Out of the frying pan, into the George Foreman grill.

Our Ur adventures continued last night.  We had left off last session with our characters retreating to the farmsteads set up in the ruins in order to rest and recharge before taking another stab at the cannibal orc warrens.  But our old friends the ogre mercenaries were running the show there.

The players: DM Justin, Dean playing Venerable Carolus, Jeremy playing Noctis, Alexei playing Maya, and myself as Thidrek.

This session, we began bargaining with the ogres.  They'd just pulled a "bring out the gimp/Deliverance" thing of some sort (off screen) on our NPCs Webberan and Chomondelay and set them free.  Thidrek offered a truce, and offered to assault some enemy of theirs, figuring that nearly every faction in Ur is our enemy as well, and it might just give us a chance to slip back to Fort Low, hire mercenaries, and come back to wipe them out.

The ogres (by the way, if you didn't read the link above, Ur ogres are lycanthropic nightmare machines, appearing like normal humans one minute, grotesque mutant mostrosities the next) were wary of such schenanigans, and planned to send us back to Fort Low to basically lead an insurrection for them.  Roll initiative time.

Karl's spell "repudiation of light" managed to soften up the opponents, but Haarkon the spider-centaur ogre leader escaped since we lost initiative.  Wez the other leader type also managed to escape, but we took out several of their underlings and then fled.  Escape was too easy. 

We were pursued, however Karl used Speak with Animals to call the carnivorous apes (not that they're too fond of us either), who responded and attacked the ogre pursuers, giving us time to flee. 

On the way back to Low, we were ambushed by a group of masked cannibal orcs - or so we thought.  During the battle, we realized that they were humans, which is why they had Fort Low armor (Romanesque) rather than cannibal orc armor (Mad Max-esque).  Luckily, Maya rolled a 1 on one roll, dropping her spear, and forcing her to use the nonlethal damaging Sky Hunter whip.  Not often that you hear someone thinking a natural 1 is lucky, is it?  Well, turns out that the leader of this band was Iago, brother of the Fort Low official who had gone missing.  We ended up taking him and one other prisoner thanks to the whip.

A large body of troops from Fort Low was approaching as we finished the battle.  We hid the bodies, and quickly looted them (a magic war hammer from Iago, two magic swords like Thidrek's, a scroll and a potion).  Karl went out to talk to the troops, Maya joined him.  Thidrek and Noctis skulked off into the ruins, Mattaki Shiptu, nerd orc magi NPC, following us.  Our former hirelings Webberan and Chomondelay were with the army, and were raving about how we'd slaughtered all of the humans at the farmstead (the ogres were actually doing that as we escaped - clever plan by Haarkon). 

Maya, Carolus, Iago and his companion were all taken into custody.  Next session, Dean will have some use for all the "dealing with folks" skills Carolus has taken like Bureaucracy and Diplomacy and Religion.  Noctis and Thidrek (and Mattaki) are hoping to slip past Low to the Hive, rally some allies, hopefully a Great Mind or two who can dispel magic, and expose the ogre treachery. 

Should be a fun session!  (Oh, and Noctis made 5th level last session, Karl made 7th level this session, and Thidrek made 6th level this session!)