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 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.

Heroes: Seppo, Foliage

Below are two more heroes which joined the madness and mayhem in Poori:

Seppo The Protagonist

At only fifteen, Seppo was the youngest and slightest of Gurgrock and unfortunate Nikko, three best friends from the docks of Poori whose lives turned out just as fate and fortune would dictate but differently than their mothers had hoped.

Seppo's small frame and naivete to the wider world is tempered by his good heart, nimble hands, and creative mind. A compulsive fast-talker and easily distracted, he has served many jobs, including as a fletcher, apprentice carpenter, and cutpurse. He prides himself on his handiwork, including a crossbow he uses for hunting, trick-shooting for coin, and sometimes to less legal (but never dishonorable) ends.

After he learned of the violent death of Nikko, Seppo set himself to joining with Gurgrock's trustworthy-enough gang of heroes to track down his friend's killer, while at the same time seeing the world for the first time.

Motivations: Be the local boy done good in the wide world; find Nikko's killer

Heroic Flaws: Naivete; focus

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Foliage The Warped

Foliage is a Druid from the wilds north of Poori, long ago driven mad from a scourge of evil humanoids who burned down his sacred grove. Now without a home to bind him, he has been thrust into a wandering life of vengeance, vigilantism, and prolonged alcoholism. Often he sees himself as an aggravated foster uncle of sorts to his young and often-wayward traveling companions.

With the appearance of an unkempt wild man, Foliage wears untanned furs; a wide-brimmed hat; a brace of liquors, moonshines, and narcotic roots; and bears a giant beard which is home to a host of critters and plants. At his waist is the Branch Cutter, a giant bronze knife often bloodied in joyless revenge against the enemies of nature. Around his neck is the feather-and-bone Amulet of the Three Sylvan Brothers, a relic of his faith and more peaceful times, which allows him to channel his inner spirit by transforming into the form of fox, deer, or hawk, although at the cost of quickly draining his human nature.

Motivations: Vengeance against those who ravaged his sacred grove and groves all over

Heroic Flaw: Aggression, hotheadedness