.

Do you ever “cheat” by faking dice rolls to help or hinder the players?

I don’t roll the dice, get a 1, but then just pretend I got a 15. Still, there are all sorts of ways the DM can nudge things without faking dice rolls. If someone is on a narrow ledge on a cliff-side and they fail a climbing roll (or whatever) I won’t just let them fall to their death. I’ll give them a (reflex) saving throw to see if they can grab the ledge. Missed? Then I’ll give the guy behind him a similar roll to see if he can catch him. Missed again? I’ll give him one last throw to see if he can grab that sticking-out branch on the way down, Wile E. Coyote style.

If they miss that then I’ll let it happen, but it’s obvious that the DM can do all sorts of stuff without needing to pretend the dice rolled something they didn’t.

Another way to tweak things is to change the enemy strategy so that it sucks.

In Session 3, when the players faced Vormoth the Wizard, he had a lightning spell available. They went into that fight low on hitpoints, low on magic, low on healing, with no coherant plan, and then fought like a bunch of numbskulls. They made so much noise that the enemy knew they were coming and when. I’d planned on blasting them with a little lightning, but I realized that I could very easily kill one or two of them that way, which could end up in a TPK.

So I had Vormoth stick to his lower-level spells. I justified this by saying (to myself) “Vormoth wouldn’t want to risk hitting the kids.” That was true, but more important is the fact that I had planned to blast them with lighning and didn’t.

This was my most “cheating” moment in the campaign, and I regret it. On one hand, I didn’t want to kill off a couple of characters. At the same time, they really did deserve to lose that fight. It’s part of the game.

I’m not going to do that again. If I find myself with a bunch of players who make bad decisions, I’ll let things happen as they do. Better to lose a level 4 character and teach the importance of strategy early, than to teach the players they are invulnerable and let them do something even more stupid in the future that causes them to die at level 8.

Actually, now that I’ve written this I think I’ve made a good case for faking dice rolls. If I had to cheat, it would have been better to let Vormoth bust out his lighning but then make sure his damage roll was low enough that it wouldn’t kill the target. That would have been a better choice than what I did. It would have driven home the point to the players, “this could have killed you”.

This subject almost needs a post of its own. The object of the game is to have fun. The players won’t have fun today if they all die. But they also won’t have fun ever if their actions don’t have consequences. To paraphrase a friend: When it comes to RPG’s, it’s better to live a short and exciting life than a long dull one. In fact, that’s the whole point.

That’s it. All done. Thanks for reading.

The players could locate and release Fiore, and use her prison on the orb, then kill Mordan in battle.

This is the best outcome, but it was the most complicated. Pat (Eomer) was convinced that Mordan’s followers were using the Mages Archives as a base, so he made it a priority to get there, which involved freeing Garret. This led them to the best outcome.

If they had not been so set on finding the Archives, then another solution would have presented itself…

Re-set Mordan’s original Prison

It was possible to sneak back into Mordan’s tomb and re-affix the orb to his casket and re-set the chains. Mordan was afraid of going back in there, and didn’t want to mess with the prison until he had the orb back. Without looking at the orb, there was no way for him to know how the trap worked. So, he had simply posted some of his (still human) followers around the site, with plans to come back and destroy the place once he reclaimed the orb.

Once the orb was in place, they players would have needed to put Mordan down. This would have been harder than in solution #1, since the orb wasn’t in a magic-proof box. It was still radiating power, and so Modan would have been more than a match for the players. They would have needed the direct or indirect help of Sagemaster or the Queen to put him down and return him to his prison.

Allow the orb to fall into Mordan’s hands again.

Bury it, trick someone else into taking it, or give it to Mordan in exchange for passage off the island. All of these would have led to the same outcome: Mordan would reclaim the Orb.

They could have dropped it into a deep chasam in the mountain. There was one such chasam in the mines that they didn’t explore. If they had dropped the orb in there, then caused a cave-in to seal it, it would have provided a temporary solution. It wouldn’t have defeated Mordan, but it might have kept him busy long enough for them to escape the island. They could also have done this by dropping the orb in the ocean, although they would have needed to be careful about getting there on a ship. (Remember the birds.)

The same is true for giving it to someone else. If they passed it off to some other sucker and then escaped the island, then Mordan would have tracked it down and killed the new owner.

In either case, they would certainly have gone back to Mar Talos to meet with Sagemaster, who would have given them a clear set of steps to take for solving the problem for good. Mordan would reclaim the orb from wherever they put it, and they would face the Lich King at full strength. He would have killed the queen and reclaimed the Citadel.

I would have needed to write a new campaign at this point, and invent some new way for the players to face him. Perhaps Sagemaster would have given them an artifact that would protect them from scrying and from being turned into gravewalkers. Using Skeeve’s description of the orb (remember that Skeeve had studied it in detail) then Sagemaster would come up with some new thing to add to the orb.

This would have been the classic quest: brave the wastelands, storm the dark tower and kill the Big Bad. It’s been done, but it would have worked.

The island and everyone on it would have been more or less wasted at that point. Ah well. Such is the life of an NPC.

What if they had gotten rid of the Orb without Skeeve studying it? They would have to be pretty irresponsible and apathetic to do that. I knew they wouldn’t. However, if I had a set of players who did chuck the orb without bothering to study it, then I would conclude that they just weren’t into the game. I’d let Mar Tesaro be destroyed, and we’d go play something else.

Destroy the orb.

Several people suggested Skeeve could get in a rowboat, go to the middle of the ocean, and destroy the orb.

There are a few flaws with this plan.

1. Dan wasn’t really interested in throwing away his character. Which is understandable.
2. Getting a hundred miles out to sea in a rowboat is no small feat. Maybe some magic might have helped.
3. A hundred mile wide death spell is going to make a mess. Imagine every living thing in the sea dying. People make a big deal about the Exxon Valdez, but that only killed some wildlife which depended on the surface to live, and did so over a much, much smaller area. This would have been orders of magnitude larger than that, and it would have killed everything above and below the surface. It really would have been an ecological disaster. The ocean would have been filled with decaying fish, which would wash up on shore by the ton for months on end.
4. The Orb was made of stone, and nobody had any idea how hard it would be to break. Even if they had a way around all of the previous problems, there was still the question of how to break it. Even if the person sacrificing themselves had access to heavy tools (say, a hammer, anvil, and maybe a vice of some sort) it wasn’t clear just how much strength would be needed to break it. Maybe it could only be broken using magic.

Still, if they managed to destory the orb it would have defeated Mordan.

For my own purposes, I was going to treat the the orb like a sphere of polished granite. Not indestructible, but not easily broken either.

Other solutions.

I would have accepted pretty much anything that made sense if they found a way around the various curses. My favorite solutions are the ones I never think of.

Upper Bolwood

When I do wilderness travel, I sort of make it a branching maze. For example: “You are in a broad clearing. From here you can go east into the valley or you can ascend the large hill to the southwest. You could also turn around and return to the pine grove to the north, which you just left.” The players understand that I’m presenting them with choices that are likely, given the terrain. Sure, they could choose some unlikely course of action, like going halfway up a hill and then walking around, but this will be slower, pointless, and they will just end up at a recycled version of one of my established locations anyway. This gives them a bit of freedom, and makes wilderness seem less arbitrary. Some ways are faster, some can be very slow (like a valley which gets thick with vegitation once they enter) and some can have encounters.

Upper Bolwood was one such maze, with Ettins at a few of the map points. I’d googled around and had pictures for every map point. They managed to route around all of this.

The weather hills were infested with Goblins, who loved to build traps and ambushes. They were another wilderness maze, although almost every point had some pit or trap which would require some reflex save for the poor slob out in front. Once the trap was sprung, (assuming it took someone down, knocked them over, or otherwise worked) then Goblins would emerge from the underbrush and attack. The Goblin camp was also in the hills, although it was a little hard to find. If the players stumbled on it or tracked it down they could clean the place out for a little payback.

I thought I’d devised the map so that they would have to journey through Upper Bolwood OR the Goblin territory, forgetting that with Enoch’s help they could walk on water. They skipped Upper Bolwood, then crossed the river and dodged the Weather Hills.

West of Crossway is the Carrow Valley. Early in the island’s history a battle was fought here between the Lormanites and one of the other factions. The battle was long and more or less a mutual slaughter, with both sides taking such massive losses that nobody could really claim victory. There weren’t enough people left to even begin the task of burying the dead, who were left to rot. At some point later folks came along and errected standing stones as a sort of halfhearted memorial / mass tombstone. The valley is quite cursed by now.

If they had entered the valley they would have gotten trapped in the curse, and would have needed to kill some sort of lesser spirit or ghost to break the curse so that they could leave. I didn’t fill in the details of this adventure, since by session 2 it was obvious they were not going to be coming this way, and they were not in the mood to explore.

In my original plans, the road into Fol Thron was lined with gibbets like the one you see on the right. The men in the gibbets were Lormanite officers. They were once strong, cruel leaders who had been captured in the war and were now withering in their cages. These really were bad guys, although there was no way for the players to tell at this point. They were dressed in rags and many were dead. As the players approached the city for the first time, I had planned to have one of the men beg to be released. Right over his cage was a warning not to take pity on these men, without further detail. The guy in the cage wasn’t about to explain the slaughter and torture he’d brought to the war, or the zeal with which he pursued it. He was going to play the victim.

The players would be faced with this pitiful guy, who was asking for help.

If they freed him, the queen would know. If they were stupid and obvious about it (like if they tried to take gibbet-boy into town with them without cleaning him up and giving him clothes first) then the guards would catch them and question them, and they would have wound up in front of the queen that much sooner. If they got away with it, the queen would still know, and when they met with her she would bring it up. In any case she would simply point out what an awful guy he was, and list some of his more horrid crimes. Crimes bad enough that the players would probably really regret freeing him.

It was a good chance to demonstrate that the “good guys” in this war were only just a little better than the bad guys. The queen would have waived their punishment in any case, in exchange for them hearing her out on the quest to kill Noreeno. So, the quest was harmless either way. I would have given an XP bonus if they had wrung the truth out of the guy in the cage (maybe by using Zone of Truth) and then acted (or not acted) once they knew the whole story. Really, the true goal of the “quest” was to avoid being duped.

Why did I skip this quest? Sigh. I forgot. The gibbet notes were in with the wilderness travel notes, and not with the notes on the city itself. So, I didn’t describe the cages on the way in. Dang.

As I mentioned in session 10, the mines had a maze and some grave walkers to fight, but they routed around it.

In my original plans, they were going to have to bust Garret out of prison if they wanted to free him. (Or sneak into jail and get the info they needed.) But by the time they got to Telwin Port I felt like they were getting restless, so I made it possible to just bail him out for a few gold.

I’d planned for the Dwarves to arrive after Mordan was defeated. They were originally going to land in Warfield (just north of Fol Thron) and attack the capital from there. This didn’t make a lot of sense. (Why would they land on the opposite side of the river, so that they would have to go all the way to the bridge?)

The players would have enough knowledge at this point that their help could swing the war either way if they decided to take sides. They could give the Dwarves a nice map of the city defenses, or reveal to the Queen the Dwarven food shortage. Doing one or the other could tip the battle whichever way they wanted, but the real solution was to free Fiore so people would stop fighting over this $#@ing mountain.

I thought they would defeat Mordan, and then worry about lifting the curse of Fiore, which was the real cause of all of these wars.

I changed things around because I thought it was time to start wrapping up the campaign. Then they managed to free Fiore before the Dwarves even arrived.

The more I think about it, the more I like the ending we got.

Click for full view. (342k) Here you can see the path they followed from the start of the campaign. Arrows are colored according to session number.

That campaign was begun in September of 2005, and ran for fifteen weekly sessions. (With the occasional week off for holidays and such.) The whole thing lasted about five months. So, the game ended about a year ago. I haven’t rolled the dice since, which is kind of sad.

I’ll probably do one more post where I detail the various alternate solutions to some of the puzzles and challenges the players faced, and talk about some of the stuff they missed. If you have any other questions, please drop them in the comments below and I’ll cover them in the wrap-up post.

Thanks again for reading.

Scouts cover the city and return an hour later with their report: This town was bombarded from the northwest. On that side of town they found evidence that another army had attacked the city. There are broken and burned siege machines that have been pushed off of the road just outside of town.

This explains the sudden widthdrawl five days earlier. The party gathers and discusses these signs. Here is how they interpret events: Mordan was battling them at the bridge when he was unexpectedly attacked from the north by forces unknown. He was obliged to recall his forces to the city to defend it. By the time these forces arrived the city was already in ruins. But the unliving have no real need for towns except as a place to find future victims. Undaunted by the destruction of their base, they pushed the Northern attackers back towards Fort Bolland.

click for full view. (134k)

It takes the better part of a day to move the army through the ruined city, and another day of travel to reach Fort Bolland. There they find Mordan’s forces swarming around the city, climbing up the walls any trying to overwhelm the defenders. The Alidian / Dwarven alliance comes down on the rear of the undead mass, acting as the hammer to the city’s anvil. At last they get a look at the forces that have been troubling Mordan’s rear flank. They are elves! It’s Sagemaster!

The armies crash into one another. The Dwarven / Alidian alliance begins hacking at the rear of the undead army, while arrows and spells pummel Mordan’s forces from over the city walls.

As the undead rapidly thin, Mordan rises above the fray and reveals himself at last. He is withered, and his skin is the color of ash. His robes are little more than black tatters that swirl around his gaunt frame. A black crown rests on top of his head, a circle of cruel spikes pointing upward and outward. His eyes are two points of cold light shining from within his empty sockets. He holds his staff aloft and moves his mouth, but they can hear no sound. The undead are driven to a frenzy. The battle intensifies. The heroes rush forward to face him.

Fireballs fly and the players surround Mordan. The soldiers in their company make short work of the various undead, leaving this battle between Mordan and the heroes. Fire falls down on him. He responds in kind. The heroes are tossed about by his spells, but they can see his power has failed him. He is at last truly outmatched. They strike him down. The ground shakes and the remaining undead collapse. A wail escapes his putrid mouth as he collapses in on himself and vanishes.

They look southward. From here the trees and hills of Bolwood block their view of the mountain, but they know he’s there, trapped under a mountain of stone and sealed in magic beyond his power.

He’s finished.

Teerin strides out of the city to meet them. He helps tend the wounded and then meets with the party in the remains of Lorman’s castle, which he’s been using as his base since he arrived. They talk about Grey Moor and Eomer gets some news of his homeland.

Teerin explains his side of the story: The moment Mordan had been freed, he sensed it. As soon as he could, he assembled what forces he had and sailed for Fort Bolland. Mordan sent his birds (which would burn ships into the sea) but such tricks were not a problem for Teerin, who is far more in touch with nature and wild beasts than Mordan. He arrived and joined with the few poeple still alive in Fort Bolland, then moved south to liberate Crossway.

While in Fol Thron, the party meets up with Beck again. He made it through the Dwarven assault of Telwin Port, and they gather that he had a big part in rallying the city defense. He’s glad to see eveyone pulled through.

In the end, the Dwarves do claim the mountain. However, since they can’t set foot on it, they build a city at the foot of the mountain – which they now properly call Fiore. They take control of the city of Della Minera (peacefully, although with some minor political haggling) and expand the town at a rapid pace.

The Dwarves act as guardians, telling people to Keep Off The Mountain. This gives them the illusion of ownership and kinship with the mountain that they desired long ago. It really was a point of pride for them, that the greatest mountain in the world wasn’t theirs. Well, it still isn’t theirs, but they are closer to it than anyone else, which makes them about as happy as Dwarves ever get. They bow to the mountain and pay it respect from a safe distance.

Once the Queen is healed, she requires several days alone. Then she meets with the Heroes again. With the curse lifted and the searing pain gone, she is a different person. The Citadel is opened up, and light is allowed in for the first time in over a century. Her country is in absolute shambles. Her army is all but gone and their chief source of income is now off limits. However, with the iron grip of the government loosening, there is hope that they can make a healthy recovery over the next few years.

The players negotiate to have the remaining slaves (the Lormanite army) set free. The slaves are freed without ceremony and sent packing. Nobody really likes the Lormanites (they did start the war that set this whole mess in motion) but there is no need for slaves, and nobody wants them around. The Queen renounces her claim to Crossway and all cities North. This gesture is mostly symbolic, as she doesn’t have the forces to control those places, and there are precious few people left there anyway. Crossway itself is more or less obliterated. Most of the population was slain to build Mordan’s army, and the city itself was ravaged by Mordan and then pummeled by Teerin’s forces. It is likely to remain a ruin for a long time to come.

They learn that some of the smaller northern cities escaped Mordan’s wrath. Joland Village and Breakshore were spared. Woodhurst – a small town between Fort Boland and Crossway – was put to the torch, but many of the inhabitants fled to the wilderness and survived.

Garret decides he wants to continue traveling. The players give him a little money and wish him well. He’s not going to be slaying dragons anytime soon, but they do hope he doesn’t get himself into any real trouble. He still has no interest in the crown, which is good for everyone involved.

Beck decides to sail with Sagemaster, who will be stopping at Grey Moor on his way home. He is at last going to get home and marry Talla.

Surprisingly, everyone was here this week.

Three days later the Dwarven army arrives, backed by the last of the Alidian soldiers. Mordan has pulled his army back and has not returned. The time has come for a counterattack. The army marches over the bridge, aiming north.

Many Dwarves look back over their shoulders as they travel, gazing up at the dark smoking peak of Khelberg.

The players ride out front. While not formally in command of the army, the commanders are nevertheless following their lead. The players have seen every side of this war, every part of the island, and have a clearer picture of what is going on than anyone else. They do not command the army, but if they tell the generals that a course of action is a good idea, then it is going to happen that way.

The army passes Hillstead, which is a smoking ruin. A few grave walkers are prowling around, gnawing on bones. They are overwhelmed and exterminated by the army without difficulty. They ride further north without contest. Mordan didn’t just pull back a little – he has evidently withdrawn all the way to Crossway.

The army moves slowly. The players are on hoseback, but the army is mostly on foot and some of them have siege machinery in tow. The trip to Crossway takes three days, during which they see only single grave walkers or other spies. They feared Mordan would strike while they were in the open, but now they have traveled for three days without answer from him. Nobody knows what to think of this.

They stop a few miles short of the city. Even from here they can see the city is smoking. Did Mordan put his own city to the torch? Did the Lormanites suddenly produce an army and assult him? Is this a trick? What is going on?

Eomer goes ahead and scouts out the town. It is, as they suspected, a smoking ruin. Stone buildings are toppled as if pummeled by siege weapons. Everything burnable has done do. A few grave walkers scamper about. Eomer evades their notice and returns to the others.

They deliberate. There is not much choice. Trick or not, they don’t have any option but to march into the city and see what happens.

She explains that her mines collapsed and an avalanche covered many of the old ways in. The mountain is sealed now, and nobody will dare to set foot on it.

She offers them a new task: To go to the Dwarves and offer them a truce. She is prepared to offer them control of the mountain in exchange for their aid in repelling Mordan. The mountain, being pissed off and errupting, is not the prize it was just a few weeks before. But the Dwarves came to claim it, and it’s all she has to bargain with.

They reveal to the Queen the Dwarven food shortage. This might be an even better bargaining chip than the mountain. She could probably simply wait for their hungry bellies to prompt their surrender, but Mordan’s attack from the north and her own thinning forces do not afford her this luxury. She adds that she will give the Dwarves the provisions they need if they aid her.

They agree to this task and depart. A detachment of soldiers is sent along with the party, under their command. There are enough men to demonstarted that they come in the name of the Queen, but few enough that the Dwarves won’t mistake the group for a halfhearted counterattack.

They ride south under a flag of truce and meet with the Dwarven general. Thordek puts her offer on the table. There is some negotiation.

The Dwarves agree to pull up stakes, take down their siege machinery, and head north. A lot of their forces are concentrated in the south at Telwin Port, and it will take three days to regroup and mobilize. Thordek thanks him, and the group departs.

They return to the city, report the results of the parlay to Fulan at the citadel, and rest for the night. The next morning they leave the town heading east. They head to the bridge to give aid to the crumbling forces holding that last choke-point between Mordan and the lands of the south.

They hold the bridge for several hours. Midnight passes. Then suddenly the grave walkers retreat. This comes as a surprise to everyone. They usually keep up the assult until almost dawn. The soldiers brace themselves, expecting that this is the calm before an even bigger storm, but their fears prove unfounded. Mordan does not strike again that night. His forces were numerous, why would he signal the retreat?

Dawn comes and everyone rests. The puzzle will have to wait until tomorrow.