A private game among friends
This is your Game Master speaking: You find yourselves in the familiar and friendly confines of The Red Light, where Jess is still serving drinks to the motley citizens of Hammingbell. Each of you has recently noticed an absent apprentice. Note that the nature of this "apprentice" is entirely up to you: the relationship doesn't need to be formal or even appreciated. But young folk who admire and emulate you, and who have gathered considerable skill in your lines of work--say, level 2 or 3.
What you know so far is in the "Campaign Info" thread above. Stop on by, say hello, grab a drink, and make a plan.
Clayton arrives nearly half an hour later than he'd intended to, his heavy footfalls echoing down the street as the thick marble soles of the latest addition to his long-disused ceramic armor bludgeon the boardwalk's planks near to splintering. His habit of stowing dangerous objects in the living earth to keep them out of the hands of novices had backfired somewhat, and he had spent the full afternoon during which he'd intended to prepare enough food for the journey instead digging around for his full collection of armaments scattered haphazardly beneath Galbraith Mountain; he has instead simply upended half a barrel of assorted unwashed tubers into his bag of holding and resolved to pretend that was all he wanted for the road.
The bandit fortress town of Damning's existence so close to Hammingbell has rankled him for some time, now, and Clayton has long thought that its fortification and geographic position along the old Baker's Road would serve the town far better as a base camp for adventurers and expeditions further east than as the haven for outlaws it currently was, if ever there was momentum enough to scour the current residents. Now, with the apparent kidnapping of his half-loved lab assistant and her companions, he cursed himself for not acting sooner.
Noting Thym's presence by familiar smell of herbs and the little man's distinctive lack of weight on the floorboards, Clayton beelines for the space next to him and leans lightly against the bar, fearful of damaging or breaking a stool in his armor. It is apparent that he's antsy and would like to leave as soon as possible, although upon noting that they're the only two yet present, he does take the time to sheepishly ask Jess if they have enough extra bar snacks this week for him to purchase a full jar for the road.
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A seven foot tall swaddling of brown robes follows Clayton into the bar and orders a watermelon infused drink with a cherry on top and sits down at a table for two. Shortly thereafter, exactly when no one is looking, the table is empty except for a short elf who heads toward the bar and asks for a stout beer with a strong coffee on the side. She heads back toward the table, across from the watermelon drink and starts muttering. Moments later (again, exactly when no one is looking) the swaddled figure is back and begins muttering back to the stout and coffee combo.
This continues until Thym laughs particularly loudly at one of Clayton's stories. Something inside Lucas hears it and responds. His illusion falls off and he floats over towards Clayton and Thym, settling on the ground just as he reaches their table. "Oh my friends, how I've missed you!" For a moment his face morphs into Hasta's and he says "how's the wife?"
Jess the bartender is glad to see old friends getting together again.
"It's great to see you all! Let me know if I can freshen up your drink... things are getting busy but I'll try to stop and catch up with you all if I can..."
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Truth be told, Thym had felt unpleasantly conspicuous when he was alone at the bar. As other patrons filtered in, he wondered what they would make of the little pile his heavy canvas backpack(lined with a bag of holding, half-full of stuff) and hartwood spear made leaning against his bar stool with his rosewood armor, bristling with thorns. He'd gotten used to wearing tunics around town with, at most, a knife, which was primarily used for cutting herbs along roadsides. He felt out of adventuring practice and wished he'd woken Blake from his nap for the company instead of just asking the tiger to meet up with them on the road later. His drink was running low by that time, and he'd scarfed all the paprika-dusted crackers.
His heart lightens considerably when a dust-dusted Clayton clomps to a rest next to him and asks Jess for snacks that weren't potato based. Thym thinks she didn't hear him because she kindly offers to refresh a drink that Clayton doesn't yet have and buzzes away, probably to make some other customers' cheese platters and mojitos.
"Don't worry," Thym says. "Hasta will get a kick out of your bringing potatoes." He rustles around in his satchel, "And I brought two dozen boiled eggs, a couple pounds of hazelnuts, a quart of honey, peppermint-yarrow tea, St. John's wort tea, sun-dried tomatoes, blackberry leather, salt, a flask of walnut oil, and three loaves worth of toasted rusks to share. Besides, it's at most a five hour walk to Damning."
Saying Damning's name reminds him of why they were going on this expedition to begin with. He felt so responsible. Jasper was a mess, confined for now in his workroom infirmary and under a regimen of frustratingly gentle sedative and calming herbs. Thym's missing apprentice, in particular, had been so volatile the he'd just wanted her get out of Hammingbell and work through some energy. Or something. Away from him. A low-level bandit quest had seemed just the thing. But now Ester and her snapping turtle companion Terpene were, according to Jasper's ravings, doomed. At least unless they got there in time.
Just as he feels his mood sinking again, despite the pleasure of Clayton's conversation, Lucas appears as himself from the folds of an illusory collective. His perfect impression of Hasta's wry half-smile startles and delights Thym.
"I don't think it's ever been accurate to say that Hasta is good. But she's well. She's really, really into making things these last couple of years. For a while it was a small army of specialized constructs, then it was a baby, and most lately it's staves. She might be having too much fun being nominally evil, but I think she'll work through it. Or realize that she can't work through it? Anyway, we cuddle Hazel a lot and go on picnic and walks most afternoons.
"Hazel's not quite two yet, but she already helps me in the garden and brings me worms and bugs to heal. And while she's too young to have a definite class, she makes little constructs out of sticks and blocks to dig in the ground or walk around Hasta's lab."
Clayton, still lacking functioning eyes of any sort, finds nothing whatsoever unusual about Lucas' appearance and, suspecting nothing amiss, is simply pleased that he'll be coming along.
"Oh divine! What a delight to raise a child and teach it to be alive. After all, the voice of parents is as the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants." Suddenly Lucas's expression changes, and he looks old for a moment. Lucas's use of illusion magic has become seamless and constant. It is difficult to tell which face, if any of them, is the "real" him. He continues, wrinkles growing as he speaks.
"That reminds me. I'm quite worried about Meryl. She was showing so much progress, and then she had to go act the fool. *Ahem* Jess, I've forgotten, what exactly is happening with these bandits and kidnapping? That silly girl was mentioning dark rituals."
Lucas is lying. He never forgets a thing, and as he speaks the lie to Jess he takes 20 on a knowledge (local) check for a total of f&!#in' 40 on the skill check.
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A small goblin staggers into the bar, alarmingly childlike, but with the ancient battle scars of an elderly orc. He is completely naked except for a series of hand puppets, one on each hand. Both puppets have been made out of the last remaining scraps of his own clothing. Neither resembles anything remotely recognizable and are instead a fairly bizarre mishmash of googly-eyes, food stains, and grass hair.
Marble speaking to himself using his left-hand puppet: "Marble, I will never leave you! You'll be my greatest friend! You can call me Furgle!"
Marble's voice through the right-hand puppet: "Goblin! You will never be good enough! You're a waste of planar space! Why did you summon me here? I despise this existence!"
Marble: "I know, but maybe if you tell me your name, we can learn more about each other"
Right-hand Puppet: "I am Lixhressbhaldan the Tearbringer, Boiler of Tongues, Bandit of Young Souls"
Marble: "Hi Lixhressbhaldan. Once we spend more time together, I think you'll find I have a winning personality."
Furgle with Marble's Voice: "Furgle! Furgle! I need my tongue to gurgle!"
Lizhressbhaldan with Marble's Voice: "FOOLISH BEINGS!"
Startled, Marbles pees just a little onto the tavern floor then slumps into a corner, still naked, and ever so hopeful that an old friend might appear.
Jess, looking distressed by the level of activity in the pub, casts a longing look at her mop--but the goblin's little mess will have to wait. Wearing long dishwasher's gloves, she's wrinkling her nose with extreme distaste at the garlic salt she's shaking into a large jar of mixed nuts.
"Here you go, Clayton!" she says when finished, screwing the lid on firmly and quickly. "It'll keep you going on the road."
She pushes the jar far away from herself, then answers Lucas' non-question. "Yeah, so that Jathper kid rolls in here a few nights ago, looked like she ran all the way from Damning. The kidnapping job went real sour--from what I've gathered from that night and checking up on things afterwards, Jathper (can you believe she wants us to call her that now?) was covering the rest of the crew as they confronted the bandits, but when the fight broke out, she decided to 'use stealth' instead of jumping into the fray. After a few days of 'stealthing' and observing the town, Jathper heard some horrible stuff about blood sacrifice, saw a bunch of bonfires, saw some people building some kind of wickerwork structure that looked like a prison. Pretty grim. Apparently those hotheads who call themselves your apprentices are thoroughly shackled to the wall in the public square, but are being fed big fatty steaks and spinach: 'to fatten you up for the appetite of the Full Moon' or something like that. It's the full moon tomorrow, so I figured you all ought to get on this one and figure it out."
Jess scuttles off to refill drinks, mop up goblin urine, and generally keep the place running even though she should probably have at least two other people working there too.
Lucas knew at least most of this already. His knowledge of Damning includes basically everything there is to know. You can share as much or as little of this with the party as you'd like, I guess, Luc. It's a settlement whose entire economy is based on raiding, and they have a pretty sweet wall around the town, which has migrated from where Deming sits in our world to hills to the north. The place is ruled by a bandit council, lately more content with harrying the wilderness to the East than trespassing too much into the Dale of Ferns or Hammingbell. However, their most recent raid on Nugget Scorner, an outlying settlement, seemed to be after people, not goods. Six healthy young adults were taken, while the elderly (or even semi-elderly) and the children were merely knocked unconscious. Normally thorough in their ransacking, this time they seemed to be in more of a hurry, leaving precious objects that were even slightly unwieldy (upright basses, potbellied stoves, St. Bernard dogs, etc.) to be reclaimed by the residents as they reclaimed their consciousness.
You know that the bandits have a convoluted semi-religion based on a deity (creatively!) nicknamed “The Dark Lord,” a god of blood and night, and that the festival of blood is rumored to happen on last full moon before Autumn. The snippets of Damningsong Luc has picked up include lyrics referring to the insatiable appetite of the god which must be appeased by the fresh blood of the young. Human sacrifice highly likely.
You also know that Jathper is a bit of a coward (as Meryl has complained in the past), and that it won’t be much use going to talk to her if she’s in one of her traumatized moods [that’s so the quest gets going without you needing to interrogate her, folks].
Lucas glides over to where Marble hides in the corner and slaps a dapper little fedora on his head. "It's JonBenet time old friend. Come join us at the table."
The last full moon BEFORE autumn! In other words, tomorrow night.
You know there's something fishy about this Dark Lord. Definitely not a member of a widely-recognized pantheon, his worship seems confined to the Nooksack Valley's more sinister denizens. That in itself isn't what's weird--what's weird is the elaborate nature of his rituals despite his relatively low profile as a local deity.
What are the sacrifices for? The Damningsongs seems to suggest that the victims become one with the Dark Lord and fuel his power.
On the night
of the white moon
before they fall
the leaves of autumn,
the blood of youth,
as red as leaves,
will leave the youth
for the lord of darkness' draughts,
he shakes the earth
like autumn branches.
Fail in this and face his wrath,
and Damning shall be damned.
Etc. Etc.
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"I've been wisely instructing a local pigeon how to find the best fish scraps in Hammingbell. He had also become good at pecking out the eyes of any nefarious bandits that threatened the peace and security of our lovely home. Are you trying to tell me that my pigeon-apprentice may have been taken? Pigeonapped? Do they know what happens to those who cross my friends? Let's leave at once!"
From under a floorboard at the Red Light, Marble grabs his trusty greataxe "Pinefeller" and his mithril shirt "Neverrust", and declares himself ready to depart, still naked from the waist down.
Marble's entire 10,000 coin budget was spent "polishing" and "sharpening" these two pieces of equipment, upgrading them from +1 to +2.
"Oh hey everyone, I was passing by and wanted to show you how to post critical information in your "Class/Level" slot in your character profile (I see that Clay and Marble have already found that, but we'll be using it for slightly different purposes than designed). It'd be nice to have your current HP, your AC, your init, your perception, and your saves readily visible. Also I love you all, sorry I can't come along, gotta make this staff."
Hasta downs an Imperial Stout in one long chug, kisses Thym, hugs her friends, and heads back to the lab before anyone has much of a chance to say anything to her.
"I wish I had asked Hasta to walk down here with Blake! I'm going to fly home to wake him up, if he's not up yet. We should both be back here and ready to go in about ten minutes." Thym is feeling restless, too. And like he wants to leave as soon as possible in order to be back as soon as possible. "Marble, do you want to borrow some clothes? Does anyone want anything from the workshop or apothecary?"
[You guys! I wrote a whole post that was basically this but with maundering about how teaching Hammingbell teenagers lately has caused Thym to fall into the sad habit of repeating information about processes and deadlines, even though Clayton, Lucas, and Marble already know that we gotta get there soon in order to figure out and avert or divert Damning's religious services. Thym also thought about how Ester and Terpene would be relatively happy being fattened with spinach, but not so much with steak. Then I found out that I was disconnected from the internet after clicking "Submit Post".]
So, if y'all are feeling the call of the road, tie up whatever loose ends you've got in town in your next post and I'll walk you up to Damning. Looking forward to having the story proper start.
One thing you might want to use: you can make the site roll dice for you.
The way to format your plain text is in the "how to format your text" thingy at the bottom of the new post rectangle.
Saw Riley today--we talked about maybe Skyping a game while he's still up here and Ben and Martin are down there...
Clayton has simply given his geology class the week off and warned that his absence may be extended by circumstances beyond his control, but that he will resume deducting points for truancy the moment he returns and that it is the individual responsibility of every student he has to stay vigilant, along with an admittedly half-hearted attempt to compare this to always being on the lookout for imminent earthquakes or volcanic eruptions or something. He's left half a dozen sealed vials of his own blood with three different local clerics with the usual instructions to please resurrect him if he hasn't returned by three staggered dates the following year (long enough in the future to be well after the adventure concludes if something kills him in the course thereof) or if the church receives word of his death from a reputable source.
He has no other loose ends in town and is ready and eager to depart; he worries after the kids, as he refers to all of the low level adventurers whether they're younger than him or not. It rankles a few but is mostly considered endearing.
Lucas packs several odds and ends including a crowbar, tooth brush, extra hat, smelling salts, a potion of bulls strength, three maps of the area, a compass, two sextants and a blacksmith's hammer into his handy haversack, next to the loads of detritus already inside. He then shoulders it, changes his face so he looks like a long-legged elf who has been traveling in the forest so long there are twigs and leaves sticking out from every bit of clothing, and is ready to proceed down the road.
Wildshaping into a small wind elemental to get home quickly, Thym swings by the gorillas' glade to gently ruffle Hazel's hair, sweeps through Hasta's lab to give her an air kiss, then blows on Blake's whiskers to wake him up. When the tiger blinks and starts to stretch, Thym becomes himself again. The cat stands up and butts his head against the hafling's.
Thym runs into his bedroom for a spare pair of leggings and a wool sweater, just in case Marble gets cold later. He stuffs the clothes, along with a fully charged wand of cure light wounds, alongside all of the provisions in his bag-of-holding-lined satchel. He notices the zumbini pin in there, as well as a masterwork kukri, and a small purse of gems. Huh. Forgot about that stuff.
He dashes back out to the workshop (thank you Jersey of the Bull) and climbs onto Blake's back. They gallop down the hill to the Red Light and stand outside the door next to Clayton, ready to go. Based on the way Clayton's standing near the rangy elf, Thym figures that it's Lucas, and he's ready too. He wonders if Marble is still inside, and if they should let him know that they're all out here.
Martin, I'm going to assume that Marble's exuberant declaration that we should leave at once means you're ready, but do feel free to retroactively take care of any small errands he'd do before leaving town.
Please play the following while you read the next post. Feel free to supplement with further adventure music as necessary:
Also, imagine my voice as the deep, booming voice of The Narrator as Archetype, following the Heroes of Hammingbell as they once again fare forth upon the winding roads of chance and fate.
As you pass the walls of Hammingbell and the ruined trackway of the Five Eyed Road, you wend your way northeast to the Old Baker's Trail, where the ragged communities of the frontier eke out their harsh living with miner's pick and farmer's plough--and bandit's swift blade. Night is falling, and tomorrow eve the moon will be full, and the blood festival of Damning will be celebrated in that long-forsaken vale beyond the last pales of what Hammingbell's respectable citizens call civilization.
You pass Jathiel's cabin, now the decaying haven of passing travelers, etched with the scrimshaw of their passing penknives. Who knows where your half-elven companions wander now, having long since disappeared over the Mountains of Falling Water to journey in the perilous lands of Middle West.
Before you rise those very mountains, with Kulshan the White catching the last rays of the sun as it sets over the Sounding Sea. When you reach Nugget Scorner, that glorified hardtack biscuit dressed up as a settlement, the people are celebrating--all but one of the five missing youths have been returned to them. The four rescued young people, variously teenagers, twentysomethings, and tallish children, report that a group of heroes were captured attacking Damning. But a clever bard among them negotiated the release of the youths from Nugget Scorner by offering themselves instead, on a one-for-one basis. "They kept Karlus, though!" says a shaking-voiced post-pubescent denizen of Nugget Scorner. "The bard woman tried to tell 'em that some pigeon was equal trade, but the bandit lord Rodengo didn't buy it! Karlus said that he was likely gonna die young anyhow, and let the rest of us go on home. Please, heroes of Hammingbell, save them other heroes and grab that somewhat-heroic Karlus while yer at it, I do beg of you!"
They inform you about the layout of the town: a hill fort surrounded by a ring wall. They tell you tales of Rodengo, the far-famed bandit lord, a dangerous warrior with a booming belly laugh; and of his bard, Kittera the Fifth, bearer of the Damningsong tradition of music that stretches back to the lays of the ancient past; and of the bandits of Damning, scurrilous louts who love to sing and dance and raise their squalid children in a sty of immorality. They tell you that they were told that they would be sacrificed on the full moon, to ascend and become one with the blood god in the sky.
While you may pose Nugget Scorner further questions, I'll answer them on the fly--I'd rather the story gets going than we get too too bogged down there. You rest at Karlus' house and prepare spells. Then, even before dawn breaks, you cautiously approach Damning. As the sun rises over the Mountains of Falling Water and Kulshan the White, you see the watchfires of Damning glimmer in the distance. What happens next is for you to decide.
Indeed, I shall provide thee with that information, good Sir Cumference.
Scarecrows abound in the fields of the outlying settlements, and if you need one, you can probably take one either with permission, or without deeply damaging your alignment (if good).
I have an image of Damning, though the artist has made several egregious errors that I will rectify in the following text.
While the general layout above accurately depicts the shape and size of the settlement, it neglects the fact that Damning is built on a spur of a much larger mountain. The Nooksack river winds to the sea at the foot of the hill.
Also missing from this depiction is the pyramid, which would take up roughly the central fifth-sixth of the hill had the artist included it--perhaps they did not out of fear of the curses attached to that structure. A tall, flat-topped ziggurat, it has plenty of space both on the summit and on its terraces for traditional rituals such as the harvest square dances, knot-tyings, the spring music and poetry competitions, and the blood sacrifices of the Full Moon Festival. The walls are earthworks topped with wooden palisades that include a gangway for sentries and defense. Yes, Clayton--earthworks!
Note also an arithmetic error in one of my prior posts: I forgot about Hasta's apprentice while calculating how many people were released to Nugget Scorner. Rather than change that, I will instead say that Hasta's apprentice quickly departed the expedition for a vacation in the Dale of Ferns, where he remains trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare regarding a passport with slightly out-of-date credentials (always read the fine print!).
Clayton will ask permission whenever plausible to do so swiftly, but before leaving the vicinity of Nugget Scorner he will have gathered five scarecrows (though just the human shapes themselves, leaving whatever stakes or branches prop them up) and stuffed them into his bag of holding, which I'm assuming is possible without keeping too close an eye on the bag's capacity (250 cubic feet) given its extradimensional properties and the fact that the scarecrows don't have bones and don't need to breathe. (If it's not, he'll trade a scarecrow's volume of potatoes and give them to the villagers as payment.) If there's as much earthwork in this town as he's been led to believe, he wonders if it may be possible to rescue the hostages without having to spill any blood at all.
But then, Clayton's always wanted his own ziggurat, so he's not terribly opposed to a less pacifistic approach after the apprentices are safe.
Anybody else can go first, and do let me know if there's any reason he shouldn't do this or is needed for something else, but if there's no other plan coming together, Clayton's going to beeline to the wall (waiting for patrols to pass or heading for a spot without a guard nearby if there's a security force, of course) and Earth Glide under to start looking for the apprentices (he should be able to detect them without surfacing if he burrows within 30 feet of them, but would surface on the other side if there was a place to do so undetected to save use of the ability for later, and would start at intuitive places first rather than simply going in a grid or anything). He can bring other people with him, but each one divides the total amount of time he can glide for, so he'd prefer to save it for the prisoners themselves if everybody else can find their own way in.
The DM does not object to your attempting the above plan. Note that there are indeed sentries on the walls, who appear to be keeping alert eyes on the surrounding countryside. The Full Moon Festival tends to put everyone on edge, the guard included.
I agree that it'd be good to get everyone out with as little bloodshed as possible. Just because these people make there livings partially by banditing doesn't mean we should kill them. I like your plan of finding everyone by burrowing to them. But what happens if they're being held somewhere up off of the ground, like on a second floor or in that gnarly looking stone pyramid? Also, you can earthglide for about eleven minutes a day, right? Would it make sense if I wildshape and fly around first to see if I can spot them, and maybe talk to them? Then you could earthglide more precisely in to grab a couple?
Thym is nervous about blowing through too many spells this early in the morning. Things tend to get more complicated than expected.
I'm just going to do that. . . .
Thym transforms into a perfectly ordinary looking crow. He flies first to a tree in the woods near town walls, then to the platform on top of the ziggurat.
From there he flies in a crooked, clockwise loop among the buildings surrounding the base of the ziggurat. As an excuse to pause, and to make it less obvious that he's casing the joint, he half-heartedly feigns interest in fruit trees and old bones as he goes.
Then, he flies a second loop between the walls and the buildings closest to them.
Does he see or hear anything that has to do with the apprentices or the full moon festival?
Lucas is invisible for the next eleven minutes as he begins to prowl around the outskirts of the camp looking for a bandit to charm. If he can find one alone, he sneakily sneaks up behind and taps him or her on the shoulder with a charm spell. If all goes well, he appears from invisibility, smiles back at his new adoring fan, and leads them back to a secluded area to have a little chat.
Thym has plenty of time to scout out the town, with only minor misadventures when various territorial or amorous corvids try to chase him for their various purposes. They are smart enough to recognize a druid after a minute or two, so no real harm done. He notes that the many bones around town are beef bones, relatively fresh.
The top of the ziggurat holds a small crowd of old folks and children who are weaving what looks like a giant wicker basket, reinforced with chains and about the size of a living room (which is slightly smaller than the platform on top of the zig).
On the lower steps, Thym spots the apprentices in a timber prison. It sits on bare earth, which no doubt will interest Clayton.
The outer walls are covered with sentries, especially at the gates, but also with a series of slowly circling pairs on patrol--one to watch the sentries ahead, one to keep an eye on the surrounding area.
That said, while everyone is preparing for the festival, not everyone is working in the village tonight. Lucas encounters a wizened and scarred old peasant driving cattle up toward Damning. He's singing snatches from the repertoire of the Damningsong, has zero chance of spotting the invisible bard, and will get his will save:
He promptly fails and thinks Lucas is the bees' knees. Unwilling to leave his cattle behind, he brings along the two steers as he chatters in an oldmannish way about the subtleties of bovine husbandry. Feel free to interrogate as necessary, he's happy that the festival seems to be progressing on schedule and glad to discuss it with such a good friend.
Thym reports via message what he's seen.
He remains a crow and flies back to Blake. They hole up in underbrush nearby Lucas's conversation.
Blake seems to be gnawing on half a rabbit.
Are Lucas and Thym outside of the wall at this point, or inside?
If the basic layout and the location of the apprentices is communicated to Clayton, he'll ask a few additional details. Namely, approximately how far is it from the timber prison to the town wall? (And how far is the drop-off from the base of the wall to the ground beyond the hill?)
At this point, I guess Thym's probably in crow form outside the wall. I think by the rules crow form doesn't allow you to talk but eff that, Thym can tell you everything he saw.
Lucas has that cattle captive in the woods outside the wall, probably an intelligent distance off the road where you approached Damning.
Rather giving you the distances to the apprentices and walls, I'll say that if Clayton wanted to swim in there, grab the apprentices, and swim out, he probably could. It'd be cutting it a little close, though, so I might throw in a roll to account for the difficulty of convincing the apprentices and especially Karlus to go with you, the fact that you can't get a good look at where you're going before you start, etc. On the other hand, you could easily get in and out with one or two of the prisoners.
Clayton feels that he might need a few minutes to explain the situation to the apprentices, and wouldn't want to rush an introduction to Karlus, as the boy sounds like a decent sort and there's certainly no reason to be rude to him. For this reason, he's going to use Earth Glide to glide directly beneath the cage, but paying careful attention to the radius of his blindsense, which should allow him to detect an antimagic field as an opaque blank cutting into his awareness, which he's rather afraid of after the lich and which has the potential to really ruin his plan, so he's keeping his eyes are open for one, so to speak. (If he encounters such a thing, he'll immediately retreat to consider other options. I figure he'd be more wary of one than usual for the simple reason that their apprentices have not been able to escape.)
Once beneath the cage, he's going to use Wall Of Stone to completely enclose the wooden cage within a stone box that should rise suddenly from the ground on all sides and then clap shut overhead, with a few small slits in the roof for air just in case there's a delay, and only once the cage is enclosed and the apprentices shielded from prying eyes outside that Clayton will pop out of the ground in a relaxed lotus position right in the cage with the apprentices, and with a Light orison cast on a pebble in his hand just for their sake.
As the stone cube (rectangle? cone?) will be there until someone manages to break it down into rubble (doable, but probably not easy or quick) Clayton will have a calm chat with the apprentices first, just to make sure there's not more to the situation than he's aware of and that escape is indeed the best plan. If nothing too surprising is revealed that would change his mind, he should have enough time to prep them for the dive and shouldn't have to work too hard to convince them, with the possible exception of Karlus, unless their motivations are somewhat different than he'd expect due to new information or being drugged or some such. He's also going to take the opportunity to see if any of them seem in some way other than themselves, or acting suspicious, or, you know, anything other than generally traumatized.
If there are no hiccups (a very un-Clayton turn of events) and the apprentices don't say anything that make him think they shouldn't escape just yet, then whenever the denizens of Damning manage to break into this stone cube that has suddenly enveloped their captives, they should find a wooden cage with five figures slumped in it as if dead. Only upon actually getting a decent look would they notice that their captives have been transformed by some dark and powerful magic into scarecrows.
(to see if anything "looks" different about the apprentices)
(to see if anything sounds different about the apprentices)
(to quickly convince them to tell him everything and to be cool about being spirited away through the ground)
Clayton and the apprentices can hear shouts of alarm and concern emanating from many bandit men, women, and children just outside their stone dome. The wall around a prison is usually bad for the prisoners, but not in this case. Meryl, Ester, her turtle companion Turpene, Clayton’s half-loved lab assistant (name her?), Karlus, and Marble’s Pigeon are startled, but Clayton is hopeful that the tremor in his half-loved lab assistant’s a-little-heavier-than-she-used-to-be’s footing might indicate an emotion... perhaps… stronger than merely relief at being rescued? Maybe? And then, wow! She rushes to him and wraps his grimy self in an embrace.
The three women and dorky outland youth gather around and basically everyone is talking at once, but because Meryl has bard levels, she talks more, louder, and faster and is gradually able to elbow the others out of the conversation, which turns into a monologue, reported below:
“We were going to save Karlus and his friends from the banditti but phew, Clayton, these guys are tough! They have a bunch of rogues and warriors and their leader Rodengo might have been able to take us all on by himself. So we’re surrounded and I’m singing but they have a bard and it turned into a kind of battle of the bands and oh gods don’t tell Lucas but I lost badly. Well seeing as I’m probably the most powerful member of the party [Ester and Clayton’s half-loved lab assistant look put off by that remark…] and if I’m not even the strongest bard in the fight well then it’s time to negotiate if possible and I was like, “Parley!” and they were like, “Um, sure!” and then I was like “Give us the kidnapped kids and we won’t tell the Heroes of Hammingbell that you suck and also they’ll probably be mad if you kill us so don’t do that either!” And they were like, “Heck no, we need these kids for a human sacrifice under the light of the full moon or the Dark Lord will swoop down from the heavens and kill us.” And I was like, ok, try again, “Give us the kidnapped kids you shouldn’t be stealing kids and you certainly shouldn’t be kidnapping them!” And they were like, “Yeah we know, we don’t like it, but we need four warm bodies and we’re not gonna sacrifice our own kids and it’s life or death for us and also tradition so just forget about it.”
Ester grimaces—“And then she really put her foot in it.”
Meryl grins—“I did! I solved the problem by offering ourselves in their place and they were like, “Hmm, you seem pretty healthy, but thin, but we’ll try to fatten you up a bit. Deal. So the kids got to go home except Karlus because they said Marble’s Pigeon isn’t a fair trade and the Dark Lord doesn’t do poultry. But three out of four ain’t bad and now we’re figuring that we’ll challenge the Dark Lord to single combat or something when and if he arrives.”
Ester frowns—“That’s Meryl’s plan. So far. Rodengo the Bandit Lord of Damning and Kittera the Keeper of the Damningsong beat the snot out of us and are clearly terrified of the Dark Lord. My plan was to wait for you guys and see if you could rescue us.”
Meryl grins—“Aww, heck, I bet we’d level up twice if we beat him ourselves! Anyway, they’ve been real nice to us and fed us lots of food and the little kids are cute and half the town’s skilled musically so I’ve been learning tunes from the Damningsong. Where’s Lucas?”
Clayton hears all this but he’s also busy processing the fact that his half-loved lab assistant hasn’t quite let him go yet.
Meanwhile, beyond the walls, Lucas has gathered much of the same information from the elderly commoner he encountered driving his cattle up to the town for the festival. He’s learned that Damning is a kind of anarchist commune without a sense of private property, where Rodengo and Kittera are revered and trusted for their power and mastery of tradition rather than because of any laws. He’s learned that the town has been thriving after several decades of decline—when Rodengo took over, he replaced the sacrifice of Damning’s children with the sacrifice of kidnaps, and now everyone is generally happier and glad for this change. Lucas tries to get more info about the Dark Lord, who apparently flies to the town once a year to collect his sacrifices in a roaring black cloud, taking the sacrifices and other offerings of precious gems and metals, while leaving magical items in return. Only once in his memory was the Full Moon Festival interrupted, and the ensuing maelstrom of destruction killed off half the town. He’s still got burn scars on his torso from that night, which he shows Lucas.
(Like... Cheryl? Cheryl. Sure.)
Alright, well, Clayton's going to get go ahead and get the apprentices safely outside of the walls either way, but if he's got enough earth glide time left to get in and out reliably once more, he might still be in the cage whenever the denizens of Damning manage to batter down his wall. If there's time, he'll regroup with the rest of the group and ask their opinion. Do we want to leave the bandits to abandon town or deal with this on their own, wait around nearby to see what happens at moonrise, make ourselves known before then, or just set ourselves up as the sacrifices and see if we're a little harder to eat? (Clayton probably favors remaining hidden nearby and possibly swooping in if something large and rock-deserving shows up or if more innocent-ish sacrifices get brought out, but he's still 50/50 on whether this settlement should even be allowed to continue existing, so he'll defer to the group.)
Clayton manages to snatch out the apprentices, Karlus, and Marble's pigeon but his earth glide is shot for the day before he can reach the cover of the woods. Bursting through the open field surrounding the heavily guarded town means that he and his charges are clearly observed by the wall sentries--who report back to their superiors and grandmas.
I love all of the potential options you outline above, but for Clayton to do anything, his party will need to pipe up and get in on this a little. Marble seems to have lost his enthusiasm with his first post... Lucas? You checkin' this thing? Thym is hovering around but doesn't want to impose. It's cool if play by post is a dead end for this particular game--should we organize a skype game to finish up the scenario? Will I have to drive to the greater Sacramento area and do it in person? Because I'm unemployed and willing, but my car is as old as I am and the odometer crapped out at 204+++ before I bought it and I might have to get a different car before risking that journey.
I don't know about the overall direction of this game, but if you're unemployed and willing you should definitely drive to the greater Sacramento area at some point anyway. You've already missed our 114 degree days for the year, so the timing's good! (Unless that's what you wanted to experience in lovely California. Very different from the PNW in at least that specific way)
Just got a new-old car, much more confident that I would make it if I set out upon that journey. Will do, one of these days--we have a bit of a Dire Rat infestation since the neighbor moved out and his rodent moved into our house, and no level one adventurers have appeared to clear out the nest as their first quest. Can't leave the birds alone--and would very much prefer bringing K along. But I definitely want to do that soon!
Marble Man Traitor