Conquering the Barbarian Altanis: Session 162

January 26, 2026

Adventurers

Character	Race	Class	Description
Tikatu	Human	Druid level 4	A dirty little man with dark and dirty skin, wearing loincloth with no back. “What will be, will be” is his favourite aphorism.
Kho Rimbo	Human	Magic-user level 3	A knife throwing wizard extraordinaire. Covered in ritual knife scars. Cuts himself whilst casting. Prone to being sarcastic.
Kenso San	Human	Fighter level 3	An arrogant and self-assured sellsword wandering Wilderlands to prove he can best anyone.
Heinrik	Human	Magic-user level 1	Muscular mage with short blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
Sieghart Totschinder	Human	Fighter level 1	Soldier of fortune hailing from the City-State of the Invincible Overlord. Impoverished into desperation.
Nifft	Human	Thief level 1	A spendthrifty drifter, mutt, and vagrant. Lanky, tall, dark eyed and dark haired, with perennial little smirk matching his bent nose.

Harvestime 1st, Airday

There it was, a dilapidated ruin of once impressive fortification. Four towers and one gatehouse, now broken and moss-covered. Castle Yukanthur, the final have of the wizard it has been named after. The castle rested on the north-west slope of the Midnight Goddess Hills, overlooking a marshy area to the north.

Heinrik led the adventurers here after he had learned about the location from Old Crus, a venerable Wizard whom had come to favour the young muscle-bound magic-user. Centuries ago Crus was an adventurer too. He offered Heinrik a map leading to an old site he never got to visit—Castle Yukanthur—in return for the right to pick some of the magical treasure adventurers might recover.

Tikatu and Kho Rimbo joined Heinrik on this expedition. They hired three more adventurers who had just arrived to the backwater village known as Ironburg. Kenso San, a warrior from Kingdom of Karak, Sieghart Totschinder, a mercenary from City-State of the Invincible Overlord, and Nifft, a smirking apprentice from who knows where.

Adventurers approached the ruin from south, meaning they came from above. Castle Yukanthur was on a slightly elevated area. Walls were clearly damaged by siege equipment as well as magical artillery. There were numerous cracks, in essence making it possible to enter from whichever side.

Surveying the surroundings revealed a cave mouth of the east side, roughly twenty feet below the castle ruin. Natural tunnel was blocked by a large boulder, which was obviously jammed in. Adventurers decided it'd be best to ignore it for now.

Well to the north-west was slightly more interesting. Completely overgrown, and forty feet below the ruins, it was difficult to spot it among the trees and overgrowth. Insides were overgrown with lichen and slippery moss. Nifft descended a hundred feet—that was as much rope as they had—without reaching the bottom. He could hear running water beneath.

Finally, the party had gathered sufficient courage to approach the ruins themselves. North side suffered more devastation than other sides of the castle. Towers were almost entirely destroyed. Second level was nothing but rubble. Adventurers snuck in through the ruined north-west tower.

Then Nifft climbed on the second level, and threw down the rope to others. Upper level, or rather, what was left of it, was nothing but rubble. Any valuables that might have been here have been plundered decades ago. The only notable thing was a rusted ballista on top of the south-west tower. South-east tower led them down, back to the ground level, and into the gatehouse.

We shall not go into details of adventurers taking half an hour to break open a single, bloated, but stuck doors. Gatehouse was filled with rubble, but everything was obviously arranged into neat piles. There were spent torches in one corners, as well as bent shovels and pickaxes. Doors leading to south-west tower were ajar.

Peeking in revealed that this tower had spiral staircase leading down. Rubble was cleaned, making it possible to access the aforementioned stairs. Moreover, someone constructed an archway out of the rubble, reinforcing the staircase access. Adventurers grinned, clapped their hands, formed a marching order, and descended.

It was a long descent, going round and round, until they finally reached a landing turning right, a then leading them further down in a straight line. They could see a stone statue of a warrior just at the edge of their bullseye lantern light. It looked chipped and damaged.

Kenso approached first. Mouth formed above the statue.

“Who dare enter the castle of Yukanthur?!” it uttered loudly and vanished.

Adventurers descended. Statue remained quiet. The corridor turned left, fifty feet straight, and then left again, into dead end. Surprised by this, everyone spread out to seek secret doors.

Suddenly a hail of arrows came from the south wall. Kho Rimbo slumped to the ground, four arrows sticking from him. Heinrik dropped like a sack of rocks, with two arrows jutting out as antennae from him.

Adventurers were now confused. South wall looked just like wall. There was no obvious trap or holes, nor slits. Kenso yelled banzai and charged straight at the well. He stepped right through and into a chamber some twenty by thirty feet. He ran straight into a group of six horned bipedal dogs holding shortbows.

Kenso swung his sword.

Three kobold heads fell down to the ground.

Nifft, also wounded by arrows, crawled back to safety, behind almighty Sieghart. Tikatu and Sieghart joined Kenso. Remaining three kobolds were promptly slain, but not before one of them managed to cut the Karakan swordsman quite deep.

Nifft and Tikatu checked in on the downed magic-users, while Sieghart and Kenso explored the corridor going south. It led to a junction which split west towards doors and south to another bend east.

Both Kho Rimbo and Heinrik survived their ordeal, but were now in quite bad shape. Both refused to abandon the expedition, and opted to follow the party in the background. Party bunched up at the junction, with few of the fighters investigating the closed doors.

Doors opened, and a gang of six kobolds unleashed a volley of arrows. Kho Rimbo added one more arrows to those already lodged in him. He went down, hard. Tikatu was hit with two arrows, and Kenso was hit by one arrow.

Sieghart and Kenso barreled into the chamber, slaying three kobolds. Sieghart put aside his one-handed warhammer, and took out his might morningstar. Then he proceeded to completely crush the kobold leader barking orders. Little beastman died with a yelp. It was turned into nothing but goo. Kenso killed others.

Heinrik limped in, dagger in each hand. He was promptly gutted by a kobold hiding behind the doors. Small beastman drove its shortwsord deep into the belly of muscled medium. Alas, no amount of abs could stop pointy steel.

Adventurers killed all the surviving kobolds.

The chamber they fought in had three entrances: door to the east they came from, and two doors to the west, both closed. Room itself was some thirty by forty feet. A dozen or so filthy piles of straw were on the ground. There were also six rats-on-sticks, as well as stomped out fire.

Nifft was quick to spot a shoddy looking wooden chest with an iron padlock. He tried to pick the lock, but failed miserably. Red from shame, he searched the leaders corpse. Lo and behold, he found an iron key around its neck. He went back to the chest, and pretended to pick the lock, while in reality he used the key.

The chest held two hundred and fifty two copper pieces, ninety eight silver pieces, and fifteen electrum pieces.

Surprisingly, Heinrik and Kho Rimbo were both still alive. Although both were now crawling, whimpering messes, who needed help to move at all. Those still standing checked around the corner, then picked up two magic-users, and returned to Ironburg. It would take them a season to fully recover before they could adventure again.

Kho Rimbo became worried sick that all the friends he made in Ironburg could now cost him his head. He begged Tikatu to take him to his thorn hovel in the nature.

Adventurers now know about multiple promising locations ripe for plundering. Which one will they visit next? And will it be as spectacular as this delve?

Attronarch's Athenaeum