The group makes their way through a small passageway hidden in the side of the mountain. This eventually takes them into a small room within the IceThorn Castle. The room, as is the castle, ancient. The rock walls pitted and crumbing. The secret passageway, long since exposed as the wooden barrier has rotted away.
They exit the room and stand in a long dark corridor. They move down the corridor, passing a couple of closed doors on either side of the hallway. They finally approach a pair of massive oak iron reinforced doors at the end of the corridor. The group pauses as Maddox and Smallfang take time to cast their find steed spells. Maddox summons his dire wolf while Smallfang summons a giant spider.
Together the group pushes open the large doors.
Hate Speech
Smallfang, using his ring of spiderclimbing, climbs along the wall then ceiling of the hallway leading to the group of trolls. He sends his giant spider along the opposite hallway. Together they emerge into a vast chamber within the castle. In total darkness they see dozens of trolls, many of them mutated horribly. Some have two heads. Some have one massive arm. Some have vine growing in and out their entire bodies.
At the front of the group standing on a raised dais, there is a smaller, younger troll. He is the one speaking to the group. Smallfang instructs his spider to move closer to the front, in order to see better. Through the eyes of the giant spider, Smallfang can see a creature behind that of the young troll. It hovers behind and always keeps itself partially hidden behind columns or broken pieces of wall. But it seems to be the one feeding the troll with the words to speak.
At the foot of the dais, laying in a makeshift stretcher, lies the body of a near dead troll. This must be Jabir. The group has heard from the exploits of the others, the story of Jabir (but perhaps not his death). The troll once helped members of The Order, when they had been trying to rescue other members of The Order who had been taken hostage. Jabir aided them with promises given to him, which would see him a member of The Order. He could finally become the hero he had always wanted to be. Unfortunately, it didn't end that way.
For Jabir
Listening, to the speach, Katya hears that Jabir he was cruelly killed trying to join the group who had promised him a hero's redemption. Finding his body mangled and dying his family brought him back to the castle and immersed him in the healing fountain. Unfortunately, the fountain had been tainted hundreds of years ago, which had lead to the abandoning of the castle. Jabir was revived but because of the twisted nature of the fountain, he came back horribly mutated.
After his failed attempt at revenge, Jabir's body returned to the castle weeks later, having been dragged back by the vines growing through his body. After putting Jabir's body back into the pool of water again, he was revived but is little more than a lump of flesh and vine now. The trolls are to take up arms and show the Order the suffering that Jabir endured.
Smallfang retreats back to the group.
He calls back his spider. The spider is spotted crawling along with ceiling and is attacked by a massive thrown boulder. Smallfangs mental link is severed as the spider dies.
Lirath uses Smallfangs spiderclimbing ring to approach the large group of trolls unnoticed and casts a spell to mind control one of the trolls into attacking his neighbors. There is a tremendous cacophony as the group of adventurers hide further back down the corridor.
The sounds abruptly stop and there is complete silence.
A Quick Retreat
There is then a different voice in a different language, which Katya quickly tells the group is telling the trolls that they should spread out and find the intruders. The group quickly retreats back to the secret entrance. Lirath hangs back for just long enough to re-cast the spell which made one of the trolls attack his fellow trolls. But as he loses the power, he feels the spell unravel and the spell has no effect. He is puzzled and more than a little annoyed.
DM Note: No...it wasn't a counterspell. Counterspell does not work on psionics. I know. Trust me.
The group retreats to just outside the mountainside castle. Back out in the perpetual snowstorm, they try to hail the ship, The Flying Dragon. Eventually they fire off an arrow imbued with daylight.
While they wait, they hear the movement of rocks near the castle's collapsed entrance. They concluded that it must be the trolls digging themselves out.
Eventually, two of the ship's crew are dispatched and appear at the far end of the chain bridge. The group crosses, with Lirath again almost falling to his death. Finally they have the ship retrieve them and climbing aboard they debate their possibilities.
They decide that they'd much rather fight the hoard of trolls on their grounds, rather in the troll's lair. So they decide to lay waste to as much of the castle as possible with the ship's cannons. The night is filled with the sounds of explosion and gunpowder smoke as the cannons fire repeatedly at the castle until the ancient entrance way of the castle is unrecognizable. This will not kill off all of the trolls but it will buy them time.
They return to Baldur's Gate.
Preparing For The Seige
Back at the city, the group disperses and each prepares for the coming war in their own way.
Lirath seeks out magical stores within the city in hopes of finding healing potions. He finds that magical stores have become quite rare within the the city for some time now. He eventually settles upon the Order Of The Obisidian Dagger's keep. The mages within, who are contacted out by the Mage's guild to aid the Order, tell Lirath that it will cost him...dearly.
Hearing that they are forcing a hero of Baldur's Gate to pay exorbitant prices for supplies, Hope steps in and uses her bard's skills to eventually, gather a number of healing potions for Lirath.
A week passes and sees the groups efforts begin to take shape.
On a bright late summer afternoon, as the group is moving about the western outer city trying to evacuate all of the residents to inside the city walls, they hear a cry far off at the outer edge of the settlement.
Troll Sighting
The watchtowers begin to ring the warning bells and they light their signal fires. As each neighboring watch tower sees the signal fire they light theirs in turn. As the others are busy trying to usher people to safety, Lirath, who has stayed further behind, notices that the signal fire at the opposite end of the city was lit at nearly the same time as the signal fire here on the western gate.
It is the trolls. At both gates.
Lirath, runs to the other side of the city to aid the gate there, leaving the rest of the group to manage the trolls at this gate.
DM Note: I think this counts as breaking the "don't split the party" rule
The Death (and ressurection) of Lirath
As Lirath approaches the eastern gate, he is met with chaos. The soldiers there are trying to fight off a group of 4 trolls and failing. The trolls break through and begin slaughtering any who stand in their way. Lirath runs up and begins to cast a mind control spell but is smashed to a pulp under the massive fists of two trolls. He falls unconscious and is dying.
Luckily, the group had decided to call out as many clerics as they could from the Order's keep. One of the clerics rushes to the aid of Lirath and revives him. He awakens and is able to summon all of his psionic powers to overcome the trolls.
The Flood
Meanwhile, back at the western gate, the group ushers civilians as fast as they can, while Rook, an illusionist wizard, begins the ritual to cast mirage arcane. Rook transforms almost the entire outer city into a vast lake, hoping to drown the trolls, or at least convince them they're drowning. Trying to buy time to get the city's citizen through the city gates and into the relative safety of the city, Rook also conjures the image of a long wooden dock under the feet of the line of people trying to get into the city. Unfortunately, many of the citizens fall into the illusionist's lake and begin struggling. The group quickly begins to aid people to get to the dock where they can stand.
Meanwhile, the trolls have approached close enough for the group to see them. Some of them charge along the massive dock, some are using the dock to swim and crawl along. As they approach they kill the people who are in their way.
Katya, Rook and Smallfang are all along the dock when the trolls arrive. Hope, the bard, assists from atop the watchtower. As the trolls progress, the group sees the trolls are trying to gain access to the city. Trying to slow them down, Rook transforms the dock into a covered bridge, with the end facing the trolls, closed, save for a small door for the people. As the group ushers the citizens through the covered bridge, they together try to hold back the trolls from atop the bridge's roof.
The Freeze
Hope, seeing the group needing help. Jumps from the parapet of the watchtower to the covered bridge below. The leaps is impressive as is the landing. As she tumbles to her feet she sees the trolls in the water and leaps into the lake below. Just as she is about to surface, Rook decides to trap the trolls by turning the water to ice. It works but Hope is trapped as well. Seeing this, Rook jumps down to the ice and sees the frozen form of Hope a few feet below, trapped within the ice.
Rook tries to help by transforming the bard into an arctic weasel. This at least helps with the crushing pressure of the ice but as he watches the weasel scratch at the ice, uselessly, he realizes that Hope will perish soon if not retrieved from the ice. So he causes the land underneath the ice to raise up and as the ice disperses, the form of Hope back in human form appears.
As the group catches their breath, thinking the trolls are defeated, there is the sound of ice cracking and along spots on either side of the dock/bridge there appears massive cracks with vines pushing out from beneath.
The mutated trolls are emerging.
The group looks at each other and Rook winks at them. He has a plan.
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