Keep on the Borderlands Session 2

Friday's session began with two of the players rolling up new characters.  One had lost his thief in the last outing and the other didn't wish to play his now irreligious Paladin.  The replacement characters were a Lawful Fighter and a Neutral Dwarf.  I decided to ditch the LL experience progression system and instead go with the RC in this capacity.  I forgot to mention that I gave XP for roleplaying in the last session as per the RC.

This time they decided to climb up to one of the higher caves rather than deal with the Goblins or Kobolds.  The ended up in one of the Orc caves, as they soon discovered.  They managed to clear out the guard room, but not before one had alerted the other Orcs to their presence.  The fighting afterwards was fierce, and the characters were forced to withdraw.  They were, however, able to inflict serious casualties upon the orcs.

They resupplied in town and then attempted to assault the same cave again.  This time they met minimal resistance.  This was because the leader of this Orc tribe had fled with his stoutest warriors and their captives to the other Orc caves.  Still a few had remained behind, but they were easily slain.  The party discovered a large chamber that contained empty cages and a large pool.  This pool was made of an oily black substance that didn't burn as the party expected.  It smelled "like pigs" and was quite deep.  Unnerved, they decided to see what else they could discover in the cave.

Further exploration revealed the Orcs' storage room, which was filled with captured equipment.  They used the large number of spears to arm themselves and their hirelings and then continued exploring the seemingly empty cave.  They found an opulently decorated (by Orc standards) chamber.  Some searching revealed a large amount of treasure, much to the joy of the party.

Since they had spent few resources, they decided to crawl across the ledge to the next cave.  Once inside one of the hirelings tripped a net and soon the Orcs were upon them.  The Orcs seemed to be of two types: pigs and goats.  They correctly deduced that the pigs were from the previous cave.  Once they were captured the leader from the previous cave appeared.  He directed his minions to take them "to the pool."  However, now they party had managed to cut themselves free and were able to fight their way out.

They wound up in a similar chamber with a pool.  This one contained a number of women kept in cages.  Upon finding that there were no signs of rape, one of the players checked the dead Orcs for genitals.  Finding none, they quickly realized the purpose of the pools.  Since they had lost all but one of their hirelings in the previous battle, they decided to flee back to the Keep.

Upon arriving, I rolled morale for the last hireling to decide whether or not he wanted to retire from the adventurer's life.  He did, and so the party was without hired help.  While looking for some extra hands, they met an easy going Priest named Adolphus.  Adolphus offered to aid them in their raids against the Caves of Chaos.  The party was a bit worried about his sapping their experience, but ultimately they decided that a 3rd level NPC would be of great use to them.

Once in the ravine, a number of Orc snipers attacked with their crossbows.  Adolphus decided this was the time to lay his trap and attacked one of the two PC fighters with his Inflict Wounds spell.  His acolyte pupils jumped out from the woods at the base of the ravine, and battle was joined.  They quickly killed the priest and his acolytes.  They managed to kill some of the Orcs before withdrawing.  Due to the late hour we called it a night here, thus ending our tenure in the Borderlands.

Overall the players and I liked it, though they didn't particularly like the women and children aspect of the module.  One of my players commented that he would have had more fun in one of my homebrew dungeons, but liked it all the same.  I rather liked the open nature of the module, and I definitely think more modules need to have titles rather than names for their NPCs.