Against The Slavers, Or; The Rescue

Nearing the end of this story-arc, our eleventh session, late-January 2012:

The Heroes:

Eric as Balto the Warrior-Scholar

Dai and Aldan the Righteous Deliverer

Beau as Markk the Seeker

Derek as Foliage the Warped

Many miniatures expertly painted by Giovanni

Recovery

The session opened with the last session's heroes having captured the pleasure-slave barge and its human cargo, en route to the Slavers' hideout, said to be in a warehouse on the fork of the canal , on a tiny island by a gas light. That was where Tulia was said to be held. Aldan was badly hurt in last session's fight, so as the others (without players to guide their hands) freed the cargo, the Paladin caught up with Markk and Balto emerging from the Broken Cup, rendezvoused with Foliage, and set out to see Doc, one of Balto's contacts and a halfling-sized street surgeon with a reputation.

Aldan did not wince from the treatment, which should keep him alive to trudge through the spring rain to the Chamber of the Blistering Sun of his rival sect. In the delirium from his injuries, Aldan found himself growing closer to the madness and self-flagellation of the Chamber. Markk assisted a priest with whip techniques in flogging the acolytes.

With the new stricture not to speak to any woman save his fair Tulia, Aldan was brought back to health with his holiness restored.

Lars, Again, At The Chamber Of The Blistering Sun

Also at the Temple they met with a platinum-haired young Paladin -- indeed it was Lars, the very would-be hero whose remains the heroes had discovered in a pile of bones in the Lair of the Rat Cult after slaying its filth-mad priest only days before. Lars' claim to only then be suiting up and heading out to defeat the Rat Cult was incongruous to say the least. Not cogniscent of the heroes' dreadful find only hours before, the hopeful cavalier pushed out the door, with the triumphant declarations of the Head Priest Zar exhorting the lad to seek his doom in heroic fatalism. Out the door, apparently uncomfortable in his harness, Lars went. The wrong way.

When the players followed, they found strewn in the street Lars' sword, armor, tunic, and even Holy Symbol of the Blistering Sun. The canal rabble had already recovered the gear; Aldan donned the giant gold chain with the Sun around his neck; the holy force exuding from his spirit warmed the amulet enough to scorch non-believers' flesh. No sign of the lad.

Against The Slavers

The next night, now a day late with hired human faux-cargo as cover, the heroes returned the barge to the canal island, under cover of night, and fell upon and defeated a handful of Slavers who were alert to trouble as the last weekly barge had not arrived on time.

Then to the warehouse they went, finding what appeared to be a now-abandoned underworld meeting place, with a steep stairwell deep under the island and even the canal bottom itself.

The heroes quickly overwhelmed and subdued a lone guard huddling in the corner by a stale barrel of beer, who before losing consciousness expressed honest terror at what lie beyond in the Slavers' Den.

But the heroes pushed on regardless. The way lit by Aldan's Holy Symbol (and Balto's lantern), around a corner in a low cavernous passage with canal water dripping down from above, they passed by a downward grade to under the water table, turning down a narrow passage bolstered by waterlogged rotten posts and wooden supports.

And then, with the shouts and calls of pleasure slaves from a pen around the corner, bore down a half-dozen giant lizard-man hybrid Slavers, slathering and hissing, scimitars in hand, hunched down and splashing in the ground water as they charged, a small army of giant rats, spiders, and snakes joining in the blood-fury.

The heroes plied their usual expertises, with Aldan's Back Talker claiming its due, Balto expertly working the foes against each other, and Markk freeing the slaves to retreat.

Tulia was not among them.

During the fight, writhing wrestling forms and limp bodies crashed into the pillars, weakening the structure, water starting to pour down from above as the passage began to cave in. And then from below the water table, blocking the way out to safety, stomped forth a giant snapping turtle, fed from the filthy depths under the canals and hungry for flesh.

Aldan tried his hand against the reptilian horror to open the route, but it was Balto who hurled an unlucky lizard-men into its maw, granting just enough time for the heroes to escape before the ceiling opened over their heads.

No Rest For The Weary

Upon returning to the surface, exhausted and victorious, another canal boat appeared from the rainy night, this one with a party of The Skull's men coming to clean up the weakened heroes and reclaim the Bronze Armband for their mysterious master.

The battle about to begin, the lead Assassin recognized Markk, again, after having previously run across him while The Seeker and Gurgrock were pursued by the same thug some weeks back, while sneaking into a merchant's house to steal the Compendium of the Old Ways for Ekk the Fence (it was a bloodbath, with a foreign emissary slain by said assassins and the book having to be re-stolen from a merchant ship by means of Markk's enchanting music and Gurgrock's disguise-work).

Honor among thieves (and a fear of an early grave) trumping mere orders, the Assassin halted his men and the two parties paused to parley instead. Indeed, the Skull demanded the Bronze Armband -- still around the bicep of Foliage -- for its restorative and resurrectory powers for those slain by the Iron-Shafted Spear. As for Tulia, well, she'd been sold already and reportedly fetched a good price. Who could afford her but one of the rich merchants in Hill District?

The two parties agreed to fabricate a bloodbath and part ways without actual violence. After all, Back Talker had tasted enough flesh.

A Riot

After stopping to see Ekk the Fence, who confirmed that Tulia had in fact been sold to Van Grimes, in fact the very corpulent and lust-crazed merchant whom the heroes abused only days earlier at The Beetle. The caution to protect the Bronze Armband was such that Balto looked into commissioning a metalsmith to create decoy copies to confound The Skull's men.

Meanwhile, Markk, who in his aforementioned earlier quest for The Compendium, had learned from Gurgrock to rally the Children of Canal Town, again called on his adolescent minions to create a distraction much like they had when the two last assaulted a merchant in his home.

Mission in hand and with Aldan in the lead, Holy Symbol granting the mismatched heroes some legitimacy in passing the Hill District's guard corp, they arrived to Van Grimes' house.

With a whistle the children started the riot several blocks away, granting enough of a distraction to enter Van Grimes' house. He was easily subdued, cowardly as he is, and in the basement they found the locked room where Tulia's scent lingered. But no Tulia, despite Van Grimes swearing by dagger-point that she had been there, unsatisfyingly non-submissive and not worth the price he paid.

With this, Foliage, as is his way, spoke to Van Grimes' terrier pet. The dog, speaking to The Druid, claimed that the human woman from the basement had in fact been gone for days, and that she had an awful smell, not fragrant like the Tulia of Aldan's heart.

The Rescue, Something Missing

And then, as the City Guard eventually responded to the heroes' assaulting an honored member of Gar's urban elite, in the front door walked Tulia, unfettered and seemingly unstressed.

The chaos unfolding around them, Balto subduing the Guard and Van Grimes shrinking into his chair from the point of Markk's dagger, Aldan and his Tulia raced to each other and embraced, the Paladin fully knowing that a woman's touch would contradict his teaching and sully his newly-restored holiness. Nonetheless, he met her embrace...

... but instead of shriveling and guilt, he felt nothing. Tulia looked up in the embrace, but her scent was absent and the glitter was missing from her eyes....

Into the Depths of Vileness; or, A Hero's Faith, Tested

Our tenth session, in the driving early spring rains in Gar.
Tony: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Dave: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Giovanni: Gurgrock The Assassin
Gareth: Foliage The Warped (arrived later)

The day had been a long one. Just back from their journey back from the Outer Hold, triumphant with the Bronze Armband around the bicep of the restored Foliage, and the heroes had nary a night's sleep. This session began right where the last one ended:

From Sin, A Clue

Amidst the simmering human chaos in The Beetle, where the hallucinogenic effects of the Outer Hold rye bread and beer, potent and shameless, were gradually being replaced by long-term madness and symptoms of withdrawal, Aldan pounded his gauntlets on the table, in front of him the tiny chest with a lock of Tulia The Librarienne's red hair and a note scratched onto a shred of her coat ("we have the girl, now bring us the Armband"), demanding they act to find the kidnapper of his romantic charge (if one never to be consummated by even a kiss). Foliage rested, recovering from his inexplicable resurrection; Rast, always the anatomist and student of strange happenings, probed the open-but-miraculously-healed Spear wound in the Druid's chest; and Gurgrock mused how he got into this situation.

The comedy of the narcotics occasionally surging from the background into the faces of the herous, a drunk and fat merchant, on his first visit to The Beetle, a young starlet on his arm, rudely shoved past Aldan, simmering. The Paladin, angry, challenged the merchant, who pointed out the life-giving recently-hard-won Bronze Armband on Foliage's arm, laughing at how foolish it would be to display such an artifact in public. Certainly there were many parties who would covet it. No less than other people of means, or perhaps worse, the Skull.

Perhaps it was his rudeness, perhaps his implications through his interest in the Armband that he knew of the whereabouts of Tulia, the torment began. On their own turf and four against one (as the starlet was a totteringly tipsy as he), the heroes interrogated. Gurgrock as always intimidating, Rast conjured a heated spoon which he used to ensure only the Magician would be asking the questions. They learned from the merchant, clearly a customer of sinful exchanges, that there was talk of a tall redhead in the vile whorehouse the Oyster Shack, deep in the Canal Town slums; indeed, he had seen her.

Infuriated, and satisfied only when the fat merchant lost his continence, they shoved him on his way, limping and defeated, into the night. Foliage, in hawk-beast form, trailed overhead.

A Plead From The Rain

As Aldan was about to set out from The Beetle (the door off its hinges from some fit of madness) into the driving spring rain to seek out the girl, he nearly crashed right into the most petite lady, dressed impeccably in a coat despite the rain, giant spectacles on her nose, staring up from the entryway, stature barely reaching the towering Paladin's sternum.

In the doorway was tiny Beanie, another Librarienne, worried sick about her colleague Tulia. They brought her to the table, an invisible field of order around her repelling the late-night chaos, where she animatedly recounted that Tulia had not been seen for three days, missing from her desk at the Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires, last with a few dalliances with a plump dapper lad whose description, sketched by Markk The Seeker (having become a regular after his earlier mission with Gurgrock) on the inn's table, resembling none other than friendly Otto The Theoretician, one of Rast's indoors-inclined fellow students of the Arcane and deep-pocketed regular at the Red Veil Club in town.

Thaumaturgic Incantations

Rast entered the main room of the Red Veil, a party for an academic fraternity of some sort plying deep into the night, was passed a bottle of brandy at random, and found dear Otto resting on the upstairs balcony, a giant tome of Remote Thaumaturgy and Interfaces With the Lunar Cycle open on a table, his diagrams to one side. The Spellcaster and his patron chatted about scribe-rates, research, potential greedy rivals looking to steal the Armband, the Skull and his possible reasons for such interest; Rast eventually concluded aloud that his friend Otto was a friend of Tulia, indeed, as most learned men were, but did not seem to be able to have taken her, despite being the last to see her. He had heard of the Oyster Shack, to be sure, but only as a daredevil gourmand trying the latest varieties. Instead, with the very help of Otto and his tome, the two concocted an impromptu thaumaturgic incantation, with the Arcane Connection of Tulia's lock and coat-shred, which Rast read aloud (after correcting for Otto's imperfect grasp of middle-late Old Tongue), and determined that the girl was in fact still alive, in the direction of the filthy slums of Canal Town. The story did not entirely add up, but they had a destination.

Ritual Cleansing, Others' Transgressions

Meanwhile, Aldan, in need of a deep atonement from the past two weeks' transgressions, stopped by the Temple of the Searing Light for absolution. After dismissing demands from Valcan the Head Priest how he had returned from the Outer Hold, where he had been ordered to suppress a rebellion by himself, by lying and claiming success, he was blessed with the addition of another religious stricture, that he must offer his enemies one chance to repent and join the New Faith, before drawing his Back Talker and unleashing righteous damage. With this, the vein on Aldan's temple popped and throbbed, ever so slightly more.

With this, Aldan set out to receive ritual cleaning. As he was washed in the wooden tub by the alcolyte, the lad mentioned that he had "heard from a fellow disciple who knew someone" who saw that a certain platinum-haired Lars, a young disciple of the infamous Chamber of the Burning Sun sect, known for its even more strident ways and obsession with self-destructive missions and impeccable purity, had been just nights prior seen in the Canal Town, in the vicinity of the Oyster Shack and other places. The poor disciple, red-faced from even recounting the tale of a friend of a fellow friend, could hardly fathom why a Follower would visit such a vile place without burning it to the ground in cleansing flame.

With Glamour-Disguise, Into the Shack of Ill Repute

The next morning, early, barely rested but for Gurgrock passed out in a rain-gutter behind a brewery, the three heroes set out for the Oyster Shack. Right on two short boat landing into one of the canals, some outdoor tables and a huge clam cauldron, still steaming from the night before. A single building, one floor with tiny windows, loomed. Gurgrock worked the door and they were in. Snoring in one room and an interior door kicked in, they set upon an old tanned clamdigger, asleep with two rubenesque women. But thanks to a bodily illusion by Rast, when the clamdigger awoke there were three more women, one tall and broad (Aldan, also unaware of the enchantment), one green-tinted and ugly (Gurgrock), and one matronly and urbane (Rast).

Through rough treatment of a lusty but harmless old man (which would have made Balto proud), the learned that Tulia had in fact been through here, as a woman working against her will, and had duly been picked up by "the slavers" (spoken in whispered tones), who passed through once a week on a canal boat, stopping at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest meat for insatiable but unknown customers.

With the sound of the inevitable beatings against the outnumbered frail clamdigger, the dragon lady madam of the house emerged, was charmed by Gurgrock's mincing, and offered him, still under the glamour of Rast's spell, work with a wink. He would start tonight, with five long nights of unspeakable labors before their mission would begin.

The Chamber Demands Absolution

But first, with hours to spare before the evening, the heroes paid a visit to the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on the other edge of Canal Town, facing down the looming filth and gloom with the lidless eye of holy light. In the streets in front, fifteen young alcolytes were whipped by two priests, all parties howling in the muck, in a ritual of raw endurance.

Avoiding this, the heroes were the audience of Zar, the head Priest and madder than any of Aldan's sect, and eventually learned that Lars had set off two weeks prior, to rid Gar of the vile Rat Cult, operating in the Tanners and Butchers' District in the foulest corners of Canal Town. Surely, Zar cackled, he would singlehandedly clean out the Cult and return triumphant. Perhaps Aldan thought a while about the mission in the Outer Hold, which he was still entrusted to complete, now abandoned.

The Rat Cult Strips Clean the Bones of the Righteous Fallen

The heroes, Foliage having returned from his mission (with little to report, alas) marched through the rain-washed sludge to the Tanners and Butchers' District, and had no trouble finding the lair of the Rat Cult. In a corner so wretched even the flesh-handlers avoided it, where the rats quickly seemed to multiply in number and brazen behavior, they stumbled upon an awful old lady, crazy and picking at bones. Through a half-conversation with her and a druidic commune with the rats themselves, they marched right into the abandoned abbatoir.

There confronting them was a pile of carcasses and bones, beast and human, picked clean but under piles of rats and their refuse, underneath poking out an untarnished Holy Symbol of the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on top of a pile of bones and stained white silk, not fresh, and strands of platinum blond hair. Clearly, Lars the Follower had fallen here, ineffectual and then nothing more than meat for a ravenous horde, much longer ago than the mere days as noted by Aldan's guilty-sounding washing-boy at the Temple.

At that point the Rat Cult King, a cult of one, appeared, attired in unspeakable raiments crafted from the bodies of his minions. He cackled crazily, but his feeble powers were not enough to drive the rats against Foliage and his animal mastery, and he was cut down in a single swing by Back Talker.

Gurgrock, Converted

The heroes, with the relics of Lars in hand, returned to the Chamber of the Burning Sun. The fallen Follower honored and Gurgrock briefly initiated into the first, painful, circle of the Chamber's oblique teachings, the heroes scratched their heads about the two incongruous sightings at the Oyster Shack.

Assault on the Canal's Edge

The rest of the week passed and the day arrived when the slavers and their canal boat were to stop silently in the night at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest shipment of stolen women. They would certainly lead the heroes to poor Tulia, no doubt in the shackles of misery.

The hour came. Rast recreated the illusion of femininity, if imperfect considering his subjects. The heroes were marched, under guard of local thugs, with three other girls a passageway under the floorboards, just over the canal surface, under the planks to a hidden platform on the dock. As the slave boat pulled up to the dock and they were about to emerge from the passageway, the heroes let loose a fury of violence, weapons barely hidden under their illusory garments, against the boat-borne slavers and the thugs on the docks.

Rast, magic Crystal in hand to empower his magic at the cost of his life-force, entrapped a dock full of thugs; Gurgrock, last in line, rushed the rearmost thug and forced his way out of the passageway; Foliage, in hawk form, dropped onto the slave boat; Aldan charged forward, Back Talker thirsty for the blood of the wicked, especially after throbbing at his waist during a dry spell of over a week without tasting righteous combat.

Such Violence Strains a Paladin's Faith

After several frenzied and bloody seconds of overcoming the captors and rescuing innocents having fallen into the canal, it was Aldan who was the last hero still battling, on the edge of the canal as he roped in the slavers' boat, a crossbow bolt in his back and two awful bleeding gashes from a slaver's sword. He swung madly and without mercy, at both foes still daring to face him and those who had already surrendered. Was it Back Talker finally taking the upper hand in the battle for Aldan's will? Or was it the Paladin had finally been overcome by his own frustrations and demands for revenge, that he abandoned, if temporarily, his Faith's requirements of forbearance and fairness?

The answer, and with it the fate of a holy hero, would not yet be known.... the heroes had won the slave barge and prepared to set upon the lair of the slavers, past the fork in the canal by the lamp post in the lone warehouse there, in earnest.

The Battle With Elder Vulture, or, The Resurrection

Our triumphant but tainted ninth session, 5 November 2011:

Eric: Balto The Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Gilles: Seppo The Protagonist
Hector: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster

The Druids

The session opened with the heroes bearing the body of Foliage The Warped, run through the heart by the Iron-Shafted Spear which he led his brothers-in-arms to retrieve from the defiled Tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man; the Spear which would be used to strike down the Elder Vulture and the possessor of the Bronze Armband.

As Druids are a peculiar folk, the heroes brought the body to the sacred meadow outside Gar. They passed from the forest, still harassed by the spirits of the woods, into a meadow known to be the abode of Druids. And just like that, they emerged, one from a hole in the sod, covered with dirt and earthworms, and the others from the woods, unwelcoming.

In a demanding and eccentric manner that made the deceased Foliage's brusqueness seem downright pleasant, they accepted the Druid's body and declared it would be laid out on the Stump of the Once Mighty Oak for the birds to pick at it, as the ways demanded. The Druids made clear that the wearer of the Armband had the power to be immune to injury from the Spear -- it was Naxim who had struck down with the Spear a wicked man in his time and as those killed by it do not suffer from the effects of decay (indeed, the body of Foliage was as pristine as he ever kept it), to ensure the victim would never return to the world, Naxim was said to have bound the Armband around the leg of the Vulture and safely away from the hands of his treacherous allies.

And thus the players had one more reason to seek out the Bronze Armband -- as the Druids prepared the body for disposal the heroes quickly announced that Foliage had made his wish to be interred with the planting of the spring turnip crop, which would not begin until two weeks' time -- enough to recover the Armband, no doubt.

Madness At The Beetle

They enjoyed one last meal at The Beetle, where the people of the inn and surrounding appeared to have been struck with a sort of dangerous madness, which they blamed on the bread and beer prepared by the Outer Hold's denizens and offered as tribute. Farmers were dancing pantless over the tables; brawls were initiated with city watchmen; the madness in the place, especially that supplies of the bread were running low, was only a step short of spreading to general rebellion.

The heroes also met up with Tulia, who wished them well on their journey and once again offered her unrequited love to Aldan, who remained distant and pure, as always.

The Un-Blessed Ones

And so they set out post-haste back to the Outer Hold on the way to the Roost of the Elder
Vulture. There they met up with Milo, the old man of Fortress Town, who led them on the road to the Roost.

Milo turned back partway as the players made their way through the driving rains of late winter and early spring. On the mountain path, they emerged through the unwelcoming forest onto a craggy dome of low bushes and grasses, loose rocks, uneven rocks, and occasional caves. They approached a plateau of sorts, and sniffed out an ambush.

Foul-smelling horrible diminutive dog-men, immediately identified by Balto (an expert on humanoid philology and physiology) as Mountain Kobolds, swarmed upon the party, emerging from low caves and brandishing primitive weapons like a band of prehistoric unfortunates throwing themselves against the heroes. Aldan swished Back Talker with exceptional fury, and the heroes wreaked havoc on the tribe before Balto, holding high the spear, awed them into complete submission.

Their man-god showed mercy to the pathetic Kobold tribe. The heroes learned through primitive barks and squeaks that the tribe was that not smiled upon by the Great Vulture; they were forced by another more powerful tribe living higher on the mountaintop to live as mere animals and submit tribute to their masters.

Over the course of a restful evening outside the vile dens of the Kobolds on the rain-soaked plateau overlooking the Outer Hold, the heroes showed magnanimity by teaching the tribe such civilized virtues as washing with soap and cooking with fire.

To The Roost, The Elder Vulture

The next morning the remaining brave souls of the Kobolds led the heroes further up the half-barren mountainside, through a glen of mean trees to a natural stone bridge over a deep gully to the lair of the Blessed Ones and the trunk of the great tree and the Roost of the Elder Vulture.

As silhouettes of the Blessed Kobold tribe loomed over clifftop posts over the far base of the stone bridge and over from the great tree, the heroes maneuvered their friendly beast-men as a front line, with Aldan at the fore, to cover the bridge. Behind them, they led forth a single sheep, brought along from the Outer Hold as a bait for the Vulture, which Balto stayed with on the center of the bridge, Spear in hand. Seppo and Rast stayed back at the near base, under cover. An ear-splitting cry filled the air; the form of the Elder Vulture, as giant and fearsome as described, formed over the peak and circled overhead.

And then the Blessed Ones attacked, in numbers and with fury. Through magic, Rast created the illusion of more silent beastmen fighters on their side, enough to confuse the attackers and buy time for the heroes' overwhelmed allies.

The Vulture swooped down. At this point Seppo let loose one of the explosive bolts from his crossbow, blasting the beast in the very leg around which dangled the Bronze Armband and infuriating the bird. The huge claws dug deep into the Monk's shoulders but he leaped onto the Vulture's back and thrust the Spear into its shoulder.

Nothing. With the power of the Armband, the Spear did no harm to the bird, but did give enough purchase for Balto, hurdling around high over the mountain on the back of an infuriated magical beast, to steer it around for a second pass.

Meanwhile, the fight on the bridge was going badly. Rast, from his side of the bridge, called a retreat of the friendly Kobolds (which Aldan joined, and predictably took an spear-wound to the lower back), brought forth the cursed Crystal into his hands, and let forth a tremendous Shatter spell on the base of the bridge, which sapped nearly the last of his mortal energy but burst the bridge, in an explosion of gravel and cries of fear, dropping its unfortunate occupants into the ravine below.

High above, the Elder Vulture closed again, Seppo launched one more explosive arrow into the Vulture, blasting its feathers and causing the Armband to slide loose and fall to the ground. With the loss of its protective talisman, the injury of the Spear-thrust hit home, causing the bird, Balto on its back, to lurch forward, right into the path of Aldan, bravely standing, wounded, Back Talker ready to meet its hideous beak.

And they collided -- The Paladin's bloodthirsty blade met the craw of the doomed Elder Vulture, a single swing dispatching the beast with a screech.

Denouement

And that was that. Rast, gasping for life, was able to detect the Armband thanks to his recently-researched conjuration, in the branches of the tree at the Roost. With this they retreated to the Kobolds' cave-village, realized Rast's horse (fine and procured as a favor by Otto the theoretician) had become meat for a feast, passed through the Fortress Town where the surprise that the troublemakers actually returned was hardly concealed, and returned to the Druid's lair.

Laid out, the body of Foliage looking as fresh as the moment he was struck down, they clasped the Bronze Armband over his bicep. Behold! He awoke, like from a nightmare, the gash in his chest closed without a mark, gasping and demanding a drink, which was present to be offered. The Druids declared Seppo's suitability for the Path, which he considered, but they did not linger.

With the Undead Druid in tow, the heroes returned to the Beetle. The bread and beer from the Outer Hold had run out in the previous ten days, leading the chaos to spread to the surrounding town. Amidst this and the relief that comes from a mission completed, the bar owner summoned Aldan, to pass him a tiny chest on request from an anonymous person.

Inside, a lock of Tulia's red hair, and a note, which he deciphered from his religious training in letters: We have your librarian. Now bring us the Armband.

The Curse of Naxim the Mountain Man; or, Stealing the Spear

Our seventh session, 17 September 2011:

The Protagonists, as in the last session:

Gilles: Seppo The Protagonist
Eric: Balto The Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Hector: Foliage The Warped
Tulia The Librarian

Today joined by:

Tony: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Gorbo The Apprentice, loyally at his side

The session began with the first five heroes resting at the mouth of the tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man; Rast and Gorbo conveniently met up with the group on the trail back to the Outer Hold. Nature, perhaps resulting from the offenses against the Tomb despite the efforts of the Demented Druid, rallied against the party, grasping at ankles, swooping from above, and otherwise making for a wary return hike.

As it happened, on a winding ridgetop path through unwelcome trees the party was met with two feral boars, mad and charging, supported by pairs of mysterious sylvan spirits. Aldan, in the spirit of protecting Tulia, the charge he is forbidden to embrace, nobly took a boar-gore in the back, before crafting a lethal pig-sticker by strapping Back Talker to a branch. Rast entangled one beast with a web and lifted an obscuring mist upon the sylvan assassins as Balto rushed into the fray to chase down the spirits which had struck him with an arrow (a rare chance for Balto to feel the sting of injury so often enjoyed by his comrades). Seppo proved the mortality of the tree-spirits with a crossbow bolt and was then gored and flipped into the air by the boar which had escaped Rast's webs. Foliage brought the boar to heel and as Balto arrested one unlucky spirit he translated the creature's tongue to learn they sought to cleanse the woods from "defilers" who did not properly respect the memory of The Mountain Man.

As the sylvan creature faded from existence and with Foliage barking like a schoolteacher to his unruly fellow travelers, adolescent Seppo, regaining consciousness as he rested in the lap of Tulia, declared an end to his childish antics. She patted him on the head and laughed off the silly words of her adopted younger brother.

Back in Fortress Town, in the Outer Hold, the people were shaken up and on guard. Foliage, ever blunt, demanded to know who had defiled the Tomb and taken the Iron-Shafted Spear. The heroes learned of a group of "adventurers" who marched in from the Tomb's direction, brandishing the Spear, roughed up the place, apparently assaulted a crazed woodsman, and left hooting off for Gar.

Aldan, true to his original duty, broached pacifying the "rebellious" Fortress Town and tried to reason to a solution with the town's elders. The independent-minded folk wouldn't play, so they agreed the Town would make a donation (or tribute, as The Paladin justified) to the rulers of Gar of local goat cheese, beer, and the very rye bread which Tulia, ever the loyal citizen of Gar, had warned the visitors against sampling. After loading a wagon full of the town's finest, the heroes set out for Gar.

Back at The Beetle, the heroes set off in their own directions: Aldan was grilled by the priests at the Temple of the Searing Light as to the success or failure of his impossible one-man mission; Foliage got drunk and shared the tribute with the owners of the Beetle; Rast went to the Red Veil exclusive club for the city's power players, meeting up with the wealthy and foolish theoretical thaumaturgian Otto, who funded the joint research of a spell to detect such artifacts as the heroes had been seeking; Balto and Seppo learned of Ekk The Fence, a fatherly type running one of the more savory businesses in Gar's lawless Canal Town...

Ah, Canal Town: A bilge-soaked den of thieves, deal-makers, drunks, and unsavory shellfish tenders. As Balto cased the area, it turned out Ekk, out of his dank and debris-filled lair, had a job for young Seppo, which put him in touch with Reinhart, who it turned out was one of the very adventurers who held The Iron-Shafted Spear.

He agreed to meet with the heroes, where he sheepishly admitted to having fallen out with the other two, over the terms of their deal with the client who paid them to retrieve the spear. He knew of the heroes and was hoping not to have run in with them.

Upon learning from Reinhart that the adventurers' once-comrades were frequent patrons of the Canal Town's Broken Cup, a drinking hall not for the faint of heart, lungs, or liver, they marched the poor hostage into the place, barricaded the exits, and stationed their number hunching under the low ceilings in disguise, obscured by the impenetrable smoke, tar, and ill-humor of the Cup. Aldan, wisely thinking of his honor, set up guard outside the "secret" rear door identified earlier by Balto's investigations.

Sure enough, the two remaining adventurers recognized Reinhart, and were immediately set upon by the heroes. A chase ensued over the narrow planks and slippery canal edges, with Foliage transforming into hawk form to guide the pursuit. As the outnumbered "adventurers" were bravely cornered by the heroes on a rain-soaked jetty between two canals, the pair was met with a massacre of combined heroic fury, but not before Foliage, in an un-replicable twist of Fate, re-formed into human shape and fell, Branch Cutter in hand, upon the Spear-wielder, who thrust the Spear right through the heart of the Demented Druid. The two falling to the ground together in a heap.

And so, thus ended the session with a taint; in the rain, dark, and damp on another late winter night, the Iron-Shafted Spear was recovered but at the cost of its protector and inheritor.

Legends and Quests of Forgotten Artifacts; or, Into the Outer Hold

Our magnificent sixth session, 4 September 2011:

Gilles: Seppo the Protagonist
Hector: Foliage the Warped
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer

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The heroes had left the backwater port city of Poori as hired ship hands, and now have been in Gar for about a week as late February shows hope of fading into spring. Balto and Aldan are more or less at home in this more civilized but still cold and windswept city, while Seppo was trying to get established in the local pickpocket community, and Foliage mostly spent his time on day-trips to the outskirts and getting drunk in the alleys. Rast busied himself in the library and hobnobbing with the elite, while Gurgrock disappeared to some of the seedier parts for a spell. The heroes made a deal to meet soon at The Beetle, a strange inn in the heart of an urban farmer's vines and wild fields, set aside in perpetuity as an untamed bed in the city and a hub of bizarre types of all stripes.

Making Inquiries

Seppo, ever youthful and naive in the big city, set about making inquiries about jobs and tracking down his friend Nikko, of course still ignorant of his childhood friend's unfortunate fate at his companions' hands. To learn more, Seppo played as if Nikko owed him money, which sat well with other thieves and ne'er-do-wells with the same sentiment. Several of the thieves suggested Seppo "check in" with master thief "The Skull", but all were short on details except that Seppo best stick to small work if he is to freelance. At one point he made a (fake) deal with one Ekrar about tracking down and fencing the Crystal, which Seppo had secreted from Rast on the voyage and which at one avaricious Gar cutpurse had made a go for on the sly (he had been allowed to grip the Crystal, which momentarily stopped his heart and left him gasping on the ground).

Meanwhile, Aldan headed for the Temple of the Searing Light, the local hub of The Faith and bastion of honorable discomfort and self-discipline. Aldan had an appointment with the Priest Valcan, who haughtily and without small talk sent Aldan on a one-man mission to pacify the unjustly independence-minded people of the Outer Hold, rebellious from rule from distant Gar. One Paladin, Arius, had been sent two months prior on the same mission, and was not heard from again. Aldan, for his part, inquired about loosening some of the burdensome strictures of his faith, to which the Priest Valcan issued another to test Aldan's faith: No longer can he touch any unclean persons or those wearing dark clothing, for fear of tainting his purity.

During all of this, Foliage, in the spirit of protest, was drunk outside the Temple, heckling the lowly acolytes dutifully earning their karma by cleaning up mud thrown by the angry Druid. Foliage even winged a mud pie at Valcan, who righteously sought no retribution at such a lowly, hirsute, unclean, wild unbeliever.

At the Library of the Towering Spires, Balto was researching the Crystal and its purported companion artifacts. Using an assumed name, he was directed to speak to Axel the Blind Sage, interrupting the latter's being read aloud a book on mountain ferns. Axel, chatty, distracted, and needlessly informative, settled in to discuss the legends of the Crystal, the Bronze Armband, the Glass Eye of All-Seeing (which Axel was interested in), as well as a ring and a cloth on unknown provenance. The artifacts, when combined, would amplify their power and grant much strength to their possessors.

According to Axel's wandering stories, the Bronze Armband in particular was told to belong to the long-dead hero Naxim The Mountain Man, who served the people of the purportedly lawless and fear-inducing Outer Hold. Before he died, Naxim had bound the Armband on the Elder Vulture, a semi-mythical beast who roosts in the mountains of the Outer Hold. Balto gently suggested he might take a look, despite warnings of the curse upon those who defile Naxim's Tomb. The Elder Vulture was invulnerable to all but the Iron-Shafted Spear wielded by Naxim himself. Perhaps the Spear was still there to be discovered for the benefit of historical knowledge.

On his way out, Balto checked out a few tomes with Tulia, a bespectacled young bookworm librarian whose eye caught that of the passing Aldan the Righteous Deliverer, ever-burdened with the Curse of Venus, on his way from the Temple. She confronted him and asked about his destination; Aldan, forbidden to lie, ended up inviting her to join the party at the inn of The Beetle.

At the Beetle, the PCs share their stories and pack up to set out the following morning, Tulia the Librarian in tow. Foliage both escalated and defused a fight, set off by a sailor patron crushing a rare insect with his boot. By the time the dust cleared, he'd warped the branches and vines of the table to bind the nature-defilers and smoldered one of their beards.

Into the Outer Hold

Several missions in hand, it was a six-day walk on the road-turned-trail-turned rain-muddy track to the northeast from the Gar coast, through mountains and rolling craggy, tall-grass-covered hills and ravines to the Outer Hold. They were to start at Fortress Town, a small outpost and entrypoint into the Hold.

On the journey, a coy triangle developed with Tulia trying to cozy up to the broad-shouldered Aldan; Seppo smitten by Tulia as his first love (she only saw him as a younger brother, excruciatingly); and Balto striving to protect Aldan from Tulia's subtle advances. After all, a Paladin must always stay true and never make excuses for lapses, even if it requires concocting rituals to distract and distance him from womankind.

The Fortress Town was just a collection of stand-alone houses at the craggy base of a lonely Gar-built keep on an outcropping. Aldan, representing the outside controlling force of Gar, made no friends and encountered simmering hostility by the free-minded cattle and goat-herders and rye growers, including a guffy one-legged old man resting in front of his house. Despite this, they learned that Arius, the Paladin who had arrived on a mission of pacification two months back and won no local love, had set out to the Fortress Keep and did not return. The people of the town had no curiosity as to his fate, and the fact that there had been not a peep from the Fortress since caused nary a stir. This is to be a quest for another day.

Foliage as a wild man himself, had more luck, leading the PCs to the house of Modi, a raspy-voiced carpenter who nodded at Foliage's desire to pay his respects at the Tomb of Naxim the Mountain Man. Modi, treating the PCs to goat milk and local rye bread (only Foliage partook in the latter, as Tulia had once heard and dutifully warned the PCs not to eat bread from the local crop), offered to lead them over the hills of Fortress Town to the head of the trail to the Tomb in the mountains.

The Ambush at the Ravine

Two days march in the mountains, with that familiar feeling of being tracked on their journey, led by Foliage in his spirit forms of hawk and fox, led the party to through a forested stretch to a ridge and riverbed ravine housing Naxim's Tomb in a shallow cave on the far side.

As they approached, Foliage the Fox smelled predators; notably three wolves barreling through the trees right toward them. Indeed, as his instincts led him to panic and flee up a tree, Balto followed suit, Aldan bravely stood near (not too near) his charge Tulia, and Seppo took cover behind some rocks and at the edge of the ravine. And then the arrows started raining in.

The characters had been ambushed by a pack of some twenty dog-men kobolds (identified by Balto, an expert in humanoid physiology; and Foliage, endlessly pissed at the depredations of evil humanoids) and their trained wolf companions.

At the outset, Aldan took a primitive arrow in the backside as he shielded Tulia, and as he met the beast-men's charge, took a second arrow in the shield-shoulder and another in the knee, plus a rusty shortsword cut to the hip (Paladins are immune to tetanus, we are reminded). One of the wolves, lucky to score a nip on his calf, met the Back Talker blade, a month of intolerable abstinence since tasting the glory of battle, and fell to earth in three parts, to Foliage's chagrin.

Meanwhile, Balto and Foliage led a tree-mounted sneak attack to the rear of the main pack of beast-men, heads cracking and the druid's Branch Cutter spreading vorpal fury among the violators of Nature's Path. Neither would feel a scratch from their victims' rusty blades.

From cover, Seppo had first noticed on the other side of the ravine a human figure lurking and then disappearing into the tree cover as the battle started. No matter -- the thief launched black powder-tipped bolts from his crossbow, the first shattering a tree (also irritating the Druid) and second scattering the attackers. One wolf, wounded by fire but vicious, wrestled with him on the precipice. But when a stray kobold threatened Tulia by the trail, Seppo heroically hurled his short sword into the slathering beast's eye, just as the wolf tore into Seppo's shoulder and incapacitated the love-smitten lad.

The kobold attackers slain and the last wolf charmed into friendship by Foliage, the party cleaned themselves up and approached the Tomb. Seppo made no mention to his fellows of the man watching them from the other side of the ravine.

The Tomb of the Mountain Man

The tomb was a shallow cave over a river, an entrance only four feet high and half-blocked by a pile of stacked stones. With Seppo and Aldan recovering from their injuries thanks to the assistance of Tulia's caring hands (one was in heaven, the other in hell), Balto and Foliage entered the Tomb. Indeed, this was a place to lay a curse on the head of anyone not respectful of the natural way to enter. Balto, having no fear of grim portents and such silliness, examined a painted depiction on the wall of a twin-mountain spire surrounded by a ring of stones in the nearby mountains; the roost of the Elder Vulture and presumed possessor of the Bronze Armband.

Foliage paid the proper respects at the sarcophagus itself, a cairn of stones on which was laid two slabs, unmoved. With much persuasion, he convinced Balto not to disturb the resting place of the hero Naxim, Iron-Shafted Spear or otherwise.

The party, exhausted, spent the night in the ravine. But in the morning, they returned to the Tomb and realized one of the slabs on the sarcophagus had been slid aside, opening the coffin. As Foliage and Balto bickered, Seppo entered the Tomb (incurring the curse), and without notice peeped inside the sarcophagus. Although there was no Spear to be found, Seppo secreted a gold ring off the gray-dusty bones of the dead Naxim, perhaps doubling the curse over his soul.

Denouement

As the curtain fell for the evening, Balto howled in regret for not looting the Tomb at first chance; Aldan ritually bathed repeatedly in the river after an unwelcome thankful embrace by Tulia; Seppo rocked on cloud nine before the dark clouds of the curse were to gather overhead; and Foliage (befriended wolf in tow), in a fury, demanded to the uncaring trees vengeance against those unknown forces which had defiled Naxim's Tomb and stolen the Hero's weapon for mysterious ends.

Gar

Gar is a smallish city on the western coast of a wide peninsula in the northern areas of the inland sea. Although larger than Poori a week's sail to the north, it is still not far from the wilderness of the hills and mountains to the east, and is the next-to-last stop on the merchant lines. The cool climate is moderated from the sea, but with a constant wind blowing in salty sea air and lending a weather-worn look to even the newest structures.

The city is firmly in the hands of the New Faith, at least on the surface. Several temples, including The Searing Light, The Nine-Pointed Star, The Blistering Sun, The Just And The Bloody, and others collectively administer some degree of rule and justice to a city of traders and the thieves who prey upon them.

The wealth in Gar, relatively speaking, is concentrated in the hands of the powerfully-named Alliance of Merchants, who have acted as secular patrons of sorts, funding the impressive-by-any-standard Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires library and its concomitant sages and men of letters; subsidizing a society of collectors and master craftsmen; a number of specialized schools and academies for a fortunate minority of literate folks to expand their minds; and the Red Veil club for the entertainment of the well-off and their hangers-on, some who prefer their identities go unmentioned.

Meanwhile, the rivers, natural and engineered, bearing barges of lumber and stone from the hills to the sea, border the Canal Town, a self-governing district of porters, miscreants, drunks, and shellfish cultivators, under the shadowy influence of "the Skull", a master manipulator and schemer whom has not been seen by any reputable soul.

Into the hinterlands, the control of the Temples is inconsistent. Some areas, sharing a common history with Gar, provide it with food, manpower, and metal enough to buttress its continued existence. Other areas, like the Outer Hold nestled in the mountains, retain a strong regional spirit and bristle at Gar's dominance. Here, too, among the farms, herds, and mines, the Old Ways remain able to color lives and dictate attitudes, to the disgrace and anger of the Temples.

The Mysterious Merchant Hans; or, Poori Fades Over the Horizon

Our bizarre fifth session, 7 August 2011:

Giovanni: Rast the Amazing Spellcaster
Beau: Aldan the Righteous Deliverer
Eric: Balto the Warrior-Scholar
Dave: Gurgrock the Assassin
Hector: Seppo the Protagonist

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After a Quiet Month, A Ship

Now February, it has been a month since the players all rallied around Rast on Evil Island in the harbor of their backwater port town, where he finished the two-part Spell of Control which abjured the countless ghosts and spirits conjured by the late Magister Hienimi back to the nether word from which they came. Aldan had been busying himself with helping rebuild the houses burnt down in the struggle. Balto and Rast had been enjoying the Magister's house in his absence, making a home of it and studying from his library. I'd like to think that Gurgrock and his old mate Seppo made sure their late friend Nikko's mother was comfortable waiting for her son to come home.

And then, drinking at the Old Oak Inn, the players joined the crowd rushing to the docks at the announcement of a ship coming in. It has been a long and rainy winter, and the lumber, hides, and other trade goods have been languishing in the harbor waiting for a merchant ship to sail this far. Indeed, a merchant ship from the week-distant port city of Gar approached the port to the glee of the townsfolk.

Alcohol flowed freely and the sailors of the visiting one-masted ship hit the docks as the women hoped for more exciting lives on foreign shores, and the men hoped to win some honest work and maybe word from the outside world.

Mayhem on the Docks

Indeed, one of the towns' ladies, waiting on the dock for her long-at-sea lover, recognized Aldan, as always in his resplendent and gleaming glory, just as her lover emerged from a week at sea and longer from his lover's embrace. Jealousy ensued, as it does, and as the cuckolded man pushed through the dock to the Paladin now uncomfortably embracing his beloved, he was tripped by a quick-thinking Seppo (avoiding real labor) and was pitched into the embrace. A struggle, and the two original lovers were over the edge and into the drink, along with an unfortunate mother and child.

Meanwhile, Balto and Gurgrock infiltrated the ship by their respective means of acrobatic ropework and fast-talking aided by light disguise work and an accent cultivated from working the docks and servicing Gar ships, and learned that the person in charge was not the captain, but a mysterious and learned man named Hans who chartered the vessel, not for trade but for his personal reasons to visit this backwater.

Gurgrock, in desperation, clocked out a young seaman stealing food from the hold who'd once been the brother of the victim of the half-orc's teenage abuses a decade and a half ago in the streets of this very town, and now threatened to call him out.

Back on the docks with innocents unable to tread water, Gorbo the Apprentice (Rast's newest minion), now bedecked in the Trell-Beast's hide, tasted heroism by leaping into the water and swimming, as a wild animal might, and rescuing the child.

Two of the jealous man's mates rushed Aldan, who, impelled by the bloodthirsty Back Talker sword, in an incredible swing cleaved them in two, sating the blade but ensuring a messy outcome. Aldan risked further spiritual contamination as a price to pay for jumping in after his babe-in-arms, hoping that the bilge-stained water would be pure enough to cleanse his transgressions.

He, predictably, sank like a stone.

By the time the adventurers were all safe and sound and the belligerents were sated or defeated, Rast too was soaking wet from a pitch in the drink, Gurgrock snagged a sailor with a poisoned dagger in the fray, and the mysterious Hans, observed only briefly as a portly, well-dressed aristocratic type, had escaped the chaos and
absconded into the town.

The Antagonizing of the "Merchant" Hans

Wisely, the players surmised Hans might be looking for the Magister Hienimi, so they retreated to the House and waited.

Before long, four townsman approached and passed word that Hans, now in the Old Oak Inn, requested a meeting. They said to tell Hans to come back tomorrow. They promptly followed the men back to town to the Inn, observed the finely-attired Hans and two hired valets at a crooked table (along with the lad now twice abused by Gurgrock's crueler impulses), and, in true style, had the innkeeper drug Hans' drink. The mysterious man passed out halfway up the stairs and they proceeded to steal his chest of clothes, rob him blind, step on his fingers; later bringing out the unnoticed Seppo to put on his innocent look and garner sympathy from the woozy and rotund traveler, woozy from his run-in with petty thieves in this dangerous backwater.

The next morning at the House as planned, Hans squeezed to discomfort by overnight-tailored suits cut a size too small, met with Rast, acting as if he were the magistrate all along. Hans was here for the Crystal (the one which Gurgrock, Foliage, and Rast all realized saps one's very life energy away as it boosts one's mystic potential), and ready to pay well for it. The deal: mundane for arcane. Hans' "master", whom he did not describe, was very interested in the Crystal's power when combined with other artifacts of lore. The Master has been watching all along, and has eyes in many places. A bag of gold emerged from Hans' coat (it had not been observed by the band of thieves beforehand) and dropped onto the table. Rast (er, "the Magister") tantalized with the Crystal as Hans waited patiently.

Predictably in retrospect, the players, having learned that Hans was an adept of divination and other magics and thus clearly a threat, decided to ambush him while in the house. Surely a diviner would not have seen such coming. One hired hand ran for the kitchen, pursued by Gorbo, egged on and uncharacteristically animalistic under the Trell-Beast's impulses, while the other hired hand hit the ground fast from a handful of marbles and a crossbow bolt from Seppo to the back. As Balto, as is his way, burst from the outside through a window at Hans, the target, in that irritating way that wizards, good, evil or neutral, are known to do, snapped his fingers and disappeared. This would not be the last of Hans.

Passage to the Wider World

Fortunately, Aldan had made arrangements with the ship's captain, no fan of Hans or of this sudden chartering which left him will little in the way of trade goods, and had booked passage on it for all the players, to return to the city of Gar forthwith, as hired hands to replace the very hands Aldan had cut down in his fury.

That very night, with only a brief goodbye to Nikko's mother, without explanation of the crimes committed against her only son but a half-bag of gold left to rebuild her life, they set sail for Gar in the driving rain and wind. That the town was not left a smoking ruin was perhaps a testament to the characters' desire to leave at once.

A week later the ship arrived, and the players, in their respective roles, scattered gleefully to their respective roles, immediately seeking out the library, temple, and dens of thieves, fences, and dealmakers.

Thoughts

This was not a session of great heroism, climactic battles, or deep intrigue. But the passage to Gar nonetheless opens a new chapter to the players. This Crystal, and those who seek it out, will be sure to bring new troubles and challenges, hopefully ones to bring out the players' more valiant colors and test their calling as great men. So many open roads ahead.