WoWP One-Shot: The Hag's Hut Report

In the aftermath of the crashing of Klaus the Gift Giver's sleigh, Aiden and Sahl Uzan remain in the town of Ironwell in the northern Duchy of Arro. They've spent the past few weeks of winter salvaging through the wreckage.

The ranger Killjoy moves on to other adventures and Aiden's associates the soulforged paladin 3,561 and Silverzilla, a dragonborn barbarian, arrive to join him. Two new adventurers arrive, a half-drow bard named Fhurr'Owhn Iyng and the necromancer Kuya Nec. Sahl is disconcerted by all of the new people. He grudgingly accepts Aiden's colleagues but is openly hostile to the bard and necromancer whom he perceives as encroachers on his salvage mission. Aiden sees them as useful tools, much as he views the old soulforged and the dragonborn.

Missing Villagers

Once they've settled down into a working relationship, they are approached by Gol Kodreg, the Mayor of Ironwell. He reports that people have been going missing from his town for months in the hills to the north. There are reports of strange delicious smells coming from that area and sightings of footprints made by an enormous cat. But no one has been able to find any of the missing people or find what makes the footprints. anyone sent out to investigate has not returned.

Gol reveals that his own daughter Wendy and his grandchildren, Hansel & Gretel, are the last to have vanished. He asks the adventurers to go find them and offers a reward of 1,250 gp. They ask for half up front, but Gol offers 250gp for them to start. The kind-hearted 3,561 accepts the gold and they begin their investigation.

The Hut on Cats Paws

The new group heads out into the woods and quickly discovers that they're great researchers in town, but less effective out in the wilderness. Fortunately, the barbarian Silverzilla has decent outdoor skills and she finds the enormous cat footprints. They find traces of the daughter and grandkids that meet up with the giant cat prints, but they disappear and the giant prints continue.

The party follows the prints and finds a small cozy hut with a porch and the smells of cooking emanating from it. As they come closer they notice that there are cat claws coming out of the bottom of the hut. The hut itself has been running around north of town.

They climb on the porch and look into the windows. A sign on the door says, "Be kind to the cats, or they'll fetch Mommy." The glass distorts their vision, but they're sure that the hut is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. As they discuss how to proceed, the naive paladin just walks in the door.

She sees a comfortable room with a table, chairs, and a tidy bed. The rest of the party follows carefully and they investigate the room. They notice a cat underneath the bed. 3,561 tries to cuddle and pet it, but her hands go right through it. The grumpy cat relaxes and begins to lick itself.

Meanwhile Sahl notices that there are two secret doors on either side of the fireplace. Once he points them out, 3,561 immediately goes through the one on the left while he opens the door to the right.

Two Fights For the Price of One

The room on the left holds a cozy reading room with a high ceiling, three lit fireplaces, and a large nest in the corner. As 3,561 looks up, a three headed chimera swoops down towards her. She closes the door and lets the party know that trouble is coming.

The room on the right is a dirty cold dining room covered in broken utensils and gnawed on bones. The group identifies that the bones are humanoid and they also see a gang of troll whelps swarming out of the room towards them.

The newly formed party prepares for combat as the whelps swarm over Sahl in the dining room and the left door explodes as the chimera's ram head bursts it open. The chimera's dragon head spits fire, covering most of the party in flames. Kuya Nec is badly burned and 3,561 engages the chimera directly. Sahl tears into the troll whelps with necromantic energy, but they keep coming even thought they've been blown to bits.

The group focuses their fire on the chimera while the troll whelps swarm into the room and chip away at them. They keep on killing whelps, but they keep regenerating and standing up. The only one with any luck killing the trolls is Kuya Nec with his fire bolts, but he's the only one with fiery powers.

Finally the chimera goes down and 3,561 goes into the room and pulls torches out of the fireplaces. They are finally able to kill the regenerating monsters with the torches and Nec's fire bolts.

They investigate the rooms, noticing that there are ghostly cats in all of them. The two rooms are connected by a pantry full of questionable foodstuffs. They detect a secret door behind one of the shelves and decide to drag it open. When they do, one of the phantom cats looks up and walks through a wall to the north.

Behind the secret door is a filthy bedroom with an immense bed in it and an empty cage. The bed is full of the rotten remains of past meals, as if a large person would lay there and eat without caring where their food went. They detect necromancy magic coming from everywhere around them. There's a door on the other side of the room. They prepare themselves and go through it.

Boil and Bubble, Triple Trouble

On the other side of the door is an immense kitchen with two huge 15-foot tall stone ovens on either side of it. There are cages with the missing daughter and grandkids in it. A huge hag stirs an immense pot in the center of the room, one green hag by the cages on one side of the room, and a purple hag on the other side preparing ingredients for the pot.

The giant hag in the middle says, "I am Shtriga Nonna and my cats have told me you're coming! I can hear you blundering through my house, but I'm prepared to offer you a deal! We don't have to fight, you can join me in my meal! When you're done, you'll feel like a lord. I'll give you treasures from my horde."

The party seriously considers siding with the hag, but the good-hearted 3,561 says "We have to save the children!"

Aiden sighs and drops a fireball in the room, targeting the huge hag and the green hag. Unfortunately, the mother and kids are also in the blast radius! The hostages go down and the battle begins.

The hags had been prepared for the party, despite the sudden fireball to the face. They attempted to counter the fireball but failed. AS they burned, the witches fought back by laying down psychic assaults and debilitating spells on their foes. They caused the hut to sprinkle them with sugar and spice, causing their willpower and resistance to poison to weaken. The head of the coven, Shtriga Nonna prepared to suck on their souls like marrow from a bone, but the enchantments of Kuya Nec and the warlocks interrupted her.

The warriors #3,561 and Silverzilla closed in as the bard Fhurr'Owhn supported them with his magical songs. As the members of the party fell prey to magical mind effects, Aiden cast a magic circle in the center of the room to trap the hags on either side of the room and protect the party from the hags' magic. When their attempts at mind control and transformation failed to work, the hags resorted to fireworks.

They dropped a lightning bolt on Aiden and Kuya Nec causing them to both go down. Aiden lost his familiars and Kuya almost went unconscious, but was brought back up by a spell cast by the paladin earlier in the day. Kuya noticed that Shtriga Nonna was near the oven and he blasted her with a telekinetic shove into the oven and slammed it close with a mage hand. 3,561 shoved her hammer through the door handles, locking it closed. As she slowly burned she screamed in rage, forcing a blast of fire from the oven on the other side of the room, almost killing Sahl, Aiden and a few of the others. But that was the end of the magic she could cast outside of the oven.

The party focused on the other hags, killing the green one and forcing the night hag into the ethereal plane. With those two out of the fight, they prepared as Shtriga Nonna slammed on the doors, slowly breaking through the hammer handle and the rocky hands that Kuya Nec had conjured. When she finally burst free filling the room with the smell of burning hair and liquifying fat, they blasted her with magic and rained down blows. The hag was finally dead and the party could relax.

Counting Their Loot

They finally turned their attention on the mother and her two children in the cages in the corner. Luckily for the neglected family, the fire hadn't killed them and they stabilized from their burns. The party would be able to return them alive to the mayor and claim their reward. They were also able to claim the witch's hoard.