Friday, March 17, 2017

Moving On

I feel like there is still a lot that can be done in this setting, but it would be more of the same - winding tunnels, small rooms, scattered monsters... season to taste. To do it justice for me would mean sketching out a map for each of the levels, and filling it by sifting through the Monster Manual for anything interesting that might be found in the dark. A lot of work, in other words, and better worked out in a more stable, consistent fashion than this allows.
I'll try to get that done, and add it later, but for now it's better to move on. The natural step after this, to my mind, is to take the battle to Granak. The first step after getting the miners out of the mine (which likely means defeating the bulk of the orc tribe) is to rout them from the camp and tower. That presents an interesting encounter.
Set up as an office/living space for the Hardys, the tower wasn't really built for defensive purposes. It is built into the cliff, with parts of both floors dug out of the mountainside. The sections of the tower built out from the cliff are mostly open spaces, with an open air "porch" running around the outside of the second story [insert bad sketch here].
The door opens into a stairwell that winds up into the lower floor of the tower. There are five smaller rooms on this level, with a central staircase spiraling up to the upper level in the center of the tower. The upper floor was an open room with doors out to the walkway around its perimeter.
The orcs have made changes, cutting a number of rough rooms out of the cliff to use as lodgings and to stash their loot from raids. Granak tries to adopt a legitimacy with the mining setup, but the orcs still hold on to their raiding ways, pillaging at any opportunity they can. They stash their illicit gains in the hollowed out holes of the cliff.
Granak disapproves of this, but has chosen to turn a blind eye to it in order to keep the loyalty of the orcs to his interest.
He is more likely to visit this location and retreat to his own lair... somewhere else to visit soon.

No comments:

Post a Comment