Down to Erthe (D&D 3.5 campaign)

Richards

Legend
This afternoon we have the last adventure (the 100th) scheduled for my "Dreams of Erthe" campaign. So now seems like a good time to start up the thread for my follow-on campaign, "Down to Erthe." This one will take place in the same game world, but just like my second campaign ("The Kordovian Adventurers Guild") took place 20 years after my first campaign ("Wing Three") in a modified Greyhawk universe, this new campaign will take place 20 years after the events of "Dreams of Erthe" in my homebrewed game world.

There will be several noticeable differences in this new campaign. While the five PCs in "Dreams of Erthe" were all dreamwalkers, able to enter the dreams of others and manipulate them to some extent, I've decided this new campaign won't be touching the Dreamlands - that part of the game world has already been explored to my satisfaction. So this one will be a more "back to basics" campaign, although I always try to incorporate something different into each new campaign to make it stand out, and this one is no exception. ("The Kordovian Adventurers Guild" introduced Spelljammer and Gamma World; "Dreams of Erthe" focused on dreams and also incorporated the Giant Monster Rampage game.) For "Down to Erthe," I'll be incorporating races and classes from Oriental Adventures and likely drawing upon the Kara-Tur game setting, mostly due to the new PC of my son Logan. (I also have another game I intend to incorporate into this new campaign, but I'll keep that under wraps for now.)

So, let's discuss the new PCs.

My son Logan decided he wants to run a female snow fox hengeyokai wu jen named Shiroko. She's being hunted by a powerful lord from her home country and has snuck aboard a ship headed for Armaturia, the Australia-sized continent that was the base of operations for the last campaign and will be where the action starts in the new campaign. As wu jen have to obey an ever-increasing list of self-imposed taboos, Logan's decided her first one is she can only take on her animal and hybrid forms (not her human form), lest she lose all spellcasting abilities for that day. However, her hybrid form isn't a human body with a fox head (as is normal for her race); rather, it's a human-looking face with the addition of large fox ears, and a bushy fox tail. Here's the image Logan chose for Shiroko:

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Next up is Vicki, who has come up with a fairly odd PC: she wants to run a mermaid scout (Vicki's a big mermaid fan, with a large collection of mermaid statuettes and other items - she's pretty easy to shop for at Christmas), but as this isn't going to be an aquatic-themed campaign, I devised a way for her to have a "second" body she can morph into, so she'll be running a human scout on land and a mermaid scout in the water, swapping bodies as needed. Her PC's name is Adrielle, and these are the images she'll be using for her two forms:

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Vicki's husband Dan has decided to run a human monk named Brendan Conaill. Brendan's not part of a monk training monastery or anything; rather, he's a tough, self-taught bruiser loosely associated with a local thieves guild in Port Duralia, the main city where the campaign will be starting. He had a custom-made mini made at Hero Forge depicting his new PC:

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And that, believe it or not, is it. In my previous campaigns, we've also had Dan and Vicki's sons Jacob and Joey as players, and my own nephew Harry has been gaming with us since partway through my second campaign. But now Harry's off to college this fall as well, and he's made the decision not to run a PC in either my new campaign or the one Logan's starting up soon. So, much like I did in "The Kordovian Adventurers Guild," I'll be adding an NPC healer to join the party. I've also come up with a logical way for the healer NPC to fade into the background, stepping forward to provide healing to the PCs as needed but otherwise avoiding combat or anything else but perhaps the occasional plot hook, which will prevent the players from having to swap off running a second character each session. (I've dubbed this approach "Schrödinger's NPC.") We'll see how it plays out, but it'll be the better part of a month before we start up the new campaign, due to some upcoming vacations and whatnot.

(Once the healer NPC shows up, I'll add the relevant image to this thread.)

(Edit: Today, Joe announced he'd like to join our new campaigns after all, so once he chooses a PC I'll update this with his details.)

Johnathan
 
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Okay, Joe's made his PC. He'll be running a changeling rogue named Kruz Taszan. Note this will not be an Eberron-styled changeling (human with doppelganger blood), but rather a mythological "fey switched at birth with a mortal baby" changeling, as per the PC race write-up in a Dragon article (in issue #304) by Gwendolyn Kestrel. So now I'll be deciding who his fey parents are/were and why he was left on the Material Plane to be raised. (Fortunately, I'll have plenty of time to figure that out before it becomes an issue in the campaign.) And he's decided he'll be part of the thieves guild with which Brendan is allied, so they'll probably start the campaign already knowing each other.

Here's the image Joe chose to represent Kruz:

Kruz Taszan 01.jpg


Our first adventure is scheduled for this Saturday.

Johnathan
 

ADVENTURE 1: DOWN UNDER

PC Roster:
Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 1​
Brendan Conaill, human monk 1​
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 1​
Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 1​

NPC Roster:
Hoppy, mongrelfolk adept 1​
Manta Surfwader, halfling ranger 1​

Game Session Date: 19 July 2025

- - -

It was late afternoon in Port Duralia, although due to the extremely dark clouds that had suddenly rolled in, it seemed almost as dark as twilight. The weather didn't bother Shiroko, though: she was glad to see land once again in sight, after a month or more at sea. The halfling vessel, a massive barge towed by a pair of baleen whales, had transported a load of goods from Shiroko's homeland of Sokoku, a small island nation only recently opened up to trade with the outside world. The barge's arrival in Sokoku had been a timely one, as the young wu jen desperately needed to flee from the bestial attentions of Lord Tajūkan, a local ruler with a taste for those of an animalistic nature. Shiroko, a snow fox hengeyokai, had attracted his attention and it was all the young woman could do to escape him and his small army of retainers. She knew staying in Sokoku would only eventually see herself caught up in his clutches, so she took the first opportunity to leave everything she knew behind.

But now, her new life in a new land was about to begin. The halfling deckhand, a ranger named Manta Surfwader, was rowing at a steady beat, drawing the two-person rowboat past the massive towers protecting the harbor from attack - the pillars rose up from the sea floor in a gentle arc, and each had barriers that could drop in place to prevent larger boats from making it to shore. But a small rowboat was no problem, and Shiroko sat in the back of the small vessel, admiring Manta's rhythmic movements as he broke through the waves towards shore.

But then, in a single moment, everything went from tranquil to chaotic. A pair of scaled hands rose up from the side of the boat and clamped down upon the top of its starboard side, while someone else pushed up from below the port side at the same time. Just that quickly, Shiroko and Manta were tossed over the side of the boat to splash into the cold waters of the bay.

Having fled her homeland with much haste, Shiroko didn't have much in the way of belongings with her: her tube containing her spell-scrolls (which she hoped was as watertight as she had been led to believe, but had never actually tested for herself), the umbrella she carried with her at all times, and a backpack with a few sets of spare clothes. She ended up beneath the water hanging onto her umbrella with one hand; it had trapped a bunch of air beneath it and as a result was keeping her afloat near the top of the water, whereas Manta had dropped to 10 or 15 feet below her before kicking back up towards the surface. But Shiroko, whose visual acuity was much greater than that of a halfling, was the first to make out what had toppled them from their craft: a pair of reptilian humanoids with sloping brows and a fin running down their spines like that of a fish: sahuagin, the feared sea devils of the deep!

Still holding her umbrella with one hand, Shiroko kicked away from the nearest sahuagin, trying to put some distance between them. But it was a much better swimmer than she was, and with a few strong kicks and a swish of its tail it had caught up to her, slashing at her with a set of claws. Blood pooled from the claw marks scoring along her abdomen; below her, she could see the other sahuagin attacking Manta in a similar manner, but the halfling - a trained sailor having spent most of his adult life on board seagoing vessels, managed to dart away from the attack at the last moment.

Desperately reviewing her currently prepared spell selection, Shiroko kicked away as best she could and cast an animate water spell, channeling a bit of extra power into it to extend the spell's duration for as long as she was able. The water between Shiroko and the sahuagin bubbled and came to life, taking on a vaguely humanoid form and slamming a gout of water at the reptilian foe. But the sahuagin merely ducked under this unexpected resistance, swam beneath it, and approached Shiroko from the side - this time with a sharp, thin needle of some sort in its hand. The needle stabbed into the side of the hengeyokai's neck, causing the world around her to go black. As she went limp, the sahuagin gathered her up in a net, then spent a moment or two figuring out the working of the umbrella (it had never seen such an unusual device; perhaps it was valuable?), and tucking it in with its unconscious captive. Not too far away, the other sahuagin had likewise dealt with Manta and was gathering the limp ranger up in its own net. Then the two turned away from the bay and fled to deeper waters, leaving the rowboat floating upside-down upon the waves.

Up in the dockyards, Brendan Conaill sat on a crate and waited for his contact from the Silent Sodality, a weird little guy named Kruz Taszan. He'd worked with Kruz on a couple of jobs before, when some extra muscle had been needed. Brendan wasn't a full member of the Silent Sodality, just someone they sought out from time to time when they thought he'd be useful. He didn't have the skills of a thief - and let's face it, the Silent Sodality was nothing more than a thieves guild, no matter the public face they tried to give their organization - but he'd grown up on the streets of Port Duralia and knew how to handle himself just fine.

A sudden scream shook Brendan from his reverie, and he looked up to see a weird sight indeed: dozens of fish-men rising up from the harbor waters and terrorizing the people nearby. As he watched, one gathered a screaming woman in a net, while a couple of others were heading in the young bruiser's direction. There were a few other people between him and the fish-men, though: a dockworker he knew as Lugger Joe and some Sokokan kid he didn't remember seeing before. But he had the features of the spirit folk from that faraway land: the odd skin tone, the narrow eyes, and the big, round straw hat and the kimono were big giveaways.

As Brendan stood up and readied the wooden staff he carried as a weapon, Lugger Joe grabbed the kid and tossed him to the ground at the feet of the nearest approaching fish-man, then turned and high-tailed it out of there. He fled past Brendan (who had half a mind to trip him with his staff as he passed, just on general principles), but before he knew it he was in combat with another of these reptilian invaders. He lashed out with one end of his staff, clonking the sahuagin on the side of its scaly head, then dodged a swipe of the creature's claws. In his peripheral vision, he could see another of the fish-men gathering up the kid in a net and returning back to the ocean with him; the one he was fighting also carried a net and Brendan swore he wasn't doing down like that - not without a fight, in any case!

Brendan took a swipe of the creature's claws on the side of his arm, the attack leaving a row of bleeding, parallel grooves along his bicep. He got in another whack with his staff, then noticed the fish-man pull some sort of needle from a harness he wore around his waist - almost like a porcupine's quill. The reptilian foe stabbed at Brendan with it and he was unable to dodge in time, the needle stabbing him in the side of the chest and making the world go all woozy for a minute. But the young thug shook it off and continued his attacks. He was holding his own for a bit, too, until the sahuagin got in another stab with the needle or whatever and the world finally did start to go black. Before he passed out completely, though, he had the satisfaction of seeing Lugger Joe paralyzed in a net, being hauled back into the ocean by another sahuagin. Served the sucker right: if a decent guy like Brendan was being taken out, no way a feckless coward like Lugger Joe should make it through the attack unscathed....

People were running around in a panic on the docks, as sahuagin chased down victims for their nets. One young woman, a dark-haired human of twenty summers or so, had just purchased a fish from the dockside for her dinner when the sahuagin raids began; her heart hammered in her chest as she froze in panic, unsure of what to do. Finally, as one of the fish-men focused on her with a wide, sharklike grin filled with horrible, pointed teeth, she let pure instinct take over and she fled. But the sahuagin gave chase, seemingly pleased at having to chase down its fleeing victim, and it soon caught up with her, stabbing her in the neck with what the young woman, quite clinically, identified as the spine of a sea urchin. "No, please," she tried to say, but her voice was incoherent as her body froze up, entering a state of paralysis as the poisons worked their way through her system. She was already out when the sahuagin wrapped her up in his net and strolled proudly back towards the waves.

Kruz Taszan had been running late; he was supposed to meet that weird guy with the long mustache, Brendan something, who was a lot tougher than he looked; Hell, the guy didn't even wear shoes and his wardrobe allowed him to pass as a beggar, should he be so inclined, but he'd seen him take down two guys in leather armor wielding short swords with nothing more than that heavy stick he carried. But as the young rogue, wearing his own leather armor, ran towards the docks he was surprised to hear screams ahead. Sprinting out of an alleyway, he stopped short as he saw a fish-man wrapping an unresisting - possibly dead? - young woman up in a net. "Hey!" Kruz yelled, pulling the light crossbow from his back and placing a quarrel into its slot. But then he saw two more fish-men headed his way, and he was forced to shoot one of them to keep himself safe. The woman, it appeared, was on her own; he had to make sure he didn't follow in her wake!

Before Kruz could reload, the two sahuagin were upon him. One stabbed at him with a trident, which Kruz managed to dodge easily enough, but it had just been a ruse to distract him from the other one's attack, stabbing him with some sort of quill or spine. Kruz shook himself as the sahuagin removed the weapon, already feeling like he'd been poisoned but unwilling to fall sway to the venom before he'd taken at least one of these fishy goons out. He staggered backwards, pulling the knife from his boot and sending it flying at the sahuagin he'd struck with his quarrel. But it was getting harder to keep his vision clear, and before he could get another quarrel out and ready the sahuagin were upon him, one of them stabbing him with another spine. This time, the word went black and Kruz collapsed in a heap upon the streets of the dockyards.

Eventually, the sahuagin retreated back to the sea as quickly as they'd emerged, whether because they feared to stray too far away from their natural environment or because they'd already gotten a sufficient number of captives, nobody could say. By the time the city guard had arrived on the scene, there was no sign of the sahuagin raiders, save for the stories from those who seen the attack and lived to tell the tale.

- - -

Wakefulness came slowly, in bits and pieces.

Shiroko suddenly realized she was laying on something painful. She sat up, surprised to see not even a glimmer of light anywhere around her. Then, she suddenly realized a few things in rapid succession: she wasn't sure where she was; she was cold; she was wet; she was breathing water, not air.

That got her attention really fast. She sprang upright, sitting up and listening to see if she could hear anything around her. It was silent, but she was definitely still underwater - and she was breathing just fine. Weird.

Well, she could certainly do something about the darkness, at any rate. Casting a dancing lights spell, she caused a few balls of illumination to circle around her head, letting her at least see where she was. A pit of some type, with chunks of broken wood scattered about on the floor; she'd been laying with a chunk of board beneath her shoulder blades. She looked about, but couldn't see her umbrella or her scroll tube anywhere around her. Checking her ripped kimono, she saw her backpack had been taken from her. That meant someone had systematically removed her items - she was a prisoner, it seemed. Her mind flashed immediately to Lord Tajūkan, but no, she was far from him - and then she recalled the sahuagin overturning her boat. She called out, "Manta?" but got no response. He must have been dropped into a different pit, then.

Shiroko looked up, wondering how deep the pit was and if she could get out of it. She was surprised to see the pit was not only covered at the top, but there was a wooden door on the ceiling above her. It was a rather normal-looking door, too. She turned her head to look at it, and then suddenly everything clicked into place. This wasn't a pit - it was a cabin on a ship. A sunken ship, which explained the water - and it must have landed on its side when it sank.

The next berth over, Brendan woke up and went through a similar sequence of realizations. The sahuagin had taken his staff, he noted, but they'd left the cloth he wore on his head, no doubt thinking it was nothing more than a head covering. But it was more than that; as he tugged it down over his face, the skull-like design took full form, giving him the appearance of a skull-headed figure - but, more importantly at the moment, granting the human full darkvision. He looked about at his current position, saw the door on the ceiling, and swam up to it. Sure enough, it opened upwards, and he swam up through the doorway into a low-ceilinged hallway. The reason for the low ceiling, he saw, was because the ship was on its side, and the hallway was normally 15 feet wide - that's how far it was from the "floor" to the "ceiling" in its current orientation - and in the middle was a pair of stairs, originally going up at one end and down at the other, but now going side to side.

The door to the side of him opened up and a bit of light escaped, followed shortly thereafter by a smallish woman with some really unusual features. The large, white-furred ears sticking up from the top of her head, for one thing (they at least matched the woman's pure white hair), and the lengthy, white-furred tail sticking out of the back of her robe. Before she could scream at his skull-faced appearance, he lifted his mask to reveal his human countenance. "And just what are you supposed to be?" he asked, never having seen a hengeyokai before.

"I am Shiroko," the wu jen replied. She'd learned the local language - they called it "Armaturian Common" - from the halflings on the barge during her voyage to the small continent, but she didn't feel like explaining her origins and life story to this uncouth-looking stranger. If only she still had her umbrella with her!

"What's going on? Where am I?" called out a fearful voice nearby. The woman who'd been captured after being chased down by a sahuagin had awakened in absolute darkness. After determining she was underwater (and yet breathing normally - how was that possible?), and after stumbling around in the dark looking for a door (and failing), she decided to try swimming up to find a way out. She bumped her head on some sort of metal protrusion, grabbed onto it, and found it turned. It was, she soon learned, a door on the ceiling for some reason - and when she swam up and out of the room in which she had awakened, she saw two others in the hallway above: a grubby-looking man with one of those long mustaches, and an improbably sort of fox-woman. "Where are we?" she asked, hoping for this to somehow make some sort of sense. But there was at least some light up here, small globes of it swimming around the fox-lady's head. It showed them to be in the middle of a long hallway, with 11 doors on the floor and another 11 directly overhead.

"We're in a sunken boat, on its side," replied the man, giving her a thorough checkout from head to toe. She crossed her arms in front of her, uncomfortable under his gaze.

"Let's see who else has been taken," suggested Shiroko, bending down to open the door beside hers. Inside was a hooded figure whose robes were tattered and patched all over. "Here," she said, reaching a hand down to the man. He hesitated for a moment, then grabbed her hand with his own as she helped pull him up and out of the room below. His hand was pale and smooth, light in color like that of a spirit folk, or an elf. But once he had reached the hallway, he crouched down and bowed low before the hengeyokai, stumbling over his thanks. It was as if were going out of his way not to make eye contact with his rescuer, which Shiroko thought was a little odd.

Kruz heard the talking above him but couldn't see a single thing in the pitch blackness. But he had a way to fix that, if only temporarily. He'd had a reddish birthmark on his collarbone since birth, and a few years ago it had started itching. To the young man's surprise, when he'd started to scratch that area, the birthmark turned into a solid, crystal sphere, hung on a silver chain about his neck. And when he held the globe to his eye and looked through it, if he concentrated, he could see things through it as they really were. The effect didn't last long, but it would be enough for him to be able to see where he was.

Kruz reached to his breastbone with his fingers and activated his third eye. The necklace and globe took solid form, and he held the crystal sphere up to his eye. For the next several seconds - that was all he could manage to hold the true seeing effect - he was able to glance all about him, seeing perfectly fine in the darkness. He saw the door on the ceiling and swam up to it, figuring out how to open it in the darkness, for by then his magical vision had faded and the necklace faded back into a red birthmark. But there was light in the hallway above him, and he saw Brendan there with the others, nodded his greeting, and opened the door on the floor just past his. Inside was a dockworker named Chig Armstrong who seemed perfectly content huddling down in the corner of his room and waiting for the sahuagin to forget about him. He piled up the broken pieces of wood - no doubt bits of furniture that had gotten smashed when the ship was sunk - about him, hoping to camouflage his location. Kruz just shrugged and moved on.

Brendan swam up onto the side of the stairwell and looked up at the doors above him, wondering if there was anybody up there. And if not more people, maybe their belongings? He hadn't had anything with him but his staff, but he'd feel more comfortable with his trusty stick in his hands.

Shivering with fright as much as the cold, the dark-haired woman opened another door and helped Kenji Geshuku out of his room. This was the boy Lugger Joe had tossed at the approaching sahuagin, hoping to save his life at the cost of another. Kenji looked to be about 8 or 10 and he was obviously frightened, but he remembered his manners. "Thank you, lady!" he said.

Manta opened the door to his room and swam up into the hallway. He was glad to see Shiroko was all right; he'd seen her wounded by the sahuagin before he himself had been taken captive. "I imagine," he hazarded, "those sea urchin spines that knocked us all out gave us some sort of ability to breathe water. That's good; it means the sea devils want to keep us alive, but we don't know for what purpose, and we don't know how long the effects will last. We need to find our way to the surface, as quickly as we can."

"I want my staff back first," said Brendan.

Shiroko opened another door at her feet and was hit by a wave of furious swearing. "What the [redacted] is going on here?" demanded Lugger Joe. "Who the [redacted] are you people, and what the [redacted] [redacted] are we doing underwater?"

"We were taken captive by the sa-hoo-a-gin," explained Shiroko, stumbling slightly under the unfamiliar word for the sea devils these Armaturians used.

"Yeah, well, I'd like to see any of those [redacted] show their [redacted] faces - I'll carve them a new [redacted] [redacted], right proper!" swore Lugger Joe. But when prompted to come out of his room, he declined, saying he was going to wait there in ambush for the [redacted] sea devils. Shiroko suspected it was more likely he was afraid to come out and help them face their captives, but she kept that thought to herself.

"What was that?" she asked suddenly, twitching her fox ears. "I heard a sound!" Everyone stopped talking, and sure enough, it sounded like someone had bumped into the side of the stairwell. Someone, or something, was moving through the sideways stairwell, headed in their direction. Kruz went over to the last of the evenly-spaced doors along the floor and opened it, finding a sideways berth like the others, but this one was empty. If there had been a tenth captive in this room, he or she had already been taken away.

The dark-haired woman, who had yet to introduce herself, swam up to the top of the ceiling and opened a door. She was immediately bombarded with a pile of falling wood, chunks of smashed furniture from the cabin above. But one piece of wood, likely a table leg, looked like it would make a halfway decent makeshift club, and they needed something to fight with against the sahuagin. Without any hesitation, she passed it over to Manta; he seemed like he could handle himself with a weapon.

Two sahuagin suddenly appeared in the hallway, having swum up through the sideways stairwell. They had voiced shock on their way up at the light spilling from the hallway and were confused to see their victims out of their rooms; the drugs must not have been as potent as expected, for they should all still be unconscious! But with a few words in their bubbly language, one spun about and went back the way he'd come while the other swam forward, slashing at Shiroko, dropping the wounded hengeyokai back into unconsciousness. He seemed surprised - and a little dismayed, if the others could read his reptilian facial expression correctly - at her having been taken down so quickly, almost as if he were afraid of having slain her.

Manta leaped forward, swinging his table leg club for all he was worth, the attack clumsier in the water than it would have been in the open air. The sahuagin easily avoided it, swimming back out of range. Down at the other end of the hall, Kruz was oblivious to the combat going on behind him, and he opened the last door on the "floor" in the ship's current orientation, finding it to be nothing but a bathroom. With a frown, he closed the door back up and looked at the door about halfway up the wall at the end of the hallway; it was sideways, of course, but it might be where their gear had been stashed. He kicked up to it to go find out.

The hooded man in the tattered robes ran up and grabbed Shiroko away from the sahuagin, casting a cure light wounds spell on her as he did so, spinning her around so he stood between her and her attacker, who was now in heated battle with the little halfling ranger. Shiroko awoke in the robed man's arms, and she got a look at his concerned face looking down at her before he flinched and turned his head away. It was quite a remarkable face: the right side of it covered in brown fur, and sporting an ear as large and pointed as her own, while the upper left side was that of an oversize frog or toad, with the green scales of a lizard covering the left side of his lower jaw and the muzzle of a lizardfolk. Shiroko had never seen a mongrelfolk before, and she understood his hesitancy to be seen, but he had just saved her at risk to himself. "Thank you," she said, placing her hand upon the side of his face.

Brendan picked up a slab of wood that had fallen from one of the overhead rooms; it wasn't as good a weapon as his staff, but it would have to do. He dropped down from the top of the sideways stairwell in the middle of the hallway and swung his makeshift weapon at the sahuagin. The dark-haired woman reluctantly did the same with another table leg, stabbing it hesitantly at the sahuagin's direction; it was clear she was no warrior, merely a woman from the city in a situation unlike anything her life had prepared her for thus far. Not unexpectedly, her tentative jabs came nowhere to hitting the reptilian captor, but it at least gave him another foe to have to worry about.

But the sahuagin was apparently over any hesitancy he might have displayed before when he knocked out Shiroko. He stabbed out with his triple-pronged trident, catching the dark-haired woman in the midsection and sending her falling backwards into unconsciousness, trailing streaming clouds of blood in her wake. Manta attacked again with his own table leg, trying to direct the reptile's focus upon himself. But now that Shiroko was back to consciousness, she cast one of the few combat spells she had remaining: a ray of frost that went over Manta's head and struck the sahuagin in the upper chest. It didn't take him down - she hadn't really expected it to - but she had at least done her part in dealing it damage; maybe, with enough resistance, they could get it to turn tail and flee back the way it had come.

Kruz was still oblivious to the battle raging behind him. He opened the sideways door and found himself in what was apparently once the medical bay, although one wall of cabinets was nor positioned on the floor and the other hung from the ceiling, the drawers from those above having fallen below and caused a scattered mess on the floor. But a quick perusal alerted the rogue to a few scalpels which would likely do as makeshift daggers, a bottle with a still-legible label that said "RUM," and what looked like it might be a little caddy of potion vials. He grabbed them all up and popped open the potion caddy, and as luck would have it, there were four potions inside, each marked "CLW" - Kruz was pretty sure that stood for "cure light wounds."

Having saved Shiroko, the mongrelfolk adept made a grab for the dark-haired woman and cast another cure light wounds spell upon her, his last for the day. It wasn't enough to revive her, but he could see she was still breathing, and at least his spell had closed up her wounds, as she wasn't actively bleeding any more. He swam up to the top of the sideways stairwell, kicking with his mismatched legs while he held the woman in his arms, up by where he saw Kenji had made his way to relative safety. He placed the woman on the side of the stairwell, bade Kenji to keep her safe, and swam back down to see if he could be of further assistance.

Brendan swung his piece of wood at the sahuagin again, frustrated that he didn't have as much power behind his swing while he was fighting against the tug of the watery element all about him. But then the sahuagin dodged past him and stabbed at the mongrelfolk, dropping him with a thrust of his trident. The ranger swung at the sea devil with his table leg, clonking him in the leg to little discernable effect. But now it was Shiroko's turn to save her own savior, as she swum up to the top of the stairwell, dragging him by the collar of his robes behind her, and placing him beside the unconscious woman with the dark hair. In the process, the hood had fallen from the adept's head, exposing his misshapen features to the others. Kenji's eyes gaped at the sight, but he said nothing; the man was obviously an ally, no matter that he looked like a monster.

"Hey!" cried Kruz, having now noticed the battle after his explorations in the infirmary. He swam over to the top of the sideways stairwell, where there were two people knocked out and in obvious need of the healing potions he carried - if they could figure out a way to drink them while underwater. He passed the potion caddy over to Brendan, who popped open the top, discerned for himself what "CLW" likely meant - and stuck the end of one of the vials in his mouth. Pulling out the sealed cork with his teeth and pushing it to the side of his mouth with his tongue, he inhaled the contents, feeling his vigor restored as the wounds he'd sustained thus far sealed up.

"Hey!" Shiroko scolded the young thug. "These two need healing more than you do!"

"Yeah? Well, they should have said something, then," Brendan scoffed, tossing the caddy over to the fox-woman. Shiroko frowned at him, then pulled out another vial and worked at getting it unstoppered and down the mouth of the fearsome-looking mongrelfolk who had saved her life. Once he was back awake (and hurriedly pulling the hood back over his uneven features), she did the same with the dark-haired woman lying at her side. She was surprised when, after both were back up, she noted she hadn't heard the sounds of combat for a bit now. "We drove him off," Manta informed her.

"He probably went with his buddy to go fetch reinforcements," Brendan guessed. "C'mon, we gotta find our gear before we're facing down a whole lot more of those fish-guys." While some of the others started opening the doors on the "ceiling" of the hallway - having all learned by now to stand off to the side when doing so, to avoid getting hit by falling debris - Brendan went through the sideways stairwell, popping out on what was the main deck, with four sets of steps leading up to the forecastle and the stern. (There were doors at the front and aft, between the sets of stairs, leading to the rooms below the two upper sections.) But what caught Brendan's attention - he had his skull mask back on, providing him full darkvision - was not the top of the sideways vessel, but the section of sea floor off to the side and front of the sunken ship: coral had been shaped into a natural pentagram encircled by another row of coral, and at each point of the pentagram stood a sahuagin. Another of the sea devils, this one wielding a sacrificial dagger, stood in the middle of the circle, and just outside the circle was the abandoned body of a human woman, likely the tenth captive that had been missing from the berth at the end of the hallway, nearest the bathroom Kruz had checked out. Her throat had been slit, and a trail of blood still drifted from the gaping wound, driving the four sharks swimming around the exterior of the pentagram a little crazy - yet their training held, and they held off their blood frenzy for now.

And on the far side of the pentagram stood or swam nearly two dozen other sahuagin, all of them impatiently looking at the front bottom of the sunken ship. As Brendan watched, the two sahuagin who had been inside the ship (to fetch the next sacrifice, he now realized) grabbed up another four of the sea devil spectators, and the half dozen sea devils started heading to the front of the vessel.

While the eyes of the sahuagin were focused elsewhere, Brendan swam across the open deck and made it through the door between the sets of stairs at the aft section. He explored what must have been the captain's quarters and those of the first mate, uncovering a masterwork short sword hanging on the wall of the latter bunkroom.

The others, in the meantime, had finished checking out the upper berths and Manta had finally found where their gear had been stashed, in the other bathroom currently accessible only through the "ceiling." They gathered up their gear - Kruz taking temporary custody of Brendan's wooden staff - and then the rogue and the frightened brunette went over to the lower deck, hoping to find a way out. The got more than they bargained for when they ran into the first pair of returning sahuagin, and the woman was almost immediately caught up in a sahuagin's net. She screamed in terror and felt her heart explode in her chest; immediately thereafter, she stopped moving altogether, the events of the past day having been too much for a mere civilian. The sahuagin, unaware that the "sacrifice" he'd gathered for the ritual had just gone ahead and expired all by herself, started heading back, oblivious to the situation at hand.

Kruz took a tentative hit from the other sahuagin's trident; this one at least was being careful not to slay the rogue - he wanted him unconscious, not dead. But then Brendan caught up with them and passed the masterwork short sword he'd discovered in the first mate's cabin over to the leather-clad rogue. Together, they managed to convince the sea devil to back away, retreating to wait for additional backup. But then a roar of shock and surprise reached the interior of the sunken vessel, and although none of the land-dwellers could determine what was being said - it was the burbling language of the sea devils, which none of them understood - they could pick up the anger, fear, and hatred coming through.

Out in the open ocean, past the sacrificial circle of coral, past the sahuagin spectators, and even past the circling sharks, a mermaid named Adrielle approached. She wore a leather harness and wielded a trident of her own, and she was swimming in a straight line for the sahuagin forces, a grim look of determination on her face. As she approached, the seashell amulet she wore around her neck started glowing; unbeknownst to her, it had picked up a suitable dead body that met her individual specifications and teleported it into the extradimensional space within the whorls of the seashell amulet.

Fortunately, Adrielle wasn't alone: behind her swam a mermaid samurai wielding a katana, five mermaid warriors and nine mermen wielding sharp daggers, and half a dozen giant sea horses, three of them mounted by three of the mermen. The sahuagin spectators turned and swam to meet these attacking forces, while the six in and around the points of the sacrificial pentagram held their positions, as if unable to leave until the ritual they'd started had been completed. The sahuagin priestess in the middle of the coral pentagram called out demanding the others to bring the next victim. Others called to the sharks, ordering them to attack.

Kruz and Brendan advanced through the hole in the front bottom of the sunken vessel - apparently the reason it was now on the ocean floor instead of still crossing the seas - hoping to double-team any sahuagin they might meet up with out in the open. However, their first foe was one of the sharks, whose limited intellect prevented it from realizing the "attack" command had been specifically targeted upon the merfolk, not the potential sacrifices. It swam up to Brendan and bit him with a mouth filled with sharp teeth, knocking the street thug back into unconsciousness, while Kruz did what he could to slay the shark with his masterwork short sword. Fortunately, Hoppy the mongrelfolk was nearby and swam over to the unconscious Brendan, casting a cure minor wounds spell on the thug that failed to awaken him back to consciousness but at least stabilized him, preventing him from bleeding out. And then Shiroko appeared, casting an elemental burst spell on the wooden deck right next to the shark, sending an explosion of splintered wood stabbing at it. Kruz grabbed Brendan by the neck of his shirt, dragging him back inside the sunken vessel, but the shark insisted on following. Shiroko cast a ray of frost at the shark, but that only caused it to focus on her; it snapped at her and its teeth pierced her flesh, but at least she survived the experience without being slain or passing out.

The combat between the sahuagin and the merfolk forces proved to be bloody and without mercy, each side actively hating the other. There were deaths on both sides, but it was quite obvious the merfolk forces were getting the better part of the deal, slaying more of their foes than they lost from their own forces by a factor of more than two to one.

Hoppy depleted all of the rest of his daily spells - at this point, merely two more cure minor wounds - but it was enough to restore Brendan back to wakefulness. And Manta had arrived to help fight off the shark that had been attacking the group by the vessel; between the halfling, the changeling, the human, and the hengeyokai, they finally managed to kill it. By then, the sahuagin spectators had been slain by the merfolk and the giant sea horses, and once the first of the sea devils manning the points of the coral pentagram had been taken out, the others realized their ability to finish the ritual - ten sacrifices to the Sea God, Galrich - was no more, and they abandoned their posts, determined to die in combat rather than fleeing. (In their minds, this was what Galrich would demand of them.)

The merfolk were more than happy to give them the deaths they desired.

After the combat was done, Adrielle checked on the land-dwelling captives, who seemed to have escaped on their own. Shiroko informed her there were others still inside the ship, and while she and Hoppy went to fetch Kenji (and let the two dockworkers know it was safe to come out now), Brendan and Kruz went from room to room inside the ship, grabbing up what they could find in the way of treasure. Once everyone was back together, the merfolk helped the land-dwellers to mount up on the giant sea horses, and they escorted them back to Port Duralia. It was getting close to sunrise when they arrived, and the water breathing effects from the sahuagin poison was about to wear off.

Before they swam into the harbor, though, the samurai mermaid took Adrielle aside and they spoke quietly in their own language. "Go with the others," she said. "There has been much more traffic upon the ocean's surfaces in recent years; we need to learn what these land-dwellers intend with their extended visits upon our seas. Learn what you can of them, and report back to us in the bay in a month's time, at the first night of the next full moon."

"I understand," Adrielle replied, touching her seashell necklace, the amulet of kessaia. It flashed, and the mermaid disappeared, shunted into the extradimensional stasis of the amulet while her mind was transferred into the body of the dark-haired woman whose heart had stopped before being sacrificed. When the land-dwellers stepped out of the sea waters and onto the shore, the dark-haired woman was approached by Shiroko. "There you are," said the hengeyokai, once again holding an open umbrella over her shoulder. "I was wondering where you had gotten to. I don't think I caught your name - I'm Shiroko."

"Adrielle," said the mermaid, now in the human body she'd be "wearing" during her exploration of the surface world.

Kenji's mother, Mrs. Geshuku, was overjoyed to find her missing son alive, and insisted upon bringing the five who had kept him safe back to her boardinghouse for a celebratory meal. There she insisted they could stay in two of her rooms at no cost for as long as they desired. (Her only insistence was that the men stayed in one room and the women in the other; she was a traditional spirit folk woman and wouldn't put up with any hanky-panky under her roof.) And thus, Shiroko and Adrielle found themselves sudden roommates, as were Kruz and Brendan.

That left Hoppy, who had an admission of his own: he saw the four heroes as his personal saviors and considered himself under a life-debt he could never repay. "If you would allow me, I will accompany you and use my healing magic to keep you safe, as you kept me safe from the sahuagin," he said. "I will sleep outside in the alley, where I will not be burdensome and my appearance will not disturb the clients in your boardinghouse."

"Nah, you can bunk with us," Kruz offered. "There's room for a cot or something besides the two beds in there - or one of us can sleep on the floor."

"We have extra cots!" piped up Kenji. "They cost extra, though."

"We won't charge them for extra cot!" chided Mrs. Geshuku. "They save your life! Show some gratitude and go fetch extra cot from storage room."

"Yes, Mama," replied Kenji, and went off to accomplish his task.

- - -

When I wrote this adventure, I knew I had to start off with an underwater adventure to get the mermaid PC involved, and I used a sahuagin raid as the catalyst to get the PCs, mostly strangers to each other (other than a passing acquaintance between Brendan and Kruz), gathered together as a team. I wasn't worried that sahuagin are stronger opponents than standard for 1st-level PCs, and decided I'd let the players run the "merfolk rescue force" as well as their own PCs there at the end. Logan ended up with the mermaid samurai; Vicki ran the mermaid warriors while Dan ran the merfolk warriors, and Joe ran the giant sea horses. But not wanting to spend the no doubt several hours such a combat would entail, I decided for the battle between the sahuagin and the merfolk forces, one hit resulted in a death; in effect, while fighting each other, they effectively all had 1 hp. (Against the PCs, we ran combat as normal.) It worked out okay for that specific situation, and we ended up finishing up the adventure within our normally allotted time.

- - -

T-shirt worn: I have a T-shirt I got at an aquarium years ago that has sharks on it, which seemed appropriate given the main adversaries in this initial adventure were sahuagin, who ally with sharks.
 
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And now I can post the last member of the PC team: Hoppy the mongrelfolk (real name "[frog croak]" - the mongrelfolk have names they use among themselves, which are generally the sounds made by various animals or insects, as they have a racial ability to mimic any sound they hear, and a "slave name," usually provided to them by others; he's called "Hoppy" because he has partial facial features and one foot of bullywug origin, and his mismatched legs give him a limping, hoping gait). Mongrelfolk in this campaign world are also known as "sinborn," under the belief anyone born as a mongrelfolk must have committed some really terrible sins in a past life and are paying them off in this life. Hoppy himself subscribes to this belief, and as a result is desperate to do good in this life so that maybe when he dies (naturally, of course, as speeding up the process is cheating), in his next life he'll be born as a "smoothskin" - someone whose features all match, whether that be a human, elf, or goblin makes no real difference to him, as either outcome is equally attractive.

Here are the images I used for Hoppy: the full-body view in his tattered clothing and the close-up of his face; in both cases I played around with pieces of different artwork to get the effect I wanted:

Hoppy 02.png
Hoppy 01.png


Johnathan
 

Next up is Vicki, who has come up with a fairly odd PC: she wants to run a mermaid scout (Vicki's a big mermaid fan, with a large collection of mermaid statuettes and other items - she's pretty easy to shop for at Christmas), but as this isn't going to be an aquatic-themed campaign, I devised a way for her to have a "second" body she can morph into, so she'll be running a human scout on land and a mermaid scout in the water, swapping bodies as needed. Her PC's name is Adrielle, and these are the images she'll be using for her two forms:

Look up Scottish legends of mermaids: they can take human form but have a shawl or skirt which allows them to turn back into mermaids. If the garment is stolen then she is stuck in human form. A possible plot bunny for you.
 

Interesting. My son used a belt of landwalking in one of his previous campaigns, which transformed the merfolk wearer's fish-tail into legs when they needed to go on land; I didn't want to do the exact same thing, so I used the "extra body" concept that Alan Moore used in his Marvelman (later redubbed Miracleman) comics to try to make some sense of the Captain Marvel mythos.

Johnathan
 

ADVENTURE 2: DOWNTOWN DELIVERIES

PC Roster:
Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 1​
Brendan Conaill, human monk 1​
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 1​
Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 1​

NPC Roster:
Hoppy, mongrelfolk adept 1​

Game Session Date: 2 August 2025

- - -

Kruz returned to the Geshuku guesthouse where the group had been staying. "We've got a job," he told Brendan. "They want us to bring along a few others as well." As the changeling rogue headed to the next door over to ask Adrielle and Shiroko to join them, Hoppy asked Brendan, "Who are 'they?'"

"The Silent Sodality," the monk enforcer replied. "Kruz works for them full-time, and they hire me on a mission-to-mission basis, as needed. Sounds like they got a job bigger than they expect the two of us can handle. C'mon, grab up your wand and let's go." The others had pooled their money and purchased Hoppy a wand of cure light wounds and a single potion of the same spell, vastly increasing the amount of healing he could provide in one day.

Adrielle and Shiroko grabbed up their gear and followed Kruz as he led the group through the back alleys until they approached a small, one-story building with a single door and no windows. The rogue stepped boldly up to the door and knocked three times. A small viewport opened up and a pair of eyes looked out at Kruz, then examined the others standing behind him. "Yeah, they'll do," the man behind the door decided, and he unlocked the bolt from the inside. The five entered the building, passing the small security station holding a pair of armed and armored guards and through a second door that led into a small living room. Caldone, a Silent Sodality functionary with a prominent beer gut, welcomed them in and indicated a small pile of four boxes sitting on an end table. "Got a few deliveries for you to make," he said.

"Who to?" Kruz asked, picking up the first of the boxes and examining it, then comparing it to the others. They were all the same size, about 4 inches long and half that size in width and depth, each with an address printed on it and the packages all tied down with sturdy twine. Kruz looked at the addresses and noted they were all downtown, in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood of manors and mansions. "Any idea what's in 'em?" he asked.

"Don't know, don't care," replied Caldone. "We're gettin' paid to deliver 'em by some folks who don't wanna be seen doin' the job themselves. They're to be delivered as soon as possible, but I don't care if you deliver 'em one at a time or split up and get 'em all done at once. In any case, you don't need to wait around for a response or nuthin' - the recipients'll know what to do once they open 'em, apparently. You just deliver 'em and come back when they're all delivered, and you'll get your pay then."

"How much?" Brendan asked.

"They're payin' ten gold each, so five each for you guys, five each to the Sodality. You know the drill."

Brendan distributed the boxes among the four heroes, and Kruz led the way towards the first address; they'd decided to start with the closest and work their way further downtown - and to stick together as a group, since Brendan and Kruz knew where they were going but Adrielle and Shiroko were both new to Port Duralia and didn't yet know their way around. Hoppy was glad they were sticking together - it made it easier for him to ensure all of their safety that way.

"We should decide on the split," suggested Brendan. "Me and Kruz are the primaries, so I figure 45/45/5/5."

"Figure again," replied Adrielle. "There are four of us" - she, like the others, had already gotten used to discounting Hoppy's presence, since he was adamant about not taking money for his "life-debt" (they'd only gotten him to agree to take the wand and potion after pointing out they would be used to heal them, not just him) - "so 25% each seems fair."

"Fair?" scoffed Brendan. "There wouldn't even be a job if it weren't for me and Kruz."

"And you were specifically told to bring along others," Shiroko pointed out. "Sounds like you wouldn't be given the job without us coming along as well." Brendan grumbled, but it was difficult to overcome the hengeyokai's logic.

"Fine," he finally agreed - "but we're only agreeing to this because of our general good natures!"

"Fine," echoed Adrielle and Shiroko. They'd known each other for a grand total of two days now, but already the two women were good friends (and roommates in the Geshuku guesthouse). Adrielle had explained to Shiroko about her status as a mermaid and her "second body" (the men weren't aware - they thought Adrielle was the original "owner" of the body the mermaid currently wore, while her own was stashed in the extradimensional space inside her amulet of kessaia), and Shiroko in turn was teaching Adrielle the Sokokuan language of her own distant homeland.

The group walked down a sidewalk when two young ruffians stepped out from between two buildings, blocking their way. "You folks seem to have gotten turned around," one of them declared. "This part of the city belongs to the Ragamuffins. You wanna enter our turf, you gotta pay your dues."

"One shiny piece of gold," added the other Ragamuffin. "Each."

The group came to a halt as they assessed this sudden threat. The youths looked to be about 18 or 19, wearing piecemeal leather armor and holding short swords, and as a result apparently thought they were invincible. Brendan smiled at them, pulled out a piece of gold from the coin purse at his belt and held it out for them to see. Then he said, "Nah, not worth it," dropped the coin back into his purse, and rapidly fired off a sling bullet at the head of the youth who had spoken first. Conking him on the head would have been a nice bit of punctuation to the monk's statement, but unfortunately the bullet went whooshing past the Ragamuffin's ear.

Adrielle stepped to the side and pulled the heavy crossbow from her back. She loaded a quarrel into its slot and cranked back on the mechanism to load it up. Kruz, in the meantime, had his light crossbow loaded and fired his first shot at the Ragamuffin leader, catching him in the shoulder. He howled in pain and yelled "Get 'em!" to his compatriot, yanking out the quarrel as they charged their foes. He swung his blade at Kruz, but the changeling easily dodged the blow. The other Ragamuffin had a better time attacking Brendan, although the blade hit the monk just enough to break the skin and draw a thin line of blood.

Shiroko took a step to the side and cast a daze spell on the Ragamuffin henchman, but the spell failed to take effect. Brendan swung his staff at the youth who had cut him, smacking him alongside the head with one end of the wooden weapon and then swinging it around to slam him in the knee with the other end. And then Adrielle shot him with her crossbow, sending the shaft completely through his neck and out the back. He dropped instantly, quite obviously dead.

Kruz stepped to the side and shot another shaft at the Ragamuffin leader, whose attitude had just been severely adjusted upon seeing the death of his fellow rogue and discovering swagger and arrogance were not in fact a guarantee of success. He yelped as the quarrel pierced his upper arm, then turned about and started fleeing the way he'd come. But Shiroko, fearing he might be off to fetch reinforcements, shot him in the back with her wand of magic missiles. He fell to the street in a heap, no longer moving.

"Are the people of this city always this violent?" she asked Kruz. Sokoku had its share of bandits and rogues, but they usually preyed upon travelers outside the city walls.

"Not all of them, no," assured Kruz. "But it's a self-adjusting problem: these two won't be attacking anyone else ever again. Come on, let's get out of here before any of their friends see what we did." And he led them hurriedly away, to the better neighborhoods where the addresses on their packages led. Arriving at the Wentworth Estate without further incident, they knocked on the door and delivered the first package to the elderly butler who answered the door. He tipped them each a copper penny and promised the package would be brought to Master Wentworth at once.

"That's one down," pointed out Brendan. "Where next?"

"The Finch Manor," replied Kruz. "This way." He led them to the next estate, but Finch Manor was surrounded by a 10-foot-tall iron fence with sharp spikes at the top of each pole. There was a gate, but it was locked, and a vicious dog came running up to them from the front yard, snarling and barking furiously.

"There's no bell," Adrielle observed.

"Guy doesn't like visitors," guessed Brendan. "Here, let me try something." He picked up a pebble from the street and threw it at the front door of the house, some 20 feet away. Unfortunately, it hit the side of an iron fence post and was diverted. Adrielle and Krug each gave it a try, hitting the door twice in rapid succession. But Shiroko, not liking at all how the dog seemed to have focused its ire upon her in particular, had a solution: summoning an unseen servant, she had it pick up the package addressed to the Finches and float it over to the door. A minute or so later, when Elgar Finch opened the front door to see what the fuss was all about (and silencing the dog at once with a single snap of his fingers), he grabbed the floating package, growled at the odd-looking group on the other side of the gate, and returned inside, slamming the door behind him.

"I guess we're not getting a tip," observed Kruz.

The next stop along the way was Totterham Manor, and on the way there they ran across an odd sight: half a dozen children running up to a little gnome pedaling a wheeled cart. They each held a copper piece in their hands, with which they had chased down Aenus Feysputter, "the Copper Penny Candy Man," and made their selections. He passed out candy to each child, taking their copper pieces as payment, and then looked up at the group as they approached. "Candy or gum, my good folks?" he asked. "I also have potions in liquid, candy, or gum form - your pick."

"I know this guy," Brendan confirmed. "He's legit." As a result, Adrielle purchased three potions of cure light wounds from him, and Kruz picked up one of his own. Brendan purchased a vial of oil of shillelagh, with which to anoint his quarterstaff. Then they made their way to Totterham Manor, where the maid who answered the door promised to give the package to Lord and Lady Totterham when they returned from an engagement elsewhere in the city.

"Three down," observed Brendan. "Who's the last one for?"

Lord and Lady Hackleton," replied Kruz. "This way." But on the way to their final delivery destination, they were approached by a grubby-looking boy about seven or eight years old, wearing tattered and patched clothes but no shoes. "Excuse me, sirs, ladies," he said, "but could you spare any change? I haven't eaten since the day before yesterday."

Brendan pulled out the copper piece tip he'd gotten from the butler at the Wentworth Estate. Flipping it over to the young boy, he said, "Here you go, kid." The boy snatched it out of midair and grasped it closely to his chest, as if afraid it would try to wriggle free from him and escape before he could spend it.

But then, as if out of nowhere, three more beggar children appeared, all asking for spare coins and claiming hunger. Adrielle gave a copper coin to a little girl with hair that looked as if it hadn't seen a comb or brush in many months, but Kruz called out, "Wait a minute!" He'd recognized the oldest of the boys, a young lad almost in his teens. "I know you!" he challenged. "You work for Jorbel Pockleitner - these are pickpockets, guys!" Indeed, one of the boys had been eyeing Shiroko, trying to figure out where her coin purse was kept, but he was unaware of Sokokuan customs, where one's change purse was normally stored in the deep sleeves of one's kimono.

"Go on, scram!" called out Kruz, tossing a handful of copper pieces away from the group. The beggar children scampered over, scooped up the coins, and ran away, happy to have at least made a few coppers out of the transaction. "Tell 'Grampy' I said 'Hello'!" he called after them.

"Who's Grampy?" asked Hoppy.

"Jorbel Pockleitner. He's the head of a rival thieves guild - uses kids as beggars, lookouts, and he even teaches the older ones thievery. They all call him 'Grampy.'"

"There's the estate up there," pointed out Brendan, eager to get the job over with and a little ticked he'd fallen for the beggar child's scam. He knocked on the door, and was met by Lord Hackleton himself.

"Eh? What's this?' he asked, ripping off the wrapping of the package, opening it, and scanning the folded parchment inside. Then his face darkened, and he tossed the paper and the package at their feet. "You can keep your useless threats!" he thundered. "Do with the boy what you will - you won't get a single copper penny from me! You go ahead and tell that to your masters, and don't bother me about his debts anymore!" And with that, Lord Hackleton slammed the door in their faces.

Shiroko bent down and recovered the opened package. "Oh, no!" she cried, seeing the severed finger sitting within. A quick perusal of the accompanying letter showed Lord Hackleton's son had run up considerable gambling debts at the Aerie, was unable to pay, and would be held as collateral until his debts had been paid off in full. As a form of encouragement, another package containing a body part would be delivered daily until the Aerie received what was owed them.

The hengeyokai's face drained of all color, until it was nearly as white as her hair. "This means," she reasoned, "we have been delivering severed fingers all morning - and there must be four captives at this Aerie!" She turned to Kruz. "What is the Aerie?"

"It's a gambling establishment," the changeling replied. "Caters to the well-to-do. You gotta know somebody to even get into the joint."

"We must go there at once!" demanded Adrielle. Kruz knew where the Aerie was located although he'd never been inside the place, so he led the group across town until they were in the street before the Aerie. It was a four-story building of solid stone, built somewhat like a mushroom with a wider top story than the floors below it. It stood only a bit over 40 feet tall, but it was the tallest building for a block or more in all directions.

"Okay, we're here," remarked Kruz. "But now what? We can't just waltz in there and demand they free the four captives." But Shiroko wouldn't be denied. She stormed to the front doors of the Aerie - and was stopped by a stern-faced but well-dressed bouncer holding a clipboard.

"Hold on there, miss," said Mr. Balladine, grabbing her arm in an iron vise. "Members only."

The wu jen responded by casting a hypnotism spell on the bouncer. Seeing from his expression that he had fallen under her sway, she said, "You will allow us to enter the building and see the lord of this place." Mr. Balladine, an unfamiliar smile on his weathered face, opened the door to usher the quintet inside, not at all concerned that bringing up the rear was a limping mongrelfolk in tattered robes - certainly not the type of clientele the Aerie normally saw.

Entering the Aerie, the group saw a coat check girl giving them a strange look, as did the tight-gowned, elven hostess who stood at the entrance of the first floor's gambling area and whose job it was to welcome all visitors. Her pretty face wore a puzzled frown as she asked, "Mr. Balladine let you five in?"

"We're here about the payments owed by four of your young clients," asserted Adrielle. Brendan, realizing none of them had really come up with much of a plan, jumped in. "We have an important message for the boss," he said. "He's going to want to hear this."

The hostess, a blond elf named Amarantha, waved over one of the men who provided security on the first floor, which seemed to be taken up with various machines that were fed coins of various denominations. "They have a message for the boss," she told him.

"An important one," Brendan emphasized.

The security guard seemed unimpressed with the bunch. "It doesn't take five people to pass on a message," he asserted. "Who's going to see the boss?" Adrielle volunteered Brendan, and the guard nodded him forward towards the stairs curving up along the outer rim of the room, following him so he could keep an eye on him at all times. It was only as they walked up the stairs that Adrielle realized they probably should have chosen someone as their representative who at least wore shoes; Brendan's soles were as hard as leather and he claimed he fought better without footwear getting in the way.

They went up to the second floor, where games of blackjack involving Aerie dealers were held, and another greeter, this one a lovely human redhead with green eyes, gave Brendan a worried frown. She shrugged as the security guard took him up to the third floor. This one had high stakes poker games going on, and the guard steered Brendan to the back of the room, where he knocked on a door.

Brendan wasn't sure what he expected when the door opened, but having it answered by a humanoid bird with slick, black feathers wasn't very high up on his list of guesses. "He says he has a message for you, Sinister," the guard said. The kenku stepped back into his room - a small suite, with simple but elegant furniture - and indicated they should both come in, closing the door behind them so they could speak in private without any of the card-playing clients overhearing their personal business.

"And what is this message?" asked Sinister, staring at the human monk with unblinking eyes.

"Uh, we delivered the packages as directed, but one of the parents - Lord Hackleton - said he's not going to pay his son's debts. He was pretty insistent about it." When the kenku made no comment, Brendan, feeling a need to fill in the silence, added, "I figured you should be made aware of the matter as soon as possible."

Sinister continued staring at the nervous monk for a moment before replying. "Well, we'll see if he changes his mind after he receives another package or two. Was that all?"

"Uh, yes sir," stammered Brendan. "That was it."

"Then you may leave."

The guard ushered Brendan out of the door and back down the way they came, the monk noting the curving stairs they had taken continued on up to the fourth floor. Hazarding a guess, he said, "There's no way the Hackleton kid can escape from up there, is there?"

"Don't worry about it," replied the guard. "He's not coming back down from there until his debt's been paid - one way or another, money or blood." Once they were back down on the first floor, where the others had been waiting in the entry foyer (Hoppy trying his very best to blend into the wall, not liking standing out like this), the guard said, "Next time you have a message, dress up a bit for the occasion - you look like a bunch of gutter trash." And with that, he scowled at them until they left.

"We really didn't plan that out very well," admitted Adrielle when they were back outside. "Will your spell still make the bouncer let us back in?"

"I'm afraid that magic has run its course," admitted Shiroko. "We'll need to find another way to get inside."

"Well, we at least learned they're being held on the top floor," pointed out Brendan. "Let's see if there's a back door." He angled around the building one block away to approach it from the rear, the others following in his wake. When they made their way to the back of the Aerie, he swore in disappointment. "How come there isn't a back door?" he complained. "How do they get their deliveries?"

"After hours, probably," guessed Kruz, while Shiroko suggested magic could allow any materials being sent over to be teleported directly there. So they tried the next best thing: finding the next-tallest building in the area and climbing up to its rooftop to see what they could see of the Aerie from a higher vantage point. There were no windows in the gambling establishment - the interior had been lit with everburning torches in sconces on the walls - but they could see a metal railing along the top of the curved roof, and what looked like it might be the top part of a skylight in the middle of the Aerie's roof. Brendan figured it was about 40 feet from the ground to the Aerie's rooftop.

"I have 50 feet of rope and a grappling hook," he said. "If we come back at night, we can probably climb up and enter from the top."

"What about potions?" suggested Shiroko. "Do you have potions of spider climbing in Armaturia?"

"Yeah," replied Kruz, "but they're outside our price range - especially if we want all five of us walking up the walls."

"Is there a place that sells scrolls?" pressed the hengeyokai. Kruz said there was, but they'd be just as expensive as the potions. Still, Shiroko had him lead them to a local hedge wizard who sold scrolls and she purchased a scroll of animate rope for 25 pieces of gold, which she paid for herself. "It will help us to climb," she promised them.

Thus it was that that night, when the sun had dropped below the horizon (and the Aerie did a brisk amount of business), the five returned to the mushroom-shaped building from the rear, well away from the bouncer at the front or any of the arriving and departing gambling aficianados. Brendan unpacked his coil of rope, Shiroko read the animate rope spell from her scroll, and the rope, when tossed up in the air, slithered to the railing and attached itself firmly. One by one - Hoppy last, after the others had each climbed up, and then they'd had him tie the end of the rope around him so they could pull him up, not trusting the strength behind his mismatched limbs - they pulled themselves up to the top of the tower and scrambled over the low railing. From there, they could see the glass skylight at the tower's center didn't open, but it did provide a good view of the fourth floor below them - in which they could see four young men, each in his own small cell, and each with one hand wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. Four kenku roamed the area, but only the center of the fourth floor could be seen from the skylight; there was the possibility of even more security forces elsewhere on that level.

"How do we get down there?" asked Hoppy.

"Here," replied Shiroko, who had spotted a hatch built into the rooftop. It was close enough to the edge of the railing it would lead to a part of the floor below not visible from the skylight. Kruz lifted the hatch, which pivoted upwards on oiled hinges, and whispered, "I'll go first" to the others. Then, crossbow secured to his back, he stepped onto the metal ladder that led down 10 feet to the fourth floor of the Aerie, a level it seemed the gambling clientele never got to see - unless they'd gambled away more than they could pay.

Dropping silently to the floor, the changeling rogue found himself in a curving hallway leading counterclockwise along the outside edge of the building's highest level. He pulled his throwing dagger from the sheath in his boot and silently crept forward.

"I'll go next," whispered Brendan. Then, looking at Hoppy - specifically at the satyr's hoof at the end of the mongrelfolk's right leg - he suggested, "Maybe you should climb down last, and then only if we need you." Hoppy nodded his agreement and the monk lowered himself down the shaft. Then, on a sudden impulse, he downed one of his vials of antitoxin, not trusting the kenku to be above using poison on their weapons.

Shiroko climbed down next, removing her wooden sandals before she did so and readying a spell once she'd climbed to the bottom and stood behind Kruz and Brendan, who were both inching silently down the curved passageway. She could hear voices ahead, but couldn't make out what they were saying.

Up on the rooftop, Adrielle loaded her heavy crossbow. She was thinking she might stay up here on the roof, where she had a good view of the center of the level below and could keep an eye on the prisoners. The glass didn't look very thick; she was pretty sure one good blow from the stock of her weapon would shatter it, allowing her to snipe down at the kenku below.

Approaching the end of the curving hallway, Kruz saw a kenku standing with his back towards him and threw his dagger. But luck was not with him, for the birdman turned at the last moment to say something to a colleague and the blade went whizzing past his head, clattering against the curved wall and falling to the stone floor. The kenku spun to face the changeling and squawked out a warning to the rest of his crew. From her perch at the skylight, Adrielle could see two more kenku running by the cages, each loading an arrow into his shortbow, while the two closest to Kruz fired their own arrows at him. As he was still mostly in the hallway, she couldn't see him successfully dodge the incoming arrows - which struck the wall at his side and fell harmlessly to the ground at Brendan's feet - but she saw the monk step into view, firing a sling bullet as he approached. It also missed, but not by much.

Then Shiroko stepped forward, casting an elemental burst spell on a section of floor midway between the four kenku archers. The stone floor erupted in a violent explosion of stone splinters, flying outwards in all directions, piercing the feathered bodies of the surprised kenku. Two dropped immediately, bleeding heavily, and the other two - while remaining standing - were obviously hurt by the unexpected (and unfamiliar) spell. This, it turned out, was their first experience with a wu jen from a faraway land.

Adrielle figured now was the time to act. Smashing the skylight with the butt of her weapon, she sent shards of glass cascading down to the floor at the center of the four cages, two on either side. The young noblemen started yelling for help, knowing there were enemies of their captors in the area. "Free us!" cried one, while another demanded, "Let us out of here!"

Kruz pulled his fighting dagger from his belt and slashed at the nearest kenku, but the nimble birdman leapt back away from the striking blade. Hoppy, seeing all pretense of silence was now gone, started climbing down the ladder in case his healing spells were needed. His hoof made a clomping sound on the metal ladder with every other rung.

The kenku not actively fighting Kruz backed away and started running along the curving wall, behind one set of cages. There, opposite the hallway from which the heroes had emerged, sat the opening to a slide leading down to the lower levels of the building. He slid down to the third floor and stopped himself long enough to pound on the secret panel leading to Sinister's quarters. Once the master of the Aerie let him in, he breathlessly informed the boss of the intruders above. Sinister stormed out of his quarters, calling for the security men on the third floor to come with him upstairs. The wounded kenku followed.

Meanwhile, the last remaining kenku on the fourth floor fired an arrow at Kruz and then hightailed it along the curved back wall, following in his comrade's path. Brendan gave chase, swatting at the fleeing avian with his quarterstaff to no effect. Shiroko fired a daze spell at the kenku, extending its effect for longer than normal using a bit of arcane wu jen magic she knew. She was pleased to see it take effect, leaving the kenku standing at the top of the sliding passageway but not yet having entered.

Adrielle, unable to see any foes from her vantage point on the roof of the Aerie, dropped down to the floor below, her boots harmlessly crunching the shards of glass beneath her. Then she raced to the two dead kenku slain by Shiroko's elemental burst spell, and rummaged through their pockets, looking for keys to the cells imprisoning the young noblemen. The first corpse had no keys upon him, but she found a key in the pocket of the second dead kenku. Pulling it out, it looked to be about the right size to open the cell doors; she just hoped all four cells would open with the same key.

Across the room from her, Kruz approached the first of the other two cells and quickly had the first one open by a practiced maneuver with his lockpicks. The grateful prisoner rushed out of his cell, eager to be free. But then the group could hear the pounding of running feet coming up the stairs from the lower level - reinforcements were on their way! Brendan started applying his newly-purchased oil of shillelagh to his quarterstaff, eager to give it a test run against the second wave of foes fast approaching.

Shiroko used her prestidigitation magic to sweep the shards of broken glass from the floor in front of the cages over to the top of the stairs leading down to the third floor, sprinkling them along the top few steps. The kenku, she had noted, wore no footgear on their birdlike feet; perhaps the broken glass would slow them down a bit.

Adrielle opened the two cages on her side of the room, and the two prisoners she released rushed over to the dead kenku, grabbing up the short swords from their slain captors' scabbards. Shiroko called for the prisoner Kruz had fled to escape through the sliding passageway the still-dazed kenku had tried to use, figuring it was likely an easier way to escape than fighting off the reinforcements making their way up the stairs. He needed no further prompting, pushing the dazed kenku out of the way and sliding down the ramp.

And not a moment too soon, for Sinister burst onto the scene, stepping over the broken glass and onto the fourth floor, where he slashed at the nearest nobleman - freed from his cage, the kenku leader noted with a scowl - slipping past the young man's feeble defenses and slicing him across his upper chest. Kruz had by this time successfully picked the final lock and freed the last of the prisoners. Hoppy clomped out of the passageway leading to the ladder from the rooftop and Shiroko called him away from the fighting, over by her. He limped along on his mismatched legs, avoiding the slashing blades and standing over by the pretty fox-woman with the white hair.

The kenku who had survived Shiroko's deadly elemental burst spell and gone down to warn Sinister now stepped over the glass shards and re-entered the fray. Brendan, closer to the slide, bashed in the dazed kenku's head with the head of his quarterstaff, saw two human guards run up into the room from the stairwell (their heavy boots crunching the glass shards beneath them without incident), didn't like the odds, and leaped down the slide himself.

Shiroko fired a magic missile across the room at Sinister from her wand, calling for the prisoners to come flee down the slide. Adrielle, all but unnoticed over by the cages, pulled out her sword and went racing over to Sinister, surprising him with the speed of her attack. His jet-black feathers were immediately coated in his own red blood. He struck back at Adrielle with his own blade, hitting the scout but inflicting nowhere near as much damage as she'd just delivered to him. The three remaining noblemen took the opportunity to flee across the room to the slide, where Shiroko ushered them down to what she hoped was freedom at the bottom of the sloping escape route.

Kruz followed the fleeing noblemen to the slide, taking a moment to shoot Sinister with his crossbow before sliding down the ramp himself. One of the human guards slashed at Adrielle with his short sword, but missed. Hoppy, upon Shiroko's direction, sat down at the top of the slide, a look of concern on his patchwork face - part bugbear, part bullywug, and part lizardfolk - at not being around to heal those who might need it. But Adrielle, the one hero still in the midst of the fight, easily dodged an attack from the wounded kenku who'd warned Sinister of their intrusion, and she was making her way towards the slide herself. Satisfied that the women would be able to make it safely to the slide, he pushed himself down the sloping ramp, sliding in a wide corkscrew along the hidden passageway along the outer walls of the Aerie's structure.

At the bottom of the slide, Brendan - who had pulled the skull mask down over his face, as the curving slideway was unlit - was initially concerned this was a dead end, but then he spotted a latch that opened a secret door out into the night air. Here was the back door that had eluded him earlier than afternoon. He ushered those already down at the bottom of the slide outside into the alley, cautioning them to remain silent.

Shiroko fired off another magic missile from her wand at Sinister, dropping the Aerie's lord, and then slid down the ramp. Adrielle raced across the room and followed in the hengeyokai's wake. The remaining kenku and the two human guards opted not to follow, instead looking after their fallen master, who was not dead, merely unconscious. They applied pressure against his wounds while one of them went to fetch bandages and Sinister's private stash of healing potions.

"Is that everybody?" Brendan asked, taking a quick head count as the two women came to the bottom of the escape slide and stepped out into the alleyway. Hoppy ran over to Adrielle and started casting curative spells, closing up the slight wound she had taken from Sinister's blade.

"That's all of us," replied Kruz, slamming the secret door back shut. "Let's get these boys home."

Three of the young noblemen, Waylon Wentworth, Erasmus Finch, and Francis Totterham, were reunited with their grateful families, who insisted upon paying the heroes for their sons' rescue. The fourth, Alexander Hackleton, was not the least bit surprised to hear his old man had refused to pay a single coin for his release; he thanked the five for his rescue and apologized he had no means of paying them for their efforts, having gambled away everything he had on him back in the Aerie (and then some, which had led to his dire predicament in the first place).

"Where will you go now?" asked Shiroko, fearing the young man had nowhere to go.

"I can stay with some friends," Alexander replied. "But I shan't be returning home, that is for certain."

"I'd advise against returning to the Aerie, either," suggested Kruz. "Like, ever."

"Agreed in full," promised Alexander, before giving the five a curt nod and walking off into the darkness.

- - -

The PCs earned a hefty 3,000 gp reward from the Finches, Totterhams, and Wentworth families. And they've earned the gratitude of three minor nobleman families, a situation rich in potential future plot hooks.

- - -

T-shirt worn: My wolf shirt, as it represented the feral dog at Finch Manor.
 
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ADVENTURE 3: TROUBLE IN THISTLEDOWN PARK

PC Roster:
Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 1​
Brendan Conaill, human monk 1​
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 1​
Shiroko, fox hengeyokai wu jen 1​

NPC Roster:
Hoppy, mongrelfolk adept 1​

Game Session Date: 16 August 2025

- - -

"Why are we here again?" asked Shiroko.

"A guild thief, Cliff Stickyfingers, failed to make his designated appointment," answered Kruz. "He was hired to snatch something for a client and meet at Thistledown Park at midnight to hand it over. Problem is, he never showed - and now we have a disgruntled client who paid half up front and a missing thief who could be dead, or could have decided to betray the guild and keep whatever he was hired to steal for himself. In any case, the Silent Sodality's out in full force looking for him: his home, his known hangouts, any known bolt-holes - the works. We've been tasked to see if there's anything at his meeting-site that may give us any clues about his current whereabouts."

"Here it is," Brendan said, as they approached Thistledown Park. It was hidden away a block behind a main street, a tranquil place for a family to have a picnic, or feed the fish in the koi pond, while the kids played on the playground equipment or tried to find their way through the hedge maze. There was also a flower garden, a fountain, and a statue of Thaddeus Galloway, the man who had the park built, never one to step away from an opportunity of self-aggrandizement.

As the group of five approached, they could tell at once that everything was not as tranquil in the park as normal. A family of three stood upon a covered picnic table, looking fearful at something down below them. A little girl was buried up to the neck in the sandbox, but her laid-back expression indicated she wasn't particularly worried about her current predicament. Over on the swing set, one of the ropes had come loose from its anchor point and had been used to wrap up the little boy on that swing; he didn't complain about his predicament either, but that was likely because the rope wrapped around his body was also effectively being used as a gag.

As Kruz entered the park and walked by the statue of Thaddeus Galloway, he pulled his short sword from its scabbard, ready for any trouble. And sure enough, trouble came to him almost at once, but not from any direction he'd have expected: Galloway's metal statue bent at the waist and a solid fist came crashing down at the changeling rogue. Fortunately, Kruz was quick enough to dodge the awkward blow, rolling forward into a somersault and running over by the fountain. The others saw the statue's attack, but Adrielle also spotted something the others missed: although she saw the statue move and bend to attack the changeling, she also saw it still standing unmoving in its original position, the two images overlapping in her vision. An illusion, perhaps? In any case, it didn't look to be able to chase after any of them, and the others had all seen it attack Kruz, so she figured none of them were in any danger from it. She went over to the playground to check on the little girl buried up to her neck in the sandbox.

"Did you see that?" Brendan asked the others as he approached, staying well out of the statue's reach, for while he saw it try to reach Kruz with its awkward fist, it hadn't moved its legs, staying rooted on the spot. The monk had his quarterstaff at the ready as he headed over to the swing set to go check on the tightly-bound boy.

Shiroko veered to the right while the others went left, curious about what had the family of three - a father, mother, and young son - so frightened. Hoppy followed the wu jen; while he considered he owed a life-debt to all four of the heroes who had saved his life from the sahuagin raid, the hengeyokai had been the only one not to have initially flinched at first seeing the mismatched features on his misshapen form; if he were ever in a position where he could only save one of them, he'd likely go for Shiroko. In any case, by ducking down and looking underneath the adjacent picnic table, they could see what had the family so frightened: a skunk, its white-striped tail raised and a look of irritation in its eyes.

Hoping the language of burrowing mammals was the same here in Armaturia as it was back in her homeland, the fox hengeyokai called out, "What are you doing?" She was surprised when the skunk replied, "Mad." It wasn't much of a response, but the animal languages were often very primitive. "Why are you mad?" she pressed.

"Bird," it replied as it continued on its way, towards the picnic table on which the family was perched, standing among their food. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to the hengeyokai, so she cast a detect magic spell to see if there was something of an arcane nature bothering the skunk. She saw no magical auras around the skunk, although the statue was radiating magic. But Hoppy's sensitive ear - the right one, that of a bugbear - picked up the sound of rapidly-beating wings. "There, behind the skunk," he said, pointing to where he heard the flapping wings, although there was nothing visible there. "Like a dragonfly," he insisted.

Adrielle approached the girl in the sandbox and was surprised at the expression on her face - she was not only unafraid, she was positively enjoying the experience. The mermaid in a human's body briefly considered if she herself had ever experienced a level of ecstasy similar to the one the little girl seemed to be undergoing, and came up blank. "I'll get you out of there," she promised the girl, undoing her weapon belt so she could use her scabbard - not her sword, no sense in taking the risk of cutting the girl with the edge of her blade - to dig her out of the sand.

Kruz went past the fountain to check out the koi pond, thinking he might find Cliff's body floating face down in it or something, but the only thing in the water was a group of hungry fish, who all came over to Kruz's side of the pond when his shadow hit the water. Past experience had taught them humanoid shadows were often accompanied by food: dried bread, usually, but sometimes items even tastier. Brendan, by then, had made it over to the boy bound and gagged on the third swing, only to have one of the ropes holding up the second swing unloop from the top and snake over his way, winding about him in an instant. Just that quickly, he was entangled as tightly as the boy beside him, although because he was twice the boy's size the rope was unable to reach up to his mouth.

The skunk was over by the picnic table harboring the cowering family and spun about, tail raised to spray them. "Leave them alone - they mean you no harm!" Shiroko commanded, and the skunk snorted once in derision and scuttled away, heading over to the fountain. Hoppy, still looking under the table from which it had originally emerged, spotted a hummingbird lowering itself from directly under the table's lower surface. "There!" he cried, and Shiroko looked over to see the hummingbird follow in the skunk's wake - was this the bird that had been annoying it? She pulled her wand of magic missiles from a kimono sleeve and fired off a shot. The hummingbird died immediately, its body falling lifelessly to the ground...but oddly enough, the sound of the rapid beating of its wings continued.

Adrielle looked over to her right and saw Brendan bound up by the swing set rope. Abandoning the ridiculously happy little girl, who didn't seem to be in any immediate danger, she ran over to Brendan, careful not to get too close to either of the other two swings, fearful of having one of their ropes try to tangle her up in the same fashion. "I'm fine!" grumbled the monk, not wanting to have to be rescued by one of his companions - he'd grown up in the rough streets of Port Duralia, surely he could get himself out of these ropes! But his first attempt was unsuccessful, much to his dismay.

The growl of a wolf alerted Shiroko and Hoppy to the arrival of a new threat to the park environs. A wolf came striding up from the far side of the hedge maze, drool dripping from its slavering mouth. The little boy on the picnic table shrieked in fear, and his father pushed him protectively behind himself and his wife. Shiroko's detect magic spell, still active, indicated to the wu jen the wolf was magical in nature, and she voiced her suspicions: "It's been summoned by someone!" She activated her daily unseen servant spell effect, having it slide the dead hummingbird over to the wolf as an offering of food, but it ignored the morsel, its red eyes focused upon the three cringing humans on the top of the picnic table. Thinking to put a bit of distance between themselves and the wolf, Shiroko and Hoppy leaped up on the table opposite the one with the three picnickers on it.

Ignoring all of the antics of his companions, Kruz carried on with his original mission: finding Cliff or clues to his current whereabouts. He wandered over to the flower gardens, which was a series of walkways surrounded by low shrubs and interspersed with a wide variety of colorful flowers. But as he approached, a clump of flowers and the shrubs around them elongated, trying to entwine themselves around the nimble changeling. Kruz was having none of that, however - he dodged their attack and backtracked over by the fountain.

There was sudden gust of wind - that's what it felt like, in any case - and suddenly Brendan and Adrielle were overcome with ecstatic joy. Brendan abandoned his struggles against the rope binding him to the swing set and just enjoyed the moment; Adrielle wandered dreamily away from the swings, stepping over the edge of a teeter-totter, only to have it suddenly slam upwards into her thigh. She stumbled over it, falling onto her back, but she ignored the pain of the attack and focused on the lovely shapes the clouds overhead were making. That one almost looked like a flounder, and with a little imagination she could almost see a starfish taking form in another cloud not too far away.

The skunk had wandered over to a small grove of trees behind the koi park, where it had dug itself a den; now that the irritating hummingbird had stopped bothering him, he was content to go back to the shade of his underground dwelling.

After Shiroko concentrated on her detect magic spell, she determined the aura around the wolf was one of illusion magic, not conjuration. "The wolf is not real!" she called over to the frightened family. "It's an illusion! It's safe to get out of here!" The boy didn't believe this for a moment, but his father scooped him up in his arms and he and his wife fled the park for home, leaving their picnic food abandoned on the table behind them. The wolf looked after the fleeing family for a moment, then, apparently realizing the game was up, winked away out of its fake existence.

"Come on!" called Shiroko, jumping down from the table top and heading over to the hedge maze. Hoppy followed without question (although he looked wistfully at the abandoned food on the next table over with the practiced eye of one who had lived his life not always knowing where his next meal would come from). As they approached the maze - a small labyrinth of 10-foot-tall growths with an open doorway facing the picnic area - they could hear cried for help coming from inside the maze. "Another dead end!" grumbled a masculine voice, while a woman from the same general area called out, "Is there anyone out there who can help us get out of this?"

About this time, the girl buried to her neck in the sandbox started wailing; whatever joyful attitude had overcome her had apparently run its course.

Kruz joined up with Shiroko and Hoppy by the hedge maze. On a whim, he activated his birthmark, causing the reddish shape on his collarbone to take on the solid form of a crystal orb attached to a silver chain. Holding it up to his eye, he looked inside the hedge maze through its open door and saw something not entirely unlike the two different forms of the statue Adrielle had seen earlier: two versions of the hedge maze, one interposed over the other, one the actual layout of the maze and the other the illusion making it look like the maze interior had a completely different configuration. He also spotted something peculiar above the hedge maze and announced, "Hey! There's a little fairy flying above the maze!"

"Where?" demanded Shiroko.

"Right in the middle, about three feet up!"

That was all Shiroko needed to hear. She cast an elemental burst spell at the top of the hedges in the center of the maze, causing splinters of sharp wood to go flying up in all directions like explosive shrapnel. The pain from the splinters caused the tiny pixie to lose concentration on her greater invisibility spell for a moment, bringing her visible for a second or two. It was enough to allow the wu jen to know what they were up against.

"Hang on - I'm coming for you!" Kruz called to the couple stuck in the illusory hedge maze. The moment of true seeing through his magic gem had passed - it was once more a reddish birthmark on his chest - but he remembered the basic layout of the maze's interior. "How long have you guys been lost in here!"

"Got to be nearly an hour by now!" replied the man trapped inside with his wife.

Adrielle and Brendan shook off the effects of their blissfulness at about the same time, and as the monk freed himself from the swing set rope, Adrielle got back on her feet and headed over to the little girl in the sandbox, who was now screaming herself red in the face. But as the scout approached her, she heard growling from beneath a nearby merry-ground. Looking over that way, Adrielle saw a pair of yellow, glowing eyes in the shadows beneath the playground equipment. But then she heard Shiroko call out, "It's fairies, casting illusions!" and realized a predator the size of the one apparently beneath the merry-go-round wouldn't likely make it into the middle of a city the size of Port Duralia without having been discovered and run off. And oddly enough, as soon as she ignored the growling menace, it ceased its noises and its glowing eyes winked out.

Brendan cut the rope binding the little boy to the swing. Adrielle went back to digging the girl out of the sandbox with the scabbard of her longsword, when the girl suddenly shrieked, "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, YOU BITCH!" It was a powerful voice, more suited to a dragon than a little six-year-old blonde girl with ponytails, and then Adrielle realized something else: while the curse had come from the girl's direction, her lips hadn't moved as the curse was voiced. More illusion magic, then. The scout doubled herself to the task and soon had the little girl free from the sandbox.

Kruz found the husband and wife in the back of the hedge maze and led them back to the entrance, although with his true seeing gone he made a wrong turn here and there, and was worried he'd soon be as lost as they were. But his training held true, and by going back the way he'd come with his eyes closed, to block out any contradictory information being fed to him via illusion magic, he soon had the three of them back out by the picnic tables. "Tommy! Sally!" called out the mother, and to her relief the boy Brendan had just freed and the girl Adrielle had dug out both went running to their parents.

The pixie's brief moment of visibility gave Shiroko a fair idea of the direction she'd been headed (away from the hedge maze and closer to the fountain) and it allowed the wu jen to cast a hypnosis spell in the area she believed the little fairy to be. Fortunately, Shiroko had accurately guessed the pixie's general location, and she'd even managed to overcome the little fey's innate immunity to spell energy. "Become visible and approach me," Shiroko commanded the pixie - and the tiny fey did just that.

"We do not wish to cause any of you harm!" Shiroko called out to whatever other fairies might be in the vicinity - there had been enough strange goings-on that there had to have been more than just the one pixie involved. "Approach, make yourselves known, and we will come to an arrangement we can all live with!"

"It's okay!" echoed the hypnotized fairy. "Come on out into the open!"

Two other fairies became visible and drifted over to the first one, flapping their little dragonfly wings. Then an actual dragon approached, but this was no larger than a small puppy, featuring the colorful wings of a butterfly. Brendan got a good grip on his quarterstaff, ready to swat any of these fey creatures out of the air if they tried anything. But Shiroko seemed to have gained their trust, so he held off his attacks - for now.

"How did you come to be here?" asked Shiroko.

"We came through the device," replied the hypnotized fairy, a tiny little pixie named Snowfeather, pointing towards Tommy, the boy Brendan had rescued from the swings. Tommy held something in his hands, looking like a magnifying lens with a lever that ran across its upper circular arc. "A giant eye appeared in the Fairylands, and when we went to go investigate it, we passed through an opening between our two worlds, and ended up here."

"At first, we thought this was a land of giants," added Thornflower, a tiny pixie with green-tinged hair. "Then we realized the setting on the device had been made much larger in the Fairylands than it was here. In passing through, we were shrunk down to these sizes." That made sense to Shiroko; from what she recalled of the fairy stories from her homeland, pixies were about half as tall as a spirit folk, not the mere two or three inches as they were here.

Adrielle asked Tommy to see the fairy glass and he handed it over. Kruz looked at it over her shoulder and said quietly, "That's the object Cliff was asked to steal for the client."

"I was playing around with it, and these tiny flying people and the little dragon flew out," Tommy admitted. "Then they went away. I didn't know they were just invisible."

"This device has caused a lot of problems here in the park," Adrielle chided Tommy. "Where did you find it?" Tommy explained he'd found it in the grass over by the side of the hedge maze. "Well, I would like to buy it from you," the scout replied. "I will give you a solid gold coin for it. That's the same as 100 copper pieces."

"That's 100 pieces of candy!" exclaimed Tommy, agreeing to the deal immediately before the foolish woman could change her mind. Adrielle fished a gold piece from her change purse and handed it over to the boy.

"You share that candy with your little sister," admonished Tommy's mother.

"Aw!"

Shiroko looked up at the hovering mini-pixies. "Do you wish to return home?" she asked them. They jointly agreed, even the faerie dragon whose euphoric breath weapon had caused the sudden changes in mood in Adrielle, Brendan, and Sally. The pixies showed how to configure the fairy glass so they'd end up back in the Fairylands at their proper sizes, and one by one flew through the glass once it started glowing. Once all four of the fey beings had passed through, Adrielle shut it off with the press of a button and passed it over to Kruz. "Here's the item in question," she said. "We can at least give this back to the Silent Sodality."

"We still need to search the park for any signs of Cliff," pointed out Kruz. He went back to the flower garden paths, now that they weren't enchanted to try to entangle him. But it was Hoppy who found Cliff's body, over behind the park, lying on the ground behind a large oak tree. There were claw marks all over his body.

"What do you think happened to him?" asked Shiroko.

"I'll give you my guess," offered Brendan. "Cliff here steals the fairy glass from a wizard, then high-tails it over here to pass it off to the client. Before the client shows up, though, the wizard finds out his item's been stolen, and he sends some powerful minion to go fetch it - a gargoyle, maybe, judging by the size of those claw marks. Anyway, Cliff sees the gargoyle - or whatever - coming for him, tosses the fairy glass away, figuring he'll evade the monster tracking him and then come back to fetch it, only the gargoyle gets the better of him. Cliff's dead, the fairy glass isn't on him - the kid said he found it over by the hedge maze, right? - so the gargoyle goes back to report his failure to his wizardly master. That means the wizard's probably going to be taking further steps to find his stolen fairy glass - divination spells, invisible stalkers, whatever - so it's in our best interest to get the goods back to the Sodality and let them get it to the client, before the wizard shows up looking to take it."

"Yeah, good idea," agreed Kruz. "Let's get this back to them, quick." He held it out to Adrielle. "Here, you can hold it, since you paid for it."

"No, that's perfectly fine," countered the scout. "You go ahead and carry it."

"What about Cliff?" asked Hoppy. He'd been ready to cast a cure light wounds spell upon the slain thief until he saw Cliff wasn't breathing.

"Leave him where he is for now," suggested Brendan. "We'll let the Sodality know where he is, and they can deal with him later."

And that was the plan they put into motion. Kruz gave a huge sigh of relief once the fairy glass was out of his hands; now it was someone else's problem. The higher-ups in the Silent Sodality paid the group 400 pieces of gold for their services, feeling very pleased with the transaction; they could now turn the item over to the client who had paid for its theft in the first place, reaffirming the organization's reliability, and they rested easier knowing Cliff hadn't gone rogue on them after all. Dying on the job was, after all, always a possibility in this profession, and Cliff had known the risks before he took on the assignment.

- - -

I had been going through the creature types and realized most fey only worked well at lower levels, so I wrote an adventure specifically allowing the PCs to be up against fairies without having to have them transported to the Fairlylands. (That will come later in the campaign, since Joe decided to run a changeling PC whose father is a powerful fey. I've already figured out what type of fey he is, and why he stashed his son to be raised on the Material Plane.)

This adventure only took a bit less than two hours to run through. Fearing such might be the case, I had the follow-on adventure all ready to go, and we went through that one next during the same gaming session.

- - -

T-shirt worn: My "Duck Dynasty" T-shirt with Phil Robertson that reads, "Everybody is Happy Happy Happy" - which at least was true of those who had been hit by the faerie dragon's euphoric breath weapon.
 
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