That night, the party has a dream (the elf has a meditative state) wherein they see a two huge greenish glowing figures, one a biped (some ogre or giant) and the other a shapechanger, first a wolf, then a bear, then a snake, then a woman. They are wrestling and fighting. There is a crack louder than any thunder, and they flee from each other. The crack seems to rip the sky itself asunder, leaving behind it a greenish curtain. Yet the dreamers have a feeling of peace when this occurs. When the party awakes that night (for all of them awaken after that dream) they are shocked to find that the real sky has that glowing curtain! Thus the northern lights are invented. Oh, and half the party is missing!
Sir Andrea, Sir Chris, Lady Leanne, Cassandra and Sir Anton soldier on to the city of Bridgeport, which is Count Randolph’s. At the city gate they find Sir Bradly and his cohort Brother George. They were taken into heaven and told that “albion and morgan are at odds”. This took 3 seconds, yet they arrived on earth just now, 4 days later.
The party enters the city and gains an audience with Count Randolph. He is currently treating with merchants about hiring mercenaries to protect his land from the waves of invading Saxons. Cassandra recognizes one of the merchants as her brother, who went missing in a giant raid 6 000 years ago! Also, all the merchants are wearing gloves.
The gloves make the party suspicious, and when the merchants ask Randolph’s son to help them finalize negotiations, Sir Anton offers to go with them. They go down a hall into a separate room while Lady Leanne tries to negotiate with Count Randolph, who wants 800 men to help blunt the Saxons. Sure enough the gloves come off and the merchants turn out to be wights (advanced), and attack both Sir Anton and Randolph’s son, who fights valiantly but perishes at their hands (his corpse looks shriveled and old). Then the “merchants” start yelling “The knight has gone mad! He has used sorcery on the young lord!” This causes some confusion, as the “merchants” put on their gloves again, but Cassandra stops them from escaping with a shape wood spell on the doors, and then combat ensues in earnest. The wights are eventually defeated, though a guard falls to them. The guards are actually quite young, older men having fallen in the numerous Saxon raids (as did the count’s other three sons). Count Randolph gives them each 100 gp, which some donate to the poor or the church (good for nobility!).
Cassandra ends up killing her “Brother” and helps to burn the corpses, keeping her “brother”’s hair. Later, she is visited by him in a dream, and thanked for being “Set free to move on”. Yep, that was her brother’s ignoble half that was the wight. But now the noble part could move on.
Oh, and Leanne finds this letter on one of the Wights:
March 18, 1246
Dear Lucius,
I trust that my messenger finds you in good health. Your suspicions seem to be correct. There is some powerful sorceress at work here, up to nothing good. Yet I believe I have found a map to the cave which you think may contain the means to defeat her. I copy the map here. Meet me on Midsummer’s day at the seaport on the southern tip of Greenland. Together with my squire we will journey together. It will not take long, for the mouth of the cave is 30 miles due north and five miles due east of there.
Please give my regards to our family. I trust that our brother Caius has outgrown his difficult adolescence and is continuing his training in the knightly skills, and that the rest of the family is in good health.
Sincerely,
Magnus
Note that the present year is 1249, and this party started adventuring in 1248.
The next day, some ships that Randolph sent as a punitive expedition vs. the Saxons returns! Three of them have sick sailors, and rats, bats, and snakes leave each of the ships respectively (the druid tries to stop some of them with wind walls and such, with fair success for a while). The fourth ship flies a skull (not a flag) and is manned by unearthly creatures (Gargoyles, suitably advanced). Some are as tall as a man, and some are twice as tall! There is also one that is red and six feet tall (here I just borrowed a Dracha from Monte Cook and gave it all six possibly racial levels – had a kicker with the breath weapon but ultimately a glass jaw, compared to the ‘goyles - Sir Chris polymorphed it into a rather surprised red pidgeon, which then flew off, in pidgeon-brain mode). Bradley’s cohort priest did a lot of healing.
[This was my experiment: the monsters spread through the town, hurting innocents. The party members could fight those they chose to, individually. Sir Anton, Bradley and Andrea picked out large ones, and Sir Chris went after the red one. Lady Leanne and Cassandra double-teamed small ones. Afterwards, wounded party members sought out small ones. This way the party could sort of “Set their own level” individually, and those that wanted to “cheat” could, and those that wanted “heroic single combat” got it. I think it worked very well, although some party members came rather close to dying.]
Of note: Sir Chris used the Lance of Longinus. I added a feature that every time it drew blood, her maximum nobility went down by one (she hit only once, so it sits at 99). Also, in combat, she had to roll percentiles and if she got equal to or over this “ceiling” (99 or 00), she would use the spear even if she wanted to cast a spell or use a different weapon. She tried to hit and missed with the spear a few times, got one hit in, and then switched to her sword. I then found out that every attack (not just every hit) made with the spear caused (for her) 10 points of nobility loss! At the end of the combat she was down to 6! But I will tie the “ceiling” of maximum nobility to drawing blood, not just attempted attacks.
Crap, I forgot that Sir Chris has an arcane failure chance in armour! Oh well – next time!
It got really nasty when a gargoyle grabbed the spear! This led to the death of a peasant, (when the gargoyle was killed, the spear was dropped, hit a peasant, and then was grabbed by another, smaller, gargoyle) and also the permanent wounding of Sir Chris’s White Hart familiar/mount! Luckily, Sir Andrea was unconscious for some of this, since the peasant’s body turned to ash! Oh, and Cassandra the druid turned into a giant octopus. Effective in grappling (she had already a fly spell on her from Sir Chris) but she had to hold her breath.
At this point, Count Randolph was so grateful that he gave the party members each 500 gp. Some party members gave this to charity to help those attacked by gargoyles. Some people were coughing like those sailors on the first three ships, and there were rats, bats and snakes all through Bridgeport!
A lot of major gains and losses of nobility. Cassandra went down some. Sir Chris went down a LOT. Sirs Anton and Andrea and Bradley all did well (as did Bradley’s cohort).
We left it with Leanne having some plans to try to contain this potential plague. A hundred years early, I know, but I couldn’t resist.
As a side note: I may have to end the campaign in May, as I will be working full time in the summer. There are options: Blair could take over as DM, for example. Anyhow, just wanted to give a heads up.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
If he bites the dust he might have to get used to carrying a fishtank with him as breathing apparatus. 
