Further Into Stonefang Pass

This is part 2 of my recap of the published adventure “Orcs of Stonefang Pass“. We are currently playing this in our group and if you plan on playing it too, be warned that there are a few spoilers in the following.

Check out part 1 of this recap.

I originally threw this adventure into my campaign for a number a reasons, the two main ones being: I wanted to try my hands at running a 4th edition adventure not written by myself, and Stonefang Pass happened to fit perfectly into where we were in the game (all I did was throw in a location where the road split and some dwarves were camping out). So far, I have to say that it has been a positive and inspiring experience.

Check the location: The Thirsty Dragon Pub (w. free pdf download).

The variety in the encounters is the most noticeable thing for me as a DM. Each encounter offers something that the previous ones did not have. Whether its flying monsters, earth quake hazards or calls for fresh tactics. The fights are different enough, that it doesn’t matter that most of them are against the good old orc. Not that that bothers me. Orcs have always been a favorite, but for that reason also not the most exotic enemy to throw at a party.

Exotic comes from the details in this adventure. Tattooed dwarves, strange imagery and powerful magic has yet to come together for my group, but definitely has them wondering what’s really going on. There’s been a couple of outburst along the lines of “I have a bad feeling about this”.

Since the first recap, we’ve played through four more encounters. First two fights at the gatehouse inside the pass itself. These are great because first the heroes have to take the gatehouse, then they have to defend it. Same location, two very different scenarios. Those two fights took up a whole session for us, but everyone was enjoying the challenge. Clever use of traps and magic offered lots of opportunity for the players.

Having successfully taken and defended the gatehouse, the heroes opened up the gate and proceeded down the pass. When they came upon a secret doorway, propped open with the corpse of a dwarf, they left the main path to investigate. At this point, I threw in one of the optional encounters, suggested in the back of the adventure; two cave bears and an orc handler. The players did a great job of making use of the cramped quarters to corner the monsters in this one.

Finally, continuing through the newly discovered passage, they entered a tunnel system with a center chamber, where a large pit was surrounded by four magical circles. An orc shaman, his ogre bodyguard and six patrolling archers almost proved more than the party could handle, as they were split into to smaller groups fighting in the tunnels and the chamber both. This was a long and epic fight, which had the party spend almost all their powers and still only barely making it out alive.

That’s where we are now. At this point, the heroes have more questions than answers, but they’ve certainly encountered the orcs that first chased the dwarves out. They have yet to see what’s at the end of the pass, or even at the end of the secret tunnel system. From the looks of it, the party will be a bit into level 7, by the time we complete “Orcs of Stonefang Pass” (they were halfway through level 5 when we started and all are level 6 at this point).