The Honking
In a time when we are having to make deals with evil races, and portals to other hellish dimensions exist, we find we are really struggling without a paladin. He always knew how to commit genocide on behalf of dragons or make deals with demons without losing his powers. Instead, we're having trouble coming up with a plan to raid a glowing red building to prove our worth, for some reason, to the leader of the drow armies.
We head out of the barracks to reconnoitre the glowing building, supposedly housing a bunch of demons. It seems we may have a choice of route in to the building, either through the guarded front door or sneak around in the hopes of finding a large enough crack in the broken structure to squeeze through. 'I prefer my enemies not to be behind me', says Krafft, pointing out his tactical preference and proficiency with a pointy stick.
'That's okay', Grimstorm replies, 'there's no facing. You will always be looking your enemies in the face, even when flanked.' We are no closer to deciding which way to storm the building. 'Let's have a show of hands', says Grimstorm, after which four pairs of hands fly in to the air. 'Wait until I've given each option, you low-int freaks.'
We end up sneaking to the front of the building to surprise the guards, although how they were still surprised after a petulant discussion on how rubbish the surprise round is, and why we can't delay during the surprise round so that we could move and use an encounter power, is beyond me.
After a couple of rounds of combat we are all wondering if it is worth expending many powers on the minions and apparently weak guards, even a few reinforcements not causing too many problems. The main cause for concern is that no one is terribly frightened by the prospect of my druid using the howl of terror power in wild-shaped badger form. 'Fine', I snuffle in badger-speak, 'then what do you think of the honk of terror?', as I change instead in to the form of a goose.
My honking, whilst effective against the targets, may have been a bit loud, awakening a new enemy. The last we see of Gruknal is when a huge, fiery hand smashes through a wall to grab and pull him back in to a room.