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