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Dunmari Frontier - Session 131

Guerilla Warfare: in which the hobgoblins are harrassed on their march

Featuring: Delwath, Kenzo, Wellby, Seeker
In Taelgar: Aug 08, 1749 DR to Aug 10, 1749 DR
On Earth: Thursday Sep 11, 2025
Location: Aurbez Plateau and the Plaguelands

Across three days, the party battered the Iron Fang—tsunami, earthquake, infiltration—mauling the host as the Empress pushed relentlessly toward the Heartroot.

Session Info

Summary

  • At first light, Kenzo communed with the Heartroot—touching a fertile, ancient mind safe yet exiled from the Istaros—after dreams of the Fox and Hunter.
  • The party consulted Revaka, who counseled that hobgoblins follow only proven strength and the Empress must be shown unable to protect or lead.
  • As eagles they struck with a Wish-cast tsunami on the moving column, killing the vanguard, forcing the Empress aloft, then teleported out; later scrying showed heavy losses and a sealed, ashless Scourge.
  • From a hidden blind they observed an ash-capped, “basketed” camp guarded by silver-metal hawks, ripped an earthquake along its edge, broadcast a noon challenge 500 feet from the host, and withdrew.
  • Confirming the Empress inside the Scourge, they used Dimension Door to strike with sunburst, fireball, and sickening radiance before extracting under fire, then scryed chaos-sorcerers shoring morale among roughly 3,000 survivors as Vindristjarna neared and the host pushed toward the escarpment and Heartroot.

Timeline

  • Aug 08, 1749 DR, dawn: Kenzo communes with the Heartroot near Three Wells, sensing a fertile mind exiled from the Istaros. party consults Revaka, who counsels that hobgoblins follow only proven strength
  • Aug 08, 1749 DR, dusk: As eagles the party approaches the marching column of hobgoblins; Seeker uses Wish to cast a tsunami, smashing the vanguard; they Teleport out and later scry heavy casualties.
  • Aug 09, 1749 DR: Observe hobgoblin camp under an ash cap; an earthquake tears along its edge as Delwath broadcasts a challenge, before the party withdraws.
  • Aug 09, 1749 DR, evening: Scrying the march, they witness the Empress’s speech promising day-and-night advance under Limbo’s power; morale wavers but the column pushes on.
  • Aug 10, 1749 DR: Party attacks army inside centipede, then quickly flee. Scrying reveals chaos-sorcerers shoring morale among roughly 3,000 survivors as the host drives toward the escarpment and the Heartroot.

Narrative

Our session begins at first light, after a night of dreams of the Fox and Hunter. At first light, as the rest of the party made preparations for the battle campaign of the day ahead, Kenzo walked north and reached for the Heartroot. Warm bread, rain, yeast; the spring of moss underfoot. He felt an ancient fecund mind, bent and constrained, straining toward home, safe but out of place in this land away from the Istaros.

Back at camp in Three Wells, the party spoke again with Revaka, asking for council on their plan of attacks against the marching hobgoblin army of the Empress of Chaos. Revaka counseled that hobgoblins follow only proven strength, and that if they wanted to dislodge her from control of her army, they must show that she could not protect and lead.

That morning, under Seeker’s shapeshift spell, the party crossed the Plaguelands as eagles, then waited on the arid flats a couple miles off from the hobgoblin’s camp, watching a rough oval of billowing ash where the army lay. As dusk approached, metal booms rolled across the waste and the centipede-line began to creep forward. The party rose as well, and closed the distance to the now-moving army. From seven hundred feet, Seeker bent Wish to call a towering tsunami, placing the wall just ahead so its first surge already covered the vanguard.

Water slammed into ash, turning it to black slurry as the wave advanced in rolling panes. Wellby slipped ahead and shot the Empress of Chaos as her flying armor speared skyward; she answered by crossing the distance with terrifying speed, then broke off and hung back to watch. Below, the ash stopped falling where the water passed. Giant plates along the creature’s back clamped shut as hobgoblins dove for safety. The first hundred and fifty feet lay choked with many bodies, thinning sharply beyond. Daylight blossomed around the party, and Delwath’s amplified condemnation rang over the field; a handful of stragglers bolted away from the centipede. With their point made, Seeker took them out in a flash of Teleport, leaving the battlefield awash and eerily quiet. At sunset in Three Wells, Delwath scried the battlefield they had just left. The centipede still crawled, its spines curled tight to seal the army within; ash no longer billowed, and the Empress rode at its head. The ground behind was littered with perhaps a thousand bodies.

After a night’s sleep in camp, during which Kenzo dreaming of heavy vines and sweet earth, the party flew again at dawn to harry the column. They found a new camp: a tight circle under a low ash cap, patrolled wide by silver‑metallic giant hawks with hobgoblin riders. From a hidden blind wrought by Hallucinatory Terrain, Seeker placed a clairvoyant eye inside the camp, seeing a wide, 150-foot circle, survivors packed beneath a lattice “basket” grown from the centipede’s spines, crude metal bunks stacked, many sleeping. The party advanced to a thousand feet, and again used Seeker’s Wish to bring down an Earthquake along the camp’s edge. The desert heaved; soldiers pitched; fissures ripped open, one plunging a hundred feet. Over the tremor, Delwath’s projected voice set terms: the Empress to meet them at noon, five hundred feet from her host, or expect more strikes. Then they withdrew and teleported back to Three Wells.

They waited, then cast scry again on the march. The woven basket of the centipede flowed off as the construct stretched to full length while hobgoblins mustered below. The Empress of Chaos hovered sixty to seventy feet up, giving a speech that promised a day-and-night advance under the protection of the magic and power of Limbo, boasting that Chaos preceded any god. The ranks wavered—half inspired, half skeptical—but none defied her. After some discussion of the effects of their attacks and the next steps, the party slept for the night.

The next morning, the party rose in the pre-dawn light to meet the centipede-engine at noon. Kenzo could still sense the Limbo-tainted aura of the Empress of Chaos, moving with the host, night and day as promised, covering at least 60 miles since yesterday. As in previous days, the party shifted into eagles with Seeker’s Animal Shapes spell, flying to meet the hobgoblin army. Using Seeker’s Clairvoyance spell, they confirmed the Empress of Chaos lurked within the centipede. The interior was a fifty‑foot‑tall tunnel of darkness and flickering blue, choked with angled shelves and thousands of hobgoblins—many sleeping at odd tilts, others armored amid a constant metallic hum. Suspecting the Empress would not emerge for the challenge, the party chose to strike‑and‑withdraw: Dimension Door in, unleash devastation, then extract.

They appeared among the spikes and catwalks. Seeker hurled Sunburst down‑tunnel; blinding radiance crushed ranks a hundred feet away. Wellby tore a bead from Kenzo’s necklace and loosed a Fireball into a dense knot of troops. Delwath quickened Sickening Radiance behind them, its sickly glow sealing the rear, then cut down nearby sleepers. Heat roared back—a hidden blast that scorched Seeker and Delwath—while hobgoblin units surged from both sides. Kenzo turned aside part of the assault, took a brutal hit, then answered with another Fireball and, mid‑melee, yanked hair from a hobgoblin for a future arcane link. A command rang out; wall‑spikes shot forth and pinned Delwath, and flaming arrows hissed through the dark. Over the chaos, Delwath denounced the Empress as a coward and urged surrender. At the top of the next heartbeat, Seeker Teleported them out.

Through scrying, they watched the living siege-thing still flowing forward, its interior reformed into ordered sections where hobgoblins tended the wounded. Disfigured chaos sorcerers patrolled the aisles, colors whirling about their heads, eyes flashing, thin streamers of fire trailing from their arms. They preached that suffering birthed power, chaos lay within, and pain would unlock it; flame demonstrations curled harmlessly past their own. Many straightened under the exhortations, yet doubt lingered—roughly a third resisted the creed.

Their strikes had bitten deep: the tsunami erased nearly a quarter of the host, the earthquake sowed further losses and confusion; perhaps three thousand remained. The assault, however, had hastened the hobgoblin’s march. Our session ends the evening of August 10th as the party withdrew to camp. Vindristjarna was expected to arrive by morning, with the hobgoblin army reaching the escarpment by the following evening, and then the Heartroot less than a day later.