Session 52

Date: 10/11/2015

Attending: Jake, Aaron, Joey, Justin

Absent: Dave – Father’s death

Start Time: 7:30 pm

End Time: 9:55 pm

XP awarded: 6,500

Game time elapsed: 2 days

Enemies Defeated:  Marquis Daedalus, Orlanivich, Banshee

Notes:

The party (which includes Marcus) mounts up and rides to Dalus Keep. They pass the old table/altar on the road and find it still destroyed (as they left it). Shortly after dusk they arrived at the keep. The suits of armor were waiting for them and took the reins of the mounts (except Frumious’ writing dog).  The knights then entered the keep to find the Doorwarden waiting for them, who indicated that dinner was about to be served. They went through the keep and arrived at the same banquet hall they had dined in previously. Appetizers were served by a figure that was possibly undead and then the Marquis joined them for dinner.

The party cuts right to the chase, and engaged in a direct conversation with the Marquis. He was evasive about when he had had Thomas killed, the knights suspecting that Thomas had been dead all along, and remained arrogantly aloof. The knights threaten him, reminding that they almost slew him before, and he responds with a warning that there are dire consequences for slaying him in his home. The Marquis proposed an alliance between him and the knights to address the happenings in Halvenspring and especially Caer Wynnic. Conversation leads the Knights to believe that the Marquis does not know the specifics surrounding current events, and in particular knows nothing of Allanora or her body. Frumious tires of the whole verbal dance, and calls the Marquis out on his attitude – noting that he needs them and should be a little less condescending. The Marquis responds by telling them he intends to have their help, willingly or unwillingly. Frumious asks how he plans to manage the unwillingly option, and the Marquis invites their other dinner guest, Orlanivich, to join them. Olanivich enters and takes a seat and is clearly a vampire. Frumious, understanding that the Marquis intends to use the vampire to dominate the party leaps to his feet and begins casting, plunging the room into combat. Before the Marquis can react Feydor (sitting next to Daedalus) deals a series of massive blows with the legendary Storm’s Fury (including one critical hit) that slays him where he stands. Upon his death contingency spells go off in the banquet room, some sort of summoning and gate spells. Since the contingencies will take a minute to resolve the party hurriedly dispatches the vampire, forcing him to revert to gaseous form to escape. The entire back of the banquet hall shimmers and becomes a summoning portal to a place of black rock, fire, and red skies. A mighty winged reptilian creature begins to enter the room, which Frumious identifies as a hellfire wyrm. Also present in the room are two gate spells, which open to a similar landscape. Creatures Frumious identifies as bearded devils, vrocks, and chain devils begin massing to enter the keep. The knights turn and run out of the keep, one step ahead of the awesome breath weapon of the wyrm. As they flee they pass the Doorwarden who is shrieking that she is free before she explodes in a wave of writhing black tentacles. Leaving the keep they see that the suits of armor are falling apart revealing black mold and fungus within. They gather their horses and ride out of the keep. A few hundred yards out they wheel around and watch the building, but nothing appears to be exiting either via door or window. As far as they can tell everything is contained within the keep.

They ride through the night, and as they approach Shadowmount’s walls they hear a horrific wailing.  The banshee descends on the knights, immediately slaying Frumious and Bajol with her deathly wail. Marcus passes Feydor a potion of fly and quaffs one himself, and the two of them ascend to do battle with the nightmarish spirit. Meanwhile Percival, in the now dead Frumious’ backpack, wrestles out the Rod of Ressurection and uses it on Frumious. Frumious joins the battle, at one point making his way to Bajol to use the rod on him as well. The knights are victorious but not before the banshee drains Marcus of all Charisma, slaying him utterly and reducing him to stone as is the way of the dwarves (a note is made that he has died within one week of being told about Halfling Tainted Ones). The party sheds a tear, says a quick word, and then loots their fallen comrade.

Entering the town they ask the redsashes that were on guard (and witnessed the banshee fight) to take them to the redsash commander. The commander (named Stephan) and Marwyn met with the party where they were filled in on the death of the Marquis, the unsafe nature (to say the least) of Dalus Keep, and the destruction of the banshee. Stephan lets them know that at least 3 banshees have been seen at one time, so the nightly threat is not ended, merely reduced (the party declines to try and deal with the remaining evil spirits, pleading – justifiably – more pressing matters). The group agrees that Stephan will rule in the Marquis’ name, and Daedalus’ death will not be publicized at this time. The party then retreats to the Gutted Candle, identifies Marcus’ things, and rests for the day and the following night, resolving to cut across country due west through the hills towards Caer Wynnic. End Session

Session 51

Date: 10/04/2015

Attending: Jake, Aaron, Dave, Joey, Justin

Absent: None

Start Time: 7:18 pm

End Time: 10:15 pm

XP awarded: 3,700

Game time elapsed: about 2.5 days

Enemies Defeated:  none

Notes:

Leaving Waymeet the Knights travel throughout the day along the road to Shadowmount.  That evening they stop and set up camp, but shortly into the first watch it begins to rain. Not equipped to weather the rain in any comfort they strike camp in the night and on Marcus’ advice head west off of the road to find a rural residence. Fyn climbs the nearest hill and sees lights, and using this as a guide the party eventually finds their way into the simple pastures of a local goatherd.

Even though it is the middle of the night there are still lights on in the home, and so the party knocks on the door seeking shelter. The goatherd, a plumply fat man named Hadrick, is obviously extremely cautious about the party but lets them in and feeds them in his kitchen. Noticing Frumious’ holy symbol, he asks each to take an oath on their faith that they will not harm him while staying under his roof. They party goes through their normal metagame paranoia, carefully constructing an oath that allows them to justify almost any action in hindsight anyway (an example - but not verbatim – “You swear not to kill me tonight?” “…we swear that we will defend anyone who is good from anything we feel is evil…” “Uh, that means you won’t kill me right?” “It means we don’t kill things we don’t think are evil.” “Uuuh…”) and then bunk down in the kitchen with watches while the goatherd retreats to his room and barricades the door (see parenthetical above).

The night passes peacefully until Frumious’ watch, when the small cleric has to take a leak. The home has an indoor privy, and Frumious heads to it to take care of his business. Within the bathroom however he finds the corpse of the goatherd, clearly dead for several days. Being Frumious he takes the time to piss, and then goes back to the kitchen to wake up the party. Fyn sneaks outside and takes position outside the bedroom window, and then Feydor and Bajol break down the bedroom door. The bedroom is empty, no Hadrick to be found. The party immediately ransacks the place. Bajol notices (nat 20 on untrained Search!) that in the bedroom there is a small rat hole that leads outside the home. The knights confer and drawn the conclusion that this was a Halfling Tainted One. They rush outside and find a pen behind the home with about 20 goats. Assuming that their opponent is posing as a goat, they set about systematically slaughtering the entire herd. After the first quarter is slain the goats mount a panicked but futile defense, escalating into a maddened escape attempt, but are slain to the last kid. The goats all prove to be merely goats. The party then turns suspicious eyes on their horses. After using Brutus to verify the equiness of the horses (but still not being able to vet the riding dog), the Knights head back to the road and continue travelling north.

The Knights ride all day and press on into the night, arriving at Shadowmount around midnight. The guard, a redsash, informs them that no one is supposed to enter the town at night, but that it is not safe for them to camp outside at night. He consults with a superior who comes out and recognizes half of the group (no Grigor, added Marcus, Feydor now an orc) and tells the guard to make an exception. The nights ride into the quiet streets of Shadowmount, and sleep at the Gutted Candle for the night.

In the morning they get up and decide to go see if Ellicor is in town. They cross the center to his shop, only to find Marwyn behind the counter. They converse with Marwyn, shop at Ellard’s, return to talk to Marwyn, return to shop at Ellard’s, return to Marwyn, etc… all of which I am going to summarize with the following: Ellard remains creapy, and refers to Frumious as the ensouled one, and Fyn as the Sosyl spawn, and tries to sell several obviously evil items to the party. Marwyn does not know where Ellicor is at the moment, cast a spell that reveals that no less than four separate individuals are scrying on the party at that moment – one of which he can identify as Ellicor and one as a magic item of some sort instead of a spell. He is very interested in what the Halfing Tainted Ones are, and scoffs at the rumors that he will now be slain in a week for knowing. He tells them that there is a small army of giants occupying Caer Wynnic, and that Fingali has been working for the God King all this time. Albus Wynnic’s army in in Goldmeadow trying to put down a rebellion led by Mario, and the remainder of the Seven Vales armies are at sea fighting the Choval Empire, or the northeast supporting Tak Nor Vel against the Choval Empire. According to Marwyn the empire is not doing well, being ill prepared for a two front war and missing much of their martial leadership strangely. In particular he notes that no one knows where Sevarius is.

When they ask Marwyn why he’s manning the store, he tells them that Ellicor asked him to keep an eye on Ellard’s Oddities and the statue, gesturing to the gigantic arm holding a sword that sticks out of the ground in the middle of the Center. They tell Marwyn that they are here to kill the Marquis, and Marwyn wishes them good luck. He also tells them that many powerful beings have tried to kill the Marquis in his home, but none have succeeded. He implies that the Keep, being Daedalus’ home territory and lair, is heavily prepared to defend him.

The party confers, agreeing that they are here to kill Marquis, and try to brainstorm some way to lure him out of the keep. While they kick ideas around, Frumious on a hunch pulls Percival out of his backpack and asked him if he knew anything about the statue (arm and sword). Percival squints at it for a second and says, “Yeah. That’s Brulor.” Frumious, paused, and asked if it was a statue of the solarian. Precival responded with, “No man. That’s Brulor. His corpse, and what looks like his sword.” Conversation stopped for a quick moment, and then Frumious cast Detect Magic. The statue did not read as magical.

Knowing that artifacts often don’t ping Detect Magic, Fyn climbed the 40 foot tall arm to the sword and hammered at it with a piton spike. The sword turns out to not be made of stone; instead the accumulation of centuries had coated it with a stone-like covering. About half an inch in Fyn found and exposed metal. Frumious then used the wand of identify on the exposed metal. The spell identified it as “Left Manacle Key.” Frumious immediately buys a shovel (gnome sized!) and starts trying to dig up the enormous, skyscraper sized statue. After about an hour and around 7 cubic feet or so of moved earth, the party convinces him to stop and they head back to the Gutted Candle. Remembering that they saw party of the statue (they think) in the ruins under the inn, they ask Helga for permission to descend again. Helga tells them that the Marquis himself closed up the access in her cellar. Heading down to investigate they find a new brick wall. Hammering a brick out of it they see a shimmering multicolored multi layered field, almost like a wall, right behind the bricks. They give up and go back upstairs.

Re-confering, the knights hypothesize that if they can get the box the Marquis was bound in out of the underground ruins that would lure him out, and they could even perhaps re-bind him.  They head to an alleyway which is where Fyn estimates the box is (below) and Frumious summons a large earth elemental who manages to dig an 8 foot diameter hole 14 feet down before the spell expires. Fyn and Feydor hop in and start digging.  Meanwhile Bajol heads back into the inn and tells Helga the Marquis’ complete history as far as the party knows of it, thinking that he can convince the population of Shadowmount to revolt by spreading the information. As he wraps up his tale, a redsash enters with an envelope for the Knights of Mist Valley. Bajol opens it and sees that it is a dinner invitation to dine with the Marquis that evening. He tells the party but suggests that they ignore it, thinking that something that they are doing has Daedalus’ attention and perhaps scares him.

Bajol then does some quick calculations and realizes that the box Daedalus was bound in probably weighs 10 – 15 tons and it is not likely that they will be able to lift it out of the ground. Fyn then remembers that Daedalus was able to magically transport when they last confronted him, and that attempting to lure him out was perhaps futile. Bajol looks at Fyn and replies, “Then I guess we’re going to dinner.” End Session

Session 50

Date: 9/27/2015

Attending: Jake, Aaron, Dave, Joey

Absent: Justin – in Florida

Start Time: 7:50 pm

End Time: 10:35 pm

XP awarded: 4,000

Game time elapsed: 2.5 days

Enemies Defeated:  1 alien creature, 2 steeltoes

Notes:

The group heads upstairs (Bajol trailing behind and still recovering from the effects of the insanity spell). Fyn is sneaking ahead when the next level opens up into a similar room. In it 4 steeltoes are talking to one of the alien creatures, but do not see the hidden Fyn. The party retreats back down into the floor they entered from and discuss their options. While they are talking they hear a steeltoe coming down the stairs. The knights hide in a side tunnel. The steeltoe enters cautiously and immediately goes to the tunnel that has the stair leading to the lower unexplored levels. The knights remain hidden, and Fyn sneaks out and returns upstairs. He finds that the other steeltoes are gone and only the alien creature remains, pouring over some documents. Fyn sneak attacks and slays the alien creature. He picks up the papers (stashing them for later in his bag) and returns downstairs. He ducks his head into the tunnel where the steeltoe that came downstairs went and hears something very large making its way up the stairs. He informs the group and they all head up to the next level.

 In the room where Fyn killed the alien creature, the knights ignore the various side rooms and tunnels and take the stairs upward. There they find a room similar to the two below it. It is a large room with a stair that continues upward. Where the double doors the party entered the complex from are located two floors below on this floor is a small door made out of the wood of the walls. Like before there are several side passages and rooms, but unlike the previous two floors there is a bright silvery sword embedded into the wall opposite the small door. Standing in front of the small door are two steeltoes who clearly see the party. A vicious fight ensues where the steeltoes are slain. The large thing that was following them has almost reached the room. Feydor manages to rip the sword free and Fyn picks the lock and throws open the door, revealing rocky hill country beyond and spilling morning light into the room. Frumious, having summoned a large earth elemental during the fight with the steeltoes, sets the elemental to block the stairs preventing the large thing from below – which proves to be an enormous steeltoe in armor wielding a massive lochaber axe – from entering the room or giving pursuit. The party then exits the complex.

From outside the knights see that their suspicions were correct and that they were in the Hanging Tree they encountered in Avonhollow. Now finding themselves there, they travel for the whole day until they make it to Waymeet. As Waymeet does not open the gates at night, the party camps outside the walls and then heads into town to plan, discuss, and rest up. Realizing that Bajol is in no condition to insist that they stay at an inn with an attached stable, the knights choose to forego the Stag and Chalice and instead rent rooms at the Lump Pillow, being run by a Halfling woman named Lois. Since the Lumpy Pillow doesn’t serve food or have a taproom, the party has a hot lunch at the Venison’s Rest tavern (instead of the Foaming Tankard). There they hole up and examine both the papers Fyn snagged and the sword they took. Not recognizing the language Frumious employs magic to be able to read them. The papers seem to be a set of orders, records of movements, and partially drawn maps. They are obviously written with the expectation that the recipient knows all they need to know, and thus there are no labels on the map fragments, and no names or places on the others. They party is able to make little sense of them except for one note:

“I know you and yours cannot leave the Tree. I have gathered my kind to the Forest to repel aggression and to claim what is ours. Stand ready; should we succeed I will bring it to the Tree for the ritual.”

The note is signed “Blackbriar.”

The sword proves to be a highly magical blade named “Colwych, the Sword of Allanora.” After discussion, the group decides to disband until dinner. Fyn heads back to his room to work on Ratchets and sleep. Feydor decides that since Grigor is no longer traveling with the party a group historian is needed and spends the afternoon taking notes on their adventures since the Isles of Mist. Frumious, on learning that the baker for the Venison’s Rest has retired, spends the afternoon baking.

The group regathers at the Venison’s Rest for dinner. Frumious gathers information from the crowd and picks up the following info:

*something or someone has occupied Caer Wynnic; no one knows what’s going on but everyone and everything is avoiding the area around the former capitol.

*the Marquis came into the Marque from the east and rode straight through. He has been largely absent of late.

Frumious then uses a spell to communicate with Osgood (note that only a limited amount of words – 25 - can be sent with this spell, and both Frumious and Osgood know this). Frumious’ message to Osgood is:

“Osgood – What is the major news of Halvenspring of late? We are in Waymeet right now. Tell me if we should return home with haste.”

Osgood’s response is:

“Things tense but not active. Holding breath. Army at lake. Suspect Illmar. Firnockt impassable. Tainted all around. Last settlement left north Mossreach. Dwarves are coming.”

The party then sits for dinner and discusses what Frumious’ information and Osgood’s message could mean. During dinner Marcus Oakcask comes in for a drink sees the knights and joins them for dinner. Frumious is all of a sudden and somewhat uncharacteristically diplomatic (nat 20 Diplomacy check) and the party finds Marcus spilling the beans somewhat about the Underground Mine.  From Marcus (and the DM’s notes):

“The Underground Mine (hereafter UM) is a secret dwarven organization that protects the interests of dwarves and guards against the day when the Tainted Ones rise up enmass again to threaten the world. While technically they have a multi continent presence, most of the UM is concentrated in the Kingdom of the Seven Vales as it is based out of Boulderrest. The Seven Vales also has most of the Tainted One locations of concern for the UM. The UM is divided up into 4 branches – the Watchers, the Walkers, the Hammer, and the Council.

The Watchers are UM agents spread throughout the world. Less sleeper agent and more passive spy, the Watchers typically live in communities and run local businesses. Many are inn keepers and smiths, no small few are merchants of one type or another. There is at least one in every area where there is a significant population of dwarves, the local regime seems racist or overbearing, or there is a sight or location associated with the Tainted Ones. Each Watcher has a coin or medallion with the symbol of the UM on it. They can use it to contact the Walkers by tracing a symbol on it – one symbol means “send Walker”, one means “in danger send help”, and one means “I’m dying”. Outside of the coins, each Watcher writes a written report twice a year which is picked up by a Walker passing through.

The Walkers are scouts and messengers. They are constantly on the move through both the wilderness and along the roads, carrying reports from Watchers and investigating new and moving threats. They are also the UM’s fast response group when protection or martial action is needed. Every Walker carries a map that magically responds to the coin of any Watcher within 100 miles. When a Watcher traces the appropriate symbol on his coin, that symbol appears on the Walker’s map in the Watcher’s location. The Walkers also have a metal belt loop that allows them **********<concealed>*****************. In dire circumstances the Council can communicate directly with the Walkers via their maps. Twice a year Walkers rendezvous with a Councilmember to deliver reports, receive instructions, and hear about the doings of others.

Most people do not know about the existence of the Underground Mine. Those who do know do not have specifics, merely knowing that there is a dwarven organization of some sort. A small percentage of that actually know that the group is called the Underground Mine and are vaguely aware of the Watchers and Walkers, and then not by name. Almost no one outside of the organization knows of the Hammer or the Council.”

It’s worth noting that Marcus seemed willing to talk, albeit slightly reluctantly, but the party chose not to press him on the part above he edited, or ask him anything about the Hammer or Council. This was not a party decision or anything, they just didn’t do it.

Anyway, Frumious then tells Marcus about the Tainted Halfling. Marcus’ demeanor immediately changes. He then tells the party that when he dies they should take an iron box that is bound with leather from his store to Klaus in Halvenspring. He then tells them that everyone who has ever learned what the Halflings become when Tainted has died suddenly and mysteriously. No one knows how or why. Immediately Feydor and Fyn suggest Marcus come with the Knights. Marcus agrees. The knights then spend the night in Marcus’ shop as Fyn doesn’t want Marcus to leave sight of at least one party member. The party gears up, buys 2 horses and a riding dog, and then heads north to Shadowmount. End Session