We've started up a new Carrion Crown campaign and will be putting character journals here. It looks like a really fun campaign and we're all looking forward to playing against the gothic horror backdrop of Ustalav.
Our campaign site can be found HERE.
Shannon
Joyless News
Session 1 - Lala's Journal
25 Arodus, 4711 - A message arrived for me at the Rusted Dagger. It appears that an old friend, Professor Lorrimor, has passed into Pharasma's arms. It has been a few months since I've spoken with him and I had no reason to suspect he was ill. The message said that I have been named in his will. Why, I wonder?
I mean, he was a good man and was kind to me, like the father I never knew, but he certainly never owed me anything. If anything, it's just the opposite. I feel like I owe him for all he has taught me. Well, I suppose there is only one way to find out.
The ceremony is to be held on the first of Rova. That gives me a few days to get ready for the trip. I feel a little guilty about being excited about this journey. It's in a town called Ravengro. I've never been there so it will be a new experience for me. I think this will be the furthest I've ever traveled since I came to Ardis, and certainly the first time I've traveled any distance without my family.
I feel a little scared too. It's a dangerous world, the Gods know, and anything could happen. I need to be cautious but at the same time I want to keep my eyes open and experience it all.
I hope things go well. At least, as well as they can... for a funeral.
Bleak Gathering
Session 1 - Lala's Journal
1 Rova, 4711 - I just have a few minutes to write while the lady Lorrimor prepares for the trip out to the cemetery. I am surprised to see how many have appeared for the reading of this will! There are some strange folk indeed.
One is a hideously scarred or burned dwarf. All of his skin looks like it has been marred by some injury and healed poorly. He introduced himself as Tasin but he seems to keep to himself. I can respect that.
There are also a pair of brothers, Endrin and Ike they called themselves. They seem pretty loud about their devotion to Sarenrae. They're probably just sellswords bought by the church. It always seems like the ones who talk the most about their devotion are the ones with the most to hide.
There was a fellow named Grachus as well. I think I overheard him say his family name was Ornelas and the lady Lorrimor seemed to recognize the family name. I'll have to see if his family is anyone of import.
We sat in the sitting room for a bit and then the lady Kendra Lorrimor announced that it was time to depart for the cemetery. She's gathering her things together now. Oh, here she comes. Will write more later.
Endrin-
We have arrived in Ravengro to a somber meeting. We met up with a strange assortment of other people who had been mentioned in the good Professor's will before striking out to meet the Professor's daughter. As always, Ike was entirely too worried about me, but why should today be any different than the rest of my life. Regardless, we met with the daughter and after some rest and refreshments we struck out to the burial site.
The burial site seems to be in one of the large plots aside a church of Pharasma. I of course prayed for tolerence as I stepped onto another God's domain. While my faith in Sarenrae is absolute, it serves neither Her nor myself to offend the Lady of Graves. At the gravesite, there were a few of the prominant townsfolk there who of course introduced themselves to us. A couple seemed... less than righteous. As we finally began the funeral procession though, several ignorant townsfolk crowded around hollering things about undead and necromacy. Sometimes, superstition can lead an uneducated mind astray. Hopefully things don't turn violent, my brother seems irritable over the presence of the rabble.
Discovering Mysteries
Session 2 - Lala's Journal
Well, I've never been to a funeral with more excitement!
It started out normal enough. We met some of the townsfolk attending the funeral. There were a couple councilmembers, Muricar and Hearthmount, the owner of a local tavern and his son, and the village apothecary. They seemed pleasant enough, though councilman Hearthmount seemed unduly nervous and it was not long before we discovered why.
After introductions were made, a few of us including myself offered our services as pallbearers for the professor. As we were headed to the burial site, we were accosted by... get this... villagers with torches and pitchforks! They were claiming that the professor was some kind of necromancer or some other absurdity and even went so far as to start whacking us with the handles of their pitchforks and hoes and shovels, etc. They seemed mostly focused on getting their hands on lady Kendra, though for what reason I cannot imagine.
Fortunately, some of those misfits and zealots that the professor has collected as friends over the years seem to be capable of handling themselves in a fight. We set down the professor's casket as those strangers not acting as pallbearers moved up to form a front-line of protection, which I thought was awfully kind of them. Hee hee. Unfortunately, lady Kendra was still out front but I was able to grab her and yank her back behind the front line and get her out of the way so the raving villagers couldn't grab hold of her.
Again, why were they trying to grab her anyway? What would they have done with her if they had succeeded? Strange.
When they realized they wouldn't be able to grab lady Kendra before they were all knocked unconscious by the zealot brothers and the dwarf, they fled. I was glad to see none of the villagers were killed or seriously injured. Just a few bumps and bruises was all. But enough to make them think twice before doing something stupid like that again.
After that *little interruption* we proceeded to the sad event. The professor was interred with a few people saying some kind words about his value to them. I spoke too, but it was all inside my head. I got a few strange looks from my silence, but I'm not gonna share my feelings with these complete strangers! What right do they have to know my mind? I'll miss him, though. He was always so kind to me and took me under his wing like he was my own father. I kind of wish he really was. That would be nice. I know it couldn't be, but I was halfway hoping that somewhere in the will he would mention that he really was my father after some long-ago dalliance. Wouldn't that be grand? To be the father of a great man like professor Lorrimor? But no such luck. I'm just grubby old me.
Anyway, after the ceremony, I put my eye on that sweaty, nervous Councilman Hearthmount. I don't trust him as far as I could spit one of these daggers. There's just something about him that seems suspicious. He's all sweaty and jittery, looking left and right, like he's ready for an ambush... and then we get ambushed! I'd bet my last copper that he's behind this somehow. I followed him through town and he almost caught me once. I'm sure he saw me but I was able to slip into a good hiding place before he could backtrack enough to find me following him for sure.
I kept sight of him through the town until he went into Zokar's tavern. At least, I assume it was. Zokar said he was the owner of the Laughing Demon and this place had a signboard out front with a picture of a demon-looking face with a big grin. I didn't want to go inside since I'd be immediately spotted for a stranger, so the trail went cold there. I returned to the professor's estate... well, lady Kendra's estate now, I suppose.
I made it in time for the reading of the will and it seems the professor used his will to request a task for all the newcomers as a group. He has collected some nasty books about some pretty dark stuff, it seems, and he wanted them entrusted to the care of some colleagues of his in Lepidstadt University. But before we can take them there, we have to babysit lady Kendra for a month to make sure she's safe. I guess that's not too bad, though. She seems like a nice enough lady.
But here's the good part... once we get to Lepidstadt, a colleague of the professor's named Embreth Daramid has a pouch of 100 platinum coins for EACH of us! How about that? Pretty nice if I do say so myself. I'm looking forward to that day for sure.
After the good part though, came the mysterious part. It seems this month in Ravengro might not be such a boring babysitting job as one might at first think. Lady Kendra showed us a journal of the professor's with some very strange entries. There was a lot of mumbo-jumbo that I didn't understand at all and that probably no one would except the professor but he did have a few entries circled. The first one was TEN YEARS ago! Something about some group of necromancers named the Whispering Way. Sounded like they wanted to become zombies and skeletons so they could live forever, which I don't quite get. That sounds more like being dead forever than living, really. But it got even more interesting after that.
Over the last month or two, he had several entries that seem to point to this Whispering Way wanting to find information about someone here in Ravengro for some reason. I guess there used to be a prison in this town that is or was called Harrowstone and the person they were looking for was there. The professor wasn't sure what they wanted to know about but he started looking into it. He was going to get a list from the temple of Pharasma of everyone who died in some fire there. At least I think it was there. He didn't really say for sure.
What's more, he actually went to these ruins to look into it and found out they're haunted for sure! He was trying to write down some strange symbols he found on the foundation, whatever that is, when ghosts chased him away!
He mentioned that he was gonna go back but he needed to get some things to handle those ghosts first. Something about a false crypt in the graveyard where the church of Pharasma used to keep supplies to deal with the undead. In case anyone else reads this, know that the location of the secret crypt is... ARRGH! <scrawled ink stroke>
Ha ha, just kidding. I guess the false crypt is at some intersection between Black Path and Eversleep. Apparently, people die so much in Ravengro that they have named streets in their graveyards. But then, they probably have that in Ardis too. I just try to avoid the graveyards there.
Well, if anyone else reads this, I hope it's because I've published it in a story of my adventures, like Ailson Kindler. But I'd really like to know what the professor found in that place. He put in his journal that he was trying to stop whatever this Whispering Way is planning. If he got killed doing that, then I owe them some payback. Gonna try to take a poke around and see if I can find these supplies and maybe look into this matter myself.
Maybe I can get the zealot brothers and that dwarf to come along. And that Grachus fellow too. Maybe they all want to pay someone back for the professor's death. We'll just have to see.
Note to Self:
Session 3 - Lala's Journal
Don't enter a crypt by yourself next time, stupid.
Well, I managed to get the strangers to agree that checking out the crypt is a good place to start. Things kind of went downhill from there.
We went out to the "Restlands" (that's what they call their graveyard here in Ravengro) and started looking around at the corner of Black Path and Eversleep, just like the Professor's journal said, but before we could find anything for sure, some cranky old caretaker starts poking his nose in our business and wants to know what we're doing looking around. I made up some story about losing an earring that looked like a little fish with a pretty blue gem for an eye and I think he bought it but he still said we needed permission from some high muckety-muck in the temple.
I didn't want to make a big fuss and start a fight with the old guy; he seems like he's just trying to follow his stupid rules. So we went off to the church and talked to them. That went... poorly. After arguing back and forth about whether we could look for my lost earring, he finally agreed that we could look but only under his big fat nose and he even brought some friends with him to make sure we didn't look too hard or something.
Well, while we were looking around, he noticed that one of the crypts near where we were searching had been "tampered with". Looked like someone dumped a vial of acid down the chamber and cored that lock like an apple. It's gonna make someone a mighty fine paperweight someday. The priest and his buddies all went inside but didn't look around much before they came back out.
Well, that said to me that someone was really interested in getting inside that crypt so I was sure it was the one we were looking for. All the rest of the folks agreed so we "gave up" the search for the earring and circled back to the graveyard after the priests left. And that was where I made a little oopsie.
That stupid caretaker was still roaming about so I wanted to be sure we weren't spotted. What I SHOULD have done was figure out a way to make a distraction to get him away from the crypt. What I DID was sneak in by myself. That was stupid. I could have been killed in there! I didn't even find anything really good, which was disappointing. I did go farther than those old guys, though. I could see in the dust where their footprints stopped at a door inside. I went through the door and down some stairs and there was another little room down there. Before I could do much poking around though, the ugliest, nastiest, HUGEST creepy crawly bugs I've ever seen came out from behind the mortar in the walls or something and started coming after me for food!
Before I could jump out of the way, they tore half my leg off and the huge bastards must have some kind of poison in their bite because I've never felt anything that stung like that before in my life! There was the pain from the bite, but then there was this other burning sensation creeping up my leg that made it hell to move! But move I did, that's for damned sure. I jumped up and ran out of that place like the hounds of the nine Hells were at my heels! Slammed that door to keep them coming up after me and even then I could here the damned things crawling up the wall and into the masonry above me.
I don't know if they could have dropped down on me from above but I sure as all Hell wasn't sticking around to find out! I high-tailed it out of there and snuck my way back out and over the wall. I sure was amazed to find those strangers waiting for me just where I saw them last. I guess I didn't really expect them to stick around but they sure did. One of the zealot brothers even laid his hands on me and tried to cure me all up... but that's another story.
Meanwhile, Back at the Crypt...
Session 4 - Lala's Journal
I hate lying here in bed with my leg up while everyone else is having all the fun. They went back to that crypt and found a bunch of weird things: some magic arrows and some devices for keeping spirits away, and all sorts of neat little things. My leg's mostly better now though.
They were able to kill those stupid huge bugs which was nice of them. From the story they all told, it sounds like that Ike fellow can really swing a sword. And they said that the dwarf was pretty good at fighting those bugs with just his hands and feet. I don't quite understand that. I could have made a difference too if I had been able to get around behind them but that's hard to do when you're all by yourself and there's TWO of them. Grr! I'm so angry about that! I feel like everyone thinks I'm a coward 'cause I ran. I'm not! I'll show them. Just wait.
In truth though, they're probably too busy trying to figure out why I can't be healed to worry about anything else. Seems I'm struck by some curse from this awful place. Since I'm the one that first went into the crypt, I got cursed so I can't be healed in this town. Maybe I can't be healed anywhere, ever. If that's the case, I'm gonna have to be very careful. I hope they don't take "careful" to mean "craven." I need to find some way of being sure I don't get hurt in these fights, but still be useful and effective.
We're going off to this Harrowstone place to see what's there that the professor was investigating. Maybe I can be healed there. I'll have to check that once we get out there. I'm really hoping this is just a temporary curse or maybe something local to the town. I don't know. The gods must hate me.