How to get a small army into a town?

[Wasum]

I need some idea on how to get a small army of duergars and trolls could surprise attack a nearby town.
The town is about 60 miles away from the duergar keep. The town also has scouts who keep an eye on this keep and the town of course has walls. On the attacker side there are duergar spellcasters up to character level 9 (druid, cleric, wizard). They have a lot of time to prepare their attack - I just doubt a tunnel over 80 miles would be all that plausible. Maybe you can come up with some suggestions, how around 30–40 duergars and trolls could get their buns inside that town – the more surprising the better!

[Telonius]

Seeming (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/seeming.htm) affects one creature per two levels, so 4 per casting at level 9. Get yourself a large canvas tent, and hand out flyers. The circus is coming to town.

[Mordaedil]

Duergar can turn invisible and enlarge themselves, so get them inside the town next to the walls, arm them with mauls and smash down the walls so the trolls can just rush in.

[Wasum]

I do like the idea a lot - the only thing is that the trolls cannot be disguised as medium sized creatures...

The problem about rushing the city is about getting close to it unnoticed.

[DeTess]

The Duergars probably need their arms and armor, but do the trolls? A DM of mine once sprung an army on a town by having them all polymorphed into mosquitoes, have them fly towards the town, and then drop the polymorph. Int his case, you'd probably baleful polymorph the trolls into some kind of easily manageable and hideable form, bring them to the town and then drop an area dispel to unleash them.

[Lapak]

If this town has a river running through/by it - as a large number of towns do, for trade and water supply - 9th level means you can stack up a lot of castings of Water Breathing, each of which can cover quite a few creatures after you split up the time (and more if you have a feat or rod to Extend it.)

Find the nearest spot under cover where they can enter the river - obviously closer is better for the purpose of splitting up the duration, but a half-hour or an hour’s walk gives you quite a bit of space to find somewhere or out sight - march them underwater into/up to the town, wreak havoc.

[denthor]

The Dugar are easy.

They come with gold and smithy tools. This happens over the course of a month. They have been over run by the trolls is the cover story. When enough have gotten in have the dwarfs being "chased" by the trolls. The town prepares for an attack by trolls by letting the dwarfs in.

If they do not open the gates the inside dwarfs. Attack the inside of the walls. The trolls outside. This of course is about two hours before dawn. Bonus points if the inside dwarfs are part of the guard they have dark vision and can guard more effectively at night. Get paid for the betrayal.

[Elkad]

Dodge/kill any patrols. That should get you to within a mile or so. Rush the walls.
Or use a scroll of Mass Invisibility once you get close.

Trojan Horse scheme where you disguise the Duergar as friendly mountain dwarves and hide the trolls in wagons.

Reduce visibility beyond the walls - probably with a large area weather effect, but simple darkness might do.

Get rid of the guards. Set City Hall on fire. Organize a strike of the guards for better working conditions. Send an assassin to poison their water. Send a wizard to put them to sleep. Send dancing girls (costuming mishaps optional) to entertain them from inside the walls.

Infiltrate the guards at a key post. Kill them and open the gate.

Bribe the guards.

"Discover" an ancient dwarven (or underdark) tunnel that already passes under the city.


Plus various other methods involving teleportation circles, a whole lot of flying mounts, airships, etc.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I wouldn't be so quick to discard the tunnel idea. Sure 60 miles is a lot of tunnel, but lots of D&D settings have an entire underground world of natural or premade caverns so if they take 5 miles of their own mines and then 50 miles of the underdark and then the last 5 miles into the town, it doesn't seem as farfetched. Tunnels are what duergar do. And the tunnel is classic.

But if you don't want tunnels, a lot will depend upon how relations with the duergar in the town are. Duergar can all use invisibility so they could go invisible and climb over the walls. Spellcasters could make the trolls invisible too. Now, the town should probably be alert to this possibility and have dogs and other anti-invisibility measures as a part of their normal practice (which is why a town 60 miles from a duergar keep has not been enslaved by the duergar or wiped them out yet). But if the contact with the duergar is new, it might be credible.

A more interesting possibility would be a town that has some friendly relations with the duergar. Duergar are probably happy to trade goods (or slaves if it's that kind of town) with humans until they get around to enslaving the lot of them--and duergar have a longer time horizon than most humans so having a scheme where the first two generations of humans get trade and the third generation gets enslaved is entirely credible. Maybe the duergar have been coming in to their guildhouse for decades but no one knows exactly how far the guildhouse goes underground and nobody notice that over the past two years, there are always a few more duergar coming in than going out. And no one noticed that there were invisible trolls walking through the gate to the guildhouse.

Of course if you wanted to be grotesque and to stretch D&D logic, the trolls could be dismembered and stuffed in crates for transport only to regenerate in the guildhouse.