Some of this I had posted on a non-Paizo forum already, but I'm putting it here since this is actually a place for campaign postings and it was mostly just taken as me rambling on the other forum(s) where I post.
I've been trying to get a group together for this campaign for the better part of the year.
The full name of the campaign is Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance: Revenants of the Damned. I was just going to call it Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance but I consulted with my father, who didn't think it conveyed the fact that it's a horror-themed campaign, so I added a subtitle. I mostly still just call it Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance though. RR&R for short.
We're playing at Champion Cards and Games here in Charleston, WV. I haven't figured out how to encourage the players to spend money at the shop yet though since I own so much of the printed matter already.
Anyway, this is just an intro post. Session-related posts follow.
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Originally posted 13 Oct 2012:
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Actually had a session of the campaign 2 weeks ago. Gearing up for session 2 this evening.
Party for the first session was:
a human commoner who will become a human alchemist
a half-elf commoner who will become a half-elf rogue
an aasimar warrior who will become an aasimar paladin
a tiefling commoner who will become a tiefling sorcerer
The session didn't actually involve any combat. The party witnessed the public execution of a werewolf that was captured in human form. The future rogue fleeced the crowd that was there for the execution and made 9 gp total (I rolled 2d10 to see how much gold he got). The tiefling placed an order for a silver-tipped shortspear (and paid half the gold for its construction) once he realized there were werewolves around, and also gathered some of the ashes after the werewolf's body was burned at the stake.
The party was recruited to join Count Galdana's militia and they were given accomodations for the night. The paladin went to bed early, while the other three stayed up late in the tavern. The tiefling got the half-elf drunk and stole twenty gold off of him.
The session was short because only one of my expected players showed up and the other three players were people from the store who said they'd play after the expected player and I had waited an hour. The expected player is the one playing the human alchemist. Today I'll take my copy of Ultimate Equipment along with me so we can get a look at some of the cool alchemical stuff he will be able to make.
One of the store regulars also already had a character generated in HeroLab software just in case he was in the campaign, so he's playing a Rakshasa-spawn tiefling. I need to go over his character with him again because he made it in HeroLab and he doesn't know what half of it means, and I didn't either until I looked it up. (The store's copy of HeroLab is a complimentary copy that has a whole bunch of supplement add-ons and he had no idea where he was drawing resources from.) I especially need to go over the fact that he's a Beastblood tiefling (aka rakshasa-spawn) so I'll need to make sure he doesn't take one of the other fiendish bloodlines when he become a sorcerer. Tieflings normally get a -2 racial penalty to CHA as tieflings but a tiefling that is a sorc with the Abyssal or Infernal sorcerer bloodline gets a +2 effective CHA score for class abilities (that negates the CHA penalty of being a tiefling). A Beastblood tiefling (from Blood of Fiends), however, gets a +2 CHA bonus instead of a -2 CHA penalty. (They have non-standard racial ability modifers.) The Rakshasa bloodline for sorcerers (from Ultimate Magic) doesn't have any +2 effective CHA bonuses for tieflings. So I just need to make sure he's not trying to min-max his tiefling ancestry to get way more CHA than he should. I -think- he told me he's taking the arcane bloodline for sorcs though. I also need to go over with him that rakshasa are native outsiders. He was talking about the Blood War during the first session, which doesn't make sense on two counts. 1.) Rakshasa are native outsiders so they're native to the Material Plane. 2.) The Blood War doesn't actually exist in the Golarion continuity. Sure demons and devils don't get along, but they're not actually in a planes-spanning war.
The guy playing the half-elf rogue isn't a tabletop RPG player at all, he's actually a Magic: The Gathering gamer. But he was there, and nobody was playing Magic with him, so he said he could roll the dice. He picked his race and future class basically from the table of contents of the Core Rulebook and we assisted him with generating a level 1 commoner. Who knows, maybe he will become a regular player? He seemed to have some trouble getting his head around the idea that it's a cooperative game though, so I won't hold my breath on that count.
The guy playing the aasimar warrior (who will be a paladin) showed up while we were making the half-elf character. He said he was interested and he asked what role the party needed. Since nobody was a primary melee character, he declared he would be a paladin. When he heard the one guy was a tiefling, he wanted to be a tiefling too. I told the paladin's player it would be fine if he was a tiefling paladin. The guy already playing the tiefling insisted that tieflings couldn't be good-aligned but he stopped insisting after we looked it up. So I assured the guy he could be a tiefling if he wanted, but I also mentioned the tiefling penalty to Charisma. He changed his mind when he heard they have a CHA penalty (paladins use CHA as their primary ability for spellcasting in Pathfinder), so I suggested he could be an aasimar instead. They get a racial CHA bonus. He was fine with that idea and went with it. I'll suggest this session some of the variant tieflings that have CHA bonuses instead and see if he wants to change his race to one of the variant tieflings. I'm taking both Blood of Fiends and Blood of Angels along so I'll make both of them available for him to look through. They're Pathfinder Player Companion books (32 pages each) that provide options and variants for playing tieflings and aasimars.
You know, all of this dependent on any players actually showing up. I'm pretty confident the alchemist's player will. He's shown up for two sessions already, even though we didn't play for the first session he showed for at all. The tiefling's player will probably be there. He's there a lot. Sometimes he even minds the shop when the shop's owner isn't there. Whether he'll play or not is a different story. I've only met the aasimar's player twice, including last session. He told me he's at the shop every Saturday though, so hopefully he'll be there. He left his character's sheet with me so I'll have it if he's there to play. And if the half-elf rogue's player is there, he's welcome to play. Not sure how strong his interest is, but if he doesn't want to play and the other three are there, three is enough.
I'll have enough resources with me to scale for a party of three or four. I could scale lower than that, probably, but it gets harder to predict. They'd end-up fighting CR 1/2 screeching fireskulls, they're about the weakest monster I have. Mainly because they're 1 HD and their size is tiny. As tiny creatures they have to move into a creature's square to attack, which gives the creature an AoO against them. They do have a chance of setting PCs on fire, but I still think they could probably do with having their CR reduced to 1/3. In my own testing, one of them didn't survive a round against four level 1 commoners with no armor and basic clubs. I suppose it's possible the PCs could fail saves against the screeching effect, but if they save once, it can't affect them for 24 hours.
My Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance campaign is set in the village of Sen's Pass in the county of Amaans, in the country of Ustalav.
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Originally posted 15 Oct 2012:
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Had a second session of my campaign last night with everyone from the first session actually present, AND a new player joined.
He's playing CG/CN (he couldn't make-up his mind) kitsune. A commoner right now, but he's planning to go rogue or ninja (which will be flavored as a rogue for the setting). As far as anyone is concerned in the campaign, he's some kind of werefox.
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Originally posted 16 Oct 2012:
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There's a feat in Dragon Empires Primer that would let the new player's kitsune turn into a full fox form too. I'll have to point that out to him. I'm sure he'll want it.
He told me the reason he asked to play a kitsune is because he normally likes to play a were-creature but he figured that would be shot-down and kitsune is scaled as a player race. As soon as we started playing and he found out that last session a werewolf had been killed and burned at the stake, he realized just how unlikely it would have been that he'd get to play a werewolf. As it is, he's going to be pretty close with a kitsune anyway, since it'll be treated as a kind of foxwere.
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Originally posted 17 Oct 2012:
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I'm brainstorming what to do for Halloween in my campaign. When it's a werewolf/witch/hag/undead-themed campaign it's hard to do something "special" for Halloween. I suppose I could have them celebrate Jestercap, the actual equivalent holiday to Halloween in Avistan. (Avistan is the continent in Golarion.)
Here's what was posted on the Paizo blog about Jestercap last year:
Jestercap occurs at the end of the month of Lamashan, traditionally on the 27th (although a few regions have taken to moving the exact day around slightly so it always falls on the last Starday of the month, allowing people who wish to celebrate in excess to have the following day of rest to recover). While Jestercap has been embraced with excited open arms by the gnome communities of the Inner Sea region, its original genesis is said to have been in one of Taldor’s coastal cities not long after King Aspex the Even-Tongued broke from the nation, significantly weakening Taldor’s power and beginning that nation’s long decline. The holiday was originally intended to distract the distraught Taldan populace with a night of revelry and comedic entertainment, but the antics of jesters simply weren’t enough. Over the course of the first few years, Jestercap evolved from a holiday of observation to a holiday of participation. Today, the holiday is a time where anyone can pull pranks or jokes or japes on companions, on neighbors, and (most typically) on rivals, with the understanding that provided no lasting harm is done, any humiliations inflicted before midnight are to be taken in stride. Of course, come morning the day after, there are inevitably jokes that went too far, and grudges and feuds borne from Jestercap antics have a way of lingering for months to follow.
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Originally posted 29 Oct 2012:
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In the second session, on Saturday 13 Oct 2012, we went over feats and I made sure the players had all selected campaign traits. A fifth player was interested in joining, so I allowed him to create a kitsune character, but told him he should expect people to treat him as if he were a werefox or foxwere--and a werewolf had just been executed in town the day before. The aasimar's player decided that he would stick with playing an aasimar, and selected the Emberkin aasimar bloodline (peri-blooded aasimar). Then we started play.
The beastbrood (rakshasa-blooded tiefling) snuck out of the tavern that night (which was immediately following the day from the previous session). He explored the town on his own. While he was creeping around town, he ran into the fox-man, who was in the form of a normal man at the time (kitsune have the ability to assume a single human form).
The two furry party members went to talk to the guard on duty. They told him they were going to relieve him of duty for lunch, and convinced him they had been authorized to do so. Just as they were talking to him about it, the kitsune used his dancing lights racial ability to make it look as through a spectral figure was passing through the village square. The guard got freaked out and almost raised the alarm, but then the figure winked out of existence. The guard decided to take that offered lunch break.
At this point I was expecting the CE tiefling and CN kitsune to get up to some more mischief while the guard was gone, but they didn't. They actually stood watch for an hour while the guard took his lunch, then they went back to the tavern. (I think the players may have realized they were making the rest of the party wait while they did their nocturnal explorations.)
After the party got up in the morning, the half-elf accused the tiefling of stealing from her. The tiefling denied it and since the half-elf's player is new to the game and might not think of talking to NPCs on his own, I had him roll a Wisdom check for her. She succeeded the check and I suggested she might think to talk to the tavern workers about what happened. They did not corroborate the tiefling's story about who robbed the half-elf of 20 gold, and the half-elf barmaid suggested she thought it was the tiefling that robbed the half-elf character, but since she didn't actually see who knocked out the half-elf, she couldn't be sure.
The guard captain came by the tavern to talk to the militia recruits but they were already gone, and only the half-elf and the trickster-fox (in human form) were there. They told the captain where to find the others, and the trickster also mentioned he was interested in joining the militia, so the captain put him on the enlistment forms tentatively.
The beastbrood picked up his alchemical silver shortspear from the weaponsmith first thing. The guard bailiff caught up with the party outside of the weapons shop and also got all their names for the paperwork to go through to get them on payroll.
The guard bailiff gave them suggestions of what work they could do around town, because the miscellaneous duties of town guards had been disrupted by the deaths of so many of the guards by the werewolf, and the subsequent hunt for it. They had their choice of investigating a report of a giant spider living in an abandoned farm house, investigating graverobbing in the local cemetary, investigating something in the river that was scaring the fishermen, or investigating fires burning in the night. They elected to investigate the giant spider issue.
They went to the farmhouse on the cliff road and saw that it was full of spider webs. Rather than even going in the house, they began throwing torches in through the windows and breaking windows and opening shutters to make sure the house had plenty of air flow. The spider crawled out of the kitchen chimney and came out one of the windows. They ended up fighting it as it stood on the roof of the burning one-story building and they stood below. The beastbrood, meanwhile, made sure he burned anything that might resemble and egg sac.
After the spider was dead, the human (currently still commoner 1, but going to be an alchemist) indicated he would cut-out the spider's poison glands, which I allowed him to do after making a Heal check to locate them.
They then loaded the spider's remains on the back of the tiefling's horse. (The tiefling and the kitsune own horses.)
I stopped the session there.
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Originally posted 29 Oct 2012:
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Had the third session of my Pathfinder game this weekend, on Saturday 27 Oct 2012.
It was supposed to start at 6 PM and run until 10 PM.
It ended up starting at 7:15 PM and running until 5:30 AM on Sunday.
Characters:
male human amateur alchemist (commoner 1)
male beastbrood tiefling aspiring sorcerer (commoner 1)
male kitsune aspiring rogue (ninja) (commoner 1)
male emberkin aasimar aspiring paladin (warrior 1)
female half-elf aspiring rogue (commoner 1)
Joined late:
female sylph aspiring cleric of Pharasma (commoner 1)
It started off still at the burning abandoned farmhouse where the party had just defeated the spider. They got the spider up on the horse and started to head back toward town. While on their way back to town, the guard bailiff Everett Racivado (which I may sometimes refer to as the guard captain, same guy), came up the road because he saw the smoke from the fire.
He ordered them back to the house to make sure it wasn't at a risk of catching the forest on fire. After they were sure that the house wasn't going to ignite the forest behind it, they headed for town again.
On their way to town, the guard bailiff Everett Racivado told them about how the village's coffers couldn't really afford to put them up in the tavern every night, and the rooms there were basically just for drunks too drunk to go home at night anyway, so they were interfering with village safety by taking up all the rooms. He told them about his family's abandoned inn, The Silver Dagger Inn, that was a mile or two outside of town. He did tell them that the inn was inhabited by a "watchsoul" though, that would need to be appeased with an offering when they went to stay there. They were like "wait, you're going to put us in an abandoned haunted building?" He told them that the watchsoul was not a haunting, but that they should be careful because like all inns, it had its share of problems and he had heard about it being haunted before, but had never actually seen any ghosts there. He gave them some background on the building and why his family wasn't operating the inn anymore (not enough traffic in the mountains to be profitable), and talked about how it used to be pretty successful in his grandparents' day, even to the point of having its own on-staff blacksmith.
The guard bailiff recommended that they go toward the inn before dark. They said "but what about the other jobs you need done?" Finally he told them they weren't welcome in town after dark so they needed to get situated at the inn as soon as possible, and not just because they were strangers, or because they mostly weren't quite human, but because this evening was the evening of Jestercap. Locals got wind of the tradition a few years ago and it terrified them. It was basically an evening of pranks they heard was popular in Druma and Taldor, but it seemed like a ripe excuse for fey to cause problems, so they didn't want anything to do with it, and they didn't want strangers in town for it. (Jestercap is on the 27th of Lamashan in the Pathfinder setting, which coincides with 27 October, the actual day of my session.)
Well, anyway, they spoke to him for awhile about the ritual to appease the inn's guardian watchsoul, a being named The Argent Chamberlain. It involved starting a fire in one of the hearths in the inn, burning some incense, pouring some wine in the fire, and making an offering of a couple daggers.
After they reached the village, they asked if there was a village apothecary. I indicated the nearest match to that description was the village's hedge witch. They went to see Katla Maleva, the hedge witch, and asked her if she would by any parts of the spider off of them, but the kitsune spoke up and indicated he wanted to keep the spider's shell. The hedge witch offered to buy the poison so she could use it to make anti-venom. The human amateur alchemist agreed to sell her one of the two poison glands, for which she paid 300 gp. Only three of the party went into the hedge witch's shop, so they split that three hundred three ways and didn't tell the rest of the party about it. After she paid them for the poison gland, they gave her the spider "meat" for no charge, if she would be willing to clean it out of the carapace. She agreed to do so. They also talked for awhile about what she had for sale and ended up buying some laxatives. (I used pricing for alchemical grease with the rationale that it was "stomach grease.") The hedge witch spoke like an old crone and referred to her formula book as her "cook book." The amateur alchemist also asked her if she could show him the recipe for something, anti-venom I believe. She did so.
After the trio left the hedge witch's shop, they met up with the emberkin aasimar and the half-elf, and decided to ignore the guard bailiff's suggestion to go to The Silver Dagger Inn, and instead go investigate the grave robbing in the cemetery. They got there and shortly after they got there, the half-elf decided to go back to town. (The player was feeling sick and said he was going to head home.)
While they were just looking around the cemetery, another regular customer of the shop came up and indicated he would like to play. He said not to stop and he'd just make his character while we were playing, so I kept going and he began work on his female sylph future-cleric of Pharasma (commoner 1).
While they were in the graveyard I decided they would encounter a vampire-festrog (CR 2), which is not actually a vampire, but a festrog that has been fed vampire blood to grant it the advanced template and some vampire-like traits. The vampire-festrog took a swing at the aasimar warrior and hit for 7 damage. At that point, I decided maybe they only encountered a regular festrog (CR 1), not a vampire-festrog, so I played it off as I had misread the sheet and the thing only hit for 5 damage. The normal festrog was defeated in one hit. The beastbrood tiefling collected the festrog's head. Another festrog and a ghoul (CR 1) showed up to attack just as the tiefling was collecting his trophy. Around this time the female sylph joined the battle as an ally of the party. The second festrog fell pretty easily. The ghoul paralyzed the warrior and switched targets, but its health was pretty low so it fled. The party gave chase, but none made any ranged attacks and the ghoul escaped into the night, relying on its superior endurance. The aasimar's player had to leave to catch his bus at this point, but he said it was fine if the character stuck with the party.
After the ghoul escaped their clutches, the party spoke to the newly arrived female sylph. She had no idea what she was doing in the graveyard or who she was or where she came from. The group decided to keep her with them and they would head for The Silver Dagger Inn at that point. They reached the inn with no problems and began exploring the facility. The gate to the inn's yard was unlocked, as was the inn's main door. The chairs and benches were up on the tables as though the place was waiting to be mopped. They looked around a bit and determined the most likely direction for the family wing of the inn.
When the party tried to go through the doorway to the residence attached to the inn, the door slammed in their faces and wouldn't budge. They tried breaking it but it was a no-go. The beastbrood went outside and crawled through one of the windows to get in, but by the time he got to the door it had opened again on its own. They moved a bench from one of the tables and stuck it in the doorway so the door wouldn't slam closed again. After a minute or so, the door began banging incessantly against the bench blocking the doorway.
They started a fire in the hearth at the end of the hallway and found some incense still on the mantlepiece to light. The beastbrood provided some wine and two daggers for offering. After the offering had been made to The Argent Chamberlain, one of the daggers rose up and flew across the room to stab into the incessantly banging door. It stopped banging.
(The incessantly banging door is a slamming door haunt. Each haunt is based on a spell effect. In this case, Seal Portal. It resets every minute, and can hold a door shut for a minute. All it does is hold a door shut. The Argent Chamberlain is a lar, an invisible incorporeal LG native outsider house guardian based on Roman mythology of house deities. The lar has a lot of spell-like abilities and the ability to possess inanimate objects so they become animated objects.)
The party went to explore the rest of the inn and stumbled into a cold spot in the inn's lounge, where they took a blast of negative energy. It almost killed some of them. In addition to the damage to hp, the beastbrood also suffered 1 point of ability damage. (CON or STR, I forget which.)
They retreated back to the inn's common room/tavern, and found that all the furniture was down off of the tables, the bench was out of the doorway and back where it belonged, and cups of water were poured at all the seats. Oh, and a doorjam had been stuck under the door to the residence wing so it wouldn't be able to slam. The dagger was gone from the door as well. The amateur alchemist was a little freaked out. The beastbrood explored the kitchen and found some rice. The kitsune decided to cook it, using some of the water from one of the mugs. The human guy declared that he wasn't going to drink any dead person's water. (They don't know the lar is an outsider, they think it's a ghost.)
The sylph went out to the stables and workshop and smelled the stench of burning flesh. She quickly backed out of the room and ran to get the others. When she came back with them, there was nobody there, and no smell of burning. The only things of note were an anvil and kiln, and workbench, and seven branding irons strewn around the floor of the workshop. The kitsune collected the branding irons for their raw materials and led his horse into the stable for the night.
The group went back to the inn and picked rooms for the night. The beastbrood decided to stay in the deluxe room in the guest wing, even though he encountered another slamming door that he had to wait to let him in the room. The sylph and the kitsune decided to check out some of the other guest rooms, scurrying past the lounge area rather than risk stumbling into the cold spot again.
The kitsune and the sylph walked into the double room and the kitsune decided to mess with the sylph by using his dancing lights ability to make it look like there were motes of light in the room, but even as he used the dancing lights, he was struck by the fact that there were way more lights in the room than he anticipated. The sylph saw the -dozens- of spectral lights in the room, and fled all the way back to the inn's closed-in central yard. The kitsune was shocked and took a step back out of the room, but didn't flee in terror.
The sylph and the kitsune headed to the residential wing and took separate bedrooms, as did the human and the aasimar. In the residential wing they found that the dagger had moved back into the hearth and was close enough to the fire to be hot but wasn't actually quite in the flames. (The other dagger they had offered was also still in the hearth.)
I handed out XP at that point and everyone but the aasimar (whose player wasn't there anyway) reached the 1000 xp milestone, so they leveled into their level 1 player character classes.
Then they took a night of rest.
In the morning, the kitsune checked on his horse to find that it had been branded in the night, and all seven of the brands he had collected had been returned to the workroom floor. The horse was branded with a stylized 'R'. The kitsune was joined by the beastbrood and the breastbrood sorcerer used detect magic to determine that the brand on the horse's backside had an aura of necromancy.
The human, aasimar (who was being handled by the kitsune's player), and sylph explored the rest of the inn, including the four single bedrooms. In the last single bedroom, they encountered a lesser shadow (from Tome of Horrors Complete) that had been lurking in the room. The lesser shadow attacked them and the fight lasted just long enough for the beastbrood and the kitsune to join the fight, but the lesser shadow didn't manage to drain strength from anyone.
On the way back out of the guest wing, I had the group make checks and the sorcerer heard a noise in the attic. While the others went back outside, he went looking for a way up into the attic. He went into the residential wing and was prevented from walking down the hallway by a strong gust of wind that also slammed the door shut behind him. He was delayed long enough that some of the other party members joined him. When they figured out he was looking for something on the ceiling, they helped him look. The attic door was in the room the aasimar had spent the night in, and it was weirdly alternating shades of wood, between a dark finish and a light finish, almost as if it were blinking.
(This effect was The Argent Chamberlain's work. In addition to moving the furniture around the night before, the lar had used the gust of wind to stop the tiefling's advance, and used prestidigitation to change the colors of the wood repeatedly to make it appear as though it were almost flashing in highlight. It used the gust of wind against the tiefling because it has Detect Evil at-will and it can tell the tiefling is CE and doesn't want him snooping around alone.)
The group went into the attic and the cleric (the sylph), who had cast deathwatch while fighting the shadow, looked around with deathwatch while the sorcerer (the beastbrood) used his Detect Magic (cantrips are unlimited daily use in Pathfinder). Eventually the group found a woman hiding in the attic. They spoke to her and her responses were suspicious so they told her they'd detain her and let the guards sort it out. She cast invisibility and tried to flee, but she was tackled to the ground. They threw some ash over her to see her invisible form (actually ash from when the werewolf was burned), and bound her. They went through her things and took some of them.
They took her back into town and turned her over to the guard bailiff. She swore her hate at him, and mentioned if she had "that dagger" she'd gut him right down the middle. He, on the other hand, indicated he had no idea who she was. She knew him by name.
The party believed she might be a werewolf so requested that she be detained and secured until after the full moon. The guard bailiff agreed to that, so she was left in his care.
Several members of the party at this point went to speak with the hedge witch, who so far seems to be their favorite NPC.
They checked on the condition of the spider chitin, declined taking any stew, and did some more shopping, buying mostly laxatives, alchemical solvent (a weaker, cheaper glue release agent that only works on non-magical glues), and casting plaster, as well as a number of empty vials. Then they left the hedge witch and went to the tavern, where they purchased a bowl and some lemon juice. The inn's proprietor overcharged for the lemon juice because he felt they should have gone to the general store for that kind of purchase, and he doesn't like the party anyway. (He thinks they're a bunch of freaks.)
The beastbrood mixed the laxative and the alchemical solvent in an empty vial, and the plaster and lemon juice in the bowl, and went back to see the prisoner. When they came back, the guard bailiff left to find that cage his brother the werewolf had been locked up in prior to his execution. (This town is small and lacks a proper dungeon or jail.)
The party, except for the cleric and paladin, took the prisoner into the guard station and told her the liquid in the vial was a caustic solution that would kill her painfully, and threatened to make her drink it if she didn't talk. She refused to talk so the tiefling attempted to force-feed her. She talked at that point, told them about how she is a demon worshiper that worships the demon patron of werewolves, and how she's after the Racivado Dagger, the silver dagger that was used to execute the werewolf a few days ago prior to its burning. It's owned by the guard bailiff's family, she said, and she wants to destroy it as it is an item opposed to her faith, because it's used to kill werewolves and has been for more than just this execution.
After they got all they thought they could get out of her, the beastbrood downed the concoction he had been trying to force her to drink to show her it had all been a ruse. Since it was a combination of laxative and glue thinner in a 1 ounce vial, I had him make a fortitude save. He failed it and got sick to his stomach (nauseated). He walked out of the guard station to where she couldn't see him and vomited up the concoction.
After the party had regrouped, and the guard bailiff had returned, along with Alexandru Merton, one of his guards, the party questioned the bailiff about the dagger that shared his name. It was a family heirloom, he told them, a magical silver dagger, and he had returned it to its traditional resting place after the execution--that is he returned it to the mantlepiece above the residence hearth at The Silver Dagger Inn. They informed him that it was not there when they were there. He told them that it's not just a family heirloom, it's also the most valuable thing he owns, and it would need to be located. They told him about how the woman was looking for it and if he found it he should keep it hidden and let them know.
(Of course he has no idea where it is, but I do.)
Then they decided to go back to the village cemetery and look around some more (presumably now that they have class levels). They went to the cemetery and started a stake-out, watching for that ghoul that got away, or more ghouls, or whatever, I guess.
Shortly after nightfall a pair of ghouls (CR 1 each) and a ghoul wolf (Tome of Horrors Complete, CR 2) came into the cemetery. The party managed to take down the ghoul wolf but the ghouls would paralyze one party member then move on to another target, until the only one who wasn't paralyzed was the alchemist. They chased him around for a bit and the alchemist managed to hit one of the ghouls. It was hurt badly enough that it fled into the night. The other ghoul, realizing that the paralysis on the others would be ending soon, ran away from the group and grabbed the paralyzed paladin, attempting to pull him off into the darkness. The paladin was heavy and the ghoul didn't get far before he got hit again. He decided to flee and took off at 4x run into the night in a straight line. The sorcerer hit him in the back with a magic missile as he was right at the edge of the spell's range, and took him down.
The group, still not welcome in the village of Sen's Pass at night, headed back to The Silver Dagger Inn instead.
That this point it was about 5:30 AM so we called it a night. The tiefling's player had previously indicated we needed to be out of there by 6 AM so he could get some sleep before work, so that gave me time to pick up my stuff before we left.
While there were some glitches in the game, notably I let them do way too much initially with Detect Magic and Deathwatch, and I dropped that vampire-festrog on them that I had to swap out for a regular festrog or almost guarantee a TPK, I think this was one of my best tabletop experiences to date. It was certainly my longest. I've never had an all-nighter in tabletop gaming before. (The closest comparison I can make is one of my 24 hour sieges of Greatgaunt on FRC.)
The GM I was playing with last year wanted to have a Halloween all-nighter one-shot but had to cut-off early because of events outside the game. I didn't even plan for a special Halloween all-nighter and got to have one.
It was very pleasing.
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Originally posted 03 Nov 2012:
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If any of my players in my tabletop campaign are reading this, stop now!
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(They could be, you'd be amazed at the power of Google.)
One of my players posted this on the forum at the gamestore where we play.
We're supposed to be finding the dagger? Killing ghouls in the graveyard or locating where the ghouls come from? We still have yet to go to the river. And in two days time there will be a full moon... We shall learn if the warewolf has been taken care of or not. I'm guessing the full moon will actually set our campaign into motion.
i'm still wautung for some homely looking teenage girl to come tromping into town from the big city and start babbling about how she is madly in love with the warewolf but is indecisive if she wants to practice bestiality or necrophilia. Wait. Maybe i'm thinking of some recent teen angst movies that have come out in the last 4 years.
Little does he know, I'm just going to take the next session to introduce more campaign hooks. Actually, I'll probably give them enough information that they can deal with the ghoul issues in the short-term. Maybe even a ghoul-themed dungeon. I have a lot of pre-fabricated dungeons and I picked one out that would be a pretty good ghoul lair.
The dagger is long gone. (I know where it is, but it's not likely to be found.) It's a MacGuffin for a plot that hasn't even appeared in the campaign yet, and won't for at least a month in-game--I want to make sure we get through the upcoming in-game full moon first.
I think they'll likely need to meet with the castle librarian at some point in the campaign before they even know why they need the dagger. Since they haven't heard of the librarian or had reason to go to the castle yet, that's a good way off.
In the meantime, the guard bailiff is just going to have to be upset that his family heirloom is missing. What an heirloom it is: The Racivado Dagger is a +1 glamered holy silver dagger. (Did you know that the glamered property makes an item undetectable to Detect Magic?)
I'm trying to figure out how to introduce some elements, like the vampires. I think it's going to come to light that the werewolf wasn't actually the one who killed all eight of those town guards. Some of them died under more mysterious circumstances. (Or, well, vampires are the presumed culprits.)
I also need to give the player characters a chance to speak to Brother Sergei Quinnell, the town's cleric of Pharasma. One of their theories right now is that he's involved in a cover-up regarding the werewolf that was executed.
I think I'll introduce the vampires and ratlings in a non-hostile way, or maybe just the ratlings at first, then let them stew in the background while I run the worg plot.
The worgs have their own problems and may need the PCs to deal with them.
I've already given them a basic hook for the fire skeleton plot but they haven't bit on that plotline yet. Count Galdana's man Ari Russov may have to steer them back onto that plotline once he arrives in town.
As for the issue down by the river? That's more of a one-off scenario than anything plot related. (I have a few river scenarios but I decided not to do the one with the ghoul since they're already dealing with ghouls.)
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Originally posted 03 Nov 2012:
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I'm thinking the ghoul boss for the ghoul plot will either be a ghast (CR 2) or a dread ghoul (CR varies) from Green Ronin's Advanced Bestiary. (It's an OGL 3.5e book of templates that Pathfinder products still regularly make use of.)
I also have another idea for a possibility of what the ghoul boss may be, but I can't remember the name of the creature right now. It's not technically a ghoul but it fits in thematically as a ghoulish undead. It would be too high CR for them to deal with at level 1 but it has an astral projection ability so they might only be dealing with the astral projection of it, which has less hitpoints, then it could survive to harry them another day.
This post is from the forum for the shop where we play, so its summary was filtered somewhat for player reading.
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Originally posted 05 Nov 2012:
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Here's some additional campaign information:
Some information about Ustalav and the campaign (some is source canon, some is made for RR&R but I won't say which is which so as not to give too much spoiler):
1.) Ustalav is a country situated in the continent of Avistan on the planet of Golarion.
2.) Ustalav is, more formally, "The Immortal Principality of Ustalav" and is ruled by a prince.
3.) Ustalav is divided into a number of counties, each one ruled by a count.
4.) The campaign I'm developing will take place in the county of Amaans in central Ustalav.
5.) Virlych, the county to the southwest of Amaans is a desolate and haunted wasteland where the ancient evil The Whispering Tyrant is imprisoned forever in his own fortress, Gallowspire. The Whispering Tyrant once tried to take over Avistan and did catastrophic damage to the countries so, even though he's been imprisoned for "a very long time," armies still actively guard his tower and prepare against the day when he might escape.
6.) Count Galdana is the current ruler of the county of Amaans. He's an active explorer of his territories and is the most frequent visitor in the most secluded parts of the county.
7.) Amaans is a county with a very small population, with most residents living in Kavapesta, the capital of the county.
8.) The people of Amaans are very superstitious and insular, and they have pretty good reason to be.
9.) The people of Amaans that do not live in Kavapesta live in a number of mountain villages that dot The Hungry Mountains.
10.) The Hungry Mountains are full of secluded vales that hide all nature of things, sometimes even ecosystems completely different from the rest of the country. These are called The Hundred Haunted Vales.
11.) The campaign begins in Sen's Pass, a village built on the slopes of the Vale of Red Breath, and the bank of the High Senir River in northeast Amaans.
12.) Sen's Pass is a small community and very insular, but common enough except for proximity to the Vale of Red Breath and Castle Galdyce that lies in the heart of the vale, and for the large number of twins born in the village over the past century. Wholly one in ten births seems to be twins, with a set of triplets every once in awhile.
13.) The main faith of Sen's Pass is Pharasma, and she has the only church in town. Pharasma is the N goddess of birth, death, fate, and prophecy. Her favored weapon is a dagger.
14.) Castle Galdyce was formerly haunted by the Viscount Oilic Galdyce, a nosferatu of some reputation, but he and his vampire brides were slain in the mid-4680s AR, over twenty-five years ago.
15.) The current campaign year is 4712 AR.
The RR&R campaign begins while Count Galdana is in town on one of his trips around his county.
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The campaign has had three sessions and during those sessions several days have passed.
The first session began on the 26th of Lamashan, 4712 AR. This was the day of the capture of Guard Bailiff Dermot Racivado on charges of werewolfism and murder. The beastbrood tiefling that was newly arrived in the town of Sen's Pass commissioned an alchemical silver spearhead with Marcus Ogden, a local weaponsmith, and paid half on the spearhead. Dermot Racivado was executed by his twin brother, Guard Captain Everett Racivado, using a silver dagger. The executioner showed the weapon to Count Galdana, who wiped the blood off of the blade and handed it back to Everett Racivado. The corpse of Dermot Racivado was then burned at the stake. A male human, female half-elf, male beastbrood tiefling, and male emberkin aasimar were all freshly arrived in the village and Count Galdana attempted to recruit them to his militia. The human, tiefling, and aasimar entered verbal agreements to sign-up once it was made clear they would be paid as members of the militia. The beastbrood collected some of the ashes from where Dermot Racivado was burned at the stake. The new recruits were providing overnight accomodations at Taproot Tavern by the count. The beastbrood tiefling knocked the half-elf unconscious and robbed her of twenty gold.
The second session began with the beastbrood sneaking out of the tavern and exploring the town after the other recruits had retired for the night and the half-elf was unconscious. It was during his night of exploration that he met with the male foxfolk (kitsune) and the two of them talked to Alexandru Merton, who was on guard duty that night. The foxfolk played a trick on the guard and made him think he saw a ghost, then the foxfolk and the beastbrood stood watch for an hour while the guard took a lunch they gave him. The rest of the night passed uneventfully.
In the morning, the beastbrood tiefling collected his silver spearhead from Marcus Ogden and the group was approached by the newly appointed Guard Bailiff, Everett Racivado.. He informed them that Count Galdana had left the village to return to Willowmourn (his ancestral home), but that he would be sending someone to act as their liaison and trainer. In the meantime, Everett Racivado informed them that he would be overseeing them and they could help the remaining village watch catch up on other issues that had fallen to the wayside during the assaults from the werewolf. The guard bailiff got all of them who were signing up to join the count's militia to actually sign their names indicating who they were (including the foxfolk, who decided to join), then he provided them a list of issues they could look into, including a spider that attacked a farmer's mule from an abandoned farmhouse, body theft in the local cemetary, something in the river scaring away some fishermen, and fires burning in the night in the hills around the village. The party elected to investigate the spider issue. They went south to the fork in the road and found the infested house. They lit it on fire and smoked out the giant spider living within. They killed it with some effort after it scrambled out of the house. The beastbrood tiefling also burned the spider's egg sac. The alchemist collected the spider's poison glands and they loaded the spider on the tiefling's horse to take back to the village.
The third session began as the spider was secured to the horse and the group began their journey back to Sen's Pass. On the road they encountered Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado on horseback. He indicated he was coming to see what was burning, and he ordered them back to the house-fire to make sure the area was clear of debris so the nearby forest wouldn't catch on fire as well. Once that matter was cleared up, the group returned to town.
On the way back to Sen's Pass, Everett Racivado explained to them that they weren't really welcome to stay in the village because of the expense to the coffers of accommodating them in the tavern, and because they were taking up all the rooms at Taproot Tavern so the local drunks didn't have anywhere to sleep it off without going out in the dangerous night, and because they were all strangers to Sen's Pass and the locals didn't trust them to be in town, especially on the night of Jestercap, a foreign holiday that fell on the night of 27 Lamashan. According to the local understanding of Jestercap, it was a night for playing pranks and getting petty revenges. To the locals of Sen's Pass that meant it was ripe for fey trickiness, and the strangers, such a menagerie as they are, were most likely to be fey themselves.
Everett Racivado indicated he had spoken to Kaitlyn Racivado, widow of his deceased brother Dermot Racivado, and both of them agreed that the party could stay at The Silver Dagger Inn, a derelict property Everett and Dermot had inherited. Everett Racivado gave the party instructions on how to locate the inn and how to appease The Argent Chamberlain, a guardian "watchsoul" that his ancestors had installed in the inn when they first built it after coming to Ustalav. The party inquired as to whether the inn was haunted and the guard bailiff said The Argent Chamberlain wasn't a ghost so much as a guardian spirit, but that he had also heard over the years that the inn was haunted. However he had never seen a ghost there himself.
After arriving at town, the party asked after an apothecary and were instead directed to Katla Maleva, the town's hedge witch. They took the spider's remains there and bargained with her for what she'd give for some of the remains, though the foxfolk indicated he sought to keep the carapace. Katla Maleva paid the group for one of the two poison glands the human had salvaged from the spider, and also let the human, a would-be alchemist, take a look at her "cook book" of alchemical recipes. She sold the group a few things and they left the spider's remains with her so she could scoop out the carapace of the spider guts. The trio who had actually went to the hedge witch split the gold she had given them amongst themselves without mentioning it to the others.
After the party regrouped, they decided to check-out the cemetery and investigate the body thievery rather than going to The Silver Dagger Inn right away. They went to the graveyard relatively early in the evening, except for the half-elf, who headed back to town still suffering from the bump on the head the night before. Shortly after arriving in the graveyard, the group encountered a pair of festrogs and a ghoul. A strange slyph woman with no memory of who she was or how she got there, joined the fight against the undead, and also joined their party. The party defeated the festrogs but the ghoul fled into the night. The party chased but the ghoul, with no need to rest or breath, eventually outran them and escaped into the night.
After that confrontation, the party decided they would make their way to The Silver Dagger Inn. Everett Racivado had given them mildly faulty instructions as the inn was further out of town than he estimated. However, they did find it without effort. The inn was very haunted, as it turns out, but the party did make contact with The Argent Chamberlain and were able to rest in the building in spite of the haunting. Given their growing experience with spiders and the undead, they found they were finally coming into their own as adventurers. The beastbrood found a growing magical power within himself, and gained access to arcane magic as a sorcerer.
In the morning, the group explored the inn a bit more and fought a shadowy undead that was lurking in one of the inn's guest bedrooms. The sylph demonstrated her power as a cleric of Pharasma at that time. Aside from memories of her faith, she still showed little sign of recalling who she was.
The beastbrood heard a noise in the attic and began looking for a way to access the attic, but he was delayed by a blast of strong wind inside until the rest of the group had joined him. Then it appeared as though the attic door was highlighted explicitly, the grain of the wood cycling between light and dark stain on the attic's trap door.
The group went into the attic and encountered a woman there. She cast invisibility and attempted to flee, but the party used a combination of Deathwatch and Detect Magic to locate her so they could detain her. They also splashed her with a bit of ash from the cremated werewolf to try to make her visible again.
After her capture, the group took the woman to town and presented her to Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado. Some of the information she told him did not match the previous information she had told them, so they bought supplies at the hedge witch and, while they were keeping watch over their prisoner, they threatened her for information, whereupon she mentioned The Racivado Dagger and told them she was a worshiper of Jezelda, Mistress of the Hungry Moon a patron of werewolves. She indicated she was hunting for The Racivado Dagger but had been hampered by the spirit guardian of the inn. The dagger, being used to kill werewolves, as it had been on several occasions, was considered a blasphemy to her werewolf-centric faith. She said her name was Tarabitha Czelnai.
When Everett returned, the party questioned him about The Racivado Dagger and he told them it was the dagger he had used to execute his brother two days prior, and after that he had returned it to its traditional resting place on the mantelpiece above the family hearth in The Silver Dagger Inn, which was, he pointed out, named after the dagger. The party indicated they had seen no such dagger there so he instructed the group that they should find it as it's the most valuable thing he owns.
Rather than returning to the inn immediately, the group went back to the cemetery, where they fought a ghoul wolf and a pair of ghouls. The ghoul wolf fell pretty quickly, but the ghouls themselves proved more difficult and paralyzed most of the party, switching to a new target each time they paralyzed someone. After awhile one of the ghouls fled into the night. The other ghoul realized the paralysis on his victims would be ending soon so tried to grab the aasimar and drag him off into the night. The paralysis ended on multiple party members and they turned on the ghoul. Knowing it was outmatched, it also turned and fled at full speed into the night. With his sorcery at his disposal, the beastbrood struck the ghoul down with a missile of force in the back.
The group decided to return to the inn at that point as the third session concluded.
I also have another idea for a possibility of what the ghoul boss may be, but I can't remember the name of the creature right now. It's not technically a ghoul but it fits in thematically as a ghoulish undead. It would be too high CR for them to deal with at level 1 but it has an astral projection ability so they might only be dealing with the astral projection of it, which has less hitpoints, then it could survive to harry them another day.
And the creature I was thinking of was a berbalang.
I do at this time believe a berbalang is the ghoul boss, but I'm expecting the party may only see the berbalang from a distance in the near future, and they're more likely to face-off against a ghast (or more than one) in the short-term.
I've been brainstorming as to why a berbalang would be keeping ghouls around, aside from the fact that its description indicates it has something of a ghoulish palate too.
Since it doesn't have any power to create undead directly, I think it likely makes more ghouls by abducting people and feeding them ghoul flesh to give them ghoul fever.
I've got some ideas for how I'll handle a ghoul lair too.
I realize I basically have given a narrative of the campaign events twice in the text above, but going over it multiple times helps me remember and plan for next time.
I don't have any set-in-stone dungeons at this point, more like set-in-stone plothooks, and I'm handling the combat stuff as it comes.
I did decide to use the Haunted Dungeon Flip-Mat for the ghoul lair though, and I've looked over it to get an idea of what encounters will occur where.
I've also been... I'd say "brainstorming" but I think that's done in a group. I've been thinking about how to introduce the changeling twins that live near the inn with their "step-mother." They both have cats, so I suppose one could come to the inn looking for her cat. Their plot is a long way off, but I want to introduce as many NPCs as early as I can so NPCs don't just materialize at the beginning of a plot and vanish again at the end of it. I want to project Sen's Pass and the environs of the Vale of Red Breath as a living, breathing community.
Right now there are a handful of NPCs from various plothooks that I'd like to introduce, including the burgomaster, the village priest, the village elders, the castle librarian, the ratling oracle, the town thug, and... Well, I need to add more female NPCs to my cast of dozens. I realized recently that I only have 3 human female NPCs.
Had the fourth session of my Relics, Reliquaries, and Remembrance campaign yesterday (11 Nov 2012) evening.
Here's basic run-down.
The session picked up right where the last one ended, with the party heading back to the Silver Dagger Inn from the graveyard. (While its name hasn't been brought up, I figure it's Sen's Pass Cemetary.)
The group decided they would take a ghoul's corpse back from the graveyard to the inn to perform an autopsy. They were trying to determine whether the ghoul was made by magic (such as Create Undead) or by being infected by another ghoul.
The beastbrood tiefling sorcerer (Shelbie) had the emberkin aasimar paladin (Ragana) chop down a small tree on the way back to the inn and just outside of the inn he planted the spike outside of the inn's main gate (it has minor fortification aspects) and he posted the festrog skull he collected on top of the spike, presumably to ward off undead but I think it's more likely to attract carrion birds, perhaps even a carrionstorm (swarm of undead ravens).
The tiefling was sure he had picked up the seven branding irons in the stable's workroom, but there they were again when the group returned. The human alchemist (Carl Delbrück) put the ghoul corpse up on the workbench and proceeded to dissect it. He determined it had been eating mostly long dead remains, but by the judgment of its stomach contents, it had probably been dead for less than a year. (Basically there were still trace elements of rotten foodstuffs.)
While the alchemist dissected the ghoul, the rest of the party went back to the inn and searched the attached living quarters for any sign of The Racivado Dagger. They didn't see any sign of it, but the fire was still lit in the main hearth and the two daggers they had offered to The Argent Chamberlain were still present.
After failing to find any sign of the heirloom dagger in the family wing, the group went up into the attic to look around again. They hadn't performed a thorough search when they captured the human woman Tarabitha Czelnai, the cultist of Jezelda (demon patron of werewolves), so they returned and did their search at this time. They didn't find much. It looked as though the woman had been staying in the attic for a couple weeks, sleeping on a makeshift pallet bed she had pieced together from materials in the attic. Other materials in the attic included a couple old chairs that were covered, and a coat rack with a ratty old fur coat left to rot on it. They didn't find anything of interest to them so they returned downstairs and determined to experiment with the cold spot.
While the rest of the group had been traipsing around the house, Carl Delbrück the alchemist had finished his autopsy/dissection of the ghoul, lit the workroom fire, and burned the ghoul. On his way back to the house, he collected some clumps of living grass, still in the dirt, from the yard of the inn.
The alchemist met-up with the rest of the group with intentions of tossing some living grass into the cold spot to observe the effect on the grass, but just as he arrived, Shiva, the sylph cleric of Pharasma (N goddess of birth, death, fate, and prophecy), shoved Shelbie the tiefling sorcerer into the known region of the cold spot. As Shelbie noticed the sudden drop in temperature and scrambled to get clear of the increasing cold before it struck him, Carl Delbrück managed to toss the clump of grass into the same area. The paladin Ragana of Sarenrae (NG goddess of the Sun, redemption, honesty, and healing), finally having come into his paladinhood recently (he started as a warrior for the first 1000 xp), attempted to Detect Evil for the first time on the area of the cold spot. Shelbie got clear of the cold spot and avoided further injury, but the clump of grass wasn't so lucky. Ragana was able to detect evil in the area, so he continued to concentrate into subsequent rounds and, while it didn't help him with the cold spot any, he did determine that Shelbie had a faint evil aura to him. (As an evil-aligned outsider he detects with a faint aura at 1 HD.)
As the cold spot didn't seem to manifest again, the group went to inspect the orbs that had been observed in one of the rental bedrooms the previous night. The orbs manifested again and Shelbie cast magic missile at one of them. The missile hit the orb but appeared to have no effect. Everyone fled in overwhelming fright except Shelbie who managed to watch the orbs fade out.
The group decided to rest for the night. Carl Delbrück, Shiva, and the kitsune sneak Rei Kyu went back to family wing to rest in beds there, while Shelbie the beastbrood stayed in the luxury room in the inn wing he had used the previous night, and Ragana the emberkin paladin insisted on staying in the room with him to keep an eye on him.
In the morning the quintet made the 3 mile trek back to town. Shiva rode the kitsune's horse to town, while the rest walked. Because he was carrying a light load, Shelbie walked slower than the rest, who went off and left him.
Once back in town, the group spoke to Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado about the condition of the prisoner and asked if she had said anything in the night. The bailiff indicated she hadn't said anything of worth. He also informed them that the count's liaison may have suffered some delay in his arrival.
Most of the group then went to see Katla Maleva, the hedge witch. Shiva didn't visit with the hedge witch because she was late arriving to town. (She left the inn after the others.) Rei Kyu picked up his medium spider carapace, now cleaned of spider guts care of the hedge witch. He took the carapace to Marcus Ogden, the town weapon dealer and weapon smith (and general blacksmith), to see about having it made into spider shell armor. After reviewing the options available to him, Rei elected to have the spider shell used in the studs of a studded leather armor, mostly because he lacked proficiency with anything heavier. Shelbie also visited the weapons dealer and picked up a kukri to replace the daggers he had given to The Argent Chamberlain two days prior. (Shelbie is not proficient with the kukri, but he purchased it as a utility blade.)
Shelbie got his horse from the stables in town and the group went to investigate the trouble that had previously been reported near the river. They went and investigated near the bridge across the High Senir River.
I'll continue from here next time.
OK, I never did get around to continuing from there. But my players did get me back to continuing with the progression somewhat on the store's forum. The store is under new management so I'm moving some of those posts to this thread because I don't know if they're keeping the same forum.
The below is posted by my player. At this point I'm not sure if he wrote it or he's quoting me. Heh. It's been too long.
I am thinkinig that Munroe needs to get on here and continue with the progress of the group. We have now finished sessions 4 5 & 6... successfully running off the Paladin and a new Iffert that seems to have pee'ed himself with the power of the Teifling.
The campaign has had three sessions and during those sessions several days have passed.
The first session began on the 26th of Lamashan, 4712 AR. This was the day of the capture of Guard Bailiff Dermot Racivado on charges of werewolfism and murder. The beastbrood tiefling that was newly arrived in the town of Sen's Pass commissioned an alchemical silver spearhead with Marcus Ogden, a local weaponsmith, and paid half on the spearhead. Dermot Racivado was executed by his twin brother, Guard Captain Everett Racivado, using a silver dagger. The executioner showed the weapon to Count Galdana, who wiped the blood off of the blade and handed it back to Everett Racivado. The corpse of Dermot Racivado was then burned at the stake. A male human, female half-elf, male beastbrood tiefling, and male emberkin aasimar were all freshly arrived in the village and Count Galdana attempted to recruit them to his militia. The human, tiefling, and aasimar entered verbal agreements to sign-up once it was made clear they would be paid as members of the militia. The beastbrood collected some of the ashes from where Dermot Racivado was burned at the stake. The new recruits were providing overnight accomodations at Taproot Tavern by the count. The beastbrood tiefling knocked the half-elf unconscious and robbed her of twenty gold.
The second session began with the beastbrood sneaking out of the tavern and exploring the town after the other recruits had retired for the night and the half-elf was unconscious. It was during his night of exploration that he met with the male foxfolk (kitsune) and the two of them talked to Alexandru Merton, who was on guard duty that night. The foxfolk played a trick on the guard and made him think he saw a ghost, then the foxfolk and the beastbrood stood watch for an hour while the guard took a lunch they gave him. The rest of the night passed uneventfully.
In the morning, the beastbrood tiefling collected his silver spearhead from Marcus Ogden and the group was approached by the newly appointed Guard Bailiff, Everett Racivado.. He informed them that Count Galdana had left the village to return to Willowmourn (his ancestral home), but that he would be sending someone to act as their liaison and trainer. In the meantime, Everett Racivado informed them that he would be overseeing them and they could help the remaining village watch catch up on other issues that had fallen to the wayside during the assaults from the werewolf. The guard bailiff got all of them who were signing up to join the count's militia to actually sign their names indicating who they were (including the foxfolk, who decided to join), then he provided them a list of issues they could look into, including a spider that attacked a farmer's mule from an abandoned farmhouse, body theft in the local cemetary, something in the river scaring away some fishermen, and fires burning in the night in the hills around the village. The party elected to investigate the spider issue. They went south to the fork in the road and found the infested house. They lit it on fire and smoked out the giant spider living within. They killed it with some effort after it scrambled out of the house. The beastbrood tiefling also burned the spider's egg sac. The alchemist collected the spider's poison glands and they loaded the spider on the tiefling's horse to take back to the village.
The third session began as the spider was secured to the horse and the group began their journey back to Sen's Pass. On the road they encountered Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado on horseback. He indicated he was coming to see what was burning, and he ordered them back to the house-fire to make sure the area was clear of debris so the nearby forest wouldn't catch on fire as well. Once that matter was cleared up, the group returned to town.
On the way back to Sen's Pass, Everett Racivado explained to them that they weren't really welcome to stay in the village because of the expense to the coffers of accommodating them in the tavern, and because they were taking up all the rooms at Taproot Tavern so the local drunks didn't have anywhere to sleep it off without going out in the dangerous night, and because they were all strangers to Sen's Pass and the locals didn't trust them to be in town, especially on the night of Jestercap, a foreign holiday that fell on the night of 27 Lamashan. According to the local understanding of Jestercap, it was a night for playing pranks and getting petty revenges. To the locals of Sen's Pass that meant it was ripe for fey trickiness, and the strangers, such a menagerie as they are, were most likely to be fey themselves.
Everett Racivado indicated he had spoken to Kaitlyn Racivado, widow of his deceased brother Dermot Racivado, and both of them agreed that the party could stay at The Silver Dagger Inn, a derelict property Everett and Dermot had inherited. Everett Racivado gave the party instructions on how to locate the inn and how to appease The Argent Chamberlain, a guardian "watchsoul" that his ancestors had installed in the inn when they first built it after coming to Ustalav. The party inquired as to whether the inn was haunted and the guard bailiff said The Argent Chamberlain wasn't a ghost so much as a guardian spirit, but that he had also heard over the years that the inn was haunted. However he had never seen a ghost there himself.
After arriving at town, the party asked after an apothecary and were instead directed to Katla Maleva, the town's hedge witch. They took the spider's remains there and bargained with her for what she'd give for some of the remains, though the foxfolk indicated he sought to keep the carapace. Katla Maleva paid the group for one of the two poison glands the human had salvaged from the spider, and also let the human, a would-be alchemist, take a look at her "cook book" of alchemical recipes. She sold the group a few things and they left the spider's remains with her so she could scoop out the carapace of the spider guts. The trio who had actually went to the hedge witch split the gold she had given them amongst themselves without mentioning it to the others.
After the party regrouped, they decided to check-out the cemetery and investigate the body thievery rather than going to The Silver Dagger Inn right away. They went to the graveyard relatively early in the evening, except for the half-elf, who headed back to town still suffering from the bump on the head the night before. Shortly after arriving in the graveyard, the group encountered a pair of festrogs and a ghoul. A strange slyph woman with no memory of who she was or how she got there, joined the fight against the undead, and also joined their party. The party defeated the festrogs but the ghoul fled into the night. The party chased but the ghoul, with no need to rest or breath, eventually outran them and escaped into the night.
After that confrontation, the party decided they would make their way to The Silver Dagger Inn. Everett Racivado had given them mildly faulty instructions as the inn was further out of town than he estimated. However, they did find it without effort. The inn was very haunted, as it turns out, but the party did make contact with The Argent Chamberlain and were able to rest in the building in spite of the haunting. Given their growing experience with spiders and the undead, they found they were finally coming into their own as adventurers. The beastbrood found a growing magical power within himself, and gained access to arcane magic as a sorcerer.
In the morning, the group explored the inn a bit more and fought a shadowy undead that was lurking in one of the inn's guest bedrooms. The sylph demonstrated her power as a cleric of Pharasma at that time. Aside from memories of her faith, she still showed little sign of recalling who she was.
The beastbrood heard a noise in the attic and began looking for a way to access the attic, but he was delayed by a blast of strong wind inside until the rest of the group had joined him. Then it appeared as though the attic door was highlighted explicitly, the grain of the wood cycling between light and dark stain on the attic's trap door.
The group went into the attic and encountered a woman there. She cast invisibility and attempted to flee, but the party used a combination of Deathwatch and Detect Magic to locate her so they could detain her. They also splashed her with a bit of ash from the cremated werewolf to try to make her visible again.
After her capture, the group took the woman to town and presented her to Guard Bailiff Everett Racivado. Some of the information she told him did not match the previous information she had told them, so they bought supplies at the hedge witch and, while they were keeping watch over their prisoner, they threatened her for information, whereupon she mentioned The Racivado Dagger and told them she was a worshiper of Jezelda, Mistress of the Hungry Moon a patron of werewolves. She indicated she was hunting for The Racivado Dagger but had been hampered by the spirit guardian of the inn. The dagger, being used to kill werewolves, as it had been on several occasions, was considered a blasphemy to her werewolf-centric faith. She said her name was Tarabitha Czelnai.
When Everett returned, the party questioned him about The Racivado Dagger and he told them it was the dagger he had used to execute his brother two days prior, and after that he had returned it to its traditional resting place on the mantelpiece above the family hearth in The Silver Dagger Inn, which was, he pointed out, named after the dagger. The party indicated they had seen no such dagger there so he instructed the group that they should find it as it's the most valuable thing he owns.
Rather than returning to the inn immediately, the group went back to the cemetery, where they fought a ghoul wolf and a pair of ghouls. The ghoul wolf fell pretty quickly, but the ghouls themselves proved more difficult and paralyzed most of the party, switching to a new target each time they paralyzed someone. After awhile one of the ghouls fled into the night. The other ghoul realized the paralysis on his victims would be ending soon so tried to grab the aasimar and drag him off into the night. The paralysis ended on multiple party members and they turned on the ghoul. Knowing it was outmatched, it also turned and fled at full speed into the night. With his sorcery at his disposal, the beastbrood struck the ghoul down with a missile of force in the back.
The group decided to return to the inn at that point as the third session concluded.
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Originally posted 18 Nov 2012:
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I said I'd continue there next time and ever since I wrote that, I've been putting off continuing.
Long story short, they went to the river and fought a mated pair of tatzlwyrms, medium-sized dragonic creatures that are serpentine with a pair of forearms. They're considered mythological even in the setting, so very uncommon creatures. The first tatzlwyrm they attacked while it was sleeping under the bridge. It fled into the river but was killed before it could escape downstream. Its corpse sank into the river and was washed away. The second tatzlwyrm emerged from the woodland nearby while they were attacking the first. It came onto the bridge and coiled around Rei (grappling, yay!) and breathed noxious gas in his face.
The group attacked the second tatzlwyrm and Carl shoved the grappling pair off the bridge into the river, and followed them over. The tatzlwyrm, kitsune, and human at that point all began swimming in the water, and being washed away by the current.
Shelbie through his regular shortspear at the swimming tatzlwyrm but missed and the shortspear poked up out of the shallows. The tatzylwyrm was killed by a combination of an icicle attack (domain ability granted by the Water domain) employed by the sylph Shiva and magic missiles courtesy of Shelbie.
Since the tatzlwyrms are considered cryptids in the setting, basically, I encouraged the players that the dead tatzlwyrm might have value. Carl the alchemist cut out the tatzlwyrm's poison glands for use in his experiments, and Shelbie claimed the creature's intestines. He then spread the intestines high in the branches of a nearby tree, and chanted. The party didn't no what he was doing, but as a cultist of Pazuzu one of the obediences is to put guts high in the trees for carrion birds to feed upon, so he was making an offering of the creature's intestines.
After the trip to fight the tatzlwyrms, the emberkin aasimar Ragana left the party. (The player of the aasimar left the shop mid-battle with the tatzlwyrms to catch his bus home, and he's moving to Texas for his vocational training so this was his last session in the campaign.)
Since the tatzlwyrm is a cryptid, the party took the remains back to Katla Maleva and she told them she'd have an estimate of its value for them in two days, but it would need to be intact to be the best value. Carl decided dealing with its gaseous poison might not be worth it, so he turned over the poison glands for Katla Maleva to put with the creature's other remains. Katla Maleva cleared out her icebox of various meats and cheeses and other things best kept cold, and packed the scaly beast inside.
Since the hedge witch was clearing out her fridge, Carl took the opportunity to buy some venison off of her. She also offered him some spider-meat stew, but he declined. He did buy a few other things though, notably a litterbox and a bag of sand for use as kitty-litter. He went to the general store afterward and bought some material to wrap the litterbox.
The group decided to head to the graveyard again, but Shelbie said he was going to take a nap at the tavern first. He went to the Taproot Tavern and rented one of the drunk rooms there, with the understanding that he'd be out of the room by nightfall.
While Shelbie was napping, Carl paid a messenger to deliver the wrapped "gift" to the tavern. When Shelbie got up, the tavernmaster gave him the package. He unwrapped the litterbox and read the note, which was a forged note from the guard bailiff Everett Racivado, that said something along the lines of "If you have to, use this and stop pissing all over town." Shelbie tucked the litterbox and bag of sand under his arm with a grin, and trotted off toward the cemetary. Once he got there, he filled the litterbox with the sand, put it on the ground, and made use of it in plain view of the rest of the party.
While Shelbie had been napping, the others had been setting up make-shift traps in the graveyard. They set-up four makeshift over-sized bear traps. Once Shelbie was in his position at the base of the statue, he spread caltrops below the statue to discourage anything coming up behind him.
The group waited an hour or so before two ghouls wandered into their part of the cemetary. One of the ghouls walked right into one of the traps and I treated the trap as a regular bear trap for damage purposes, so it reduced that ghoul to 2 hp and held him in the trap. The other ghoul was engaged and they managed to destroy it before it could get away.
When they were bearing down on the ghoul in the trap, it started trying to negotiate to survive. It told them it would give them whatever they wanted if they didn't destroy it, so they questioned it and it told them it served "the berbalang" and it could take them to its lair. After some negotiations, they released it from the trap to take them to its lair.
The ghoul led them to a different part of the cemetery that had crypts and directed them into one. Rei stabbed it in the back before the party went into the crypt. The crypt was small above ground, but it had a pair of stairs that led into a dungeon complex beneath. Rei used his dancing lights ability to make four orbs of light to send ahead of the group so those without darkvision could actually see. They found a smashed statue of Pharasma and the alchemist collected a few chunks of stone from the statue.
There was a narrow tunnel that was dug into the crypt, and a ghoul emerged from it. The combat is a little fuzzy in my memory but I believe Shelbie used disrupt undead, Carl threw a chunk of statuary at it (for 1 damage), and Shiva channeled positive energy to destroy it. I don't remember exactly who did what damage in that fight, but I know that 1 damage from the thrown stone was necessary as without that the channeled energy would have left it with 1 hp.
The group progressed forward and a festrog charged out of the darkness at Shiva, who was in the lead. It bit into her and pulled her feet out from under her with its bite. The rest of the party attacked it while she took the total defense action, so it turned its attacks on them. It attacked Shelbie, who had been behind Shiva and rendered the tiefling sorcerer unconscious. Carl threw holy water at it, dealing damage to both the festrog and splash damage to Shelbie, who, as a demon-worshipping beastbrood, is an evil native outsider. After throwing the holy water, Carl retreated toward Rei. The festrog couldn't charge because the unconscious Shelbie was in its way, so it moved up to Carl and attacked. Its attack reduced Carl to disabled (0 hp). Shiva rolled 5 feet on her turn to be 5 feet closer to the fight, and channeled positive energy to heal the living. She restored Carl and Shelbie to functioning levels of hp. Rei moved into a flanking position with Carl and finished off the festrog with his sword. When he sliced into the beast, it spewed diseased pus on him from its necrotic boils, but he was able to shrug-off the disease.
Once the party were back on their feet, I decided to call it a night.
We left the party standing in the crypt there.
In that description it seems like the festrog got a lot more actions than the rest of the party, but that's just because I remember what it did better than I remember what all they did, since I was running the festrog. I was happy to see that festrog was far more scary than the first festrog they fought, that died in the first round of combat.
I haven't figured out exactly how they'll deal with the berbalang yet. I'm thinking it probably isn't in the dungeon, since it's CR 6 and would annihilate them. They're getting very close to level 2 though, and if I put in a ghast or two (Pathfinder ghasts are CR 2, while basic ghouls and festrogs are CR 1), they should be level 2 pretty soon.
I think their next encounter is probably going to be an RP encounter though, rather than a combat encounter, to keep things interesting. I haven't decided if it's going to be an RP+combat encounter yet though. Since the party alchemist speaks Necril, I'd like to give him an opportunity to use it. (Necril is the language of the ghoul nation in the Darklands, and more generally is considered a language of the undead.) The ghouls they've met so far have just been locals that became ghouls though, so they don't even speak Necril, they speak the local languages.
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Originally posted 03 March 2013:
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We had a Pathfinder session last night. Started late and ended up finishing a little after 5 AM.
The party took on some new and interesting tactics, like sending NPCs ahead of themselves in a first wave to deal with the low-level minions (or die trying). Ari Russov, their boss (and a capable inquisitor of Pharasma), led the NPC party that consisted of Rukalla, Egikmaco, and Tarabitha Czelnai, the cleric of Jezelda.
After their NPC allies retreated (after battling ghouls, ghoul wolves, and a pair of Menadoran festrogs), the party swept in to clean up. Egikmaco was badly injured so the NPC forces retreated from the second Menadoran festrog. The party, consisting of Carl the human alchemist, Shelbie the beastbrood sorcerer, Shiva the sylph cleric of Pharasma, Rei Kyu the kitsune "specialist" (mechanically a ninja), and the two new additions of Dimti the dwarven cavalier (and his boar companion), and Tepes the svetocher wizard made their way to the graveyard and past the wandering Menadoran festrog to delve into the crypt. Due to the unnatural darkness and eerie fog lingering over the graveyard, some spellcraft checks were made to determine that the graveyard had been fully engulfed in both a darkness and a mind fog.
Dimti caught sight of a festrog (a common one) devouring the remains of one of the defeated ghouls with its face and claws coated in its ghoulish (in both senses) meal. It was more than Dimti has been accustomed to, and it seems the poor dwarf may develop a fear of being eaten by undead.
There was some turmoil in the party after Shiva caught Tepes within the radius of her channeling positive energy to harm the undead and actually injured him more than it hurt the undead then he accidentally shot her in the back with his heavy crossbow when he fumbled a shot on a ghoul. Later, in retaliation for being shot in the back, Shiva actually poured out two potions of inflict light wounds that the party recovered (worth a total of 100 gp, and useful only to the svetocher).
The party fought a festrog, a trio of ghoul wolves, a pair of spiders, and finally battled with the incorporeal berbalang and two dread ghoul warriors. The berbalang was discorporated, mostly from a combination of channeled positive energy and magic missiles. The last fighting ghoul warrior almost killed the Pharasmin sylph (with the aid of a shot in the back by the svetocher wizard) but made the mistake of switching targets once she was paralyzed. The other ghoul had fled down a "well" to the lower catacombs but the alchemist took him out by dropping bombs down the well. One of them exploded on him and he fell in a ball of flames to the bottom.
After looting and leaving the crypt, the party noted that the Menadoran festrog was now much closer to the entrance to the crypt, but he also appearred to be under the slow effect. With the enormous festrog slowed, they took the opportunity to destroy him.
They were unable to determine the origin of the darkness and fog in the cemetery and don't know why the festrog was slowed, but that mystery will have to wait for another day because as they arrived in town they encountered their boss (Ari Russov) at the temple of Pharasma and he told them the mayor of Sen's Pass has an assignment for them and would like to meet with them "soon."
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Originally posted 16 April 2013:
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Let's see...
Last session the party had several people join, but I got the impression two of them may not stick around because their players seemed kind of disinterested and I think were just killing time at the shop. They eventually stopped to play cards instead. They didn't get the best introduction though, because neither was familiar with the game and they kind of got thrown into a moment where the party was preoccupied with investigating something from a previous session.
The kitsune also brought along another kitsune, this one an oracle. I have no idea what her name was, but I'll find out soon. The party went to the graveyard again and managed to draw out the kere for a brief discussion. She said to call her Safira, and she gave them some information on berbalangs--notably that they're not incorporeal undead, and said she'd look into Shiva's memory loss.
Then the party set-up a trap for some highway men with the understanding that the village would prefer the highwaymen be taken alive. In particular the village council wanted them to come back with Eli Ogden, the son of the village weaponsmith.
Once the bandits (three Varisian humans and a tiefling of indeterminate origin) were subdued with a combination of traps and violence, the party secured Eli Ogden in the carriage and tortured one of the other bandits while the other two watched, to give them the location of the bandit hoard. The two human bandits didn't give into intimidation before the tiefling broke and offered to show them where the bandit hoard was if they'd let him go.
The party split, living the kitsune oracle to torture/guard the human prisoners while the others went to find the bandit treasure while led by the tiefling bandit.
After they acquired the bandit treasure, which was quite extensive, they made their way back to the other bandits and the kitsune oracle. There they found she had strung up the bandits and was torturing them with acid and genital distress.
The tiefling was released with a traveler's outfit and whatever else the party was willing to let him leave with, with the understanding that he was no longer welcome in the region and they wouldn't be so merciful to him if they ever crossed paths with him again.
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Originally posted 26 May 2013:
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Been two sessions, at least, without an update. Let's see....
I'm trying to remember what happened at the beginning of the session two weeks ago.
I know the party kitsune got rabies, but I can't remember which session that was. I remember it was the kitsune specifically because the only party member with a bite attack got rabies, right? That couldn't have been last session because two weeks ago Bum didn't play his kitsune and played a ranger instead? (A human ranger? I can't remember.)
I know that session the party was searching for fire skeletons in the woods at night, and managed to actually find some. They made relatively short work of them though.
Unfortunately Ari informed Carl that he had received formal notification from the Delbruck family that they would be reclaiming their errant alchemist. Ari suggested to Carl that he hide or bury anything he didn't want representatives of his family to confiscate. As they are an aristocratic family, Ari was obligated, in his service to the Count Galdana, to aid them in recovery of their wayward son. It was unclear why they sought his recovery, but but Carl feared for his summons, owing to the property damage he had done to the family estate before fleeing, and Ari assured Carl that he would come find the man himself if he didn't hear from him after two months.
Then this session last night Shiva the slyph cleric of Pharasma checked on on Brother Quinnell in town, and while she was there she encountered two men: a human swordsman going by the moniker of Zero, and a male green-faced "human" witch answering to Ezzy. Both were looking for trouble, or work, as the case often is with wandering weirdos in town, and Ezzy was also seeking magic at Toben's Magic & More. (Unfortunately Toben didn't have much of actual interest to him.) Shiva professed a hatred of humans several times, but took both men to the Silver Dagger Inn. Up to her tricks, she tried to convince one of the vishkanya sisters to "dance" for the men, but the woman refused on the grounds that she's not sure if she's allowed to or not.
A dwarf drinking in the inn (hard to say whether it was Dimti the cavalier or that other dwarf that's around sometimes) indicated that Ari and Egikmaco had gone out searching for cobra flowers for some reason. Further conversation with the vishkanya outside suggested they had been gone awhile and were expected back soon. She also offered Shiva and Ezzy breakfast while Zero wandered around the inn and stumbled into the cold spot.
Ari returned and Shiva spoke to him about Midnight Terror snooping around the inn, then she went to speak to the Argent Chamberlain to make sure he doesn't attack Midnight Terror in the future. His reply wasn't very reassuring, and he suggested that she might be wise to remember to make offerings on occasion.
Meanwhile, Ari spoke to the two new arrivals and made arrangements to pay them 600 gold each after seven days of labor to the militia. (These seven days need not be consecutive.) He also assured them, because they inquired about funeral expenses, should they die, that as a Pharasmin, he would see to their proper burial.
Ari had Ezzy and Zero try out their luck on a combat dummy, just to see what they were capable off, and took them out on a "patrol" to put them through their paces. They were checking local farm houses for any signs of The Burning Legion, going south from The Silver Dagger Inn (and town). While the first farm house they came upon wasn't on fire or burnt down (probably pretty good indicators that The Burning Legion wasn't around), they investigated anyway. (They heard a whippoorwill as they approached the farmhouse, even though it was daylight.) They found that the occupants of the house had been murdered in some sort of grisly ritual, and there was a halfling hiding in the house who insisted that he had nothing do do with the murders there, but had actually come that way looking for a zombie that he had inadvertently created by exploring magic he didn't fully understand.
Though not trusting the halfling, who identified himself as Gray, they went with him in search of the zombie he sought. He indicated he had created it with a "word of power" he discovered while going through the castle library at Castle Galdyce with his mistress Emera. (He indicated he had not seen the nosferatu Viscount Galdyce up close but had observed him from afar on the castle grounds.) The party didn't completely believe his story, particularly about his relationship with the vampire, but they went with him to hunt the zombie before its plague could spread.
They backtracked to the woods surrounding Castle Galdyce north of the village, the last place Gray said he had seen the zombie before he managed to lose it in the woods. While they were looking around in the woods for any clues as to where it actually may have gone, Rukalla stumbled upon the party. He indicated he had been scouting out the castle, and had destroyed some of its skeletal guardians, and he volunteered to help them look for the zombie.
The group of six (Shiva, Ezzy, Zero, Ari, Rukalla, and Gray) wandered deeper into the northeastern woodlands tracking a likely trail of the zombie with the bad leg, but instead of the human zombie they expected, they found a massive ogre zombie. It was no easy fight, but they managed to dispatch the thing, and even as it fell two more zombies emerged onto the trail: a zombie wolf, and a zombie with a "bad" leg. (In spite of its apparent handicap, it demonstrated surprising celerity.) As the final zombie fell, all three seemed to explode almost concurrently, covering the party in zombie gore.
The sextet went back toward town, all the while the sylph making accusations against Gray, who could only act to reassure Shiva that he isn't in league with the vampire.
It was getting late so we wrapped up there. I assume Shiva will want to take Gray into custody for his creation of the zombie.
There's still also the unresolved issue of the ritual murders at the farm house.
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Originally posted 21 July 2013:
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So let's get to it.
We left our heroes in the woods north of Sen's Pass. The assembled forces consisted of the sylph Shiva of Pharasma, Zero the swordsman, the green(?) human who identified himself as Ezzy, the mercenary undead-hunter Rukalla the Quiet, and Count Galdana's man Ari Russov of Pharasma, as well as the "halfling" that identified himself as Gray, and said he was an oracle.
Previously, after defeating the trio of zombies, the zombies had exploded. Everyone managed to dodge the eviscera except Shiva, who got some in her mouth. Suffice to say that's a taste that's hard to get rid of. MMM... zombie guts. Also, there's a high chance she got the Zombie Rot.
Ezzy, apparently being dissatisfied with the way this group was panning out, took off without the others, presumably toward town. Or maybe he wasn't dissatisfied but rather disgusted with the zombie guts--The Pharasmins insisted on burying the zombie corpses, or what was left of them. Regardless, Ezzy the Green Man wandered off into the woods and hasn't been seen since.
The group started to walk back toward town, and Shiva insisted that Gray stay well out of arm's reach of her with the logic that she "knew" oracle magic would probably require Gray to touch her if he decided to get hostile with the group. Gray was still anxious, and not just because he expected she'd take him in for questioning about the zombie he claimed he created with the "Word of Power." He told the group not to be alarmed because his polymorphing magic was about to wear off. Shiva asked him if he was actually undead and he assured her that he was not.
When the magic did fade shortly thereafter, Gray transformed into a small creature no larger than a common housecat, though he actually resembled a rat with a human(-ish) face and the hands of a miniature man on his forelegs rather than paws. He identified himself as a "ratling." He told the group he had used the magic to take the form of a halfling so he could search for the zombie without too much trouble, and said once again that the rest of the information he provided was true, that he did discover the Word of Power at Castle Galdyce while doing research there, and he did escape from the zombie, and, yes, he had seen Count Galdyce in the castle, but he had never had a direct confrontation with him.
Oddly enough, at that point Shiva offerred to let Gray ride on her shoulder. He reminded her he was still an oracle, in case she forgot. He was ready for the quartet (Shiva, Zero, Ari, and Rukalla) to put up a fight about his departure, but Shiva asked where he was going and he indicated he was returning to Castle Galdyce to continue his research in the library there. He assured them he would not be haphazardly muttering any more words of power. They allowed him to scamper off into the woods.
As the group neared the crossroads south of Castle Galdyce, truthfully mere yards from where they had parted with Gray, they came upon an odd pair--a rather flamboyantly-dressed and well-armed half-elf walking along with a powerfully built dark-skinned full-blooded orc. The orc, at least, was unarmed. It seems the pair had met on the road and decided two was better than one. (Even an unarmed orc can be formidable.) The two indicated they were looking for a village to stop for the coming night, and our quartet were able to direct them to the village. It was a surprisingly busy road as the sextet also met an angelkin woman walking the road with her dog. Now they were a septet and they made their way to the village.
The flamboyant half-man turned out to be a bard, or so he claimed. He introduced himself as Kayln and asked his way to Taproot Tavern. The orc, Glaukus, followed that way as well. (Where he subsequently tried to start a fight with a dwarven merchant, but the dwarf failed to live up to the stereotypes and backed down.)
Meanwhile, the two Sczarni prisoners in the pillory called out to the Misbegotten Menagarie (as Ari thinks of his little branch of the militia auxiliary), and told them of a ghostly beast that assailed them in the night, possessing Eli Ogden and trying to bite them while still locked firmly in the pillory. Eli knew nothing of what they claimed, having no recollection of such a possession. Yet the two thugs seemed sincerely terrified, so the menagarie took the threat seriously. The Sczarni criminals claimed the beast showed up the previous night, which, as was pointed out, was the first night of the new moon. It flew out from the east side of the courtyard and flew into Eli Ogden, who took on a monstrous cast and spent the next few hours trying to bite them, without ever securing some means of release. It was, in fact, the pillory itself that saved them from the Elijah-thing as it could not reach them while restrained. They said they had told the guards but the guards just made some off-hand comments about everyone seeing a ghost in the village square from time-to-time, and the prisoners shouldn't worry about it. (That, of course, did nothing to ease their spirits.)
The regular menagerie decided to take the threat more seriously though, and went back to the inn to prepare before sundown. Unfortunately they couldn't quite prepare for what they faced. They returned to The Silver Dagger Inn and they took some rest, coming back to Sen's Pass such that they arrived shortly before midnight. Midnight was when the prisoners had said it came last time after all.
A fight did ensue, but it was a battle of attrition. The unit seemed unable to harm the creature, which resembled nothing so much as a translucent blue-white blood-splattered werewolf trailing way to nothingness by the time you could trace down its lower legs.
The group, who had been joined by Kayln the half-elf bard, Glaukus the orc bare-knuckle berserker (who followed a strange orcen philosophy of civil violence), and Kira the angelkin summoner and her eideolon "dog."
While a combination of Mass Protection from Evil on Kira's part, and a casting or two of Protection from Evil by Shiva did mostly cover the battlefield, Zero found himself unprotected so the black-hearted beast (or no-hearted beast, being incorporeal) attempted to possess him. Zero was able to shrug-off the possession attempt so the creature turned and claimed possession to Eli Ogden again, whose face contorted. He immediately tried to bite anyone near or coming near him, including those Sczarni thugs he was sharing the pillory with. The various curious members of the group taunted and tested the Eli-thing, but ultimately, after inspecting the pillory, they decided that it seemed sound enouh there.
Meanwhile, Brother Sergei Quinnell, the local priest of Pharasma came out to great the group and see what all the racket was about. Shiva spoke to him about his ominous dream about disappearing or leaving, but he indicated he wasn't quite ready yet, and he didn't think it would happen until he had his accounts in order anyway. Brother Sergei indicated that the village's temple is actually hallowed ground and always acts as a ward against evil, so he'd have the pillory relocated to the temple in the morning, so the prisoners need not worry about possession on subsequent nights if the spirit couldn't be destroyed.
Shiva also asked Brother Quinnell if there was anything he could do about the Zombie Rot and he indicated he could at least tell her if she was infected. He cast a spell on her, Diagnose Disease, I believe, and he indicated that she did, in fact, have the zombie plague. Zombie Rot, being a magical affliction, could not even be temporarily alleviated by the lesser restoration Sergei had available, so Shiva took a horse and set-off north for Kavapesta in search of a more serious remedy.
Glaukus decided to wait around town to see if that dwarven merchant would ever come out of the shop, but the others (Zero the human swordsman, Kayln the half-elf bard, Kira the angelkin summoner, Ari the bossman, and Rukalla the Quiet) made their way south from town toward The Silver Dagger Inn.
That's where the session a month ago wrapped up.
I'll type up last night's session very soon.
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Originally posted 25 August 2013:
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Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future....
Let's get to business.
The session following the fight with the werewolf spirit began as the group, consisting of Zero the human swordsman, Kayln the half-elf bard, Kira the angelkin summoner, Ari the bossman, and Rukalla the Quiet, made made their way south from town toward the Silver Dagger Inn.
Kayln decided to head back to town and speak to Glaukus, maybe talk him out of jumping the dwarf when he came out of the tavern. The others waited for him a bit but he never returned. They eventually continued on their way.
As the group walked the road south in the black hours of the early morning, they realized they were following behind someone. At one moment he wasn't there, then the next he was, walking between fifty and ninety feet ahead of them. He wasn't doing anything hostile, just another traveler on the road going south in the week hours of the morning.
As the group entered an intersection of several wooded trails crossing the more heavily traveled road, the figure ahead was just leaving the intersection. As he did a creature, about the size of a halfling, but lower to the ground, longer, and at least twice as horrific, erupted from the underbrush. It was a white undulating worm, looking like a maggot except on one end it had a bloody razor-filled quadrasected mouth. It made enough noise squirming out of the underbrush that really only Zero failed to notice before it was in the stranger's face.
The group acted to come to the stranger's aid, but he was quick with his bow and made short work of the creature before they could bring the full force of their aid to bear.
After the thing was killed, it was examined and determined to be a rot grub grown to unusual size, a very ill omen. Ari spoke some words with the archer and, though he wore a mask, Ari invited him to join the group as they made their way south on the road to the Silver Dagger Inn, with the possibility of working with the group to be discussed in the morning.
The group made their way back to the inn and tried to get some rest. Not being an actual member of the Misbegotten Menagarie, Rukalla retired to his own affairs.
In the morning, around 9:30 or 10, the dark stranger found himself in the courtyard of the inn with Zero and Kira. There were demonstrations of skill on the combat dummy, and it became apparent that the stranger didn't like Zero, and Zero didn't seem too fond of him either. Kira flirted some with the stranger but, despite her charm and friendliness, he wasn't smitten with her, and wouldn't even tell her his name. Ari spoke to the stranger to propose he work with his militia auxiliary branch and get his details. Most significantly, his name was Orazio Esposito and he hated ghouls, and sought to destroy them, and would work with Ari's group if ghouls were on the menu. Ari also noted, though it was not made apparent to the others of the group, that Orazio was a dhampir. Ari assured Orazio that the group had run up against plenty of ghouls and other undead, and he had no doubt the Orazio would face more such creatures with their group. The vishkanya twins had taken to working in the kitchen and cooked a high protein breakfast of bacon, eggs, ham, and baked bread, so Ari discussed with his team about their next step, which was figuring out what killed all those people in the ritual that had gone wrong at the run-down house where they had first encountered Gray.
The Misbegotten Menagarie, with Ari at the fore, followed by Orazio, Zero, and Kira, made their way back to the house on the roadside. The group searched the building for any clues and again determined that the place had been the site of some kind of dark ritual, but details weren't clear. A hoof-print scorched into the wood of the building, almost like a brand, was found high on the back wall. Orazio searched the area and found that a trail of similar prints led into the dense woodland behind the ramshackle house.
The group followed Orazio through the deep woods. The bickering between Zero and Orazio continued, mostly with Orazio as instigator. Eventually the scorched hoof trail led to a small cave in the woods and as the band approached the cave mouth, a fiendish creature emerged. Standing no taller than a man's waist, the creature had a head resembling a ram, with a flat but large nose. Its skin was a sickly blue-gray shade, almost like dirty ice, but it was burly with dark oily black fur growing on its head and shoulders. It wore filthy tattered clothes with a dark hood pulled high on its head to reveal only the prominent outline of swept-back horns beneath. Its eyes burned like smoldering coals through the thick smoke of its noxious breath. It wielded a flaming sword, and flames left up from its burning hooves.
The group immediately engaged the small monstrosity, with Kira's eidolon hound Siri rushing forward to fight the thing toe-to-toe, but the thing's very breath was noxious and the hound, though still able to attack, became sick and struggled to strike the demon. Kira, with her knowledge of far realms and distant planes, was able to recognize the thing as a brimorak demon, one of the foot soldiers of the Abyss.
The creature ignored the eidolon for the most part, and instead focused on the approaching humanoids. He cast a fireball into the group and while most dodged the blast of flame with only minor burns, Ari took the brunt of the damage. Fearing that the brimorak would cast such a potent spell again, Ari moved to close the gap between the combatants, while Orazio and Zero peppered the creature with arrows, wearing it down. Closing with the brimorak soon proved to be a bad idea, as the brimorak tore into Ari with its flaming sword then kicked him to the ground. It looked about to smash Ari's head in when the combined efforts of Zero, Orazio, and Kira's eidolon Siri finally pushed it into a retreat. It swiftly cast a teleportation spell and vanished into the ether.
That session actually ended there. The next one began there as well.
Feeling less than victorious, the group made sure Ari was stable and explored the demon's shallow cave. Nothing significant found inside, Orazio and Zero took to arguing among themselves. Zero, finally frustrated with the ridicule, stomped off into the woods alone. Kira and Orazio, with Ari over his shoulder, made their way back to the Silver Dagger Inn.
Please note that I don't know round-for-round every detail of what happened in the fighting. I've tried to summarize to the best of my ability. I don't remember what Kira was up to for a lot of the fighting, so I was kind of vague on what she was doing. I know she was directing her eidolon. If you feel there are any details that should be included that I've overlooked, please let me know.
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Originally posted on 04 Sept 2013:
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The next session began, as mentioned above, with the exploration of the demon's cave. That revealed little. Orazio and Zero argued, then Zero left. Orazio and Kira went back to The Silver Dagger with Ari as baggage.
The group made it back to the inn safely and put Ari to bed, leaving him in the care of others at the inn. He encouraged them to keep looking into the events surrounding the demon to figure out how it got there and what it wanted.
Orazio and Kira (and Siri the eidolon) headed back to the town to see if they could learn any more about the dead in the house on the road, and why the demon was summoned.
The quartet's first stop was the Temple of Pharasma, to speak with Brother Sergei Quinell, but there was no sign of him at the temple. The pillories had been relocated inside the building to protect the prisoners from the werewolf spirit so Eli Ogden and his two Sczarni companions served their sentences out of the direct sun, at least. The prisoners had nothing to say.
While they were in town, a surprisingly feathery-haired man arrived, a plumekith aasimar. He indicated he was a priest of Sarenrae. (She's the goddess of healing, honesty, and the Sun. While a less common religion in Ustalav, a very popular faith in the world.) He indicated that he had met Shiva on the road and, while he was unable to cure her zombie rot affliction, she told him of the troubles in Sen's Pass, so he came straight-away to see if he could lend aid in her absence. In desperate need of a healer, the pair accepted the plumekith with little argument. He introduced himself as Hikari.
The trio (Orazio the ranger, Kira the summoner, and Hikari the cleric of Sarenrae) went to the Silver Dagger again to speak with Ari, who was recuperating, having a meal in the main room. Rukalla was also there and he listened in a bit. While the group were talking, they noticed another man in the inn that they hadn't seen before. A well-dressed man sat at a corner table with a cane across his lap. He had clean and shiny black hair, and skin as pale as lambskin. His canines, protruding slightly on his lips, identified him as svetocher, a breed of dark-haired cousins to the dhampirs. He self-identified as Espio, and said he had heard there was work to be had if he came to the inn. The group was initially hostile toward this vampire-kin who showed up inside without knocking, but Rukalla reminded them that he too had merely come into the inn and sat down at the same table Espio now occupied. Finally he was able to work out an arrangement with Ari for payment based on services provided.
The vishkanya twins, taken with their new and safer lifestyle as hostesses, served lunch for anyone interested. Ari had little guidance to offer, but suggested that the group continue their investigation, so they headed back to town with Espio the svetocher in tow.
With no sign of the Pharasmin priest, the group decided to talk to mayor Barovan Sweetwater. They made their way easily enough to the mayor's house and a servant admitted them to the drawing room to await the mayor's reception. While they waited, Espio took the opportunity to look through the mayor's liquor cabinet, and selected a bottle of wine for himself. Mayor Sweetwater finally arrived and spoke to the group briefly. He indicated he had no knowledge of the demon callers or the demon they called, and perhaps they should talk to Bailiff Racivado, as that sort of thing was his job. Espio asked if he might have a drink. Somewhat annoyed, the mayor indicated he could have anything in the cabinet that was no older than 4700 AR. Espio produced the bottle he had selected, and the mayor said it was fine that he just take it and go. After the group left the mayor's house they overheard the mayor informing his servant not to admit them into the house next time.
The Misbegotten Menagerie (now comprised of two aasimar and two vampire-kin) went to speak with the guard bailiff Everett Racivado and he told them what he could about the murder scene when he and his men found it. Scenes of a ritual sacrifice, and several bodies, mostly naked, burned and cut, spread around the room. He had no idea who the corpses were. He suggested the group might speak to that demon cultist Tarabitha Czelnai that he had arrested before for squatting.
The group, growing ever more familiar with the stretch of road between Sen's Pass and The Silver Dagger, made their way back to the inn. They found Tarabitha of Jezelda, who was as unfriendly as ever, but she went along with them to see the corpses and the ritual scene at the house on the road. She was able to tell them that it had been a demon summoning ritual, and her cousin was one of the dead. She also said that her cousin was a dumbass who couldn't manage to do anything right. Tarabitha's guess was that he tried to perform a ritual to Jezelda and call forth one of her minions but he screwed something up and got the brimorak instead. Expecting some other kind of demon, and unsure what to do with the fire fiend, he lost control of the beast's containment and it slaughtered his cult. That was Tarabitha's best guess, anyway. Without the brimorak's name, finding it now that it teleported would be near impossible, at least as far as she knew or was willing to share.
With the trail growing cold on the brimorak, or, well, icy cold by this point, the pair of aasimars and vampirekin returned to The Silver Dagger with Tarabitha. She went off to do her own thing while Orazio, Kira, Hikari, and Espio consulted with Ari.
The brimorak demon had teleported away with no clues to locate it.
The werewolf spirit was functionally overpowering and they had no means to deal with it.
There were no recent signs of Theodore Pyreborn's flaming armies nearby.
The berbalang had disappeared into thin air.
There hadn't been any recent signs of rabid worgs, though the Argent Chamberlain had indicated that it was aware of creatures in the woods at night.
After talking with Ari and Rukalla, the quartet decided they would head for the Castle Galdyce in the morning to look around. Rukalla, who had scouted in the region previously, would go with them.
That night they got a good rest, except for one disturbance outside. Orazio went up on the tower to take a look with Rukalla and the pair saw a bearded and shirtless man in the forest behind the inn, plowing through the underbrush with a greatsword in-hand. The man didn't approach the inn, and in fact seemed to be searching for something in the woods.
In the morning Veloura and Satina, the vishkanya twins, cooked a big breakfast of bacon, steak, eggs, and toasted bread.
This is part-way through the session a month ago. I'll continue here later. If you see anything that needs corrections, let me know. I'm remembering events a month ago, after all.
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Originally posted 05 Nov 2013:
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Let's see if I can get at least this part right... Time flies when I need to type this stuff up.
In the morning, before the party departed for Castle Galdyce, another member joined their motley band. This was a ratfolk who arrived at the inn riding a giant rat. The anthropomorphic rat (of indeterminate gender!) was no taller than a halfling and its rat mount was easily as a riding dog. It introduced itself by some name that people probably didn't immediately remember, and indicated it was a wizard. While I don't remember its motive for joining the group, join it did, and it ventured with the group toward Castle Galdyce.
The group, consisting of Rukalla as guide, Hikari the Sarenrae cleric, Kira the summoner (along with Siri her eidolon), Orazio the archer, Espio the very handsome svetocher, and the ratfolk wizard, all made their way north from the Silver Dagger Inn, north past Sen's Pass, and finally north into the woodlands surrounding Castle Galdyce.
There on the road the group encountered some kind of bloody abomination. A creature apparently composed of blood, and wearing a blood-soaked chain barding, had the general form of a dog. It attacked the group on-sight and they spent a little while engaging it in what seemed to be very dangerous combat. Then the ratfolk wizard, truthfully a necromancer of some talent, made use of its ability to command the undead and gained control of the "bloodhound."
With the bloodhound in tow, the group continued on the path around the castle and arrived at the northeast gate. After Orazio climbed the gatehouse and raised the gate for their passage, the group entered the ruined courtyard. Once in the courtyard, they were attacked by a few vampire-festrogs and, with the aid of the bloodhound, made quick work of them. The last of the festrogs fled back into the darkened hall beyond the courtyard.
The group were discussing their plans to go forward when a shadow-blooded woman with red-black hair scaled the north wall and watched them warily. She introduced herself as Deyanira and indicated she came to the castle to hunt undead and find treasure. She was followed over the wall by a half-orc that Espio recognized and indicated was his bodyguard. Espio and the half-orc departed for other undisclosed business shortly thereafter. That left Deyanira to get acquainted with the rest. As she was meeting the others and they prepared their marching order going forward, the spider-armored kitsune Rei Kyu and the dapper beastbrood tiefling sorcerer Shelbie arrived at the courtyard quite independently of each other and joined the group. Both indicated they had been directed from the Silver Dagger Inn. While the group had experienced quite a shake-up at the courtyard, they felt confident to continue into the depths of the castle as it was still a few minutes before noon. It's unclear what adventures Shelbie had been having while apart from the Misbegotten Menagarie, but whatever it was had cost him a finger on his left hand. The loss of his digit only seemed to add to his air of unholy menace.
Eager to get underway, and perhaps weary of any more random people showing up or departing, the group made their way into the hall beyond the courtyard. Orazio went first into the building, securing the two entries into the foyer before Shelbie followed him in. As soon as Shelbie walked into the building, a hiding vampiric minion dropped down from the high ceiling and attempted to grapple him, lunging with fangs and open talons. With cat-like reflexes, Shelbie grabbed the undead and rolled to turn the tables on it, throwing it free of himself and out the door into the near-noon daylight.
Panicking, the vampire cried and pleaded to be let back into the darkness of the building, but its path back into the building was barred and it was pummeled mercilessly by the Misbegotten Menagarie, all the while smoking in the direct sunlight until it finally ignited and, in a flash of flame, collapsed into a pile of ash, that even seemed to dissipate into nothingness.
The Misbegotten Menagarie progressed deeper into the hall, finding some empty cages in a side room, and finally arriving at a chamber with a vast black orb floating in the middle. Translucent black tendrils danced across the room, floating out of the orb in all directions. A number of human bodies actually littered the room with the orb, perhaps victims to its power, or perhaps simply creepy home decor.
Deyanira, who had a number of pet lizards, tossed one of her lizards into the room. When it was struck by a black tendril, the lizard took on an ashy pallor and managed to creep back to her across the room on the verge of death. It was quickly deduced by the group's arcanists that the black orb and its tendrils were comprised of negative energy.
Orazio, who, by his dhampir nature, was immune to negative energy (and in fact healed by it), walked right into the room and made no attempt to circumvent the tendtrils. He began work on finding a trap-door on the far side behind a bookcase in the alcove there. Finally Orazio found a hidden latch and was able to release it to open the door with the shelves built-in. He opened the door and revealed a chamber beyond with a stone-and-wood spiral staircase leading up two stories. A black-and-red blood ooze worked its way down the stairs and began the arduous slither toward Orazio. The rest of the group had been keeping their distance from the negative energy sphere and its tendrils but they moved into the room enough to attack the ooze through the doorway after successfully identifying it as a vampiric ooze, an undead ooze with the power to create zombies. Attempting to prevent it from gaining entrance to the potential perpetual healing of the negative energy-infused chamber and access to the corpses within, the bloodhound rushed forward to attack the ooze in melee while the group attacked at range. They destroyed it before it could even reach Orazio.
The other members of the group mostly managed to get through the room unscathed by avoiding the shadowy tendrils of the weeping well of negative energy--all but Kira the angelkin, who was struck by a tendril in spite of her best attempts to avoid them. She was badly injured by the negative energy, brought to the brink of death, and found herself cursed with Ebon Eyes.
A spellcaster with ebon eyes develops a jet-black film over her eyes, which inverts her capacity to perceive light and darkness. The creature treats darkness as bright light, dim light as normal light, normal light as dim light, and bright light as darkness. The ebon eyes protect against blinding, dazzling, patterns, or other visual effects, granting a +2 bonus on all saving throws against those effects.
Once the group made it into the chamber behind the door, Orazio closed the trap-door behind them and the group ascended the staircase. It spiraled around to an open exit onto the roof of the building. To their south was a short walk then a massive staircase going up another two stories.
Hikari, as a cleric of Sarenrae, requested that the group stop at this time for an hour rest, that he might pray to the Dawnflower at noon and regain his daily spells. While Hikari prayed, Shelbie secured a rope to the roof and put it over the side of the building so the group might not have to pass back through the negative energy on their way back out (or perhaps back in?). After Shelbie did this, and while Hikari yet prayed, the others took a brief respite and had a picnic lunch on the roof of the building while a cool Neth breeze blew in.
Orazio heard something from below, perhaps a grunt or a yelp or perhaps just a footfall. But regardless of what clue it was, he looked down the stairs to see a muscular and severely injured orc coming up the spiral stairwell behind the group with a gleaming falchion in hand. With Ustalav's long history of border problems with the nearby orc realm of Belkzen, Orazio didn't wait for the orc to strike first and began firing on him. The orc, in a fury, came to the top of the stairs and Shelbie cast Magic Missile, which struck the orc squarely in the chest. While it seemed to be struggling beyond the very brink of death, it did not attack and instead insisted in Common that they wait. Perhaps despite their better judgment, they stayed their attack and heard what it had to say. The orc introduced himself as Valgor and said he had a vendetta against his mother's killer, and sought to find the killer or find means (wealth) to help him find her killer, and he indicated he'd go through them to get into the castle if he had to.
Having finished his daily prayers, Hikari healed the orc with the magic he gained from the Dawnflower's blessing.
The had just started to ascend the second set of stairs when Rukalla, who was in the rear, quietly slipped away, abandoning the Misbegotten Menagarie to the troubles ahead.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere, Karl Delbrük was chained to a wall. When his family's agents came to claim him in Sen's Pass, how could they know they would be captured not but a few miles from the village?
Karl had been chained for a week? Two weeks? No, no, it couldn't have been that long. His arms would have more wear from the shackles. He'd been fading in and out of consciousness though and couldn't be sure. When the vampires drank from him he felt so weak. The vampires and their half-living spawn had been feeding on him, drinking his blood, but they were making him last longer than the family servants. They drank them first. They only sampled him like a delicacy while they drank the men in the Delbrük livery like they were cheap swill. They were taking their time with him. Perhaps they didn't want him dead? Or maybe their intention was more sinister?
It only seemed like a day after the last of the Delbrük men-at-arms died that the svetochers brought in another prisoner and shackled him beside of Karl. This was a young gnome named Zar. Or was he young? How could you tell with gnomes? The way they aged was always so strange. Karl was so weak. He felt now like every day was slow torture on the brink of death, but the gnome was chatty. Amazing, given their circumstances. Less chatty once the svetochers and their undead forebears started drinking on him, but still a talkative little man. Zar talked about being on the road, about how the svetochers had taken him by surprise as he made camp for the night. The vampires drank from Zar but the svetochers didn't seem to take to the gnomish blood and still fed on Karl primarily. The vampires forbade their living kin from finishing off poor Karl, keeping him alive on a meager diet of bread, hard yellow cheese, and water. Forbidden from drinking Karl's blood for the time, his svetocher jailors took perverse pleasure in eating food in front of him instead. It seemed they could get by as well on bread and meat as on his blood, but they favored the latter. When they weren't torturing him with food or perversely licking his scabs, they left him to suffer the conversation of the very lonely gnome, who begged Karl that he might be his friend, and spoke at length about his own imaginary friend, that he could "conjure out of thin air."
Karl struggled and fought, but he was so weak now, and his shackles were securely mounted. Until one day they weren't. He pulled to no avail, then fell slack, and the stone in which the shackle was embedded moved on its own. It began to push out of the wall slowly as a blackish-red slime oozed around it. In fact the whole wall Karl and Zar were shackled to began to bulge as a blood-stained ooze began to push its way through the cracks, widening them, pushing out the stone blocks. Karl yelled, he cried, and Zar as well, but their svetocher jailors did not return. They had sounded an alarm and left their prisoners unattended to face some threat outside the dungeon Karl had thought he would die in. But now the ooze was even scarier than they were, and it liberated Karl and Zar from the wall. They scurried to the other side of the dungeon, smashing the brittle bones that littered the floor as they scrambled to put distance between themselves and the scab-colored death leaking out of the wall behind them.
Karl, without his alchemical supplies, tried to act swiftly. He knew oozes were usually acidic in nature, so he did all he could think of. He urinated in a circle around himself and Zar in the hope that the ooze would be repelled by the ammonia in his urine. Zar acted swiftly too and grabbed a candle (made of some dubious tallow, no doubt) from the sconce on the wall, then grabbed Karl by the scrotum and used it as a focus (a small bag) to cast a summoning spell. Over the next few seconds he summoned a small fire elemental and a small air elemental, and used them to fight the emerging ooze. Karl regained his anatomy from Zar and made his way to the door. It was locked, but his alchemical supplies had been stashed with the rest of the gear from the Delbrük men-at-arms in the weapons locker beside the door. Karl quickly mixed up a bomb and logged it into the fight between the summoned elementals and the ooze.
The faint sound of fighting was audible echoing down the staircase that led up from their dungeon.
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The Misbegotten Menagerie climbed the massive staircase toward a narrow landing at the top of the stairs. The door at the top had opened and a sevetocher in heavy armor peeked out then closed the door. Orazio lit an arrow on fire and took a shot at the door. The arrow didn't immediately ignite the door, but it did provoke the svetocher to open the door and step through it, followed by another svetocher in equally heavy armor. The group did battle with the two svetochers and they proved little threat. Shelbie beheaded the svetocher he killed. During the ruckus the flame on the arrow had actually gone out.
The group made it inside and began exploring the ruin the rested at the top of the stairwell. To their left was a narrow set of stairs that led down. They found Karl and Zar behind a wrought-iron cage door there. Once liberated, the pair joined their group. With access to his alchemical supplies again, Karl mixed up a concoction that he used to alleviate himself of some of the weakness the vampires and their kin had burdened him with in place of his fine Delbrük blood.
The group searched up a small staircase and found the upper story to be falling away. There had once been a hallway but now it had collapsed into the lower chamber and only the first two rooms were accessible. Within them were a trio of pallet beds and a coffin, as well as a trio of footlockers, which were swiftly looted. No direct route to the rest of the castle was immediately obvious.
That's actually all I have written up to this point. I'll have to continue from here soon.