The town of Galvinston was founded in DR 1252 DR by Pietro Galvin. The story goes that in late 1248 DR, Pietro was playing a game of dice with a priest of Grumbar named Rolf, and several others whose names are lost to time. In this game Pietro won a set of mithril plates from one of the nameless players. The plates, previously only valued by the metal itself depicted a tale of a great battle in which the hero is cut, and appears to bleed into a river, causing the ground below to become seeded with the metal which made the plates.
Well, it was at that moment that fate intervened in the life of Pietro Galvin, because Rolf the priest recognized the images on the plates as depictions of his god Grumbar. He told Pietro that he knew of a legendary battle that Grumbar fought against Malaar the beast lord which is what the plates must be depicting. If they were able to figure out from the depictions where the battle took place, they could simply sink a few shafts in the ground and the Mithril would practically come pouring out.
Pietro and Rolf spent months researching this legend, and its possible basis in fact, trying to put names on the places depicted in the images. After a year of gathering information, stories, and leads, they finally decided that the battle must have taken place in the hills along the river Ijssen in the untamed lands of Vaasa.
Having determined a site for their new mine, Pietro and Rolf set about pulling together what they needed to setup a mining concern along the river. First, they convinced a group of dozen dwarven miners to accompany them completely on the strength of the legend, and the promise of the riches that awaited them there. Next, they spread the news throughout the lands surrounding the downriver ends of the Ijssen, in The Ride, and The Moonsea region, trying to draw people upriver to the promise of mithril mines.
Once the seed of their adventure was planted, Rolf and Pietro moved to Vaaasa accompanied by the 12 Dwarven miners and a minor contingent of 25 hired guards and tradesmen. After a brief time spent clearing Orcs and the like out of the area the mining began.
Taking full advantage of the presense of a priest of Grumbar, the mining locations were chosen through the use of simple divinations. The priest would accomplish this by use of an Augury spell, casting the bones to determine where the best place to drop a new mine shaft would be. It is this method of mining which gave the town it's more common name, Bonesville. Every time a new shaft was to be sunk, Pietro would have the priest consult the bones, after which they would begin digging in a new area.
Unfortunately, this proved to be only moderately successful. After six months of digging shafts, the miners finally struck something worth mining: copper. Another six months of digging revealed that the land around the river Ijssen only held copper and iron. So, after a year of mining, and the final hopes of finding any mithril smashed, the Dwarven miners left.
However, Pietro and Rolf could not accept the dwarven assessment that the land would never yield mithril, so they continued to dig new 'boneholes' as they were called, hoping that the next would stumble onto the vein of mithril that they were convinced lay beneath the ground. During all of this digging, more and more people were coming up the river in search of an opportunity to share in the mining wealth, and before they knew it, they had a modest town, with reasonable trade, and Pietro the gambler found himself the despotic lord of his own city state.
Pietro finally died in 1293 DR without ever finding the mithril he sought. In spite of this fact, the town has been moderately successful. Its proximity to the river led to relatively easy lanes of shipping the seemingly endless supplies of copper and iron downriver to The Ride, and eventually to the Moonsea region. Because of the long winters, and the dangerous territories that must be passed in order for cargo to reach the Moonsea, the town only exports its wears three times/year, sending large, well armed caravans of barges down the river into The Ride, where they are met by caravans from Phlan, who carry the wares the rest of the way South.
Village of Galvinston a.k.a. Bonesville Population: 597 (humans 82%, dwarves 10%, half-elves 2%, half-orcs 2%, gnomes 2%, other 2%)
Government: Constable Hired by Mining Coalition
Religions: Auril, Grumbar, Chauntea
Imports: Manufactured Goods, Alcohol
Exports: Precious Metals, Food
Alignment: NG, N, CN
Galvinston Grainery & Livestock
Mr. Farth (Male Human Expert 2 - 40)
Mrs. Farth (Female Human Commoner 1 - 36)
Nicolas Farth (Male Human Commoner 1 - 20)
Morn Farth (Male Human Commoner 1 - 18)
Sorenson Mercantile & Exchange
Hectar Sorenson (Male Human Commoner 1 - 35)
Felicia Sorenson (Female Human Commoner 1 - 28)
Bethany Sorenson (Female Human Commoner 1 - 17)
Nathaniel Sorenson (Male Human Commoner 1 - 15)
Forsythe Sorenson (Male Human Commoner 1 - 15)
Galvinston Saw Mill & Woodworking
Mr. Miller (Male Human Expert 2 - 30)
Mrs. Miller (Female Half-Elf Commoner 1 - 45)
Jason Miller (Male Quarter-Elf Commoner 1 - 12)
Clarise Miller (Female Quater-Elf Commoner - 8)
Galvinston Smithy
Mr. Smith (Male Half-Ogre Expert 3 - 25)
Mrs. Smith (Female Human Commoner 1- 35)
Jim Smith (Male Quarter Ogre Expert 1 - 15)
Jane Smith (Female Quarter Ogre Commoner 1 - 13)
Church of Auril
Mistress Lucinda Frostfell (Female Human Cleric 4 - 40)
Shayne Sorenson (Male Human Adept 1 - 16)
Town Hall
Constable Varg (Male Half-Orc Fighter 1/Aristocrat 1 - 25)
Treasurer Blaine (Male Halfling Rogue 1 - 32)
Mercenary 1 (Male Human Warrior 1 - 19)
Mercenary 2 (Male Dwarf Warrior 1 - 68)
Mercenary 3 (Female Human Warrior 1 - 22)
Mercenary 4 (Male Half-Elf Warrior 1 - 30)
Mercenary 5 (Male Gnome Warrior 1 - 40)
Mining Office
Tharn Rolf of Grumbar (Male Dwarf Cleric 3 - 98)
Asard of Grumbar (Male Svirfneblin Cleric 1 - 85)
25 Dwarven Miners (Male Dwarf Expert 1 - 80)
30 Guards, Laborers, Tradesmen and Functionaries.
Cats Cradle Brothel & Saloon
Mrs. Tala Macroy (Female Human Commoner 1 - 38)
Rulac (Male Human Warrior 1 - 40)
Shizy Macroy (Male Human Cleric 1 - 19)
Efra Macroy (Female Human Commoner 1 - 20)
Hasana Macroy (Female Tiefling Commoner 1 - 14)
The "Girls"
Rose (Female Half-orc Commoner 1 - 27)
Pearl (Female Human Commoner 1 - 22)
Gypsy (Female Half-Elf Commoner 1 - 62)
Moira (Female Dwarf Commoner 1 - 60)
Blythe Bandele Inn
Mr. Farren (Male Gnome Commoner - 111)
Mrs. Farren (Female Gnome Commoner - 108)
Mariasha Kiyoshi-Farren (Female Gnome Rogue 1 - 41)
Meeshani Kiyoshi-Farren (Female Gnome Commoner 1 - 34)
Mirushal Kiyoshi-Farren (Female Gnome Commoner 1 - 28)
Summary of events that lead to the death of Forsythe Sorenson.
Tarsakh 27, 1295 DR
Location: Town of Galvinston, & Ruined Manor House in the Eastern Galena Mountains
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Adept 1
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Warrior 1
Mariasha - Gnome Female Expert 1
Raindrop - Human Female Warrior 1
Shizy - Human Male Adept 1
Susan - Human Female Warrior 1
NPC Dramatis Personae
Forsythe Sorenson – Human Male Aristocrat 1
Jim Smith – Quarter Ogre Male Expert 1
Jane Smith – Quarter Ogre Female Expert 1
Wilhelm Trapper – Human Male Commoner 1
Wilhelm Trapper, one of your best friends and a member of the general collection of human kids in Galvinston recently returned from an early spring check of his father's traps. Along the way, he and his father stumbled along the amazingly well-preserved remains of an old manor house approximately a half days hike away in the mountains to the west. Wilhelm told this story to his best friend Jim Smith, the town's biggest bully and general leader of all things pertaining to mischief, mostly due to the Ogre blood in his family background. They then both got the grand idea that it would be fun to hike out to the old house and explore it like all the famous adventurers you hear about in bed time stories. Over the next few days, they secretly planned the trip, cajoling, bribing or intimidating other kids in town to join them on their grand adventure. They dubbed the group of six children the "Circle of Bonesville" and set forth. Little did they know that their supposedly covert planning had overheard by some of the slightly more responsible juvenile non human's in town. Those prying ears felt that they ought to follow the human kids at a safe distance to provide some supervision or protection in case the hiking trip turned into something less than a bright spring day’s entertainment.
A gang of eight kids met up on the outskirts of town near a game path shortly after dawn. After the usual delay that occurs when you try to get a large group of children moving, they made their way into the woods with Wilhelm Trapper in the lead and Forsythe Sorenson having declared himself the de-facto leader. Following quietly and out of sight were Mariasha Kiyoshi-Farren and Dendrail Iceburrow. After several hours of uneventful travel the group was surprised when a male wolf crossed their path. Slowing to a halt, a few of the kids went ahead to see what might be going on and overheard the growling sounds of perhaps several more wolves. The male wolf appeared from the nearby brush growling which prompted Susan Goatherdson to respond by throwing a rock directly at it. The rock smashed into the wolves’ skull and it charged the young woman in retaliation. This is when events started to get sticky for the group of kids.
The wolf managed to get in a single nip and knocked Susan to the ground right before her brother Basil used an Obscuring Mist spell right in the middle of the melee. The conjuration had a two-fold effect, it clouded a large portion of the nearby area in a thick mist that provided a solid defense against the wolves, but it also made it impossible for anyone to use ranged weapons inside the effect. Chaos ensued inside of the mist as the kids went on the offensive, tried to get away from the melee or collided with each other when moving around. Strangely a young dwarf and a gnome came up from behind the group and tried to help out with the pending disaster. Things got a little sticky with several of he kids ending up on the ground either due to a collision or a wolf and visibility near zero. Forsythe tried to play battle commander from the rear, ordering everyone around, and while Wilhelm, Jim and Jane mostly listened to him, everyone else mostly ignored him. When all of the dust had settled, only two of the kids had been bitten by the wolves and both the wolves and their cubs had been killed in self-defense.
Shizy bandaged up the wound on Susan and Jim while Wilhelm rigged up a hanging apparatus to bleed the corpses and keep both predators and scavengers away from the bodies until the group returned from their trip. Wilhelm, being the son of a trapper, was quite skilled at recognizing the value of the wolf pelts and how to properly handle them. The oddest bit of the battle wads that just as soon as the dwarf and gnome shoed up and provide ranged weapon support against the attacking wolves, they vanished up the trail. All of the kids recognized both of them from town, but could not figure out why they had followed along on the adventure, interfered with the battle and then ran off again. After a short break, everyone gathered up their gear and continued on the trail. Several hours later, the kids could make out the exterior walls and part of the roof of the manor house. They stopped to take a break for lunch before exploring.
The ruins of the mostly intact Manor House were behind a large ten foot stone wall covered with freshly grown vines. Looking through the rusted front gate revealed an extremely overgrown garden just inside the fence and he remains of what must have been a green house. The Manor House itself was mostly intact on the ground floor, but became less and less so as it rose up to its full three stories. The ground floor windows were all covered with intact shades, while the second floor had no remaining shades and was full of broken windows. It looked like a nearby ice pack had recently receded during the unusually warm spring and had revealed this long hidden structure. Basil guess that the building was several hundred years of age an was likely a summer vacation home for some Vaasan noble before it fell into despair and then was swallowed by a forming glacier.
Susan was anxious to explore and climbed up the wall quickly, only to discover that the top of he wall was covered in shards of glass that cut her hands up pretty badly. As a result, she had to bash the glass in a small area so that it would be safe for others to climb up. As the kids started to go up and over the wall, Giant Bees started to angrily fly out of the derelict green house and attack. Just like before, the strange dwarf and gnome suddenly appeared from nowhere and started providing defensive support. Forsythe started ordering everyone over the walls, but not before Jim tried to unsuccessfully smash down the gate. Basil and Raindrop both ending up getting stung pretty bad before all three of the Giant Bees were squished and everyone was over the walls into the garden area. Susan and Forsythe ended up getting into a shouting match over some silly argument which broke out into a fist fight. Jane got really upset that her boyfriend was wrestling with another girl and then perturbed when Forsythe used the conflict as a excuse to kiss Susan right on the lips. Eventually everyone pulled the two kids apart and stopped them from causing each other any permanent damage.
Raindrop did manage to discover a honeycomb full of honey inside the green house, but didn’t tell anyone until after she had eaten half of it. She did learn that the honey had minor healing properties, relieving the pains of the bee stings, so Shizy collected the remaining portions, gave one to Susan to fix up her hands and saved one for later in case of trouble. The dwarf and gnome disappeared again after the battle and scouted around the entire yard area looking for any signs of trouble before introducing themselves and Dendrail and Mariasha. They had followed along when they overheard all of the kids talking about the grand adventure. The duo figured that someone ought to follow along to keep anyone from really getting hurt. Of course, this annoyed everyone, especially Forsythe who kept acting like he was in charge. Yet, they quickly realized that it was far too late to complain and the duo wasn’t going to stop them from exploring, just try to keep them out of trouble.
Deciding to push ahead, the group opened up the jammed front door of the house and went inside. The interior of the ground floor was a complete mess. All of the furniture was rotting or collapsed when it was touched. There were holes all over the main floor and more were created when various rotted boards broke while being walked on. The only items of note on the ground floor were a grand stairwell leading up and the remains of the kitchen. The old stove had become home to a pair of bats when made their displeasure known and fly away rather than cause trouble. When three of the kids climb on the stairs at the same time, they ended up collapsing even after Basil had declared them safe. It turns out that were rotted from the inside by termites and some of the kids got a few scrapes and bruises from the fall. Jim boosted both Basil and Susan up to the second floor for them to look around. The remains of an old painting on the stone infrastructure of the house were at the top of the stairs, but it was mostly faded away. Basil concurred that the second floor was going to be even more treacherous that the first and no more than two people could share the same ten foot square section without risk of it collapsing.
The group of kids carefully made their way through the second floor and again found nothing more than junk and rotting debris. However, when Mariasha quietly made hear way up to the attic she heard voices in a strange language. When she went to warn everyone, they all wanted to go see, but she managed to keep them all from just running upstairs blindly and instead try to move quietly. Once Basil got close enough, it was clear that the voices were arguing in Sylvan. A group of two creatures wanted something of value from a single creature who would not give it up. The kids tried to move closer to get a better idea of what was going on until one of them miss-stepped and made a huge noise. The conversation suddenly stopped and everything in the attic went quiet. When Forsythe sent Jim to investigate, the poor kid was attacked by a pair of apparently invisible Fey wielding spiked chains. When Forsythe charged into help his friend, exhibiting the first signs of foolhardy bravery all day, he was struck down almost immediately, collapsing in a pool of blood.
Jane immediately charged in after Forsythe, dropping her weapon, desperate to see if he was alive. The rest of the kids rushed in shortly behind with Susan and Raindrop taking the lead, each going after a different target with Dendrail and Mariasha shortly behind them trying to provide ranged support. Wilhelm brought up the rear, hoping to get a clear shot from across the attack while Basil was undecided on just exactly what he should be doing. It wasn’t until Susan was attacked that Basil charged in to try and save his sister, using one of the most powerful offensive spells taught to him by Horace, Burning Hands, against the Shadar-Kai. Shizy tried to stay out of the fight, heading over to Forsythe and unfortunately confirming that he was indeed dead from the impressive blow.
What followed next was a frustrating attempt to try to keep the Shadar-Kai from disappearing into the shadows and try to land any type of damage on them. Jim was the next to suffer from the attacks of the strange dark Fey. Luckily his body was pulled from the battle by Susan and stabilized by Basil, keeping him from dying. Raindrop kept up her assault and paid for it with a horrible wound. Yet Shizy was right behind her, providing the healing touch of her goddess Sharess to stave off any chance of peril. Mariasha and Dendrail tried to keep up the ranged assault, but either kept missing outright or interfered with by their friends getting in the way of their shots. Things were just not looking all that good with two of the ten allies down and little damage being done to either Fey.
Finally, several smaller blows starting to land, mostly by Raindrop and Mariasha on the same Shadar-Kai and it went down. The other decided that discretion was the better part of valor, stopped attacking and vanished into the shadows. The kids tried their best to stop it from escaping, but to no avail. The entire fracas took less than a minute, but it left Forsythe dead, Jim unconscious and Wilhelm barely standing. Shizy did they best she could to administer first aid with what little magic and the magical honey, but that still left Wilhelm pretty beat up. The kids started poking around the strange Fey and discovered a pouch of coins, a chunk of obsidian as well as the masterwork suit of studded leather armor and spiked chain it wielded so effectively. Everyone quickly decided that they had better take back the body of the Shadar-Kai to town in order to be able to explain the death of Forsythe with some sort of proof of the cause.
Meanwhile, Basil started to look around for the strange single voice that had been present before the battle. He was surprised when a small Brownie appeared from the rafters and said hello. The brownie introduced himself as Sage Salvias of the Seelie Court. He apologized profusely for the death of Forsythe, but did mention that the kids should not have gotten involved. When asked, he said that resorting Forsythe was beyond his power, but that he did owe all of the children a single favor for saving his life. To contact him to return the favor, they would need to speak his full name while facing east into a westbound wind. Sage would appear nearby as soon as he was able. It might take several days for him to disengage from other obligations to provide assistance. When inquiring about why the Shadar-Kai were hassling him, Sage said he was not at liberty to share that information, even to his saviors. Sage then politely said his goodbyes and fly out of a hole in the roof of the Manor House and off into the distance.
The difficult task of determining just was to do next was then upon the nine remaining kids. After much discussion it was decided that nothing less that the truth would suffice. They would all head back to Galvinston and go straight to see Constable Varg. Litters were cut and assembled to haul the extremely injured Wilhelm as well as the corpses of both the Shadar-Kai and Forsythe. The trip back to Galvinston was very tedious, yet Wilhelm still demands that the group collect the remains of the wolves killed earlier that morning since the fur is so valuable. The numerous delays and added time that it takes to haul the three litters amongst has the group arriving back into town well after dark. Several parents have obviously been very worried when one of the mercenaries hired by Constable Varg as a security detail finds the group as they exit the woods. Upon seeing the group, the gruff dwarf mumbles something about a bunch of darn fool kids ruining his drinking and gaming for the night and begrudgingly leads them directly to the Constables office.
A small group of parents waits inside of the office including the Sorensons (Forsythe) , Smiths (Jim & Jane) , Trappers (Wilhelm) , and Farrens (Mariasha) Noticeably absent are the Goatherdsons (Basil & Susan) and Macroys (Shizy). All of the parents are visibly relieved that their children are safe, except for the Sorensons who completely break down upon seeing the body of their son Forsythe. Eventually, everyone is asked to tell their version of the story privately to the Constable before being sent home for the evening with their parents. The Sorensons immediately demand that the remaining killer be tracked down and made to pay for its crimes. The Constable agrees to send out a patrol first thing in the morning to the remains of the Manor House to see what might be done. Individual punishments are left to the parents, but the Constable makes it clear that if the shenanigans of the kids impair the finances of the town, that the individual parents will have to pay an extra tax to find it. The Sorenson family immediately responds by putting up a 50gp bounty for the escaped Shadar-Kai.
Tarsakh 28-30, 1295 DR
Constable Varg and his mercenaries are unable to find any remains of the escaped Shadar-Kai, but are able to correlate the story of the children fairly accurately. They enlist the aid of the town wizard and Alchemist Horace in a controlled burn of the derelict Manor House. All that is left after the magically enhanced fire is the stone foundation and the over grown gardens. While the Sorenson family demands justice for their children, the bounty is never claimed. Instead they take their fury out by raising prices at the Mercantile for the families of the children involved with the death of their sun. None of the children involved receive any major punishment other than being told to never venture outside of the village except under adult supervision.
During these few days, Mariasha tries to play the role of bursar and to see about divvying up the spoils of the adventure, just like the heroes of old. While several of the kids agree that this is a most excellent idea, Susan is livid. She feels that all of the gear should go to Forsythe’s family to compensate them for the death of their son. Basil makes the startling discovery that the bag of coins are not from any local denomination he has ever seen. In fact, they do not even appear to be true gold coins. They are stamped with strange fey profiles in an unknown alphabet and language other than Sylvan. He is not sure that any of the coins should be dispensed as anyone in town might question their origins and start probing where the might have originated. In the end, no immediate decision is made about what to do with the items acquired from the fallen Shadar-Kai.
Summer, 1295 DR
Wilhelm Trapper eventually is well enough to clean and tan the wolf hides in time for the Mid-Summer fair where he sells most of them and secretly divvies the money amongst the rest of his gang. He keeps two of the wolf cub pelts which he makes into slippers and leaves anonymously for Susan Goatherdson as a sign of his continued secret affections. Meanwhile, Jane Smith blames Susan Goatherdson personally for the death of her boyfriend and goes out of her way to make life miserable for the young girl. Everyone else, including Jim Smith, probably just to spite his younger, smarter sisters, all become fast friends and spend the entire summer season hanging out together and getting into all kinds of local mischief, until the changing weather makes idle amusement a thing of the past.
Summary of major events between the Prologue and Chapter 1
1295/Year of the Ormserpent
Galvinston responds to the Fey killing of Forsythe. Sorenson family offer a bounty for the escaped Shadar-Kai which never is claimed. Smith family asked to a import a small stock of Cold Iron to provide a few weapons for the local militia. Sorenson family applies tax to all goods sold through their Mercantile applied against those families whose children they blamed for the tragedy.
1296/Year of the Black Hound
Unexplained mine cave-in buries two bone holes. Iron and Nickel mining grinds to a complete halt until new shafts are dug. Only a single shipment of the usual three departs Galvinston for Vaasa. Numerous families pack up and leave town, causing financial issues for all town businesses.
1297/Year of the Singing Skull
Galvinston mine shipments return to normal, but Drow spotted by several caravans heading north. The Drow never engage or harass the caravans, they just seems to be watching for someone or something. Trackers are called in to find where the Drow are coming from, but no signs are ever found.
1298/Year of the Pointed Bone
Wandering Svirfneblin is hired by mining company to divine the location of metal. This sets off a flurry of digging around the mines. More bone-hole are sunk this year than any other. Yields of Iron and Nickel soar causing the population to return to near what it was before the accidents.
1299/Year of the Claw
Galvinston is rocked by a scandal when the old Sorenson kid moves into the Temple of Auril with Priestess. It becomes clear that Shayne Sorenson turned to Mistress Lucinda Frostfell for affection in response to his brothers death several years before. The Sorenson family can do little to stop their son thanks due to the political power the Temple of Auril holds in Bonesville.
1300/Year of the Starfall
Galvinston revels in a major Copper Strike thanks to Asard of Grumbar, the Svirfneblin hired two years ago. As a result, the Zhentarium pay their first visit to Galvinston asking for protection money. The Constable and the town militia drive the extortionists out of town, but stop short of killing any of them. Many new faces are seen in town once Winter breaks, hoping to find their fortunes in the mines. A major festival is planned for Mid-Summer to celebrate the town's new found mineral wealth as well as the end of the century.
Chapter One – Raiders of Galath’s Roost
Location: Town of Galvinston, & Ruined Guard Post in the Western Galena Mountains
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 1
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Ranger 1
Mariasha - Gnome Female Rogue 1
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 1
Shizy - Human Male Cleric 1
Susan - Human Female Barbarian 1
NPC Dramatis Personae
Jim Smith – Quarter Ogre Male Expert 1
Jane Smith – Quarter Ogre Female Expert 1
Wilhelm Trapper – Human Male Commoner 1
Constable Varg – Half-Orc Male Fighter 5
Mid-Summer, 1300 DR
A rather large carnival for the size of Galvinston has been set up in one of the fallow fields south of crossroads to celebrate the mines striking copper earlier in the year. Almost all of the town’s population has turned out to celebrate this momentous event knowing that it could only server to improve the future prosperity of the small mining town. Numerous booths filled with games of skill or chance as well as more activities as a bake sale or a kissing both lines the fields. Everyone has chipped into provide a huge feast with the summer harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables, local livestock and hunted wild animals fill the platters of everyone in attendance. The general attitude of the town and its inhabitants is one of hope and contentment as they enjoy the festival and all entertainment it provides. Suddenly, shout are heard above the general hustle and bustle and eyes turn to see a blood smeared female mine guard running into camp as collapsing. Almost immediately thereafter trees on the outskirts of the field suddenly shift into strange hairy humanoids that attack anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.
Several members of that fateful expedition to the old manor house five years ago responded to the initial shout. The injured guard was none other than Susan Goatherdson’s best friend Rayina. Something had attacked and killed all of the mine guards except for her shortly after sunset and was now attacking the carnival attendees as well. The aforementioned band of reluctant heroes jumped to the challenge and moved to defend the residents of their home town from the unknown attackers. Constable Varg and his band of hired mercenaries also moved to take the offensive. With everyone’s help, including the smart thinking of Wilhelm Trapper to assist with crowd control, the dozen or so attackers were dispatched quickly with only a single fatality and only limited casualties amongst the revelers. A more detailed interrogation of Rayina revealed that her attackers had made of with all of the refined copper stock taken from the mine since the last trade caravan had left about a month ago. The mining consortium felt that the risk was too great to send anyone after the stolen ore until morning. As a result, Constable Varg put out an open call for all interested parties wishing to provide aid to meet at the mines at dawn to track down the bandits.
Some of our heroes had other ideas and as the friends assembled after he battle to compare notes and treat their injuries a plan of action was being formed. Mariasha and Dendrail were going to strike out while the trail was hot and leave marks on the trail to be followed at dawn. The duo figured that they knew the surrounding area very well and that darkness was not inhibit their natural abilities to see in the dark. The rest of the gang camped out at Susan’s cabin for the evening since they had to carry the unconscious woman back to her bed after she continued to seethe and rage after all of the raiding humanoids had been dispatched. Even her brother Basil was determined to go along, more because his perennially lazy master had figured out a means to avoid going on the mission himself by delegating the wispy boy as the official mining wizard liaison outside of Galvinston. Only Jim and Jane Smith were going to stay behind, more due to the potential economic windfall of the search party hastily purchasing armor and weapons for the chase. There was also much discussion about the coincidence of the mine ore being stolen the day before Shieldmeet when the miners would certainly be renegotiating their contracts in light of the recent copper strike.
Shieldmeet, 1300DR
Morning saw the arrival of a half-dozen miners eager to assist with recovering their hard earned ore, in addition to the four mercenaries, Varg and the seven overconfident adventurers. Once it was known that Dendrail and Mariasha had defied his implied orders and had scouted ahead overnight, Varg was livid. He and Susan had a few choice words for each other before hitting the road in search of the ore. The path leads down the mining road to the main fork to town and then north along the major trade route. After a few miles, the tracks lead to a barely used game trail and eventually to an abandoned wagon. Mariasha and Dendrail were busily exploring the wagon for clues when the rest of the group arrived. Varg had left groups of mercenaries and miners at various turn-offs on the road in order to send for more reinforcements. As a result, only the band of novice adventurers was present to learn that the wagon had been unloaded onto two different groups of horses who had split up and went in different directions.
Varg sat down to eat his lunch and wait for backup, but the heroes were keen on pushing ahead against the half-orcs better judgment. After some discussion, the group headed north along the path that seemed to parallel the valley ridge rather than head along the eastern path that leads higher into the mountains. After a few hours or uneventful hiking, someone spotted what appeared to be a Snow Spider munching on the corpse of a horse up the trail. As the group prepared to flush out the creature, another jumped out from the woods only to be cut down by Susan’s halberd before being able to cause any harm. The original Snow spider swiftly moved to attack and was also cut down just as fast by Susan. After checking to make sure no other of the arachnids was nearby, the group moved to inspect the dead horse. The equine had clearly been killed by the spiders and had been used to haul some of the copper ore. In fact, four bars of the ore we under the fallen corpse that were left behind in the apparent rush to collect it after the bandits had been attacked by the spiders. The trail clearly showed that the rides had to dismount and lead their horses in order to bear the additional weight of the extra ore. The body was fresh enough that the raiders were likely only an hour to two away, so the group headed up the trail in a rush.
Lo and behold, less than an hour later, the group came upon eight raiders leading their horses up the trail. While they had hoped to surprise the bandits, something gave them away and the planned ambush turned into a major battle. The bandits consisted of four half-orc and two human mercenaries and a human cleric and wizard to provide arcane and divine support. They all wore expensive armor and wielded quality weapons, both melee and ranged. In addition, they all appeared to wear the same colors and insignia consistent with the Zhentarium and the worship of Bane. The fight was certainly going to be a brutal affair with a band of religious fanatics. The reality turned out to be just as accurate as the estimate and the battle was indeed fierce and almost deadly to several members of the novice band of adventurers. Their enemy was extremely coordinated in their attacked and had skilled spellcaster providing both direct spell support as well as counterspell skills. Those details coupled with the half of the enemy being armed with quality ranged weapons made for a potential recipe for disaster.
Nevertheless, the novitiates managed to overcome the extremely disadvantageous odds stacked against them without taken a single fatality on their side. They paid for the victory with their blood and pain with critical wounds being taken by all six of the friends. After bandaging their numerous wounds they began to take stock of the situation. A quick inventory of the eight horses revealed a dozen bars of copper ore on each. The still cooling Zhentarium corpses contained numerous weapons, armor and a handful of coins, but nothing that would explain their involvement with mine heist, who had taken the other half of the ore or the connection between the two groups. A discussion of how to proceed with returning the ore, dealing with the bodies and distribution of the deceased wealth broke out into quite a serious disagreement bordering on an argument on how to proceed in light of just exactly how injured everyone really was. It would seem that this time tested batch of friends were going to another type of trial, this time for their friendship rather than their lives.
Shieldmeet, 1300DR (Continued)
Surprisingly, a lone Zhent raider had surrendered at the end of the battle to avoid being cut down and killed. Initially the Zhent claimed that the group was all fleeing from an attack on their caravan, but when pushed with the facts he admitted that they were all part of a group of raiders employed by Zhentil Keep. After some extended discussion, it became clear that did not know anything about motivations behind the attack other than theft or if anyone from either the mining consortium or the town had helped out. After much discussion about what to do, Mariasha was sent ahead on a single captured horse to bring Constable Varg back to the scene of the battle. Everyone else assisted with building a sled to haul back any gear or ore that could not be carried on the remaining horses for fear of collapsing under the weight.
Just as everything was ready to head down the trail, Mariasha returned with the Constable a few of the town mercenaries and many spare horses. The various ore and gear was distributed amongst the group and taken back down the trail to where the abandoned wagon had been left. Ore was offloaded from the horses to the wagon and everyone made their way back to town, hoping to arrive before any of the contract renewals for the past year were signed. On the way, Varg queried everyone with the details of the battle. The canny half-Orc had immediately taken possession of the Zhent prisoner and had tied him on the back of his own horse for later questioning. He continued to chastise the group, which he still considered kids, which they could have gotten themselves killed with their foolishness. Both Mariasha and Susan stood up for the actions of the group to the Constable, although Susan’s responses were a bit more reactionary than cogent.
Everyone arrived back in town near sunset and were quite annoyed to learn that the contracts had all been signed at Noon as per custom. The stole ore was sent back up to the mines, while the horses were delivered to the local livery for identification. The Constable was quite reluctant to give up any of the gear taken from the Zhentarium, but had no local precedent for ruling against it and had to allow the spoils of battle to go to the victors. He was much more successfully with the horses, having them be examined by local experts to see if any of them had been stolen from the mines or taken from a local community member. He did agree that if no clear owner could be found, that they would given to the newfound town heroes much like the rest of the loot. He then departed to the town jail to deposit the prisoner, but not before asking everyone to meet at sun-up in the ten square the following day to go after the other half of the stolen ore.
Several of the new heroes were sure the Constable was up to no good with the horses, so they sent Dendrail to mark them in case of any foul play. They then all headed back to Susan’s hovel to try to catch a few hours of sleep and maybe recover a little from the external difficult battle earlier in the day. Everyone was so exhausted that they did little more than count up the coins taken from the Zhent Raiders and roughly collate the rest of the booty before collapsing into a much deserved sleep, knowing that the following day would likely be just as tenuous and potentially life threatening as the day that had just ended.
Eleasisas 1, 1300DR
Dawn brought a new day, but many of the former children were still trying to deal with the wounds of battle from the day before. Mariasha took a short stop over at the Smith to speak with Jim and Jane about some future work removing Zhent symbols from the looted armor and weapons as well as to stock up on some arrows. The rest of the group also tried to stop by the Temple of Auril to inquire about some healing. They hoped that the high priestess would provide her services gratis thanks to their role recovering half of the ore, but she would have nothing to do with. Her prices were extremely steep financially or relatively cheap religiously, only requiring regular attendance at church services. Only Susan agreed to pay such a price, commenting as she left the Temple fully healed, that she only agreed to attend services, she did not agree to actually believe anything that was being preached to her.
The ride from town back to the where the abandoned wagon was completely uneventful. Constable Varg had brought along four of his seasoned mercenaries in case additional trouble was discovered along the way. The other fork in the trail lead up into the eastern mountains and after several hours of climbing reached a small peak covered with the remains of last season’s snow. The group almost immediately found themselves under attack from a quartet of Taer’s, a much smaller, but equally as dangerous, species of giants. The creatures were dispatched without much effort, with only a few mercenaries being injured in the process. The worst injury of all was to Constable Varg’s pride, for failing to completely hit a single Taer that he engaged in the initial few seconds of battle. Susan, who had two of the kill’s herself, could not resist rubbing it in with the scarred battle veteran.
When it came time to head down the trail on the other side, Varg was ready to head out, but Susan was sure that treasure could be found nearby after a comment made by Dendrail about the size of the hunting party. Susan and Raindrop stuck around looking for the lair, with Mariasha staying nearby as a look out while everyone else rode ahead. After only a very short period of time they were rewarded for their tenacity. The discovered a small three room cave filled with the remains of several unfortunate travelers either had been used or were being saved for meals. Amongst the remains they found quite a large collection of silver and gold coins. After collecting up all of the treasure in saddle bags they started to make their way down the trail only to hear the booming sounds from the trail below accompanied by rising dust.
As it turns out, the warm summer thaw had released a large boulder which had rolled down the mountain and caused a landslide across the trail a short distance below. The slide had completely taken out a pair of the mercenaries and might have gotten Basil as well if Constable Varg hadn’t jumped in to save the young wizard and shielded the youth with his own body. Varg paid for the rescue with critical injuries to his torso and skull. Shizy felt the wounds were too bad for the Constable to continue and the half-orc wasn’t even conscious to argue in his defense. In the end, the last two mercenaries agreed to take the Constable back to town for treatment and the six adventurers would continue on ahead in search of the rest of the stolen copper ore.
The rest of the ride down the other side of the ridge was quiet, but the trail split into three different directions on the other side of a stream. As the group was trying to sort out which direction to take, Mariasha sensed the group was being watched. When she went off to investigate, she walked by what looked like a hunter blind. Rather than trying to investigate solo, she went back to the rest of the group and they tried to sneak up to surprise whoever might be inside. Much to their annoyance, the blind was devoid of any occupants. Strangely, the blind was sent up to provide cover in all directions, not just one or two. The inhabitant was somewhere nearby because the blind was still warm. The young adventurers’ broke up into several groups, hoping to catch the unknown watchers in between them. However, they made one mistake, sending Raindrop back alone of gather up the horses.
The poor girl was suddenly under attack by a pair of darkly clad strangers wielding hand crossbows. The attackers were strangely covered from head to toe, including hoods, masks and gloves. Yet, for as professional looking as they seemed, they were no match for Susan under the influence of one of her deadly rages. In fact, the novice heroes spent more time trying to calm Susan down than Susan did killing the two assailants. Much to their complete surprise, the two corpses turned out to be none other than a pair of Drow. This worried everyone as it suggested that the Zhentarium had perhaps been in cahoots with the Drow in the raid on Galvinston. After stripping the bodies of anything of value, the corpses were quickly buried in the woods before heading out on the trail.
Unfortunately choosing which direction to travel was more like a comedy of errors than a correct decision. At first the group headed east along the stream trail until it became clear after short distance that the tracks were misdirection. Then they went the opposite direction down the west stream trail and discovered that it too was also meant to throw off any tracks. Left with only one remaining choice and with several wasted hours from poor choices, the group headed down the remaining trail which lead into the middle of the lightly forested valley floor. Several hours later, and with sunset only an hour or so away, the group reached a clearing in the forest that contained the remains of an old ruined tower. Weary about potential Drow nearby, everyone agreed to back track down the main trail and find some place safe to camp away from the ruins for the night.
Of course, Mariasha’s curiosity got the better of her and she just couldn’t wait until the following morning to explore. So she convinced Dendrail to join her and they both headed off to quickly explore the ruins for clues before sun down. The dwarven ranger stayed back at the tree line to provide ranged cover and to act as a lookout while the wily gnome made her way slowly up to the ruins. The tower had certainly seen much better years with little remaining more than exterior walls several feet high and a few interior rooms. After Mariasha spotted something roosting in one of the interior rooms, she started to head around the outside of the tower, hoping to make her way around to the far side to determine why carrions birds were circling nearby.
She was very surprised to see a pair of leopard like creatures crawl out from their nearby den in some bushes and let loose piercing howls that instilled great fear in her. As the gnome made to run away, the strange quadrupeds gave chase and it was clear that they could easily catch her with little effort, but that they wanted to play with the dinner first. Mariasha’s screams for help eventually prompted Dendrail to let loose a few arrows as Mariasha tried to dodge, bluff and misdirect her way away from the hungry carnivores. Her life passed in front of her eyes quite a few times as the uncanny noses of the creatures were able to find her again and again as she tried to hide in the nearby brush. It was only with the aid of the dwarven ranger’s bow and her luck that she was able to escape with her life and only a single bite wound to show for her trouble. Deciding that sun down was too close and that they had pushed their luck to the limit, the due headed back to the main camp with utmost haste rather than sticking around and exploring anymore that night.
Eleasisas 2, 1300DR
The reluctant heroes took a bit to get moving in the morning arguing a bit over either the lack of food rations or the quality of the food provided by others. There was even some hassle over whither or not Mariasha’s and Dendrail’s stunt the night before was likely to have caused more trouble by leaving the corpses of the leopard creatures behind. Eventually everyone gathered their gear together, loaded it on their horse and started down the trail to the ruins in the clearing. On the way, Storm managed to snare a few rabbits and squirrels mostly to quash any complaints about food, but also as a way to let off some steam in her own way. Once there, the horses were tied to a nearby tree and some time was spent on remote surveillance. Between the keep and the forest were a collection of carrion creatures obviously feeding on the remains of the battle from the previous night. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, the group warily moved closer.
As usual, Mariasha was scouting ahead of the group and was a bit alarmed to discover that only a single corpse of the two remained, so she backtracked and gave Storm quite a scare. After sharing the tidbit of information, the group all spread out, but stayed within line of sight each other as they approached the ruins. Once they got close enough, they all took a very long extended look, seeing nothing but trees, shrubs, and overgrowth but Mariasha preceded the group. Just inside of the remains of the front gate, she glimpsed something moving in the old gate house and as she backtracked to warn the group a pair of Stirges flew out and latched themselves to her and Storm. A quick scuffle broke out as the two tried to tear the creatures off them before they started to drink their blood. Just a few short second later, the flying rodents were squashed into tiny bits for their petulance.
Everyone carefully made their way into the fallen tower, much slower this time after the initial scare of the Stirges and made their way around the eastern interior noting several central rooms, one filled with rubble, another with a large grove of oak trees, a stairwell that lead down on the far right and some type of raised mound on the far left. The stairs were made of very old stone and had fairly recent scuff marks on them, but otherwise no other significant features. Raindrop made her way towards the oak tree and was surprised when an acorn dropped on her and then when she tried to climb the tree it tried to shake her off and dumped more acorns on her. Then amazingly, the tree started to talk out loud to everyone. This made Basil curious and he approached closer only to get a face full of acorns for his trouble.
While everyone else was goofing off with the tree, Storm went around behind the central room on the back side of the tower and noted a pile of rubble with some type of tunnel entrance and the far northwest side. When she tried to poke around, she was surprised to see the form of a Giant Ant making its way out of the tunnel. She yelled out a warning and took a defensive posture waiting to see if the insect attacked. The rest of her friend immediately stopping goofing off with the tree and ran to her aid, only to discover a few moments later that the Ant and its newly appeared twin didn’t seem to care about anyone but themselves. Basil went back to talking to the tree after it declared itself quite lonely while Storm went around investigating the raised mound, only to have it collapse and almost dump her down a sinkhole. Once it was clear that the main portion of the ruins was secured, they group made their way to the stairs to descend all while the talking oak tree warned them about a pair of Unseelie faerie supposedly hiding down below.
These sudden revelations from a talking tree that Fey similar to the Shadar-Kai that killed Forsythe Sorensen both scared and encouraged resolve amongst the six friends and allies. While they could never quite explain why a talking tree would have such information, they prepared a light source and made their way slowly down the stone steps into the unknown underground. Strange reflections and echoes came from all around as they descended their way into a damp cavern filled with trickles of water and several pools. As they reached the bottom a booming voice from a nearby pool called out a warning and a veiled threat. As the group went to investigate the origins of the voice, the creature brought forth a Stinking Cloud right on top of Storm.
She emerged several seconds later out the far side coughing, but generally fine and headed away from the cloud down a tunnel into darkness. Meanwhile Mariasha and Dendrail headed out in the other direction away from the stairs and stopped when they spotted several Giant Ants busy moving around some type of hive. Raindrop and Shizy all stood around the stairway with Basil heading upstairs to get away from the smell and general disarray and chaos of his friends. Everything changed when Storm was hit in the back with a blast of acid originating from within the Stinking Cloud. She immediately turned around, charged into the area and started swinging.
When whatever attacked her, let loose with an acidic breath weapon and the previous attacked kept burning, she dropped her halberd and jumped into the pool to wash off the effects. Then she dove under water to try and chase the creature and started swinging with whatever weapon she had available. Shizy and Raindrop tried to help out, but both became very ill from the Stinking Cloud. Mariasha and Dendrail had to back track from the far side of the cavern and didn’t move in until the cloud cleared. Basil came back down into the cavern when it became clear that his sister was in trouble, but he too was leery of the cloud. Storm was alone in the dark, under water trying to kill whatever creature was attacking her.
Eventually, the cloud cleared and a light source became available thanks to Raindrop, encouraging everyone to rush in and play their little part. Dendrail was shooting arrows while Basil was hurling spells. Mariasha and Shizy dove into the pool to try and help Storm out, while poor Raindrop was still retching on the ground. The creature, which Basil clearly identified as a Water Mephit was shrugging off attack after attack thanks to some type of magical defense. Even with everyone cornering it underwater, it seemed to either take no damage or heal back whatever everyone managed to do. It wasn’t until Basil called forth and Undead Crocodile that the tide of the battle turned and the Mephit went down in seconds under the combined onslaught of the group, but not before it gave a warning about a winged creature that lived in the ruins above. Ironically things might have gone a bit better if everyone had known that the correct origin of the creature wasn’t a Fey, but in fact an Elemental from the Plane of Water.
After getting everyone patched up, they all moved as a group this time deeper into the caverns, only to have Mariasha get trapped inside of some type of mechanical door at the same time that Raindrop walked too close to an Assassin Vine. Luckily, neither the Vine was all that difficult to dispatch, nor was the grate that hard to smash down which was lucky because the Giant Ants in the cavern were started to get annoyed with all of the noise and they moved into attack. A small group of four was easily dispatched, but not before Raindrop learned that trying to grapple stinging insects was not the brightest of ideas.
Deciding that it was a good idea to see where all the Giant Ants were coming from, the group moved up towards the piles of dirt and discovered a nest with some additional Ants inside as well as the Queen. As usual Storm was in the front of the group and in over head, so she went berserk trying to kill the creature and succeeded quite admirably with the help of the rest of her friends as back up. As usual, the battle was over so quickly that Storm was a risk to everyone else, who quickly retreated rather than risk her wrath. Perhaps the most creative solution to the problem was Raindrop taking the light source out of the nest and everyone else fleeing, leaving Storm alone in the dark. While Storm yelled out some choice invectives, specifically aimed at Shizy for touched her inappropriately while providing some much needed healing earlier, the only thing injured in the end was everyone’s pride.
After everyone had calmed down, the group tried to take some accounting of the last few hours. It appeared that a significant section of the cavern was now completely free of its local inhabitants, having dispatched them all. Yet, there did not appear to be by any sign of any valuables and upon initial investigation there was a strange door leading out of the cavern. All of the spell casters were totally exhausted and it was barely mid-morning. Most of the crew wanted to completely survey the entire cavern from top to bottom before heading outside and camping in the forest while Basil was arguing against camping anywhere but within the self-perceived safety of the ant nest. To top it all off, there was still no sign of the missing copper ore, warnings about Unseelie Fey and flying creatures went completely unexplained and no one could quite decipher the mystery behind the talking tree.
Eleasisas 2, 1300DR (Continued)
Dendrail went up above into the ruins and started to talk to the strange oak tree while everyone else poked around below. The rest of the ground poked and prodded down below, eventually discovering a concealed door behind the grate trap, but no clear means of opening it from their side. They also noticed a selection of natural shelving and piles of broken glass near the second pool of water. The glass looked like it had all been broken fairly recently and might have been placed on the shelves originally. The second pool had a strange color that look potentially magical or mineral in origin. Eventually, even Basil got bored by the triviality of it all and also came up to talk to the tree.
Meanwhile up above, Dendrail had just finished a short hand notation of the very boring last fifty years of the oak trees life when Basil showed up. The tree managed to trick Basil into taking some of the water from the second pool and poor it on various creatures as well as drink it. The tree was then giggling to itself so much that it started saying out of character things and eventually revealed itself to be a Faerie Dragon named Periwinkle who was just out to have some fun. It traded a few nuggets of information with the dwarf and his young human wizard friend before departing for a lunch date in parts unknown.
Completely at random down below, Raindrop noticed a hairline crack in the bottom of the three foot pool and accidentally chipped a piece of stone lose from it. The caused most of the group to try and start banging on the bottom of the pool, chipping away at it over and over and over. Eventually the gang broke through the cracks and emptied the pool of all the water into a chamber below. A closer examination of the secret area revealed thousands of coins of copper, silver and gold as well as a few gems and some other more interesting items of value. They then proceeded to load all of the valuables into a variety of easy to carry packages made up of spare bags and backpacks.
All of this loot made some members of the group even greedier and they started poking around the nearby door. They eventually tied a rope to the handle, after determining that it wasn’t locked, but merely stuck and pulled it open. A huge pile of ancient beeswax that had kept the door closed collapsed with a bang and strange moaning sounds issues from the other side. As the group struggled to ready for battle and try to close the door, a skeletal creature appeared on the other side of the room an attacked with a Magic Missile. Sensing that things were about to get very bad, the door was closed and everyone tried to position themselves for ranged attacks. The doors were wrenched open in short order and on the other side were two Banedead skeletons, both wavering as if under the effects of magic.
The novice adventurers tried their best to fend off the undead, but they were quite spent from the previous battles of the day, Storm rushed into hoping for an easy kill and was beat unconscious for her efforts. Only the quick thinking of Shizy and the use of her divine power to force the undead to flee saved everyone from likely dying a painful death. Given a quick moment to rest and get Storm’s unconscious form away from the battle area, the group was surprised by the appearance of a quarter of Forest Goblinkin. While Dendrail managed to shoot them all in rapid succession a nearby audible alarm was heard. A strategic retreat was taken as everyone made their way out of the cavern, to the ruins above, across the fields and to their horses. As the rode away, they were harassed by ranged weapons from a pack of Goblinkin that used the ruins as cover.
At first the group rode back up the trail into the mountains to see if anyone had returned to the site of the landslide. They were happy to send a dozen miners trying to clear the trail enough to eventually get pack horses across haul the remaining stolen ore. When they asked about Varg’s health, the half-orc was physically healed, but lay in a coma at the temple of Auril for reason unknown. After Basil wrote a note to pass along to Horace detailing the status of the rescue party, the group head back down the mountain trail and rode south along the stream until it veered away from the trail. They then found a nearby rocky overhang to server as cover from some nasty thunderstorms that had blown in and to eventually rest for the evening.
Eleasisas 3, 1300DR
After an uneventful night filled with nothing more than thunderstorms, everyone broke camp and rode back towards the ruins in the very hot and humid weather. The adventurers decided to ride around the outside of the clearing where the ruins were located and within several moments, noticed a group of creatures trying to hide behind some trees and a dirt mound. The creatures started to rain down arrows on the approaching group and did some pretty serious damage until Storm was able to close within melee range. As she approached, she noted almost ten Forest Goblinkin lead by a Shaman and half-orc warrior wearing what looked like Zhentarium armor. The Shaman was clearly in charge and was screaming out orders to attack and hurling spells between yellow out invectives at the supposed heroes.
The ranged advantage of the Goblinkin was making pin cushions of everyone. Thankfully, Storm charged into combat first thing and was dropping the annoying little creatures left and right with her trusty flail. Yet, she was taking quite a beating from the half-orc and a pair of raging Goblinkin. The adventurers were slowly able to close with a little bit of ranged support from Dendrail, whittling away at the superior numbers of their adversaries. At the same time, the Shaman had sapped strength from Storm and blasted her brother Basil with a pair of magic Missiles. Things started to turn when the Shaman got hit by a few arrows and retreated into the burrow, collapsing it behind him a few moments later, but not before he sent out the Banedead skeletons with orders to kill.
The addition of the two undead was not enough to stop the heroes from overwhelming the remaining enemies and as usual, leaving Storm raging and without anything hostile to kill. Everyone retreated quickly, mostly on horseback, to avoid suffering her wrath and when she chased them, her berserker rage ended, leaving her collapsed in exhaustion and drifting into unconsciousness. The group quickly tried to patch themselves up as best as they could while regrouping around both the ruins and the collapsed burrow in case more enemies showed up or the escaped Shaman happened to try and sneak by.
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Hey, this has been good to read. It has given me much insight on starting a campaign in a small village.
Did the characters garner experience points in the "kid's adventure" that carried through into the current one or was that more setting back story?
Keep it up, I want to find out how things go and who was really behind the stealing of the copper ore.
Patrick
Eleasisas 3, 1300DR (Continued)
Mariasha started thoroughly looting the fallen bodies for anything of value while Basil and Dendrail stood watch. Storm, Raindrop and Shizy all headed into the caverns under the tower ruins to watch out for any escaping Goblinkin or Zhentarium. They decided to listen at the door and were surprised to hear frequent sounds of rock upon rock. After several minutes of listening they determined something was piling up debris on the far side of the door trying to ultimately keep them out. Figuring that meant things were as safe as they could reasonably be expected, the group made camp on the far side of the cavern by the concealed door since it was the most defensible position available
Eleasisas 4, 1300DR
Morning arrived and the only thing out of place was that some type of Illusory magic had been placed on the groups horses, likely by the bored Faerie Dragon who lived in the large Oak Tree in the ruins above. The early part of the morning was spent forcing the reinforced door open and digging out just enough debris to make it safely across to the other side. Once the group had properly prepared themselves with light sources, magical assistance and tactical planning, they carefully made their way into the cave, wary for any sign of potential danger. Fate intervened and sent quite a fair bit of danger their way in the form of a salivating Abyssal Eviscerator demon proclaiming its fealty to Bane.
The demon charged straight at Storm who was leading the way through the excavated debris and started to rip and tear into her. From some place deeper in cavern, the Goblinkin Shaman also started hurling spells at the hapless barbarian who was taking the full brunt of the initial assault. Both Mariasha and Raindrop tumbled their way in the cavern around the demon trying to provide some type of assistance. While the Gnome was successful, the Monk wasn’t so lucky and got tore into for her brazen attempt. Shizy used Invisibility magic on Basil, allowing him to slip by as well while trying to hunt for the Shaman. Basil tried unsuccessfully several times to use various magical effects on the demon and failed, much to his frustration.
Dendrail stayed in the rear sending arrow after arrow into the flesh of the demon, with many successful hits, which was fortunate because Storm was having trouble making any type of contact against the extraplanar outsider. Raindrop stayed back trying to play it safe due to her horrible wounds and mostly ended up providing a light source for the majority of the battle. Eventually she managed to score a massive blow which tore the creature in half from sternum to pelvis. Mariasha did an excellent job of pinpointing the location of the Shaman with her darkvision as the Goblinkin stood just outside the range of all of the human’s visual senses. This allowed her to interfere with the escaping Shaman as it tried to flee after the death of its ally. Dendrail was then able to make the kill from afar with deadly precision.
What proceeded next was the merry game of trying to avoid getting slaughtered by the raging Storm. Basil stayed put, having been previously hit by a Ray of Enfeeblement and lacked the strength to flee. Raindrop and Shizy fled the scene taking all of the light sources away leaving Storm in pitch blackness. Both Dendrail and Mariasha were left in their element, able to use their Darkvision to avoid direct confrontation as well as to try to take down Storm safely. However, for the very first time, Mariasha felt that her life was truly in danger and was obliged to use lethal force to protect herself from Storm. Dendrail was able to step in before things got out of control and used a blunt arrow to knock Storm unconscious.
Things were a bit tense for the next few minutes as it was unclear just how bad Storm had been injured. When it became clear that Mariasha has used lethal force and argument ensued between her and Raindrop over her actions. Raindrop could not understand why lethal force had to be used at all while Mariasha argued that her life was in danger and the only option she had was to use her dagger. The two went back and forth over how things could have been different, never quite agreeing on anything. In the end, Mariasha made it clear that if the choice was ever between her or Storm, she would choose herself. Raindrop let the issue drop after she explained that she felt violence should never be used as an option to deal with Storm’s rages.
Shizy went around performing first aid on anyone wounded enough to need it as Mariasha rifled through the remains of the Demon and Goblinkin. Several items that radiated magic were found on the remains of both creatures which excited almost everyone. Amazingly, several hundred pounds of the stolen copper ore was inside a small pouch. Next a very thorough examination of the caverns revealed the existence of no other sentient creatures. All that was found were the remains of several campsites, the other end of the collapsed tunnel above and the remaining copper ore, neatly stacked in the far corner of the caverns. Everyone, except the still unconscious Storm spent the next few hours loading the copper ore from the caverns below to the ruins above. Since everyone was still so injured from the battle, they all decided to play it safe and camp for the day and following night within the ruins.
Eleasisas 5 1300DR
At dawn, the adventurers loaded up their horses with the recovered copper ore and started the long ride back to Galvinston. When they reached the site of the former land slide, it was totally cleared and no on was around to wait for them. Riding into town near dusk, almost no one was out on the streets to witness their triumphant return other than a few miners on the way to one of the taverns and a lone mercenary acting as deputy in the Constable’s office. The few folks who were nearby did congratulate the young heroes on the success of their job. While there wasn’t a great deal of fanfare, there was honest thanks and appreciation from the working class members of the town. After checking in with the deputy and finding out that Constable Varg had still not recovered from the head wound, they took the ore up to the mines to be returned.
Rayina was glad to see her friend Storm had returned relatively unharmed and with the remaining copper ore in tow. She went around finding the foreman on duty as well as the other various mining personal who needed to witness and count the ore to see if everything was returned. After an hour of counting, the bursar declared that the entire load of stolen ore had indeed been returned. He would notify the head of the mining consortium so that the reward of 100 gold pieces for the safe return could be claimed the following morning. After receiving the thanks from the handful of miners still hanging around, the group split up and went their separate ways.
Storm and Basil went to check on their sister and were surprised to find her in bed with Kal. Apparently she had gotten engaged over the past few days. While she wanted her new fiancée to stay the night, Storm would not allow it under her roof, so Kal was shuffled on his way out the door. All the rest of the group went to quickly catch up with their respective friends and families before meeting up at Mariasha’s family establishment to discuss how to divvy out all of the treasure in a private room. The gang of friends spent quite a few hours wrangling and laying claims to the various magical items, mundane gear and various coins and gems.
Ultimately it was decided that a larger portion of the gear would be taken to the local smithy, have the Zhentarium symbols removed and sent off on the Harvesttide caravan to be sold. The large Topaz would also be sent along to be traded for pearls to identify the magic items properly. Storm proposed spending some of the money on the establishment and construction of formal adventurers guild in Galvinston and Mariasha agreed to the idea wholeheartedly. The rest of the group wasn’t immediately interested in the idea, but they would have many days of the summer left to spend their new found spoils and ultimately come to some type of agreement on the idea.
Did the characters garner experience points in the "kid's adventure" that carried through into the current one or was that more setting back story?
Yes, the players all started playing NPC classes and earned XP for Chapter 0. They then moved into PC classes with the same earned XP at the start of Chapter 1. We just finished Chapter one last week and will move forward two and a half years for Chapter 2. The campaign is designed to run from 13000 DR to 1372 DR acrossed 15-20 chapters.
Jester
Intra-chapter Timeline:
1301/Year of the Trumpet
An almost constant stream of copper ore starts to bring many new faces hoping to get a piece of the action. One of the new arrivals in town buys land and breaks ground on a new inn in the early spring. During construction the excavators find an ancient cairn complete with grave stones but no corporeal remains of any kind. The Thistle Inn throws a grand opening party shortly after Greengrass. Jill Goatherdson’s fiancée Kal is hired the new manager of the Inn. Before the end of the year, strange unexplained haunting begins at the Thistle Inn.
1302/Year of the Broken Helm
Copper Ore is being pulled from the mine so quickly that the thrice seasonal shipments expand to once a month. An unexpected fire burns the stables of the Thistle Inn to the ground during the summer. Constable Varg, having never quite recovered from the avalanche a few years back states that he will officially resign at the end of the year. A general call for heroes is requested by the Thistle Inn to exorcise it from otherworldly manifestations one the one year anniversary of the first haunting.
Chapter Two – Sinkhole!
Location: Town of Galvinston & a Planar Pocket Realm near Faerie.
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 3
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Ranger 3
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 3
Shizy - Human Male Cleric 3
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 3
NPC Dramatis Personae
Constable Varg – Half-Orc Male Fighter 5
Nightal 6, 1302 DR
At the request of Kal, the novice band of adventurers converged on the Thistle in where he worked as the day manager. For the past year or so, the Thistle Inn had been experiencing a wide array of strange accidents, thefts, and what appeared to be a general haunting. The owner of the inn, Bren Harlow, had tried everything within his power to deal with the issue and had failed miserably. It was Kal who came up with the idea to hire adventurers to possibly handle the issue. He asked the group, based on their plots several years ago, through his finance Jill, the youngest sister of Basil and Storm. No member of the adventuring fellowship had previously been to the Thistle Inn, except for Basil, so most of them were very surprised by the quality of the service and décor of the structure upon their arrival.
Kal took seated everyone at a table and provided a full food and drink menu and then went off to serve other customers. Only four other people were in the dining area; a rustic farmer named Cedias, a hairy furrier named Walcren, a priest of Ilmater named Vachlan and a wealthy traveling merchant named Liandra. In addition, the owner of the Inn was busying himself with various tasks while Kal waited tables. Eventually, Kal took everyone’s order which initially consisted of simple fair until Basil ordered a very fancy meal complete with an expensive vintage of wine. Storm was initially concerned that no one would be able to afford since fine food, but once Basil assured her that it would not be an issue, everyone else changed their order and selected a more expensive meal from the menu.
Over the course of the next several hours, Kal provided details on the various issues the Inn had experienced over the year since it had opened. The incidents started initially as misplaced or disappearing objects and escalated to moving furniture, broken windows, spoiled food and eventually culminated in the stables completely burning down. The only apparent cause of the problem was the discovery of some ancient unmarked cairns underneath when the mining dining area was located during construction. The Church of Auril had removed the cairn and consecrated the Inn, but that seemed to have no effect at all on haunting.
As the evening got later, the farmer and furrier wandered off to bed, needing to be up at dawn while the Priest of Ilmater came over to talk to the group and the merchant flirted with Shizy from afar. Suddenly, the front doors of the Inn crashed open and an elderly human male entered resplendent in a haphazardly arranged suit of armor seeming to consist of all shapes, sizes and variations of armor possible. The man declared himself to be Hir Elixto, a noble knight-errant who came to answer the call for adventurers along with his faithful squire Sarpedo Longa. It was fairly clear that the self-proclaimed knight was not necessarily in charge of his mental faculties. Nevertheless, Kal felt that it would only be fair to hire him as well in order to double the chances of resolving the haunting.
Eventually, Shizy & Liandra excused themselves and went upstairs while Hir Elixto fell asleep at the table and the Priest of Ilmater to bored lecturing Raindrop on the importance of worshipping a deity or risk becoming one of the False in Lord Myrkul’s realm after they die. Rather than head to sleep, the group decided to explore the Inn. They went around the main floor looking for anything out of place and after finding nothing went down into the cellar to look around. Strangely, there were numerous cracks in the floor of the cellar, but nothing of consequence was discovered, even after prolonged and extensive research. In addition, there seemed to be nothing out of place on the exterior of the inn or the remains of the burned down stable. So the group settled down for the evening in the common room hoping to witness one of the mysterious disturbances.
Nightal 7, 1302 DR
As the night went on everyone became quite bored and drowsy when suddenly the ground started to roll and shake and seem to fall out from under everyone and then land with a horrendous crash. Initial investigations suggested some type of seismic event had just occurred in the nearby era and had seriously damaged the Thistle Inn. From the back side of the structure where some of the private rooms were located came cries for help. Once investigated it was revealed that several other guests had escape unharmed, while one was trapped under fallen timbers and others had disappeared. After freeing the trapped guests, a more detailed search of the severely damaged building revealed that the rear half had collapse upon the main floor. Looking outside of the Inn revealed the complete lack of stars in the sky and snow falling from it. The wreckage of the Thistle Inn seemed to have slid down inside of a sinkhole that closed up.
As the group moved outside, several of them thought they heard or saw something moving directly above just as strange creatures fell from the sky and attacked. The creatures were mostly shrouded in magical darkness and grappled their targets, trying to squeeze the life out of them. The darkness reeked havoc with everyone’s ability to effectively fight against the creatures. Several people activated sun rod’s given to them by Basil to provide light when not enclosed by the magical darkness. While there were only four creatures, eventually identified by Basil as Darkmantles, used their natural Blindsight to navigate the absence of light and almost kill Shizy before they were all killed.
After Shizy was brought back from the edge of death with a few potions from his pouch, the priest of Sharess tended to everyone else’s wounds. Meanwhile Dendrail and Basil were experimenting with the trying to see how larger the cavern was using the Light spell cast on an arrow. After a while it was determined that the cavern ceiling was about 120 feet tall and the cavern itself was perhaps 300 feet on diameter. An earthquake of some kind had slide the Inn into a massive sinkhole and then had closed up behind itself. At least one Inn guest was missing and the rest were a bit concerned with how they might be getting home later. Only Hir Elixto was unconcerned with his general welfare and wanted to explore to see if he could find and punish those who were behind such an horrible crime.
The outskirts of the cavern had three tunnels leading away, after picking one at random, the group headed out to explore it. The walls of the tunnel were illuminated with small numbers of sparkles that seemed to become denser as they went further into it. The sparkles seemed to vanish if a chunk of the wall was removed and a radiated weak Illusion magic. The tunnel eventually branched off into three more directions about the time that Hir Elixto obviously became either bored or stupid enough to head out on his own. He declared that the group was taking far too long to investigate and pushed ahead on his own rapidly heading down the path to the left. Storm tried to talk him out of the foolishness to no avail and the older Knight walked down the tunnel in complete darkness without the aid of any light source.
The friends all headed to the right and stopped to explore a dead-end before moving down the next path. In the most ironic twist of fate possible, someone made a comment about not giving a flying rat’s ass about something and then mere moments later, Dendrail found himself under attack from a six-pack of rainbow colored rats with butterfly wings. The swarm of rats bit and scratched and the dwarf, harassing him as he tried to use his bow to fend them off. As the rest of the group approached to provide assistance, the rats turned to the use of magic and tried to turn some members of the party against each other with Charm Person spells. Both Raindrop and Dendrail fell under the effects of the spell and tried to stop Storm and Shizy from hurting their new found friends. This didn’t stop Basil from blasting away with spells or Shizy and Storm from avoiding being disarmed and dispatching the remaining rats anyways.
It took a almost an hour for the effects of the spell to wear off on Raindrop and Dendrail, both of which were extremely annoyed in the mean time that one set of friends would go off and kill another set for no reason. Once they realized that they had been under the compulsions of a spell, they apologized for their harsh words and rash actions in battle. Nevertheless, they insisted that the rat bodies be taken somewhere and buried properly after the cavern exploration was completed. Shizy tended to the few wounds causes by the Half-fey Dire Rats and the group started to wearily make their way deeper into the sparkling tunnel, proceeding slowly in case of more unexpected attacks occurred due to misspoken words.
Nightal 7, 1302 DR (continued)
Moving further down the tunnels only a short distance revealed the presence of a pair of Giant Cockroaches covered with iridescent scales and abnormal butterfly wings that immediately went on the offensive as the group approached. On of the roaches let loose a nauseating stink with the other tried to cast several spells on various people with varying success. Shizy ended up succumbing to the stink and spent some time heaving and coughing, but Raindrop was perhaps the most embarrassed when she became the target of a spell that completely incapacitated her with laughter for an entire half-minute.
The ceiling was much taller in their part of the caverns, so ranged weapons had the greater advantage. Dendrail injured one of the roaches quite severely early on and it decided to flee causing the group much consternation as they tried to chase it down. The other roach choose to engage directly and ripped Storm up quite badly before she was able to put it down. Meanwhile the escaped roach had back tracked down a parallel tunnel and attacked the group from behind, trying to turn Basil into a scrawny meal. The young wizard brought forth one of his varied undead creations and with the assistance of his sister, beat the vermin down.
Things were getting late, but everyone agree to push on with Raindrop in the lead. This did not turn out so well when she came around a corner to look behind a stalactite and was jumped by a pair of Spriggan. The stinky and hair fey had managed to capture Hir Elixto and had hung him up on a wall, likely to eat later and instead decided to snack on the poor monk when she came by. Then to make matters worse, the Spriggan used their natural shape changing ability to grow larger and started to smash into things with improved size and strength.
Storm went into one of her rages while Dendrail provided his usual bow backup and Raindrop managed to astound everyone with her martial powers, previously kept hidden away. It was her combination of kicks, chops, throws and body blows that dropped one of the Spriggan almost immediately. The other seemed to be a little more difficult to handle so Basil brought forth another undead denizen to provide melee assistance, but that was when things went horribly wrong. Somehow the skeletal crocodile mistook the unconscious form of Hir Elixto as an enemy and ended up killing the helpless knight-errant as he hung up on the wall. Basil was almost immediately overcome with grief when it became clear what had happened.
Jus as the group was trying to figure out what to do, they heard the sounds of voices approaching. As the sounds drew closer, it was clear that they belonged ot the remaining Inn guests coming to investigate. At the front was Sarpedo Longa who had apparently gone for help when his master had been captured by the Spriggan. He returned with Liandra, the merchant and Vachlan the Priest of Ilmater. Once he saw the body of his fallen master, he was overcome with grief. As the story f the debacle was shared, the poor man almost became catatonic. Vachlan took it upon himself to deal with the situation and asked if anyone had a shroud. Basil happen to have one in his possession and gave it to Vachlan who wrapped the body with care and pacing it on his shoulder, made his way back to the collapsed Inn.
Back at the Sinkhole, Vachlan set about building a funeral pyre for the fallen knight while everyone else dug through the wreckage. The group ended up being able to salvage quite a bit of wood to use for the pyre as well as the remains of various mattresses, pillows and bedding to sleep on. While almost everyone else retired, Basil approached Vachlan and asked for the return of the shroud. Apparently, the shroud had belonged to his deceased father and the young wizard was some overwhelmed by the accidental death that he had not thought clearly when turning over to be used for Hir Elixto. Vachlan thought it was very selfish of Basil to ask for it back and spent some time berating the young boy about the apparent conflicting emotions and possible life paths the wizard was experiencing. In the end, Vachlan handed the torch to Basil and told him that it was his decision to either reclaim the shroud to let it burn as penance for the accident. No way was awake to witness Basil’s choice, but the pyre had burnt down to embers by morning.
Nightal 8, 1302 DR
An indeterminate amount of time later after everyone had slept long enough to recover spells and the battle from the day before, the group discovered that both a Cedias, the farmer and Walcren, the furrier had vanished. Dendrail was quickly able to determine that something had likely taken them and had disappeared down one of the previously unexplored tunnels. Moving carefully with Dendrail in the lead, they made their way down the tunnel, hoping to find the two kidnapped men before it was too late. It did not take long before they group ran into another group of flying Dire Rats, this time covered with scales and flying with leathery membranous wings. Having fought such an adversary before, they quickly dispatched the nuisances as one would an insect and moved along.
Proceeding deeper into the tunnels, they passed several empty nooks and crannies and were not finding anything of any consequence until a pair of worm-like creatures with fluorescent pink heads and bright green bodies came around the corner. Basil identified the creatures as Thoqqua, a type of elemental creature of earth and fire, but they were unlike any he had read about in ancient tomes, being all sorts of strange and unexpected colors. The wizard quickly warned everyone to stay away from the heads which had a nasty burning slam attack. However, the tunnels were quite narrow making ranged weapons difficult with some people in the way for anyone other than Dendrail.
As usual Storm ran to the front and started pounding with limited success. Raindrop and Shizy both tried to help with crossbows, but it only made matters worse when the monk accidentally ricocheted off a wall and hit Storm from behind. For her part, Shizy end up standing behind storm to provide healing magic to keep the raging barbarian alive, while Raindrop ended up spending most of the battle just standing around. Basil called forth a new type of undead previously not seen before called an Allip which was incorporeal and attacked the psyche of its targets or hypnotized them into doing its bidding. At one point, several of the adventuring group fell prey to this effect on accident, begging the question on just how much control Basil had over his undead underlings.
Just as Storm put down the last of the Thoqqua, a trio of Redcaps came around the corner all cocky and bragging. They looks at he group as nothing more than a little fun and games until Dendrail showed them the folly of their attitude. The steady eye dwarf turned the group of Redcaps into pin cushions with one crack shot after another. Aided by the use of Cold Iron arrows that no Fey could defend against, all three Redcaps lay dead with arrows protruding from various critical portions of their anatomy in a matter of seconds. With no enemies in sight, Storm then tried to chase down Raindrop to get even for hitting her in the back with a crossbow bolt, but the quick monk was long gone and hiding somewhere out of sight.
A detailed investigation of the rest of the tunnel area revealed the partially eaten bodies of Cedias and Walcren, as well as the skeletal remains of a much older corpse. The Redcaps had been carrying quite a bit of cash and strangely each of them had a tooth that radiated weak Transmutation magic. While the skeleton remains was wearing a magical chain shirt and some type of magic wand that Basil confirmed as Arcane in origin. Nothing else of interest was found in the rest of the nearby tunnels, so the group patched themselves up from the battle and made their way back to the remains of the collapse Thistle Inn. Their next likely destination was the third and final unexplored tunnel where they hoped to find a way out.
Nightal 9, 1302 DR
After the end of the next indeterminate sleeping cycle the group awoke to find Liandra and Vachlan absent from the inn ruins. They left behind a note that stated that food and water supplies were running low and they were going off to explore the third cavern on their own. Immediately annoyed, the group got their gear gathered and tried to go after them. Following the tracks proved out to be really easy as they were many and frequent in multiple directions all over the cavern. At one point there the group stumbled onto the remains off almost a dozen fey Dire Rat corpses, but no signs of Liandra or Vachlan. Pushing forward they eventually came upon a section of the cavern with worked stone that was different from all of the rest of the tunnels. The natural formations of the walls were the brightest seen yet right before the worked stone section.
Looking closely at the walls, no one was able to determine their origin but they were certainly old. As the group explored the area provided a natural reddish violet color and faint smell of roses was constantly present. Turning the corner they look into a large room with what appeared to be a doorway at the far end filled with rainbow colors. Standing in front of the doorway singing to herself was a single female fey wearing a chain shirt and leaning against a white mace. When the group tried to call out in greeting to her she either did to hear them or ignored them completely. She just kept on slightly singing and humming to herself, moving to some sort of internal music with her eyes closed.
Basil decided to move closer and as he entered the room, felt magic wash over him but fail to take hold. The floor and walls of the room were filled with incredibly detailed mosaics. While the floor was a simple pattern one side of the room was filled with a bright sunny day, many flowers, and all sort of happy fey playing and cavorting in front of some royalty holding court and the other side of the room was dark, dreary and filled with all sorts of vicious, hungry fey performing strange ceremonies involving pain and torture win front of another set of royalty holding court. The contrast between the two mosaics was quite obvious except where they flowed to together in neutral territory as the walls rose to meet at the top of the curved ceiling.
The female fey stopped signing and greeted Basil with a friendly hello. Yet, outside of the room, everyone still saw the fey sitting and singing quietly to herself and Basil standing alone in the doorway. Basil started asking quite a few questions, but mostly got questions in return. The fey was clearly the guardian of the doorway and required some type of toll to pass through. Yet what was on the other side of the door and what exactly one would be required to pay to step through seemed to be rather subjective. It seemed that each person would
set their own price and create their own expectations on what might be on the other side.
One by one, everyone but Storm entered the room and joined in on the conversation with the own questions. Only Raindrop seemed to be influenced by the magical effect that seemed to make them much friendlier towards the fey which Dendrail identified as a Gloura. As the conversation progressed, Basil got more and more paranoid, especially when his sister was called to sit down next to the Gloura and complied without question. When Raindrop was asked to do the same, Basil tried to stop her and failed. Basil decided to take actions in his own hands and started to cast offensive spells at the Gloura and was immediately frustrated when something in the room seemed to each his magic, much like some creatures natural spell resistance. Storm entered when she noticed that the smells in the outer foyer had turned from roses to blood which seemed to coincide with Basil’s attack on the Gloura.
Things started to get really crazy at this point with everyone but Basil being content to talk to the Gloura about payment through the doorway. Dendrail did initially take a defensive stance, but when it became clear that Basil magic was having no effect and the retaliatory magic cast by the Gloura in return didn’t seem to work either, he settled down. One by one, Shizy, Raindrop and Dendrail each determined their own payment and walked through the door. In the mean time Basil was furiously tossing spells that either washed over the Gloura or that she resisted. The Gloura responded by using all non-lethal spells such as Charm Person, Confusion and Blindness rather than try to cause any type of permanent damage.
Storm asked permission to leave the room to look for the missing inn guests and received approval from the Gloura while the blinded Basil decided to try to flee rather than deal with the situation which was clearly getting worse with everyone except his sister having left through the rainbow door. Grabbing Storm’s hand, he blindly pulled her out of the room and fled he area. As soon as they both stepped over the room threshold, they forgot all about the events of the past few minutes and were surprised to be alone in the tunnels without any of their friends. Yet, this all seemed very natural and they decided that they need to find Liandra and Vachlan who were still missing and likely nearby. It only took a short period of time for the siblings to discover the missing former inn guests asleep in an empty cavern nearby.
Apparently Vachlan and Liandra has gone around the tunnels in circle and stumbled onto the faerie rats. After killing all of the rodents, they were seriously wounded, so they retreated to some place defensible and tried to rest. Both the Priest and the Merchant were surprised to not see the rest of the adventurer’s, while Basil and Storm though it strange that Vachlan and Liandra had assumed the friends were even around. In any event, they walked around the rest of the tunnels and eventually found one that lead to the surface. Once outside, they saw that the former location of the inn had been replaced by a faerie mound and that the hold they had crawled from had disappeared. Things were very strange indeed, but everyone split up to head to their respective homes and worry about things in the morning.
Nightal 10, 1302 DR
Raindrop, Shizy and Dendrail all woke up as if from a dream in their own beds and were quite surprised to hear about Basil and Storm little adventure. It seemed that there were two distinct series of events being told. One from the group who went through the door and had some type of visionary or prophetic dream while the other group who did not go through the door had no recollection of the Gloura or the strange room filled with fey art. Some members of the dream group were more willing than others to share portions of their dreams with everyone else. The whole event was quite strange and while they never got paid for their effort they got out alive and with quite an impressive collection of new loot. They were pretty sure that they could easily finish the construction of the guild in the spring with the fund acquired on their second major adventuring expedition.
Intra-chapter Timeline:
1303/Year of the Evening Sun
More and more successful bone holes are being sunk at the mines and copper is practically flowing like water. This sets up a small boom in the local economy as more miners, caravan guards and other various support services are required to support the mine. In no time, the town swells to slightly more than a thousand residents and begins to feel very crowded. As might be expected, the increased volume of unruly and rowdy residents leads to an increase in local criminal activity starting with petty theft or property damage and eventually escalating up to random unsolved murders. Ultimately this causes the mining consortium to increase local security and start taxing local businesses to fund it.
1304/Year of the Stag
All sorts of strange occurrences happen at the fey mound that appeared after the collapse of the Thistle Inn into the sinkhole. Aberrant sights, sounds and smells occur at all hours of the day and do not seem to follow any logical schedule based on seasons, moon cycles or planetary rotations. Domesticated animals, transients and young children vanish with alarmingly regularity near the mound. This leads the Mining Consortium to cordon off the mound with tall iron fences to protect the public from themselves. Shortly thereafter, several prominent residents witness isolated ghostly apparitions of a lone white stag trying to break free from inside of the iron fencing.
Chapter Three – Fiend’s Embrace!
Location: Town of Galvinston & Cold Swamp in southern Vaasa.
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 4
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Ranger 4
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 4
Mariasha – Gnome Female Rogue 2, Fighter 1
Mist – Moon Elf Female Bard 4
Shizy - Human Male Cleric 4
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 4
Ches 23, 1305 DR
It was a beautiful winter day during the first real break in the season storms and everyone was hanging around the warm and cozy guild house swapping stories and making plans for the spring when the door slammed open and a breathtakingly beautiful Moon Elf walked in. The woman introduced herself as Mistranthia or Mist for short, a Bard originally hailing from the elven forest of Cormanthor on the far side of the Moonsea. She had been traveling over the mountain pass from the town of Downslope when she came upon a Paladin of the Red Knight mortally wounded from battle with Winter Wolves.
With her dying breath the knight had handed the Bard a map which she had taken from a cult of Talona. The map supposedly led to an artifact of great evil somewhere in the Cold Swamp in southern Vaasa. The Red Knight had been traveling to Galvinston to hire the Adventurers Guild and asked Mist to take the map in her place. Needless to say this epic story stoked the interested of the still slightly wet behind the ears adventurers and they agreed to take up the offer. Mist was convinced to come along with an offer to join the Guild should the map prove authentic.
Ches 24-26, 1305 DR
The weather held out for the first two days of the trip before returning to the seasonal norm of several squalls a day. Approximately mid-day on the third day on the road the group was passing a trail side cave when a pair of bear-like hominoids that Basil identified as Urskan noticed the adventurers. Basil warned everyone to avoid being charged, but Storm managed to be at the receiving end of a powerful charge that ripped into her anyways. Raindrop also found herself a bit too close for comfort and at the other side of a nasty swat that critically wounded her.
The rest of the quick battle became an exercise in ranged attacks from Dendrail, as well as melee attacks and immediate retreats from Mariasha and Raindrop. Basil called forth a giant skeleton that grappled one of the Urskan, keeping it occupied and completely unable to finish off his sister. Mist provided quite a bit of moral support with epic oratory that boosted spirits on her new allies. Shizy just tried to keep everyone alive which included some emergency first aid on Mariasha. In the end, the group was victorious with only Strom, Raindrop and Mariasha taking any type of serious wounds. Mist was even able to calm Storm down and keep her from trying to injure her friends. A quick search of the Urskan’s possessions yielded quite an impressive array of coins and gems.
Ches 24-26, 1305 DR (continued)
Now that the rush of battle was over, Mist noticed that the cave the Urskan’s had come out of was the same one she had spent the night in the day she encountered the dying Paladin of the Red Knight. This interested the rest of the group, except for Basil and Shizy, enough to investigate the cave. The cave was a normal run of the mill affair with rough hewn walls, a dirt floor and a well used fire pit in the middle. It was Mist that finally noticed when seemed like a natural stone chimney way off in the far corner. Storm climb up the wall to investigate and shined a sun rod into the hole, noticing a strange green reflection from deeper within. Suddenly a small scorpion sized creature apparently made of shiny green minerals wander up the narrow chute and blasted Storm with some type of magical effect.
Combat immediately ensued, but based on the end results, it was only a success in that everyone managed to get out alive and with only a few injuries, everything else was a complete debacle. The strange creature that Mist identified as Crysmal promptly vanished from the chute and another Crysmal crawled out from hiding and immediately use magic to blow dirt and ruble into Storm’s face trying unsuccessfully to knock her down the ground. This caused enough noise to send Basil and Shizy running into the cave to determine what exactly was going on.
Dendrail spotted the first Crysmal and tried to hit it with his bow with limited success. Mariasha quickly learned that her darts and throwing knives were also quite useless. Strom and Raindrop took turns running and jumping up to the creature still in the chute with limited success. It was Basil that seemed to be doing all of the hard work with a successful Magic Missile. This ultimately caused him to become a target for numerous mental attacks that all failed as well as having various rubble magically tossed at his head with relative success.
For whatever reason, the Crysmal’s were simply providing too difficult of targets, in large part due to damage resistant construction and their ability to avoid direct melee. Even when Raindrop managed to jump up and grapple one of them, it immediately used a Dimension Door like effect and vanished. Shortly thereafter the other Crysmal vanished as well, never to return. Deciding that trying to crawl up the rock chute was a practically impossible due to its narrow size, he group choose to abandon the chase and head down the mountain trail, hoping to reach Downslope before dark.
Pushing hard, the group was able to make it to town of Downslope which is totally a transitory settlement filled with all sorts of questionable vagabonds. No permanent building exists in the entire town as every structure is some type of tent, yurt, teepee or the like. The nominal leader of the settlement is Bargru, The Fearless Wolf Leader, Tarkhan of all the Wegwuir, Commander of the Relentless Horde. He is a human male fighter type that occasionally dabbles in magic. The local militia of armed mercenaries patrol the streets are called the Swords of Tarkhan. If you want to set-up a tent nearby, you pay a fee for a plot of land to the Sword of Tarkhan.
Realizing that they did not actually had a tent, Shizy and Basil went out to purchase one and Mariasha unknowingly tagged along. Meanwhile, the rest of the group was approached by a pair of trappers named Francis and Harold who were looking to trade. They seem very honest and amiable until Mist mentioned Cold Stone Keep, prompting the men to immediately shut up and excuse themselves from the camp. Once Basil and Shizy returned with the tent, everyone compared notes and pointed out that perhaps mentioning their destination to random locals wasn’t the best of ideas. Nevertheless, they needed proper directions as the map was quite vague.
Mariasha and Mist decided to head into to camp and see what they might discover about their destination. They did learn that a group calling themselves the Hand of Talona lead by a human female and consisting of a mixed group of humans, gnomes and half-orcs had been asking the same questions fairly recently. Almost no one went into the Cold Marshes due to their inherent dangers and could share little about the terrain or items of interest on the map. They did discover that Downslope was the only town of any size nearby short of making the long track to Bloodstone Pass border with Damara. All other settlements were generally small and consisted of small mines or isolated farming communities grouped together for safety.
Ches 27, 1305 DR
Annoyed that they had not found much all that useful about the Cold Marshes, after packing up their camp, the entire group went into Downslope looking for better references. They were eventually able to find an aged explorer named Zarlag who spent many years in the Cold Marshes and provided numerous details concerning all items of interested marked on the map. Armed with the several ideas n how and where to proceed first they all headed towards the swamp. They reached it after about a half day of riding before dismounting and carefully heading into the marshes on foot. The rest of the day was spent without issues and camp was made at sunset.
Ches 28, 1305 DR
Some time during the night a strange Black First rolled in, dropping the temperatures significantly and limiting visibility. Rather than try to press their luck traveling in such weather everyone remained camped for the day. The weather appeared to be very strange, but did not seem magical in origin. Strange noises echoed across the marshes all day long with no visible sources, nevertheless everyone was extremely wary of attack. Their attitude was justified when two strange flying creatures flew above the camp skirting the edges of the fog around lunch time. Almost immediately thereafter, undead and demons crawled froth from the swamp and attacked.
The flying creatures turned out to be a black and white Abishai, a type of Baatezu or Demon that owed fealty to Tiamat the evil Chromatic dragon deity. They summoned forth a trio of skeletal Trolls and ten Lemure Demons. The battle was monumental, perhaps the most difficult the group of young adventurers had ever previously faced. When the dust had all settled while no one had died, Mariasha came quite close and no one remained free of injury over the minute long fracas. Not even the horses escaped without complications with several having slipped their ties and fled into the swamp in terror. Most of the group was also quite fatigued or simply just exhausted from the extremely cold waters surrounding the camp site.
Ches 28, 1305 DR (continued)
Yet only a few hours later a strange ball of eerie light wandered into camp, blinking back and forth between being visible and not. Basil wasn’t sure if the creature was a Will’o’Wisp or simply a ball of swamp gas, but he did warn everyone to be careful anyways. The ball of light wandered through camp several times and seemed to indicate via non-verbal communication that it wanted someone to follow it somewhere. This strange behavior sparked the group’s curiosity and Dendrail was elected to follow the creature into the swamps since his racial heritage as a Glacier Dwarf made him immune to the chilling effects of the marsh water. As it turns out, the whole follow the leader game was little more than a nasty trick to lure Dendrail away from the group and then to start shocking the dwarf with deadly electric bolts.
The group immediately tried to retaliate with various ranged weapons and quickly found the creature was almost impossible to hit being both very small and extremely quick. Dendrail strategically withdrew back to the group but he seemed to still attract the interest of the Will’o’Wisp and eventually was shocked bad enough to drop unconscious. Basil wisely called forth a pack of skeletal minions and ordered them to let loose on the creature while the Will’o’Wisp turned its attention to Mariasha. Shizy rushed to Dendrail’s aid, arriving just in time to save his life while the Gnome tried to escape before she became the next victim. Eventually a few lucky blows in unison managed to drive off the Will’o’Wisp before it managed to acquire another victim. Everyone gasped a sigh of relief and hoped that the rest of the day passed uneventfully without anymore of the local denizens harassing them.
Ches 29, 1305 DR
While the chilling cold of the day before seemed to vanish with the first rays of dawn it was replaced with an extremely thick fog that narrowed visibility down to almost five feet. Nevertheless the group felt that sticking around the camp site another day was asking for trouble. So they struck out in a vaguely northward direction and wandered for the entirety of the day stopping about every hour or so to reorient themselves in the right direction. While they were sure that they managed to get lost quite a few times they did appear to make some forward progress and did not get totally lost before finding a dry place to camp for the night and hoping for clearer weather on the following day.
Ches 30, 1305 DR
The weather changed again the following morning to a steady rain but mostly clear visibility. Everyone got up early and headed out to the north as quickly as possible in order to make up for the past few days of lost travel time. Some time around mid-morning, Raindrop was surprised to step into a puddle of water that tried to crawl up her leg and eat her. It took a few seconds for everyone to stop and pay attention, but it was clear that the young monk had managed to stumble across a ravenous Gray Ooze. Basil warned everyone that the creature feed by excreting acid and to avoid physical contact at all costs. This didn’t stop the ooze from trying to eat Mist’s horse that got too close for its own safety. Luckily the ooze was quite easy to damage even if it keep trying to eat whatever was the closest meal. It took almost no time at all to destroy the offending nuisance and for everyone to head back on the trail towards Zarlag’s Hut.
Sometime near lunch they came within sight of the aforementioned residence. When Mist approached to knock on the door she was greeted by the smell of stew, the sounds of bad singing and the invitation by the lone occupant, by the name of Krudin, to join him for a mid-day meal. Krudin was a large human who had lived in Zarlag’s old hut ever since the explorer retired almost a decade before. Krudin was certainly a strange hermit, very much preoccupied by his well kept Greatsword, but very willing to share what he knew about the swamp. He did provide to useful details one that Scrags, a type of aquatic troll, occupied Cold Stone Keep and that he could provide several additional landmarks to make navigation using Zarlag’s map much easier.
Yet as the meal progressed, Krudin became more and more interested in his sword than his guests. When initial questioned about the weapon he turned mildly aggressive, but became angrier over time. So much so that eventually he ordered everyone to leave and when Mist tried to sweat talk her way out the door, she was cut down by the man who turned into a raging berserker like adding kindling to a fire. Things could have gotten really ugly, really fast except that Basil got a lucky shot off with a Scorching Ray within the first few seconds of the battle and turned Krudin to a pile of ash. Unfortunately, his sister has also gone off on one of her uncontrollable rages and was left without any unfriendly target to take out her anger on. Instead she went after her friends and allies with a blind bloodlust which would likely only lead to extreme pain and suffering.
Meanwhile Mariasha was inside of the hut and fearing for her own safety, so she tried to hide and tossed a few bolts at Storm. Basil was the only person to see this happen and immediately tried to protect his sister from lethal harm by casting a non-lethal spell on the Gnome and when went over to make sure she was Stunned and unable to hurt anyone. Imagine everyone’s surprise when instead of fleeing, Raindrop jumped on top of Storm, wrestled her to the ground and held down to the best of her ability. Meanwhile, Since Raindrop seemed to have Storm more under control than usual, everyone else approached nearby and either readied spells or blunt weapons just in case Storm escaped. Eventually Storm calmed down and quite resisting even though it was really touch and go for most of the time.
After everyone had clamed down and both Mist and Dendrail had been treated for the damage dealt to them by the now deceased Krudin, they quickly rifled the cabin for valuables and only came u with a few mundane items, some cash and the strange Greatsword. Basil examined the sword and it radiated weak Transmutation magic but did not seem to do anything to him, so he packed up the sword safely away on his horse. While some of the group felt that the hut would be an excellent place to camp, Dendrail pointed out that they should not waste the best weather they had seen in days and argued to push ahead. Eventually, everyone came over to his side of the argument and they all pushed on to the north for the rest of the day before making camping for the evening.
Tarsakh 1, 1305 DR
The group awakes to a much clearer weather, with only a light fog wafting across the Cold Marshes and with maybe a half-day travel to the Ghoul Bridge. However after only a short period of time on the move, Basil’s horse suddenly becomes agitated and breaks free from his grip erratically galloping off into the swamp. A strangely dark section of the fog seems to chase after the horse and then quickly dissipates. Examination of the horse reveals that it has been sweating blood and appears to have had some of its vitality drained. Dendrail points out that this weather phenomenon appears to be completely random and is not at all in the realm of normal.
Arriving at the bridge near mid-day and with no other visible means to cross the large flowing body of water, everyone set about investigating the ancient structure. Basil took rubbings of the gargoyle faces while pother poked and prodded that close side of the bridge. Suddenly, the edge of the river seemed to rise quickly, overflowing its banks and a quarter of Vodyanoi erupted from the surface to attack Basil and Raindrop standing on the banks. The groups of aquatic Fey used the increasing depths of the water to their natural advantage, but were unable to cause much damage before being quickly dealt with. A brief search in the waters under the bridge foundation revealed their quite large pile of silver coins.
Once Basil declared the main portion of the bridge as structurally secure a few members of the group started to explore. Midway across the bridge had collapsed at some point in the past and a very rickety wooden slat and vine structure was put up in its place. On the far side was another completely different section of bridge that led to the far shore that seemed to be able to support more weight, but consist of little more than well constructed wooden slats and pilings. Basil determined that the vine bridge could support the weight of one person at a time, but not any of the horses. He made his way carefully across, but failed to check the far side which collapsed suddenly under his weight. Luckily, someone had the fore thought to tie a safety rope on him before had, so he barely got wet for his mistake.
At this point Raindrop decided that she could jump across the broken portion and explore the other side. But much to her surprise, once she had done so, what originally looked like a large boulder turned out to be a very hungry five-headed Cryohydra looking for a quick meal. The beast charged up and started to rip and tear at the unfortunate Monk with its teeth. Storm ran up to provide melee support and quickly paid for her bravery with numerous bite wounds and blasts of a freezing cold breath weapon which pummeled her and Raindrop. Deciding that a tactical retreat was in order Raindrop started to swing across the river, aided by a rope tossed by Mist and Storm tried to flee across the narrow struts and fell into the river. Meanwhile Mariasha, Dendrail and Basil pummeled the magical beast from safe positions with ranged weapons or summoned creatures and managed to dispatch it just as Raindrop and Storm climbed up the underside of the bridge, dripping wet and freezing.
The undead skeleton summoned by Basil continued to rip and tear into the corpse several moments after its death, revealing piles of coins and gems from the gullet. After Shizy treated everyone’s wounds, the whole group swam across the river, including their horses, and set up a camp fire to warm themselves while they collected the treasure before heading off deeper into the swamp. After once again arguing about continuing their journey, they pushed ahead for a few more mils before finding a securable camp site and bedding down for the evening. Much to their appreciation, the evening passed without incident or harassment from the local monstrous swamp denizens.
Tarsakh 2, 1305 DR
A morning’s journey through heavy rain brought everyone to the domicile of the potion maker Slurrozh. Basil made his way up the rickety rope ladder to discourse with the crazy old Druid. A short conversation and some purchases later, Basil made his way down the ladder and managed to slip and get himself caught upside down dangling dangerously from the rungs. After being rescued from his humiliation Basil shared that Slurrozh had shared that the Hand of Talona had stopped by the day before on their way to Cold Stone Keep. The group tried to step up the pace for the rest of the day, hoping to perhaps catch up to the worshippers of the Lady of Poison.
Near sundown as they looked around for a safe place to camp, the group stumbled onto mud bogs populated by a half-dozen Ice Toad. The frosty amphibian’s lashed out with their tongues and ensnared everyone except for Mariasha and Basil within the first few seconds of the battle and started to pull them to be swallowed. Dendrail completely freaked out and started to panic while Shizy activated a special gift from his goddess and slipped free of the sticky tongue. Shizy then used a spell to calm half of the Toads which prompted them to release Mist and Raindrop and Basil summoned a small group of undead to act as a buffer. Storm miraculously managed to keep herself out of the Toads mouth but Dendrail wasn’t so lucky and got swallowed whole.
One of the toads attacked Shizy, thereby spoiling his concentration for the Calm Emotions spell releasing all of the other calmed toads from the effect. Raindrop quickly took another down with the assistance of the undead releasing Storm who them killed the Toad who had eaten Dendrail. While the glacier dwarf was able to cut himself out of the inside, he was stilled panicked and fled the field of battle. One of the toads managed to get a hold of Basil and everyone rushed to his aid and got caught in the middle of the ice Toad’s naturally cold causing ability, chilling most of the group. Yet it wasn’t enough to turn the tide and the rest of the Toad’s went down in short order. A detailed examination of the amphibian bodies revealed numerous gems stuck in hide carapace that were greedily harvested by the victors.
Tarsakh 3, 1305 DR
Dawn broke to a day filled with dense thick fog with almost no visibility. Unlike the first time this happened, the group pulled together and all helped out navigating their way across the swamps for the first half of the day before arriving at the outskirts of Cold Stone Keep. The keep itself looked quite old and the ground that it was built on was quite obviously sinking with the front half of the keep leaning forward and immersing almost the entire front gate under water. The keep seemed to be completely surrounded by a sixty foot moat of deep dark water with no obvious means of crossing other than swimming. As a result after checking for the presence of tracks and finding none, the group slowly moved clockwise around the keep following the edge of the moat. While a portion of the southwest corner of the keep appeared to have collapsed, it too was under water with no easy entrance. However, the rear of the keep was more promising with a massive hole in the rear wall and strangely a skiff tied up nearby. This was likely how the Hand of Talona had gained entrance.
A grappling hook was tied to a long rope, tossed to the skiff and then pulled taut against its tie line. Then several arrows were shot to cut the tie line and the skiff was pulled to the edge of the moat. While the boat would not hold all seven of the group they could easily use it to cross in two trips. Clearly the Hands of Talona has used the skiff to cross most of the entire swamp, likely much faster that the adventurers had been able to tread across swamp leading horses. After paddling across the moat the group reconvened at the keep, but not before tying up their horses deep off in the fog and leaving Dendrail’s wolf companion to guard hem from harm. The interior room was square, filled with rubble from a collapsed ceiling and contained both a set of stairs heading down and a wooden door warped and jammed into the frame. Mariasha checked the stairwell and it looked unused and lea down to a similar chamber flooded with water. Dendrail checked the door and it did not appear to have been opened and tracks were wiped clean around the door unlike the rest of the room. Instead the group decided to climb up to the second floor through the collapsed floor and explore from the top of the keep down.
Storm climbed up first with a rope and lowered it down to help the others. Mariasha followed next and was starting to prowl around in the hallway above when she suddenly came under fire from an archer to the east that was further down the hallway. Over the next tense few moments the group all made their way up the rope to the second floor foyer dodging incoming fire and taking cover. Meanwhile a group of a half-dozen assailants were moving to take better tactical positions and casting a variety of magical spells on themselves to improve either their combat prowess of defenses. One the assailants also took the chance to exchange a bit of shouted dialogue claiming first right of salvage to the keep and ordering the burgeoning adventurers to cease their interference or forfeit their lives. As could reasonably be expected, the offer was passed which lead to both sides posturing for the most expedient means to end the battle without undue risk to their own lives.
The battle was tediously slow to start each group of combatants hesitant to rush in and start the fray stating with an enemy caster used an illusion to draw cover fire from Mariasha. Bardic music was also in use by both sides to provide inspirational courage. Eventually Storm pushed the issue by moving down the hallway eliciting fire from both ranged and magic weapons and a prepared charge from one of the burly fighter types. Raindrop and Mist quickly followed behind battle ally and things went from cautious to tumultuous almost instantaneously. Several of the Talona worshippers had use invisibility magic to hide; a wizard who blasted Storm with a Ray of Enfeeblement and a priestess who attacked Mist from behind. The tide of the fight could turn at any moment and it suddenly did with a pair of shots from Dendrail and Mariasha that suddenly dropped the priestess of Talona in an instant.
Basil pushed the momentum further by calling five skeleton reptiles and sending them rampaging. The enemy half-orc and human fighter fell to their claws only a short moment later leaving the rival forces at half of their original level. These small victories ultimately lead to a strong offensive push by the adventurers culminating in the death of the enemy archer, the surrender of the gnome bard and the cornering of the human necromancer. Storm was under the influence of her insane rage and refused to take surrender as an option and cut down the gnome for his prior involvement in the battle. Luckily Raindrop was nearby to provide some immediate first aid and keep their potential informant from passing into the great beyond. The desperate necromancer called forth a web to keep the skeletons at bay, but in due course Storm, Shizy and Raindrop all forced their way through the sticky mesh and put down the maniac before he managed to hurt anyone else.
The battle clean-up moved along in short order and a quick inspection revealed that most of the group managed to come out unscathed with the exception of a few scratches. The strength drain spells, while a nuisance in battle, wore off several minutes later. Everyone proceeded to share the common tasks of standing watch for other nasty interlopers, field stripping the fallen bodies for anything of value and arguing intensely about how and when to question the captive for useful information. The Talona worshippers had accumulated quite a bit of wealth including numerous magic items, weapons, armor, and quite a collection of potions. The group was at a quasi impasse about whither to push forward with the investigation of the keep immediately, when to questioning the captive and how they might utilize some of their new found wealth to without delay.
Tarsakh 3, 1305 DR (continuued)
No one could agree on what exactly to do with the prisoner and argument was on the verge of breaking out when Dendrail dealt with the problem by killing the gnome. While no one seemed all that shocked over the turn of the events, they were not that sympathetic either. They just seemed to take the cold blooded murder of the prisoner with blatant disregard as one might treat an enemy casualty of war. Screams from across the keep cut short the conversation and everyone noticed that Mariasha was absent from the room and that the keening was likely hers. As it turns out while snooping around one of the second floor rooms, the floor collapse and the Gnome had fallen into the room below which was covered in vines. Fearing that they might be carnivorous based on the warnings from Zarlag; she hurriedly climbed up in time to notice her friends amusingly wondering what had occurred.
After searching the rest of the second floor they moved careful down to the first, moving into a room filled with skeletal dogs around their former master in front of the fire place. As Storm approached, the dogs suddenly came alive and attacked only to be destroyed mere moments later by the divine power of Shizy and his goddess Sharess. Examination of the remains revealed an arcane wand amongst the former master’s possessions. The remainder of the main floor was mostly empty except for another room with a floor that collapsed, almost dragging Raindrop down with it. Out in the bailey, the privacy was occupied by a swarm of rats which were quickly dispatched but not before causing a nasty bite to Mist that was likely infected with a disease. Shizy felt that he could help out with the affliction, but not until the following morning.
In the center of the bailey was a well which seemed to go down quite a ways and was leaking from several places. Suddenly the water seemed to come alive and formed into a pair of Wavecatchers, a type of minor water elemental armed with ranged weapons. They started to attack, as and the group retreated rather than come under ranged fire, a Scrag erupted from the flood waters in the front of the structure and ripped into Storm. Raindrop was closest to the elementals and quickly dealt with them while the rest of the group focused on the larger threat of the aquatic troll. The troll was a nasty melee opponent who tore into Storm like paper. Nevertheless, the creature fell rather quickly under the combined assault of the group and was beheaded to keep it from regenerating.
Yet, the battle was fierce enough, combined with the other threats of the day that the group felt it was appropriate to retreat and rest for the day before exploring any further. Before doing so, they patched each other up and made sure to collect and collate the acquired wealth of the creatures they had dealt with. There were quite a few magic items that each member of the group thought they could use to improve their battle prowess. A strand of pearls on the deceased Scrag would also allow them to identify a few of the more mysterious items on the following morning. After the dispersal, they headed outside of the keep to camp in the wilderness rather than stay inside the keep in case any other of the former denizens decided to attack during the night. Right before bedding down, Mariasha asked for and received a tarot treading from Raindrop that seemed to calm down her paranoid delusions of the last few days at least a little.
Tarsakh 4, 1305 DR
Basil used a pair of the pearls to identify the strange blue gem from the ice Toad’s and Krudin’s Greatsword. The weapon turned out to be nothing more than a standard magic weapon while the gem had the ability to call forth an Ice Elemental as an ally as a single use. Feeling better armed than the day before, the group headed down to the basement with Mariasha in the lead. The led to her being attacked by a Bloodbloater ooze swarm that was living in the water as soon as she entered the knee deep water in the room. After scraping the creatures of her, Mariasha retreated and let the rest of the group burnt the Bloodbloater’s to ash. The rest of the dungeon area was flooded to the ceiling, but after some discussion it was decided that Storm would drink both an Endure Elements and a Water Breathing potion and would swim in to investigate aided by a Sunrod to provide enough ambient light.
Storm quickly discovered that idea wasn’t all that brilliant when the light revealed a pair of Scrag’s, one larger than the other swimming nearby and now alerted to her presence. Wisely, Storm tactically withdrew and prepared her friends for the eventuality of an attack. The Scrag tactics turned out to be rather simple, they charged forward confident of their combat prowess and then grappled their opponents, hoping to drag them back underwater and drown them. This didn’t work too well on two counts, the first being the presence of a pack of skeletal bears Basil called forth to interfere and the second being the fact that Storm had no issues with breathing water thanks to the potion.
The smaller of the two Scrags’ went down pretty fast, but the second larger troll seemed to be infused with some unholy power that seemed to be originating from a strange cloak on its back. When Shizy tried to dispel the effects of the cloak, he was surprised to have it categorically fail due to its overwhelming power. This seemed to indicate to everyone that the Scrag was in possession of the item they were all looking for; Fiend’s Embrace. Unfortunately, Storm was barely alive from the assault of the Scrag and that had hauled her far underwater and down the flooded corridors. She managed to escape from the grapple and swam back to her friends to keep herself alive and in the process of regrouping, the Scrag escaped down a back tunnel and somewhere into the swamp. The group would have to figure out how to track the Scrag if they ever wanted to acquire the evil artifact from its current possessor.
Tarsakh 4, 1305 DR (continuued)
After tending to all of their wounds and developing a search plan, it was decided that Storm would swim up the tunnel that the Scrag escaped through while the rest of the group would head out to the skiff and pole out to meet with her. They would then looks for tracks and use Shizy’s Locate Object spell to hopefully narrow the search a little. The group separated and then met back up again a short time later about a hundred yards to the east of the keep. The area was totally underwater and there were no apparent tracks of any kind. While deciding how to proceed, they hear a troll-like yell to the west. When Shizy used his Locate Object spell on the Fiend’s Embrace, the spell designated a location that was within range and likely inside of the keep itself. The group quickly head back to the keep and eventually into the central bailey area where they found the Scrag screaming and digging around the well-head.
Mariasha & Dendrail headed to the balcony to provide ranged support from the relative safety of the second floor. Storm and Raindrop headed into melee range while Shizy and Basil stayed back to provide magical and healing support when required. Unfortunately, the Scrag had an extremely thick hide and the arrows from the gnome and dwarf mostly bounced off except for a few lucky shots. Basil also found out that fire based spells were not that effective, due to both natural spell resistance and the cloaks ability to resist fire. Shizy and Raindrop also seemed unable to penetrate the natural armor, so Shizy used a Spiritual Weapon while Raindrop focused on getting lucky with a Stunning Fist. This left Storm to handle most of the dirty work and although she suffered horrible wounds from the creature, she was able to dispatch it with the coordinated effort of her friends after a relatively short period of time.
An examination of Fiend’s Embrace revealed the cloak to be made of demon skin which contained some type of basic residual intelligence. The cloak seemed to want its owner to stay and feed, but was not powerful enough to overwhelm the will power of most people. As a result, he stored the cloak in his Haversack for safekeeping until he could find the proper time to research it. Very curious about why the Scrag was digging around the wellhead, Storm was lower down the well to investigate. The Scrag had ripped holes in the edge and seemed to be flooding the lower levels of the keep. One of the side passages off the well lead down to a dam far below that seemed to be keeping the dungeon levels mostly underwater. No additional treasure or information was gleaned from the reconnoitering; they could only assume that the Scrag was trying to flood more of the keep, thereby giving it more of a tactical advantage. With their quest goal completed, and with much urging from Mariasha, the group started the long trip back home.
Tarsakh 8, 1305 DR
The cold weather of the swamp seemed to start to clear and spring weather started to become more prevalent on the return trip. The skiff was hauled along in order to make the trip across the river at the collapsed bridge easier. Yet, when the reached the swamp, a large white demon called a Zovvut with distant connections to the demon prince Orcus appeared to be waiting for them. The evil Outside spoke only in Abyssal and so Basil handled all of the negotiations. There were several minutes of tense discussion with much shouting and growling before the demons’ eyes glowed a bright red, paralyzing Dendrail and Mist immediately and it moved to attack. The Zovvut took to the air and started to fly around the group, trying to paralyze as many as possible, managing only to catch Mariasha in the effect for the rest of the battle.
Shizy provided a fly spell for Storm so that she could get some altitude since all of the groups ranged weapons experts were suddenly out of commission. Basil hurled numerous spells, some with more affects than others, and raindrop just tried to stay underneath the demon to avoid being caught in the gaze effect. Eventually, the demon decided to stop messing around and swooped down to pick up Basil and carries him away. That gave Raindrop and Storm a chance to deal with the demon on the ground and they both moved to grapple to keep Basil from being flown away to certain death. While Storm was pushed off, Raindrop miraculously held on and kept the demon on the ground, allowing Basil to struggle free. Deciding that is own life was more important that its quarry, the Zovvut teleported away to try to deal with the issue another day. Afterwards, Basil made it clear that the demon had demanded Fiend’s Embrace and he had refused to hand it over, which was what prompted the attack.
Tarsakh 9, 1305 DR
Morning came and a very strange turn of events made itself manifest. Mariasha was missing from the camp site, but had left behind her bedroll, most of her baggage, and her mount. Lying unconscious on the ground was Basil, lying on the ground next to him was Mariasha’s journal, fluttering in the wind, and several arrows shot into the ground. Basil possessions were strewn all over the ground and it was clear that both Basil’s primary Spellbook and Fiend’s Embrace were missing. As soon as it was clear what had occurred, Dendrail has also vanished, disappearing into the swamp to track the missing gnome. Meanwhile, Shizy tended to Basil, rousing him to consciousness. Mist carefully examined the left behind journal and concluded that Mariasha had gone off the deep end and had wrestled with murdering Basil, but had settled on stealing the cloak and the Spellbook thinking that they had possessed the young human wizard. Storm was furious at the treatment of her brother and vowed to kill the gnome for what she had done; it was only the clear headed thinking of Raindrop that kept the outraged barbarian from running off into the swamp without the rest of the group.
Eventually when level heads prevailed, the group headed out into the swamp as a cohesive group, following Dendrail’s trail. After about a half hour, they came upon Dendrail who was covering what was the apparent corpse of Mariasha in a cloak. Lying on the ground was Basil’s missing Spellbook, clearly with a few missing pages fluttering about in the wind. Dendrail explained that he had found Mariasha’s body strung up in a tree, with pieces of paper, likely from the Spellbook stuffed into her mouth and eye sockets. Fiend’s Embrace was missing, but no other items or possessions seemed to be missing. The gnome had been tortured to death and had likely been left as a message from the Zovvut demon to warn everyone away. Dendrail prepared his long time friends body for burial and requested that everyone leave him alone to mourn. Basil picked up his Spellbook before leaving, clearly very upset over the damage to it, but also believed that is had not been completely destroyed.
Tarsakh 14, 1305 DR
The heroes returned to Galvinston greatly changed from when they had left. While they had found a new ally in he form of the elven Bard Mist, they had also lost a friend who seemed to have succumbed to madness and insanity. They had recovered the Fiend’s Embrace from Cold Stone Keep at the behest of the dying Paladin of the Red Knight only to lose it to a Zovvut demon. Their adventure was bittersweet with the only clear success being that the dark weather than had been prevalent in the Cold Marshes for decades suddenly seemed to be clearing, likely due to the removal of Fiend’s Embrace and the destruction of the creatures that dwelled in Cold Stone Keep. Yet, this small victory was clearly overshadowed by the treacherous actions and the hideous downfall of a formerly good friend. How each of them would dwell on or resolve the events of the two ten-day would ultimately define them for years to come.
Intra-Chapter Timeline
1305/Year of the Creeping Fang
With the removal of Fiend’s Embrace from the Cold Stone Keep in the Cold Marshes of southern Vaasa, the strange weather that had been gripping the land for as long as anyone can remember slowly dissipates. While the marshes still remain a hostile place to dwell, they are no longer the threat they once were, prompting numerous explorers and entrepreneurs to set off into the marsh in search of raw materials, lost artifacts and wildlife to cultivate. Some of the most successful establish small settlements that start to slowly spread across the wetlands. This only serves to solidify the settlement at Downslope as a permanent community serving the north end of the Bonesville pass through the Galena Mountains. Galvinston benefits immensely from this with an increased demand for the various ores they excavate from their now quite profitable mines.
1306/Year of Thunder
A war that had been brewing for some time breaks out on the Moonsea. Hulberg is destroyed in a naval invasion from Mulmaster. In return, an alliance of other Moonsea cities retaliates against Mulmaster. Sulasspryn suffers heavy damage from the naval bombardments from the Mulmaster navy. To make matters worse, a dragon invasion, known as the Dragon Run, sweeps out of the Moonsea North. Phlan is destroyed in the aftermath of the draconic rage. This leaves the overall economic outlook for the entire Moonsea region quite grim indeed. The mining consortium in Galvinston proposes funding a road south to the Moonsea and the establishment of a formal port in order to try to take advantage of the current ore trade vacuum in the region.
1307/Year of the Mace
Sulasspryn collapses into a huge sinkhole, destroying the city leaving nothing but an immense crater where the city used to be. This leaves the entire northeastern region of the Moonsea without any type of permanent settlement. The Galvinston mining consortium breaks ground on the new southern road to Moonsea as well as cobbling the most of the town and its nearby major trade roads as well. Needless to say, this building boom brings even more labor to Bonesville and requires a quarry to fulfill all of the stone required for the trade way. The local population practically doubles over the year with every able bodied humanoid working for fulfill the insatiable need for cobbled stone for the new trade route.
1308/Year of the Catacombs
The immense public works project of road building endeavor practically bankrupts the mining consortium leading to numerous public cries for the cessation of the project, some culminating in near riots. Frustrated laborers, who often go unpaid due to lack of funds, take out their frustration on the innocent town inhabitants and their businesses. What starts as petty crime and mischief culminates in a lynch mob that publicly hangs several mining foreman and the burning down of the guild office in town. Needless to say, the town militia is overwhelmed by the violence and is barely able to maintain the peace before things finally calm down as payrolls start being paid again.
1309/Year of the Sunset Winds
Enough of the new trade route is completed to allow for regular caravans to the Moonsea. A small settlement is founded at the site of what will be the new port and excavation begins on a harbor. All of this civilized intrusion onto the wilderness lands stirs up dissent amongst some of the nearby monstrous denizens. An entire brigade of Orc raiders from Thar attack and destroy the new port settlement before being driving off. The Mining Consortium decides that they should focus on completing the road before trying to formally rebuild the port. Instead they fund the construction of a small military fort to act both as a trade post as well as a formal claim on the land where the port will eventually be built.
1310/Year of the Storms
The Orc harassments continue unabated causing frequent loss of life and trade goods. In an apparent act of desperation on their part, the mining consortium approaches the adventurers' guild and formally asks for their assistance. They request that a group of heroes be sent into the lands of Thar to deal with the source of the Orc problem once and for all. They agree to pay for the entire expedition as well as an extensive reward on the success of the mission.
Chapter Four – Sons of Gruumsh
Location: Town of Galvinston, Moonsea Outpost & Grey Lands of Thar.
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 6
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Ranger 5
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 6
Meeshani – Gnome Female Scout 5
Mist – Moon Elf Female Bard 5
Shizy - Human Male Cleric 5
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 6
Kythorn 11, 1310 DR
A knock on the door of the Adventurers Guild broke the long silence of the past five years. Standing on the other side was a mild mannered dwarf by the name of Franken who represented the local Galvinston Mining Consortium. He had been sent to hire the guild to deal with the outstanding Orc issues that had been a major thorn in the southern road and port projects for the past year and a half. Only Strom was currently present at the Guild and quietly listened to the rough outline of the hiring details, proposed payment and other conditions and terms. She then asked Franken to return shortly after the evening meal to allow her time to gather the rest of the Guild to properly listen to and decide on the job offer.
After dinner everyone assembled at the guild, eager to hear just exactly what the Mining Consortium was offering for the job and what they expected to be done. Franken returned at the aforementioned time and started to lay out the particulars. The Mining Consortium wanted to hire the Guild to deal with the constantly Orc raid’s against the road and port workers, in return they provided with the basic necessities to handle the job and a significant reward upon their success. There was some quibbling over what constituted dealing with the Orcs, but the Consortium mostly just wanted the consistent raids to be tracked to their source and stopped. They understood that occasional raids were a fact of doing business in the wild, but almost daily attacks were beyond their ability to control.
A few intriguing details came up about the Consortiums prior attempts to deal with the situation. About a year ago, they had dispatched a team of dwarves from the miners with some past adventuring experience. About a month later, a single member of the half-dozen returned with horrendous wounds and damage to his mental functions that Grumbar couldn’t repair. The lone dwarf was now being cared for by his wife and would likely be bed-ridden and incoherent for the rest of his life. About a month ago, a non-affiliated band of adventurers was hired and sent out to deal with the issue. Whither they have all been killed or just ran off with the up front payment, nothing has been heard from the group. For his part, Franken was clearly not that experienced with dealing with people and was very nervous and apprehensive in dealing with the group. In the end he took back the terms & conditions to the Consortium and would return in the morning with some type of compromise.
Kythorn 12, 1310 DR
A bright spring morning came along and Franken returned to the Guild with seven horses, loaded with tack and travel gear. While Storm had requested a place at the bargaining table during the next contract negotiations during Shieldmeet, the Consortium had countered with a single share of the mine to be awarded upon successfully dealing with the Orc raiders. At first, the concept of mining shares was difficult to understand, but Basil was able to adequately explain it to everyone in such as way as to make it sound like a better offer than was what initially requested. Content with overall contract, they all agreed and Franken returned to the mines while the Guild mounted up and headed south for a last days worth of riding. While the Guild passed several groups of construction workers on the road, no Orcs or signs of Orcs were seen of any kind. Everyone spent the evening camped on the side of the road with no Orc sign all night long.
Kythorn 13, 1310 DR
Around mid-morning near one of the many completed bridges, most of the group spotted a collection of Orcs who appeared to be stetting up for am ambush. While there were initially conflicting numbers on the quantities of Orcs, when it came time late to count the dead, they were a squad of ten. The Orc were clearly a disorganized group despite all being armed with similar armor, weapons and markings. Then were even arranged in three squads with an overall leader, but that did not stop them from being slaughtered fairly quickly. Basil kept a third of the group contained with a web spell, allowing everyone else to advance and attack directly or work from range. Only Storm and Raindrop ended up taking minor damage during the battle and a single Orc was taken prisoner. All items of value were taken from the bodies and options were discussed on how to make the unconscious Orc provide any sort of information.
Kythorn 13, 1310 DR (continuued)
Basil wanted to the torture any useful information out of the Orc and while at first it appeared that no one else would disagree, when the wizard started waving the knife around, Storm had to pull him aside for a private conversation on the topic. They argued quite loudly back and forth about the best way to interrogate the prisoner and it was eventually agreed that Storm would intimidate the Orc, with Meeshani translating and Basil standing in the background threatening with his knife. Shizy roused the Orc to consciousness and the series of questions began. At first, the Orc seemed quite confused as to its surroundings and didn’t initially respond, but eventually it started to become quite belligerent and confrontational. While, the cocky bravado of the creature did reveal the name of the Orc warlord who appeared to be in charge and that the Orc blamed the humans for encroaching on their tribal lands, this only served to frustrate Basil who felt that it was then necessary to start carving into the Orc in retaliation for its impudence.
Somewhere around this point, Storm completely freaked out and started attacking her brother in a mindless rage. The siblings then proceeded to roll around on the ground grappling, trading insults and dredging up large portions of their very difficult childhood with everyone listening. Storm was also taking advantage of her brother’s comparative weakness to beat him senseless. While Mist tried to use her magic to stop the fight, it failed to have any effect. Meeshani & Dendrail decided to stay out of the fracas and instead went on the look out for possible attackers in case the fighting attracted unwanted attention. Shizy stayed back and made sure that the Orc prisoner didn’t fantasize delusions of escape. Only Raindrop felt that it was important enough to get involved and after being insulted by Storm for the unwanted attention, ended up trading a few blows with Storm for her trouble. Eventually Storm calmed down and as usual, didn’t remember much of anything of the encounter but still ended up riding off all in a huff with her bruised and battered brother riding after her. Tossing the Orc on the back on the horse after knocking it unconscious again, the Guild headed back down the trail, hoping to reach the coastal outpost by lunch
About an hour later as the Guild was rounding a curve in the road, Meeshani & Dendrail heard the sounds of someone calling for help. Unfortunately, the sounds were coming from a quartet of Leucrotta who had laid a trap which they sprung as the dwarf and gnome rode around the corner. The rest of the group rode into battle as soon as they realized what was going on. The battle was brief even though the Leucrotta had the initial upper hand. While strange quadruped’s with the hooves of deer, tails of jackals and the heads of a lion were quite skilled at mimicking the human voice, they were not able to stand up to the combined onslaught of the seven Guild members. All four swiftly fell to blade, bow and magic in short order. Strangely, all the corpses of all four creatures had collars with symbols of Gruumsh which radiated weak Abjuration magic. It appeared that the creatures were likely pets or guard dogs for some of the Orc raiders who were extremely prevalent in the nearby wilderness.
Just as the Guild was nearing the Moonsea outpost, they heard the sounds of fighting and noticed a large pack of brutish Orcs nearby. The raiders were busy attacking the outpost with a large group harassing the defenders of the structure with arrows and a smaller number trying to ram the door down. Storm and Basil were at the forefront of the rush to protect the citadel from the Orcs and while this ended up being a good thing for Storm, it was quite bad from her brother. Storm waded into the thick of things, trading blows almost as good as she gave, but Basil got jumped by a trio of the pig-nosed humanoids after they realized that their arrows were having no effect and slumped unconscious and dying in the saddle of his horse. The massive Orcs were dropping like flies under the coordinated effort of the Guild but were inflicting significant damage nonetheless. Raindrop rushed in to keep Basil from dying and was aided by the crack shooting of Dendrail and Meeshani. Mist tried to enter the melee as well, but was forced to retreat when she started getting thrashed. Then, just as soon as it started, the battle was over with corpses of Orc littering the battlefield alongside some of the human defenders of the mining outpost.
Kythorn 13, 1310 DR (continued)
As it turns out the Garrison Commander of the outpost was an old family friend of Dendrail and was very grateful for the assistance in dealing with the Mountain Orcs. The front gates were opened; the allied dead were collected along with any useful gear while the Orc deceased were hauled away to a mass grave nearby. Everyone then moved inside with the horses and the front gate was re-barricaded again with some expert assistance from Basil on how to repair the damages caused by the battering ram. Everyone then set about tending to their wounds, stabling their mounts and setting up camp for the night inside of the Outpost.
When questioned about the conditions and frequencies of attacks, the command named Vaklyn mentioned that they were usually attacked on a daily basis between sunset and sunrise when the Orcs benefited most from their Darkvision and were not hampered by sunlight. The Orcs usually came from various trails to the west in groups between five and fifteen, sometimes topping to attack outpost or heading to the north up the road to cause all sorts of problems. When asked about what o do with the prisoner, Vaklyn recommended slitting its throat since the only useful information every gathered was about Warlord Thrull and that the Orc originated from the Grey Lands of Thar to the Northwest. Mist took the duty upon herself to put down the Orc, much to Raindrop’s disgust.
Kythorn 14, 1310 DR
At dawn Basil busied himself with preparing spells and identifying a few magic items taken from the Orcs and Leucrotta on the trip down from Galvinston. Meanwhile Dendrail and Meeshani spent some time in the western woods looking for tracks and were amazed at the sheer volume of Orcs that had been traveling in the region. The density of the forest kept out most of the elements, which meant that hundreds, if not thousands of footprints were spread all across the nearby forest within an hour by foot. Any additional tracking was going to take a more concentrated effort and would likely require heading deeper into the coastal forest with the rest of the Guild if they were going to find any useful information.
After rejoining the rest of the group, the entire day was spent narrowing down the tracks to three discrete different trails; one to the southwest which was likely the old trade trail from Sulasspryn, one due west which headed into the coastal plains and one to the northwest which followed the dense forest heading towards Thar. The only significant event of the day was when Mist tried to have some fun with Basil by placing him under a magical suggestion while telling stories over the evening campfire. At first Basil was quite fascinated by the story telling, but when he suddenly snapped out of the effect he was extremely agree and stormed out of camp in a fury. Shizy went off to try to calm down the quite embarrassed wizard but he wasn’t at all successful. When Basil eventually returned, he refused to acknowledge Mist’s presence and spent the rest of the night sulking and glaring in her direction.
Kythorn 15, 1310 DR
Before heading out in the morning, the group backtracked to the check for fresh tracks on any of the trails and was surprised to find sings of a group of five Orc who had gone towards the outpost and returned during the night. Figuring they this tail was the most likely to yield results, they headed down it slowly on foot. Eventually the trail widened, becoming more pronounced as it ran parallel to a mountain stream at the bottom of the foothills leading up into the Galena Mountains. As the trail gained altitude, it became foggy and after moving around a corner they stumbled onto a pair of Quaraphon who were fighting over a pile of fresh corpses just off the trail. The bipedal blue beats stopped fighting amongst themselves, let off a bellow and charged into battle through the thick undergrowth. Their battle roar had two unfortunate side effects, with the first being sonic energy damage and the second becoming deafened.
With most of the group unable to hear themselves or each other, the Guild members moved quickly into battle with Dendrail staying back and moving around cover to find good shots while Meeshani dove right into fracas quickly crossing the battlefield to let lose with her bow. Raindrop and Storm closed into melee range with varying degrees of success while Mist stayed behind singing a rousing tune to inspire courage. Shizy readied his weapons and cats a spell to speed up his movement, and moved forward to provide support for the two women bravely facing off against the large blue aberrations. Lastly Basil started hurling ranged spells some hitting and other missing while trying to stay behind cover. While the Quaraphon were quite successful with the sonic shouting, their melee skills were pathetic and the battle was over in less than thirty seconds with only Storm and Raindrop taking any type of physical damage.
An investigation of the corpses littered nearby revealed three different types. The freshest were obviously from the five Orcs who had left the tracks on the trail during the night and they had been clearly killed by the Quaraphons. The second batch was a half-dozen Orc killed more than a month ago by weapons and field stripped of their gear. The last lone corpse was of a dwarf who as also been killed around a month ago by weapons and was likely from the group of adventurers hired by the Mining Consortium that had failed to return. Clan symbols on the two groups of Orcs were different from the other two groups previously encountered but they all contained the all seeing eye of Gruumsh as part of their design. The only real items of value were a collection of coins and gems on the freshly killed Orcs.
Travel for the rest of the day lead the group out of the forest into the upper coastal plans near the mountains and eventually to the end of the moors which were filled with strange rocky protrusions jutting out form he earth as well as strange vaporous sewing from sink holes and caverns. As the sun started to set and the group prepared their camp site, Meeshani spotted another nearby campfire and when she went off to investigate discovered a group of Orcs preparing for an evening raid. After consulting with the group, everyone felt that they should deal with the issue immediately, so they packed up their gear quickly and moved towards the Orc camp with intent to wipe them all out.
The Orc camp consisted of five normal Orcs and much larger Orc-like creatures that turned out to be a pair of Tanarukk, an Orc species that had cross-bred with demons at some point in the past. While the Guild was at an initial disadvantage due to low-light conditions and rough terrain, that was quickly changed with the judicious use of a Sunrod, an Everburning Torch and Basil’s new Haste spell. While both Basil and Shizy summoned creatures for what they felt was going to be an extremely difficult battle, they had barely been engaged by the time all the Orcs were dead. The only real unexpected part of the battle was when the Tanarukk fired arrows that turned into living creatures that Basil called Arrow Battleloths, a type of Yugolith. A quick check of the corpses revealed a fifth type of Orc clan badge, some basic weapons, a magic amulet, a single potion and the remaining unused Arrow Battleloths. After disposing of the corpses, the Guild made camp by the already burning fire and spent an uneventful night.
Kythorn 16, 1310 DR
With morning came thick dense fog, but no actual rain. Visibility was reduced significantly which meant that everyone was paying more attention for possible Orc attacks or other signs of danger. While they passed several recent camp sites, no Orcs were ever encountered. Instead, some time around mid-day a pair of Foulwings suddenly fly out of a bank of fog and moved into attack. They lead off with a viscous acidic breath weapon that temporarily blinded and stunned those unfortunate to be caught inside the effect. Regrettably Storm was the only one to be impacted by the effect, not that the Foulwings were any significant threat with both Dendrail and Meeshani blasting away at them with arrows. Raindrop was the only member of the Guild to take any damage when one of the Foulwings landed and attacked her briefly before falling victim to the Storm’s Greataxe.
As the group settled down for the evening, while setting traps around the camp for safety, Meeshani noticed an Orc with a wolf spying on everyone. When she went to confront it, it stepped out from the brushy cover and introduced herself as Haravak, a roving steward of the wilderness. She was inquiring about why the Guild members were wandering the Grey Waste of Thar with a horde or Orcs nearby readying for war. The Guild has quite a few questions to ask of the Orc once they realized that she wasn’t an immediate threat. Albeit, Basil clearly distained the Orc ranger’s presence so much that he was holding up a handkerchief to his nose to block the scent. Haravak was not able to provide much information other than numerous tribes were gathering two days journey at the citadel of Xul-Jarak preparing to join the Warlord Thrull in a battle campaign. She recommended that the Guild turn around and head back to wherever they came from as she felt considered it complete suicide to try to do anything about it. Shortly thereafter she turned around and left when she realized that she really wasn’t all that welcome sticking around.
Kythorn 17, 1310 DR
While preparing to break camp in the middle of breakfast, four whirlwinds of dust swirled into the encampment and formed themselves into Ash Demons. Basil immediately warned the group to be careful of their breath weapons which caused choking and eventual suffocation if not tended to promptly. The warning did little to prevent Mist from being targeted by one of the Demons and starting to drown on the dust spit into her respiratory track. Raindrop was also surprised when after grappling one of the infernal Outsiders, it turned back into dust and flowed from right out between her arms and our of her grasp. These parlor tricks did little to prolong the lives of the Tanar’ri who were quickly blasted back into oblivion with very little effort thanks in part to Basil’s summoning of a skeletal Minotaur. Amongst the remains of one of the creatures was a strange transparent bottle which radiated Conjuration magic that appeared to be empty. Afterwards while scouting after the battle Meeshani stumbled onto a group of Orcs who clearly had died the night before lungs filled with dust.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR
Rising out from the dark clouds about an hour before sunset, the Guild caught their first glimpse of the citadel and the hundreds of campfires of the Orcs bivouacked nearby. The battered two story fortress rose from a plateau of rock rising majestically above the nearby clouds. After finding secure shelter away from prying ideas were discuss on how to proceed. Eventually Meeshani was sent ahead to scout for possible means to locate Warlord Thrull and how to potentially penetrate the citadel without alerting the Orc army camped outside. When she returned a few hours later after dark, she shared that the there was several ways into the citadel including the front doors as well as three different collapse wall sections leading into the citadel itself. The front doors were not a very good choice and were immediately discarded. While the larger collapse wall section was proposed it was ruled out after Meeshani revealed that a sleeping Wyvern occupied the central courtyard of the main floor. It was then decided to try to go through a smaller collapse wall section onto the roof of the citadel on the side farthest from the encamped army.
The plan started with having Shizy cast a Silence spell on a single arrow held by Dendrail. The entire Guild then moved as quickly as possible up to the citadel at the bottom of the rocky cliff. Dendrail took the arrow and shot it along with several other arrows quickly into the single Orc guard who was standing by the open wall section on the top on the citadel. Meeshani joined in with the arrow peppering as well, so that in the end, with five arrows stuck in him, the orc guard slumped over in silence. At which point Storm started to climb the wall. After slipping a bit, and falling once, Storm finally makes it up the wall. When it becomes obvious that Storm is having trouble, Meeshani decides to break out her grapple and use it to climb up the wall and she reaches the top about the same time that Storm does. The two of them quietly secure the grapple and help the rest of the party to climb up to the top of the wall.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR (continued)
Almost immediately after Storm climbed up the wall she was hit by an arrow from a nearby Orc. Since Meeshani was able to see in the dark, she charged in and dropped it and then moved to deal with a pair of other Orcs nearby who also managed to notice the intruders. Meanwhile Storm focused on steadying the rope and occasionally lifting other members up onto the parapet. Shortly thereafter the rest of the group made their way up the walls and started to deal with a group of Orcs who managed to hear a single yell for help from inside a rooftop building. Meeshani ran off to scout the rest of the eastern edge of the fort, taking out several other Orcs along the way before returning to the rest of the group who had successfully dealt with their opponents.
Investigation of the rooftops revealed another set of buildings on the southern end and several sets of stairs leading deeper into the fortress. Examination of the northern structures exposed a now empty guard post and pair of private bedrooms that overlooked a collapsed hole in the floor. Down below a gang of flunky Orcs were gathered around a tribal chief and an Ogre ally. While a set of stairs seemed to lead down into the large open audience chamber, the group decided to stage a very orthodox attack through the buckled opening down into the group. Storm lead the way under the covers of an Invisibility potion, but the entire surprise attack almost failed when several of the Orc heard Mist moving around up above.
The Orc leader, whom everyone assumed was Thrull, until Meeshani overheard his name to be Vhazror, sent a group of orc up to investigate and the rest of his porcine allies readied ranged weapons. Rather than waiting around to get caught, Strom dropped to the floor below and snuck around a statue of Gruumsh, hoping to grab the wield halberd out of the hands of the orc leader. Basil and Meeshani started to let off ranged attacks while Dendrail and Raindrop head back to the stairwell to defend against impending assailants. Luckily the dwarf had planned ahead and hand left behind a bag of caltrops at the top of the stairs just in case of trouble. However, the Orcs seemed quite unwilling to climb the stairs through them, so Raindrop tried to tumble through and Bullrush her way into melee. Her luck wasn’t all that great and she was unable to force her way into the fracas.
Down below Storm tried to disarm Vhazror and failed, requiring her to change her plan of action, retreating to draw her own weapon to defend herself, thereby leaving her open for a wide number of attacks from nearby Orcs. Lucky for her most of the Orc could not hit the broad side of a barn but the same could not be said for both the Ogre and Vhazror. Realizing that his sister needed reinforcements badly, Basil brought forth a skeletal Minotaur to act as both a target and maybe to get in a few hits as well. Yet, this did not seem to be enough to turn the tide, so most of the rest of the Guild also went over the edge to join in the fray. This clearly was a wise plan and they decimated the Orc down below, but this did little to help Mist who remained up above and had to deal with the duo that got by the caltrops and attacked. Nevertheless, she managed to deal with the issue long enough for backup to arrive and drop both of them.
A mere three minutes after entering the Citadel Xul-Jarak, the Guild had fought their way through several dozen Orc defenders and had taken down a key lieutenant. Taking a brief moment to look around at their surroundings, they patched themselves up and moved to quickly loot the bodies of easy to access valuables while hiding the corpses away where they would not likely be stumbled upon unexpectedly. The main chamber was filled with rubble with only four doors leading out of it. Two of them lead back to the kitchen and dining area and eventually to stairwells leading up. The other two lead towards unknown destinations, with one of them likely to be the main central courtyard when the Guild knew a sleeping Wyvern was likely awaiting them. They would need to move quickly and quietly to avoid being caught be random Orc patrols as they searched for where Warlord Thrull was hiding out.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR (continued)
Over the next several minutes the group worked to move hastily through their tasks. For his part, Basil used a Detect Magic spell to examine the strange bubbling fonts and the statue of Gruumsh. The ruby in the long eye of the Orc deity radiated Necromancy magic with the fonts radiated Conjuration magic. Examination of the liquid in the font revealed it to be some type of alchemical or magical potion that seemed to work with the physiology of Orc and acted as a type of poison for any other species. The young mage also examined several of the magic items discovered on the bodies of the deceased finding several weapons, armor and a small collection of potions for his effort. Lastly, Basil used his prestigious Spellcraft skills to also properly identify several of the potions and distributed them amongst those in the group that could use them the most efficiently.
Mist used the Wand of Healing to tend to everyone’s wounds and also helped with the potion identification. Shizy and Dendrail help collect and move all of the nearby bodies out of the man room and into the pantry area to avoid them being found by anyone wandering by. Meeshani climbed up the statue, and after determining that there were no obvious traps, removed the embedded ruby and then she went to help Raindrop finish collecting valuables and to remove Vhazror’s magical armor. Lastly, Storm collected up all of the gold pieces and potions from the shattered chest, transferred them to the groups’ magical storage equipment and then went to explore the room on the far side of Vhazror’s bedroom. This turned out to be the mistake that set the next serious of encounters in motion when a structurally weak floor collapsed in the room and the noise altered the Wyvern in the nearby courtyard to come and investigate.
The lesser dragon ripped opened the door to the courtyard and moved into investigate, stabbing Mist with its tail and it moved to engage. The elf wisely withdrew leaving Storm to suffer the brunt of the attacks which she took grimly knowing that she would return the favor. Ironically it was Dendrail’s bow that ended up doing most of the damage, but the combined noise of the ceiling collapse and the combat had attracted the unwanted attention of the Citadel’s main defenders. A small group of Orcs came to scrutinize the errant sounds and moved to attack as soon as hey noticed the intruders. Several Archers from far up the battlements were also drawn into the fray and took peppered anyone foolish enough to step in the courtyard with arrows. Yet throughout all of this, the Guild was prepared for the onslaught and handled it without much effort. The only real surprise was one of the Orc ordering prisoners to be killed and Basil running off in response to see if he could stop the order from being executed.
Strangely, the sounds of battle attracted the attention of three different groups of combatants all who had been lodged in sleeping quarters immediately to the west of the main throne room. While two groups were various breeds and tribes of Orc, both of which had been seen previously on the trip from Galvinston, the last group was a Zhentarium envoy. It wasn’t until after the battle that it was clear that all three groups were diplomatic envoys who had brought offerings to ask for political favors from the rapidly assembling Orc horde on the moors outside of the Citadel. Of course, Zhent blood was just as good as Orc blood in the eyes of the guild, so the Bane worshippers were cut down with equal vengeance.
Meanwhile, Dendrail got creative with his quiver of Arrow Battleloths sending them off to harass the Orc Archers before chasing after Basil to provide some basic protection. As it turns out the wizard really didn’t need it, using his invisibility to sneak up on the Orc messenger, killing it with a Scorching Ray and then trapping a room full of Orc in a web before toasting them to a crisp with Burning Hands. The dwarf simple played mop up for those Orc fortunate enough to avoid the magical barrage. On the other side of the roof, Meeshani finished off the remaining archers and lucked out to be standing on the western stair as a group of Orc raiders tied to tactically retreat. With the help of Raindrop and Mist, they finished off the group just as Storm laid the smack down on a pair of Mountain Orcs who tried to get up close and personal with her. Another three minutes had passed and another large collection of Orcs in Xul-Jarak had taken their last breath.
Once again, the Guild paused for a moment to recover from the hectic battle. Yet, this time when they made their way around the citadel, they could not find another living soul in the first pass, not even a supposed group of prisoners. As a result, they took their time healing, looting, distributing wealth and magical assets all while still paying close attention to the hundred of Orc tribes’ camped mere miles away in the valley below the citadel. Over the next half hour they combed the citadel from top to bottom and eventually discovered a pair of secret doors that both lead down into what they guessed were dungeons below the main structure. Making sure to properly prepare themselves for what they knew would be a difficult offensive push into likely well-defended areas, they opened one of the doorways and made their way down below ground.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR (continued)
Meeshani and Dendrail went ahead of the group down the stairs since they could see in the dark. When they spotted four Orcs standing guard, they quickly dispatched the enemies and then had the rest of the group follow them down into the first level of the dungeon. This level of the dungeon was octagonal in shape and has a large hold in the middle that seemed to lead much deeper underground. The sounds of falling water echoed from the hole from somewhere far below. Dendrail confirmed that the he could see at least one more level down which seemed to coincide with the fact that the stairwell kept spiraling deeper downward. Elsewhere in the room were four statues of Orcs beating on drums and a pair of double doors. Magical examination of the doors revealed that they were protected by Abjuration magic and while not locked were not easily opened by any physical means.
Stealthily moving down to the second level of the dungeon, Meeshani noted a pair of guard dog like creatures that were likely being controlled by Orc that she could not easily see without being noticed. From her description of the canines, Basil determined that they were a pair of Feral Yowlers creatures known for their fear inducing howl, their natural ability to trip opponents and their natural illusory displacement. While the group tried to plan ahead to get the jump on Yowlers, the actual execution of the tactics were almost a complete disaster. The entire melee got piled up at the base of the stairs, with several members of the Guild knocked prone or unconscious. While a pair of Orc handlers went down quickly, the Yowlers took some time and caused significant damage to many before going down.
After patching everyone up, everyone looked around quite thoroughly. This level of the dungeon was similar in shape and design to the one above. A series of vaults lead off in three directions filled with almost two dozen sarcophagi. Investigation of a random burial grave revealed little more than a badly composed orc corpse with several mundane and corroded artifacts. The most significant feature of this level was the origin of all the running water in the form of an underground stream that flowed down into the central hole in the level thundering to the ground far below as a waterfall. Looking down the gap in the floor revealed at least two more levels based on the fact that the water did not collect into a pool in the level immediately below.
Moving down to the third level and quickly dispatching a pair of Orc guards the Guild set about to investigate. Three large unlocked double doors similar to one on the first level of the dungeon were the main features of the area. Two of the three doors were protected with Abjuration magic, including one labeled as the tome of a long deceased Orc king named Kursk. Sounds of metal of metal came behind the third door and when opened revealed itself to be a fully functional forge complete with numerous orc blacksmiths. Leading the group were a pair of Orog’s a species of Org who almost never visited the surface. Thanks to the savvy placement of a Slow spell by Basil affecting most of the defenders, the guild was able to quickly take down the entire group very quickly. A quick search of the forge area revealed piles of recently manufactured weapons and armor as well as a small unfinished tunnel that seemed to lead down.
Given the option of using the stairs or the unfinished tunnel, the Guild felt it was the safest to use the stairway down to the fourth and bottommost level. Advance scouting revealed at least one pair of Tanarukk standing guard in front of a doorway, but additional reconnaissance was going to be difficult due to the deep pool of water at the bottom of the waterfall. The Guild prepared quite a collection of offensive and defensive spells and potions in hopes of getting the jump on the demon bred Orcs. However, it was a Potion of Enlarge Person used to make Storm quite impressively big that ultimately gave away the delicately prepared ambush to not just two, but all four Tanarukk’s who stood watch in the very damp chamber.
Regrettably Raindrop got on the wrong end of a Tanarukk charge and went down under the barrage of several great axes and required some immediate first aid. Storm waded across the pool of water which was barely up to her knees due to her enhanced size and started swinging, but not before Mist provided some much needed illumination in the area. The four demon spawn went down fairly quickly and then everyone rushed to loot the fallen bodies for healing potions to administer to Raindrop. A quick check of one of the exits in the octagonal room revealed nothing, so Storm moved onto to another pair and was surprised by what she found. A massive Orc warrior dressed in full plate and wielding a massive maul that could only be Thrull was on the other side.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR (continued)
The Orc warlord was standing in the middle of an elaborate room filled with pillars, a sacrificial table complete with a live victim all lit by torches. Standing around the orc was a quartet of jeering and leering Orc warriors as a ceremonial guard. At least three exits lead out of the room, two rough hewn tunnels leading into darkness and a tattered blanket hanging in front of a third. Rather than immediately engaging anyone, the Orc leader ordered his allies into melee and took a swing at the sacrifice on the table, killing the victim instantly. He then waded into melee facing off against the Enlarged Storm who was crackling with numerous offensive and defensive magic provided by potions and her friends and allies who were bringing up the rear.
At first, things looked grim when almost a dozen other Orcs and Orogs ran out of the two open tunnels and into the fray. Especially when one of the enemies was clearly a spellcaster and the majority of the creatures were armed with various ranged weapons. However, Basil stepped in and blasted a large group with his Wand of Web sticking at least half of the enemy force to the floor, taking most of those effected out of the entire battle. This allowed the backup forces of Raindrop and Meeshani to safely enter the room and start to take down Orcs with rapid speed. The drunken monk immediately went after the Orc spellcaster and dove into a grapple, while the swift gnome was on the constant move peppering opponents with arrows from all angles.
Meanwhile still back near the waterfall, Dendrail came under attack from three Orc who came streaming out of a doorway that Storm had declared erroneously safe a few seconds earlier. Hard pressed by the attackers and pushed into the corner, the glacier dwarf was forced to drop his bow and draw his sword to defend himself. Luckily, he had quite a bit of training and gave a good accounting of himself in battle. Strangely, rather than picking up his bow afterwards, he continued to use his sword, rushing into to add the rest of his allies in the central main chamber where the main combat was taking place.
For their part, Mist and Shizy found themselves taking more of a support role for most of the combat. Early on Shizy made himself invisible allowing him to sneak around healing allies, validating that key opponents were deceased and investigating the chamber from a relatively safe position, Mist provide her varied vocal talents by providing morale support as well as several potions of healing and other types to those in need, especially Raindrop who had been seriously wounded in the initial portion of the battle with the Tanarukk. While these combat support efforts might be considered less interesting to some, they are extremely critical to a properly functioning team of adventurers and they were most appreciated by those who benefited from the extra attention.
The entire group working together ultimately led to a quick fight against the Orcs. Storm trade massive blows with the leader and managed to get the upper hand thanks to a Haste Potion, allowing her to emerge victorious. Basil used his Wand of Burning Hands to burn the Orcs caught in his Web spell, killing most of them in an eruption of ignition. Raindrop went back and forth with the Orc spellcaster who seemed to put up quite a fight and eventually broke the Orogs neck dropping it to the floor. Dendrail, in a very rare showing of melee prowess moved about aiding allies where needed dropping several of the group. Even Mist got in on the action, using her rapier to good effect in several places. Lastly Meeshani kept herself busy collecting Potion from the fallen Orc just in case anyone needed healing magic since all other sources had been exhausted for the day.
Unfortunately, Shizy’s curiosity got the better of him and while he was the first to notice that four prisoners were chained up just outside of the main chamber, instead of going to their aid, he went behind the curtain into the Orc leader’s room and stumbled onto the pet Dweomervore that laired there. The pesky little Dragon fed on charged and single use magic items and had quite a few natural Spellcasting abilities that allowed it to do so quite stealthily. This forced the group to get tactical, closing the doors to drown out the sound of the waterfall and they carefully stalk their prey. Amusingly, even though they all managed to team up on the beast as it moved into to grab a wand from Shizy, the Dweomervore managed to almost get away by using its Telekinetic breath weapon. It was only the quick hands of Raindrop who came along for the ride across the room while grappling that kept the creature from escaping.
Suddenly, the battle was over and the stalwart friends and allies had been victorious. The first step immediately afterwards were to distribute the Healing potions acquired by Meeshani to those in need and then to tend to the captives. Three humans and one half-elf were removed from their bindings and treated for their condition. All four of them were unconscious from being extremely malnourished and dehydrated. After tending to their physical wounds and laying them down in nearby beds, food and water were carefully feed to each of them. Shizy declared that it would require at least a good nights rest before he expected any them to recover enough to become conscious.
Next up, the collection and collation of gear, wealth and treasure began. The group ransacked various nearby rooms filled with beds, bunks, trunks. They then collected together all items of significant value or were magical in nature together wit previously collected loot so that they might determine just exactly they could or could not carry out. The deceased Orc and Orog bodies were stacked off to the side and a small funeral was held for the sacrificial victim. Then some frank discussion was had about how to proceed since there were some areas of the dungeon left unexplored, but defensive and offensive resources were extremely scarce after almost three hours of constant battle.
Of some concern was the strange behavior of Dendrail that occurred after he used the strange sword acquired in the Cold Marshes a half-decade before. While Basil had declared the weapon as safe, it was clearly having unintended effects on the glacier dwarf who now wielded it and refused to put in down. Nevertheless, the Guild decided to push forward with exploring a large section of the cavern on the lowest level before back tracking and heading up the surface. Meeshani was frustrated to note that a pair of Amphisbaena, two-headed snakes with a nasty poison and a predilection to explode on their dead. However, she also noted treasure glinting far off in the cavern which was enough motivation for everyone to prepare themselves for yet another battle of the day.
Kythorn 18, 1310 DR (continued)
So after much discussion and consternation about getting involved in another fruitless combat, Raindrop dove into the fray with a little prompting and amazingly managed to dodge and weave between the multi-headed creatures emerging unscathed on the other side. Storm and Dendrail followed up behind with steel and blade while Meeshani contributed and arrow or two and Mist sang a rousing battle hymn. A few scant seconds later the battle was over and with only a few bite marks to show for their effort. Investigation of the cavern revealed a scattered collection of treasure amongst a pile of bones, dirt, refuse and snake scat. At the far end of the cave was another tunnel leading much deeper underground that was Storm really wanted to explore, but eventually talked out of by everyone else.
Before leaving, they decided to use Basil’s last spell of the day to open up the magically locked door to Kursk One-Tusk’s tomb with a Knock spell. Inside they found the remains of several sarcophagi all previously looted and smashed to small bits. In the middle of the room was slightly more impressive and still intact tomb of Kursk himself. After some inspection, Meeshani found and disabled a complex blade trap but was unsure what a strange plug was for at the bottom of the burial dais. Deciding to risk it, the group forced open the tomb and was surprised to find it filled with a black briny liquid. After pulling the plug and emptying the fluid, the bones of an ancient Orc king was revealed that was covered in ceremonial jewelry worth quite a considerable sum.
Kythorn 19, 1310 DR
Deciding that they had pushed the extent of their luck, the rescued prisoners were carefully gathered up and carried up the four levels deep of the dungeon back out to the roof of the citadel. Then they were cautiously lowered one by one to the ground far below and carried back to where the horses were being guarded by Dendrail’s wolf companion. Mounting up the Guild rode towards the Galena Mountains on the northern edge of Thar. They hoped that if the bodes left behind by the raid were discovered that be heading in the wrong direction, the assemble orc army would not head towards Galvinston in retaliation. They continued riding until they found a safe place to camp in an underground crevice short time near dawn.
After some rest the trio of prisoners awoke and tensions ensued when they asked for the return of their gear at the same time they refused to share much of their trails and tribulations. Mist became so incensed that she attacked one of them and got into a fist-fight before things calmed down. Two of the former prisoners were husband and wife and seemed to be quite ungrateful for the rescue so much so that when told that they would have to prove the gear belonged to them and return to Galvinston to claim it, they exclaimed that they had simply traded one jail keeper for another. The third former captive was a little friendlier and was willing to talk about his misadventures, share food with the group and generally be grateful for his release. The human male introduced himself as Kalman, an aristocrat and smalltime sorcerer hailing from Thentia.
Basil spent most his spare time identifying magic items with the spell components that he had available while Dendrail and Meeshani rode back to scout out the Orc camps. They passed no Orcs along the way and confirmed that the massive campsite was considerably reduced in the volume of camp fires present. The citadel had also been sacked with all of the bodies left behind having been taken and anything of value being either remove or destroyed. All signs suggested that the Orc horde was breaking up with the passing of Thrull and that they would be safe returning to Galvinston without risk of being followed for the purposes of retaliation. Shizy confirmed that the fallen Orc leader was indeed Thrull with the use of a Speak with Dead spell on the severed head that Basil had wisely brought with him.
Kythorn 20-22, 1310 DR
While heading for home, the group rain into a pair of multi-armed wandering Tall-Mouthers in the coastal forest range. Basil showed off the use of one of his new spells on one of the creatures to great effect while Dendrail practically took down the other one by himself now that he had his bow back. It turns out that the strange behavior of the Glacier dwarf could be completely attributed to a cursed sword. The very same sword that Basil had previously stated was safe for use. Needless to say Basil was quite annoyed to have to continually apologize for his mistake while Dendrail was starting to be concerned that wizard might have it out for him and that he would have to be more careful in the future.
Kythorn 23, 1310 DR
The Guild members arrived back in Galvinston with little fanfare other than the usual pack of children that seemed to form around them whenever they returned from some great adventure. As a result of the informal parade, just about everyone in town knew they had returned from their task. The real question on everyone’s mind was, had they been successful. A few hours later, the Mining contact Franken arrived to question the group about the details of the past ten-day. He took copious notes concerning the disposition of the Orcs, the rescue of the prisoners and ended up taking back the severed head of Thrull to validate the entire story. In addition, he would return with the contracts of both the Guild and the other group of adventures to sort out the exact details for all parties.
Kythorn 30, 1310 DR
After almost a week passed, the proof of their success was validated by the priests of Grumbar at the mine and everyone received the formal payment of a single share of the Mining Consortium for their successful venture against the Orcs. The other group of adventurers was also awarded the return of their equipment based on the wording of their contract, but they were not paid since they failed their mission. In the seven days that passed since their return, Storm got quite close with the friendliest of the three adventurers and had even gone on several picnic dates with Kalman. Meanwhile, the married couple steadfastly considered themselves prisoners for the entire time period until they were vindicated by Franken. After gathering their gear, they made it quite clear that the Guild had made enemies of several noble houses in Thentia for their behavior.
1311/Year of the Fist
With the Orc threat seriously diminished, the Mining Consortium was back in the road building business again. A disagreement amongst the family members at the Cat’s Cradle leads to Shizy heading south and purchasing ocean front property at the new port. The young priest of Sharess breaks ground on a new palace of pleasure aptly named the Cat’o’Nine. Business is slow at the start, but eventually starts to grow as other small businesses and private homes start to appear around the new port. Celebrity of sorts occurs in Galvinston when a family of Earth Genasi arrives in town as part of a caravan and then decides to set-up shop dealing in rare minerals, gems stones, and other hand carved works of art made from stone, soil and crystal.
1312/Year of the Griffon
A small group of human miners stumble onto a very small vein of Mithril in the hills east of Galvinston. The profit from this rare strike pays for the project to dredge of a proper harbor at the port as well as the construction of break wall piers. Construction begins immediately on the project and is estimated to be completed after several years. All of the architectural growth in the nearby area requires additional timber from the surrounding region. The volume of lumber cut in the area leads to formal complaints from a previously unknown settlement of wild elves in the eastern foothills of the Galena Mountains. While the Elves try to formally petition the Mining Consortium to cease the gathering of forest supplies, they are basically ignored and are practically laughed out of town for their effort.
1313/Year of the Shattered Oak
Horace takes seriously ill from serious bout of avian influenza that sweeps the town affecting most of the older populace. Local religious leaders are powerless to stop the infection which claims the lives of most of the elderly in town. The required disposal of so many corpses requires the founding of the first official town cemetery along the main road south of town. The Mining Consortium begrudgingly donates the land and allows priests of Auril, Grumbar, Ilmater and Sharess to consecrate the land as well as receive a formal blessing from the local Druid of Chauntea. Occasional attacks against lumberjacks occur throughout the near, with no permanent physical harm ever taking place, only property damage or destruction of woodworking tools.
1314/Year of the Shadowtop
Horace passes away from natural causes. The strain of the prolonged sickness from the previous year was simply too much for the wizened mage. The logical successor to the Mining Consortium wizard post is passed without question to Basil Goatherdson. At the same time the Guild comes into its own with the formation of second regular adventuring troupe. Their primary role, funded by the Mining Consortium, is to handle most of the nuisance issues that happen around an isolated community such as the random goblin incursion, roving wild animals or the occasional rogue marauding monstrous humanoid. Needless to say, Storm is quite proud of her novice trainees and her triplet nieces and nephews which seem to spend all of their free time at the Guild. Occasionally this new band of heroes crosses paths the wild elves that harass the timber industry, but they never manage to catch or capture any of the naturalist activists.
1315/Year of Spilled Blood
Discovery of a small pocket of Bloodstone by a group of Glacier Dwarf miners from the Ice Burrow clan is the sparking point for racial motivated violence and murder in Galvinston. A fire bomb attack ignites the Blythe Bandele Inn, while only causing minor damage, requiring Rayina to arrest and eventually hang the human perpetrator. This places the female constable in a precarious position of trying to mediate between the diverse racial groups while clearly not being impartial in the minds of the human who felt slighted by her capitol punishment verdict. Rumors of a religious sect experimenting with the boundaries of pleasure and pain are all the talk within the local community. Ironically, the same people spreading the stories are nothing more that drunkards, addicts and derelicts on the fringes of normally accepted society.
1316/Year of the Gulagoar
Port Galvinston is officially opened for commercial sea trade with ore shipments being sent across the Moonsea. Interested trading coasters from as far off as Hillsfar start to make regular excursions to the new port which brings all of new faces into the coastal settlement. A traveling priest of Ilmater named Vachlan known to the Guild for the past decade approaches them to investigate strange issues occurring in his home town of Twilight Hollow near the eastern Galena Mountains towards the Glacier of the White Wyrm. While Vachlan has no means to fund such an investigation, he reminds Basil of conversation they had years ago in an effort to encourage the Guild’s involvement in unraveling the mystery.
Chapter Five – Twilight Hollow
Location: Town of Galvinston, Town of Twilight Hollow, Monastery of the Yellow Rose
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 5, Incantatur 2
Dendrail - Dwarf Male Ranger 7
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 6, Drunken Master 1
Meeshani – Gnome Female Scout 7
Mist – Moon Elf Female Bard 7
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 6, Frenzied Berserker 1
Eleasisas 25, 1316 DR
Vachlan, the wandering priest of appears in town after almost a year of absences and asks the Guild for assistance with investigating a strange set of occurrences in his home town of Twilight Hollow. He received a disturbing letter from his cousin concerning the local high priestess of Ilmater. Vachlan had no means to fund such an expedition having taken a Vow of Poverty ever since experiencing a life changing event that lead him down the path to become a Martyred Champion of Ilmater. So instead he appealed to adventuring opportunities that might abound for those who traveled with him to probe the oddities. After some discussion, the Guild agreed to participate in the expedition, but without Shizy who had formally retired from adventuring to focus on his business at Port Galvinston.
Eleasisas, 30, 1316 DR
Several days into the journey alongside the eastern edge of the Moonsea, Meeshani noticed some strange movement near a collection of rocks. At the same time, a small insect like creature also noticed the rest of the group and chirped to summon others of its species. Basil and Mist warned that they creatures were called Kruthik and were usually part of a much larger pack with several of the more evolved brethren, some of which could shoot spikes while other were imbued with a nasty natural acid. The Guild moved immediately to defend themselves as a group of the smaller Kruthik rushed forward with gleams of menace in their eyes.
The pack of Kruthik appeared in stages all over the field of boulders numbering slightly more than a dozen in all. While the initial grouping was comprised of just the juveniles, both the adults and larger version appeared to help defend their hive. Because of this, the battle initially appeared much less difficult that it eventually became. No one managed to escape injury, thanks to the spikes hurled by the adults, who even tossed a few at both Mist and Basil causing them some serious damage. Storm and Raindrop were both taking quite a physical beating before things started to shift in the favor of the Guild.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point of the battle came when Basil summoned forth a fiendish vampire to aid in the group’s defense. Vachlan took an immediate affront to the use of undead in battle and unsuccessfully proceeded to try and destroy the creature to no avail. He had some quite colorful words to describe how he felt about Basil summoning Undead and the rest of the Guild allowing such behavior. He even went as far as to refuse to provide healing to Basil for his perceived crimes as an exercise in personal suffering and required that everyone else say a personal prayer to Ilmater before tending to everyone else’s wounds.
After the battle with Kruthik, Vachlan will give quite a prolonged sermon about the perils of using the tools of evil. He will proselytize about how using the tools of evil are a gateway to what will eventually the damnation of Basil’s soul. He will also comment that by allowing Basil to use these tools, you are all sliding down the path towards evil yourselves. The blackness of Basil’s soul will eventually rub off on the rest of you unless you put a stop of his actions. You all still can be redeemed, even Basil, if you forsake fraternizing with evil and start to make attempts to recant the actions of your past. Offering to help him with the strange problems occurring in his home village with no offer of a reward is an excellent start down the path of redemption.
Eleint 4, 1316 DR
Twilight Hollow resembles most other small villages that dot the face of Faerun. A stone temple dominates the village’s profile. Most of the remaining buildings have wooden and thatched roofs. The aroma of burning pine spreads an ashen pungency through the air. The smell of a hearty roast rolls out from the local inn. And the blacksmith shops rings with the sound of metal striking metal. The residents bustle about performing their daily chores – until they see you. The moment they spot you, their natural rhythm falters. They stop. They stare. They whisper among themselves and they disappear a bit too hurriedly into their shelters. Dark clouds gather in the sky and it looks like rain is imminent at any moment.
Proceeding to the Double Bolt Inn to check in, they received the same cold shoulder from the proprietor, Okrosh, who did little more than conduct business with a very dour demeanor and no idle chat. While room rates were cheap, rooms and services were extremely basic even down to the sub-standard bathing options. Even the stables were undersized with paddocks only available for three horses, with one of them strangely being occupied by an impressive war horse, even through there were no other occupants of the inn. Also missing was the presence of a stable boy who was off attending school until the mid-day meal, which meant that the guild members took care of their cleaning and stabling their own mounts. Of course, the sky opened up and the imminent rain arrived, turning the roads and ground the own into a quagmire of mud.
After only about an hour in town, several strange events occurred. The first was an elaborate funeral procession that took place through the center of town during a brief lull in the rainstorm. When Storm went to investigate, she received jeers from the assembled villagers. The memorial service only continued after she removed herself from the nearby area. The second instance was when the stable boy finally arrived at the Inn and Mist was politely trying to inquire about the peculiar behavior of the local inhabitants. The teenage boy recited a detailed mantra that seemed to blame the guild for all of the troubles the town was currently facing. When asked about the unusual prophecy, the boy had no idea what he had just said and dismissed the whole situation as a joke.
It was quite clear that the entire town was on edge over something, likely it was whatever had caused Vachlan’s cousin to send the obtuse letter. When Meeshani tried to visit the local mercantile and started to ask questions the proprietor practically tried to throw her out for being nosy. The innkeeper was doing his best to provide only the limited services of the inn and refused to partake in any conversation. He even went as far as to offer additional portions of the inns only alcoholic beverage, nutty brown ale, as an incentive for the group to loiter in their rooms instead of the common area. He was clearly afraid that the locals would not partake of his dinner offerings with them present. This led to quite a detailed argument between Basil and Okrosh over the issue. While the rest of the group was fine taking dinner and drinks in their room, Basil was firmly staying put, causing the unfortunate business owners to be forced to invent take-out as a concept to keep his loyal customers feed when they were unwilling to eat in the dining area,
Determined to try to find out what was behind all of the strange behavior, the guild members headed to the Temple of Ilmater where they met with the high priestess Andress. She explained that the funeral procession was for a paladin named Shaunnra whose condition was due to mysterious circumstances. The horse in the stable belongs to her and returned with her body several days after the catastrophe. Shaunnra was technically not diseased, but it appeared that her soul was no longer residing inside of her body. This rendered the paladin comatose and no divine magic granted to Andress was able to resolve the problem. The priestess dismissed the strange prophecy as hearsay and knee-jerk reactions by the local populace eager to blame the downfall of their beloved paladin on anyone. Andress asked for help in determining the cause of the problem from the Guild and everyone was quite eager to agree to help out.
After scheduling a meeting on the following morning to examine the body of Shaunnra, everyone left to look around town. Examination of the nearby paladin’s tomb revealed several Abjuration and Conjurations spells protecting it from casual inspection and entry. Divination magic on the stable boy and innkeeper revealed the presence of Enchantment magic likely in the form of some type of Charm spell. This led the group to circumnavigate the town looking for active magical effects that ultimately lead them to a farmhouse and large barn on the northwestern edge of town. Voices inside of the barn were not in a language anyone could translate, but it was clear that magic was in use and some type of conspiracy was brewing. Yet, the human couple inside of the farmhouse seemed to be oblivious to what was happening on their property.
Deciding to investigate, the guild opened the doors on both side of the barn and was surprised to find a group of Hobgoblins busy parting in various games of chance. When the goblinoids reacted to the intrusion with violence, the guild quickly retaliated with excessive force and flashy magic. The battle was quick and fierce with Storm and Raindrop taking the brunt of damage, but nothing too serious which was good because Vachlan had not joined the group on this little expedition. In the aftermath of the battle, Meeshani discovered that the farmhouse was vacant, suggesting a potential involvement in the conspiracy with the human couple and the goblins. Also of note was a trap door discovered on the floor in the barn that led to deep pit with no apparent exits.
Eleint 4, 1316 DR (continued)
After relieving the bodies of fallen Hobgoblins of their valuables and collecting Vachlan from the Inn, the guild decided to examine the dirt pit for clues. Investigation of the walls at the bottom of the pit revealed a concealed door that lead into a series of rough hewn rock tunnels. One direction led to a flowing underground stream while another lead elsewhere. Unfortunately, the overall exuberance of the party lead to a bit of carelessness culminating in Storm setting off a nasty trap that smashed her brother between two massive boulders. Amazingly the scrawny human wizard managed to survive long enough for everyone to push the boulders back into the wall and inadvertently reset the trap. After Meeshani managed to disable it, Basil crawled off the trigger and asked for some healing.
That is when things went from bad to almost catastrophic. When it became clear that Vachlan and Basil had come to some prior arrangement about requiring redemption before providing healing, the duties fell upon Mist. However, she clearly had been struggling with the some of the dogma of Ilmater spouted forth by Vachlan and felt that Basil had not truly earned the right to be healed by anyone. This caused a quite sudden and immediate rift in the ranks of the Guild members, right in the middle of lair of an unknown force. Meeshani kept a clear head and provided a healing potion to keep Basil from getting any worse while Storm and Mist went at with over the elf’s rather inappropriate moment to make her decision made public.
Realizing that all the shouting was likely to draw attention to them, especially after taking noticed of abnormal sounds echoing from further away, Meeshani moved down the corridor towards what appeared to be a wooden bridge over the stream. This ended up making her the target of a pair of arrows launched from Hobgoblins wielding longbows. The sudden appearance of attackers on the scene quickly wrapped up the arguments long enough to deal with the imminent threat. A good ten of the larger and uglier of the goblinoid race was suddenly a hundred feet down the tunnel tossing javelins and shooting arrows, so a petty feud over the use of undead and healing suddenly became immediately less important.
Raindrop and Storm took advantage of missile weapon defensive magic and waded into the fray only to have the angrier of the two become victim of a weak board on the bridge and suddenly found herself swimming upstream in water over her head. Meeshani laid down cover fire while Raindrop grabbed some rope and started rescue procedures while dodging a hail of incoming weapons fire. Once Storm was dragged from the water and out of the way, Basil laid down cover fire in the form of a Lightning Bolt which scattered the targets like tornado in a forest. Meanwhile at the rear of the group, Vachlan was preparing to provide first aid if it was required and Mist trying to figure out a peculiar magical effect she noticed early on in the battle when several arrows clearly veered away from missing and hit her dead on.
The electrical swath of power was clearing turning point of the battle and it took little time afterwards to dispatch the enemy, even with the amusing distraction of watching one of the smaller ones fail a jump over the hole in the bridge and fall into the water to be swept away. With the battle complete, Vachlan tended to the wounds of those who needed it while Meeshani quickly went from body to body looking for easy to find valuable while Raindrop stood watch and provide defensive. Basil and Storm were trying to convince Mist to not walk away, but that did little from dissuading the elf from dropping the few party magic items she was carrying, walking away and climbing up out of the pit all on her own.
Mist was clearly disgusted with the group and seemed to be willing to abandon the entire group over the disagreement. At first Storm was content to let her go, until reality hit home and what might happen if Mist harbored any thought of revenge for the friendship rattling argument. Storm shared her private revelation with Basil which set the two in motion after Mist that ultimately lead to the complete withdrawal of the dungeon of the entire group. Storm was eventually able to catch up to Mist as she was saddling her horse and convince her to not leave, but not without soliciting and receiving a promise from Basil to stop using undead. This agreement was met with the approving nod of Vachlan as if he had orchestrated the entire affair like a puppeteer with a coterie of marionettes.
Eleint 5, 1316 DR
Overnight Meeshani heard strange a noise coming from what she thought was the other side of the wall. Yet upon further investigation it was discovered that a secret hallway existed between rooms that contained peepholes to spy on guests. It was becoming quite clear that the town of Twilight Hollow had more secrets that anyone had ever considered and it was going to take a great deal of effort to uncover them all without them collapsing like a house of cards with the guild members being caught in the rubble. As a result, when Mist wanted to search the ground floor of the Inn, everyone else stopped her after pointing out that the charmed Innkeeper could be in on the conspiracy. Poking around the portions of the Inn when he worked almost constantly was likely to tip the quite weak hand they held.
Instead, they headed to the crypt where the soulless paladin lay to make their dawn appointment with High Priestess Andress. Once there, Basil performed numerous incantations and invocations that confirmed that the soul of Shaunnra clearly was no longer in her body. The most logical reason could be spells or a supernatural ability that replicated effects similar to either Magic Jar or Soul Bind. This suggested either a very powerful spellcaster or a nefarious monster with the natural ability capture souls. Neither option was desirable, but it certainly suggested a cohesive force was behind some, if not all of the strange activities around town. Armed with that additional information, it was decided to head back into the tunnels under Twilight Hollow and see if they could ferret out the cause.
Eleint 5, 1316 DR (continued)
Descending back into the tunnels, Meeshani went first scouting ahead to look for advanced signs of trouble, finding none, she beckoned everyone else come back down. What she did notice was that the trap that had crushed Basil the day before had been manually reset, so she busied herself with trying to disarm her. Unfortunately for her, she managed set off the trap, but did manage to avoid getting caught in it. This force the group to all work together to push the boulders back into the walls slots and in the process of doing this they soon realized that noise crated by the boulders slamming together had alerted others to the presence. A strangle slug-like creature covered with bits of rust metal was on the other side of the trap and it looked quite hungry.
Both Basil and Mist identified the magical beast as a Metal Master, a type of evolved slug that had magnetic control over various forms of metal. While everyone quickly moved out of tightly cramped space and gathered their weapons, the slug turned all nearby metal to a cloud of defensive particles that slashed at anyone who go too close. Forced to stay outside of melee range, Basil let lose two different electricity based spells, scorching the creature while Mist broke out her rarely used bow and let fly with a few arrows. The Metal Master seemed to be able to exude control over metal much father away as it suddenly activated a repulsion effect that pushed several members of group away. This did not stop Raindrop or Meeshani who tumbled past the monster onto the far side. Even when the slashing cloud of metal returned, Storm rushed in knowing that the damage caused would drive her into frenzy.
Luckily for all her allies that no sooner did she manage to kill the Metal Master that a band of Hobgoblins on the other side of where the bridge had been previously made themselves known. As a result, Storm ran screaming down the tunnel, leaping over the stream and into the midst of battle. This forced everyone to quickly follow behind her in order that Storm not end up getting in over her head as she had been prone to do in the past. Raindrop also jumped over the stream and the make-shift barrier on the other side, but it required Meeshani to use a grappling hook and then leave it behind for everyone else to safely cross the stream. Meanwhile poor Vachlan was almost left behind brining up the rear of the group after taking time to heal some of those wounded by the Metal Master.
Meanwhile Storm, with a little help from Raindrop made short work of the eight Hobgoblins with one managing to escape for a brief period of time fleeing for its life further down the tunnels. As the two friends gave chase, they stumbled into the lair of an evil human priest who made his displeasure known by ordering a pack of skeletons to attack the intruders. Unfortunately for the cleric, he was mostly caught unaware and went down like a chump by a Scorching Ray provided by Basil rushing to keep up with the chase. The only real challenge that the enemy provided came in the form of an animated cauldron that spit acid on anyone trying to approach. Luckily Basil had a waterskin handy, Raindrop had a flash of wine ready and Vachlan had prepared a Create Water spell. Allowing those splashed by the caustic fluid to wash it off with minimal damage being taken.
Investigating the wreckage of the break-neck battle of the past few minutes revealed only a handful of coins on the Hobgoblins. While the priest turned out to be a worshiper of Loviatar, the Mistress of Pain and had a strange necklace that radiated Evocation magic. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the presence of two prisoners locked up in under grates in the floor. One of the prisoners appeared to be unconscious, likely from repeated abuse as well as lack of food and water, but the other was awake. The malnourished human said his name was Yharune and was initially unwilling to talk until Mist used a Charm Monster spell to make him more pliable.
Yharune was clearly quite insane and was under the misconception that Mist was the high priestess of Loviatar. He seemed to respond best when under repeated pain which Storm caught onto quite quickly. The scarred man tended to ramble on at times, but he did reveal a few useful pieces of information. He indirectly confirmed that the couple from the farm house was involved with bringing him down into the tunnels and locking him up as well as that a Temple of Loviatar was hidden somewhere nearby. Regrettably, he was unable to identify the high priestess as she always wore a mask in his presence. In addition, he did not know the directions to the temple, having never been himself. In the end, he was locked back up again for his own safety rather than be let run around the tunnels rousing all sorts of trouble.
Eleint 5, 1316 DR (continued)
Upon examination of the second prisoner in more detail by Vachlan, he discovered the remains of some type of magical charm inside the mount of the comatose albino halfling. Once he pulled out the charm, the prisoner started coughing and rousing from his coma. After providing him with food and water, the Guild started asking questions of the prisoner who introduced himself as Gavin Shortspur. Apparently the halfling was part of a traveling circus that frequented most small towns and cities in the Moonsea region every few years. During a stop over in a small town some two and half ten days ago, the circus was attacked and many of the performers were taken captive. Over the last few weeks, Gavin was constantly tortured for no apparent reason as he saw all the rest of his former companions taken from their cells and lead somewhere to be sacrificed to the Mistress of Pain.
While Basil seemed eager to send Gavin off back to town, the halfling was quite eager to understand why he was captured and where the rest of his former performers had been taken. In addition, Raindrop was more than a little suspicious of the motivations of the strange halfling, but after some discussion it was agreed that Gavin could tag along. Meeshani then provided some basic weapons and gear to Gavin since they both had the same basic physical build and size. Once everyone was ready, they headed down the long hallway past the prison into an area of the tunnels filled with strange symbols as well as drawing and paintings of various types of torture emblazoned along the walls.
The hallway ended in two different features; an elaborate door and handle complete with a metallic monster-like mouth with a handle inside and a recently abandoned forge room filled with rusty tools, an anvil, stone storage cabinets and an eerie black flickering flame. Investigation of the forge and the fire revealed an unknown type of elemental who was hidden behind an illusion of the fire. The creature struck out at both Mist and Basil causing an unexpected side effect of massive paranoia and mistrust. Overall, while the elemental was quite easy to destroy and it ultimately caused very little physical harm, the mental ramifications of its touch seemed to have the potential for long lasting effects.
The taint of the creature seemed to accentuate the already prevalent fears and suspicions of the elf and the greedy wizard to such a level that they started to bicker and provoke each other and their friends into arguments and the prospect of violence. Poor Gavin was stuck in the middle of what had the possibility of breaking out into a full fledged melee between what he though were a band of friendly adventurers. Luckily Vachlan was there to add his insight into the situation and to also keep things from blossoming completely out of control. Meeshani also gave one of her rare interjections and practically screamed at everyone to get themselves under control. Eventually some level of sanity crept in, but Mist and Basil still looked at each other with extreme suspicion.
Storm, Meeshani and Gavin then focused on the strange door, noticed trap that would cause the mouth to snap shut on anyone using the handle and disabled it. Unfortunately, with no handle to open the door, Storm was forced to bash it down and this had the unintended effect of causing a collapse of the hallway on the far side of the door which spilled over into a pile of rubble on the near side, almost burying a few people. When Storm went to try and remove some of the debris, Basil warned her away, fearing that any significant movement of the crushed stone would cause further collapse. He also surmised that some type of deadfall trap had been triggered when the door was smashed down rather than being opened in the normal fashion.
Reluctantly realizing that they had hit a dead end, everyone made their way back through the tunnels, up the pit and back above ground. They all decided to head straight to the Temple of Ilmater to share what they had learned with Andress the high priestess. They also wisely brought the slightly insane worshipper of Loviatar with them in hopes of being able to glean more information from him. While Andress was out ministering on the town and unavailable, they were able to give their report to the priestess on duty instead. She immediately mustered the temple guard, took the prisoner in for interrogation and kicked off all of the emergency procedures that were in place for just such an emergency. Loviatar was a long time enemy of the church of Ilmater and her presence in the tunnels underneath Twilight Hollow was certainly a dire providence.
Strangely after almost an hour, no one had been able to find Andress, which it itself was not all that unusual since she often rode to outlying farms some distance away to preach to the faithful unable to make it to town, However, under the current circumstances, there was some definite concern that perhaps something had happened, so the search for her widened. In the mean time, the Guild decided to head over to the Inn and have some lunch as well as to investigate the strange hidden areas behind their sleeping areas. Everyone sat down for lunch while Gavin snuck around the ground floor of the inn looking for secret entrances. It did not take long for him to find a hidden door in the back of a closet that contained a ladder heading up to the hidden hallway and down to an area under the Inn.
Gavin snooped around and discovered a pair of rooms, one empty and the other filled with supplies. In addition there was a hallway which led to a bridge over running water and further down an unknown tunnel. Meeshani eventually joined Gavin in exploring and they decided to leave lantern burning in order to draw out anyone nearby. The gnome and halfling then went back up to get everyone After trussing up the charmed Inn owner, they all started to make their way down to the hidden tunnels below, but the distraction they created ended up not turning out as they expected. A trio of three hobgoblins lay in wait down below and jumped Storm as soon as she went down the ladder. While this alone would not have been so deadly, there were more hobgoblins lying in wait nearby by.
A pitched battle broke out at the bottom of the stairs as the various members of the guild jockeyed for position and tried to make their way down to aid their allies. Raindrop, Meeshani and Gavin were able to fall or tumble their way down to help out Storm and eventually everyone else was able to force their way down. For the defenders part, they gave up quite a fight putting more than a dozen of their forces into the battle with limited degrees of success. Most of the brute force was provided by a gang of Hobgoblin grunts. Additionally support was provided by a priest of Loviatar, a magic missile happy Sorcerer, a half-dragon barbarian and a stealthy rogue. While they put up quite a good fight, in the end, they were unable to overcome the determined forces of the Guild and all fell quite quickly.
Eleint 5, 1316 DR (continued)
A significant period of time was spent going over the valuables of the fallen enemy forces as well as searching the area for any potential hidden entrances, exits or caches. While they were unable to find any obscured areas, they did find quite a collection of coins, gems, artwork, weapons, gear and other magical effects. Basil took a moment to identify the potions before handing them out to those who could use them most effectively, before the group decided to move on deeper into the tunnels. They moved through several rooms with locked doors that contained nothing much of interest until Meeshani stumbled onto a massive crypt area full of skeletons. While the group moved on the offensive, Vachlan simply walked up and turned them all to ash with the power granted to him by Ilmater.
Pushing ahead, Meeshani scouted down several tunnels finding three potential directions to focus their investigation. One was a bridge over swiftly moving water while two others were deeper into a crypt area where she heard something rattle off in the background. Deciding to move back towards the main group and report, just as she got within visual range, she felt strange magic try to take effect and turned around to noticed a strange Fey-like creature dresses in Jester’s motley waving a rattle. This chance encounter with what clearly was an insane faerie would end up causing more problems than anyone could have ever anticipated.
Several members of the group identified the creature as a Grey Jester, a type of Fey that derived nourishment from the emotions of the living and favored Enchantment effects that changed those emotions. Mist though she would be cute and give the creature a does of its own medicine, but that only ended up angering the Fey who singled her out for most of its attacks. In addition, anyone who got within thirty feet of the Grey Jester came under the effects of its emotional feeding. This quickly lead to most of the group suffering from personality drain, and Gavin falling to the effects of a laughter spell and then catatonia as his essence was bled dry. While the fey did not turn out to be much of a melee opponent, the overall impact it had on the group was unprecedented in the history of the Guild.
After some discussion and detailed searching of the nearby crypts for anything of value, the group decided that rather than risk getting into anymore trouble that they would return to the Temple of Ilmater and rest for the remainder of the day. This would allow both Vachlan and the acting priestess Edna the ability to remove their personality drain on the following day. In the mean time they caught up on the news of the day. Andress was still missing with no real clues as to her location. In addition, the innkeepers’ son was also missing as well as Dendrail who had not been seen since the night before. This meant that potentially three different innocent victims had fallen prey to the machinations of the cult of Loviatar that had taken up residence under Twilight Hollow.
Eleint 6, 1316 DR
After restoring the personality drain with the use of quite a few Restoration spells and determining that no additional information had been discovered about the missing High Priestess or the Innkeepers son, the group made their way back down into the tunnels under the city. They returned to the area with the wooden planked roped bridge leading over the roaring flow of an underground river to where Meeshani had seen some strange ooze like creature the day before. While the Gnome was keen on taking things safe and slow, Storm ruined that by wandering into a Glyph of Warding that exploded in flame as she walked by. The brazen barbarian then callously proceeded down into a maze of hallways, stopping only when two of the oozes came into her visual ranged.
Most of the group followed quickly behind Storm in order to keep her from falling prey to her own idle curiosity. Gavin and Meeshani all moved in close enough to see and take advantage of their ranged weapons while Raindrop tried to figure how she was going to be able to enter melee with a creature that would like injure her by contact alone. Mist and Vachlan brought up the rear and they all soon rued the fact that they had all clustered together in a corridor as one of the ooze tried flow over, across and through most of them. Luckily, everyone but Storm was able to dodge out of the way and avoid any of the acidic burning that Storm encountered. They then all quickly turned reduced the two offending oozes to little more than pools of acidic slime
After successfully identifying the creatures as Gelatinous Cubes and daring to be different, Basil decided to take a different tunnel. This turned out to also be trapped causing him some serious burn for his effort. Unabashed, Basil armed himself with various types of Necromantic magic, webbed a passing ooze, then burnt the web off, hoping to be engulfed and thereby cause the creature to expire from its own incessant hunger. Unfortunately, both Meeshani and Mist ended up earning his ire after they let lose with arrows, destroying the creature, thereby ruining his meticulous plan. Once again, the wizard and the bard were at the opposite ends of yet another incessant argument with no obvious means to resolve their differences.
Eleint 6, 1316 DR (continued)
Backtracking to the one remaining section of the tunnel seemed to lead the group deeper into processes and procedures to administer pain as exhibited by the increasingly detailed paintings, motifs and drawings that were scattered across the walls. The tunnels eventually lead to two different, but identical doorways, similar in all ways to the mouth shaped doorway elsewhere in the tunnels. Wary of potentially collapsing the tunnel, the group decided for a more direct method entering. Storm volunteered to insert her hand into the mouth shaped door casing and was surprised when it would not open due to her natural toughness accrued over years of battle. The task ended up falling to Basil who embraced the task with his usual zeal and the mouth bit down, drew blood and the door opened.
Something hidden in the shadows or by magic was on the far side and it made a massive roar alerting anyone nearby of a burgeoning conflict about to ensure. Yet when Basil moved to use magic to reveal the creature, it failed, leading him to believe that the creature was some type of outsider, likely a demon or devil, with some type of natural cloaking field, some type of damage and spell resistance as well as some type of energy resistance. Meeshani found out the hard way that the creature was quite large and able to scoop up opponents in its mouth. Luckily, with the information provided by Basil, Vachlan was able to use a Protection versus Evil effect to make the gnome untouchable by evil outsiders, causing the creature to drop Raindrop. Unfortunately, the creature was still practically invisible and as such quite a challenge to make any type of concerted effort to defend against or attack.
To make matters worse, the roar had alerted the central temple complex of intruders in the form of what appeared to be several zombie creatures directed by a human priestess. In addition, some strange violet colored creature was also nearby and its simple presence seemed to induce some type of momentary weakness to anyone within line of sight. The zombies took the form of a pair of Otyugh’s and a single Rust Monster who headed straight for Storm proceeded to munch both her magical halberd and a spare Morningstar. Vachlan’s impressive power over the undead was having no effect that in part to the desecration of the temple by the worshippers of Loviatar. Luckily, Meeshani had wisely place the magical halberd taken off the dead half-dragon on her haversack and provided to Storm. Using that weapon, the barbarian was able to push forward and drop several creatures quickly thanks to some previously unknown magical effect on it.
As the group moved further into the temple, they noticed an elaborate altar area where a priestess of Loviatar had strung up a prisoner. The poor victim was none other than the son of the town innkeeper and his death was swift thanks to the sacrificial scourge wielded by the dominatrix in charge. His passing, alone with the destruction of the zombies and the lesser priestess all seemed to fuel the power of the violet hued undead creature that Vachlan identified as a Soul Stealer. Even stranger was the fact that when Mist got close to the creature, she saw what looked like the disembodied form of the fallen Paladin Shaunnra trapped inside. While the evil presence of the Soul Stealer was difficult to be near, the guild was able to work together to vanquish the creature while Raindrop tried to capture the high priestess. Unfortunately, she managed to escape the clutches of her grappler through the fortuitous use of a Dimension Door spell.
With the battle over, the group moved to explore the temple proper and the nearby exits. A single stairwell lead up to a overlooking balcony and a series of rooms on an upper level. Underneath the altar area was a small torture chamber filled with several bodies, some of whom Gavin recognized as belonging to his traveling circus. A single doorway lead to a more elaborate torture chamber complete with cells that resembled an abattoir filled with the deceased remains of numerous species. The room was quite difficult to stomach especially after finding the remains of Grr, Dendrail’s wolf companion. A doorway on the far side of the room led to a simple bed chamber obviously used by a professional torturer. Prior to moving on Vachlan felt the need to taken down all of the bodies and administer some form of last rites. He felt it was the least his faith could do for letting such heinous actions take place under the noses of the Temple of Ilmater for such a prolonged period of time.
The last major exit from the chamber was a pair of elaborately carved metal doors that seemed to indicate that they were the main entrance of the temple proper. Rather than waiting for anyone to check for potential issues, Storm opened the doors and was subject to a series of magical traps and narrowly avoided falling into a pit trap that opened underneath her. She was barely standing after the conflagration and it took immediate medical attention to keep her from dying from the after effects. On the far side was an intricately designed stairwell that lead down and greeting chamber and a small number of additional rooms. Exploration of those rooms revealed the other side of the collapsed tunnel from the day before as well as another torture chamber filled with an iron maiden occupied by a wraith. This particular undead was quite easy to destroy in seconds thanks to a transdimensional spell of Basil’s and the exalted power over the undead of Vachlan.
Several surprising revelations occurred over the tense several minutes fighting and exploring around the central portion of the temple of Loviatar. The first was when Mist was trying to be sneaky and encourage Basil to use undead when she though the battle was going badly. She thought that by speaking in Celestial, she could avoid detection. Ironically, Vachlan heard and understood every word of her desperate plea. Next, Gavin was quite emotionally overwhelmed when he came up the remains of his former friends and traveling partners in the circus he used to perform with. Seeing the tormented and besieged bodies of close personal acquaintances hanging like meat in a chop house was simply more that the poor halfling could handle without becoming physically sick. Lastly, while it appeared that soul of the fallen paladin had been released with the demise of the Soul Eater; the real villain had managed to escape from Raindrop’s grasp to locations unknown. It was likely that she was on the upper level of the temple and would have to be hunted down and dealt with properly.
Eleint 6, 1316 (continued)
Deciding that this was the best course of action was head upstairs, the group carefully climbed up the spiral staircase to the balcony area above the main temple. The foyer contained three rough hewn stone columns and a pair of hallways that lead off to numerous doors and fire lit alcoves. As the group move to explore the area, one by one the columns shifted into a trio of Earth Demons wielding stone Greatclubs and attacked. While the melee never truly became life threatening it was certainly made more difficult by the fact that the Outsiders had some type of molten blood that escaped through wound marks are anyone that hit them with a slashing or piercing weapon. Raindrop found this out the hard way when she grappled several of the Demons and got splattered with molten rock as everyone took advantage of their opponent’s momentary combat deficiencies and reduced them to piles of rubble.
Moving down the far hallway, they carefully listened at doors, check for traps and opened several rooms. The first room was certainly the most elaborate complete with the vilest of wall murals, a leather bed hung on chairs, a large mirror as well as a wardrobe filled with fancy women’s clothing and a small hand-sized sarcophagus containing a poisoned dagger. The other rooms were much smaller containing little more that basic bunk beds and empty chests. Meeshani did discover some strange sounds coming from the only chamber that contained double doors leading into it deepest into what must be a dormitory. At the same time as Storm went to investigate the noises, Mist noticed something strange about the wall sconces that suggested some type of hidden entrance. It was this innate curiosity of both the Bard and the Barbarian that ultimately led to a battle that would be fought on two fronts.
On one side, Storm & Meeshani discovered a Tiefling being voluntarily tortured by some tiny of bluish-purple ball of energy while on the other, Mist discovered that all of the wall sconces contained secret doors which lead into a hidden central chamber where the escaped High Priestess was hiding protected by a Prismatic Roper standing guard. The Barbarian and the Scout quickly learned that the spherical creature packed an offensive blast attack and it appears that their weapons were effectively useless, prompting a strategic retreat. While the Bard was surprised to notice her Monk friend suddenly fall victim to a magical effect from the Roper and voluntarily walk within melee ranged of the multi-tentacled Aberration. The rest of the group was then caught in the middle of this quickly escalating battle.
With all of the sconces suddenly becoming open doorways, the group was quite effectively able to avoid the Roper and focus their attacks on the High Priestess all while trying to avoid the energy creature that had been conducting the torture session. While most melee weapons seemed ineffective against the sphere, Basil’s magic was quick effective blasting it several times in rapid succession. His magic was also useful against faithful of Loviatar electrifying her quite successfully. Mist was quite successful in fascinating the Roper, effectively taking it out of the battle for the short term while the group focused on the other combatants. Storm finally managed to get lucky with a hit that finally dissolved the energy sphere creature for good.
For his part, Vachlan rushed into battle that obviously was meant to resolve the Ilmater versus Loviatar issue in Twilight Hollow. He smashed into the priestesses, knocking off her mask and revealing her to be none other presumed missing High Priestess of Ilmater; Andress. The now revealed double agent retaliated with a curse from her deity followed by dosing poor Vachlan with a potent poison.
However, this did not stop Meeshani and Gavin from letting lose with arrows and bolts striking the traitor on numerous occasions. Raindrop even tried to enter into the fracas with a grapple, but was frustrated when it was clear that worshipper of Loviatar had planned for just such a tactic with a Freedom of movement spell. Yet it was clear that the imposter wasn’t long for the world, so with her dying breath, she tossed a lone dagger at her ally the fascinated Prismatic Roper, in hopes of shattering the Enhancement Magic.
It was clear that the tactic worked when the Aberration went berserk and started to thrash anyone and everyone within twenty feet with its massively long tentacles. While the appendages themselves did not cause all that much inherent physical damage, they were laced with a poison that impaired the natural agility of someone under its effects. Several people became under the influence of the effects of that poison as they dodged out of the way of the grasping limbs while trying to offer any type of offensive action they could provide. As usual, Storm was at the front of the battle, having used an Enlarge Person potion, but was unable to connect likely due to both being affected by the poison and her unwieldy size. Nevertheless, with repetition comes success and she was finally able to destroy the beast wit a few lucky blows.
With the battle complete, the clean-up began. Raindrop, Storm and Mist decided to investigate the rest of the closed doorways, summarily smashing them all to bit, looking for any hidden enemies or items of value. Meeshani, Basil and Gavin poked around the hidden chamber looking to pry any hidden secrets from it. For his part, Vachlan patched up much of the party, but not before he had liberated a few material items from the body of Andress, most specifically a holy symbol of Ilmater and what appeared to be a holy relic. This apparent act of looting on the part of Vachlan ended up causing a serious contention with both Basil and Meeshani. They argued that since Vachlan had been unable to pay them for their effort, the spoils of battle belonged to the group. Vachlan argued that the spiritual items of his church had never been under any such strictures since their ownership by the church of Ilmater was never in question. This lead to a quite loud argument between the three individuals that seemed likely to escalate into something nasty if it wasn’t diffused quickly.
Eleint 6, 1316 DR (continued)
Basil quickly appraised the value of both contested religious items and realized that apart from the church of Ilmater, they held very little value for anyone. Once he made that clear to Meeshani, the increased tension of the situation vanished as if it had never been, albeit Vachlan was a bit perturbed by the greedy actions of the two adventurers. Moving along, they decided to question the Tiefling still shackled in the torture room for information on Dendrail. With reluctance, the Tiefling revealed that he was told that the dwarf had escaped. Feeling relieved that their friend and ally had not been caught, tortured or killed, the group moved on to look for any items of value. They eventually stumbled onto a secret room hidden behind a mural in the largest and most ornate bed chamber. Four magically trapped chests contained a variety of magical and mundane loot for all of the hassle the Guild had to put up with resolving the subterfuge of the Temple of Loviatar.
Returning back of the Temple of Ilmater with the Tiefling in tow, they shared the results of their research with acting High Priestess Edna. With her assistance, they confirmed that the fallen Paladin Shaunnra had indeed been put to rest and her soul was on its way to its final destination in the Outer Planes. Afterwards, Edna places Twilight Hollow own under martial law and orders assistance of an Inquisitor from the Monastery of the Yellow Rose to investigate if they are any more traitors present in town. Basil even takes the time to enact his own personal style of revenge by informing the Innkeeper of the death of his son at the hands of Andress herself. The rest of the even is spent relaxing, partying or sleeping back at the Inn, helping themselves to all the food and drink they can lay their hands on.
Eleint 7-12th, 1316 DR
After spending a day identifying their treasure and divvying it amongst the party, the group decided to head back home after being given approval from Inquisitor of Ilmater. The ride back to Galvinston is anticlimactic at best after the tense events of the past few days. Vachlan was required to remain in Twilight Hollow to handle the pending Inquisition forthcoming from the Monastery of the Yellow Rose. The entire town was placed under full martial law until everyone was able to be properly interrogated. Somehow you managed to leave without either an official thanks from the church or the townspeople, but also managed to avoid having to tithe any portion of your treasure to the clergy. The only thing that makes the trip home interesting is Gavin relishing in his freedom and pestering the group with questions about your home town.
Unfortunately, along the ride home, the Guild does stumble onto a pack of wolves devouring the remains of several corpses. They scatter the animals, but amongst the remains they find several items that appear to have belonged to Dendrail. The half-dozens corpses are strewn with arrows suggesting that Dendrail put up quite a fight before he was subdued or killed. The creatures all appear to be medium-sized humanoid bipeds with heads similar to a goat or a ram. The bodies are either too decayed or half-eaten so it is impossible to reveal just exactly what creatures that attacked Dendrail might have been. Basil has quite a few ideas, but nothing concrete to work with the evidence on hand. In addition, any useful tracks appear to have been wiped clean based on Meeshani’s rudimentary tracking skills.
Intra-Chapter Timeline
1317/Year of the Wandering Wyrm
The first High Blade takes power in Mulmaster across the Moonsea. A small group of Wild Elves appear in Galvinston demanding to speak to the local authorities. Constable Rayina manages to broker a treaty between a previously unknown nation of Tel’Quessir and the Mining Consortium. The details of the treaty layout established boundaries for town expansion, mining and logging for the Consortium while the elves agreed to provide historical records on forestry and mineral within the agreed upon treaty boundaries. While most of the local inhabitants feel that the treaty is a good thing, many of the miners feel cheated as a result of the deal. The treaty also formally protects all elves within the borders of the treaty from threat of retaliation for the previous years of sabotage and terrorism, leading to elves coming to town to trade on a fairly frequent basis.
1318/Year of the Tired Treant
Mulmaster enters into a formalized trade agreement with the Mining Consortium to provide timber, quarried stone and metal ore. This turns the port overnight into a raucous and at times lawless urban blight. Most of the service related businesses immediately put up a local establishment at the port with more of the traditional services migrate back to the main town in original river valley. The lure of quick money encourages most of the area’s youth to move to the port causing yet another increasing dichotomy between the populations of Galvinston. Sheriff Rayina is forced for the first time to keep active officers on duty at all hours to deal with the increasing criminal element that inevitably results with such a rapid increase of business opportunities in a small coastal town. Drow are seen with increasing in the wilds in southern Vaasa.
1319/Year of the Fallen Throne
With the collapse of the local government due to the passing of an heirless royal line, the Zhentarium take formal command of Zhentil Keep. In order to foster good will with other local governments of the Moonsea, the Zhentarium attempts to open formal diplomatic relations. While most of the Moonsea is completely ambivalent to such endeavors, the town and port of Galvinston completely rebuff any such attempts at negotiation based on past historical precedence. Increased criminal activities both from Downslope and Port Galvinston force the official founding of an authorized town militia and defense force called the riders of Galvinston known for their skill and speed negotiating the well traveled toad between the town and port.
Chapter Six – Woe to Galvinston
Location: Town of Galvinston
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 5, Incantatur 4
Gavin – Halfling Male Rogue 8
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 6, Drunken Master 3
Meeshani – Gnome Female Scout 8
Mist – Moon Elf Female Bard 8
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 8, Frenzied Berserker 1
Marpenoth 11, 1319 DR
The core Guild members were enjoying a relatively quiet autumn day over brunch mostly discussing the mysterious appearance of Bail a few ten-days before when they were interrupted by the sounds of shouting from the direction of the main road. When they ran out to investigate, they witness an uncontrolled covered wagon careening down the street in the direction of the stream ford. The cart plunged into the stream, rolled over and then disgorged a pair of four armed albino beasts that Mist would later call a Girallon. Just to make matters worse, several members of the group heard screams originating from inside of the slowly sinking vehicle.
Gavin responded the fastest, pulling and shooting a crossbow at the lead creature without a moments notice. Meeshani noticed that Storm was not quite armed for battle, so she pulled out her trusty Shortspear and stuck into ground as she moved by. Mist provided a bit of magical enhancement to the spear before Storm grabbed the weapon and shouted out orders that sent Raindrop running down the cobble stones moving at speed up to the bridge over the stream. Looking inside the Monk saw two small forms underneath a cloth tarp amidst the overturned remained of several freshly cut green logs.
Further up the road, Storm and Gavin moved to engage the first of the creatures while trying to dodge out of the way of their excessive reach. Raindrop dove off the bridge and into the wagon tearing back the trap and was surprised to see two small Drow children inside. She managed to grab both of them in a head lock and jump outside in the waist deep water, moving slowly onto shore. Raindrop then moved under the bridge dragging the children with her to keep them from the prying eyes of the nearby monsters, the locals and her friend Storm who had just go into complete battle frenzy. Mean while the combined melee offense of Storm and Gavin managed to drop the first gorilla beast and they moved onto the second after it charged at Meeshani.
Within seconds the second creature also vanished under the onslaught but not before several Guild members suffered critical wounds from the gnashing teeth and rending claws of the Girallon. Storm even went as far as to attack her friends deep within the mental rage that over took her senses, before being calmed down by the soothing music of Mist. In the aftermath of the battle, Storm and Meeshani stayed behind to answer questions and to help clean-up while Raindrop, Basil and Gavin smuggled the Drow children back to the Guild where they tried to figure out where they came from and just what to do with them.
The Constable showed up shortly thereafter and asked all sorts of questions. She sent a runner to the Temple of Auril to treat the wounded, had the corpses hauled off to an empty field for further investigation and arranged for draft horses to pull the wagon out of the stream. A through search of the wagon revealed freshly cut wood from a region of the forest off limits to the population of Galvinston as a result of the treaty. Both the owner of the wagon and the wheelwright who constructed it were clearly marked on the vehicle so they were called upon to answer a few questions. The wagon turned out to have gone missing on a regular ore shipment to Downslope a few days before. Meeshani performed a brief bit of scouting to determine where the runaway had originated. She found a pair of horses loitering around the north road and tracks leading up the hill towards Downslope.
Back at the Guild, Mist was trying to question the Drow children with little success. While she was able to create an effective disguise accentuated by a Tongues spell and some Illusion magic, the children were clearly traumatized and knew very little. In fact, one of the two children had collapsed into unconsciousness due extreme fear of the bright light. The other knew little more than that he had been taken from the safety of the crèche by strangers and had woken up in the wagon moments before the crash. He was quite hesitant to answer questions from a strange Drow female that he had not previously met before. Mist even managed to make matters worse when she tried to sing a traditional Drow lullaby and was met with complete dread and abject terror.
When everyone got back together it was decided that they would gather up their horses and ride up the trail looking for clues. Meeshani sent her brother down to the port to collect the junior adventuring band to stand guard over the guild in case a mob came looking for the Drow. Then she asked her parents to take the now sleeping Drow down into the basement of the adjacent inn to keep them completely safe from potential persecution. Storm stayed behind to wait until her young protégés showed up passing the time by sending the other children home from the day care center the Guild had turned into over the past few years.
Several hours ride up the road revealed a camp site used the night before by perhaps a dozen armed men on horse back. Thrown off the road were six bodies, which clearly matched the descriptions of the missing caravan guards and driver. The bodies were killed some place else and thrown off the road at the camp site. All tracks suggested that the armed raiders rode back towards Downslope. After Storm caught up with the main group, they all decided to head in that direction to hopefully obtain clues along the way. She had talked to Constable Rayina before leaving town about potential leads on the lumber cutting and was given the name of a less than scrupulous timber dealer who worked out of the White Hart Inn at Downslope. Armed with that extra bit of information, the Guild felt confident of tracking down the perpetrators of the crimes.
Chapter Six – Woe to Galvinston
Location: Town of Galvinston
PC Dramatis Personae
Basil - Human Male Wizard 5, Incantatur 4
Gavin – Halfling Male Rogue 8
Raindrop - Human Female Monk 6, Drunken Master 3
Meeshani – Gnome Female Scout 8
Mist – Moon Elf Female Bard 8
Storm - Human Female Barbarian 8, Frenzied Berserker 1
Marpenoth 11, 1319 DR
The core Guild members were enjoying a relatively quiet autumn day over brunch mostly discussing the mysterious appearance of Bail a few ten-days before when they were interrupted by the sounds of shouting from the direction of the main road. When they ran out to investigate, they witness an uncontrolled covered wagon careening down the street in the direction of the stream ford. The cart plunged into the stream, rolled over and then disgorged a pair of four armed albino beasts that Mist would later call a Girallon. Just to make matters worse, several members of the group heard screams originating from inside of the slowly sinking vehicle.
Gavin responded the fastest, pulling and shooting a crossbow at the lead creature without a moments notice. Meeshani noticed that Storm was not quite armed for battle, so she pulled out her trusty Shortspear and stuck into ground as she moved by. Mist provided a bit of magical enhancement to the spear before Storm grabbed the weapon and shouted out orders that sent Raindrop running down the cobble stones moving at speed up to the bridge over the stream. Looking inside the Monk saw two small forms underneath a cloth tarp amidst the overturned remained of several freshly cut green logs.
Further up the road, Storm and Gavin moved to engage the first of the creatures while trying to dodge out of the way of their excessive reach. Raindrop dove off the bridge and into the wagon tearing back the trap and was surprised to see two small Drow children inside. She managed to grab both of them in a head lock and jump outside in the waist deep water, moving slowly onto shore. Raindrop then moved under the bridge dragging the children with her to keep them from the prying eyes of the nearby monsters, the locals and her friend Storm who had just go into complete battle frenzy. Mean while the combined melee offense of Storm and Gavin managed to drop the first gorilla beast and they moved onto the second after it charged at Meeshani.
Within seconds the second creature also vanished under the onslaught but not before several Guild members suffered critical wounds from the gnashing teeth and rending claws of the Girallon. Storm even went as far as to attack her friends deep within the mental rage that over took her senses, before being calmed down by the soothing music of Mist. In the aftermath of the battle, Storm and Meeshani stayed behind to answer questions and to help clean-up while Raindrop, Basil and Gavin smuggled the Drow children back to the Guild where they tried to figure out where they came from and just what to do with them.
The Constable showed up shortly thereafter and asked all sorts of questions. She sent a runner to the Temple of Auril to treat the wounded, had the corpses hauled off to an empty field for further investigation and arranged for draft horses to pull the wagon out of the stream. A through search of the wagon revealed freshly cut wood from a region of the forest off limits to the population of Galvinston as a result of the treaty. Both the owner of the wagon and the wheelwright who constructed it were clearly marked on the vehicle so they were called upon to answer a few questions. The wagon turned out to have gone missing on a regular ore shipment to Downslope a few days before. Meeshani performed a brief bit of scouting to determine where the runaway had originated. She found a pair of horses loitering around the north road and tracks leading up the hill towards Downslope.
Back at the Guild, Mist was trying to question the Drow children with little success. While she was able to create an effective disguise accentuated by a Tongues spell and some Illusion magic, the children were clearly traumatized and knew very little. In fact, one of the two children had collapsed into unconsciousness due extreme fear of the bright light. The other knew little more than that he had been taken from the safety of the crèche by strangers and had woken up in the wagon moments before the crash. He was quite hesitant to answer questions from a strange Drow female that he had not previously met before. Mist even managed to make matters worse when she tried to sing a traditional Drow lullaby and was met with complete dread and abject terror.
When everyone got back together it was decided that they would gather up their horses and ride up the trail looking for clues. Meeshani sent her brother down to the port to collect the junior adventuring band to stand guard over the guild in case a mob came looking for the Drow. Then she asked her parents to take the now sleeping Drow down into the basement of the adjacent inn to keep them completely safe from potential persecution. Storm stayed behind to wait until her young protégés showed up passing the time by sending the other children home from the day care center the Guild had turned into over the past few years.
Several hours ride up the road revealed a camp site used the night before by perhaps a dozen armed men on horse back. Thrown off the road were six bodies, which clearly matched the descriptions of the missing caravan guards and driver. The bodies were killed some place else and thrown off the road at the camp site. All tracks suggested that the armed raiders rode back towards Downslope. After Storm caught up with the main group, they all decided to head in that direction to hopefully obtain clues along the way. She had talked to Constable Rayina before leaving town about potential leads on the lumber cutting and was given the name of a less than scrupulous timber dealer who worked out of the White Hart Inn at Downslope. Armed with that extra bit of information, the Guild felt confident of tracking down the perpetrators of the crimes.
Marpenoth 12, 1319 DR
Several hours down the trail, the tracks spit once and then split again a short time later. Deciding that they would have a better chance of gathering information by following one of the side trails, they followed it for several hours across difficult terrain. Raindrop and Meeshani went ahead since they could move faster on foot without being constrained by being on horse back. The managed to stumble onto the remains of a ambush that occurred at a trail head a sometime around dawn. Whoever had performed the attack had cleaned up after themselves quite well and then lead the horses of the defenders off in a different directions along with the bodies of the dead
Following that trail lead to a dead end at the top of a several hundred foot cliff with no clear means of easily traversing it. All signs suggested that the ambushers were likely Drow who were acting to retaliate for the kidnapping of the two male children that were resting comfortably at Blythe Bandele Inn in Galvinston. With half the day spent chasing one dead end, Raindrop convinced the group to check the second side trail as well, but they were unable to find anything or catch up to those making the tracks before it became too dark for the humans in the group to see clearly Storm decided that it would be a good idea to set-up camp on the trail and proceed in the morning.
Marpenoth 13, 1319 DR
Some time in the early hours of the morning, a group of assailants launched poison laden crossbow bolts at those on watch. They then followed up by tossing a deceased human body at Storm while shouting a curse in broken common before attacking from the darkness. The attackers kept themselves on the fringes of the light provided by the fire which prompted the Guild to activate a few light sources of their own to get a better idea of just who was attacking. The enemy also called forth a Fog Cloud in the middle of the camp to obfuscate themselves followed by a Darkness effect nearby and culminating with a Fireball dead center in the middle of the camp where most of the Guild had withdrawn to hide within the Fog Cloud.
It quickly became clear that there were at least four enemy attackers, two who seemed to be proficient with ranged weapons along with both a divine and an arcane spellcaster. Meeshani eventually spotted the two bowmen floating, likely by magic, above a pair of evergreen trees and dropped another light source underneath it to make it a target. It was immediately hit by ranged weapons and perished. Mist dispelled the magic on the other causing it to fall across Storm’s melee range immediately leading to its instantaneous death as well. The two casters were slightly more difficult to track down and deal with.
The arcane caster was spotted first and seemed to go into hiding as a result while the divine caster was unexpectedly discovered by Gavin trying to sneak up on Mist. Once exposed, it moved into the relative safety of the still active Darkness spell where is tried unsuccessfully to hide. Raindrop managed to sneak up, grapple it and drag it outside of the darkness. The arcane caster chose this moment to disclose itself and tried unsuccessfully to free its ally before escaping by Teleportation magic. This is moment when things almost went catastrophically wrong.
The attacker was able to use levitation magic to move the grapple into the air. Meeshani, Mist and the Gavin all let lose with ranged weapons trying to take it down before it escaped, but instead all three hit Raindrop causing her to plummet to the ground. Thankfully Meeshani’s weapon choice was a blunt arrow; otherwise the three erroneously aimed weapons might have killed Raindrop. Instead it allowed the divine caster the brief few moments it needed to escape into the night and the arcane caster to return to collect the body of one of its fallen allies. Only one body was left behind and it was revealed to be a male Drow with indications that it was a worshipper of Vhaeraun, a deity favored by assassins.
The repercussions of the mistaken targets in the battle were felt most by Raindrop who was at the unfortunate receiving end of the poorly aimed missile weapons. She took the brunt of her anger out on the newest member of the group, the albino halfling. She also requested that no one else ever utile lethal force that had a chance of injuring her if a similar situation occurred in the future. This prompted Meeshani to arm Mist with several blunt arrows and to suggest that Gavin keep similar measures handy as well in the future. The discussion then turned to why the Drow had attacked them and the identity of the human body that was thrown at Storm. The human appeared to be wearing the same style of boots as the group of rides they had been tracking, so perhaps the attack was simply in confusion over who was ultimately responsible for the aforementioned kidnapping several days before.
Marpenoth 14, 1319 DR
Everyone awoke at dawn and rode heard all day long towards Downslope, arriving shortly after sunset. They decided that they should break up and explore several different methods of gathering information. Mist took a single horse and headed into the tented section of the town posing as a trader looking for information on lumber or wood dealers. She easily found someone willing to trade the horse for a significant amount of cut wood that matched the types of species found in the runaway wagon in Galvinston. Storm and Raindrop went off to pasture the remaining horses and quickly discover that a half-elf named Teegahn was sold a larger amount of wood was likely to be found at the Dustaway Inn on any given night. Meanwhile Meeshani and Gavin took care of reserving lodging at the White Hart Inn.
As the various Guild members made their way to the tavern, they were all quite surprised to find Basil already there and in the middle of a detailed discussions with a group of humans and a half-elf. Once Basil noticed the group, he disengaged from his business dealings in order to talk to his old friends and allies under the pretense of conducting a private narcotics deal. Everyone soon discovered that Basil had been working under an assumed name for years in Downslope as Timothy Redcap, a well known dealer in Devilweed and other alchemical supplies. The reunion of the Guild members, sans Mist, was used to quickly share information about Bail’s mysterious disappearance as well as the various events that had occurred over the past few days in Galvinston. They compared notes and all realized that they were all involved in trying to do the same thing, determine the identities of the terrorists and stop their activities.
Eventually, Mist arrived in the tavern in disguise. She was shocked to see Basil alive and well, happily conversing with her friends as if nothing was amiss. She walked over to Basil, demanded to speak with him and then informed Meeshani on the way out to gather everyone at the edge of town or risk her leaving the group permanently. Storm had tried to call it an early night and had to be collected before everyone arrived at the edge of town out of immediate visual and auditory range from any nearby camp sites. Once there, Mist confronted Basil, accusing him of being responsible for all of the terrorist activities and sabotage over the past few years. She demanded that Basil explain himself or risk her wrath.
This sudden allegation of crimes and collusion against Basil stunned the rest of the Guild who were initially unsure how to react. Gavin had grown close to Basil over the last few years, so he moved into to protect his friend, while Raindrop prepared to grab Mist if she did anything rash. Storm stopped both of them from interfering the moment that Mist committed herself to attacking Basil, hoping for a resolution of the encounter without anyone else getting involved. For his part, Basil admitted to playing both sides for both the Mining Consortium and The Cause, but this wasn’t enough to satisfy Mist who felt that actual violence was the only way to resolve her concerns.
Basil showed admirable restraint, casting only defensive or movement based spells to keep himself away from as much direct harm as possible while trying to explain things. Mist continued to push and prod the issue all while attempting to attack Basil in any way shape or form. Meeshani tried to stay out of the entire affair, instead scouting around the group in case anyone came looking for the source of the loud and flashy disturbance. Raindrop attempted to remove whatever options Mist had to attack including disarming the elves bow and tossing it into the darkness. Things escalated when Mist swipe an offer of a drink out of Raindrops hands and threw at Basil, hitting him in the side of the face. Raindrop was forced to stun Mist into submission to try and stop things from getting any worse.
In the end, Mist eventually calmed down and offered what little evidence she had of the allegations. Apparently when she had left Galvinston in mid-1317 for parts unknown she had instead gone undercover in disguise and joined The Cause. As a result, she had a first hand view of the activities that some of its members participated in a very unofficial capacity. Many a terrorist action was performed by its members, apparently on a whim with blame placed on the Wild Elf nation or Mist’s recent boyfriend Elendil. Yet, there was never an example of any of the leadership of The Cause either ordering such actions or participating in them. Both Raindrop and Basil seemed honestly shocked that the joined membership of The Cause and The New Dawn had been involved in such criminal activity. In the end, everyone decided to retire for the evening to ponder the evidence. Mist got her own room at the Inn and left her journal for Raindrop and Storm to read in her absence.
Marpenoth 15, 1319 DR
Mist awoke early and went out on the town to find the wood dealer, Teegahn. She found him at the tavern and carried on a short conversation with the half-elf. Apparently Teegahn, due to his elven heritage, was allowed to harvest the wood from the elven lands and sell it in places like Downslope. The druid practiced a type of sustainable agriculture that only removed deadfall, diseased or trees of a specific age. Teegahn had no interest is deforesting his homeland, but he could run a respectable business and use the profits to help his people out. He was quite friendly and willing to take anyone out to his lumber operations in the Galen Mountains so that they could see the forestry harvest themselves. Mist arranged for just such a trip scheduled for later that day.
Back at the White Hart Inn, everyone was discussing the journal over breakfast. Raindrop and Storm had stayed up all night reading it and were trying to concisely share its contents with the rest of the Guild while grilling Basil over certain details. Basil certainly seemed concerned about The Causes participation in the events over the last few years, but he seemed to be telling the truth about his involvement. The alleged facts were purely conjecture on the part of Mist, so it was clearly her word versus Basils and Storm was quite annoyed with being stuck in the middle trying to mediate. Eventually Mist showed up, provided details of the arrangement with Teegahn and the trade of the horse for a wagon full of wood. She then said her goodbyes, handed in her guild page and rode out of town. Meeshani rode out after her and unsuccessfully tried to convince Mist to stay around for the general good of the Guild and Galvinston, but ultimately she refused and rode off alone towards Bonesville.