kingtycoon | Adventure #3 - The Fall of Sevvel (Reply)

The party returned to Sevvel in time to warn of a probable invasion from the north, the ravening hyena-men would certainly head for the town, the players decided, and so they must be warned.

The town is in no great position to defend itself & the PCs take it upon themselves to craft some ersatz fortifications. Gideon makes a halting attempt to speak to the Wzectc Malboge worshipers but is scared off by their apparent prescience & discouraged by their total lack of concern with what he assumes is an imminent attack. It seems that they have some irons in the fire, so the say, and that they're not concerned, sipping their coffee in their plaza.

Warrill & Pike & Elwin & Mishka forsake the Fathers entirely & turn instead toward helping the Mothers & the Workers to fortify & shore up their defenses. Gideon is able to marshal a few of the Fishers as well, though most of them, their fears stoked, are set on leaving town & settling elsewhere.

Preparations are based on trench digging, trap laying & wall — reconstructing. The fortifications are meager & in the fourth night, when the hyena-men force does finally appear the fortifications prove to be ineffective entirely — the leader of the demonic hyena folk is crowned in black flame & carries long tattered scrolls, scribed with profane magics. She reads the first of her hideous words and the earth itself shakes — the city is dashed to sticks & great trenches are formed in the earth. The party is at pains to connect with one another & presently they are in a series of skirmishes that carry on through the night — many, many fights break out & the PCs only barely prevail — pressed to the edge of their limits they finally confront the leader of the Hyena folk — supported by Rooster — they manage to drive her into one of the chasms of her own creation — but with her dying breath she curses the town with a second calamity — calling the ocean to the land, she brings forth a tsunami that wipes Sevvel from the earth.

Pike Mocks the Gnoll Queen (by Agatha!)

Almost — the Wzetct — having spent their moments of preparation weaving a magical skein over their 13 houses are left untouched. Saved by the evil power of their god Malboge, they have watched the night's melee play out with casual disinterest.

In the end there are sparse survivors — Pike & Warrill swim through the dense waves to rescue a scant 30 people while Gideon & Elwin root about, hopeful of gathering the remains of the Gnoll-Queen's panoply.

Holy Symbols of the new gods (by meeee!)

Calling the effort a total loss the party decides to lead the survivors back north to the ruined city of Tlaar & the relative safety provided by the temple of Addy there. Rooster, Renner & the few dozens of the Mothers & the Workers that have survived all trudge north, along the new riverbed, displaced persons in search of refuge.

(The last session was almost 80% fighting — it was an arduous series of hard encounters that the PCs only survived by having superior strategies & cohesive tactics — in particular Mishka's use of Spike Growth & Warrill's use of Ice Sheet.)