We pick up directly after the events of last session.

Korvask, Gudrun, and Tancred were joined by Devron Leveller, a berserker chosen mason. He was up in the high sands of the Caskbound Pocket meditating and getting high, buried to the neck in the loose sandy soil. He sensed the call going through the whispervine in his altered state, and when he came to he headed to Klassa to help out. (He also found his mustaches waxed and pointed aggressively forward like mastodon tusks, and dubbed them “mastostache.”)

He arrived in Klassa to see the burning of orc corpses. He renewed his friendship with Korvask, and agreed to join them in their defensive efforts.

Holding Action

Speaker Kurtz asked them to take shellers and go head off the incoming orc force. If they could slow it, that grants more time for reinforcements to come to Klassa. More arrive every day, so there were enough youngsters (up to 50 years old, still indentured to the clan) to send them out with assistants.

Each of them would get an assistant to run the sheller, and another assistant. This is what they ended up with.

• Korvask: Finley (delver) and Topaz (topsider)
• Gudrun: Danella (delver) and Penn (cook)
• Tancred: Slish (delver) and Akbar (engineer)
• Devron: Kreg (delver) and Lessa (topsider)

The Forest Door

They reached the point where the Shot River flows out of the Caskbound Pocket into the forest. While they rested, Devron scouted ahead. He encountered an elven party. Lessa translated, discovering that the elves forbade the dwarves from entering the forest; if they tried, they’d be shot.

Devron took the news back, and the dwarves hatched a plot to seal the entry and let the orcs and elves duke it out in the valley. Or at least threaten to do that, retaining the option.

Tancred and Korvask went to talk with them, and managed to wring a concession out of the elves. Turns out Grumbletch the Choppa threatened Tevuria Selvuria and his people; if the dwarves came out, the orc would massacre the elves and burn their forest down. So, the elves would let the dwarves through only if they promised to slay the orc war leader. They cheerfully agreed.

Onward

They continued on, scouting, and talked to their topsiders about what was local. They found a waterfall, and beyond that a marsh, and beyond that a fork in the river, and beyond THAT a human settlement called Brightstone ruled by Major Donnelley.

They moved as far as the marsh, and sent a delegation on foot to reach Brightstone and see about potentially luring the orcs to attack the human settlement instead.

Negotiations

They bribed their way into the walled town after dark, finding a seneschal and laying out the news of an incoming orc threat. The delegation was respectfully housed in an unused dining room for the rest of the night, and humans sent out search parties to look for the orc army at first light.

They also found a huntsman that Lessa had been teaching the dwarven language, he sort of helped.

The scouts found the orc army, and the humans decided to camp out in their walls rather than riding out to meet them. (An overall sensible plan, but not much help to the dwarves.)

Korvask worked with the catapult, fixing it and painting a blood rune on a container of flaming oil so it multiplied impressively in midair, part of an effort to convince the mayor to lure the orcs to battle here.

Korvask managed an impassioned speech, and the mayor agreed to send a force of a hundred raiders to help out in attacking the orcs. The rest of his people were needed for defense.

Meanwhile Devron took the huntsman to the local tavern and acted as a moneybags quest giver, recruiting a dozen adventuring groups to go after the orcs for promised bounty.

The Camp

The first night the party was split, a mass of two dozen wolves attacked trying to get the delicious sheller meat. They were driven off by the stalwart dwarves.

The second day they moved to the fork in the river; closer to town, but where the orcs couldn’t sneak past. That night they were attacked by a scouting party of orcs, and they slew them after a harrowing battle.

Ride to War

The skirmishers, adventurers, and mounted dwarves prepare to meet the onrush of the orc invaders on the field of battle.