Three Worlds #1

Mala, Zua, and Rokas battle an orc warrior

Our story begins as Mala, Rokas, and Zua (see PC profiles here) entered Fort Davelmag at the western end of Huloror Canyon - known also as the Valley of the Manticore - as guards for the first trade caravan of the season. Valdus, their employer, had hoped to be the first merchant to reach Karn Buldahr in the south this year, and make a tidy profit.

The party were welcomed by the garrison, as news from the outside world was eagerly sought. That evening a modest feast was held for the visitors. But midway through the evening, a cry and a loud sound was heard outside the mess hall, and when the soldiers and our heroes rushed out they saw the body of Arnellas, one of the soldiers, lying face down at the bottom of the fort's watch tower. Standing at the top of the tower was Jorrus, the caravan's muleteer. His face was in a daze, and in his hand he held a knife.

Jorrus was disarmed and bound by the soldiers, and it soon became clear that he had stabbed Arnellas in the back and the latter had either fallen or been pushed off the watch tower. The two men had not met each other before the day, and no motive for the attack could be found, but nevertheless the guilt was clear. Jorrus was placed in a large pit in the courtyard of the fort which served as a jail, and Captain Mossak would send messengers to the town of Belton to fetch the duke's emissary to execute the death sentence for the crime.

Having found Jorrus an honest and upright fellow during their time together, our heroes were puzzled by his actions, and so they asked him what had trasnpired. Jorrus, still in a daze, replied that he had gone up to the top of the watch tower with Arnellos to take in the view of the canyon at night, and that he heard the saw the flapping of giant wings, and the next thing he remembered was that he was being arrested by the soldiers.

Our heroes returned to their quarters to find Valdus waiting for them. Valdus was unwilling to leave the fort without Jorrus, who had been a good muleteer, and in any case it would be unwise to travel on without someone to tend to the mules. He would ask the soldiers traveling to Belton to seek a replacement for Jorrus, which meant that they would have to wait for four weeks at the fort.

To make things worse, Captain Mossak had informed Valdus that the stream supplying the fort had in recent days decreased in flow, and their water would not be able to sustain the garrison and the mules if the caravan remained for more than a few days. Two soldiers sent out to investigate the cause of the lessened flow had not returned, so now Valdus asked our heroes to seek out the cause of the problem.

The next day, our heroes followed the course of the stream up the hills, and about noon time they came to a place where a pool had formed over a flat area of ground; a crude dam of rocks had been built across the stream. Zua observed that two orcs were hiding among rocks in the sloped overlooking the dam.

Rokas and Mala decided to make a wide flanking move and come upon the orcs from their rear, but as they neared the orcs' position Zua saw that one orc archer had in fact noticed the two of them and was aiming an arrow at Rokas. Zua loosed an arrow at the archer, and Rokas and Mala were warned of his presence. A brief skirmish broke out, and soon one of the orc warriors were dead, and the other one defeated and bound by our heroes. On the orc they found a sword which belonged to one of the soldiers from the garrison.

Our heroes attempted to interrogate the orc, but they could not speak each other's language. Zua, who had learned something of the "hand speech" used by some orc tribes during his travel, was able to learn that the orcs had indeed dammed the stream as they deemed the garrison of the fort enemies.

Our heroes began the work of dismantling the dam, with Mala wielding a shovel which he had acquired from the fort for this purpose, but before they could complete their work Zua spied two more orcs heading their way. As the two orcs began to shoot arrows at our heroes the first orc attempted to break out of his bonds. Mala felled him with a blow from his shovel.

Once more a fight broke out, and Zua and Rokas in turn fell to the orcs, until Mala struck down the last of the orcs with his shovel and ended the battle. Fearful of more attacks, our heroes looted the orcs, laid their bodies in a row, and then returned to the fort.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session is based pretty much "out of the book" from the module Through the Valley of the Manticore. I had the PCs be part of the caravan described in the module to give them a reason for being at the fort, and reversed the roles of the murderer and murder victim so that the PCs would have a motivation to want to get to the bottom of the mystery and prove the innocence of their fellow traveler.

This was a little more successful than I had hoped for, and the players spent quite a bit of time trying to solve the crime, and I had to move things long by nudging them in the direction of the problem with the water supply. The scenario with the water supply was supposed to lead to a second location, but given the time we had left and the state the PCs were in, I decided to delay that to our next session.

One of the things I have done for this campaign is to replace all the "humanoid" opposition with orcs, who play the role of the indigenous people of the continent. I used the culture and the architecture of the tribes of the American Southwest for the setting, and used the idea of the Plains Indian Sign Language to allow the PCs and the orcs to communicate.