Leaving the fair, we head toward the capital, Lapolla, and intend to book passage down river to the sea.
We meet the local honcho who tells us that a nearby lodge that belonged to the founder of the local sect of the church of Pelor has fallen on hard times and been besieged by hobgoblins. Sayeth they: 7 Hobgoblins. We know it will be more and worse. The fees for travel on the river are high so we decide to do this in return for a reduction in passage. And because it never hurts to help. Well, okay, maybe a little.
Anyway, the joint has been somewhat of a holy place but apparently not so holy that they kept good guard on it. We see that it is far from unassailable. We kick in the front door and begin the siege. Our first contact is with a woman in her early fifties who says she is a druid who was injured during a fight and managed to make her way here. The fact that she’s not besieged by hobgoblins seems suspicious. She claims the place is empty and has been empty since her arrival but we decide to look around anyway. When we check the neighboring room the fight breaks out.
A gaggle of hobgoblins rush us and it we begin our usual smacky/slicey/kaboomy thing. The nice old lady druid turns into a hag.
We don’t have too much trouble taking them out as the damage is pretty evenly divided among the party and we’ve got a healer on hand. However, one of them decides to run downstairs into the basement and that is where we meet the longest tenured resident of the house: A Clay Golem. It’s far from friendly and has at its feet some kind of fish man (A “skum”) who is playing dead for his own safety. The golem makes short work of the hobgoblin.
Turns out clay golems are difficult if not impossible to heal from. Damage taken from them is only healable on a very difficult heal roll, and can’t be healed naturally, so left untreated you never get better. So the gang gets pretty beat up and the best opportunity to harm the golem comes in the form of Copan’s summoned elementals, which can hammer away with some success. After a time the golem will fall, but not before we cause other problems.
Seems there was a nearby chest, which another summoned beast hauls upstairs. Thinking that inside may lay the secret to defeating the golem (who at that moment was still kicking our ass and ignoring magic missiles), the chest is unlocked by Rayson, causing a trap to be triggered. Two astral constructs appear and begin to attack the already injured crew. Once the golem falls we can all shift our efforts to these things.
They nearly kill, or do kill, Rayson, but he gets better. The rest is all a blur of astral constructs tripping people, wolves tripping constructs, and the occasional magic missile for seasoning. Once we deconstruct the astral constructs, we discover that in the chest is a fair assortment of goods, the most interesting of which radiates necromantic magic. An “identify” reveals that it is a cloak that gives an AC boost and a couple levels of magical casting to… Vampries only!
We consider destroying it but about then the Foresigt spell on Mathius seems to indicate that keeping the cloak might be helpful.
Well, naturally the vampires show up about then. There’s a discussion over trying to make for town or holding up there. It’s split; some think it’s just going to be dangerous to the townspeople if we go there while the others think that the more the merrier when it comes to firepower. The latter may have been right. Because we stick around and end up in a night long siege. A horde of bats come down the fireplace and meet a web spell and a slow burn. The vampire spawn (lesser vamps) try to break in. A few get fireballed into oblivion by Pon-Pon, and a few get missiled and smacked around, etc. But vamp himself is nearly impossible to kill. The closest we get is a moment where the vamp is in the grip of a summoned beast and could be hit but otherwise he’s pretty slippery and touch attacks glance off, a lot of smacks go ignored. It’s a long process during which he is whittled down and ultimately decides to leave by flying away and turning into mist.
During the siege the gnome was enlisted to create a device that would cause the cloak to burn if we were harmed. By threat of harming the item, we are able to put it on a tenser’s disc and get to town where we are trying to heal back the many, many, many, many levels that we have been drained. Glad we aren’t looking for a profit on this mission, because it would all be going back into restoration spells. Since we’re helping a Pelor temple we’re guessing we can get a discount from the Pelorians.