Session 8 - The Sinker and Beyond.

 The night wears on, Kurash sits at the Tavern in the sitting room, watching the seconds tick by. The rest of the party hear a bell ring......the locals in the bar cheer "The sinker" in unison. 

They explain that they have a tradition in the bar where they end the night with a drinking competition known as the sinker. The locals ante and buy a large tray of drinks. 

The first round is Ale, and well whats another ale to already drunk competitors

The Second Round is Mead, which is enough to take Mochi down. 

The Third round is wine, wich is too much for Etch as he tumbles from the competition

The fourth round is Ale again which sees Throt, Layton and Nox down for the count.

The locals cheer and the barkeep sends for help cleaning up the mess. 

At this stage the excessive amounts of alcohol start to take effect. Throt suddenly becomes sadden by his shortcomings as a person, and begins to cry. Ecth decides now is a perfect time for a face tattoo. Layton becomes suddenly so obsessed with getting food it is all that he can think about and Mochi has enough of Etch and challenges him to a fight to the death. 

Etch spots Throts tattoos and asks if he can do one on his face for him of a dragon. Nox trys to console Throt pointing out that his limpy leg hardly holds him back causing him to sob more, while he gets out his tattoo kit and as he prepares, Mochi approaches Etch rapier drawn, to which Etch responds by casting sleep on Mochi and deciding Mochi wants a matching face tattoo as well.

Throt starts on Etch and the end result is black ink on his silver scales that looks like this with some Goliath tears thrown in for good measure. 

Very satisfied with the outcome he drags Mochi over for his turn, but as Throt starts on him he wakes up and forgets his blood lust for Etch. He is left with a small line tattooed on his face barely noticeable. 

The party head towards the tavern where their rooms await, and all of them make it except for Throt, who falls in the street, as no one is strong enough to help or drag him the rest of the way they cover him with a cloak and let him sleep it off. 

They find their rooms and awake to the smell of cooking food. Heading downstairs they see Throt come in also drawn to the delicious smells coming from the kitchen. The Tavern (The Northern Light) is run by two sisters, Allie who (while most of you don't remember) was the one that greeted you and saw you to your rooms, and Cori who is working the kitchen. Allie explains that the Inn got its name from a magical lantern that used to hang above the sign but was stolen in a string of robberies by some unseen thieves, to which she speculates are Dwarves who have fallen on hard times during the endless winter, as she finishes hypothesising Cori enters with a plate of food, and strongly disagrees, citing that a dwarf is about as silent as a snoring dragon and someone would have seen them. 

Anyway Allie explains that the thief had been around again and had left another set of tracks in the snow that very night, and offers to show them. 

The tracks lead in the direct of Kalvin's Cairn and as the party are headed that way regardless they offer to follow them and check out who has been thieving from the locals. Allie offers them some lodging in return.

The collect their belongings after finishing breakfast and follow the tracks out into the tundra. Around 1/2 a mile from town the single set of tracks meets up with a much larger set of tracks which the party identify as an ogre dragging some kind of sled.

As they get closer to the foot of Kelvin's Cairn they see the tracks start to disappear and as they follow the general direction they come across a structure not easily spotted at the end of a recess in the wall of the mountain. Carved into the stone is a set of Solid timber doors, and a couple of heavily barred windows, in the middle of the clearing there is Bunker carved out of solid rock with 6 inch wide arrow slots every couple of feet. 

Mochi sneaks up to the bunker and peeks inside where he sees a trap door in the floor, and a guard sitting lazily on the ground, holding a heavy crossbow, and a warpick laying at his side. He returns to the group and tells them what he saw. Kurash decides to wild shape into a cat and sneak inside, which he is able to do unnoticed, Etch uses unseen servant and opens the trapdoor, which Kurash(cat) hides behind. The Guard a dwarf with grey skin calls out "Who is there, are you come to relieve me" when no one answers he closes the trapdoor, seeing the cat he says "Where did you come from little fella and picks up Kurash(cat) and starts to pet him, he sits on the floor putting his crossbow and warpick to the side so he can hold and pet Kurash. 

Kurash does his best to be a cat, and puts his soft little paws onto the Guards chest, deciding at this point to wild shape again....into a bear. The guard has no chance and the others hear the commotion and position themselves outside the arrow slits, poking weapons in at the guard as they see him struggle with being mauled by a bear. 

Throt calls out in protest about the murder of the guard until he sees his face, and recognizes him as a Duergar, the dark dwarves of the under dark, known for their brutality to the surface dwellers, and then joins the attack on him. His life soon ends, and Throt picks up the war pick to try and knock down a section of wall between the arrow slits to make a bigger entrance for them to get inside, which he manages to do in 5-6 Solid swings, meanwhile Kurash sits on the trapdoor still in bear form to stop any unwanted visitors. 

They get inside and search the remains of the guard. Throt sizes up the corpses hands for additional parts for his pan flute, and they ponder what could be on the other side of the tunnel under the trapdoor.