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Message: <blockquote data-quote="peteyfrogboy" data-source="post: 1408856" data-attributes="member: 5677">Company Of HeroesFinally, the last session has been played! I hope you've enjoyed it.***Seraphim sat with her feet dangling over the edge of her chair, cradling a thick ceramic mug full of tea in her small hands. Across the table from her was Rodrigo, a slim young Midlander who worked with her at Rhodes. He shook his head with disbelief. "You know Parika the Bold?"The halfling smirked. "We were friends... well, a long time ago. Her life seems to have gotten a lot more exciting since she moved here, though."Rodrigo nodded. "Everyone's talking about it, even though the Council denies everything. They say she went out the Milton's Folly the night of the dedication.""I don't doubt it," said Seraphim, taking a sip of her tea. "She and her friends came by that morning with a bunch of stuff they needed identified in a hurry. I can't imagine why they'd be in such a rush unless they were planning to do something big, and soon.""You mean they brought Black Dog's treasure to you?""She shrugged. "I suppose it may have been. I was too busy analyzing dweomers to do any research on the items themselves. I didn't really feel like asking about them either; they all looked like they'd had a rough night. Lots of recently healed wounds, dirty clothes, that sort of thing.""I wonder how they got out to the lighthouse?" said Rodrigo. "The Sea Lord's ships were patrolling all around it that day."***"I could barely breathe, I was so nervous." Merrill tapped his fingers on the arms of the straight-backed chair. "We were all crammed into that tiny rowboat, trying to sneak across the harbor past ships full of bloodthirsty marines. If one of them had spotted us..."Marin Travio nodded his head, stroking his short white beard with his hand. The Surian elder had agreed to listen to Merrill's story shortly after the younger priest had begun attending services at the temple. "I can imagine how harrowing that must have been," he said in a soothing baritone. "Sometimes the Mother grants as much grace with her eye closed as with it open. As I recall, the moon was dark that night."Merrill nodded. "I never imagined myself doing that sort of thing. The people I was with seemed to find it perfectly normal to be creeping around in the dark, climbing up ropes into a guarded monument. Even if the place hadn't been full of cultists, I doubt we would have found a pleasant welcome." He stopped for a moment, glancing at the elder apprehensively. "It was illegal, I suppose, wasn't it?"Travio smiled. "If rules were not meant to be bent -- or sometimes, if the circumstances warrant it, broken -- we would still be saying prayers alongside our estranged brethren. No, sometimes it is only by following our hearts that we can see the true path.""I suppose." Merrill looked down at his hands. He had done his best to refrain from violence that night, but even as he saved the lives of his companions he had been soaked with blood.***Wind In The Grass indicated a spot directly over her heart with one finger. "I could see the quarrel coming right at me, but there was nothing I could do. We were standing twenty feet up in an open archway. There was nothing to do but stand there and hope it missed me." She shook her head. "By the Boar's teeth, I swear I should have been struck dead right then."White Eared Fox nodded as he rhythmically brushed his horse down. He was one of a small number of Wildermen who had settled in Freeport, and his horse training field just north of the city was a frequent gathering place for other expatriates of that land. "You are not dead, though," he said simply."No, but it was a close thing. Almost as soon as I felt the stab of pain in my chest, I felt Merrill catch me. If he hadn't healed the wound even as it happened, I feel sure it would have been too late." She rubbed the spot, which still felt numb even weeks later. "It was a hard-fought battle with the guards at the bottom of the lighthouse, but that was as nothing compared to what awaited us above. Once we won our way to the stairs, we climbed into a nest of the true servants of that dark god. they produced a constant barrage of fear and darkness in addition to their more mundane weaponry, and it was all we could do to keep ourselves alive. In the end, though, their power was spent and we hunted them all down.""A good battle," said Fox with a nod. "But not the last?"Wind shook her head. "The way upward was blocked by cunning tricks, the likes of which I had never conceived."***"Remember the statues?" asked Parika as she leaned on the rail of the Raging Wind. The crisp smell of salt air was refreshing after the heavy odors of the city.Nevroth nodded. "We would have been there for hours if you hadn't figured it out."The half-elf chuckled. "It wasn't that hard. We knew there had to be stairs going up, and there were only a few possible triggers to open the hidden passage. It was just a matter of pulling and pushing everything that looked like it could move.""I guess." Nevroth tapped on the rail with his hook. "I just wish I hadn't gone up the stairs first.""I know what you mean," said Parika with a nod. "What was that thing they had crawling around up there? I never got a good look at it. That insane babbling and the flashing lights had me all turned around. I think I shot Wind in the leg." She rubbed a spot on her forehead where the hair seemed shorter that the rest of the surrounding area. "I'm pretty sure she blasted me once."Nevroth shuddered at the memory. "It was like a big pile of eyes and mouths, all boiling and squirming. If you all hadn't come to your senses and helped me kill it, I would have joined that big pile of bones it was crawling around in.""Yeah. I wonder how many people were creeping around that place. There was that one unlucky girl who got shot in the back down in the water shrine, remember? That potion she had was probably her big escape plan, but she never got the chance to use it."***"I drank that potion that Parika gave me, and suddenly I was flying like a bird!" Rachel swooped her hands around to illustrate. "It was amazing."Angus nodded as she leaned up against him. He put an arm around her shoulders as she continued telling her story. He was taller than her, and more broadly built, but as he watched her hands he could see the dozens of tiny scars that marked her skin. He had a few small burn marks of his own, but those were born of carelessness, not the true heat of battle. he wondered if, for all his brawn, he would be able to rush into battle like Rachel did time after time."So where was I?" Rachel was still smiling at the memory of flying. "Oh, right. So we came up through a trap door from the lair of that babbling... thing... and found ourselves almost at the top of the tower. Drac himself was there to taunt us, and threw some sort of exploding skull thing at us before he ran off. There were four serpent archers up at the top of the stairs, and one serpent wizard who started flying around, shooting fire and lightning at us. But like I said, Parika had that fancy potion of hers and I went flying up to beat on that snakey spellflinger of theirs. It was strange, because he didn't really fight back like I'm used to. He just kept backing up and shooting lightning and whatnot out of his hands. Scared me half to death, but what could I do? I just kept on running him down until I wore him out. The others were running up the stairs, and arrows were flying back and forth across the tower like bees. We finally got past them and right up underneath the little room at the top of the tower."Rachel was quiet for a moment. The grin that was on her face as she recounted the battle with the serpent men faded. "I was eager to get up through that door, and I beat it down myself to get through. I saw Nevroth and Parika rush past me into the room, and I saw Melkior Maeorgan and Milton Drac in there waiting for us, with that awful yellow crystal glowing on the pedestal. Then Drac pointed toward me and started chanting. I thought he was going to try to scare me away again, like the other priests had done, but instead I felt my whole body freeze up. It was like my mind was suddenly cut off from my body, except I could still feel everything." She swallowed. " I felt a hand on my shoulder, and even though I couldn't turn my head I could tell there was no hand there. I hadn't seen anybody there at the top of the stairs. Then I felt the edge of a knife against my throat." She reached up and grabbed Angus's hand. "I could feel my throat being cut, Angus, and I was completely powerless to stop it. I could see a scaly green hand appearing as the knife moved, but then everything became dark, and so cold. I don't really remember anything after that, until suddenly I woke up bathed in that green light. It was just like waking up from a dream, except... I died, Angus. I know I did. And you're just not supposed to get up and walk around after you're dead."The blacksmith patted her shoulder and made soothing noises, though in truth Rachel's story unnerved him. The rumors that were going around about Rachel and her friends saving the city from some evil fate were one thing, but hearing the tale from someone who actually lived it was quite another. "I suppose," he thought, "I'll just have to get used to being in the company of heroes."FIN* This is the end of our first Freeport campaign. I've already sown the seeds of the next one, though it may be quite a while before it's played. It also looks like little if any of it will actually take place in Freeport, at least at the beginning. Nevroth and Parika will almost certainly be moving on to greener pastures, to be replaced by as yet undecided characters.* I had to deal with two character deaths during this session, and I am disinclined to kill characters off, especially in less-than-heroic circumstances. Early on, Wind was shot by one of the lighthouse guards, and the crit table declared that it was a lethal heart shot. I'm actually starting to think about retiring the crit tables, since such arbitrary slaughter doesn't really mesh well with my aversion to raising the dead. It just happened that Merrill was standing right beside Wind at that point, and had held his action since there was nobody nearby to heal. I ruled that, since he had an action available (if not strictly readied), that he could pull her back from the brink of death. She still ended up at negative hit points after the healing, but she was at least alive.* The more difficult death to deal with was in the very last battle. Since the party was hacking through the trap door from below, Drac and his pals had ample time to prepare for their arrival. In addition to Drac's own defensive spells, Gorn was standing next to the trap door, having consumed his potion of invisibility. Early in the round, Drac managed to get Rachel (the natural target, being the group's strongest melee fighter) with a hold spell. At that point, there was nobody near Rachel and Gorn stepped up to do a CDG on her. Now that I actually think back on it, that should have taken him a full round, during which someone could easily have intervened. In the end, I ended up having the Jade Serpent bring her back to life as it destroyed the villains in the room. I don't feel so bad about that fudge now that I realize that I overlooked an important rule during the CDG itself.</blockquote>

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