The Good thing to do would be to free the prisoners and escort them home. The second good thing would be to wait in ambush. They went to the next door to see what was there instead. There was a fight. The problem was that they saw the padlock and they had to unlock it. They could have decided to just move to the next door, but they didn't. The thing is, this is roleplaying gold; the heart of the game is moral quandries and exploring new things. Most people never get to raid a temple and discover prisoners and get to free them. What would you do?
The fight was a long protracted fight stretching through four conected rooms and involving 8 ghouls and 4 ghasts. They also got their first real taste of solid treasure. The first room had copper, the second had silver, the third had gold and a scroll, but not much, and the fourth had two pieces of jewelry, worth 4000 and 2000 gold pieces respectively. Those two pieces of jewelry represented about a quarter of everything they found before this day, and it was not a hard fight, although they almost lost their leader when he was tag teamed by a pair of ghasts. After he rushed in, after making enough noise to wake the dead, oh, wait, ghasts ARE undead.
Then they went back to the prisoners. It had been an hour tops, but things had changed. Someone had entered the prison and butchered a prisoner there and had taken another elsewhere. There were eleven prisoners, but now there are nine. After the prisoners had told the player characters that they did no have a sense of time, but they felt that the last time someone came was a long while ago. The wife of the butchered prisoner was inconsolable and the others wanted out quickly; they did not trust the PCs. The PCs wanted to rest and recuperate. But when they had rested, we're they just going to leave again and leave them in the cell? The PCs elected just to rest and not escort the NPCs up and five to ten minutes out of their way. They were told take a right at the intersection, then a right at the next and up the stairs. After their rest, the PCs found one of the remains of one of the prisoners at the first intersection. They were escorting the imprisoned townsfolk back to the village. The consequences of selfishness were made clear, but the lesson was not learned; there was a third argument about prisoners before the end of the session.
The players covered ground as they explored through abandoned sections of the temple. They discovered a secret door and decided that that was reason for a course change. They padded through the secret door and wandered a gain aimlessly. They found a corridor with many doors and they approached the first door. The door was blocking the noise of a man being torn apart on a rack. The paladin entered the room and discovered a torture chamber with five prisoners and two people torturing one of them. The Ranger entered the room and drew his arrows and attacked the bad guys. He rolled a critical hit backstabbing the Turnkey with an arrow and he hit with his second arrow too. Soon the guard and his flunkey, the bugbear, were dead and there was only the prisoners. And another dilemma.
The problem was two of the prisoners were Orcs, defenseless and manacled in a cage. I, the GM has known about this from way back. The question is an old dilemma, to kill the evil prisoners, or to set them free. Essentially, this is a big plot development and a milestone for all the characters in their character development. Good vs Evil, Law vs Chaos.
The Ranger, favoured enemy Orcs and family reported to have been killed by Orcs, first wants to kill them on sight, maybe give them a weapon then hunt them down and kill them, but takes a deep breath and looks deep and tells them they are free to go. The lawful good fighter wants to release the human female prisoners first but wants to release the Orcs too. The Druid, in bear form, wants to release them too. The lawful neutral paladin, sees his fear about prisoners manifest. He believes that they are there to hinder the party and that there is usually a spy in amongst them and sees two orcs as a clear example. He will let them go, but thinks that they will double back and attack them. Most bizarrely, the half elf bard is completely willing to let them go free, after he cuts their ears off, because Orc ears are worth money, and he is a greedy fucker, he is Chaotic Good. The half Orc priest's player has decided to leave the game for an indefinite hiatus, so I play him as neutral, but he will escort the orcs to safety, if they decide that. That is the starting position. The bard steps back, to the entrance of the room and casts hypnotic pattern on the party and the prisoners, a clearly evil act; it is not a lethal spell, but it is a spell meant to affect his friends, so he can get his way. The Ranger seeing the bard begin to act suspiciously steps into the shadows and as it turns out, out of the area of effect. The player characters fail their saving throws and the prisoners, save one. The bard's attempt to secure two bounties fails.
Oh I failed to mention something. They interrogated the prisoners. The Ranger could speak Orc and the Bard cast comprehend languages as a ritual. And I called for insight checks to see if they thought the orc prisoners were lying. They claimed to be farmers and craftsmen from the orc village to the north and were captured by raiders and the ranger and the bard believed them.
As an aside…
The first time I ventured forth with my training wheels off with out a module to back me up I placed the characters in a similar situation in my virgin world, it was a few years ago, and I was about 20… the characters traveled down a road and they came to a bridge and there were five orcs at the bridge. The players readied their weapons and I told them the bridge has a gate over it and a small building attached to the bridge and the gate, one of those gates on a counter balance that swings up. The orcs were wearing crisp uniforms and there was signs of rank, one of the orcs was wearing a different uniform, white with gold buttons and a red sash, the others were green with red sashes.
What would the characters do? Attack or investigate. A Greenpsychopomp dilemma. I mean really. Turn your perceptions on their tails!! See with your intuition and the evidence before you , not your preconceptions!
This adventure is going to be about that. It is like growing up in the Empire joining the battle to fight the Rebels and then seeing the injustice first hand and joining the Rebellion and fighting the evil Empire and it's Sith Lord
Back to the game.
The bard's attempt fails, and the Cleric of Stromida leads the orcs away. I think I will introduce another PC follower, one of the orcs. A follower of the Ranger. I think the event was significant enough to warrant a permanent boon to the Ranger. And I wont reveal his alignment.
Plot reveal, if you are playing you might not want to read further.
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This is a perfect relief point. The questionable leader fighting a war against the Orcs, with a henchman that is clearly evil, whose policies are evil, compared to a vile threat that has been beaten into them from forever. They will discover plot points in this module that will lead them to the discover that the Duke, is not the rightful leader of the nation but the usurper, moreover that Jarda attacked the Temple of Elemental Evil with the help of the nation to the South, a nation of Orcs! Only the village of Hommlet remembers this and is thus vilified by the Duke. The temple of elemental evil are in fact the duke's allies.
What a tangled web I weave.
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