The Second D&D Tarak Campaign - First Sight of the Orc Stronghold

Welcome to the ongoing saga of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign I ran a little while back. It started off using The Sunken Citadel module from the Tales From The Yawning Portal source book, but was then fitted into my Homebrew setting and moved on from there.

In the last post, the party very efficiently destroyed an outpost the orcs had set up blocking the route between the heroes' base at Oakhurst and the main base the orcs were excavating in the mountains nearby.

I hope you enjoy my D&D campaign write-ups, and the commentary I add to them. Questions, comments and feedback are welcome !

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

When the party approached the stronghold, the main entrance was quite obvious, with low spoil heaps outside where excavated earth and rock had been bumped.

The stronghold was currently just a temporary camp for the orcs, but their long-term goal was to dig it out and extend it to become a major base of operations and maybe even a city. But we’re a long way from that so far !

It is about 2 miles further into the mountains than the advanced watchpost the orcs had set up, set near the top of a minor peak; low enough that it is not snow-covered, but still high and windy.

The map a little further down this post shows the layout of the first level. It was made thoroughly primitively in Excel !

Entrance. A great arched cave mouth set into the rockface. There were no signs of external defences, but the ground had clearly been worked to smooth it and remove any large boulders. The spoils formed a small semi-circular berm in front of the entrance. The great entry cavern was riddled with firing points, but they were cunningly hidden (needing a DC20 Perception check to spot them).
The Wall of Sorrow. This wall extended to a height of 25 feet, with a firing platform capable of holding 10 orc archers. The wall was high enough to give ¾ cover to the archers (+5 bonus to AC and Dex saves). For the more enthusiastic adventurers, there were cauldrons of quicklime; dumped on those immediately below, the lime did 3D8 damage (halved for a successful Dex save), and a failed save caused blindness for 2D4 rounds. The centre of the wall held a heavy iron-shod stone door, double-barred from the inside. It needed a massive 300HP of damage to break the door open. The wall also had a large gong which will be used to sound the alarm as soon as intruders are spotted. It would take 3 rounds for all firing slits to be occupied.
Entry plaza. Contained 15 orcs (each with 2D6 gold as treasure), able to replace lost archers or act as a reserve if the door was threatened. Additionally, there was an Orc War Chief (Monster Manual p 246, 2 Orogs (Monster Manual p 247), and an Orc Claw of Luthic (Volo's Guide to Monsters p. 183). The Claw has swapped out some spells giving him the following list;
0 – Guidance, Mending, Resistance, Thaumaturgy
1 – Bane, Guiding Bolt, Catapult
2 – Blindness/Deafness, Hold Person
3 - Bestow Curse, Spirit Guardians
The Claw would step up to the firing platform to replace any casualties in order to fire offensive spells.
Orc lounge / restroom. A dozen bed-piles made up of old unhygienic furs, together with a table in the centre with an abandoned game of dice. The dice were ivory, worth about 5gp, and there were a dozen teeth scattered around the table - these are actually used by the orcs as small change.
Orc guardroom. 8 orc archers (arrow slits give ¾ cover once spotted). Again, each orc had 2D6 gold.
Orc firing slits – manned by the orcs from room 7.
Orc barracks. 6 orc archers (each with 2D6 gold) to man firing slits 6

This arrangement in the entrance made for an effective layered defence presenting the party with multiple simultaneous problems to solve.

First in was Griff, in his usual impetuous style. Even with only a few of the hidden arrow slits occupied, he almost immediately became a pin cushion and had to be dragged back out by his comrades. They healed him up while planning a more careful assault.

At this point, Griff hadn't even seen the Wall of Sorrow, so they assumed it was just a case of getting past the arrow slits, finding their entrance and slaughtering the orc archers in a surprise rear assault.

The plan was to use a combination of careful positioning, stealth and protective magic to minimise the impact of the arrows. It worked until they rounded the corner and saw the heavily defended obstacle in front of them....

Next Time... Battle at the Wall of Sorrow

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zakludick (73) 6 days ago

Excellent! Finally a situation those brash blunt adventurers cannot simply bully their way into!

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alonicus (69) 6 days ago

Yep ! When the "monsters" are reasonably intelligent and have lots of experience warring against humans, I play them smart. They know what's coming, they know human adventurers are tough, so if they've got time they'll set up a layered defence and a warm reception 😁

!BBH
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zakludick (73) 5 days ago

Hopefully that group started thinking a bit more now!

alohaed (62) 4 days ago

I like the excel map! It's simple and clean. I may implement something like this for the Marvel RPG I'm running for friends.

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alonicus (69) 3 days ago

Thank you ! Sometime or other I'll find a decent mapping program that's easy to use and gives me the results I like. Using maps I find in Google or Pinterest works up to a point, but when I've got a specific or unusual design in mind, I'll turn to Excel 😀

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