I'm tagging this campaign with "Free Company" in order to distinguish it from everyone else's Rise of the Runelords games here. The name is a bit of an in-joke; all of my friends playing in this game are also members of a World of Warcraft guild of the same name, on the Oceanic server Nagrand.
The PCs
Nartana, played by my wife Lexa.
A human cleric of Desna, the goddess of dreams and travel. Nartana is a member of the Varisian people, who take their name from the region in which these adventures take place. Varisians are a travelling culture, fond of tattoos and fortunetelling, magic and performance. Nartana herself is a well-trained dancer, dance being one of the ways she honours her patron goddess.
Aaron Deverin, played by my friend Owen.
A human paladin of Erastil, the god of farming, hunting, and family. Aaron is a member of a lesser branch of the Deverins, one of the four founding families of Sandpoint; his mother is actually a blood relative of Kendra Deverin, the current mayor, but Aaron's father took her surname out of a desire to further associate himself with such well-regarded people. Aaron is a member of Sandpoint's town guard.
Tali "Nima Gorod" Relevon, played by my friend Sarah.
A human rogue. Tali was born and raised a member of the Gargoyles, an all-female criminal organisation in the nearby metropolis of Magnimar. Recently, she had an affair with a Varisian man named Meleris, who persuaded her to abandon her life of crime and start a new one with him. They arranged to meet in Sandpoint two weeks ago, but she hasn't seen hide nor hair of him. Tali is using the name "Nima Gorod" in an attempt to distance herself from the Gargoyles.
Tharl "the Stupendous", played by my friend Andrew.
A human conjurer. Like Tali, Tharl was born and raised in Magnimar, and apprenticed to the Stone of the Seers, a well-regarded wizards' academy in that city. Unfortunately, it was only his father's glib tongue and occasional luck in gambling dens that enabled Tharl's tuition to be paid (or temporarily forgiven), as the family was in truth quite poor . . . and when his father died recently, Tharl was forced to sell even their tumbledown home in order to pay for the remainder of the year's education. He began supporting himself - barely - by performing stage shows in sleazy dockside bars, but two weeks ago he finally decided to take up an old friend's offer and make a fresh start in Sandpoint.
Backstory
Aaron Deverin was that old friend who offered Tharl a place to stay. Aaron had been sent to Magnimar as a teenager as part of his father's grand plans for his future, and had met Tharl there. The two had become friends and maintained a correspondence over the years. As it happened, Tharl travelled to Sandpoint with the same merchant caravan as Tali.
Aaron also knows Nartana fairly well, since he often involved himself in easing tensions between the permanent residents of Sandpoint and Varisian travellers. When Tali couldn't find Meleris anywhere in Sandpoint, she decided the best way to find out what had happened to him was to get to know some of the Varisians in town. Nartana happened to be performing regularly in the Hagfish, a tavern known for its rough clientele but lively entertainment (and the place where Tali was staying), so they became casual friends as a result.
The final piece of backstory for these characters ties Aaron Deverin to the town's history a little more. One of Chopper's victims was a young man named Jared, Aaron's best friend growing up. When Aaron was sent to Magnimar, unfortunately, Jared and Aaron's fiancee Aya grew too close to each other and fell in love.
It's a great source of guilt for Aaron that the day he found out and confronted Jared (in a raging argument that left the two former friends angry rivals) was also the day that Jared was brutally murdered. Since then, Aaron and Aya have had to deal with not only their broken engagement but also their mutual sorrow over Jared's death. It's not exactly easy on either of them, let's just say.
The PCs were, of course, in town when the Swallowtail Festival was held. They enjoyed the sights and sounds, listened to the speeches given by prominent citizens, and finally gathered to hear Father Zantus begin the dedication ceremony proper.
Before he could even begin to recite the first prayer, a goblin dashed through the crowd and opened the throat of a sleepy dog, just roused by the thunderstone, under a wagon near the PCs. Two other goblins leapt out from their hiding places nearby, and people all over the crowd began to scream as they noticed goblins swarming through the streets around the cathedral.
Tali reacted more quickly than anyone - her hand found a dagger at her belt and hurled it straight through the throat of the dog-killing goblin, pinning him to the wagon by his neck. As Aaron ushered any children within reach behind him for safety, one goblin leapt onto the closest lunch table and started filling his pockets with leftover food, while the other tried to hide behind the dog by lifting up its nearly-severed head, exposing its opened throat.
Nartana drew a starknife, favoured weapon of Desna, and put an end to that ruse by sending it spinning through both the dog's throat and the goblin's own, killing it instantly. Aaron, having herded all the children behind him, rushed forward at the goblin scrabbling for food on the table. Luckily for the goblin, it slipped in a puddle of gravy and dropped down below the deadly arc of his sword.
Tharl stood in front of the children as Tali sprung forward, intent on pinning the goblin to the table with a second dagger. She came within a hair's breadth of pinning it down, too, but succeeded only in burying the knife in the wood of the tabletop. Nartana was more successful, coming forward and crushing the goblin's skull with her morningstar.
The PCs took stock of the situation and helped Father Zantus gather up the frightened children and their parents within the safety of the cathedral. Just as they'd caught their breath, however, our heroes saw five goblins light on fire a wagonload of wood intended for the evening bonfire . . . and the goblins saw the PCs, too.
They rushed to meet each other in combat, Tharl muttering a hasty spell (enlarge person) and causing Aaron to grow magically larger. Four of the goblins had armed themselves with flaming brands, but when Aaron neatly cut one of them in half from shoulder to hip they shrieked in outrage and drew the battered, scrap-metal swords they call "dogslicers". Nartana and Tali joined Aaron in melee immediately, and even Tharl charged forward to deliver a satisfying blow with his staff.
The fifth goblin, a filthy-looking female with disturbingly few clothes on her scrawny body, was croaking some sort of warsong (inspire courage) to encourage the warriors. Seeing the even-larger-than-normal "longshanks" paladin cutting down her allies, she changed her tune and tried to cloud his mind (daze), with little success. Instead, she was forced to use her whip, cutting his cheek but soon after falling before the heroes.
The last goblin left alive yowled in terror at the sight of the warchanter's death, but didn't manage to get three feet towards safety before Tali despatched him with a knife between the shoulderblades.
As the PCs caught their breath and cleaned their weapons, they heard screams and barking from the north. Rushing to help, the arrived in time to see a tough-looking goblin mounted on an ugly, ratlike goblin dog cutting down some kind of hunting mastiff with the scrap-metal halberd they call a "horsechopper". Behind a nearby rainbarrel, a well-dressed man was cowering at the sight, shrieking even more as four more goblins emerged from hiding, emboldened by the dog's death.
Tali's first knife performed what we called "precision surgery at range", killing one of the goblins outright as Aaron and Nartana charged at the commando on the goblin dog. Aaron's final act before the enlarging effect wore off was to kill both commando and "dog" with a mighty downward blow, and it didn't take the PCs long to finish off the other three goblins.
The well-dressed man was falling over himself to thank the PCs, introducing himself as Aldern Foxglove and begging them to find him in his room at the Rusty Dragon so that he could properly reward them for saving him from certain "goblining". They agreed, but sent him on his way as they cautiously explored the rest of the town, looking for any further goblin menace.
Several town guards hailed Aaron and let him know they'd pushed goblins as far as the seacliffs, where they'd leapt into the ocean rather than be captured! Sheriff Hemlock found them a short while later, and told them the guards had managed to interrogate a few, but all they would say was that their leader was a "longshanks like you" who had a "secret mission to the graveyard".
Sobered, the other PCs accepted his invitation to come along to investigate as vouched-for friends of Aaron, and together they discovered that Father Tobyn's grave had been robbed. No-one there could think of a reason why someone would do such a thing, but they agreed to honour the sheriff's request to keep the theft of Tobyn's body quiet.
It wasn't long before the PCs accepted Aldern Foxglove's invitation to meet him at the Rusty Dragon, and it took even less time for them to accept his further invitation to join him on a boar hunt in the Tickwood, a few miles west of Sandpoint along the Turandarok River.
Along the ride, Foxglove was extremely chatty with all of them, inquiring into their backgrounds and praising their prowess in the fight. He paid especial attention to Nartana, commenting often on her beauty, and to Aaron, remarking several times in wondering tones on the mighty blow which had killed the goblin commando and his mount in but a moment. His attentions and inquiries, in fact, wore on the heroes' nerves over the course of the boar hunt, but they were certainly glad to dine with Foxglove at the Rusty Dragon when he arranged for Ameiko Kaijitsu to prepare the boar with some of her native land's unusual sauces and spices.
Over the next couple of days in town, Aaron found himself surrounded by distant but attentive knots of blushing young women wherever he went, and his elderly landlady kept finding little love notes and gifts left on his doorstep. None of these secret admirers seemed to have the courage to approach him just yet, however, so who exactly was showing such interest remains, for now, a mystery.
The heroes were becoming concerned about the possibility of further goblin trouble, but their tentative plans to head out and look for signs of another attack were cut short when Sheriff Hemlock invited them to a meeting with Mayor Deverin and a newcomer to town, the elven ranger Shalelu Androsana. Shalelu, as Hemlock informed the PCs, spends most of her time wandering around the general vicinity of Sandpoint keeping an eye on the goblins and other threats in the open country and the forests.
Shalelu herself had a tale to tell: members of all five goblin tribes in the Sandpoint area were involved in the attack on the town, and that worried her a great deal. Anything that could unite all five tribes could pose a more serious threat to the town, and the idea that it might be a "longshanks" was even more troubling.
Hemlock laid out his plan: he would travel to Magnimar and secure an additional garrison for the town from the city guard there, but in the meantime it would be best if the PCs could stay around and reassure the populace that their new heroes were looking after them. When Tali and Tharl expressed some doubts, he offered them a small salary of 2gp per day, which they of course gratefully accepted. Aaron, of course, wouldn't need the encouragement even if he weren't a guard, but Nartana wasn't exactly averse to earning a little more than what she could make dancing in the Hagfish.
This is the beginning of the second session, held just this past Tuesday night.
On patrol around Sandpoint, Aaron Deverin met a pretty young woman named Shayliss Vinder waiting for him outside her father's general store. She explained, almost shyly, that her father Ven was so preoccupied with what her older sister Katrine "might be up to up at the lumber mill" that he wouldn't listen to her about a problem in the store's basement.
Namely, she's sure she saw a rat "as big as a goblin . . . well, at least half as big" hiding among the barrels and sacks down there. Aaron was, of course, more than happy to take care of the problem for her, and the two of them headed straight into the store and down the stairs.
Needless to say, Aaron was flustered when Shayliss began to slip out of her bodice and wrap her arms around him as soon as she shut the door behind them. A cot in the back of the basement seemed to be her intended destination, but Aaron protested - surely she knew of his history with Aya, and that he couldn't give her what she wanted?
Shayliss's mouth turned down at this news, and she seemed about to speak when Aaron whirled around - he could hear footsteps coming down the stairs to the basement! As she straightened her clothes at Aaron's urging, the door flew open and Ven Vinder appeared, frowning at the sight of his daughter and a guardsman alone and not entirely dressed!
Fortunately, Aaron smoothed things over with a simple and honest explanation that, while Shayliss might be infatuated with him, he was not in the slightest bit interested himself, and merely thought he was doing her a favour. Shayliss surreptitiously stamped on his foot as she stormed out of the room, but Ven (after visibly thinking it over - you could almost hear the gears turning) accepted Aaron's story, and contented himself with warning the paladin away from both of his daughters. As he left, Aaron asked if there was any real rat problem, but of course Ven had no idea what he was talking about.
The following night, eight days after the goblin raid, the PCs had met for dinner in the Hagfish tavern. Their meal was interrupted by a frantic woman, clutching a baby to her breast and almost dragging along a small boy, little older than a toddler.
This woman, Amele Barett, explained with fear in her voice that her son, Aeren, had been having nightmares ever since the attack on Sandpoint - he'd seen a goblin light a cat on fire and caper around its burning corpse, and ever since he'd woken almost every night screaming about a goblin in his room. He insisted that their dog Petal sleep in the room with him, but his screams would wake her too and set her barking.
Finally his father, Alergast, had insisted that the boy begin acting like a man, and when Aeren woke in terror an hour after being put to bed tonight, they ignored his cries at first. That changed when they heard his screams become even more shrill, and Petal yelping in pain - Alergast ran into the room, grabbing Aeren and pushing him out into Amele's waiting arms. She didn't wait to see what was happening, but ran outside with the children to safety.
At this point, she lifted one of Aeren's arms to show the characters the unmistakeable marks of needle-sharp goblin teeth. Amele went on to explain that she'd waited a few minutes for Alergast to come out and tell her everything was all right, but when he didn't come she'd run to the Hagfish for help - and luckily, Sandpoint's heroes were right there.
Naturally, Aaron led the others down the street to the Barett home a short distance away. Nima volunteered to quietly explore the small home - just a kitchen in the front room and two bedrooms - and found it empty apart from the boy's bedroom. In there, a gruesome sight: Petal lying dead with a crude knife in her ear, and Alergast Barret lying on the floor motionless, his head and upper body inside the boy's wardrobe. He had obviously crawled inside to see something, but what?
Nima found the courage to pull Alergast out of the wardrobe and turn him over, and saw the sickening truth: the flesh of his face and most of his neck and upper torso had been chewed off. The culprit wasn't hard to find - enraged at the theft of his meal, a skinny goblin wearing a dog's-tooth belt hurtled out of the hole, slashing at Nima with some sort of crude knife he'd made from a sharp bit of metal and the leg of a wooden toy soldier.
Nima's cry of alarm brought the others inside, luckily for her as the desperate goblin cut her deeply on both her calves - when Nartana came into the room, she saw her friend's wounds immediately and healed them with Desna's grace.
Which may or may not involve a glow of twinkling stars and fluttering butterflies, since both are special to Desna.
With four "longshanks" to deal with, the vicious little monster was soon despatched, despite his agility in twisting around their blows. Sorrowfully, the PCs lifted Alergast's body onto his son's bed and covered it with a blanket, and Aaron bore the dreadful news to his widow, still waiting down the street with her children.
Aaron took it upon himself to lead the Baretts up to the new cathedral, where he knew Father Zantus would provide for them until their family could be contacted. Tharl tried his best to calm Aeren down by entertaining him with prestidigitation tricks, but it was clear that the PCs were witness to the destruction of a once-happy family.
A few days later, with Sheriff Hemlock still not yet returned from acquiring more guardsmen in Magnimar, the PCs' meal was once again interrupted by someone needing help. This time, an elderly halfling woman named Bethana Corwin, a maid at the Rusty Dragon, came to the heroes for help - her employer, Ameiko Kaijitsu, had gone missing overnight.
In Ameiko's room, Bethana had found a note written in her boss's native tongue - fortunately, Ameiko had been teaching her to read its unique script, and Bethana was able to show the PCs a translation of the note, which proved to be from Ameiko's half-brother Tsuto.
Bethana explained, her eyes wide, that Tsuto is a half-elf, and obviously the product of his mother's having had an affair. She related the whole sordid history of the family, explaining that Ameiko hasn't seen her brother since their mother's funeral five years ago. Bethana is sure that Ameiko must have gone to see her brother after such a long silence, but she's frightened that her boss hasn't returned.
The heroes decided to investigate the Glassworks right away. As they approached, they could see the furnace chimney smoking as if it were still in operation, but they found every window with its curtain drawn and every door into the building locked.
Before I forget - I use the name Tali here in the recaps, but she actually uses the name Nima even with the other PCs.
Tali slipped around to a side door and carefully opened the lock, but by doing so she drew the attention of a passer-by who asked - pretty loudly - why one of Sandpoint's heroes was trying to break into the Glassworks. Luckily, Aaron was just around the corner, and managed to quiet the man by alluding to "official business of the Sandpoint guard".
Inside the Glassworks, the PCs found themselves in some kind of circular showroom - wooden cabinets on every wall held examples of vases, bowls, and windows. They moved cautiously through the seemingly-deserted factory, hearing little besides the ever-present rumble of the furnace.
They found the common dining and recreation room a complete shambles - every stick of furniture had been chopped into kindling, playing cards were scattered everywhere, and even the dinner knives had been stuck into the ceiling beams. The workers' sleeping quarters presented a shocking sight: eight beds soaked in blood, sheets and matresses torn by the blades that had obviously slaughtered their occupants. A nearby pantry provided an obvious clue: a broken dogslicer discarded amidst the ruins of sacks and barrels of food. Goblins!
In the loading room at the opposite end of the building from where the PCs had entered, they discovered a safe hanging open and empty. The only room left for them to look in proved to be the glassworking room itself - home to another horrible sight.
More than a half-dozen goblins were capering around the work tables, waving dismembered body parts of the employees they'd murdered in the night, partially burning them in the furnace and dripping molten glass over the remains in an attempt to mimic a more "impressive" achievement in the center of the room - an elderly man, whom Aaron was barely able to recognise as Lonjiku Kaijitsu, dead and strapped to a chair, covered in runny sheets of molten glass.
The goblins shrieked in alarm and gathered up their weapons at the sight of the heroes, but Tali reacted more quickly than any of them, sprinting forward to crouch behind a nearby worktable and hurling a dagger at the closest goblin. It caught him right in the eye and killed him instantly - but now three goblins rushed at Tali, and one of them was waving some long-handled tongs dripping with molten glass!
As the rogue leapt backwards to avoid their attacks, the remaining four goblins (one also carrying glass-laden tongs) charged at the rest of the PCs as they stood in the doorway. Thinking quickly, Tharl cast enlarge person on Aaron, and the paladin stood shoulder to . . . hip . . . with Nartana as they cut the goblins down. Tali stabbed a goblin right in the face, but the blow wasn't fatal, and she decided to retreat. She managed to throw herself back out of the range of their weapons and headed towards her friends.
The goblins shrieked in rage and hurled large fragments of glassware at Tali's back as she ran. One only clipped her hip, but another one lodged in her back near the base of her spine, severely injuring her. Tharl aimed an acid splash at the goblin with the wounded face, but it flew wide and only succeeded in scarring the wall of the furnace.
As Nartana and Aaron cut down the last two goblins, and the paladin moved forward to interpose his enlarged self between the wounded rogue and the remaining three foes, the little freaks realised that most of their number had been killed. Hurling a last barrage of half-melted glassware at Aaron, they turned to run.
With his longer reach, Aaron charged forward and cut two of the three goblins down. Tharl and Tali (healed by Desna's grace) ran to catch up, but the last goblin was out of the room and around the corner before anyone could catch him. A long corridor ran down between the left wall of the furnace and the workers' quarters and offices on the other side of the building, and it was down here that the goblin ran as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him.
Aaron and Tali were hard on his heels, but unable to cut him down. Tharl winged the creature with another acid splash, but the battle wasn't over until the goblin burst through a set of double doors at the end of the hallway and ran straight into the business end of Nartana's morning star, the cleric having moved from the other end of the glassworking room to cut the little freak off.
Tali was still pretty badly wounded, but the heroes had found no sign of Ameiko or her brother, so they continued the search. Another door off the loading room led to some stairs down into a storage basement, where they found the badly-beaten but still conscious inkeeper bound and gagged in a locked storeroom. She was able to explain what had happened to her as the heroes cut her free.
When she arrived for her midnight rendezvous with Tsuto, her brother had explained to her that it was not her father but Tsuto himself who was in league with the goblins. He'd boasted that something even bigger was in store for the town, hinting that she wouldn't want to be around when it happened, and offered her the chance to join in with him and the others who worked for a woman named "Nualia", headquartered in the den of the Thistletop goblins. Of course, she refused, and Tsuto had his goblin minions beat her unconscious and lock her in the storeroom.
The only other feature of the basement was a narrow passageway that looked like it had once been bricked-up but was recently reopened. Inside, the heroes found two doors - behind the first of which they could faintly hear the sound of someone snoring. Aaron concentrated, stretching out with a mystical sense granted to him by Erastil, and could feel a corrupted soul inside the room. That was all he needed to know - drawing his sword, he flung open the door and stepped inside.
Tsuto, for it was obviously he, was startled awake by Aaron's violent entry and crouched on his pallet. The paladin pointed the tip of his blade at the half-elf and commanded his surrender . . . a demand which was predictably met with a cry of "Never!" as the murderer tried to twist past him and flee down the other end of the corridor, which led to the stairs up into the glassworks proper. Aaron cried out for Erastil's justice and tried to smite Tsuto with the flat of his sword, but his stroke was easily evaded.
Tharl, in an unlikely show of bravery, pursued the murderer and caught him in the back of the head with his staff, and Aaron finished the fight with a near-fatal blow as he caught up. Staggered and leaning against a wall to stay upright, Tsuto looked at the heroes with hatred and desperation. As a bitter gesture, the murderer lashed out with the heel of his hand, cracking Tharl's skull, then fell to the ground exhausted as the wizard reeled back into unconsciousness.
With half their number badly injured and Ameiko to care for, the PCs elected not to investigate the second door in the corridor and retreated to safety. Tsuto was bound tightly and carried to the Sandpoint garrison under Aaron's watchful eye for imprisonment pending trial in Magnimar, while the other PCs helped Ameiko to the cathedral and the care of Father Zantus. Of course, the priest was more than happy to tend to their own wounds!
Among Tsuto's possessions were found a magical potion and a magical ring (as determined by Tharl the next day, though they don't yet know their functions), along with a very well-made flute, a high-quality set of thieves' tools, some jewelry, and a few sacks of gold and silver dust which had evidently been stolen from the safe in the glassworks.
They also found Tsuto's personal journal. Most of it was filled with various maps detailing different plans for attacking Sandpoint - the heroes were easily able to recognise the circled map which corresponded to the attack they'd experienced, but noticed with alarm that later maps seemed to plan for a force of two hundred goblins attacking the town! None seemed to have been chosen yet, but the implications were ominous.
The journal also contained a great many erotic drawings of a beautiful woman Aaron recognised as the daughter of the old priest Father Tobyn - the one who died in the fire that burned down the old chapel, and whose body was stolen during the attack on Sandpoint. Aaron put it together - this girl had been named Nualia, he remembered, and she must not have died in the fire as everyone thought! The last of the drawings, disturbingly, depicted the girl as a succubus - clawed, batwinged, with horns and a tail.
Three passages in the journal seemed especially relevant - one commented on the aftermath of the attack during the Swallowtail Festival and mentioned "the real raid", another mused about disagreements among the goblins and the humans about how to proceed and mentioned the possibility of making some kind of a deal with a quasit, and the last expressed Tsuto's misgivings over Nualia's intent to replace her "celestial taint" with "her Mother's grace", and hoped that she would still be beautiful when she became a demon . . .
That's where we left off. Everyone has reached 2nd level, and next week's session ought to begin with the heroes exploring beyond the second door in the smuggler's tunnel.
I concur.
More please! :)