One More Try

8th of Fireseek,
Skullgorge Bridge

Pulling around the small camp and nursing wounds sustained in the fight at the bridge the party falls into a solemn state of affairs. After about an hour or so Kulin begins to round the group for a discussion on what the next course of action is.

“We have seven hours before my trap on the bridge goes away and lets them cross,” Glok states huddled in the center of camp eyes darting to the perimeter.

“At least we have that much time to figure out a plan,” Brandar growling as he picks at the blisters on his skin from the dragons corrosive gas breath.

Darkman speaks in his solemn tone, “Take out the bridge and be done with this.”

Eventually a plan is formulated. A crude map is drawn in the dirt with a stick and options for the angle of attack are considered. One member of the party goes to investigate the bridge as the seven hours is almost up and the information they brought back was discouraging.

“There are hundreds of them on this side of the bridge. It looks like they dispelled my trap on the bridge,” reports Glok in anger and a flurry of spittle.

Brandar stops the picking at his skin and his head slumps mumbling, “I can’t believe I didn’t think that they might be able to dispel the bridge. They are an army after all. We have no way of knowing what they are capable of and what the extent of their resources are."

Glok replying, “There must be a couple hundred hobgoblins and several Giants, along with a few Ogres on this side of the bridge. I also noticed fast moving worgs with goblin riders. They are spread out as though expecting trouble.”

Conversation is continued and they determine that they must try one more time to repel the horde here and kill as many as possible. The party must wait recoup their spells as well as tend to their wounds and in the morning another assault on this side of the bridge commences.

The party starts off by skirting the north end of the gorge with Kulin in the lead. Glok takes to the air as a falcon scouting the area. Brandar and the Darkman follow far behind. Not long after they move into position, Kulin summons his ancestors to fight for him. Brandar and Darkman charge in for the kill. Moments go by and Ozzrandion the green dragon takes flight to survey the battlefield. Glok begins to squawk and flutter about throwing spells meant to hamper the storming horde and buy the three ground troops some time. Kulin launches what looks like hundreds of arrows into the air, landing in large clumps, decimating the advancing the horde. Screams of rage and pain are all that fill the scene. All the hero’s can see are a sea of troops foaming at the mouth to hopefully add their enemies to their cook pots.

A “BOOM” followed by a low roar is heard and Glok looks to visualize a dome of liquid fire engulf some of his party. The heat wave coming off the blast is so strong that even Glok in the air needs to squint. Charged with arcane power and the divine might of Wee Jas the hero’s fell one enemy after another. Just after declaring battle and as combat ensues, some of the party feels magic begin to pull away from their body. There is only one form of magic that can strip the powers of Wee Jas and nullify arcane endowments, that being the power to undo magic, Dispel. In the alarming succession of fireballs begins the dispelling efforts from somewhere within the horde.

Darkman and Brandar feeling the brunt of the reversal magic, prod on. Black bolts of energy crackle past, attempting to weaken and bring the hero’s to their knees. Fireballs, magic missiles, and dispel continuing, Ozzrandion swoops in for a closer look. As Ozzradnion appears to ready himself to make a dive on a hero locked in melee, he quickly adjusts and flies straight at Glok to take a bite out of the bird that is goblin at heart. As entangle spells begins to disappear and giants move in to clean up this mess once and for all, Ozzrandion dives to smother the melee combatants in a fog of corrosive gas. Kulin dropping to his knees howls in pain. Darkman seeing and hearing this decides that before his escape route is closed off he needs to rescue Kulin.
After killing many of the enemy, the sound is made to beet feet and retreat.

Retreating back into the dense Witchwood, a suitable area is found to make camp. Spending the rest of the day the party discusses the days fight.

With a scowl Glok moans, “I was just thinking that in all the time I've fought, I have never had an army spam dispel magic before.”

With a look of surprise Brandar comments, “How many times have you fought an army? This is a first for me. We should have realized that we might encounter more casters when they dispelled the bridge.”

“Where did all those casters come from throwing those magic nullifying spells, we have not seen those before. The first thing they did was to dispel us. How did they know to use Dispel against us, and at the first sigh of battle no less.” says a pouting Darkman. "The only way they could have known that we were magically enhanced was to cast detect magic on us and we were out of range," anger building in the normally stoic Darkman.

Kulin finally adding to the discussion after some contemplation, “Did we expect an easy fight? We fight an intelligent foe, it’s not like we are fighting a group of oozes or fungus. We knew before going in that there were many more troops on this side of the field. How are we to begin to even fathom what they have at their disposal? They ally themselves with dragon, manticore and chimera not to mention ogre’s and giants.

To Darkman, “Think about this, we have fought the horde now on many occasions. And many time allies of the Red Hand have lived to tell the heads of the Horde about us. Of course they know who we are and what we can do. They have seen our tactics, down to our use of flying phantom fish, entangle spells, spike stones and many other spells. I pose this question, have we not enhanced our fighting and defensive abilities before each fight via magic? Don’t you think they do the same? Readying dispel magic is sound strategy, not only against Glok’s entangle but also against us. This was our third fight for the bridge in three days. They clearly expect us. I would not be surprised if they had even more reinforcements if we went again. Another thing, do you have any idea how many spell casters were out there? There are hundreds of hobgoblins out there; can you differentiate who is casting and who is not? Except for the front line coming at us, I could not with any certainty identify through the mass of bodies who is casting and who is not.”

“We are also discounting one very important possibility, their use of Divination magic. They are an army, assume that they have spells to detect us and glean information about us,” says Kulin as though addressing a classroom. “We also need to consider the Red Hand bringing the fight to us when we are unprepared. For the last two nights they have found our camp three times, that worries me."