My GM burnout has lasted longer than I expected, so Otheriel’s penultimate stage on her quest for Immortality is put on hold some more. After the better part of a year of WanG the GM of that story wanted a break and my wife has stepped up to run Ruins of Azlant for the group, adapted to Mystara. The new group has nothing to do with the old one, and no one is allowed to worship the two who have become Immortal since RoA takes place before they have ascended.
The starting island is in the Thanegioth archipelago in the Sea of Dread, not far from the infamous Isle of Dread. Thyatis, expansionist as it is, has started encroaching on the Sea of Dread from its colonies on Davania and one of the newest is a small island called Thincol’s Jewel.
Dramatis Personae
Tibor
Tortle monk from Zul (the ‘civilized’ tortles). A young, quiet farmer bit by wanderlust who signed up with a Thyatian expedition to the settlement of Thincol’s Jewel for free travel to an area he wanted to explore. He has an interest in tortle history, especially the idea that there was an ancient advanced civilization of tortles. He has an old artefact he is convinced is from this supposed civilization, and he thinks the Sea of Dread might hold more signs of this civilization. As he is from the Savage Coast he suffers from the Red Curse, mutating him and giving his shell and hide a scarlet tinge and spiky growths that need regular trimming. I made this character simply so I could play a teenage mutant ninja tortle.
April Mai, called Vår (“spring”)
Gnome unicorn sorcerer with no Spellcraft or Knowledges because the player is physically incapable of making characters who don’t max Charisma, Diplomacy and Bluff, and heard we were going to need Swim in this AP and so went out of his way to get Swim as a class skill. Bit of an airhead. A good friend of hers came on the first wave of settlers to Thincol’s Jewel and she wanted to follow, planning on selling her magical knowledge to the other settlers.
Bo-bi Nuar and Aidu
Human Cavalier. Bo-bi is from the Pearl Islands, a fairly recent Thyatian conquest and the type of person that adapts to the new regime almost entirely, ignoring many ancestral traditions. When he was young he found a water drake egg which he took home and cared for until it hatched. Aidu is a dumb, vain, cowardly lizard who at present is more trouble than he’s worth.
Sylvia
Human druid (herbalist). Came to explore new lands and plants, and offer her services as an apothecary to the colony. Fairly happy-go-lucky.
Session 1
The trip to Thincol’s Jewel was uneventful, though stories of the rough storms in the Sea of Dread and aquatic monsters were constant worries among the passengers and crew.
Tibor spent most of the time on deck out of the way of the crew, meditating and watching the waves. Bo-bi spent most of his time entertaining his warhorse and his drake, neither of whom liked being stuck on a boat for weeks, while Sylvia and Vår socialized.
Upon arriving at Thincol’s Jewel the PCs were annoyed at being called upon to investigate the apparently deserted settlement while the ship took everyone else to the back-up port. The players did not make too much of a stink about this because it was obvious where the rails of the adventure went and we wanted to get on with it. Tibor put his belongings in the ship’s boat and jumped into the water as he outmasses everyone else put together (tortles are chonky). He easily solos the grindylow who show up to attack the PCs.
On shore Aidu is attacked by the fuath and fails his Reflex save against the clingy water, but AIdu can breath water so isn’t in any danger. He screams like a scared chicken anyway. Bo-bi dispatches it easily with his sword and the PCs successfully make their required skill rolls to notice the sabotaged canoe. They make their way into the seemingly abandoned settlement. They look around and notice how everything seems to have been devoid of the inhabitants for weeks. All the fields are overgrown with weeds and one of them seems to be infested with dire moles. They first enter the smithy and handle the monkey goblins with ease, making note of things to loot recover for later use by the new colonists. They then enter the chapel. The signs of death and the smell of decay are unnerving but Bo-bi’s eyes are immediately drawn to a fancy longbow hanging on the wall and he resolves to ‘recover’ it. Tibor thinks that stealing stuff from the house of the Immortals is probably a bad idea and says so. The others say nothing but try to figure out what happened here. It seems obvious that someone was wounded or killed and then dragged from one end of the chapel to the other. I wonder how there is any sign left of the blood, considering the tropical environment and the time that has elapsed from the killing til now, but am told not to think too much about it. The PCs find the priesthole pretty quickly and the poltergeist emerges and frightens everyone away. This has the happy benefit of stopping Bo-bi from stealing the pretty longbow on the wall. Outside the gang recover their wits and wonder what they should do. Tibor says he wants to try something and goes back inside.
Inside he sits down in the middle of the room and places a piece of chalk in front of him and waits. When the poltergeist starts acting up again, Tibor masks his fear and says “O restless spirit of the unjustly slain [Tibor made some assumptions], I wish to talk. If you cannot speak, please write,” and gestures to the chalk. The poltergeist takes him up on this offer thanks to Tibor being able to use his Constitution modifier in place of his Charisma modifier once per day, and a brief conversation follows where Tibor politely asks the name of the haunt, who killed him, which Immortal’s he paid homage to, and if he will allow Tibor to bury him. The haunt, Silas, answers and Tibor moves to the corpse. Trying not to think about the smell and the liquids pouring down his arms, Tibor wraps Silas’ remains in his blanket, takes him outside and buries him with the fancy bow. Not knowing much of anything of Silas’ patron Zirchev aside from name and basic interests, Tibor prays to Zirchev and asks Him to grant His follower the peace of death currently denied. After this he performs the traditional tortle death dance since he has no idea what sort of rituals Zirchev’s clerics practice and figures something is better than nothing. Once this is done the dirt of the grave starts moving as something pushes its way out. A brief moment of panic at the thought that Silas’ body may have become undead as well as his spirit passes through the PCs, but what emerges is actually the bow. Tibor assumes this means Zirchev accepts the death rites, and he takes the bow and promises to pass the bow on to another worshipper of Zirchev. Then he goes down to the beach to wash off the rotten corpse juices all over him. The PCs then investigate a couple more places until they find some fairly fresh tracks of something heavy being rolled from one house to a farmhouse on the outskirts of ‘town’. Sylvia easily follows the trail, puzzling at the strange footprints left by the being rolling the presumed barrel. The PCs enter the house at the end of the trail and force their way through the warped entry door, causing it to creak loudly. Inside they find hints that something has been here fairly recently and Sylvia spots something hiding in a corner outside and calls to the other PCs. Tibor gets there first and is attacked by a drunk choker, who quickly chokes out the hapless tortle. The other PCs fell it quickly and Sylvia and Vår set about healing the poor reptile. During their investigation they find a plum tree, which had me wondering how they grew in a tropical environment. I was told not to worry my pretty little head about that. Near the base of the tree the PCs found a Clue - a brief missive hinting at power struggles in the little colony. We dutifully note down all names.
Once this is done Sylvia sits down to make some more potions while Vår and Bo-bi want to explore some more. Careful comments about splitting the party from the DM fall on deaf ears. Tibor elects to stay with Sylvia in case something comes upon her. Sylvia protests that such caution is unnecessary but Tibor does not pay any attention to her. Vår and Bo-bi check out the strange-looking fields. By lucky dice rolls the bloody maize does nothing to them and they handle it fairly easily. Then they go to the dire molehills and find out they were actually ankheg hills. Being a veteran of Baldur’s Gate that’s what I feared but hoped it was dire moles. The good news was they were tiny ankehgs and Vår, Aidu and Bo-bi manage to survive and run away and we end the session there.
Hello, I am the GM. I will pop in to provide some background info to the readers on how some things have been adapted to Mystara and location near the Sea of Dread/Isle of Dread (nothing bad can happen on an island near this, right? RIGHT?!), in case anyone is curious.
Players, stay out.
Book 1, part 1:
After traveling often past the Sea of Dread and its surrounding waters, the Thyatian Empire found a series of islands that didn't seem to suffer from the large beasts that the Isle of Dread and its ilk does. What the investors and the Thyatian government don't realize is that their designated site for a colony was once a pair of Azcan settlements tied together with magic, now completely submerged. With the colonization efforts, dangerous and powerful secrets once lost are now being loosed upon the world!
Little is known about the Azcan empire today, and hardly anyone knows about their relationship to the algolthus (the assembled races of aboleths, veiled masters, and similar creatures). Even the empire's best and brightest minds were completely unaware of the algholthus until a relatively short time prior to their downfall, let alone the millenia in which the creatures manipulated the course of destiny. And yet, it was the chance discovery of the algholthus and their subtle manipulations that lead to their downfall.
The term "veiled master" originates in Azcan folklore and conspiracy theory. It was attributed to an anonymous council (which some tales claim was composed of powerful mages) that was thought to manipulate sociopolitical events as a means to secret control the world. For example, if a bank loan was denied without cause, a satirical playwright murdered, or an architectural project collapsed, it was said "the veiled masters were against it". Only in the final days of the empire was the term associated with aquatic spymasters, and even then only between high-ranking elites in the empire.
Azcan was mired in a culture of espionage conducated by other nations and races both known and unknown, each jockeying to steal new discoveries and innovations (such as Azcan took from the Olmecs they enslaved). It became the practice of highly placed arcane scholars and scientists to alternate absolutely secrecy with clever misdicreciton and thus the Spindle Solution was founded. The Spindle Solution was publicly understood to be an Azcan humanitarian project concerned with the improvement of the human condition through the creation of ioun stones. This perception was further reinforced as the Spindle Solution did in fact perform such research and development, and came up with wondrous uses for these magical gemstones that benefited the empire greatly, especially at its height.
Secretly, the ioun stones were created through the craft of the Olmecs and their arcane talents, and it was only one branch of the Ioun Imperative; an organization that served the Azcan empire's intelligence agency. The Ioun Imperative had a mandate from the highest ranking in the empire to create potent weapons to defend and advance Azcan's interests throughout the world - particularly to the long war between the Azcans and their serpentfolk rivals. A cunning and powerful wizard named Jazradan was appointed as the group's director, and a secret facility known as the Compass was established for the purposes of research and development, and as a secure location for coordinating Azcan's magical response to threats against the Empire in this part of the world. The epitome of Azcan hubris, Grand Arcanist Jazradan saw it as his responsibility to ensure that Azcan had no equal in arcane military might, and thus steered the organization toward the creation of what could only be described as doomsday weapons.
Although the majority of Azcan society was unaware of the Spindle Solution's activities at the behest of the Ioun Imperative, the group attracted the attention of a veiled master named Ochymua. Ochymua was the head of the algholthus' ongoin monitoring of the Ioun Imperative, and it recognized the threat that the Spindle Solution's clandestine work posed to the algholthus should their connection to the Azcan people ever be uncovered. Cautious of the group's true activites, Ochymua took human form and set about infiltrating the group.
Ochymua successfully penetrated one of the Spindle Solution's research facilities, and quickly grew alarmed by the weapons under development. Furthermore, it miscalculated how advanced and thorough the facility's security protocols were - particularly that the Spindle Solution members in this facility all benefited from the resonant power of a clear spindle ioun stone that provided protection against mental control. Ochymua was caught off guard by its inability to dominate the Spindle Solution scientists, and its surprise allowed it to be discovered and captured alive.
Grand Arcanist Jazradan had no idea who or what he had caught, initially thinking it was a disguised serpentfolk come to spy on the empire, or some other race. The algholthu spymaster remained in human form and resisted all attempts at interrogation so as to not expose itself and potentially the truth of the algholthu's influence on one of the great empires of humanity. Frustrated by his inability to break the spy or glean even the slightest bit of information, Jazradan placed Ochymua in a temporal statis, safely cutting off the spy from the rest of the world while Jazradan sought another approach, possibly transferring his prisoner to a great city of the Azcan empire. While Ochymua never betrayed its kind, the damage had already been done - the Azcan leadership now knew of powerful spies in their midst, and in short order, the empire's tom minds learned that this secret conspiracy of powerful entities ran through their civilization. Though the Azcan didn't know the algholthu's true forms, they now knew of their existence, and soon after began to realize they were victims of millenia of social and genetic manipulation. The algholthu's grand experiment was contaminated.
Eons later, Azcan is gone. Some ruins still exist, scattered, and time has worn away obvious traces of civilization and created new ecologies. Hundreds of years ago settled an island once a part of the Azcan empire, establishing the Sun Temple Colony. Contact with that colony mysteriously ended just over 200 years after its founding. Centuries later, Thyatis seeks to establishing a thriving colony in the Adakkian Ocean. Three years ago, Thyatis dispatched dozens of ships (through trade companies backing the project) to survey islands in the area where the Sun Temple Colony once sat, looking to determine their suitability for building a new colony. The survey was successful, and last year the Thyatian government, in conjunction with a group of wealthy private investors, started outfitting a new colony to be named after Emperor Thincol on the island of Ancorato (named after the ship captain who discovered it). The first group of colonists sailed about the Zendrolion's Herald and arrived on Ancorato 10 weeks later. These settlers began their work, constructing homes and community buildings and planting crops. Meanwhile, the Zendrolion's Herald sailed back to Thyatis, and another ship was scheduled to arrive 6 months later with supplies and additional colonists.
Horror struck in the interim. While exploring the island, one colonist discovered the ruins of a partially buried complex where Ochymua somehow still remained in stasis. This would-be adventurer failed to comprehend the significance of her find and inadvertantly released the veiled master, who found that thousands of years had passed by it in the blink of an eye. Ochymua seized control of its liberator and began to scour her mind to understand what had transpired since its imprisonment.
After its release, Ochymua established telepathic contact with an omnipath who had kept the veiled master in its telepathic mesh for all this time. Ochymua reached out through the mental network to assess the state of algholthu society. Although alien by human standards, algholthu culture is neither static nor immutable, and Ochymua discovered it had little in common, either socially or politically, with its modern day peers. Seething at its perceived sense of loss, Ochymua elected to pursue its own agenda rather than attempting to acclimate itself. The veiled master surmised that if its own prison site survived the Rain of Fire, the Ioun Imperative's military bunker might have as well, along with its weapons of mass destruction.
Ochymua made contact with an aboleth nearby named Onthooth who had taken up lair in a ruined temple of Atruaghin. Ochymua agreed to trade the colonists in Thincol's Jewel to Onthooth in exchange for information. Approximately a month ago, faceless stalkers under the leadership of the treacherous ugothol Thanaldhu slowly replaced the colony's leader and other key community members in order to abduct the settlers for transport to Onthooth's lair. While the faceless stalkers took pains to hide every trace of their deeds, lest they forewarn future arrivals, they nevertheless left some clues behind. Meanwhile, Ochymua reserved a pair of dominated and slimed colonists to guard its former prison and alert it when new colonists arrive, before departing in search of the lost military base.
Today, the player characters arrive on the shores of Ancorato on the Peregrine, only to discover empty homes and abandoned possessions with virtually no sign of violence. Here, they must establish a new home, while not so far away from Ochymua and Jazradan are on course for a second confrontation: Their first confrontation precipitated the fall of the world, and it is up to the PCs to prevent the devastation a second confrontation could unleash.
With most of the front-liners low on HP the party decides to spend the night in what they consider the most defensible part of town they have explored so far. Nothing attacks the party during the night and the next day they explore the rest of the town after some healing.
The rest of the looti-, er, exploration goes smoothly with me shaking his old school head at the amount of magic items we get right off the bat. This day Sylvia has prepared Detect Magic and has a rank in Spellcraft so we can actually identify the items we find. A few things we find strike us as odd. Well, odder than the Roanoke-ing of the colony. The colony's charter was found hidden away in the house of the governor pro tem, and a bunch of names were stricken from the list. The logs found in the council house were stuffed in a bag for later perusal. Aidu notices a strange metal spider thingy and utterly fails to catch it, and is full of sour grapes about it and does not bother to properly inform the party about it. Fortunately we heard his little attempt and managed to get some information of him.
The food storehouse is full of cockroaches and Tibor leads the retreat since no one has anything that can handle them. Outside Sylvia casts a bunch of Light spells on the PCs and their equipment, and this prevents the roaches from being too bothersome on the second attempt. The party recovers fair amount of food and packs it up. The colony full explored, we collate our findings and set out to meet up with the ship at the secondary anchorage. We take with us such things as we can carry and would find useful, primarily food. Sylvia is weirdly fixated on the blacksmith's anvil and wants to bring it along. The rest of us think that if it was undisturbed for a month or more, it will likely remain undisturbed for a few more days and no one wants to lug a freaking anvil cross country. We level up and leave the abandoned village.
During the trip the party comes across an ankheg, which resulted in a surprisingly long fight since both sides spend most of the time missing. In fact, the PC that hit most often was Vår, who ignored poor Dexterity bonus and melee penalties and hit every round. Tibor, on the other hand, missed every attack for three rounds straight and did minimum damage on the one attack he did hit with. Still, the ankheg rolled equally poorly so it wasn't a difficult fight.
The trip to the secondary landing site was mostly smooth, if slow and unpleasant. We encountered a couple of wild pigs, of which we killed one and got some fresh meat. On the coast we met a strange thing - a dead man piloted by an oversized nautilus. The fight was mostly fairly easy except that Bo-bi got grabbed by the thing and it attempted to stick its tentacles into his brain. The GM was very nice and allowed a save against the poison. The player complained about SoD poison at second level and asked me to get the GM stop putting that sort of thing in the game. I told him he was asking the wrong person because I approve of the occasional SoD effect in a game, at every level.
We meet up with the rest of the second wave and almost immediately get embroiled in what appears to be brewing trouble. Several of the colonists are arguing vociferously for returning to Davania because they don't feel safe here. Ramona, the leader of the trip, again turns to the PCs to help smooth things over in the hopes that fellow colonists will find it easier to talk the dissenters down than she has. The other PCs do well but Tibor flubs his roll. He tried to comfort Petilia (?) the scribe but she is not reassured by his observations that every new settlement faces difficulty and success is not given and they will succeed, and must just try the best they can to make things work. Vår, who is (as is expected of this player) specc'ed for Diplomacy, swoops in and fixes the issue after calming down her first target.
We then are asked to fix the issue of the super slow ship. This is easily handled by Aidu and Tibor, primarily, since they can swim. Sylvia and Vår make minor contributions to the fight and Bo-bi spends the combat trying to rid himself of his armor so he can jump in and help. The fight is over well before he is. They do however spot some more grindylows watching the ship. Ramona again asks the party to take care of this things before the ship departs. Tibor decides to swim out to meet them, assuming he can either handle them if they attack, considering how he handled two in the first session, or can flee if they prove too much to handle. The grindylow flee but he manages to track them back to what he assumes is their lair. He returns to the rest of the colonists and informs them of his findings.
Ramona wants the PCs to 'handle' the issue to prevent further attacks and show the nervous members that things are being Taken Care Of. A brief discussion follows where we try to decide whether we should wait a night, in which case the ship would return to Thincol's Jewel and we would again need to trek cross country, or we should handle things now, in which case the ship will wait for us, considering it needs a few hours to get things ready in any case. We decide on the latter and head out, chooing to rappel down the small cliff rather than risk being caught in a boat on the open water. Clearing out the cave is mostly pretty easy, with only Salttooth proving dangerous, reducing Sylvia to 0 hp and wounding Vår. Tibor was a good tank, thanks to his AC being high enough they needed a natural 20 to hit, but poor rolls meant he was not as dangerous as he should be: he had a better than 50% chance to hit on paper but hit at best 30% of the time, and half the times he did hit he rolled 1s for damage. I got the feeling Vår again did more damage with crossbows and attack roll cantrips into melee but that may just be me being grumpy.
Despite this opposition the PCs prevail and Salttooth begged for mercy in broken Minean. Tibor, the only speaker of Minean, stops attacking and informs the party. There followed a brief discussion about what to do but the final decision was put off until next session since it was well past my bedtime.
Some of our readers (if you're there) might be confused about the names of the NPCs here (and the colony). That is because I have changed some of them around to fit better into the world of Mystara, specifically the names of characters from the Empire of Thyatis.
Thyatis is very inspired by the Roman Empire (a solid mix of its various periods and east/west), so the names are in similar often Roman/Latin sounding.
Here is a list of following name-changes (for now)
Zendrolio's Herald (renamed Liberty's Herald. Zendrolio is one of the old emperors of Thyatis, and this boat was named after him)
Thincol's Jewel (renamed Talmandor's Bounty. Thincol is the most recent emperor of Thyatis)
Hongli (Eamon Caranth, who is now a dark-skinned elf from the colony of Ochaela, which is pseudo-China inspired)
Galerius Andorux (Harcourt Carrolby, now a rich man from the Isle of Dawn. Played as if he was Daerran in Wrath of the Righteous, just not as amazing or douchey)
Luetin Pollux (Luetin Calewick)
Petillia Berys (Perrell Beys, our resident pencil pusher)
Ramona Avantus (Ramona Avandth)
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Rabio Arcturus (Rayland Arkley)
The ring with "my dearest Livvy" has been changed to "my dearest Livia".
We had a brief session last night (one player was down with the flu and I was feeling tired myself) to merely wrap up the fight with Brinetooth and move on to the Downtime at the colony.
The party chose to show mercy to the Grindylow Queen, much to her surprise (a surprise but a welcome one). She agreed to a wary peace between herself and the colony, and Tibor said that if they wished to speak with her, they'd plant a flag on the beach nearby so they wouldn't intrude on her territory again. As she recognizes them as someone stronger and far more dangerous than her, now that she doesn't have any minions left, Brinetooth gives them her locked chest as tribute (she hasn't opened it anyway) in recognition of their strength as "Big Bosses".
At this point, I the GM consider the ecology of the grindylows and what Brinetooth will do since she has no minions left... perhaps she will reproduce as an anglerfish does, and start laying some eggs to hatch new underlings. After all, the grindylows are more or less the goblins of the sea, so they probably respawn fast.
After peace has been brokered, the party returns to the Peregrine and reports to Ramona. She is pleased with the outcome and praises the PCs, and finally they all set sail back to Thincol's Jewel.
The PCs accept Ramona's offer, and settle down at Levin Farm (easily the best building, imo, for a group of adventurers who also want to have their own alchemy lab).
This is where I introduce the downtime rules, which I ripped more or less from Ultimate Campaign, but removed the use of Magic, Influence, Goods, etc, since I didn't feel like dealing with that extra mechanic. I saw others here on the board had let the players take a more active hand in shaping up the colony once settled, and we will be doing that as well, though I have to expand upon those rules some more as the main focus on working for the colony this time was to get everything in order and cleaned out. Sylvia set to work with brewing a lot of potions, donating a fair amount to the colony's use (most were not needed at the moment, but the soldiers appreciate having healing potions and such available in times of crisises), while Tibor and Vår spend their time helping the colony with anything that needs doing. Aidu will be focused on crafting his nest, and Bo-Bi's activities are currently unknown as he was the one down with the flu for the session, but he'll let us know in time.
If others are interested, here is my homebrew rules for downtime activities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Euy4rJQ19IqvJIoS4BlEVQkw2cvXefcen3x3m-H opGk/edit?tab=t.0
The magic item creation houserules is an expansion upon already existing houserules Bjørn Røyrvik has used as a GM. I felt it would be nice to introduce them here too as this AP has limited options for shopping, so I wanted to angle for more self-sufficient PCs with Crafting capabilities. (which meant I also had to look up what the costs would be for crafting furniture, thankfully someone else had thought of it on the great internet)
We had a session before christmas (and one yesterday so we're behind on updating this journal).
The PCs enjoy some peace and quiet as everyone is settling into the colony, though the peace is quickly shattered only a day or so after. The two priests, Hongli and Kurvis, had originally moved into the house next to the chapel, but had ended up with an argument that made the two friends decide to take some time apart, thus both moved out of the house (Kurvis taking up abode in the chapel itself, and Hongli moving into the barracks).
This left one of the nice big houses vacant, making Luetin and Galerius both pounce on it. The group comes across their heated discussion and overhears the situation. Luetin, despite having an attached quarter to the smithy to live in, wants the house for his family when they arrive with the next wave of settlers (a wife and kid). Galerius desires the home for similar purposes (awaiting the arrival of his fiancé), and as a wealthy sponsor of the expedition feels entitled to it.
The PCs end up siding with Luetin, finding it more useful that the smith, who is currently working mostly solo, gets a nice dwelling to rest in close to his place of work. They convince Galerius to back down by appealing to the benefits of settling into a house that has more possibility for expanding and space for the horses he plans to rear and train. No surprise to this group, Vår does have very good Diplomacy and thanks to the others do a decent job of calming things down between the two men.
After this, they are finally able to enjoy almost two weeks of peaceful work for the colony. As noted above, Sylvia spends her time working to make potions for the colony, while Tibor and Vår do various jobs for the colony (Tibor puts his farming knowledge to use to help with salvaging the crops, while Vår uses her meager seamstress skills to mend clothes, bags, nets, and other things that require a needle and thread or simply just deft hands). Bo-Bi decides to help out in the smithy, which helps Luetin a lot even if it's just an untrained pair of hands (or pair of eyes that can keep an eye on the fire to maintain a steady heat).
One day, Carver Hastings, more or less the unofficial sheriff in the colony at this point due to his age and experience, pays a visit to the PCs' home at the farm. He asks them if there have been any unusual activity or happenings for them in the past days, to which they say no (which is also true), and they in return ask what has happened. Carver tells them that some shady figures have been seen lurking between the houses at night, which was worrying but nothing dangerous yet it seemed, but last night one of the carpenters, Da-Bi, was attacked in his home while asleep. Carver and the group pays a visit to Da-Bi and his wife Mi-Su, and hears the first-hand account of what happened; Da-Bi was sound asleep when he suddenly awoke because of a strangling sensation around his neck, and to his shock some sort of dark creature was on top of him as it tried to choke him to death. Tibor already suspects it might be a creature similar to the one that nearly did the same to him, and inspecting Da-Bi's neck, similar markings are visible to the injuries Tibor sustained before. Mi-Su explains that she had gotten up in the night to fetch herself some water to drink, and had come back into the room to see some monster strangling her husband. In panic she had grabbed the closest item, an iron pan, and hit it on the head. The attack caused the creature to let go and stagger away in a hurry, clearly dazed from the attack.
Our heroes assure the couple and Carver that they'll look into this strange matter to put an end to the danger, starting by searching for clues and tracks at the couples' house. Mi-Su informs them that the door was opened by the creature to get in, and it left that way too, so they look there to begin - easily Sylvia finds some tracks, almost identical to the tracks that they found before, and also leading to Levin Farm like the last time. This time however the tracks stop at the farm's well. It doesn't take much as they conclude the creature might have come up from the well and one of them takes a climb down to investigate. A crack in the wall, over the waterline, just big enough for a medium sized creature to squeeze through, seems to be the source of the problems. They gear up and decide to go into the dark, dank, tunnel.
After a very uncomfortable and squeezed trek through the darkness, they enter a more spacious cave, finding some common gemstones as their light reflects off of their surfaces. True to form, the group goes left when the cave splits in two directions, and come upon a group of four young chokers. The chokers are made aware of them pretty fast because of the light, and combat ensues! Tibor acts quickly and moves forward to face them off, and one of them takes a swipe at him with little effect. Seeing this, Vår decides to do a pincer move and place herself off to the side of Tibor, where she can shoot the choker with her crossbow (and miss). This does leave her completely open for charge from the remaining three chokers... and one of them proceeds to do exactly that and with one attack that grabs onto her (and constricts), Vår is reduced to unconscious. This causes some exasperation for the rest of the group as they have to deal with the chokers and also save Vår, but they manage to do a pretty good job of things, dishing out a lot of damage in one turn and taking out one of the young chokers. The remaining three, seeing that resistance is much tougher than anticipated, decide to flee back to Ma and Pa, as they would much rather risk any punishment from their parents than dying at the hands of these intruders. Bo-Bi gives some pursuit but decides against going too far into these unfamiliar tunnels, while the rest of the party gets Vår up again. Regrouped and healed, they follow Bo-Bi's lead after the fleeing chokers. Even if they see the obvious potential ambush for what it is, they don't know about Ma and Pa , expecting only the three they gave chase to. What follows is a somewhat brutal surprise attack and a tough battle in taking out the two adult chokers and their remaining offspring, but our heroes are successful in stomping out this evil that could have been a real threat to the safety of the colony.
After rummaging around the choker-cave to find some treasures, they continue exploring, and stumble upon some very precious shiny rocks. Sylvia is pretty eager to get her hands on them, as is Aidu, and the two are quite happy to dig through the piles of gems. As they do so, the rest of the group becomes aware of the approach of two crystal-like creatures. With no knowledge of the planes, no one can identify what they are, but Vår and Sylvia, are able to barely understand some of the strange sounds they make (because of some of the languages they know; as I make the GM decision that the gnomish language having some root to the Plane of Earth, and Druidic being a patois of many different sylvan and elemental languages). Though pretty much all they can make out are words like "Offspring", "Kin", "Grow" (or "Create", hard to tell).
Sylvia isn't very happy about backing off, but the creatures don't seem to be openly hostile (but are very much wary of the party and ready to fight if need be), so she decides to let them keep their shiny rocks. Aidu takes much more convincing, eventually being dragged off by the tail by Bo-Bi.
Leaving the Crysmals alone (which pleases me, and I'll think of some neat reward for this to come down the line, also I would've been concerned if they decided to fight the Crysmals since they can be pretty tough), they find a tunnel that leads back to the surface. Realising that there is more of the cave system they haven't explored, they backtrack some, and find a nest of Darkmantles, as identified by Vår who grew up with stories of them as boogeymen in nearby caves. The Darkmantles use their Darkness to great effect, removing the light of the party, and proceed to gang up on the only person available to attack - Tibor. Much to the Darkmantles' dismay, Tibor is suffering from the Red Curse of the Savage Coast, which means his body has gone through some horrible mutations... in his case, it has caused sharp growths and spikes to form on his shell. The Darkmantles are very upset that the food is biting back, and eventually let go of trying to envelop Tibor and just attack him instead. The fight is easily resolved after that.
Having cleared out the cave system now, they follow the tunnel up to the surface and finds that the exit isn't that far away from the colony. The group reports to Ramona and Carver what they found and the threats eliminated. Ramona thanks them for a job well done, but decides that apart from keeping the tunnel-entrance off-limits, there won't be anything said officially about what is down there apart from possible dangers. "We don't need idiots looking for treasure getting lost or worse in those tunnels"
The group pay a visit to Dora the alchemist after their report, which allows them to heal up and identify some of the loot they found. Dora listens to their story with great interest that reminds her of her own youth, serving them something refreshing to drink as they chat. She informs them that she would like to ask them for their services in procuring some reagents in the wilderness, but assures the party they can take their time in resting up after their little adventure before setting off.
We end the session there, and I award everyone a level as a christmas gift (a bit earlier than the book says, but it felt fitting considering it was christmas!).
After a couple of days of hard work but no adventures, one of the colonists reports being attacked by a horrid creature that tried to choke her. The PCs do some snooping and find tracks that lead to the well just outside their new home. They descend and find a tunnel. Entering they encounter a few chokers. The PCs engage and some questionable choices occur. Vår forgets she is a spellcaster and moves so she can get a clear shot with her crossbow, gets charged and is quickly reduced to negatives by a choker.
Tibor decides to increase his damage by letting the chokers hit him and hope they impale themselves on his spiky hide. They do but don't care and deal a lot of damage in the process before going down. The PCs fell two and the third runs off. Fortunately we had a good amount of healing so we could heal up before heading further in. It turns out we had been fighting young chokers and the parents were nastier. Fortunately the dice were more in our favor this fight and despite taking some damage, we prevailed without too much difficulty.
Once the chokers are killed, the rest of the 'dungeon' is easily cleared. The crysmals are not obviously dangerous and seem concerned with protecting the precious crystals rather than outright murder, so Tibor convinces the others to avoid killing things merely protecting what he conceives may be their eggs. Fortunately, they agree. Possibly influenced by the fact that healing is running out and they don't want to tempt fate.
The last arm of the cave sees a couple of darkmantles attack. Tibor again allows them to attach themselves to Tibor, take damage, and this time it has the desired effect of making the creatures disengage and run off. Once their darkness effect runs out they are picked off by ranged attacks.
The PCs exit the cave through the back passage, hide it, and decide to not tell anyone about this place. They are sure that if word gets out there are valuable crystals down there, some greedy person will go down, bug the crystal creatures, and probably get themselves killed. They return to the villlage and report that they killed the monsters and everyone is safe now. They tell the whole story to Ramona and she agrees that keeping the crystals secret is a good idea.
This done the PCs hope they can get back to being good little colonizers. This lasts another day or so before Ramona asks them to do some scouting. There are other colonists scouting the area but she wants a more complete picture of the island than she has. The PCs agree and just before they head out a breathless scout comes running to inform the village that her partner is stuck in quicksand. The PCs run headlong all the way, only barely getting stuck themselves in their haste to save their acquaintance-they-totally-knew-before-he-was-introduced-for-this-adventure- segment. Bo-bi had the best plan: tie a rope to his horse and send Aidu to fly out with and drop the end on the poor guy. Milo had conveniently waited until the PCs were there before failing his checks to stay afloat, and so cannot grab the rope. Sylvia and Tibor jump into the quicksand to try to help but Sylvia has the better potions to help and Tibor waddles back onto safe ground and grabs the rope. Sylvia manages to grab hold of Milo and the rope and drag him up enough for him to get some air and grab hold of the rope. Getting him out after this is easy. When it becomes known that Milo makes fermented beverages, three of the PCs are extra glad they saved him. Tibor never acquired a taste for rotten vegetable juice, so he's only regularly glad to have saved Milo.
After escorting the two exhausted NPC scouts the PCs do some scouting of their own. They come across some ruins which are only partially covered with vegetation. Tibor gets very excited at what little is shown and runs ahead of the rest of the party to find more architecture. As they approach what appears to be a stage of some sort ringed with pillars, they activate a magical effect. An illusion of a human appears and says something in a language unknown to the PCs, though Tibor wonders if it is related to Minean. The player spend some time ribbing Vår's player for not having Comprehend Languages. When leveling up he had asked for recommendations for his 1st level spell, and had been given CL. He was just about settled on that spell when he saw Snowball and chose that instead.
At the sight of the illlusions, Tibor's excitement dies a little. He had hoped this would be tortle ruins but it appears to be human. Still, it's somewhat exciting. The PCs do not have much time to poke around before they notice a small group of monkey goblins approaching. They try to hide but are noticed. Tibor steps forth, spreads his hands and tries to sound calm and non-threatening. They attack anyway. The battle is pretty easy though Vår is again reduced to negatives. When leveling Vår's player had asked for tips on what feat to take, and Toughness was mentioned. He chose Point Blank Shot instead, and the GM had to point out that if he had chosen Toughness he would have still been standing by the end of the combat. Cue some more ribbing of Vår's player.
He gripes a bit about feeling useless at compared to the martials and we tell him to just let us have this because in a few levels' time he will be outclassing us easily. Thus mollified the PCs check out the rest of the area. Tibor makes rubbings of all the writing he can find, does some sketches of the area, and makes a bunch of notes.
They return to Ramona, and she accompanies them the next day to look at the place and translate the languages. The recording turns out to be some form of proclamation about how everything is fine and people should just get on with their lives. The scene from the Naked Gun about how there is nothing to see comes to mind, just replace the exploding building with the Great Rain of Fire.
With our first real Clue to the AP's plot in hand, we end the session.
Over the course of several days Tibor scours the site of the recorded illusion for more information but finds little else of note. Other than this, life for the colony seems to be going well but there is the underlying tension from the fact that we still do not know what happened to the first wave of colonists.
Tibor spends his time split between farm life - farmers never lack chores - and spending a little time with Petillia to try to find clues to what happened to the missing colonists. Vår does minor chores around the colony, Sylvia makes potions and builds up a shop with Dora, and Bo-bi trains the militia.
Petillia notes that there are a couple missing pages in the log book, pages that were carefully excised to try to hide their lack. While interesting and almost certainly a lead to the mystery of the missing colonists, both assume that the missing pages were destroyed since we haven't found anything in the village and it makes sense for them to have been destroyed.
While Tibor and Petillia are going over documents, the other PCs are called down to the dock. There they spy some hunched fishmen that threaten one of the hapless villagers who was doing some fishing. Successful Knowledge checks indicate that Sylvia and Vår, as well as the rest of the women in the colony, are likely targets for 'reasons'. The battle is swift and in favor of the PCs though Vår took a few hits. Bo-bi suggests putting the heads of the skum on pole near the water's edge to warn off future attempts, and everyone agrees. Interestingly, the skum were carrying a map of the island with some landmarks hitherto unknown to the colony and some interesting writing that said 'Bring captives here'. If the skum were interested in - how to put it delicately? - getting to know the local women, they would probably not take them on land and far away from the water. This leads us to the conchat there is yet another party on the island that is powerufl enough to convince the skum to work for them and might be where our missing colonists have ended up. Ramona and the PCs decide that this is something that needs looking into sooner rather than later. The PCs decide to take a couple of days to prepare, then leave. Personally, I suspect the GM put this Very Obvious Clue to push her oblivious and passive players to going to the right place to advance the adventure.
During this time a cargo ship from Davania docks and people can buy some stuff. Ramona arranges some credit for the PCs, which they end up donating to Sylvia for 'supplies' and Sylvia can do some crafting for the group. She makes two Cloaks of Resistance +1, and promises to work on Bracers of Armor for Tibor when she has time. The PCs tell Ramona to expect them back within ten days, and to assume the worst if they are gone for more than fourteen.
The trip to the mysterious tower is interesting. They see signs of something that makes them think of a swarm of little things that tramped a nice big path through the jungle. This is what we call 'foreshadowing'.
Before reaching the tower, the PCs find a ruined glade with signs of overgrown pavement leading up to a circle of divine images. Tibor's player recognizes nearly all of the Immortals in their persona as Azcan gods, but Tibor himself does not roll well enough on the K. (religion) roll to do the same. When the two celadons animate and try to talk to the PCs we get a little nervous. Ramona had seen fit to give the party a potion of Tongues and two scrolls of Comprehend Languages. Again, I suspect divine GM intervention to make the adventure easier. Vår uses Comprehend Languages and manages to strike up a conversation with the constructs. The party quickly learns that someone else is active on the island and was here 'not long ago'. More importantly and interestingly, they learn the ruins here come from the time of the Great Rain of Fire (also known as the 'Blackmoor's Big Oopsie'). When the constructs indicate that they wish the PCs to stay here and learn, Tibor is elated though the others are less enthusiastic. They bring up things like 'we're on a mission' and 'duty to the colony', and 'I don't wanna be stuck here the rest of my life' and silly things like that. Vår manages to convince the celadons to make a compromise: the party will stay with the constructs and accept their tutelage for two days, then be on their way and come back 'soon'. The party gets an intensive and divinely augment course in the Azcan tongue, which is suspiciously similar to what another world would call 'Nahuatl'.
The party levels to 4th and Vår, again oblivious to any suggestions or foreshadowing, chooses Scorching Ray as her 2nd level spell. After all, she has Point Blank Shot.
When the party reaches the tower and see the warden jack swarm, they get that shocked Pikachu face and wonder how they could have ever predicted they'd meet a swarm.
The fact that it moves faster than Tibor is a problem, but fortunately Vår remembered she had a wand of Flaming Sphere, and the swarm was taken out with only a few hit points lost. We end the session here.
Before the session begins the DM mentions that she leveled us to 4th ahead of when the AP intended us to do so, because the tower was a bit tough. She also said that the session would either be over quickly and we could get on to book 2 that evening, or we would spend most of the session and perhaps the next one faffing about with some potentially tricky parts.
I looked at her and said something to the effect of “you know which way it will go”. I was right.
We entered the tower and immediately got Aperture Science or VaultTec vibes from the art and infomercial stuff on the walls. The first room saw the PCs ambushed by a couple of skum, which went down without trouble. The second room looked fine but we fortunately noticed the tiny holes that dotted the walls, indicating something to look out for. Tibor, in what will be a running theme for the evening, puts his 18 Wisdom to work and cautiously steps out into the presumed Danger Zone. He quickly steps back after being pierced by several arrows. He pulls them out and licks his wounds.
The PCs determine that they can open the doors on either side without entering the confirmed Danger Zone, and do so. The first one opened on a pair of constructs that told us that the room was restricted access and we had to close the door (with us on the outside) or be eliminated. We chose the former, and tried the other door. That one opened on a couple of skum that were looting the base.
“Hold on,” we said. “We thought the skum were supposed to work for whoever is in this tower. Why are they looting it?”
At least that’s what we were about to think before the skum attacked Vår who, for reasons the rest of us cannot fathom, has a tendency to want to go first into dangerous places despite having the worst saves, AC and the fewest hit points of the group. Once combat is engaged Sylvia hits upon the brilliant idea of pulling the constructs into battle on the assumption that they can attack the skum and we can fall back while they kill each other. Of course what actually happens is that they attack us, so now we have twice as many enemies to fight. Tibor tells everyone else, especially Vår, to fall back and he will keep them busy. Needless to say Vår doesn’t even consider this option, electing instead to, over the course of several rounds, do minimal damage and take several attacks that threaten to fell her in a vain attempt to avoid provoking a couple attacks of opportunity while moving to actual safety.
Fortunately the encounter is not particularly difficult, just time-consuming. With more damage taken than would have been necessary due to poor judgement on several fronts, we confront the trapped hallway, which I correctly identify as the ‘either or’ obstacle the DM spoke of earlier, and we proceed, as I predicted, to faff about. Tibor elects to continue the trend of dumb ideas, picks up one of the dead skum (who, the PCs noticed, did not trigger the trap) and holds it in front of him in the hopes that he will register as a skum instead of a tortle. He does not.
Taking a bad idea and running with it, Tibor dashes across to the far end of the hall where the PCs had noticed a panel which they assumed would control the trap, holding the dead skum all the way. The GM was gracious and said that the corpse granted cover. Tibor still takes a few hits and is now at about half HP. On the far side he opens the panel and cannot make heads nor tails of the inner workings and decides on the Star Wars Solution, i.e. destroy any control panel you come across in hopes that that will do what you need it to do. It does not.
While Tibor meditates briefly on what exactly 18 Wisdom entails and how running into arrows unnecessarily isn’t that, the rest of the party check out the rooms off to the side. They take a couple of arrows each but manage to scout things out. One room is boring and empty, the other has corpses and body parts, which we assume come from the missing colonists. Tibor drinks a healing potion and runs back to the others, taking a few more hits. This is the point where the DM figured we would faff about, and faff about we do with lots of discussion about how to find the mechanism (no one has Disable Device, so that’s a no go), whether everyone should just run across and hope that the pain is spread evenly across the group, or wilder ideas. Then I hit upon the idea that we should just pull back and make a rough testudo from stuff around us and avoid the arrows that way. There are no convenient wooden tables or benches inside but there are trees outside. Most players think this sounds like a good idea. We’re running low on hit points anyway and want to top them up before facing whatever is up the stairs. Then a long discussion follows about how we should go about making our box. We do not have an axe, adze, nails, hammer or anything like that, just rope and a magic sword. Should we go back to the colony and get supplies? Should we send Aidu, who can fly? Should Sylvia go alone since she can travel faster without us hanging on? Should we try making a wicker weave basket and Metal Gear Solid our way across? After much talk Sylvia realizes she is a druid and can do other things than make healing potions, and so suggests she use Wood Shape which would make everything easier. Then there follows a discussion about how thick to make the box, what sort of wood to use, should we try to make wheels, etc.
All this takes well over an hour, and is exactly the sort of thing my old(ish) school self likes - creative answers to problems that aren’t just solved by a die roll. Bo-bi gets fed up with this dithering, takes charge, and nearly runs us into problems by charging us across the Danger Zone before the rest of the PCs and players say, “y’know, we’ll stick with the smart plan instead”. The Smart Plan is enacted and Sylvia casts Obscuring Mist in the hall as well, and we all make it across unscathed. We were, it turns out, triply protected as the Obscuring Mist obscured the targeting magic, the testudo box would have stopped any arrows, and boxes were not on the magical trap’s list of valid targets.
Faffing about done with, we go up to the next floor and we almost immediately get into a fight with a slightly more powerful skum, who goes down brutally fast. We look around and Tibor gets a brief surge of joy as he sees the second floor is a library and then his heart is dashed when he sees nearly all the books are rotted away. There are a few remaining and Sylvia tries to read one, amusingly titled “I prepared Explosive Runes this morning”.
The surviving books are put safely in Tibor’s pack, away from careless readers and they look around. Apart from the normal bits one would expect in a library, there is a strange bust with a spindle-shaped depression in it. We quickly suss out the purpose andput the spindle-shaped crystals they looted on the floor below in it. Some interesting scenes recorded from just before the Great Rain of Fire play out, and after a brief discussion about them we turn our attention to the big set of double doors in the middle of the tower. It appears to be a ‘holding tank’, which purports to be full of water. We are at the lower observation point, so a sign says, and not wanting to take the chance of dumping a ton of water on us, we forgo opening it. It may be empty, there may be some force field holding the water in, there may be a ton of nasties in there waiting to be released. It can wait. We then go up to the third floor.
There are two humans here, who apart from looking rather inhuman with slimy, almost transparent skin, immediately raise suspicion when they claim to be prisoners. We expected prisoners but for some reason do not find it credible that said ‘prisoners are fully armed, not guarded nor locked up, and give off weird vibes. When one of them introduces himself as Rabio Arcturus, the DM is surprised and gratified to see one of her players actually remember a name introduced earlier and what it did: kill Silas, the poor priest who became a haunt. The other ‘prisoner’ is Vår’s missing friend Arlia. No one is fooled by the claims of the two ‘prisoners’ and combat is joined when Tibor asks Rabio about his ‘friend’ Silas and gets a muddled and factually weird answer. The PCs try to do non-lethal damage while the enemies try to kill the PCs. The fight is long and difficult. Sylvia and Vår are both reduced to negatives and Bo-bi takes some damage but Tibor is mostly fine due to high AC, lots of HP and being ignored for most of the fight. The PCs prevail and we bless the Immortals (DM) who thought the fight would be too tough for a 3rd level party and let us level early.
We end the session there, so wrap-up of Book 1 and the start of Book 2 will be next time.
