AtD 023: Down the Long Stair

The party’s martial puissance quickly began to tell on the increasingly desperate goblin defenders. One after another, the goblins were cut down until only one remained, desperately trying to keep the door at the end of the room shut. Ozloc—yet cloaked in invisibility—easily forced the door open, however, and the goblin was quickly slain.

The heroic celestial warlock was joined by Harald and the rest of his companions. While the balance of the party held the top of the stairs, the warlock crept down the long stair beyond the door into the darkness.

The stairs were long, but Ozloc was patient and moved slowly and quietly. So extreme was his stealth that he managed to reach the bottom of the stairs—perhaps fully 30 feet underground—without coming to the notice of the trio of alert bugbears lurking at the bottom of the stairs ready to ambush intruders.

Retreating up the stairs as quietly (but perhaps slightly swifter) as he had descended, the warlock returned to his friends. The adventurers’ blood was up, and the lust for battle burned brightly in their chests. After a brief discussion and some minor healing, the heroes descended the stairs. Their light and the clinking of their armour provided ample warning to the lurking bugbears.

The bugbears put up practically no meaningful resistance, and soon the party stood triumphantly over their bloody corpses. A brief discussion—to loot or not to loot—slowed the party’s exploration slightly, but shortly after the bugbears’ defeat, the party began exploring a small maze of passages. The flickering of flames to the west drew their attention, and in short order the heroes discovered a forge of sorts. Therein, a bugbear and a half-dozen or so hobgoblins were busily arming themselves for battle—the party’s lights again foreshadowing their arrival.

Again, the battle was one-sided and brief. This time, Balasar unleashed powerful destructive magics that exploded half the party’s foes from the inside out. Such was the awesome divine power which the dragonborn channelled that even the hobgoblins’ arms and armour were rent into many pieces.

After this incredible display of destructive power, the balance of the party’s foes fell swiftly. The last hobgoblin tried to use an emaciated, chained-up dwarven prisoner as a shield, but Harald used his divine power to force the hobgoblin to drop his weapon, and he was quickly slain. With resistance at an end, the party moved to free the dwarven prisoner…