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<blockquote data-quote="Chimera" data-source="post: 2978773" data-attributes="member: 2002"><p>(Session 5)</p><p></p><p>After Nieri and Kethra bind the unconscious Janx, Healer John heals Janx to consciousness.</p><p></p><p>Janx’ initial attitude is defiance and silence. He refuses to answer questions and seems not to be very intimidated by the party. Efforts by Samsel and Nieri to question him meet with little success, though they do cause Janx to attempt to purchase his freedom through bribery, offering to lead them to his hidden cache if they will swear to release him unharmed. The party counters this by telling Janx that they will not kill him if he leads them to his cache, but that they still intend to turn him over to the Freetown authorities. Janx doesn’t like this option and falls back into silence.</p><p></p><p>Moving forward, Nieri “nine-fingers” ‘punishes’ Janx by cutting off his little toe. As he screams in pain, Lawrence rushes forward to pull Nieri away and admonish him for this act of torture. Nieri is confused, saying that he was just punishing Janx and wonders why Lawrence is so upset. This leads to a small discussion over the issue of torture, which puzzles Nieri (who had been severely tortured on many occasions, hence the nickname “nine fingers”). In the end, Janx reluctantly agrees to lead them to his cache, in return for not being tortured and/or killed.</p><p></p><p>The party heads back to the edge of the hills, where they camp for the night. They leave Janx tied up, but otherwise unsecured. This proves to be a mistake, as during Nieri’s watch, Janx gets to his feet and takes off at a dead run into the night, stumbling and crashing through the brush. Nieri hastily awakens the rest of the party, then sets off after Janx. After more than an hour of tracking, circling and chasing Janx, Samsel uses his talents to speed ahead of Janx and hit him with an electrical bolt, dropping him.</p><p></p><p>After regrouping at this point, Janx is again healed, but warned that any further attempts to escape will result in his death. Janx again falls silent. From this vantage point, the party sees several large bonfires on a high hill some miles to the north. They question Janx, believing him to have been headed for that spot. He refuses to answer their questions, so they simply return to their previous camp, hog-tie Janx to a tree and sleep late into the morning.</p><p></p><p>Late the next morning, the party heads back down the path to Rivermarch. That afternoon, they are approached by a lone traveler, a Bard out of Gotham who has been wandering the hills collecting tales from the Old Tribes. He had been spending time with the Birdsong tribe and had heard from them of this group. Having found that the hills were much more dangerous than he expected, he was hoping to catch up to them in order to travel northward with them.</p><p></p><p><strong>New PC</strong></p><p></p><p><strong>Jack Teagan </strong> A Bard from the city of Gotham, now traveling after a dispute with a more senior member of Master Thespian’s company.</p><p></p><p></p><p>On the afternoon of the fourth day, they arrive in Rivermarch. Very little has changed since they left. Members of the Red Arcana group are guarding the gate, along with several armed lumber jacks. The group heads directly to Captain Trevason’s office to surrender Janx, who has remained utterly silent throughout the journey.</p><p></p><p>Captain Trevason knows of Janx, but only as a minor thief. He is surprised by the tales of Janx leading a group of Orcs in banditry against the northern tribes. While there is no established bounty on Janx’ head, Captain Trevason offers the group 2,000 dollars as a reward for their efforts. Again, Janx remains utterly silent as Captain Trevason addresses him, then has him escorted off to a cell.</p><p></p><p>The party then asks Captain Trevason for news of the effort against the Kobolds. Captain Trevason is not upbeat. He tells the group that the Army had completely destroyed one Kobold warren and moved on a second when a single Kobold messenger arrived, bearing the head of a second Kobold and a letter, scribed on scraped rabbit hide.</p><p></p><p>The letter purported to be from a Kobold leader calling himself “The King of the Sunrise”. He offered the Humans the head of his former rival, the “King of the River”, saying that this second king had been killed for failing to destroy the caravan along the Treva Road. This new ‘king’ then laid claim to all lands to within “one day’s walk from the Human town” (assuming Rivermarch) and warned the army to retreat from his territory or face destruction, as the king was gathering all warrens to overwhelm them.</p><p></p><p>With this, the Falconeer force retreated some distance to a defensible bend on the Treva, approximately 40 miles from Rivermarch. They have sent notice along to the Council in Freetown and are awaiting instructions. This is all that Captain Trevason knows at this time.</p><p></p><p>The next morning, rested and resupplied, the party heads back up the trail to the north for the third time.</p><p></p><p>On the fourth day, as they approach the campsite at which they had held Janx, they are ambushed by a lone Orc, who steps out from behind the brush high on the ridge above them. The Orc raises a thin bone horn to his lips, the sound echoing across the narrow valley, then cut short as the horn shatters. Shaking off the blood, the Orc smiles like a predator as six columns of smoke appear around the party. The smoke congeals into large Orcs, who then attack the party.</p><p></p><p>Nieri drops two with a sleep spell, but the other four prove more resilient, one of them taking a large chunk out of Kethra. The Orc on the hill, most probably the companion of Janx who had escaped, takes no action at first, simply content to watch the summoned Orcs battle the party. In short order however, the tide turns and the summoned Orcs are dropped. As the party attempts to move up the steep slope to engage the summoner, he places his hand over a medallion on his chest and utters several feral words. The medallion flares to incandescent for a moment. The Orc jerks back his smoking hand, then collapses behind the brush. Moments later, two large jet black dogs with flaming red eyes appear just above the party.</p><p></p><p>Kethra is scorched as the Hell Hounds spew gouts of fire down on the party. As Lawrence moves up to engage them, he takes a nasty flaming bite. But once again, the enemy are unable to prevail and our party is swiftly victorious.</p><p></p><p>Moving up to check on the Orc, the party finds him unconscious, but stable. Rousing him, the party attempts to get information from him or to convince him to lead them to Janx’ cache, but the Orc is adamant that death is preferable. As the party debates what to do him, Kethra’s hatred of Orc-kind comes to the fore and she puts the Orc to the sword.</p><p></p><p>Camping at the old spot, the group heads north from there the next morning. About mid-day, the come around the bend near the high hill upon which they had seen the bonfires ten days earlier. They can see that the entire hillside is covered with dead pine trees, dry and brown. They can also see that a good portion of these trees have been cut down and that someone or something is walking around on top of the hill, through from this distance, they cannot make out who or what this is.</p><p></p><p>As they approach the hill, they surprise a man walking down a path leading from the crest of the hill to the trail they are on. The man is stripped to the waist, carrying a battle axe, whistling as he comes down the trail He is a half-Orc, showing clear signs of his Orcish blood. He looks at the party in surprise and asks “Who you?”. When it is Nieri who answers him, the man becomes puzzled and asks “What you do with little boy?”. The man tells them that he is named Muuk, that he is employed by a man named Artemis Mourn, and that it is his job to cut the trees and haul the wood to the top, where his boss burns Kobold bodies as a warning against the Kobolds who have begun to encroach upon this area.</p><p></p><p>The party is so surprised and fixated on the question of who Artemis is that they completely fail to ask Muuk any further questions about anything but Artemis, even after Nieri surreptitiously casts a <em>Detect Magic</em> spell and discovers that Muuk’s axe is of moderately strong magic, and after seeing that it has an etching of Muuk’s face on one side of the blade. Upon being told that Artemis is a Wizard that lives perhaps two days north, the party continues on their way.</p><p></p><p>Later in they day, the party meets a short, stocky man approaching from the north. A hairy and ugly man with one large piggy eye, the man proves to be surly and aggressive, demanding to know who the party is and why they are in “his” territory. Holding their tongues, the party learns that the man is named Bartlebee and that he lives just across the valley that they are currently passing. Ignoring his shredded clothing and bad attitude, the party inquires about Artemis, Janx and the Kobolds. Bartlebee tells them that Artemis lives a good day or so north of him, that people pretty much leave him alone, and that Kobolds are good eating. (“Skin ‘em, stuff ‘em with a little sage, wild parsnips and onions, let ‘em age a few days and cook ‘em up!”)</p><p></p><p>Moving on quickly from this encounter, the party continues north for a while, until they encounter several dwarves packing up at a cave high above the trail. They question the Dwarves for a while, finding that they are prospectors. Informed of the fate of the other dwarves, whose bodies Nieri had spotted when they first entered the hills, the dwarves are grieved. They continue their packing, intending to head next to Gyretown.</p><p></p><p>A short distance away, the party camps for the night near the territory of the Rockscribe tribe, a secretive bunch who will not allow the party to approach any closer to their camp. From the tribe’s patrol, they learn that the tribe lives in fear of both Janx and the monster that lives in the lake to the north, blaming the later for the disappearance of some of their people over the last year. They have a pact of mutual ignorance with Bartlebee, who seems to frighten them as well. When informed of Janx’ capture and imprisonment, they are quite happy, but their overall secretive and suspicious attitude does not change.</p><p></p><p>The next morning (the 12th of Weaving, or 42 days into the campaign), the group finds the eastward trail that heads toward Artemis’ place only a mile from where they had camped. Spending most of the day, they finally arrive in a fair sized valley, where the trail bends down from the slopes to the valley floor. On the valley side, there is a pasture with four horses and a small pond as well as a large garden area. Up against the sharp slope, a wooden palisade closely surrounds a rough two story house-like structure built right into the slope.</p><p></p><p>The group spends an inordinate amount of time banging on the palisade and seeking a way in before a tall, angular man comes out of the building to address them. “Who are you and what do you want?”. The party is annoyed that this attitude seems to be prevalent in this part of the hills, but they hold their tongues and announce that they have come to see Artemis Mourn. The angular man tells them that Artemis is busy and can’t see them, but they are adamant. The man tells them to camp across the road and wait. But don’t mess with the pasture or the garden. Sneering, he looks straight at Samsel and tells the young man not to molest the horses, before heading back into the house.</p><p></p><p>The party waits all evening without sign of Artemis, then camp overnight next to the garden. Late that night, Nieri decides to attempt to gain entry to the house. In the darkness, he manages to climb the palisade and approach the house, but cannot see what he is doing (no light sources, very dark night). He manages to approach the door undetected, hearing nothing but snoring within, but decides better of entering and returns to the camp.</p><p></p><p>The next morning, the party remains past breakfast, insistent on a meeting with this mysterious Artemis. Late in the morning, the place finally stirs and the angular man opens the gate. A man of confident and regal bearing strolls out to meet the party, backed by a large man in armor and a small dark haired woman.</p><p></p><p>“Good Morning. I am Artemis Mourn. You wished to speak to me?”</p><p></p><p>Through the discussion, the party finds that Artemis has established himself as something of a power in the area, keeping the Kobolds at bay and working with the local tribes. He tells them little that they didn’t already know and doesn’t seem too surprised when they inform him of Janx’ capture. Feeling a bit puzzled and disappointed, the party thanks Artemis and moves on, heading back westward to the trail that leads north.</p><p></p><p>The next day, the party heads up to the lake and decides to march around it, hoping to draw out whatever inhabits it, to put an end to the threat faced by the local tribes. On the north side of the lake, Kethra finds tracks coming out of the lake and headed up the wooded slopes, but cannot identify them (bad roll). Continuing around the swampy western side, the party is disappointed in that they can neither see anything of merit, nor does anything seem to be interested in them. On the south side of the lake however, the party comes to a small patch of woods filled with webs. As they approach closer, they can see a horse sized spider moving among the trees. They charge into battle, finally glad to have found something!</p><p></p><p>As Kethra engages the first Spider, two more drop from the trees. A swift battle ensues and the spiders are rather easily killed. The party moves back to the trail from the lake, disappointed that they were unable to find anything of the sort that would cause a tribe to fear going anywhere near the lake.</p><p></p><p>Northward on the trail until near nightfall when the party encounters members of the Burberry tribe. In stark contrast to their previous encounters in this area, the tribers invite the party to come to the tribe’s camp for the night. While the tribers are outwardly friendly and social with the party, they find that the tribe has been devastated by losses in the last year and are currently packing up and planning to head north and eastward from this, their ancestral home.</p><p></p><p>Clearly grieving at the need to depart lands that their tribe has lived in “since before our elders were born”, the tribe explains that they’ve lost half of their number in the last year, to Kobolds to the west and to a brutal creature that lives to the east.</p><p></p><p>The creature to the east flies in several times a month and begins singing. The song is such that nearly everyone drops what they are doing and mindlessly approaches the creature, who then carries one of them off. Numerous attempts to kill the creature have failed, as it simply flies off when threatened, returning later with even more brutality. From the descriptions, Kethra recognizes this creature as a Harpy.</p><p></p><p>The party camps with the tribe for the night, vowing to deal with the Harpy in the morning.</p><p></p><p>{End Session 5}</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Chimera, post: 2978773, member: 2002"] (Session 5) After Nieri and Kethra bind the unconscious Janx, Healer John heals Janx to consciousness. Janx’ initial attitude is defiance and silence. He refuses to answer questions and seems not to be very intimidated by the party. Efforts by Samsel and Nieri to question him meet with little success, though they do cause Janx to attempt to purchase his freedom through bribery, offering to lead them to his hidden cache if they will swear to release him unharmed. The party counters this by telling Janx that they will not kill him if he leads them to his cache, but that they still intend to turn him over to the Freetown authorities. Janx doesn’t like this option and falls back into silence. Moving forward, Nieri “nine-fingers” ‘punishes’ Janx by cutting off his little toe. As he screams in pain, Lawrence rushes forward to pull Nieri away and admonish him for this act of torture. Nieri is confused, saying that he was just punishing Janx and wonders why Lawrence is so upset. This leads to a small discussion over the issue of torture, which puzzles Nieri (who had been severely tortured on many occasions, hence the nickname “nine fingers”). In the end, Janx reluctantly agrees to lead them to his cache, in return for not being tortured and/or killed. The party heads back to the edge of the hills, where they camp for the night. They leave Janx tied up, but otherwise unsecured. This proves to be a mistake, as during Nieri’s watch, Janx gets to his feet and takes off at a dead run into the night, stumbling and crashing through the brush. Nieri hastily awakens the rest of the party, then sets off after Janx. After more than an hour of tracking, circling and chasing Janx, Samsel uses his talents to speed ahead of Janx and hit him with an electrical bolt, dropping him. After regrouping at this point, Janx is again healed, but warned that any further attempts to escape will result in his death. Janx again falls silent. From this vantage point, the party sees several large bonfires on a high hill some miles to the north. They question Janx, believing him to have been headed for that spot. He refuses to answer their questions, so they simply return to their previous camp, hog-tie Janx to a tree and sleep late into the morning. Late the next morning, the party heads back down the path to Rivermarch. That afternoon, they are approached by a lone traveler, a Bard out of Gotham who has been wandering the hills collecting tales from the Old Tribes. He had been spending time with the Birdsong tribe and had heard from them of this group. Having found that the hills were much more dangerous than he expected, he was hoping to catch up to them in order to travel northward with them. [B]New PC[/B] [B]Jack Teagan [/B] A Bard from the city of Gotham, now traveling after a dispute with a more senior member of Master Thespian’s company. On the afternoon of the fourth day, they arrive in Rivermarch. Very little has changed since they left. Members of the Red Arcana group are guarding the gate, along with several armed lumber jacks. The group heads directly to Captain Trevason’s office to surrender Janx, who has remained utterly silent throughout the journey. Captain Trevason knows of Janx, but only as a minor thief. He is surprised by the tales of Janx leading a group of Orcs in banditry against the northern tribes. While there is no established bounty on Janx’ head, Captain Trevason offers the group 2,000 dollars as a reward for their efforts. Again, Janx remains utterly silent as Captain Trevason addresses him, then has him escorted off to a cell. The party then asks Captain Trevason for news of the effort against the Kobolds. Captain Trevason is not upbeat. He tells the group that the Army had completely destroyed one Kobold warren and moved on a second when a single Kobold messenger arrived, bearing the head of a second Kobold and a letter, scribed on scraped rabbit hide. The letter purported to be from a Kobold leader calling himself “The King of the Sunrise”. He offered the Humans the head of his former rival, the “King of the River”, saying that this second king had been killed for failing to destroy the caravan along the Treva Road. This new ‘king’ then laid claim to all lands to within “one day’s walk from the Human town” (assuming Rivermarch) and warned the army to retreat from his territory or face destruction, as the king was gathering all warrens to overwhelm them. With this, the Falconeer force retreated some distance to a defensible bend on the Treva, approximately 40 miles from Rivermarch. They have sent notice along to the Council in Freetown and are awaiting instructions. This is all that Captain Trevason knows at this time. The next morning, rested and resupplied, the party heads back up the trail to the north for the third time. On the fourth day, as they approach the campsite at which they had held Janx, they are ambushed by a lone Orc, who steps out from behind the brush high on the ridge above them. The Orc raises a thin bone horn to his lips, the sound echoing across the narrow valley, then cut short as the horn shatters. Shaking off the blood, the Orc smiles like a predator as six columns of smoke appear around the party. The smoke congeals into large Orcs, who then attack the party. Nieri drops two with a sleep spell, but the other four prove more resilient, one of them taking a large chunk out of Kethra. The Orc on the hill, most probably the companion of Janx who had escaped, takes no action at first, simply content to watch the summoned Orcs battle the party. In short order however, the tide turns and the summoned Orcs are dropped. As the party attempts to move up the steep slope to engage the summoner, he places his hand over a medallion on his chest and utters several feral words. The medallion flares to incandescent for a moment. The Orc jerks back his smoking hand, then collapses behind the brush. Moments later, two large jet black dogs with flaming red eyes appear just above the party. Kethra is scorched as the Hell Hounds spew gouts of fire down on the party. As Lawrence moves up to engage them, he takes a nasty flaming bite. But once again, the enemy are unable to prevail and our party is swiftly victorious. Moving up to check on the Orc, the party finds him unconscious, but stable. Rousing him, the party attempts to get information from him or to convince him to lead them to Janx’ cache, but the Orc is adamant that death is preferable. As the party debates what to do him, Kethra’s hatred of Orc-kind comes to the fore and she puts the Orc to the sword. Camping at the old spot, the group heads north from there the next morning. About mid-day, the come around the bend near the high hill upon which they had seen the bonfires ten days earlier. They can see that the entire hillside is covered with dead pine trees, dry and brown. They can also see that a good portion of these trees have been cut down and that someone or something is walking around on top of the hill, through from this distance, they cannot make out who or what this is. As they approach the hill, they surprise a man walking down a path leading from the crest of the hill to the trail they are on. The man is stripped to the waist, carrying a battle axe, whistling as he comes down the trail He is a half-Orc, showing clear signs of his Orcish blood. He looks at the party in surprise and asks “Who you?”. When it is Nieri who answers him, the man becomes puzzled and asks “What you do with little boy?”. The man tells them that he is named Muuk, that he is employed by a man named Artemis Mourn, and that it is his job to cut the trees and haul the wood to the top, where his boss burns Kobold bodies as a warning against the Kobolds who have begun to encroach upon this area. The party is so surprised and fixated on the question of who Artemis is that they completely fail to ask Muuk any further questions about anything but Artemis, even after Nieri surreptitiously casts a [I]Detect Magic[/I] spell and discovers that Muuk’s axe is of moderately strong magic, and after seeing that it has an etching of Muuk’s face on one side of the blade. Upon being told that Artemis is a Wizard that lives perhaps two days north, the party continues on their way. Later in they day, the party meets a short, stocky man approaching from the north. A hairy and ugly man with one large piggy eye, the man proves to be surly and aggressive, demanding to know who the party is and why they are in “his” territory. Holding their tongues, the party learns that the man is named Bartlebee and that he lives just across the valley that they are currently passing. Ignoring his shredded clothing and bad attitude, the party inquires about Artemis, Janx and the Kobolds. Bartlebee tells them that Artemis lives a good day or so north of him, that people pretty much leave him alone, and that Kobolds are good eating. (“Skin ‘em, stuff ‘em with a little sage, wild parsnips and onions, let ‘em age a few days and cook ‘em up!”) Moving on quickly from this encounter, the party continues north for a while, until they encounter several dwarves packing up at a cave high above the trail. They question the Dwarves for a while, finding that they are prospectors. Informed of the fate of the other dwarves, whose bodies Nieri had spotted when they first entered the hills, the dwarves are grieved. They continue their packing, intending to head next to Gyretown. A short distance away, the party camps for the night near the territory of the Rockscribe tribe, a secretive bunch who will not allow the party to approach any closer to their camp. From the tribe’s patrol, they learn that the tribe lives in fear of both Janx and the monster that lives in the lake to the north, blaming the later for the disappearance of some of their people over the last year. They have a pact of mutual ignorance with Bartlebee, who seems to frighten them as well. When informed of Janx’ capture and imprisonment, they are quite happy, but their overall secretive and suspicious attitude does not change. The next morning (the 12th of Weaving, or 42 days into the campaign), the group finds the eastward trail that heads toward Artemis’ place only a mile from where they had camped. Spending most of the day, they finally arrive in a fair sized valley, where the trail bends down from the slopes to the valley floor. On the valley side, there is a pasture with four horses and a small pond as well as a large garden area. Up against the sharp slope, a wooden palisade closely surrounds a rough two story house-like structure built right into the slope. The group spends an inordinate amount of time banging on the palisade and seeking a way in before a tall, angular man comes out of the building to address them. “Who are you and what do you want?”. The party is annoyed that this attitude seems to be prevalent in this part of the hills, but they hold their tongues and announce that they have come to see Artemis Mourn. The angular man tells them that Artemis is busy and can’t see them, but they are adamant. The man tells them to camp across the road and wait. But don’t mess with the pasture or the garden. Sneering, he looks straight at Samsel and tells the young man not to molest the horses, before heading back into the house. The party waits all evening without sign of Artemis, then camp overnight next to the garden. Late that night, Nieri decides to attempt to gain entry to the house. In the darkness, he manages to climb the palisade and approach the house, but cannot see what he is doing (no light sources, very dark night). He manages to approach the door undetected, hearing nothing but snoring within, but decides better of entering and returns to the camp. The next morning, the party remains past breakfast, insistent on a meeting with this mysterious Artemis. Late in the morning, the place finally stirs and the angular man opens the gate. A man of confident and regal bearing strolls out to meet the party, backed by a large man in armor and a small dark haired woman. “Good Morning. I am Artemis Mourn. You wished to speak to me?” Through the discussion, the party finds that Artemis has established himself as something of a power in the area, keeping the Kobolds at bay and working with the local tribes. He tells them little that they didn’t already know and doesn’t seem too surprised when they inform him of Janx’ capture. Feeling a bit puzzled and disappointed, the party thanks Artemis and moves on, heading back westward to the trail that leads north. The next day, the party heads up to the lake and decides to march around it, hoping to draw out whatever inhabits it, to put an end to the threat faced by the local tribes. On the north side of the lake, Kethra finds tracks coming out of the lake and headed up the wooded slopes, but cannot identify them (bad roll). Continuing around the swampy western side, the party is disappointed in that they can neither see anything of merit, nor does anything seem to be interested in them. On the south side of the lake however, the party comes to a small patch of woods filled with webs. As they approach closer, they can see a horse sized spider moving among the trees. They charge into battle, finally glad to have found something! As Kethra engages the first Spider, two more drop from the trees. A swift battle ensues and the spiders are rather easily killed. The party moves back to the trail from the lake, disappointed that they were unable to find anything of the sort that would cause a tribe to fear going anywhere near the lake. Northward on the trail until near nightfall when the party encounters members of the Burberry tribe. In stark contrast to their previous encounters in this area, the tribers invite the party to come to the tribe’s camp for the night. While the tribers are outwardly friendly and social with the party, they find that the tribe has been devastated by losses in the last year and are currently packing up and planning to head north and eastward from this, their ancestral home. Clearly grieving at the need to depart lands that their tribe has lived in “since before our elders were born”, the tribe explains that they’ve lost half of their number in the last year, to Kobolds to the west and to a brutal creature that lives to the east. The creature to the east flies in several times a month and begins singing. The song is such that nearly everyone drops what they are doing and mindlessly approaches the creature, who then carries one of them off. Numerous attempts to kill the creature have failed, as it simply flies off when threatened, returning later with even more brutality. From the descriptions, Kethra recognizes this creature as a Harpy. The party camps with the tribe for the night, vowing to deal with the Harpy in the morning. {End Session 5} [/QUOTE]
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