Trapped

“Trapped”
Rise of the Runelords episode
Episode no.	Episode 47
Date	2009
Game Master	Abbe
Characters	Dorothea Gloriana Honeypot Nell Velicia
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "The Farm" "The Barn"
Rise of the Runelords chapter list

In this chapter entering the house the heroes find more half-ogres and lots of humanoid remains.

Trapped

We went up to the side door of the house. As there had been a lot of traps in the woods surrounding this place I looked for traps on the door. I thought about how stupid those inbred half-ogres were, putting traps everywhere when Gloriana told me in my head to keep those thoughts to myself. Oups. I'm not really used to that telepathy thing yet. I was sure there were no traps on the door and we opened it. There was a kitchen inside, but Velicia who entered it soon looked as sick as I felt from just standing outside. There was a stench from old rotten flesh that was at least as bad as Aldern's cave under the Foxglove manor. I remembered that I had promised myself to buy perfume, but haven't yet. We left and headed for the other door. As the kitchen door hadn't been trapped I wasn't up front to check for traps, but luckily I noted some strange contraptions on the porch before Velicia who was at the door had time to open it. There was a trap making scythe blades swing down from above if the door was opened without disabling the trap first, so I did. We entered a room with an awful couch made from skin and body parts. There was still a stench but not as bad as in the kitchen. Suddenly Dorothea fell through the floor. It turned out there was a trapdoor in the floor in front of the couch. There were sharp spikes at the bottom but Dorothea seemed to handle it well and teleported up from there.

Nell attacks a half-ogre.

I took a closer look at the door before we opened it and that too was trapped. I thought I disabled it but a swinging scythe barely missed Velicia when she opened the door. It led to a corridor and we continued into a dining room that had human head on the table. Through another trapped door was a nursery. There were lots of grotesque things in there and drawings on the wall of a devil throwing children from a cliff and a monster with tentacles in a lake. There were also two "children". They were larger than me and the one I saw best had deformed legs and was playing with sculls. I threw my dagger from the dining room hitting it in the neck. The other ogre laughed and said:
"Ha, ha. You got a dagger in your neck."
The others charged into the room, but the one I attacked ran out to me and shut the door. I made a riposte that I learned recently. The door was opened and I got back to the others. We killed the young half-ogres and strangely enough I felt guilty afterwards. They thought we were playing, but the game killed them. Perhaps my own childhood is part of the reason for my feelings. Usually I don't feel for monsters such as these.

Mammy.

We took a short pause while Honeypot performed some cleansing rituals on Gloriana and Dorothea. I regained my strength and collected my thoughts. Next we looked through a bedroom and a storage room that had been used as a toilet too. While Gloriana, who was magically protected from filth hesitated to search the last room Velicia used her mage hand. The last room was a really grotesque room with several corpses, body parts and flesh. In that dimly lit, awfully smelly room was also an incredibly fat female half-ogre that could hardly move at all. When we attacked it, three of the dead bodies started moving. It was half-ogres that probably was its own offspring that was animated using some evil magic. The fight that followed was initially fierce but soon we had destroyed the zombies and it turned into a fight against the fat half-ogre. Its fat often protected it making my daggers bounce, but in the end we killed it. Shalelu was heavily wounded and retreated mid fight.

We had looked through all rooms on the first floor except the kitchen and found two stairs leading up and down. As the one to the cellar was through the kitchen we went up first. Velicia who was first as usual opened a door where we found a workshop for making traps. Dorothea and I entered carefully not to set off any traps. After a quick look around we found four flasks containing acid. We took two each and continued to the next room. It was a bedroom that contained, apart from filthy beds and disgusting half-ogre stuff, a small cedar chest. Gloriana opened it with a magic hand and a trap tried to cut it. The chest contained some valuables like coins but there were icky teeth mixed in.

We continued down the stairs to the cellar through the kitchen. I got all groggy from the awful stench. I can't understand how the others could stand it. I closed the door to the kitchen behind me and started feeling better when Velicia opened a door below. Gloriana stormed into the room and told us using the telepathy that there were a half-ogre with an extra head in the back, a broken jaw and bad legs, also rats hiding in the corners. I threw my dagger into the big half-ogre and looked around. I noted that there were rats in a nearby room, under the stairs and even in the walls. The rats were really big, almost as big as me but we killed them and even the half-ogre was killed at last. During the fight Gloriana summoned a storm that completely surrounded me and hurt rats all around me but I stood in the eye of the storm and was unhurt. It was a very strange experience.

In the cellar were one room for dismembering bodies with half made chairs of flesh and bones, a gory bedroom, a room with farming equipment and a wide corridor to a room with a mossy floor with a lot of fungus and the remains of a half-ogre with roots and vines growing through it looking like tentacles protruding. I screamed "Vorels curse!" using the telepathy but Honeypot calmed me and said that it was the result of a fey curse. It was the worst thing they could do to anyone so somebody had done something very bad to a fey. She also said that whatever the half-ogre had done it deserved to be kept like that and not killed. We thought of leaving when we saw a door on an opposite wall. We made a plan. Honeypot played soothing music to distract the creature while I sneaked in and hopefully freed the prisoners. It worked very well except that there were no prisoners.
I thought "Yippee! A treasure chest." before adding "Oups, I mean, Oh no, No prisoners."
It contained several beautiful jewelry items, a dress and some magical items apart from the dress. There were also a boring elven bow. I brought it as Shalelu might want it. Honeypot was still playing so I could sneak out without the creature ever knowing I stole all the treasure.