All manner of beasts and monsters lurk beneath the eaves of the Shudderwood, but none so numerous or feared as the forest’s werewolves. Although the wood contains packs of these feral killers beyond counting, they can be loosely grouped into five distinct tribes: the provincial Broken Ones; the Kellid-descended Primals; the Prince’s Wolves, with their ties to Sczarni; the mighty Silverhides; and the fiend-worshiping Demon Wolves. Of course, the greatest threat these werewolves pose is that they can be anyone—the rough woodcutter, the itinerant peddler, the riverboat captain— any of them might be a wolf in human skin, and travelers through the Shudderwood are well advised to keep moving, keep to themselves, and leave the dark shadows of the forest behind them as soon as they can. For when the moon is full, the true masters of the Shudderwood fill the night with their howls, and woe be to any man or woman who becomes their prey.
—Oleandra Amandine, Shadows of the Shudderwood
It was two days before that you left Judge Daramid's townhome, armed with blank letters of invitation to the Ascanor Lodge, the last place you knew the Whispering Way cultists were headed. You were told to speak to the lodge’s warden, Estovion Lozarov, as he will be able to set you on the proper path.
Standing at the edge of the Shudderwood is almost like staring into another world. Ominous, towering pine trees blot out the sunlight, allowing only occasional splinters of light to pierce through. Within this dimness, broken branches and occasional shrubs growing up through fallen trees create shadowy illusions both wondrous and haunting. Apart from pallid lichens, colorful fungi, feathermoss, and wintergreen, little else grows in the forest. The Shudderwood possesses an eerie stillness only occasionally lifted by the sounds of passing birds and small animals scurrying across the dry pine needles littering the forest floor.
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Harlequin is introduced by Judge Daramid as a useful ally who can get thing done, though his methods are often...unorthodox...
The individual introduced as Harlequin seems to be half-orc with only small tusks that are only seen as he speaks. His face however is covered in white make-up to give him a pale face which is accentuated with dark ringlets around his eyes and red lipstick on his lips. He is clothed in a colorful breastplate and on his head rests a jesters cap which is complemented with a pair of jesters shoes. He absently strokes what seems to be a small bunny, but upon closer inspection that bunny has no fur at all. Only wrinkly skin cover it from head to tail, which is just a clot of skin.
He makes an elaborate bow which makes a curious sound as his bells jingle due to his movements. "Greetings my new companions. Judge Daramid already gave short introductions about you, but I am sure we will be besties before long, hi hi hi." He says with a wide grin, flashing those tiny fangs with his other pearly white teeth which almost blind you as the candlelight reflects on his teeth. "My name is Harlequin, or at least that is what I am called most of the time. Jester is another name I am often called, or Joker, or Nooo Please Sir Have Mercy!...." He continues while tapping his head trying to remember all the names thrown at him while his smile continues to widen at the memories.
During the two days travel with Harlequin, he has been telling strange otherworldly stories with unbelievable twists which he swears to be the truth. At other times he is skipping along the path whistling famous familiar as well as foreign and unknown tunes.
"I am the Merry Queen of Scones." Risbeth says in response, bowing deeply. "Also known as Her Ladyship, First Fang of Her Terrible Imperial Deathness. Also known as Treebane the Meloncholy. Also known as The Humorless Bonecrusher, but only by my former lovers. Also known as..." Risbeth spends the next ten minutes (or until she's forcibly stopped) making up titles and names, never once using her actual name.
Risbeth will buy components for Professor to make things.
Sonny listens patiently to Harlequin and less so to Risbeth. He stops her after about 2 minutes, "Risbeth, my friend, I think that is enough. The rest of us should introduce ourselves I think. You two will have plenty of time to exchange titles on the road." He slightly bows to Risbeth and then turns to Harlequin, "I am Sonny Wright, devotee of Sarenrae. I can be useful in keeping you breathing and even more so in making the nonliving stop moving, but I'm always careful to leave my friends unharmed."
The professor looks with a weary eye at the dialogue between the dhampir and the newcomer half-orc. He seems lost in his thoughts but still introduces himself.
"I am Professor Augustus Tournesol, from Oppara. If you'd be interested in Aracana, History and Ancient Tongues, you may have read my books before."
He quickly returns to his studies as he seems to be occupied by crafting a high number of items.
"Hello, Mr Harlequin. My names Montoya, Caesare Montoya. I hope we will have a better harmonie than with, a for the love of Torag, I can´t remember his name. And now, if you will excuse me, I think the Professor might need my help!"
After a few more days of traveling, you find yourself near dark and in need of rest. The forest around the path thins, and a brisk crosswind scatters concealing drifts of pine needles across the trail. If not for the shallow grooves left behind by the wheels of traveling wagons, following the path would be nearly impossible.
You set about making camp, putting up tents, building a fire, when suddenly you hear a faint cry, a human cry, from deeper in the trees.
"Could be a spirit, I've heard of them luring people in. Usually the ghosts of girls who were wronged by their first loves. Do we investigate?"
"Of course we investigate. If it's someone in trouble we help, if it's a ghost we get rid of it so it can go where it belongs.", Sonny says as he heads off in the direction of the cry.
"Of course we investigate..." Risbeth says under her breath, following along. "...can't have us avoiding any dangers along the way... might not be as much fun..."
Grabbing an extrakt caesare transforms himself into an gargoyle. Seeing his friends faces he speaks. "Well in this form I can see perfectly in the dark!"
Risbeth peers into the dark woods. In the distance, she can dimly make out the ruins of a tower, sitting alone amongst the woods. It appears that the cry came from there.
Risbeth peers ahead, her combined low-light and dark vision giving her an advantage. "Tower... of course it's a tower... do we have time for me to ask a few rats about the tower, or are you going to go in fists first?"
"Hello lovelies, any of you near who can tell me of the tower?"
A particularly scarred looking rat, just this side of being of an unusual size, slinks through the taller grass. It sits on its hind feet and regards you with dark eyes, then squeaks a reply.
Risbeth digs some cheese out of her belt pouch, and drops a chunk the size of the rat's head next to his feet.
"Hold up everyone... tower holds an ancient evil. Old and deadly, I am told. It sings and the prey comes close. Spider folk serve it, or so I'm told." She informs the rest, before they crash on into the tower.
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Harlequin picks up the rat by the tail and looks at it inquisitively as it responded to Risbeth's talk and she apparently understood it.
"Hmmm that is odd, is it a magical rat? Squeak, squeackity squeaken?" He says dangling the rat left and right and holding it close to his ear.
The prof shakes his head. "No, not at all, my dear! It is only a Rattus Rattus, very common indeed!"
Turning towards Risbeth, Augustus asks "A tower he says? Hum, I may have heard of it..."
Risbeth watches as the rat rips a large chunk out of the Jester's ear.
"Good boy, extra cheese!"
She digs another piece of cheese out and tosses to where the rat can grab it as well. Then she turns to Jester. "Leave the nice rats alone, or they won't warn us in the future. And stop feeding them, who knows where that ear has been?"
dealing damage!
The rat bites at the harlequin and hisses loudly. Suddenly are very aware of the eyes of many, many small rodents watching you from the woods.
Risbeth looks at the small eyes watching.
Looking at Jester, she smiles sweetly. "I told them they can eat you for dinner if you don't put the nice rat down nicely."
After Risbeth explains the intel she got Caesare shakes his head.
"We should clear that tower. It sounds like some kind of siren! We should take care that our ears and minds are protected!"
Risbeth gives the rat a scritch behind the ears.
She puts the rat back down near the cheese, and adds a third piece.
"You're going to be annoyingly heroic about this aren't you? You do know that dead things have to eat too? Do we really have to bother the poor undead thing that's doing us a favor by getting rid of people too stupid to know better? There are quite a few stupid people in the world, and losing a few of them really would be for the greater good." Risbeth seems wholly indifferent to cleaning out the tower.
The rat receieves the scratches and the cheese with quiet rodent dignity. It picks up the cheese and disappears back in the swamp, as the many eyes fade suddenly back into the shadows.
Continuing your discussion, you can creep closer to the tower for a better look at it. The soft, haunting melody of a harp drifts through the air, emanating from a ruined stone watchtower in a small clearing. The tower stands about three stories tall; blood ivy and grayish green lichen blanket the stonework of the tower’s crumbling exterior, while passing winds whistle softly through its darkened, gaping windows.
"Dead things should just stay dead! Being undead is unnatural and against Pharasmas will!"
"Careful where you say such things, Caesare." Risbeth says coldly.
"Are you gonna negate the fact that undead walk among us, my dear Caesare?" says the prof, looking at Risbeth with a smile.
Risbeth grins at the Professor. "Oh, don't worry about me. I'm more concerned should he ever visit my mother's court. She's not as bloodthirsty.. well, yes she is, I mean she is a vampire, so she rather has to be bloodthirsty.. by definition, literally, if you see what I mean? But, she's not bloodthirsty in the metaphorical sense, except when she's actually bloodthirsty in the literal sense, at least not usually. However, she does have very little patience for people who try to say she is an abomination who needs to be killed. I mean really, you can't blame her can you? I don't see humans running around and meekly agreeing to be food... well, actually, I have seen that, but it's generally considered an honor and mother's usually good about not overeating... but you know what I mean..."
Looking at Risbeth Caesares usually warm laughter is a hard cackle in his form."Indeed I do, my dear professor. Risbeth is not undead. She may hide it, but you and I know that she is alive as you and me. Like an ifrit she has more in her veins than regular blood, but she breathes and eates and has a soul."
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"Hoo hoo, your mother sounds like quite a treat my Lady Eternal Fury. I don't think I would mind if she nibbled on my ear some. Hoo Hooo. I don't believe I have dated an undead before yet. I wonder what kind of gifts I should give them, alive or dead...? Perhaps a young virgin lady to share? Or..." Harlequin starts and continues uttering possible gifts suited for a vampire queen with a lot of extremely weird suggestions.
Harlequin moves close to the tower and enters the doorway if he can with his sword drawn. He continues to name possible gifts but more under his breath now, sometimes shaking his head at a suggestion saying things like "preposterous" or "perhaps if she is on her period, wait do vampire have periods?".
"I'll have you know my mother has several souls... she keeps them on a necklace, quite a lovely one..." Risbeth responds to Caesares with a huff. Whether she's joking or not is up for debate.
She appears to be serious... mostly... perhaps she's not sure herself.
Risbeth follows along with the group. "Just so you're aware, if it's an undead, I have no intention of attacking it unless it attacks me." She warns ominously.
Long, taut strands of shimmering silk fill the ruined tower’s interior, forming an intricate pattern running from floor to ceiling. Half a dozen large cocoonlike shapes hang from the ceiling, suspended above the tower’s hard-packed dirt floor. In the far corner, between two larger chunks of rubble, a wide burrow opens into the ground. From inside the burrow comes a faint cry, as if of a small child.
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Risbeth holds back and watches the jester poke the cocoons. "Desiccated idiots..." She observes dryly.
"Queen Empress of the Ivory Throne." For a change, Risbeth isn't smiling. "Seriously, I would get that very very correct. She has a tendency to scry on me, and that's not something you want her to hear you mess up." Risbeth gives a slight shudder, as if having a bad memory.
Paying no more attention at the debate at hand, the prof is suddenly interested in the cocoon's poked by Harlequin's blade.
"Were they soft or hard? What was the sensation you had when you poked these cocoons?" and his ready to take notes, not paying attention to the cries either.
Harlequin's poke reveals a desiccated corpse of a goat. Another cocoon has a horse in it, but others look more humanoid.
The Professor spends some time looking around. He believes this to be partly the work of ettercaps, but something else is clearly at work as well, and his knowledge fails him. However, he does get a chance to re-evaluate his knowledge when a great shape slides out of the burrow and rears up in front of you.
The bloated white segments of a maggot’s body erupt in a torso of mixed feminine and insectile features. Pale humanoid skin and carapace meld together beneath a face with segmented eyes and mandibles chittering a song of discordant alien clicks and hisses, as overlong carapace claws weave cords of thick webbing between them. The creature fixates on Harlequin, the closest meal!
Round 1:
28 Professor
27 Foe
21 Caesare
13 Harlequin
9 Risbeth
6 Sonny
The prof quickly chants arcane words to enhance the party.
"Ιου βε κωικερ!"
The professor casts his spell of quickness upon the party! The great bloated worm thing bites and claws at Harlequin!
for damage!
for damage and a Fort Save vs paralysis!
for damage and a Fort Save vs paralysis!
Harlequin manages to avoid the bloated worm's attacks!
"That thing is hideous! May Sarenrae help you destroy it!"
Sonny raises his holy symbol and divine blessing descend upon the party.
Risbeth steps forward. "Well, this seems like something I can splatter with all good conscience." It fairly oozes chaos.
Using his spear for good effect after a moment of study, Caesare stabs the creature.
Sonny blesses his comrades, while Risbeth erupts into kicks and punches. All but one land, pummeling the worm-thing!