Chapter 3 / Episode 90 – Inside the Stronghold

 

Chapter 3 / Episode 90 – Inside the Stronghold

Date: Planting 13, 576 CY — Evening
Region: Drachensgrab Hills, south of Highport — the slavelord stronghold.
Weather: Cold drizzle. Low clouds. Mud and mist clung to stone and bone alike.

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Players

• Silversun Ubermage the Magic-User

• Dog the Ranger

• TerryOr the Cleric

• Irving Nonreluctant

• Slash the Bard

• Kern Blackshield of Safeton

• Lady Morwen Ellisar (NPC)

• Tiger Wong Monk from Afar

• Lailath the Jester

• and Harvey

I, Silversun of Greyhawk, set quill to parchment not in the safety of distance, but in the suffocating belly of enemy stone, where every wall listens and every shadow breathes. We no longer stalk the Slavers’ Stronghold from the outside—we are inside its veins now, moving through its blood, its filth, its secrets, and its screams. What follows must not be forgotten. Let it be a warning, a record of descent—into violence, into corruption, and into the kind of darkness that does not wait to be understood before it kills. But I digress:

We were crouched on the hill like carrion birds, watching the Slavers’ Stronghold breathe smoke and cruelty into the sky, when Terry Or began to chant again.

Not a prayer of comfort nor a hymn of gratitude. The cleric was reaching.

It was a plea wrapped in ritual cadence—a desperate summoning shaped by doubt, fear, and exhaustion. His voice carried the brittle edge of uncertainty, the kind that gods can smell like rot in the soul. The air thickened. The wind stilled. The tension itself drew tight, as if the world were holding its breath.

And St. Cuthbert answered. Not with warmth. Not with blessing nor mercy.

The presence that manifested was cold, crushing, judgmental—like a celestial weight pressing down on Terry’s spine and spirit. I felt it before I saw it, a pressure in the skull, a grinding tension.  I think we all felt it. The lesser god was displeased. Deeply displeased. Terry’s faith had wavered—fractured by fear, hesitation, and too many unanswered prayers—and the god punished him for it.

Not with lightning, fire or even death. But with humiliation. Celestial domination...with divine consequence.

What we believed to be a failed communion with a disappointed god—was in truth a relocation of flesh and fate.

Reality folded like wet parchment as the hill vanished beneath our feet and the sky collapsed into stone and shadow.

And we were suddenly inside the Stronghold itself.

Stone walls surrounded us. Iron rings jutted from blood-streaked stone. The air reeked of animal filth, rot, and old suffering. A massive boar stood in the chamber with us—tusked, scarred, red-eyed, froth dripping from its mouth in thick ropes of rage and hunger.

It charged without hesitation. Straight at me. It was raw violence, from a tormented soul—meat, muscle, tusk, and hate. The tusks missed my ribs by inches as the party tore into it with steel, arrows, divine force, and sheer fury. Blood sprayed the walls. Bone cracked. The creature screamed like a dying demon and collapsed in a wet, twitching heap, its intestines steaming across the stone floor.

That was loud, very loud.  Kern opened the door closest to us, to escape this small room.

And more of the evil that runs this place revealed itself with it. A galley with a fire roaring in iron pits.
Grease popping and hissing from the huge lizard being roasted. Smoke curling thick along the ceiling beams. There a  massive cook stood over the flames & three burly warriors sat at a table. All armed. All staring at us as they stood up reaching for their weapons. Even the so-called blind cook turned his head toward me, his empty face fixed on my presence like he could smell my soul.

Steel came out instantly followed by screams of rage as Kern Blackshield charged like a thunderbolt of iron and fury. Terry and Slash began their incantations. Dog loosed an arrow. I kept my gaze locked on the cook—blind eyes, wrong smile, too still, too calm. What was he reaching for?

Missed strikes by the thrashing fighter. A failed arrow by the steady ranger.
Then Slash’s crucial spell that collapsed on the beast with no eyes.

Luckily Terry managed to lock one of the berserkers in divine paralysis.

Then the room changed in diseased madness.

Bones cracked as they grew in size. Flesh tore as jaws extended and tusks grew. Spines reshaped to giant swine proportions. No fear, no hesitation.

The three warriors transformed into wereboars before our eyes—snouts ripping from faces, muscle tearing through skin, blood spraying as their bodies reformed into monstrous shapes.

The cook reached behind his cutting board and drew a sword so massive it looked like a butcher’s altar ripped from an execution hall.

I did not hesitate, though a Fireball would have been nice, I settled for Magic Missile. The cook’s chest detonated in purple-blue force, flesh tearing open like wet parchment. Dog’s second arrow dropped one wereboar in a screaming heap of blood and bone. The cook lunged for Terry as I cast a second Magic Missile.

“Die foul monster!”, I screamed inside my head.

His swing went wide—too much rage, too much momentum, too much confidence. Dog dropped the second wereboar in a fountain of blood and shattered bone as the cook roared, raising his blade again—

and died.

Terry was there with his Mace blazing with holy might. The fighter Kern redeemed himself with a deadly slash to the hulking man. But it was Slash’s strike that fell the brute, gutting the ogre like man. Three strikes of steel and faith and fury.

One mountain of a man—seven feet of muscle, cruelty, and firelight—collapsed like a falling tower, skull crushed from a mace, blood draining from open gashes from Kern’s longsword and guts sprayed into the heat of the galley fires as the chaotic blade of Slash struck true.

The last wereboar broke free and charged. It had Kern in its sights & lunged for him sinking its tusks into Kern’s neck.

We killed it anyway.

We always do.

We looted gold from the lycanthropes. Found parchment etched in raised orcish slang. A second tablet—directions to a place called “The Airy.”

Once again we fled into the nearest room.

It was a bedroom, the cook’s quarters & we found a name; Icar the Slavelord.

“He’s second in command of the Stronghold”. Lady Morwen spat.

She also confirmed Markessa as the head of this vile place, this festering scab in these lands.

We stripped the room:
A mandolin.
Platinum coins.
Silver.
Jet gemstone bracelets.
A copper coffer offering a strange small metal anchor, two potions and a cleric scroll.

Terry healed Kern and burned divine power to purge the wereboar venom from his blood. That’s when we heard the crying. A woman’s voice coming from an obscured door in the corner.

Dog and Irving rushed it.

I tried to stop them but it was too late.

Irving opened the door as he made sure Dog was ready. Then Dog gasped in horror.

I vanished as I cast Invisibility around me immediately.

Kern shoved past the ranger as Irving screamed—and turned to stone. Instantly. A statue of terror and frozen faith.

The woman laughed, a nasty medusa; Snakes writhing in her hair, fangs dripping venom, eyes glowing with cruelty.

Dog fired and retreated. Kern swung, missed & also stepped back from the creature. But he was not fast enough, the snakes struck him. Poison sank into his veins like fire in his blood.

Lalaith, taunting & tormenting the foul creature, quickly turned her face away avoiding being turned to stone. Slash played, magic in the music and courage in the sound.

Hearing the music Tiger Wong flew. A brutal flying kick shattered the medusa’s ribs allowing the rest of us to finish her before we all were petrified. We butchered her. Crushed her in the name of Cuthbert. Tore her down like it was somebody rifling through my backpack in the middle of the night.

Terry cut off her head and bagged it. I kept it because Tiger wanted nothing to do with it.

The aftermath was horror made physical.

Irving—stone. Too heavy to move. Too sacred to abandon. 

Kern—on his knees, choking, poison closing his throat. We scrambled but found no antidote. For our efforts we watched him die. Eyes bulging and fingers clawing at his airway. Blood foaming from his mouth as he wheezed for oxygen.

Then Terry used the scroll - Resurrection. Kern returned screaming, gasping, reborn in blood and breath.

We had no such miracle for Irving, nor did we know where to find such a remedy. So we put him in a closet.

Like furniture.
Like a relic.
Like a holy crime.

Then we continued. There were two more doors in the galley & we heard nobody enter so we went back to the large room with the dead stronghold leader & wereboar slavers.

The two doors revealed a larder & storage for unwashed dishes – nothing, except…

“Over here, a secret door!” Tiger told us all.                                                                                                 “Behind the stack of dishes.”, he pointed.

Terry cast find traps and found nothing so the door was opened revealing stairs downward with a hallway going left.  Dog and Tiger proceeded. About 30’ down the hallway it turned left once again but Dog noticed small footprints in the corner. They actually came from one wall and led directly into another wall.  Dog came and got the rest of us and terry sensed no traps.  Two secret doors were found. A small one for who knows what & a normal sized one.  We opened the normal sized secret door & found out what used the small door. We surprised 9 goblins eating at a table. They had an emaciated prisoner in a cage in the corner.

Terry Or casts Hold Person again & holds three of them.  Slash. Kern & Dog dispatch the rest with ease.

Goblins.
A prisoner.
We feed the prisoner hoping he would speak with us. Nothing, the gaunt captive was to far gone. 

This is where I started prying, asking the three held goblins questions about the medusa, about an antidote to the medusas dreadful stare. They mocked me, told us all we were all already dead. I reached for the bag with the medusas head pulled it out & let them take a good look.  All of them stoned by the head of the gorgon.

This was a rough start. With basically losing our paladin & almost our newly acquired fighter after only  just getting here. We are inside the Slavers’ Stronghold now. The hunt is over. The pain is unforgivable. Death is very real.

Our war continues and so be it!

All we do know is there will be no clean ending.