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Story Hour
Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8053019" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p><span style="font-size: 15px"> Session 4: Crazy Whispers</span></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Imaktis - Tortle Cleric (Nature)/Shadow Sorcerer</p><p>Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore)</p><p>Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant)</p><p>Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker)</p><p>Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive)</p><p>Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients)</p><p></p><p>GM: - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p></p><p>1 Sunnin 748 (night of the same day) (Campaign day 2)</p><p></p><p>Not listed among last session’s treasure was the (Un)holy symbol of Orcus that the Wight-spellcaster was wearing, because none of us wanted it. However, we thought it might be important, so Fiona wrapped it up in leather and put it in her satchel.</p><p></p><p>Commander Mogree showed up at the lumberyard after we took care of all the undead. He was disturbed when we reported that the shadowpool at the lumberyard was made by the same person as the one at Istin’s Yard. He said he would talk to Tulmor & Barnett -- they are good at planar stuff.</p><p></p><p>Mogree also told us that he had convinced Chief Ullar Truehammer to change our arrangement with the guard -- they will be paying for our lodging and food. It’s only fair -- they provide room and board for the regular guard. We can stay where we’re currently staying and they’ll cover room and board. We can also have people leave messages for us with the guard -- rather than telling possibly shady sorts where we’re staying.</p><p></p><p>Mogree said that he didn’t have any word of anything else happening in the city at the moment other than the ordinary sort of things that the guard are well equipped to handle.</p><p></p><p>We parted for the evening with plans to meet for breakfast the next morning.</p><p></p><p>Back at the lodging house, Joybell gave Queena one of the silver ewers found at the boarding house as a thank you gift. She also asked about how to get a letter or a package to someone in another city. Mail moves most inexpensively between cities along trade routes with caravans. That is not fast. More expensively a special courier can be hired -- that costs more, but how much depends on how long a trip.</p><p></p><p></p><p>2 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 3)</p><p></p><p>We met up for breakfast to talk about plans for the next few days. Joybell had to go to the Basalt Henge to take her final vows -- a three day trip (one there, one at the Henge, one back). The rest of the party had plans for doing various kinds of research, both personal and pertinent to the undead problem, in the city.</p><p></p><p>We agreed that we were going to continue working together -- this has been working out really well.</p><p></p><p></p><p>2-4 Sunnin 748 (Campaign days 3-5)</p><p></p><p>Mo spent the days working at the docks as a stevedore. He joined the stevedore’s guild and helped carrying crates at various shipyards and listening to the workers. He went with them to work and got to know their lives and struggles. He wrote and performed songs of their struggles in the stevedore’s guild taverns.</p><p></p><p>He learned that they get health care (curing magic) when they are injured without being stupidly at fault (coming to work drunk, for example) but the pay is very low. The guild assigns work out to workers who make themselves available for the day, but the Guild takes a percentage of the pay. Mo netted about 5cp per day working as a stevedore (about half the wages as a guard). So he heard some complaints about pay, but not about treatment otherwise. He also learned that the Stevedore’s Guild has a seat on the city council.</p><p></p><p>A few of the people he spoke to knew people who worked at Istin’s yard, but he didn’t get any insight into the skinny guy with the sword who was seen coming off the ship in the middle of the night.</p><p></p><p>He was reminded (as were we all) that the foreman at Istin’s Yard was, when we were talking to Ser Istin and Chief Truehammer, unaccounted for. He had not been seen and was not among the dead. One of the stevedores Mo worked with in Deepport knew him as an acquaintance to say hi to. The stevedore saw the Istin’s foreman in Deepport earlier in the day and said hello, as one does. The foreman didn’t seem to recognize or know him at all, was slow to respond to his own name, and seemed surprised to have been recognized. He clearly didn’t ‘have any idea who the acquaintance was. It wasn’t that he was scared or nervous about being recognized, he just had no idea. The stevedore told Mo that the foreman’s name was Alin, but didn’t know a last name. (Of course, Ser Istin knows the foreman’s name, so we could get it from him.)</p><p></p><p>Imaktis spent the time looking into official records of the town. He was looking into the Lumberyard and Istin’s Yard and looking for other businesses that may be failing. He did not have good luck looking through the city’s records (they are very poorly organized and the city doesn’t keep good records, according to Imaktis). The Lumberyard was in receivership, but Istin’s Yard was not struggling at all.</p><p></p><p>Joybell went to the Basalt Henge to take her Oath. There was a letter from her parents waiting for her at the Henge -- her mother (pregnant when Joybell left them) had given birth to a baby brother named Eulan!!</p><p></p><p>She also spoke with the person who trained her in combat, a tiefling named Green Hope -- she showed off her spiffy flail and talked to the him about undead and how to fight them. When she mentioned that the second Wight had a symbol of Orcus and was casting spells, Green Hope got very serious and said she needed to kill all such things she found. When Joybell asked if he had any advice about how to do that he said, “Hit them until they stop moving.”</p><p></p><p>Fiona and Orryk went to Tulmor and Barnett’s place to see about using their library, which they had been invited to do. When they got there, Tulmor and Barnett were already up and about and busy, though it was pretty early in the morning, and seemed surprised to see them.</p><p></p><p>Fiona showed them the wight’s Orcus symbol. They asked if anyone from the Guard saw that and Fiona said probably not, because it was wrapped up in her bag before Commander Mogree got there and we didn’t think to mention it. But he did see the Orcus symbols carved into the chests of the ghouls. Barnett re-wrapped the Orcus symbol and took it into another room and returned without it and Fiona and Orryk were happy to be rid of it.</p><p></p><p>Tulmor told them that Chief Truehammer had hired them to go out and map the planar instabilities in the city, throughout Embernook. This was going to entail walking around the city concentrating on a spell similar to locate object. All day. For several days.</p><p></p><p>They asked Fiona and Orryk to man the desk at their office -- taking messages and being there in case people came in to hire them. While there, they were free to use the research library without charge. For 50gp per day, Fiona could look through their spellbooks and learn any spells she could manage in the time she paid for. They even had the necessary inks and paper available, at the usual cost, for her, so she didn’t have to go hunting around.</p><p></p><p>Then Tulmor and Barnett headed out to start their survey and left Fiona and Orryk manning the desk at their office/home.</p><p></p><p>During the days of down-time, Orryk was doing research into Orcus, but had little success (possibly because Fiona had already snagged those books off the shelves) and the Elemental Planes. He had tremendous success with some research into the Elemental Planes. He also looked a bit into whether there was a Devil parallel to the demon Orcus, and found that there really isn’t one that’s as focused on undeath as Orcus is.</p><p></p><p>Fiona was researching Orcus as well and had tremendously more success than Orryk did. She learned that Orcus is the Demon Prince of Undead. He has the goal of turning everything in the multiverse into undead . During the time when the demons and devils were rampaging or stampeding on this continent, Orcus made several personal appearances, separated by hundreds of years. These didn’t go well for anyone and the last time he was on this world, sending him back to the Abyss involved two Solars (high-ranking Celestials).</p><p></p><p>Every time he showed up, those people who had made deals with him to become warlocks became undead wight-like creatures that could cast spells immediately upon his arrival on this plane...which sounds disturbingly familiar. (Note: Those people who made pacts with him to become warlocks during the hundreds of years when he was not on his plane, lived out their lives normally. It was only when he came to this plane that his warlocks immediately became undead spell-chucking wights. Which makes that guy in the lumber-yard even <em>more</em> bad news.)</p><p></p><p>Fiona also did some research into a personal project of her own.</p><p></p><p>The only interesting visitor during the days they were watching the desk was Chief Ullar Truehammer who showed up and asked where Tulmor and Barnett were. When told they were out walking around the city doing their mapping, he grumbled and left.</p><p></p><p>Orryk also went to a shop to ask about how much it would cost to make a weapon magical -- no specific <em>power</em>, just a magical thing as opposed to a non-magical one. He learned that it costs 75gp and takes about a week to put a simple enchantment on an item. He didn’t pursue this idea at this time, but did make note of the information.</p><p></p><p>Joybell got back to town on the evening of 4 Sunnin (Campaign day 5). She stopped by Queena’s to drop off her pack and say hi, then headed off to the Pewter Oar to find people. No one was there at first, then Taman and Mo and Imaktis showed up. Tulmor and Barnett asked FIona and Orryk to go with them there (so Orryk didn’t go straight back to Queena’s himself), because they wanted to talk to all of us (or as many of all of us as possible). We all wound out gathering in a quiet corner of the Pewter Oar.</p><p></p><p>They told us that, based on their survey, there were no shadowpools currently forming in the city. There were some instabilities -- places where it would be easier to set up a standing gate. None of those instabilities appeared to go to the Shadowfell -- one went to the Feywild and one to the Elemental Plane of Water. There was also one in The Nook that was vague and indeterminate -- it seemed to them that someone could take some control over where that one became a portal to, if they were of a mind to. There was no sign, during those three days, of there being any undead problems in the city, but we still haven’t fully explored the tall, skinny, stinky guy who came off the ship at Istin’s Yard and we haven’t looked into Alin the foreman from Istin’s at all.</p><p></p><p>They did have a job for us, however, less than a day’s travel outside of Embernook, in a town called Kalmarn. They had a bookish friend, a research wizard, named Harl the Quiet -- he was Barnett’s mentor and teacher and he had collaborated with them on various projects. He had a huge library (setting the hook for Orryk and Fiona). They had not heard anything from him at all in a couple of weeks and the last riverboat that moored there (four days previous) had not seen any signs of life in the town. It looked deserted. Mo asked if the riverboat crew had seen any signs of flight from the town and there was no answer for that -- the riverboat had tied up, seen that it looked like no one was there, and then left. There was no fire and it didn’t look like the city was in shambles. There was just no one there.</p><p></p><p>We asked if he was researching anything that might have turned on him and they said that wasn’t likely. But he was definitely a research wizard -- “Anything he doesn’t know is not worth knowing” was his attitude. He had a very large library, but was very reclusive, which is why he lived in the small farming village of Kalmarn.</p><p></p><p>They wanted us to go first thing the next morning, so we weren’t going to have time to look for Alin, the Istin’s Yard foreman before we left. Fortunately, we weren’t expecting to be gone long.</p><p></p><p>We retired to our respective lodgings. At the temple, Imaktis tried to get a sense of what the local clergy were saying about the undead problems -- generally they’re pretty much against them. They do have some Inquisitors who are interested, but they have no information.</p><p></p><p></p><p>5 Sunnin 784 (Campaign day 6)</p><p></p><p>We met up at the Pewter Oar early in the morning. There were two letters waiting for us at the bar when we assembled there for breakfast. One was from Tulmor and Barnett and was addressed to Fiona. It had an envelope inside addressed to Harl and a note telling her not to open the other envelope. The other was from Chief Ullar Truehammer. Chief Truehammer’s note said that we were going to be going to Kalmarn by a boat called The Kelrose, which was waiting for us in Upport. The city had arranged for the boat and we would be paid our usual salary (such as it is) while on this mission.</p><p></p><p>The captain of the Kelrose, Whit (otherwise known as Captain), told us that we’d get to Kalmarn in the afternoon. The Kelrose had a crew of about 20 people, so it was a pretty big, but not huge. The river is about as wide as the Potomac at Embernook, narrower upstream.</p><p></p><p>Joybell had never been on a boat before, so she and Mo spent the river trip sitting up in the front of the ship watching everything. Mo was playing his flute and smoking his pipe. Taman spent the trip listening to the sailors’ scuttlebut -- the sailors were a bit baffled about this trip, because they had no cargo and were only going as far as Kalmarn. Apparently the whole purpose of the trip was to take us there.</p><p></p><p>About 2 in the afternoon, we got to Kalmarn and tied up at the moorings there. The Captain told us that they would stay until sundown, but no later. If we weren’t back to The Kelrose by then, they’d leave without us and go back to Embernook.The sailors were going to stay on the ship -- they had no intention of facing whatever was going on in the city.</p><p></p><p>From the boat, we could see that Kalmarn is a small village -- there was nothing moving, but we could see a couple of people lying on the ground looking inert.</p><p></p><p>Taman could hear some distant screaming and yelling in a language he didn’t know. As soon as he told everyone else about it, Joybell started running in that direction. The others took a moment then followed her. Strangely, Imaktis was the reluctant one, but he did come along.</p><p></p><p>By the time we got to the village proper we could all hear the screaming and shouting. None of us knew the language, though we have a lot of languages between us. When we got to the “main street” (such as it was), everyone had pretty much caught up to Joybell, who was looking around pretty wildly at first.</p><p></p><p>She was relieved to find that this was nothing like what she’d seen before.</p><p></p><p>Mo cast comprehend languages in an attempt to understand what the screams were saying -- but he found that the people (who we couldn’t see yet) weren’t making sense. The words could be translated but were put together without syntax or sense or grammar. So there was no possible translation of the phrases and sentences.</p><p></p><p>The inert people lying in the street were dead bodies -- they appeared have been beaten to death.</p><p></p><p>As we were examining the dead bodies in the streets, screaming people came out of the buildings, 8 undead bad guys (8 Mindghouls). They were moving toward us, so that the first two attacked in the first round and then more did double moves, to get to us or at least get close. They looked <em>mostly</em> like people -- they looked ragged but not exactly rotted. They were gibbering and yelling with strings of spittle dried and caked on their faces. They didn’t have fangs, just normal human teeth, and they didn’t have any weapons. They didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before -- they looked filthy and smelled of rot, but weren’t normal ghouls or zombies.</p><p></p><p>Taman spent a moment studying one to get insight into it, then took a shot at it. Mo found that they could be Viciously Mocked, to an extent. Their minds were too badly broken, as manifested by the gibbering, to be susceptible to psychic damage, but they could be put at disadvantage on their next attack.</p><p></p><p>One of them hit Joybell and for a moment the babbling almost made sense to her. Then, still mentally scrambled, she missed with her attack.</p><p></p><p>Taman got a sneak attack crit on one for 32 points of damage. There were two on Orryk and Joybell and Orryk did 17 points of damage to one. Mo used the Magic Missile wand to hit one that had flanking on Imaktis, then Imaktis moved away from it (ignoring the attack of opportunity) to attack the one Orryk had just hit.</p><p></p><p>Another mind ghoul started coming up through the village from behind the houses in the main street (1 more mindghoul, total so far: 9). Joybell used her protection ability on the first attack against Imaktis but the second would have hit if not for Imaktis casting a Shield spell. Joybell was hit and wound out stunned -- unable to attack or move or take reactions and all attacks against her had advantage. While she was stunned, one came up and started whispering in her ear -- the gibbering almost made weird sense to her, but she saved against most of the damage. Then she was able to shake off the effect, but was unable to attack.</p><p></p><p>Taman made a good shot, then Orryk missed with his staff. Fortunately, he hit with the unarmed strike.</p><p></p><p>Mo blew a silent note on his flute which then exploded in a crash of thunder, which was a shatter spell. He was able to catch three of them. Imaktis cast Sacred Flame on one them that was in the Shatter Spell and Fiona Firebolted one and dropped it.</p><p></p><p>Another one started coming in from the end of the street (1 more mindghoul, total so far: 10).</p><p></p><p>They attacked Joybell and Imaktis and actually missed Joybell. Who was then able to get an actual hit against them. Taman then dropped the one she’d hit.</p><p></p><p>Orryk moved 15’ away from one then punched into the air, which then hit with all the force of his punches and his spiritual energy. Very cool! Mo used the wand of Magic Missile again. Fiona tried to firebolt one, but missed.</p><p></p><p>When they attacked, Joybell protected Imaktis from the first attack with her shield and then he used a Shield spell to protect against the second attack.</p><p></p><p>In the background we saw a different kind of creature coming up from a house at the end of the road -- it looked like a “vaguely humanoid frayed cloud” (1 Allip). It didn’t look like a shadow, which were the only other incorporeal beings we’d encountered. It came up from the end of the road then moved into a house, going right in through the wall.</p><p></p><p>Joybell missed with another attack, but Taman managed to get one with his rapier. Orryk did his air-fist attack, Fists of Unbroken Air, at one and then moved back further from the buildings -- because he didn’t want anything coming out through the walls at him. Mo dropped one and then hurt another one with a Magic Missile from the wand. Then Imaktis cast Magic Missile and dropped one and hurt another one. There were still a few mind ghouls around us and 1 more coming up from further away (1 more mindghoul, total: 11).</p><p></p><p>Fiona Magic Missiled one mindghoul, then the weird one (the allip) came out of the building and made a weird, babbling howl that stunned Joybell and Taman and did psychic damage to everyone. Orryk hit the allip with the same Fists of Unbroken Air attack, then backed around the corner of a building for cover. Mo used Vicious Mockery on it.</p><p></p><p>Imaktis moved Taman back out of range of the allip, then cast guiding bolt on it. He did a lot of damage, and left it limned with magical light so that the next attack against it had advantage. Fiona cast a Fire Bolt and killed another of the mind ghouls. As the mind ghouls dropped one by one, the screaming got to be less and less. As the last mind ghoul finally got to us, Fiona did a lot of damage to it with a firebolt.</p><p></p><p>The allip did its babbling howl again and once again Taman and Joybell failed the save. Both immediately dropped and <em>immediately</em> failed death saves on their turns.</p><p></p><p>Orryk ran up and did a flurry of blows on the one last “normal” one and dropped it.</p><p></p><p>Mo healed Joybell and got her back on her feet with a Healing Word.</p><p></p><p>Then Imaktis hit it. In response, it tried to float away, but Imaktis dropped it with an attack of opportunity. (Also, Taman got healed, somehow.)</p><p></p><p>The Village was clear.</p><p></p><p>Orryk figured out that these creatures, the corporeal ones, had some sort of contagious, undead madness. Anyone that died to that gibbering, screaming attack from the incorporeal one was going to come back as one of the corporeal ones. So would anyone who died to their psychic attack (whispering in the ear).</p><p></p><p>The party looked through the whole village and all the buildings and found no living people in any of the buildings. We did find a few corpses in the buildings and it was clear that the corpses had been dragged into the houses to hide them from people. Like the ones on the street, they had been bludgeoned to death. Perhaps so that people would come to investigate. There was no sign that people were packing to leave or fleeing the village, so whatever happened happened quickly.</p><p></p><p>Harl’s house was the large one at the end of the main street -- the one that the allip had come out of. Before we went in there, though, we went back to a large open area between the village and the dock (so nothing could sneak up on us) and took a short rest, which Taman and Joybell were especially grateful for.</p><p></p><p>After our rest, we went to explore and investigate Harl’s house. Walking around the outside, we were able to look in through the windows (the curtains were open). The house was a mess, with a vibe of all-night-study-session as well. Joybell did her Divine Sense to check for undead in the house (while we were still outside) and detected none. We knocked on the door and got no response. The door was locked, so Taman opened it, while Imaktis and Fiona were both casting Detect Magic as ritual spells.</p><p></p><p>Inside the house, we found that things were torn up and torn apart. Inside the library, there were books and paper all over the library. The books had been disassembled, with the covers ripped off and pages ripped out. Orryk and Fiona both grieved the loss of the library. The detect magic spells found no magical books.</p><p></p><p>We did find Harl’s journal -- at the end it was randomly polyglot, changing languages within words and total word-salad even if they were in one language. Joybell went backwards through the journal, looking for a point when the journal still made sense to try and learn what Harl was researching when he went insane. He was working on reading a book, but he couldn’t figure out what language it was in. When he cast Comprehend Languages and tried to transcribe the translation, the transcription was in the same language as the book. He couldn’t translate it.</p><p></p><p>We figured out what book it was -- like every other book in Harl’s huge library, it had been torn apart with half the pages ripped out and the spine torn apart. The characters weren’t normal characters for any language that any of us knew, but they were distinctive. We found the rest of the pages in among the litter of the room. At least most of them. As we did so, we found that the more languages someone knew, the harder it was to look away from the crazy-writing because with greater knowledge the more nearly comprehensible it seemed.</p><p></p><p>The rest of Harl’s large library could possibly be restored with a lot of work by a bunch of apprentice wizards. An intern project.</p><p></p><p>Searching Harl’s house, we found some treasure including coin and some magic items. (See list at end.) We did not find anything like a shadowpool, which was a considerable relief.</p><p></p><p>We did find:</p><p></p><p>20gp</p><p>1100sp</p><p>1800cp</p><p>3 onyx gems (50gp each)</p><p>2 jasper gems (50gp each)</p><p></p><p>Bag of Holding (Orryk is carrying it for the party)</p><p>Potion of Force Resistance (in the Bag)</p><p>Potion of Greater Healing (Orryk)</p><p>Candle of the Deep (in the Bag)</p><p>Necklace of Prayer Beads (4 beads) (Imaktis)</p><p>Suit of Magical Studded Leather (Mariner’s Armor) (Taman)</p><p></p><p>We took Harl’s journal and as many pages as we could possibly find of the Crazy Book (so that they’re not a trap for said apprentice wizards) then headed back to the Kelrose for the sail back to town.</p><p></p><p>Once we were back in town, we went straight to Tulmor and Barnett’s to break to them the bad news of their friend (and Barnett’s mentor), getting there quite late at night. We told them that Harl had died and his library was destroyed. Barnett had heard of people being made mad by research -- their minds couldn’t handle what they were learning. Harl believed that the Crazy Book had some secret in it. We gave Harl’s journal and the Crazy Book to Barnett, with very strong warnings that he not open the Crazy Book before reading the journal. We warned him that the Crazy Book appears to be something of a trap for the unwary, so he should read the journal to know what he’s getting into. Hopefully, they’ll find that the journal also says where he found the book or who he bought it from. That might be worth investigating.</p><p></p><p>Harl had helped them with various matters in the past, but he was not at all an adventuring or combat mage. He was an academic/theoretical wizard. He was, however a friend and collaborator for them. We asked if he had other friends or other collaborators. Barnett said he didn’t know but it was entirely possible that Harl didn’t have any friends other than them.</p><p></p><p>We made a plan to give a report to Chief Truehammer first thing in the morning -- it smells too much like coincidence that suddenly in Embernook there are undead coming out of the woodwork.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8053019, member: 7016699"] [SIZE=4] Session 4: Crazy Whispers[/SIZE] Dramatis Personae: Imaktis - Tortle Cleric (Nature)/Shadow Sorcerer Mo - Goliath Bard (College of Lore) Orryk - Forest Gnome Monk (Way of the Four Elements, variant) Fiona - Half-Elf Wizard (Evoker) Taman - Human (variant) Rogue (Inquisitive) Joybell - Forest Gnome Paladin (Oath of the Ancients) GM: - Everyone Else 1 Sunnin 748 (night of the same day) (Campaign day 2) Not listed among last session’s treasure was the (Un)holy symbol of Orcus that the Wight-spellcaster was wearing, because none of us wanted it. However, we thought it might be important, so Fiona wrapped it up in leather and put it in her satchel. Commander Mogree showed up at the lumberyard after we took care of all the undead. He was disturbed when we reported that the shadowpool at the lumberyard was made by the same person as the one at Istin’s Yard. He said he would talk to Tulmor & Barnett -- they are good at planar stuff. Mogree also told us that he had convinced Chief Ullar Truehammer to change our arrangement with the guard -- they will be paying for our lodging and food. It’s only fair -- they provide room and board for the regular guard. We can stay where we’re currently staying and they’ll cover room and board. We can also have people leave messages for us with the guard -- rather than telling possibly shady sorts where we’re staying. Mogree said that he didn’t have any word of anything else happening in the city at the moment other than the ordinary sort of things that the guard are well equipped to handle. We parted for the evening with plans to meet for breakfast the next morning. Back at the lodging house, Joybell gave Queena one of the silver ewers found at the boarding house as a thank you gift. She also asked about how to get a letter or a package to someone in another city. Mail moves most inexpensively between cities along trade routes with caravans. That is not fast. More expensively a special courier can be hired -- that costs more, but how much depends on how long a trip. 2 Sunnin 748 (Campaign day 3) We met up for breakfast to talk about plans for the next few days. Joybell had to go to the Basalt Henge to take her final vows -- a three day trip (one there, one at the Henge, one back). The rest of the party had plans for doing various kinds of research, both personal and pertinent to the undead problem, in the city. We agreed that we were going to continue working together -- this has been working out really well. 2-4 Sunnin 748 (Campaign days 3-5) Mo spent the days working at the docks as a stevedore. He joined the stevedore’s guild and helped carrying crates at various shipyards and listening to the workers. He went with them to work and got to know their lives and struggles. He wrote and performed songs of their struggles in the stevedore’s guild taverns. He learned that they get health care (curing magic) when they are injured without being stupidly at fault (coming to work drunk, for example) but the pay is very low. The guild assigns work out to workers who make themselves available for the day, but the Guild takes a percentage of the pay. Mo netted about 5cp per day working as a stevedore (about half the wages as a guard). So he heard some complaints about pay, but not about treatment otherwise. He also learned that the Stevedore’s Guild has a seat on the city council. A few of the people he spoke to knew people who worked at Istin’s yard, but he didn’t get any insight into the skinny guy with the sword who was seen coming off the ship in the middle of the night. He was reminded (as were we all) that the foreman at Istin’s Yard was, when we were talking to Ser Istin and Chief Truehammer, unaccounted for. He had not been seen and was not among the dead. One of the stevedores Mo worked with in Deepport knew him as an acquaintance to say hi to. The stevedore saw the Istin’s foreman in Deepport earlier in the day and said hello, as one does. The foreman didn’t seem to recognize or know him at all, was slow to respond to his own name, and seemed surprised to have been recognized. He clearly didn’t ‘have any idea who the acquaintance was. It wasn’t that he was scared or nervous about being recognized, he just had no idea. The stevedore told Mo that the foreman’s name was Alin, but didn’t know a last name. (Of course, Ser Istin knows the foreman’s name, so we could get it from him.) Imaktis spent the time looking into official records of the town. He was looking into the Lumberyard and Istin’s Yard and looking for other businesses that may be failing. He did not have good luck looking through the city’s records (they are very poorly organized and the city doesn’t keep good records, according to Imaktis). The Lumberyard was in receivership, but Istin’s Yard was not struggling at all. Joybell went to the Basalt Henge to take her Oath. There was a letter from her parents waiting for her at the Henge -- her mother (pregnant when Joybell left them) had given birth to a baby brother named Eulan!! She also spoke with the person who trained her in combat, a tiefling named Green Hope -- she showed off her spiffy flail and talked to the him about undead and how to fight them. When she mentioned that the second Wight had a symbol of Orcus and was casting spells, Green Hope got very serious and said she needed to kill all such things she found. When Joybell asked if he had any advice about how to do that he said, “Hit them until they stop moving.” Fiona and Orryk went to Tulmor and Barnett’s place to see about using their library, which they had been invited to do. When they got there, Tulmor and Barnett were already up and about and busy, though it was pretty early in the morning, and seemed surprised to see them. Fiona showed them the wight’s Orcus symbol. They asked if anyone from the Guard saw that and Fiona said probably not, because it was wrapped up in her bag before Commander Mogree got there and we didn’t think to mention it. But he did see the Orcus symbols carved into the chests of the ghouls. Barnett re-wrapped the Orcus symbol and took it into another room and returned without it and Fiona and Orryk were happy to be rid of it. Tulmor told them that Chief Truehammer had hired them to go out and map the planar instabilities in the city, throughout Embernook. This was going to entail walking around the city concentrating on a spell similar to locate object. All day. For several days. They asked Fiona and Orryk to man the desk at their office -- taking messages and being there in case people came in to hire them. While there, they were free to use the research library without charge. For 50gp per day, Fiona could look through their spellbooks and learn any spells she could manage in the time she paid for. They even had the necessary inks and paper available, at the usual cost, for her, so she didn’t have to go hunting around. Then Tulmor and Barnett headed out to start their survey and left Fiona and Orryk manning the desk at their office/home. During the days of down-time, Orryk was doing research into Orcus, but had little success (possibly because Fiona had already snagged those books off the shelves) and the Elemental Planes. He had tremendous success with some research into the Elemental Planes. He also looked a bit into whether there was a Devil parallel to the demon Orcus, and found that there really isn’t one that’s as focused on undeath as Orcus is. Fiona was researching Orcus as well and had tremendously more success than Orryk did. She learned that Orcus is the Demon Prince of Undead. He has the goal of turning everything in the multiverse into undead . During the time when the demons and devils were rampaging or stampeding on this continent, Orcus made several personal appearances, separated by hundreds of years. These didn’t go well for anyone and the last time he was on this world, sending him back to the Abyss involved two Solars (high-ranking Celestials). Every time he showed up, those people who had made deals with him to become warlocks became undead wight-like creatures that could cast spells immediately upon his arrival on this plane...which sounds disturbingly familiar. (Note: Those people who made pacts with him to become warlocks during the hundreds of years when he was not on his plane, lived out their lives normally. It was only when he came to this plane that his warlocks immediately became undead spell-chucking wights. Which makes that guy in the lumber-yard even [I]more[/I] bad news.) Fiona also did some research into a personal project of her own. The only interesting visitor during the days they were watching the desk was Chief Ullar Truehammer who showed up and asked where Tulmor and Barnett were. When told they were out walking around the city doing their mapping, he grumbled and left. Orryk also went to a shop to ask about how much it would cost to make a weapon magical -- no specific [I]power[/I], just a magical thing as opposed to a non-magical one. He learned that it costs 75gp and takes about a week to put a simple enchantment on an item. He didn’t pursue this idea at this time, but did make note of the information. Joybell got back to town on the evening of 4 Sunnin (Campaign day 5). She stopped by Queena’s to drop off her pack and say hi, then headed off to the Pewter Oar to find people. No one was there at first, then Taman and Mo and Imaktis showed up. Tulmor and Barnett asked FIona and Orryk to go with them there (so Orryk didn’t go straight back to Queena’s himself), because they wanted to talk to all of us (or as many of all of us as possible). We all wound out gathering in a quiet corner of the Pewter Oar. They told us that, based on their survey, there were no shadowpools currently forming in the city. There were some instabilities -- places where it would be easier to set up a standing gate. None of those instabilities appeared to go to the Shadowfell -- one went to the Feywild and one to the Elemental Plane of Water. There was also one in The Nook that was vague and indeterminate -- it seemed to them that someone could take some control over where that one became a portal to, if they were of a mind to. There was no sign, during those three days, of there being any undead problems in the city, but we still haven’t fully explored the tall, skinny, stinky guy who came off the ship at Istin’s Yard and we haven’t looked into Alin the foreman from Istin’s at all. They did have a job for us, however, less than a day’s travel outside of Embernook, in a town called Kalmarn. They had a bookish friend, a research wizard, named Harl the Quiet -- he was Barnett’s mentor and teacher and he had collaborated with them on various projects. He had a huge library (setting the hook for Orryk and Fiona). They had not heard anything from him at all in a couple of weeks and the last riverboat that moored there (four days previous) had not seen any signs of life in the town. It looked deserted. Mo asked if the riverboat crew had seen any signs of flight from the town and there was no answer for that -- the riverboat had tied up, seen that it looked like no one was there, and then left. There was no fire and it didn’t look like the city was in shambles. There was just no one there. We asked if he was researching anything that might have turned on him and they said that wasn’t likely. But he was definitely a research wizard -- “Anything he doesn’t know is not worth knowing” was his attitude. He had a very large library, but was very reclusive, which is why he lived in the small farming village of Kalmarn. They wanted us to go first thing the next morning, so we weren’t going to have time to look for Alin, the Istin’s Yard foreman before we left. Fortunately, we weren’t expecting to be gone long. We retired to our respective lodgings. At the temple, Imaktis tried to get a sense of what the local clergy were saying about the undead problems -- generally they’re pretty much against them. They do have some Inquisitors who are interested, but they have no information. 5 Sunnin 784 (Campaign day 6) We met up at the Pewter Oar early in the morning. There were two letters waiting for us at the bar when we assembled there for breakfast. One was from Tulmor and Barnett and was addressed to Fiona. It had an envelope inside addressed to Harl and a note telling her not to open the other envelope. The other was from Chief Ullar Truehammer. Chief Truehammer’s note said that we were going to be going to Kalmarn by a boat called The Kelrose, which was waiting for us in Upport. The city had arranged for the boat and we would be paid our usual salary (such as it is) while on this mission. The captain of the Kelrose, Whit (otherwise known as Captain), told us that we’d get to Kalmarn in the afternoon. The Kelrose had a crew of about 20 people, so it was a pretty big, but not huge. The river is about as wide as the Potomac at Embernook, narrower upstream. Joybell had never been on a boat before, so she and Mo spent the river trip sitting up in the front of the ship watching everything. Mo was playing his flute and smoking his pipe. Taman spent the trip listening to the sailors’ scuttlebut -- the sailors were a bit baffled about this trip, because they had no cargo and were only going as far as Kalmarn. Apparently the whole purpose of the trip was to take us there. About 2 in the afternoon, we got to Kalmarn and tied up at the moorings there. The Captain told us that they would stay until sundown, but no later. If we weren’t back to The Kelrose by then, they’d leave without us and go back to Embernook.The sailors were going to stay on the ship -- they had no intention of facing whatever was going on in the city. From the boat, we could see that Kalmarn is a small village -- there was nothing moving, but we could see a couple of people lying on the ground looking inert. Taman could hear some distant screaming and yelling in a language he didn’t know. As soon as he told everyone else about it, Joybell started running in that direction. The others took a moment then followed her. Strangely, Imaktis was the reluctant one, but he did come along. By the time we got to the village proper we could all hear the screaming and shouting. None of us knew the language, though we have a lot of languages between us. When we got to the “main street” (such as it was), everyone had pretty much caught up to Joybell, who was looking around pretty wildly at first. She was relieved to find that this was nothing like what she’d seen before. Mo cast comprehend languages in an attempt to understand what the screams were saying -- but he found that the people (who we couldn’t see yet) weren’t making sense. The words could be translated but were put together without syntax or sense or grammar. So there was no possible translation of the phrases and sentences. The inert people lying in the street were dead bodies -- they appeared have been beaten to death. As we were examining the dead bodies in the streets, screaming people came out of the buildings, 8 undead bad guys (8 Mindghouls). They were moving toward us, so that the first two attacked in the first round and then more did double moves, to get to us or at least get close. They looked [I]mostly[/I] like people -- they looked ragged but not exactly rotted. They were gibbering and yelling with strings of spittle dried and caked on their faces. They didn’t have fangs, just normal human teeth, and they didn’t have any weapons. They didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before -- they looked filthy and smelled of rot, but weren’t normal ghouls or zombies. Taman spent a moment studying one to get insight into it, then took a shot at it. Mo found that they could be Viciously Mocked, to an extent. Their minds were too badly broken, as manifested by the gibbering, to be susceptible to psychic damage, but they could be put at disadvantage on their next attack. One of them hit Joybell and for a moment the babbling almost made sense to her. Then, still mentally scrambled, she missed with her attack. Taman got a sneak attack crit on one for 32 points of damage. There were two on Orryk and Joybell and Orryk did 17 points of damage to one. Mo used the Magic Missile wand to hit one that had flanking on Imaktis, then Imaktis moved away from it (ignoring the attack of opportunity) to attack the one Orryk had just hit. Another mind ghoul started coming up through the village from behind the houses in the main street (1 more mindghoul, total so far: 9). Joybell used her protection ability on the first attack against Imaktis but the second would have hit if not for Imaktis casting a Shield spell. Joybell was hit and wound out stunned -- unable to attack or move or take reactions and all attacks against her had advantage. While she was stunned, one came up and started whispering in her ear -- the gibbering almost made weird sense to her, but she saved against most of the damage. Then she was able to shake off the effect, but was unable to attack. Taman made a good shot, then Orryk missed with his staff. Fortunately, he hit with the unarmed strike. Mo blew a silent note on his flute which then exploded in a crash of thunder, which was a shatter spell. He was able to catch three of them. Imaktis cast Sacred Flame on one them that was in the Shatter Spell and Fiona Firebolted one and dropped it. Another one started coming in from the end of the street (1 more mindghoul, total so far: 10). They attacked Joybell and Imaktis and actually missed Joybell. Who was then able to get an actual hit against them. Taman then dropped the one she’d hit. Orryk moved 15’ away from one then punched into the air, which then hit with all the force of his punches and his spiritual energy. Very cool! Mo used the wand of Magic Missile again. Fiona tried to firebolt one, but missed. When they attacked, Joybell protected Imaktis from the first attack with her shield and then he used a Shield spell to protect against the second attack. In the background we saw a different kind of creature coming up from a house at the end of the road -- it looked like a “vaguely humanoid frayed cloud” (1 Allip). It didn’t look like a shadow, which were the only other incorporeal beings we’d encountered. It came up from the end of the road then moved into a house, going right in through the wall. Joybell missed with another attack, but Taman managed to get one with his rapier. Orryk did his air-fist attack, Fists of Unbroken Air, at one and then moved back further from the buildings -- because he didn’t want anything coming out through the walls at him. Mo dropped one and then hurt another one with a Magic Missile from the wand. Then Imaktis cast Magic Missile and dropped one and hurt another one. There were still a few mind ghouls around us and 1 more coming up from further away (1 more mindghoul, total: 11). Fiona Magic Missiled one mindghoul, then the weird one (the allip) came out of the building and made a weird, babbling howl that stunned Joybell and Taman and did psychic damage to everyone. Orryk hit the allip with the same Fists of Unbroken Air attack, then backed around the corner of a building for cover. Mo used Vicious Mockery on it. Imaktis moved Taman back out of range of the allip, then cast guiding bolt on it. He did a lot of damage, and left it limned with magical light so that the next attack against it had advantage. Fiona cast a Fire Bolt and killed another of the mind ghouls. As the mind ghouls dropped one by one, the screaming got to be less and less. As the last mind ghoul finally got to us, Fiona did a lot of damage to it with a firebolt. The allip did its babbling howl again and once again Taman and Joybell failed the save. Both immediately dropped and [I]immediately[/I] failed death saves on their turns. Orryk ran up and did a flurry of blows on the one last “normal” one and dropped it. Mo healed Joybell and got her back on her feet with a Healing Word. Then Imaktis hit it. In response, it tried to float away, but Imaktis dropped it with an attack of opportunity. (Also, Taman got healed, somehow.) The Village was clear. Orryk figured out that these creatures, the corporeal ones, had some sort of contagious, undead madness. Anyone that died to that gibbering, screaming attack from the incorporeal one was going to come back as one of the corporeal ones. So would anyone who died to their psychic attack (whispering in the ear). The party looked through the whole village and all the buildings and found no living people in any of the buildings. We did find a few corpses in the buildings and it was clear that the corpses had been dragged into the houses to hide them from people. Like the ones on the street, they had been bludgeoned to death. Perhaps so that people would come to investigate. There was no sign that people were packing to leave or fleeing the village, so whatever happened happened quickly. Harl’s house was the large one at the end of the main street -- the one that the allip had come out of. Before we went in there, though, we went back to a large open area between the village and the dock (so nothing could sneak up on us) and took a short rest, which Taman and Joybell were especially grateful for. After our rest, we went to explore and investigate Harl’s house. Walking around the outside, we were able to look in through the windows (the curtains were open). The house was a mess, with a vibe of all-night-study-session as well. Joybell did her Divine Sense to check for undead in the house (while we were still outside) and detected none. We knocked on the door and got no response. The door was locked, so Taman opened it, while Imaktis and Fiona were both casting Detect Magic as ritual spells. Inside the house, we found that things were torn up and torn apart. Inside the library, there were books and paper all over the library. The books had been disassembled, with the covers ripped off and pages ripped out. Orryk and Fiona both grieved the loss of the library. The detect magic spells found no magical books. We did find Harl’s journal -- at the end it was randomly polyglot, changing languages within words and total word-salad even if they were in one language. Joybell went backwards through the journal, looking for a point when the journal still made sense to try and learn what Harl was researching when he went insane. He was working on reading a book, but he couldn’t figure out what language it was in. When he cast Comprehend Languages and tried to transcribe the translation, the transcription was in the same language as the book. He couldn’t translate it. We figured out what book it was -- like every other book in Harl’s huge library, it had been torn apart with half the pages ripped out and the spine torn apart. The characters weren’t normal characters for any language that any of us knew, but they were distinctive. We found the rest of the pages in among the litter of the room. At least most of them. As we did so, we found that the more languages someone knew, the harder it was to look away from the crazy-writing because with greater knowledge the more nearly comprehensible it seemed. The rest of Harl’s large library could possibly be restored with a lot of work by a bunch of apprentice wizards. An intern project. Searching Harl’s house, we found some treasure including coin and some magic items. (See list at end.) We did not find anything like a shadowpool, which was a considerable relief. We did find: 20gp 1100sp 1800cp 3 onyx gems (50gp each) 2 jasper gems (50gp each) Bag of Holding (Orryk is carrying it for the party) Potion of Force Resistance (in the Bag) Potion of Greater Healing (Orryk) Candle of the Deep (in the Bag) Necklace of Prayer Beads (4 beads) (Imaktis) Suit of Magical Studded Leather (Mariner’s Armor) (Taman) We took Harl’s journal and as many pages as we could possibly find of the Crazy Book (so that they’re not a trap for said apprentice wizards) then headed back to the Kelrose for the sail back to town. Once we were back in town, we went straight to Tulmor and Barnett’s to break to them the bad news of their friend (and Barnett’s mentor), getting there quite late at night. We told them that Harl had died and his library was destroyed. Barnett had heard of people being made mad by research -- their minds couldn’t handle what they were learning. Harl believed that the Crazy Book had some secret in it. We gave Harl’s journal and the Crazy Book to Barnett, with very strong warnings that he not open the Crazy Book before reading the journal. We warned him that the Crazy Book appears to be something of a trap for the unwary, so he should read the journal to know what he’s getting into. Hopefully, they’ll find that the journal also says where he found the book or who he bought it from. That might be worth investigating. Harl had helped them with various matters in the past, but he was not at all an adventuring or combat mage. He was an academic/theoretical wizard. He was, however a friend and collaborator for them. We asked if he had other friends or other collaborators. Barnett said he didn’t know but it was entirely possible that Harl didn’t have any friends other than them. We made a plan to give a report to Chief Truehammer first thing in the morning -- it smells too much like coincidence that suddenly in Embernook there are undead coming out of the woodwork. [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #1) [Session 46: Making Deals with Devils is Stupid as well as Bad]
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