The Ambergate Chronicles - Galahorn or the Curious Adventure of the Glass Coffin

Dante must cajole and coax Utresh all the way to the office of the Mayor. He seems to Dante a little taken aback at this visit, but agrees to talk to the students and the wise woman. Reluctantly, she tells the Mayor about the visions and the dreams she has suffered; his face falls from good-natured indulgence to disappointment and worry.

“This is most extraordinary,” he admits. “And to think I was going to come to you for help.” Dante exchanges a look of curiosity with Serai, then bids him to continue. “I was hoping to ask you to discreetly look for the adventurers I sent to find the children missing from the town. Now that’s the least of our worries.”

“We’d be happy to help,” Dante interjects. He glances about at his companions for their agreement, then notices with a thrill of alarm that George isn’t with them. A glance out the window reveals the tall lad stooped by the door of the bell tower. To Dante’s horror, he realizes George is trying the lock. Dante quickly continues to cover his agitation. “And I suspect that the missing children, the adventures and the strange visions and dreams are all connected.”

The Mayor nods, absent in his own unhappy thoughts. “I fear as much, though I dread bringing more outsiders into our misery. There’s been too much death and unhappiness – I had hoped we had left those days behind us for good.” He looks Dante in the eye. “We can’t spare much, but I promise you one hundred gold each, should you be able to help us.”

Dante meets his gaze with a dead-eye wizard’s stare that unnerves the Mayor and sends a shiver down his spine. “We will take your offer, but I do ask only for one other thing: the deed to that mine.” The Mayor protests, but Dante is firm. “It is doing none of you any good as it is and it will be our problem to protect and work it.”

The Mayor sees the wisdom in this, or perhaps ever the merchant, he sees a way to profit from this agreement. Either way, he promises the mine shall be theirs.

Through the window, Dante sees that George is not quite finished with the tower’s door, so he stalls the Mayor with questions. “That bell tower – I understand the bell was made from copper from Copperdeath’s mine. May I ask if it has any unusual purpose or power?”

The Mayor smiles. “Nowadays, its only purpose is to ring the time of day – we’ve two men, Harley and Malcolm, who volunteer to do this. It has no magic of its own, though it does bring bad memories for some.”

George has given up on the lock, just in time for Dante, Serai, Jade, Ishii and Utresh to leave the Mayor’s office. As promised, the students take Utresh to stay on Othic’s farm, though they decline to impose on his hospitality another night. Instead, they return to rooms at the inn, where over smoked sausages the students take turns reading from the journal of Thrommel Redstone, a dwarfish priest of Darvos. Though it is a thrilling tale about the slaying of the Dragon, no one can gleam any new clues to the present situation. Exhausted, the students say good night and crawl into their beds…

…And into nightmares.

For Jade, it is beetles. Thousands of them crawl about his body, their tiny feet tickling his flesh even as their mandibles cut into it.

Dante is a toothless, drooling idiot, followed by children throwing stones and clods of earth. He remembers it was not always so and that make his condition all the more unbearable.

Ishii has his bones broken, one by one, by a relentless, unseen attacker.

Serai finds herself at a desolate crossroad, alone. In the blink of an eye, a crystalline creature, shaped like a jagged man, is beside her, his razor-sharp arm jabbing into her stomach like a sword. Before she can cry out, there is another, then another, their spiky limbs slashing and stabbing. But there is no blood, only sickening pain that brings her to her knees. She awakes with a start…and finds herself atop a table, her arms shackled at her sides, an unseen being sawing the crown of her skull open to expose her brain.

Worthern is in a forest. He sees a pixie at last, as he has always desired, but it runs from him through the trees. He chases the pale, slight shape, only find it is nasty creature with a wide mouth filled with shark teeth that bite and bite and bite.

And George sits sweating, cowering in a corner. There is only one bullet left. He can no longer keep the door closed no matter how he tries. The Thing on the Other Side is nearly through now; the door shakes on its hinges while the frame splinters.

And it will all end, if they would just give in.

George does wake to a pounding on his door. He sees that Dante is already out of his bed going towards it.

“No, don’t open it!” George yells wildly. Dante turns to him, eyes wide and rimmed with dark circles. He is so pale and his thin hair is stuck to his scalp with sweat.

“George,” he starts, but then a voice from behind the door exclaims, “Master Dante! Please, it’s Tal, Othic’s man. There’s been a terrible accident!”

Accident does not accurately describe the scene in the barn. The students are huddled together, weary and sad, their eyes unable to rest comfortably anywhere on the scene. The hay is soaked with fresh blood from Othic’s slain body which is nearly cut in two. Upon his back are impressions where the horses in their panic had trampled him on their way out of the barn. The farm hands are still searching for them.

Serai is sickened, as much from grief as horror, and leaves the barn to question the farm hands. Dante murmurs a familiar spell while touching the air, searching for the tingling, electric presence of magic and finding none. With a sigh, he crouches to examine the bloody tracks with Jade, but the elf shakes his head: they are too jumbled or perhaps he is too distracted to make sense of them. He turns instead to the body.

“George,” Dante says wearily, and without needing to be asked, his friend helps him right the corpse. He examines the arms and hands and finds no scratches or defensive wounds. There is still a wallet filled with coins at his belt. There are large bites at his neck, however, and waist. But they are most chilled to find a horse’s bit shoved into his mouth.

Dante glances about the barn and explains his theory, “He was attacked from behind from here.” He points to a spot about a third of the way inside. “Whatever it was that killed him was already inside.”

“And this?” George asks, pointing to the bit.

“Most likely, he put it in himself, probably at the command his attacker” Dante says. “I can’t explain it otherwise.”

“Dante!” Serai’s voice is shrill with fear. The body of their former host is forgotten in their rush to find her. She is only a few feet from the barn, but she is paralyzed with terror. Ishii is beside her and looks at her in puzzlement. When the three reach him, he merely shrugs.

“There,” she points. At the gate, three horses are standing, tossing their heads and snorting.

“Serai, it’s just Othic’s horses,” Dante replies.

And then he sees one lifting the gate’s latch with its teeth. The other two snort, stamp their hooves and flick their tails with impatience. A nearly tangible wave of menace hits our little group. Dante staggers a moment and shakes his head to clear it.

Serai answers his question before he can ask it. “They are psionic. They attacked me before you got here.”

Dante nods, a bit shaken by the encounter, but chants a spell for summoning undead. A tiny zombie, the rather ripe body of a recently deceased kobold, answers his call and plods in the direction of the malicious horses. Panicked, he hides in the barn.

Ishii unties the bola from his rope belt and slings it around the legs of a horse, which stumbles and falls with a loud shriek. It rolls, frees, then rights itself.

George trembles while loading his pistol and silently curses himself for not loading it properly beforehand. His hands shake so that he loses the shot in the grass and has to start over. The horses are nearly upon him when he takes his first shot and misses.

Serai’s eyes glow with power as she utters a word in a language strange to George. Whatever she intends, it does not stop the horse galloping toward her. She backs away, but not in time, for the horse nips her on the shoulder. Ishii punches it, then jumps to kick it squarely in the jaw, thus giving Serai time to get away from this monster.

With his mighty bow, Jade shoots an arrow true and strikes a horse in its flank. Something changes in their demeanor after this, for they circle round to the gate to flee in panic. Attuning with Nature, Jade calls upon Her magic again and performs several small miracles. First, he makes the grass near the gate grow and writhe to cling to and hamper the legs of one of the horses. Another he causes to stop altogether, and though it is far from docile, it no longer tries to bite or kick. The third he chases, all the while striking it with swift arrows until it collapses dead from its many wounds. While Jade is occupied, the entangled horse breaks free and flees. George shoots but is inexpert at hitting moving targets and does not strike it as it disappears into the woods.

Breathless as frightened rabbits, the students gather around the remaining horse,.

“Don’t kill it,” Serai says. “I want to try to talk to it.”

George swallows hard, but reloads his pistol. “Tell it I’m watching it. If it tries to get away, I’ll shoot.” He cocks the pistol and points it at the horse’s head, and adds with more bravado than he actually feels, “And I won’t miss this time.”

With hands raised in a gesture of peace, she tells it, “We won’t hurt you. Please, we just want to ask you a few questions.”

It snorts, then tosses its head, assenting.

“How did you come to be?”

An eerie, croaking voice from a throat never intended to use speech replies, “Little blue men from the forest came. They free us. Make us strong. Now you, you will wear the saddle.”

The horse rears with a snarl. George shoots a glancing blow that grazes its neck. It sprints away into the forest, while George reloads and gives it parting shot. If it hits, it does not slow the creature and it vanishes into the trees.

Well, he didn't miss this time.

Claps...

Very good SH, I am going to keep watching this one...

Creepy stuff ....

Nice updates, eris. Keep 'em coming.

Our little group of novice adventurers is discouraged by this encounter and at a loss at how to proceed. After a brief discussion, Ishii reveals that gnomes can speak with burrowing animals; perhaps he could find one to question.

A little way into the forest, he wakes an ill-tempered badger who seems disinclined to be helpful. But through the chittering noises and hissing the animal makes, he discerns that he did see a small green man walking in woods. He shows Ishii where he saw the little man and Ishii indeed finds a tiny footprint among the leaves. He returns to his new companions with more questions than answers.

Where, might you ask, is Utresh among all this? She is alive and quite safe, though shaken by the experience, and is making breakfast and tea for the grief-stricken farmhands. The students are glad to see she is well and note that the experience has changed her. No longer is she the cringing old woman, though her smile is feeble.

“I have something to tell you,” she admits. “I am not completely the old fraud I pretend to be. I am a worshipper of Xante.”

“Who’s that?” George whispers to Dante.

“If you paid attention in religion class, you’d know she’s the goddess of forbidden knowledge.” Dante hisses back.

“Is that bad?” George asks, worried.

“Depends on who you ask,” Utresh replies with a soft laugh. “I may not have been her most favored worshipper, but she has shown me a few things.” From her bundle, she unwraps several vials of dark liquid. “These are the sum of my magical training. I think you may need them more than I.”

Dante receives the potions with gratitude and asks Utresh what she will do next.

“Go home,” She says with a shrug. “If nowhere is safe, then I might as well be where I am most comfortable.”

After breakfast, the students sit together and discuss what to do next. They are afraid, but also excited by the promise of exploration and adventure. Ishii offers to show them where he found the footprint, which seems as good a place as any to start. And so, our friends say good-bye to Utresh and the farmhands and set out for the woods. While combing the forest for the print, Jade discovers several sets of small tracks.

“I think these belong to the children,” he announces. Our travelers follow the trail in silence north across the river. The tracks cross an old road and then find an old path that leads up to the foot of the mountain. There it ends among the tall rocks that rest there; nearby, a waterfall hisses and gurgles into a large pool.

“Now what?” asks Serai. She is unused to such hiking and is quite fatigued and thirsty. She rests by the pool and drinks from its cool, clean water. Nearby, she notices a dam made of leaves and branches and an idea occurs to her. “Ishii, can you speak to beavers?”

From the busy little builder, Ishii learns that the mines are sealed, but that small green-skinned men had climbed up the mountain not long ago; he twitches his nose in the direction the little men hiked.

Found this little gem just yesterday. Wonderful, wonderful writing

I'll be keeping my eye on this. (So, keep it up!)

(As an aside, its interesting--at least to me--to see all the variations of P-Cat's module that pop up on these boards...the variations obviously due to both the skill at which the module was designed and the differing personalities of each gaming group.)

~Fune

Funeris said:

(As an aside, its interesting--at least to me--to see all the variations of P-Cat's module that pop up on these boards...the variations obviously due to both the skill at which the module was designed and the differing personalities of each gaming group.)

~Fune

Click to expand...

It's like reading a different story every time. Really, it's amazing. I'm thinking I'll need to get a copy of this one. Urrrr, where can I find it?

Lela said:

It's like reading a different story every time. Really, it's amazing. I'm thinking I'll need to get a copy of this one. Urrrr, where can I find it?

Click to expand...

I imagine you can still find it around in various places. It's by Fiery Dragon, and it looks like its available on their website. I think that one reason it can play so differently is the way that it has a very open way of hooking the players in - in my case, I adapted it into my campaign world and came up with an idea and motivation to get the players into the adventure (pick up bell, keep them out of trouble until the school year starts after the duel with Malek). Then there's the town and the townsfolk. The players kind of imprint their own style and mindset onto the NPC's - for example, Utresh, the "witch" wasn't really written to be more than a slightly crazy fake seer who happened to have one true vision. My players decided they weren't just going to let her give her little spiel and run off - the drug her back in to town and made her take a more active part in helping. They even tried to set her up with Othic - sadly that didn't go as well...