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Hello all. Recently my party managed to explore the tomb in “A Gathering of Winds”. As they made their way back to Diamond Lake I had one of the PCs receive a sending from Alchemist Refrum (from “The Styles”). The alchemist said the following:
Have encountered a problem in Greyhawk, may be in trouble. Investigating the Lantern Man murders. Have stumbled upon something far more sinister. Please send help.
The party was torn about what to do. On one hand they want to help their friend (I had the party meet him at a very low level), but they also feel they need to go to Manzorian’s in order to stop the impending doom. In the end they decided to go on to Magepoint and hoped that Refrum could handle the situation without them for awhile. So here is what I am thinking.
I’m sure the party is eventually going to return to Greyhawk (where I have placed the Styles) looking for the alchemist. I intend to have them find his small house in the Alchemist Quarters abandoned and ransacked. With a little bit of information gathering, they will eventually meet up with the sister of Jarme who will tell them that Refrum was doing investigations on her behalf. She’ll mention that as he continued his investigations, he began to get more and more paranoid, eventually telling her that “they” were coming to get him. A few days before his disappearance he gave her his journal of what he had learned, but she had not been able to make heads or tails of it.
I’ve come to you guys to help me flesh out what the journal should have in it. I want it to chronicle Refrum’s growing loss of reality as he learned more about the corruption within the government and the tentacled horror that slept below the city. I want it to be creepy in the true Lovecraftian fashion that this adventure so rightfully deserves. Suggestions would be much appreciated; quotations or passages to actually have in it would be even more wonderful.
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(SPOILERS)My first thought is this:
There's one city guard the party talks to who actually is competent, caring, and helpful. Have Refrum be totally paranoid in his journal entry referring to him...can't think of the guard's name right now.
Refrum's been getting dream sendings from the aboleth for some time now, and he doesn't trust anyone. He thinks that this guard is friendly,...almost...too friendly.
Total red herring, can really confuse matters, esp. if the party starts detecting lies/ et. al. and it comes up truthful. They'll think the guard has some scrying protection.
Who do you trust, man?
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(Spoilers)The guard I refer to above is Constable Jute. By the time Refrum meets him his sleep has been severely compromised by nightmarish sendings, and his spells don't work. I am going under the supposition that the aboleth is threatened by Renfro, cannot dominate him (his will is too strong), an so will try to either drive him insane, or eventually to brainwash him through sleep deprivation.
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Thanks for the good ideas, I'll definetly use them. I've made a few early entries already. They are just talking about the first few days of his investigations, but the last entry is the beginning of the weird stuff. I'll write more in the next few days.
Despite my misgivings Eleanor has convinced me to look into her brother’s death. Even though the evidence against him was substantial, she still seems to believe that he was executed wrongly. I am no investigator, but she has no one else to turn to right now. I will try to organize my thoughts in this journal in case some important detail leaves my mind.
Jarme was found by the city patrol standing over the body of a murdered man with a bloody knife still in one hand and a lantern in the other. This alone seems to indicate that he was the Lantern Man, but the fact that he could not come up with a sufficient alibi for why he was there makes the evidence all the more damning. This is the official story from both the city guard and the courts, and seems to be true. With Jarme already dead for over a month it is difficult to piece together what brought him to that fateful night, but perhaps I can shed some light on this mystery but retracing his last footsteps before his execution…
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Before Jarme’s execution he was held in a wretched place called Hopene’er Asylum. Eleanor has told me that during the short time he was incarcerated there she was unable to visit or speak with him. The city watch would allow no one to see him. This is particularly harsh treatment, even for a murderer as infamous as the Lantern Man. However, it may be understandable considering how long Jarme the Lantern Man, avoided the city guard’s attempts to find him.
However, while he was in Hopene’er someone must have spoke to him. There had to be guards, and other assorted people who brought him food and moved him from place to place. I hoped to start me investigation by interviewing these people, but like Eleanor before me, I was barred from entering the asylum. A group of men under the employ of Councilman Dory were guarding the entrance to the building and told me in no uncertain terms that I was not welcome. They seemed very aggressive and I felt that I would soon be put into bodily danger if I did not relent. My attempts to contact, Emil Trantor, the Physician who runs the asylum were met with similar failure.
How is Councilman Dory involved in this? I realize the government took a strong interest in these murders, but why are his men still investigating them after the execution?
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As I continue this investigation, I am left more and more with a feeling that I am not being shown the whole picture. Since I was not allowed to visit the place where Jarme spent his final days, I decided to visit the Styles Garrison. It was the guards from this garrison that had been tracking the Lantern Man during his brutal killing spree, and it was they who finally found Jarme over the body of his victim. I hoped they could shed light on some of the details of the case. When I first arrived at the garrison the guard there were friendly and talkative, but as soon as they heard my name and what I was investigating they became distant and refused to speak to me about the Lantern Man. This is such odd behavior from the city watch, as even a little bit of gold did not loosen their lips.
Fortunately I was able to find a noble soul willing to talk to me. His name was Constable Jute and he spoke with me at great length. Much of what he said I already knew. He claimed was present in the patrol that found Jarme and that he was a remarkably well-behaved and calm man considering the crimes he had committed. However, in the end Jute warned me that the guards had already been visited by government officials who had warned everyone in the garrison from speaking to me. He too warned me that it was in my best interest to let this investigation lie.
In only a single day from visiting Hopene’er Asylum, word about me has already spread? How can this be? Eleanor what path has your request placed me on?
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Last night I awoke from dark dreams to find a visitor in my room. Despite the fact that my room was pitch black I knew it was there, I could feel it. Sitting against the wall opposite the foot of my bed, its dark eyes were watching me. I could see nothing of its form, but somehow I knew that it was large and hungry. For many hours I sat in bad staring at it as it stared at me. Eventually it left and my mind fell back into the realm of dreams. When I awoke this morning, I found no sign of the creature. Was it simply a dream? Has my paranoia about this case just gotten to me?
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In the journal entries, early on, throw in the phrase, "help is on the horizon." "The Horizon...." over and over again. What does it mean? or is it "The rising done?" Subliminally slipping "Tharizdun" into the subconscious of his psyche as he slowly plunges into the cold unforgiving sea of madness.
Also, just like the aboleth, Refrum feels abandoned by his fellows (the party's failure to show up), but not by his religion. Have his thoughts parallel this theme, until it starts getting really warped around into a direct reflection of the aboleth's thinking. It won't make any sense to the party until the end of the adventure.