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Story Hour
Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8050311" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p>Session 3: We Appear To Have Saved A Town</p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger</p><p>Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)</p><p>Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk</p><p>Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)</p><p>Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter</p><p>Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest))</p><p></p><p>GM: - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p></p><p>We ended the previous session in the middle of the night. The rest of the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>4 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 5)</p><p></p><p>We continued up the side path we were on, following the horse tracks that had gone this way from the cart-bandit-gibbering undead thing interaction on the main road.</p><p></p><p>After about half a day on the road the path widened into what appeared to be a tiny village -- there was a small cluster of cottages, though none had smoke rising from the chimneys and all looked dark and cold. In the center of the village, sort of the square in among these cottages, were half a dozen bodies. Five of them looked as though something had burst out of their torsos (like a chestburster from Alien). The sixth one looked as though it had been extensively chewed on and was close to bones.</p><p></p><p>All of the blood was dry, but the corpses had not yet gotten too smelly. It was pretty clear that the bodies were those of the residents of these cottages.</p><p></p><p>There were footprints around the five that had their chests burst open - those looked like the footprints of the grues (the beachballs on stilts). Some of those footprints led to the one that had been chewed on. There were no bite marks on the ones that had been, apparently, hosts to the grues.</p><p></p><p>The horse tracks we’d been following from the main road stopped here for a while and the riders dismounted, but there was little sign of fighting. The only signs of a skirmish were near the body that was partially eaten. The others looked like they just fell where they were standing. The riders dismounted from their horses and just stood in one place, then mounted again and rode off. Eight people from the village followed them on foot.</p><p></p><p>We explored around the empty cottages a bit, making sure there were no survivors. None of the cottages had been ransacked and it didn’t look like people had left in a panic. It did look like the had stopped what they were doing right in the middle of things and stepped calmly outside.</p><p></p><p>We thought that perhaps it had been like what we saw in the caravanserai back at the Knot -- preachers came in and began speaking to the assembled people. Some became like Saeno (the manager of Tashimeet) in the inn, standing completely transfixed and gob-smacked, while the preacher preached. Some of the people listening to the gibberish sermon fell and then had grues burst out of them. Some of the villagers apparently were converted and followed the preachers. One, for whatever reason, did neither and was eaten.</p><p></p><p>A couple of the people who followed the preachers were children. Oh, dear.</p><p></p><p>We continued on down the road to try and catch up to them.</p><p></p><p>Toward the end of the day we all saw something nasty in the road about 75 feet ahead of us -- it looked like a slime mold with many gibbering mouths. Or a blorb of gibbering goo.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: Oh, god, what is that?! Kill it with fire!!</p><p></p><p>Then she cast guiding bolt on it, but was so freaked out that she missed wildly.</p><p></p><p>We proceeded to kill the thing -- Marxine and Vinya getting right up close to it, Elama, Mia, Elderron and Aldalómiel staying back and firing at it with their various ranged attacks. As it got hit it gibbered more and more loudly became more and more distracting, but Marxine and Vinya were both able to keep their wits about them.</p><p></p><p>We killed it, Aldalómiel getting in the final blow, but not before it spit out a glob of bright flashing light-goo that blinded Marxine and Vinya. Before it could take advantage of their blindness, however, it was gone.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: Really really, what the hell was that? I’m over 100 years old and I’ve never seen anything that gross.</p><p></p><p>Vinya poked at it a few times to make sure it was really dead, then Marxine flipped it out of the road with her axe.</p><p></p><p>Ugh.</p><p></p><p>We decided we wanted to be a bit away from it, so we pressed on for another 15 minutes or so before making camp a short distance from the path.</p><p></p><p>Mia offered everyone one of her good berries, which would provide enough sustenance for a whole day.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: The berries are good, but I prefer real food.</p><p>Mia: I understand.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel and Mia foraged for food and then we ate and rested, staying close to one another and keeping the horses close to us as well.</p><p></p><p>During second watch (again -- it’s the witching hour), the white horse (we have a white horse and a brown horse) and Elderron heard gibbering in the distance up the path. It resolved into a three way conversation in Gibberish, as though all of the speakers could clearly understand it as a language. Occasionally, Elderron could understand a word or two. He could also see a bobbing lantern or other light source. He alerted Aldalómiel and Lamie, who were on watch with him.</p><p></p><p>They woke the rest of us, very quietly. As we were quietly waking and getting to our feet, one of the horses nickered. There was a gibbery “Huh?” and the bobbing light began to move toward us more quickly.</p><p></p><p>Mia tied the horses tied securely and safely away from the path and we spread out on either side of it. The figures approached and when Mia could see them she cast Faerie Fire, limning one of them in purple sparkles.</p><p></p><p>The light from the Faerie Fire let us all see that there were two relatively normal looking humans, a man and a woman, and a guy with a tentacle arm. The woman had the faerie fire.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel didn’t mess around, she dropped the normal-looking man with one arrow from her longbow.</p><p></p><p>They were fairly far away, and Marxine was not on her horse, so it took a while for her to get into combat with the tentacle guy. Because of her crazy monk speed, Vinya was able to get right up to the tentacle-arm guy and attacked -- her attack with the quarterstaff missed but she was able to land a kick to his midsection.</p><p></p><p>The woman with the faerie fire screamed, gibbered and ran toward Vinya, wildly swinging a longsword. Aldalómiel shot the tentacle armed guy from out in the darkness, getting his attention with a solid hit, but he couldn’t see out into the darkness to know where it came from -- the ranged attacks from Aldalómiel, Mia, Elderron and Lamie were just coming at them from the night.</p><p></p><p>Cool!</p><p></p><p>The tentacle-armed guy attacked Vinya, hitting first with the tentacle and grappling her, then beating on her with his club. Fortunately before he could hit her again, Mia had dropped the purple-sparkly woman with her crossbow and Marxine and Elderron took out the tentacle guy.</p><p></p><p>Elderron: More of these gibbering things. They keep coming our way. Where are they coming from?</p><p>Vinya, pointing up the road: That way.</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Lamie, I’m feeling pretty poorly.</p><p>Lamie: Good luck with that.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately Mia was able to make more of her good berries and Vinya felt better after eating them.</p><p></p><p>We went back to our camp and the rest of the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>5 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 6)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, we gathered up the bodies of the cultists we’d fought in the middle of the night. Vinya took one of their shortbows and she and Aldalómiel split up the arrows. The guy with the tentacle arm had the concentric circles holy-symbol tattoo on his tentacle arm, like the ones at Tashimeet. Mia examined his arm, to see if the tentacle had been sewn on somehow and found that it was his own arm that had just transformed.</p><p></p><p>Mia: That is not natural. I don’t like that.</p><p></p><p>We burned the bodies and headed out on our way. We hadn’t gotten far when Elama, watching out behind us, saw three <em>emaciated</em> wolves on the road behind us.</p><p></p><p>When the lead wolf noticed that they had been spotted, it looked at Lamie, then it mewed like a cat. It mewed again, then made a noise like a laughing kookaburra.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: Elderron. Elderron!</p><p>Elderron: What was that noise?</p><p></p><p>The rest of us, hearing the kookaburra noise (not native or natural to this northern forest) turned and saw the same wolves we’d encountered a few days earlier on the main road from the Knot.</p><p></p><p>The wolves continued to make a variety of animal noises and Mia figured out that they were gibbering in various forms of animal communication. This was the animal version of the polyglot gibberish the cultists were speaking.</p><p></p><p>Mia: We need to kill them.</p><p></p><p>We proceeded to do just that. Vinya dropped one that had been weakened by other attacks and the skinny runt of the pack with a swing of her quarterstaff and a well-placed kick. Marxine rode up to one on Brown Horse and dropped it with her big axe while still in the saddle.</p><p></p><p>Marxine, patting Brown Horse on the neck: His name is Comrade. He’s been a huge help.</p><p></p><p>We burned the bodies.</p><p></p><p>Rattled by the creepy mewing wolves, we proceeded on our way, cautiously at first, then a bit more relaxed as the day passed and we proceeded.</p><p></p><p>About the time we were starting to look for a place to make camp, two or three hundred feet ahead of us through the leafless trees, we saw a larger cluster of homes with a bonfire in the middle of them.</p><p></p><p>Elderron sent Oda the owl flying up to take a look.</p><p></p><p>Without a word to anyone, Mia’s large form shimmered and shifted and a silvery-grey fox stood in her place. She gestured toward the village with her head and then ran off in that direction.</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Well! That’s cool!</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel slid off into the woods, getting lost in the bare branches and dark tree trunks, and moved in the direction of the village as well.</p><p></p><p>They all saw a big bonfire in the middle of the town square. There were about twenty people there -- most of them were standing agape and stupefied. There was a dwarf near the fire, orating in gibberish. Two dwarves were at the back of the crowd, presumably keeping watch for anyone to break ranks. A couple of the grues were among the gaping people. A couple of the mindghouls (the gibbering-whispering undead things we fought in the road) were at the edges of the crowd. They weren’t attacking anyone, they were just standing, looking at the preacher, and drooling slightly.</p><p></p><p>Mia, after surveying the situation from the safety of the forest edge, circled around out of hearing of the preacher and ran back to us. She changed back in mid-stride, her Firbolg form stretching and shimmering out of the fox as she ran.</p><p></p><p>Mia: We’ve got to go now. They’re trying to turn the village…</p><p></p><p>We thought for a moment about coming up with some sort of strategy or tactical approach that involved circling around the city, but in the end decided just to try and blast them -- focusing first on stopping the Orator from orating.</p><p></p><p>Elderron started things off by firing off a magic missile spell, hitting the orator with all three darts. This caused a bit of a hiccup in the flow of the oration, but it didn’t stop, unfortunately. The two tentacle arm guys turned around in response and moved into cover behind the two buildings.</p><p></p><p>Mia cast an entangle spell that got two of the cultists and the orator (and some civilians) and restrained all of them. The nearest grue and mindghoul began moving toward the party, the grue getting relatively close to Aldalómiel and Mia.</p><p></p><p>Ignoring it, Aldalómiel put her hunter’s mark on the orator and shot him well, but he continued preaching. Vinya moved to interpose herself between the grue and her friends, dropping it with a blow from her quarterstaff followed by a kick. Lamie gave a blessing to Vinya, Aldalómiel and Marxine.</p><p></p><p>Marxine, on Comrade, rode past the acolyte and attacked a cultist. She split his head in half with her axe.</p><p></p><p>In response to all of that, the Orator stopped with his preaching and gestured at Marxine. She dodged out of the way of his sacred flame spell.</p><p></p><p>At this point things seemed to be going pretty well. But then, the tentacle-arm guy near Marxine grappled and restrained her with his tentacle and then beat her with his club. A cultist took advantage of her being restrained to attack with a longsword. And suddenly, Marxine was looking pretty hurt.</p><p></p><p>A mindghoul attacked Aldalómiel -- hitting with its slashing claws. Mia moved into position to flank it and cast shillelagh, hitting it with her magical club. Aldalómiel pulled out her shortsword and attacked it as well.</p><p></p><p>Vinya, seeing that they had the mindghoul pinned between them and that Marxine was exposed and alone with lots of people all around her, ran past the acolyte (who Marxine had already ignored) shouting insults as she passed and attacked the cultist on Marxine with her quarterstaff. She then tapped into her ki-energy for a flurry of blows, and dropped the cultist with her first punch. There was no one else she could reach with the second punch in the flurry, which was frustrating.</p><p></p><p>The acolyte, motivated apparently by Vinya’s run-by insults, moved to attack her, but missed. Lamie cast a sacred flame at the one that Aldalómiel and Mia were fighting and then moved into close combat.</p><p></p><p>Marxine, badly hurt, took a deep breath and got a second wind, then tried to get out of the tentacle-guy’s grapple but only seemed to wind herself in tighter.</p><p></p><p>The Orator created a large, gimballed spinning thing as a spiritual weapon right next to Vinya and hit her with it, leaving her badly injured.</p><p></p><p>Fortunately, Elderron moved into range where he could use his firebolts and shot the preacher, dropping him. The spiritual weapon, having done its damage to Vinya, hovered and whirled.</p><p></p><p>The tentacle-arm guy on Marxine hit her with his club, taking advantage of having her restrained, and hit for as much as she’d healed herself up by with her second wind. The other tentacle guy finally made it into the knot around Vinya and Marxine, hitting Vinya hard.</p><p></p><p>At this point, Marxine and Vinya each had two remaining hitpoints. They were surrounded by the acolyte, a mindghoul, the two tentacle-arm guys and two cultists.</p><p></p><p>One of the grues that had been in the enthralled crowd of villagers went and started eating the fallen Orator. The other began moving toward where Aldalómiel and Mia were still trying to drop the other mindghoul.</p><p></p><p>The mindghoul near Vinya moved up behind her and whispered in her ear, or tried to, but she was swaying from the tentacle-arm guy’s blows and swayed out of its way. The other one was dropped by Aldalómiel after failing to hit her.</p><p></p><p>Vinya hit the mindghoul on her, thanks to the blessing that Lamie gave her. She summoned her ki-energy and moved into a defensive stance against her attackers. Then she pulled her potion of greater healing out of her belt pouch and handed it to Marxine</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Drink this if you live that long.</p><p></p><p>Lamie swung her sword forward into the air, sending a blast of force and sound forward as she cast a thunderwave spell, getting the grue, the acolyte, the mindghoul and the tentacle-arm on Vinya. Elderron moved up near her and cast a burning hands on the same group, except the mindghoul. He dropped the acolyte, thinning the herd a bit.</p><p></p><p>Marxine drank the healing potion and felt much stronger for it. Which was good because the tentacle-arm who had her grappled, immediately hit her with his club and would have dropped her if she hadn’t gotten to drink the potion first.</p><p></p><p>Vinya’s patient defense paid off because all the attacks against her, from the tentacle guy, the cultist, and the grue missed.</p><p></p><p>Mia shot the tentacle guy on Vinya and dropped him with her crossbow. Aldalómiel shot one of the cultists straight through with an arrow, killing him instantly. Vinya golfed a grue out of existence with her quarterstaff then moved around to a position behind the tentacle arm guy grappling Marxine (as yet untouched) and rabbit-punched him in the back of the head. Elderron got a great shot on the tentacle guy grappling Marxine with a firebolt, but despite getting a critical hit and doing huge damage, the guy didn’t drop.</p><p></p><p>In fact he hit Marxine with his club again, but didn’t drop her.</p><p></p><p>Lamie hit a cultist, who then turned around and hit her. Which was a big mistake, because lightning crackled out of the wound and up the cultist’s sword into her arm. Everyone looking in that direction could see the cultist’s skeleton glow inside the skin, and then she fell.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel moved her hunter’s mark to the tentacle guy holding Marxine and shot him nicely and Vinya immediately hit him again in the back of the head, this time a hard blow with the quarterstaff, finally dropping him and releasing Marxine. Vinya, feeling pretty badly injured, moved around to be near and a bit behind Mia.</p><p></p><p>Marxine, released from her restraints and angry at being neutralized for so much of the fight, swung at the grue next to Comrade with her axe, like a polo swing, and cleaved it entirely in half.</p><p></p><p>And all was quiet.</p><p></p><p>In the quiet after the fight, we noticed that the villagers had been starting to shake off the effects of the Orator’s speech and were looking around in bleary-eyed confusion and fear.</p><p></p><p>Vinya found someone in the group who looked older and maybe like they could be in charge. She explained that these people had come in and were preaching about the Hunger Between Worlds -- some people would have gone crazy and followed them, some would have turned into monsters. We don’t know what makes some people go one way and some the other.</p><p></p><p>We explained that they wer safe now and nothing bad had happened here. However, the last village back down the path was now a ghost town -- everyone from that village was dead except a few children who followed the cultists. The elder looked around and saw them in the crowd. He said that the villagers would take them in and take care of them.</p><p></p><p>While Vinya was explaining the situation, the others were searching the bodies, finding a pair of goggles pushed up to the Orator’s forehead, but nothing else of interest. They took the goggles then moved the bodies into the fire for cremation</p><p></p><p>The town elder pointed to two horses tied up near one of the houses.</p><p></p><p>Elder: They rode those horses into town. They’re yours if you want them.</p><p></p><p>We thanked him and said that we would like them. Looking through the saddlebags, we found stuff:</p><p></p><p>90 gp (15 each)</p><p>1500 sp (250 each)</p><p>1500 cp (250 each)</p><p>3 x 10 gp gems (we can either hold these as party treasure, or divide up the value among the party and just have some people get their treasure as gems -- if we do that we’d each wind out with 20 gp each. Vinya would be more than happy to take her share of that as two gems.)</p><p></p><p>There were also some interesting looking items.</p><p></p><p>Mia took the Orator’s goggles and held them to her eyes and found that she could see 60 feet into the darkness (goggles of night vision).</p><p></p><p>Mia: Wow!! There’s a squirrel out there in the forest.</p><p>Vinya: Those are yours.</p><p></p><p>There was also a potion of greater healing to replace the one that got used. That went to Marxine since she’s always going to be right in the middle of things mixing it up. Finally, there was a bottle of Oil of Slipperiness. For the moment, Vinya is carrying that, but it will be used when needed by whoever in the party needs to use it.</p><p></p><p>The villagers gave us a place to stay for the night and the night passed without incident.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8050311, member: 7016699"] Session 3: We Appear To Have Saved A Town Dramatis Personae: Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest) Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster) Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter Mia - Firbolg Druid (Circle of the Land (Forest)) GM: - Everyone Else We ended the previous session in the middle of the night. The rest of the night passed without incident. 4 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 5) We continued up the side path we were on, following the horse tracks that had gone this way from the cart-bandit-gibbering undead thing interaction on the main road. After about half a day on the road the path widened into what appeared to be a tiny village -- there was a small cluster of cottages, though none had smoke rising from the chimneys and all looked dark and cold. In the center of the village, sort of the square in among these cottages, were half a dozen bodies. Five of them looked as though something had burst out of their torsos (like a chestburster from Alien). The sixth one looked as though it had been extensively chewed on and was close to bones. All of the blood was dry, but the corpses had not yet gotten too smelly. It was pretty clear that the bodies were those of the residents of these cottages. There were footprints around the five that had their chests burst open - those looked like the footprints of the grues (the beachballs on stilts). Some of those footprints led to the one that had been chewed on. There were no bite marks on the ones that had been, apparently, hosts to the grues. The horse tracks we’d been following from the main road stopped here for a while and the riders dismounted, but there was little sign of fighting. The only signs of a skirmish were near the body that was partially eaten. The others looked like they just fell where they were standing. The riders dismounted from their horses and just stood in one place, then mounted again and rode off. Eight people from the village followed them on foot. We explored around the empty cottages a bit, making sure there were no survivors. None of the cottages had been ransacked and it didn’t look like people had left in a panic. It did look like the had stopped what they were doing right in the middle of things and stepped calmly outside. We thought that perhaps it had been like what we saw in the caravanserai back at the Knot -- preachers came in and began speaking to the assembled people. Some became like Saeno (the manager of Tashimeet) in the inn, standing completely transfixed and gob-smacked, while the preacher preached. Some of the people listening to the gibberish sermon fell and then had grues burst out of them. Some of the villagers apparently were converted and followed the preachers. One, for whatever reason, did neither and was eaten. A couple of the people who followed the preachers were children. Oh, dear. We continued on down the road to try and catch up to them. Toward the end of the day we all saw something nasty in the road about 75 feet ahead of us -- it looked like a slime mold with many gibbering mouths. Or a blorb of gibbering goo. Lamie: Oh, god, what is that?! Kill it with fire!! Then she cast guiding bolt on it, but was so freaked out that she missed wildly. We proceeded to kill the thing -- Marxine and Vinya getting right up close to it, Elama, Mia, Elderron and Aldalómiel staying back and firing at it with their various ranged attacks. As it got hit it gibbered more and more loudly became more and more distracting, but Marxine and Vinya were both able to keep their wits about them. We killed it, Aldalómiel getting in the final blow, but not before it spit out a glob of bright flashing light-goo that blinded Marxine and Vinya. Before it could take advantage of their blindness, however, it was gone. Lamie: Really really, what the hell was that? I’m over 100 years old and I’ve never seen anything that gross. Vinya poked at it a few times to make sure it was really dead, then Marxine flipped it out of the road with her axe. Ugh. We decided we wanted to be a bit away from it, so we pressed on for another 15 minutes or so before making camp a short distance from the path. Mia offered everyone one of her good berries, which would provide enough sustenance for a whole day. Lamie: The berries are good, but I prefer real food. Mia: I understand. Aldalómiel and Mia foraged for food and then we ate and rested, staying close to one another and keeping the horses close to us as well. During second watch (again -- it’s the witching hour), the white horse (we have a white horse and a brown horse) and Elderron heard gibbering in the distance up the path. It resolved into a three way conversation in Gibberish, as though all of the speakers could clearly understand it as a language. Occasionally, Elderron could understand a word or two. He could also see a bobbing lantern or other light source. He alerted Aldalómiel and Lamie, who were on watch with him. They woke the rest of us, very quietly. As we were quietly waking and getting to our feet, one of the horses nickered. There was a gibbery “Huh?” and the bobbing light began to move toward us more quickly. Mia tied the horses tied securely and safely away from the path and we spread out on either side of it. The figures approached and when Mia could see them she cast Faerie Fire, limning one of them in purple sparkles. The light from the Faerie Fire let us all see that there were two relatively normal looking humans, a man and a woman, and a guy with a tentacle arm. The woman had the faerie fire. Aldalómiel didn’t mess around, she dropped the normal-looking man with one arrow from her longbow. They were fairly far away, and Marxine was not on her horse, so it took a while for her to get into combat with the tentacle guy. Because of her crazy monk speed, Vinya was able to get right up to the tentacle-arm guy and attacked -- her attack with the quarterstaff missed but she was able to land a kick to his midsection. The woman with the faerie fire screamed, gibbered and ran toward Vinya, wildly swinging a longsword. Aldalómiel shot the tentacle armed guy from out in the darkness, getting his attention with a solid hit, but he couldn’t see out into the darkness to know where it came from -- the ranged attacks from Aldalómiel, Mia, Elderron and Lamie were just coming at them from the night. Cool! The tentacle-armed guy attacked Vinya, hitting first with the tentacle and grappling her, then beating on her with his club. Fortunately before he could hit her again, Mia had dropped the purple-sparkly woman with her crossbow and Marxine and Elderron took out the tentacle guy. Elderron: More of these gibbering things. They keep coming our way. Where are they coming from? Vinya, pointing up the road: That way. Vinya: Lamie, I’m feeling pretty poorly. Lamie: Good luck with that. Fortunately Mia was able to make more of her good berries and Vinya felt better after eating them. We went back to our camp and the rest of the night passed without incident. 5 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 6) The next morning, we gathered up the bodies of the cultists we’d fought in the middle of the night. Vinya took one of their shortbows and she and Aldalómiel split up the arrows. The guy with the tentacle arm had the concentric circles holy-symbol tattoo on his tentacle arm, like the ones at Tashimeet. Mia examined his arm, to see if the tentacle had been sewn on somehow and found that it was his own arm that had just transformed. Mia: That is not natural. I don’t like that. We burned the bodies and headed out on our way. We hadn’t gotten far when Elama, watching out behind us, saw three [I]emaciated[/I] wolves on the road behind us. When the lead wolf noticed that they had been spotted, it looked at Lamie, then it mewed like a cat. It mewed again, then made a noise like a laughing kookaburra. Lamie: Elderron. Elderron! Elderron: What was that noise? The rest of us, hearing the kookaburra noise (not native or natural to this northern forest) turned and saw the same wolves we’d encountered a few days earlier on the main road from the Knot. The wolves continued to make a variety of animal noises and Mia figured out that they were gibbering in various forms of animal communication. This was the animal version of the polyglot gibberish the cultists were speaking. Mia: We need to kill them. We proceeded to do just that. Vinya dropped one that had been weakened by other attacks and the skinny runt of the pack with a swing of her quarterstaff and a well-placed kick. Marxine rode up to one on Brown Horse and dropped it with her big axe while still in the saddle. Marxine, patting Brown Horse on the neck: His name is Comrade. He’s been a huge help. We burned the bodies. Rattled by the creepy mewing wolves, we proceeded on our way, cautiously at first, then a bit more relaxed as the day passed and we proceeded. About the time we were starting to look for a place to make camp, two or three hundred feet ahead of us through the leafless trees, we saw a larger cluster of homes with a bonfire in the middle of them. Elderron sent Oda the owl flying up to take a look. Without a word to anyone, Mia’s large form shimmered and shifted and a silvery-grey fox stood in her place. She gestured toward the village with her head and then ran off in that direction. Vinya: Well! That’s cool! Aldalómiel slid off into the woods, getting lost in the bare branches and dark tree trunks, and moved in the direction of the village as well. They all saw a big bonfire in the middle of the town square. There were about twenty people there -- most of them were standing agape and stupefied. There was a dwarf near the fire, orating in gibberish. Two dwarves were at the back of the crowd, presumably keeping watch for anyone to break ranks. A couple of the grues were among the gaping people. A couple of the mindghouls (the gibbering-whispering undead things we fought in the road) were at the edges of the crowd. They weren’t attacking anyone, they were just standing, looking at the preacher, and drooling slightly. Mia, after surveying the situation from the safety of the forest edge, circled around out of hearing of the preacher and ran back to us. She changed back in mid-stride, her Firbolg form stretching and shimmering out of the fox as she ran. Mia: We’ve got to go now. They’re trying to turn the village… We thought for a moment about coming up with some sort of strategy or tactical approach that involved circling around the city, but in the end decided just to try and blast them -- focusing first on stopping the Orator from orating. Elderron started things off by firing off a magic missile spell, hitting the orator with all three darts. This caused a bit of a hiccup in the flow of the oration, but it didn’t stop, unfortunately. The two tentacle arm guys turned around in response and moved into cover behind the two buildings. Mia cast an entangle spell that got two of the cultists and the orator (and some civilians) and restrained all of them. The nearest grue and mindghoul began moving toward the party, the grue getting relatively close to Aldalómiel and Mia. Ignoring it, Aldalómiel put her hunter’s mark on the orator and shot him well, but he continued preaching. Vinya moved to interpose herself between the grue and her friends, dropping it with a blow from her quarterstaff followed by a kick. Lamie gave a blessing to Vinya, Aldalómiel and Marxine. Marxine, on Comrade, rode past the acolyte and attacked a cultist. She split his head in half with her axe. In response to all of that, the Orator stopped with his preaching and gestured at Marxine. She dodged out of the way of his sacred flame spell. At this point things seemed to be going pretty well. But then, the tentacle-arm guy near Marxine grappled and restrained her with his tentacle and then beat her with his club. A cultist took advantage of her being restrained to attack with a longsword. And suddenly, Marxine was looking pretty hurt. A mindghoul attacked Aldalómiel -- hitting with its slashing claws. Mia moved into position to flank it and cast shillelagh, hitting it with her magical club. Aldalómiel pulled out her shortsword and attacked it as well. Vinya, seeing that they had the mindghoul pinned between them and that Marxine was exposed and alone with lots of people all around her, ran past the acolyte (who Marxine had already ignored) shouting insults as she passed and attacked the cultist on Marxine with her quarterstaff. She then tapped into her ki-energy for a flurry of blows, and dropped the cultist with her first punch. There was no one else she could reach with the second punch in the flurry, which was frustrating. The acolyte, motivated apparently by Vinya’s run-by insults, moved to attack her, but missed. Lamie cast a sacred flame at the one that Aldalómiel and Mia were fighting and then moved into close combat. Marxine, badly hurt, took a deep breath and got a second wind, then tried to get out of the tentacle-guy’s grapple but only seemed to wind herself in tighter. The Orator created a large, gimballed spinning thing as a spiritual weapon right next to Vinya and hit her with it, leaving her badly injured. Fortunately, Elderron moved into range where he could use his firebolts and shot the preacher, dropping him. The spiritual weapon, having done its damage to Vinya, hovered and whirled. The tentacle-arm guy on Marxine hit her with his club, taking advantage of having her restrained, and hit for as much as she’d healed herself up by with her second wind. The other tentacle guy finally made it into the knot around Vinya and Marxine, hitting Vinya hard. At this point, Marxine and Vinya each had two remaining hitpoints. They were surrounded by the acolyte, a mindghoul, the two tentacle-arm guys and two cultists. One of the grues that had been in the enthralled crowd of villagers went and started eating the fallen Orator. The other began moving toward where Aldalómiel and Mia were still trying to drop the other mindghoul. The mindghoul near Vinya moved up behind her and whispered in her ear, or tried to, but she was swaying from the tentacle-arm guy’s blows and swayed out of its way. The other one was dropped by Aldalómiel after failing to hit her. Vinya hit the mindghoul on her, thanks to the blessing that Lamie gave her. She summoned her ki-energy and moved into a defensive stance against her attackers. Then she pulled her potion of greater healing out of her belt pouch and handed it to Marxine Vinya: Drink this if you live that long. Lamie swung her sword forward into the air, sending a blast of force and sound forward as she cast a thunderwave spell, getting the grue, the acolyte, the mindghoul and the tentacle-arm on Vinya. Elderron moved up near her and cast a burning hands on the same group, except the mindghoul. He dropped the acolyte, thinning the herd a bit. Marxine drank the healing potion and felt much stronger for it. Which was good because the tentacle-arm who had her grappled, immediately hit her with his club and would have dropped her if she hadn’t gotten to drink the potion first. Vinya’s patient defense paid off because all the attacks against her, from the tentacle guy, the cultist, and the grue missed. Mia shot the tentacle guy on Vinya and dropped him with her crossbow. Aldalómiel shot one of the cultists straight through with an arrow, killing him instantly. Vinya golfed a grue out of existence with her quarterstaff then moved around to a position behind the tentacle arm guy grappling Marxine (as yet untouched) and rabbit-punched him in the back of the head. Elderron got a great shot on the tentacle guy grappling Marxine with a firebolt, but despite getting a critical hit and doing huge damage, the guy didn’t drop. In fact he hit Marxine with his club again, but didn’t drop her. Lamie hit a cultist, who then turned around and hit her. Which was a big mistake, because lightning crackled out of the wound and up the cultist’s sword into her arm. Everyone looking in that direction could see the cultist’s skeleton glow inside the skin, and then she fell. Aldalómiel moved her hunter’s mark to the tentacle guy holding Marxine and shot him nicely and Vinya immediately hit him again in the back of the head, this time a hard blow with the quarterstaff, finally dropping him and releasing Marxine. Vinya, feeling pretty badly injured, moved around to be near and a bit behind Mia. Marxine, released from her restraints and angry at being neutralized for so much of the fight, swung at the grue next to Comrade with her axe, like a polo swing, and cleaved it entirely in half. And all was quiet. In the quiet after the fight, we noticed that the villagers had been starting to shake off the effects of the Orator’s speech and were looking around in bleary-eyed confusion and fear. Vinya found someone in the group who looked older and maybe like they could be in charge. She explained that these people had come in and were preaching about the Hunger Between Worlds -- some people would have gone crazy and followed them, some would have turned into monsters. We don’t know what makes some people go one way and some the other. We explained that they wer safe now and nothing bad had happened here. However, the last village back down the path was now a ghost town -- everyone from that village was dead except a few children who followed the cultists. The elder looked around and saw them in the crowd. He said that the villagers would take them in and take care of them. While Vinya was explaining the situation, the others were searching the bodies, finding a pair of goggles pushed up to the Orator’s forehead, but nothing else of interest. They took the goggles then moved the bodies into the fire for cremation The town elder pointed to two horses tied up near one of the houses. Elder: They rode those horses into town. They’re yours if you want them. We thanked him and said that we would like them. Looking through the saddlebags, we found stuff: 90 gp (15 each) 1500 sp (250 each) 1500 cp (250 each) 3 x 10 gp gems (we can either hold these as party treasure, or divide up the value among the party and just have some people get their treasure as gems -- if we do that we’d each wind out with 20 gp each. Vinya would be more than happy to take her share of that as two gems.) There were also some interesting looking items. Mia took the Orator’s goggles and held them to her eyes and found that she could see 60 feet into the darkness (goggles of night vision). Mia: Wow!! There’s a squirrel out there in the forest. Vinya: Those are yours. There was also a potion of greater healing to replace the one that got used. That went to Marxine since she’s always going to be right in the middle of things mixing it up. Finally, there was a bottle of Oil of Slipperiness. For the moment, Vinya is carrying that, but it will be used when needed by whoever in the party needs to use it. The villagers gave us a place to stay for the night and the night passed without incident. [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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