Heroes of Spittlemarch

[Radiating Gnome]

Poland 4
Beginning of the End . . .
That night, hidden as best they could in a grove of trees, the sentires were surprised by a gypsy boy walking right up to their camp, as if he know it was there all along.
He told the party that he had been directed to find a group of outsiders in this very grove, and to bring them to his grandmother. She was a very gifted fortunteller, he told them, and knew things that no one else could know.
The goonies decided to leave Minimonk behind to watch over the tank, and followed the young boy to another secluded glade a few miles away. There they found a handful of round gypsy horse-drawn wagons, all old and battered. There were a few gypsies around, tending pots on fires and performing other camp chores, but they all avoided making eye contact with the party.
The boy led them to the wagon at the center of the camp, and held the door open for them. The six party members crowded up into the wagon.
There the found a old woman sitting at a small round table, shuffling a deck of cards. She beckoned them all in to the wagon, and then started dealing cards out onto the table in front of her. As the cards fell, she spoke.
She explained that the cards had told her that there were outsiders coming to fight the great evil that was spreading across the land -- and that she was there to help them understand their role in this world.
Then she started to read the cards for the party.
These things you know, and I can see in the cards:

"You came here as outsiders -- not German, or Polish, Russian or even Roma. You came here from far away, and wish to go back to your own world.
"You did not come here naturally -- far from it, you were brought here by a great evil. You are the counter to that evil, like the other side of a coin, and your escape, your freedom from this world hinges on the destruction of that evil. You balance their presence now. Without you, with the evil left in this world unchecked, this world will become an abyss.
"You must go to a place of great evil, and the instrument of that evil will be the instrument of your return home.
"Now the cards tell me things you do not know. Future things. What the cards can tell me about the future is often a muddle of choices and paths you may or may not take. Listen well.
"The cards tell me that the evil outsiders know you are coming and make haste to prepare for your attack.
"The cards tell me that what you choose to take from this world may serve you well in your own, but that you must choose wisely.
"And the last. The cards tell me that you will not all return. One of you will stay that the others might return."

Pah shrugged. "That sucks. Is that all you've got?"

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Poland 4 - part 2

Part 2

They hit the road again early in the morning, riding their new tank, full of ammo and fuel and everything they could think of that the might need.

There was one last surprise on the road to Treblinka -- an ambush set by a platoon of wehrmacht soldiers, who were lying in wait, armed with a pair of Panzerfausts (german versions of Bazookas).

The tank rattled into the midst of the german ambush and the soldiers opened fire. Riflemen took pot shots at the characters that were riding on top of the tank, while the Panzerfausts fired away at the heavily armored tank.

The battle was short and bloody. Even with the Panzerfausts, the germans were not able to do much damage to the tank itself, and within a few rounds the party had killed off most of the unit, an Ulric-tiger chasing down a few that tried to get away on foot. Then the tank continue on towars it's goal.

Late in the day they came around a bend in the road and saw ahead the concentration camp and factory. Rather than charge right in, spells and health depleted by the Wehrmacht ambush, they hid themselves in the woods a few miles away, using the night to make their plans and prepare.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Poland 4 - part 3

Part 3.

The plan was fairly simple. They would drive the tank down the road towards the camp, using Obscuring Mist as they got closer to hide the tank in the morning mists. There wasn't a whole lot they could do about the sound of the approaching tank, but it was a start.

The road to the camp actually passed between the camp and the factory, which fed into the party's plans. Ulric, in Tiger form, and Pah, would ride into the area atop the mist-shrouded tank, then, covered by an improved invisibility and invisibility resepctively, they would make their way on their own into the factory to blow it up, while the rest of the party, in the tank, would attack the main camp, heading directly for the section of the camp where the laboratory was situated, rather than where hundreds of jewish prisoners were held.

So, shortly after dawn a clankling, sputtering cloud of mist rumbled down the road towards the concentration camp, cruising along at something like 12 or 15 miles per hour (top speed for the outsider-driven tank)..

Hardly surprised, the bad guys sent out a welcoming committee -- a trio of devils to take on the tank before it hit the compount walls.

As planned, Ulric and Pah peeled off invisibily as the tank passed between the camp and the factory. The others stayed inside the tank to avoid rifle fire from the guard posts around the camp and factory. But they were not expecting the Osyluth's opening gambit, a wall of ice thrown up directly in the tank's path.

At the moment the Ice Wall appeared, Pah was holding the barbed wire fence aside so the Tiger could slip through (a big stretch for a halfling!). They saw the wall go up, but figured the party could handle what ever it was.

Oddly enough, the rest of the party, inside the tank, did not share their confidence.

"ICE," yelled Minimonk from the spotter's seat.

"Turn right!" yelled someone else.

"No, crash through!"

"Turn turn turn.!"

Uri slashed one drive lever up and the other down. A sharp turn like that would have spun out a car if two things were not true in this situation. First, that the tank was very heavy, on tracks, and clung to the road very well. Second, that in all their days of driving the tank they had never, not even now, gotten the thing to go faster than 15 miles per hour. At this point it was hurtling forward at something closer to 8 miles per hour, and sharp turns were not a problem for them.

The tank turned to face the barbed wire fenceline of the concentration camp. Another Ice wall went up, this time again directly in front of the tank, blocking it's path to the camp, but the wall only lasted a few seconds, quickly dispelled by Crys. The tank shuddered, crawling slowly towards the camp.

Ahead of the tank a Kyton (one ofthe Chain Devils) appeared in front of the tank, and it hopped up on top and stared slashing and bashing at the tank's guns. Irk wasn't about to let some devil scratch the paint, grabbed his club and went up top to get the thing off.

Another side note: it should be noted that Irk still does not have much by way of equipment -- hs gear was all taken by the Mind Flayer, Ghareth Axom. He has a normal greataxe he made in the Gypsy camp, and a club that someone else had been carrying, that had been +1 but Uri had improved to +2. But Irk was still wearing borrowed clothes and little else to protect himself besides a bad look and strong smell.

Irk at the Kyton set about bashing each other on top of the tank, while Eli took over the gunner's seat and started spinning the turret around, looking for a target. Then, Irk was slashed at from behind, and the author of the Ice Walls became visible -- an Osyluth, standing on the ground behind the tank and slashing up at Irk from behind.

Uri managed to hit the controls and the tank lurched forward. Hearing Irk swearing, Eli spun the turret and caught sight of the Osyluth, standing now about 25 feet behind the tank. Eli mashed a thumb on the button he was pretty sure fired the main gun, and it went off.

There was a great deal of fire and smoke as the HE shell hit the devil squarely in the chest and exploded. The battlefield was silent for a moment, until everyone could see again. All that was left of the bone devil was a pair of skeletal feet and a twitching, scorpion tail.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Poland 4 part 4

Part 4







Everyone in the tank cheered.

On top of the tank, the sudden motion of the turret had nearly thrown Irk and Minimonk off the tank. They had done a fair amount of riding atop the tank, and had come to expect the sudden shift of the turret, but the Kyton was not so experienced. He fell off the back of the tank, chain-appendages still clinging to the tank. The tank lurched forward a bit, dragging the writing devil along behind.

Irk and Minimonk took advantage of the Kyton's disadvantage and hopped off the tank to pound on him -- they were not able to kill him outright, but they did damage him enough that they would not have to face him for some time.

The tank continued to roll forward, bulling its way up to the fenceline, pushing thrrough as barbed wire and fence buckled under the tank's treads.

That was when the third devil attacked -- a Hellcat, invisible and toothy, started to slash at the handful of characters outside the tank.

Irk stood in the Hellcat's way for a few rounds, trading blows, but loosing ground each round as many of his blows struck the empty air. Eventually he had to back off, but was saved from serious hurt by the timely arrival of Ulric and Pah, returning from teh destruction of the Factory. Ulric, now in Buffalo form and asl o invisible, charged the hellcat. Onlookers were treated to a few rounds of dust spinning, agonized roars, and blood spraying the dirt from nowhere as Ulric finished the Hellcat.

At about the same time the tank was slowling making it's way through a low wall (which it had blown holes through) and towards the central cement building in the compound. This was complicated by sniper fire from one of the guard towers, whose bulltes were finding their way through the viewports of the party's tank with even more accuracy than Eli's arrows. Spotters caught sight of one of the SS spellcasters up in the tower, casting a spell (true strike) and then shooting the rifle each round. A bit of machine gun fire drove him out of the guard tower, down to the ground where Ulric and Pah teamed up to finish him.

Eli, meanwhile, lead Irk and Crys around to the front of the central building, where Eli stopped and threw open the large main doors.

A few steps behind, Crys and Irk could not yet see what Eli did -- but they saw the slack-jawed look on his face, for just a moment, before he reflexivly began to shoot his bow for all he was worth.

Irk turned the corner and saw what he Eli so spooked the second before.

The space beyond was a large open area, the ceiling two stories high. A sort of converted warehouse or motor pool. Beyond the open area there were some door sthat lead into a handful of first floor rooms, on top of whihc was an observation platform that over looked the open ground floor.

On that observation platform there were many odd devices and objects, a few of which looked oddly familiar to Irk (from the vision he had when he was being gated into this world). Up on the platform there was a scientist in a lab coat, and the mind flayer, Ghareth Axom, who Irk had already faced twice in his short life. The last time it had cost Irk a foot.

On the ground floor, guarding the doors, were a pair of SS Vertrans with a evil ast to their skin. And standing in the center of the room, in the midst of a large pentagram was a devil that dwarfed the little ones they had fought before -- A Cornugon, whose long, firely whip slithered along the floor as he turned to face the Elf and Dwarf that had opened the door, without knocking first.

And the session ended there.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Getting Caught Up

The Heroes of Spittlemarch story hour has gotten woefully behind, but the campaign marches on.

I'll be trying to get things caught up over the holidays, but here's a short synopsis of what's been happening in the campaign.

- They managed to escape from Poland, and kill Ghareth Axom in the process. They failed to permanently destroy the gate on their way out, as that would have required that one of them stay behind to destroy it.
- They didn't leave empty handed. They left with a tank, a lot of ammo, especially for Pah, who has taken to weilding a pair of matched Walther PPKs in combat.
- They rescued about 2000 Jews, Gypsies, and others who were in the concertration camp Treblinka, taking them back to greyhawk with them.
- They returned to greyhawk.

-more coming-

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Another Placeholder

Back in Dyvers

The party had a little time to kill between their return to Dyvers and the battle with their former spelljammer ship.

The ship, which had been called The Mystery Machine, was now called the Herald of Ashardalon, and was bringing Gulthias, Anathe, the powerful necromatic artifact the Heart of Ashardalon (from Nightfang Spire), and a whole lot of undead and construct flunkies to Dyvers and the seat of the new DragonFaith in Greyhawk.

There are a lot of details to come here -- the party mucked around trying to come up with good ideas for dealing with the ship. Pah got herself in trouble with a crime ring run by Rakshasa, and the party had to bail her out.

And they met the Fangs of the dragon -- warrior priests of the Dragon Faith, trained to ride young red dragons into battle -- who would accompany the goonies when they went to face off with the Herald.

They also found out that the Herald was being escorted by one more more white dragons, somehow loyal to Anathe despite his split from the dragon faith proper.

And they got news from outlying towns -- the Herald had veered off course a bit, and was skimming close to the earth when it got near small settlements along the way. As it neared those villages, the dead buried there were clawing their way out of theirgraves and rising up to kill the living in the village. They had reports from several villages reporting the same sort of floor of zombies. in preparation, the Magister had ordered the Dyvers army to set about digging up the dead in all graveyards and catacombs and destroying (burning, mostly) all bodies that they found. The citizens were not happy about the solutionl, but it made the most sense at the time, as for centuries the poor had not been able to afford the sort of rituals and enchantments that would protect a body from being animated, and the city did not have the resources to perform those spells and rituals in the time left before the Herald's arrival.

So, they had a lot to think about.

-rg

This will all be fleshed out later . . .

 

[Radiating Gnome]

The Battle for the Herald of Ashardalon

First, there was a surprise.

The Goonies were sitting around the Mangy Pup, an Inn that Solen had selected for its economy and proximity to the Dyvers halls of government. Before them was a map of the countryside, a string of small towns marked with black X’s, tracing the path of the flying ship as it raised dead in droves and destroyed one village after another, making it’s slow way to Dyvers.

The Goonies had been at this for days – trying to find a strategy that would cut down on the danger that they were facing. There were various ideas being bandied about – some of them more crackpot that others, but in the end it seemed that they had a workable plan – and with the Giant Owls get them to the ship it seemed like it just might work.

While they were chewing their fingernails, waiting for it to become time to attack the ship, news started to trickle in to the tavern of a man who had walked right out of the harbor – walked out of the water and up onto the quay, then in to the city. He was supposed to be bronze-skinned – not like he had a tan, but a very metallic cast to his skin.

And, shortly, after they heard about this, the bronze man walked into the tavern. Pah, Eli, Irk, and Uri recognized him immediately, despite the changes he had gone through. It was Norham, their old adventuring companion. Still a bit damp, and with skin that looked like Bronze that needed a bit of a polish, he walked into the tavern common room and approached the table where the Goonies were standing.

“But you’re dead!” said Pah.

Norham smiled enigmatically. “Nope.”

Irk looked at Norham mistrustfully. “How?”

Norham beamed. “Mystery and magic. Mystery and magic.”

“Bollocks,” said Irk. Oathbreaker, his talking axe, agreed with him.

Uri tried to get him to spill. “Really, Norham, how can you be here?

“Norham. Yes, that’s what I was called. That was my name.”

Uri grimaced. “This all sounds vaguely familiar . . . “

Norham went on. “I come to you now, at the turn of the tide . . .”

“I don’t know,” said Uri. “I still say I’ve heard all this before . . .”

Norham’s story was an odd one indeed – when he fell from the blue dragon’s maw into the Nyr Dyv he was rescued, underwater, by a Bronze dragon named Ham El Ton. Ham the dragon took him to an underwater lair, where he infused Norham with some of his own essence – Norham became Half dragon. Then Norham was taken to a council of Metallic Dragons.

At least that’s what he said. The Goonies didn’t believe much of what he was saying, despite the bronze cast to his skin.

He claimed that the Metallic dragons were watching them – that they were aware of the rise of the chromatic dragons, the dragonfaith, and the one called Sear especially. They were waiting for heroes to arise – as they have always done in ages past – and all of the portents point to the Goonies – but that left the Dragons very confused. The Goonies didn’t act much like the heroes of times past, and the dragons found that troubling. They needed an emissary to go to the party – one who would be familiar to the party, who could get their attention and convince them that they had an important role to play in the world. But, as it turned out, the new, Bronze-skinned Norham was no more convincing and evocative than the previous one – perhaps the infusion of Dragon essence did not include any sort of diplomatic ability.

Still, the band of pseudo-heroes were happy to have another cleric along for the ride when they faced off with a flying ship full of Undead, and accepted Norham for his willingness to fight at their side, even if they didn’t want to listen to him preach much about heroism and the struggle against the elements of evil rising in the world.

They returned to their scheming, and planned their attack.

The Battle

The day finally came, and the Goonies suited up, most mounted up on the Giant Owls that had arrived to carry them to battle, while Ulric shapechanged into an eagle, and Crys polymorphed into a sparrow. They were as ready as they were going to get.

They elected to attack by day, and managed to catch most of the undead on the ship hiding away from the sun. The Goonies were joined by the five Fangs of the Dragon, the elite dragon-riders of the Dragon Faith. The five dragonfaith warrior priests, on their red dragon mounts, were an intimidating sight, until they came into view of the Herald, and its escort of two white dragons, both older and larger than the small reds that the Fangs rode into battle. Still, the Fangs peeled off and engaged the two whites in an aerial battle that took them away from the Herald, leaving the slow-moving ship without escort.

The Goonies climbed high, and them approached the ship with the sun at their backs, using the bright light to hide their approach – a tactic that prevented the figures on deck from spotting the approach of the Goonies until they were right on top of the ship.

Then the battle began in earnest.

The plan was to take over the Spelljammer chair and the control of the ship – and to that end they concentrated their boarding on the stern of the ship, where a lone figure paced back and forth behind Anathe himself, who was at the helm. As they closed with the ship the figure on the poop deck disappeared (Redbone, the Wight assassin from Nightfang Spire, cast Improved Invisibility on herself). But there wasn’t time for Anathe to do more than yell for help as the Goonies hit the deck and went to work.

Uri and his new cohort, a halfing cleric named Geiger, stayed on an Owl, circling the ship and casting spells to support the fighting on the ship. Eli and the new Bronze Norham did the same, providing their support for those who boarded the ship and engaged the enemy.

The boarding party moved quickly to isolate Anathe. The foredeck was the nest and post of the handful of Girallons that traveled with Gulthias – and on the main deck stood Mr. Stitches, the half-dragon flesh golem, two normal golems, and the Tombstone golem. Golems and Girallons moved quickly to try to move to protect Anathe, but quick spellcasting blocked their path – a potent mix of Web, Wall of Thorns, and then Evard’s Black tentacles slowed things down considerably.

Irk jumped down from his Giant Owl mount and moved quickly to stand before Anathe, who was torn between his desire to stay in the chair and pilot the ship, although it meant taking terrible risks. Irk pounded on him mercilessly, and Anathe finally had to give up the chair and try to protect himself, only to be jumped from behind by Pah, who attacked him from the poop deck, above and behind him, slipping a locking garrote around his neck. Anathe failed to cast a spell in time to save himself, and collapsed.

Redbone, the invisible Wight assassin, had been holding back, studying Irk so that she could make her death attack when she had an opening, but when Anathe was clearly in such great trouble, attacked by the halfling from behind and the dwarf in front, she stepped up and delivered a devastating sneak attack to Pah. Pah turned, and tried to defend herself, but would not have lasted long had Ulric not saved the day.

Ulric, himself invisible, shape shifted again from half-elven form into his polar bear shape, and then started to sweep his great paws about, looking for the Assassin. A few lucky blows dragged the struggling Wight into a painful bear hug – a hug that threatened Ulric with the Wight’s energy drain every round, but eliminated his advantage for being invisible.

While Ulric was doing that, the little sparrow that was Crys shaped changed back into her natural form and took Anathe’s place in the Spelljammer chair. Once there she put the Goonie’s secret plan into effect.

She started a laborious roll, turning the ship over slowly, while disabling the magic that would keep passengers from falling off the ship. The heavy golems started to slide a bit, while the girallons used their extra limbs to grab for handholds as the ship turned.
Further forward, a pair of night hags had stepped out of the forecastle and had taken an interest in the Goonies that were circling the Herald offering ranged spell and bow support to the boarding party. Their best effort was a pair of ray of enfeeblement spells that they cast on the Giant Owl that was bearing Bronze Norham. The spells robbed the Owl of almost all of its strength, and it could no longer carry Norham and stay airborne. The two began to fall.

Norham, hoping someone would get to him soon, jumped off the falling Owl, which was then able to slip into a slide that would allow it to land safely. But Norham was still falling.

Eli, seeing Norham in trouble, tucked his Owl into a power dive, and managed to catch up to Norham before he picked up too much falling speed. His owl snatched him out of the air, a claw on each upper arm, and the now-laden owl began the long climb up towards the Herald’s elevation.

As they flew up, creatures began to fall past them, some screaming.

On Deck.

The Deck of the Herald was a mess – the combined effects of the Web, Evard’s Tentacles, and the Wall of Thorns, made it difficult for the Golems and Girallons to get to the heroes who had taken over the Poop Deck and the Spelljammer Chair. A few of the girallons managed to push through the mess and get to the party, but Irk handled them quickly.

Mr. Stitches, frustrated with his inability to fight through the web and thorns faster, used his dragon breath weapon to try to burn a path – it cleared a lot of the web and the last few tentacles, but the wall of thorns was made of sterner stuff.

One Girallon was in the rigging, swinging from mast to mast to get to the stern of the ship while avoiding the spells on deck. Then Crys’s roll started to happen, and things got interesting quickly.

Pah and Ulric were still on the poop deck, behind the Spelljammer Chair, trying to do something about Redbone. Just as Crys turned the ship into it’s roll, Ulric, in Bear form, managed to get a grapple on the Wight – which threatened to drain him levels each round – then took advantage of the shifting deck, and leapt overboard into the open sky, still holding Redbone.

Redbone swore a blue streak in undercommon. Ulric let go, pushed away from the Wight and shapeshifted into an Eagle, but was not able to get himself oriented in time to avoid a clumsy crash into the ground, where he landed with a terrible crash, just a few seconds after Redbone landed.

The Herald continue to turn, shifting until had turned completely upside down. The Girallons, all six limbs grasping at rail and rope and the last shreds of web and thorn, were mostly able to cling to the ship, but the less agile Golems were not able to get a grip and hold on, and started falling.

The tombstone Golem in particular was having trouble. When the deck had started to shift, it had moved to the mast and held on for dear life. But by the time the ship was inverted the massive stone construct was sliding towards the top of the mast, breaking away ropes and stays that had never been designed to hold its weight. Then, with a final snap of one last line, it was falling.

Irk did not waste any time worrying about the ship’s orientation. Wearing his slippers of spider climb, he had moved to the side of the ship – over the rail and actually stood on the underside of the ship while it was on it’s side – and put Oathbreaker to work in a way the axe had never really been intended. He started to chop wood like mad.

The surviving Girallons and Flesh Golems were clinging to the side rails of the ship, where they had slipped when the ship had started to turn. Irk moved along the rail, chopping it away with powerful axe strokes. The first victim of his woodcraft was Mr. Stitches, who screamed “NOT AGAIN” as his last handhold was chopped away and he, too, fell to the earth. Irk moved down the rail, cutting it away, sending the surviving Girallons and Flesh Golems after Mr. Stitches.

Ulric, on the ground, had been nearly killed by the fall. He struggled to catch his breath, thankful that the improved invisibility he was wearing kept him relatively safe from the badly wounded Golems that were shuffling around where they had fallen, looking for something to bash. As more Golems and Girallons fell, those on the ground were hard pressed to avoid being struck by falling monsters.

Crys continued to turn the ship as fast as she could, turning it up on it’s end, in a power climb, trying to shake the last few of the creatures on the outside of the ship off. Geiger, the hapless halfling cleric who had recently signed on to Uri’s service, was desperately clinging to ropes and rails, holding on for dear life as the ship turned and cavorted.

While the ship was tying it self in knots, Eli, Uri and Norham were having their own bit of fun with the night hags. The hags shapeshifted into gargoyles when the ship started to turn over, then took off and started chasing Eli and Uri’s Owls around, while Uri and Eli tried to defend themselves. The Hags peppered Uri with Magic Missiles – nearly killing him. Uri was forced to allow himself to fall from his mount, playing dead, and count in his feather fall to save him once he hit the ground. He had made a good accounting of himself against the hags, though, and that made it possible for Eli to finish them – Eli had been shooting at the Hags for all he was work, needing to score criticals to actually do damage because of the Hags’ damage resistance. In the end, though, Eli managed to evade the Hags long enough to shoot them out of the air.

While the Hags and Eli and Uri were swirling around each other, poor Norham was still clutched in the Owl’s claws. Norham was caught up in such a way that he was unable to move his arms to cast spells, so he wasn’t able to do more than shout encouragement to Eli. Eli offered several times to drop Norham off on the ship, but Norham refused.

But, once the Hags were dealt with, Norham reconsidered. The ship was still flying straight up into the sky, and the decks had been cleared. Irk and Pah were moving towards the open hatch to the lower decks, where the undead who were sensitive to sunlight were hiding – the vampires, including Gulthias. Norham, finally seeing the chance to join the fight against the great undead, ordered Eli and Eli’s owl to drop him off at the hatch – an order which amounted to having Norham tossed into the hatch, as the Owl had to do it while flying by.

Norham was tossed into the hatch, and he fell to the end of the main hold compartment that was oriented down at that moment. There, in the hold, he found himself surrounded by a half-dozen Morghs.

On the ground, Ulric patched himself a up a bit, and work on finishing off the golems and Girallons that were not killed by the fall. When Uri arrived, falling the last few feet as gently as a feather, he Joined Ulric in that effort.

Pah and Irk, seeing Norham tossed unceremoniously into the hold, yelled for Crys to return the ship to it’s normal orientation and entered the hold to try to help Norham. Once the ship was level again, Geiger shrugged his way out of the ropes and raced forward to help.

Floating in the center of the hold was the heart, a huge black flaming organ the size of a wagon. Its oppressive power seemed to dim the sunlight that drifted into the hold from above.

Once in the hold, they found things had gone very badly for Norham – there were bits of him all over the hold, blood streaking the walls in odd patterns as the ship had turned and twisted back to level. The remaining morghs and vampire spawn turned to face Pah and Irk.

As Irk and Pah started to go to work, Geiger stuck his head into the hold from above, turning undead for all he was worth, but the power of the heart bolstered the strength of the Morghs, and they were not turned.

As the fight in the hold moved on, Irk slashing Oathbreaker through the Morghs like so much wheat, Gulthias himself emerged from the Heart, and made a quick movement towards Pah. He gazed into her eyes, batten an eyelash, and in a heartbeat she was his to command. He sent her into a back room, then engaged Irk.

Gulthias’s toe to toe fight with Irk lasted a few rounds. Oathbreaker was singing some obscure dwarven battle aria while Irk slash and feinted at the vampire, forcing him back a step at a time. Finally, it became clear to Gulthias that he could not continue the fight – and, as much as he hated to give up on centuries of work on the heart, he would have to leave it behind if he were to survive. But he wouldn’t leave open handed. He ducked into the back room a few steps ahead of Irk, called Pah into his arms, and the two teleported out of the ship.

Irk charged into the room after Gulthias in time to see the vampire and his halfling thrall disappear in a wink.

Irk slumped to one knee. Oathbreaker spoke for both of the. “Pussy.”

Aftermath

What was left was a little mopping up. Uri and Ulric had finished of those that fell to the ground and returned to the ship. Irk and Oathbreaker returned to the main part of the hold and saw the heart. A few rounds after Gulthias made his getaway the flame on the heart winked out for some reason none could fathom, but Irk took it as the opportunity he needed to vent his frustrations on the heart itself, hacking it into tiny bits.

As the Goonies gathered on deck, and everyone got up to speed on Norham’s death and the abduction of Pah, they saw a lone red dragon, bearing the two surviving Fangs of the Dragon, limping back towards Dyvers after their battle with the White Dragons.

The ship itself was a mess – bits of web and thorn remained, much of the deck had been badly burned by Mr. Stitches’ breath weapon, and then there was the rail and spars that Irk had hacked away to cut Girallons and golems loose. The ship would take a lot of repair before it would be the Mystery Machine again.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

A Fine Mess: Return of the Goonies

A Fine Mess: Return of the Goonies

It has been quite some time since this chronicler has been able to record the travels and deeds of the band of adventurers known as the Heroes of Spittlemarch by some, the Dyvers Dragoons by others, and the Goonies by those who know them best, Much has happened -- some of it heroic, some less than heroic, but all of it remarkable.

Catching up:

Until quite recently, the Goonies had faced some powerful opponents -- including Anathe and Gulthias, and the Heart of Ashardalon, and an army of Gulthias' undead minions. They were joined for that battle by the Fangs of the Dragon, Fighter-Clerics and dragonriders, the pride of the DragonFaith, with whom they had forged a very tenuous alliance.

In the battle with Gulthias' horde, all being flown to Dyvers on board the Goonies' flying ship (which Gulthias had stolen from them), the Fangs drew the White Dragons that were flying escort for the goonies, riding giant owls, attacked the ship itself. They managed to recapture the ship, and kill Anathe, but Gulthias escaped, teleporting back to the Nightfang Spire, taking Pah, the halfling rogue, back with him as his charmed prisoner.

So, once the ship was recovered and the danger to Dyvers averted, the Goonies had to race back to the Spire and rescue Pah. Which they did.

Finally they were able to return to Dyvers, to the Tavern their patron Solen was using as his headquarters,.

But there was little time to relax and enjoy their success. Pah, always at the center of a whirlwind of trouble, had enemies in Dyvers that were looking for her. Prior to the battle with Gulthias and his minions, Pah had been trying to help find some form of flying that would help the Goonies get on the ship. She was directed, by contacts in the thieves guild, to the manor house of an elven merchant who had a device they promised would help. IN the process, Pah was killed by a poison trap, although she managed to get out of the house before collapsing. The rest of the party was able to rescue her, and revive her using the Staff of Life, but the damage was done -- Pah had a new enemy, a Rakshasa sorcerer that has been posing as an elven merchant and trying to take over the territory of the thieves guild in Dyvers.

There were, of course, other issues. The goonies had been joined, in their attempt to rescue Pah, by a young gypsy girl named Neesha, one of the refugees from Treblinka. Neesha had agreed to go along with the rescue, as long as the party agreed to return the favor and rescue the jewish refugees from the Dragon Priests, who had taken them in as a humanitarian gesture, but turned around and put them to work in an underground scriptorium, making copies of Dragonetics, the holy book of the dragon faith. They're being worked in two 12 hour shifts, scribbling away their lives, locked up in filthy dungeons the rest of the time. Neesha had fought her way out and come to the Goonies for help.

On top of that, the political situation in the city was getting worse and worse for the Magister, who was trying to play by the rules, but also stem the tide of the Dragonfaith, which had spread like a virus in the city, squeezing out all other faiths and threatening to take over the city, and the nation.

With all this going on, the Goonies were trying to sort out what their next move would be. They were actually trying out a few new concepts – planning ahead, strategizing, that sort of thing – trying to figure out what they would do with 2000 refugees once they were rescued – how they would get them out of the city, where they would take them, what it would cost to take care of them until they were able to care for themselves, that sort of thing.

Then visitors started coming in to the Tavern, calling on some members of the party. The first visitor was an elf woman, in traveler’s clothing, who wanted to speak to Eli. The two elves found a private table, and she told him some grave news – that his master, Avaros, who had trained him in the secrets of the Order of the Shooting Star, was dead, killed by the Order’s ancient enemy, Dark elves. She also told him that he was the last of the Order, and that the future of the order rested on his slender shoulders – it would die with him if he did not do something to rebuild it. She delivered to him a book – an ancient tome, the Codex of his order, a manual that held the secrets of thousands of years of the Order. The only other thing she could tell him was that his bow, the intelligent bow that Eli had carried for a few weeks when he was being evaluated for the order – was lost when Avaros was killed, and is presumed to be in the hands of the Dark Ones.

Eli returned to the group, tucking the book under his arm, and obviously deep in thought. Soon after that visit, another pair of elves ducked into the tavern, this pair looking for Pah. They told her that they were representatives of the thieves guild, and they needed to set up a meeting with her in the slums quarter of the city. Pah agreed to the meeting. A bit later she left for the meeting, taking Irk along as her protector. A few other members of the party tagged along at a distance, to provide a bit of cover in the event of some sort of mischief.

The meeting was an ambush – one orchestrated by the Rakshasa that Pah had angered. The two elves were apparently waiting for the dwarf and halfling in an intersection. When Pah and Irk arrived the elves quickly disappeared from sight, while a half-dozen gnomes stepped out of the shadows and started to attack the pair.

This didn’t look like much of a fight, but looks were clearly deceiving.

But the Elves were not gone – only invisible. One of them started casting spells. Seeing Irk for the wrecking machine he is, she cast Insanity on him, and Irk was quickly reduced to a random set of tics and reactions to the world around him – and very little help to Pah.

Then, while Pah was trying to hold off what was left of the gnomes, the Rakshasa hit her with a spell as well – a Geas. Pah stood stock-still for a few seconds, receiving her directions for the Geas. Then the Rakshasa disappeared again, and the surviving gnomes disappeared into the shadows, leaving a dangerously deranged Irk behind, and Pah standing there absorbing the implications of her new mission.

Her geas? She had been ordered to destroy the thieves guild in Dyvers.

Very briefly, things degenerated from there. Irk and Pah, in their own insane ways, divided the party. Irk clearly needed to be disarmed and kept out of trouble – which was accomplished by Eli and Ulric, who managed to take his axe, hide it in Eli’s glove of storing, then truss him up and dump him into a wheel barrow so he could be taken away. Crys and Pah ran off together, with Pah leading the way, suddenly full of purpose.

It was quickly determined that the only source of clerical power in Dyvers strong enough to save Irk from his insanity was the dragonfaith. So Ulric came up with a plan, dumped Irk back in his wheelbarrow, and presented himself to the dragonpriests, the prodigal druid (for he had come to Dyvers, originally, as a mercenary hired to be one of the claws of the dragon), and beg to be taken back, and to have his friend restored to sanity. They were quickly dumped into a cell in the dungeon beneath the temple while the priests tried to figure out what to do with them.

Meanwhile, Crys tagged along with Pah while Pah started interview contacts to try to find the hideout of the thieves guild. In conversation with one such contact, Crys made it clear that she wasn’t interested in attacking the guild, as Pah was. The conversation turned adversarial, and Pah decided that she could complete her mission better on her own – so she took off running. Crys tried to stop her, thinking fast, and cast Polymorph other, but made an unfortunate choice, turning her into a tabby cat – a cat that quickly slipped away into the shadows and was gone.

Crys returned to Solen’s tavern to find Ulric, Irk and Uri also gone.

That is, roughly, where we were before our most recent session.


Latest session:

Here's what happened in the latest session . . .

Pah found one of the main Thieves' Guild hideouts and snuck in, still in cat form. She puttered around, looking for something she could do -- some way to cause trouble -- when the thieves started to prepare for a meeting of some sort. A few minutes later, a team of four adventurers teleported into the room.

This was especially shocking, because one of the things in the Pah's background that hasn't been used yet in the campaign is that she's on a search for her long lost love. And this lost love was one of the four adventurers -- a halfling rogue. There were also a fighter, ranger, and wizard in the party with him.

The meeting got underway -- the adventurers were clearly mercenaries, and had been hired by the guild to try to deal with the Rakshasa problem. The Pah wasn't content to watch the meeting happen, though -- she sidled over to her Oom and started to rub up against him.

Anyway, Oom tried to get rid of the cat, but it kept coming back, and this insistence drew the attention of the Wizard -- who had true seeing cast, and saw her for what she was. When the thieves wouldn't fess up to knowing anything about the fairly insistent cat, he cast dispel magic on Pah, and this time it worked, returning her to her own form.

The thieves were instantly shocked, but Oom, her long lost love, was able to keep them from doing anything to her, while he tried to figure out what was going on. Then wizard announced that they knew what they needed to know, and would return to their hideout. Oom begged, and they too Pah along for the ride.

Meanwhile, things were not looking good in the dungeons under the Dragon Temple, where the Irk and Ulric (and Uri, invisible and hidden from view) were being questioned by various members of the dragonfaith -- claw officers, priests, etc.

Ulric’s line of bull -- to try to convince the dragonpriests to cure Irk and accept that the two of them want to join the claws -- involved being deeply in love with Irk, and refusing to leave him behind in the cell. This struck the priests as a shockingly hard to believe story -- but it amused the Archbishop enough that he decided to meet the two himself -- and then, to see how far the Ulric was willing to go, offered to marry the two, right there, before they met their fate. Ulric, playing his bluff to the bitter end, agreed.

So there was a small ceremony in the dungeon cell. Irk, rolling his 1d10 every round to determine his behavior (the player was having a grand time with this, and I can't tell you how cool it is to have players that will enjoy something so frustrating, and make it fun) while Ulric dressed him up as best he could as a bride -- including pink ribbons in his beard.

Once the ceremony was complete, the archbishop, surprised that they had gone all the way through with it, and still convinced that they could not be trusted, ordered that their cell be walled up, trapping them in marital bliss, Cask of Amontillado style. And it would have worked, too, had Uri wizard not been there to dimension door them out of the cell.

While all of this was going on, the party members who were left were NOT shopping for wedding presents. They were working to try to nail down arrangements with Rhennee barge-folk and smugglers to get the refugees out of the city once they were freed by the party.

This group was also on hand when a fire broke out in the Magister's palace. They raced to the scene, and tried to charge into the fire to rescue the magister (or see if they could find any sign of her). In the fire they encountered a couple of the fangs of the dragon, crashing about in the fire, but the fangs escaped, leaving Crys and Eli in the fire hiding in the relative safety of a hearth, while the rest of the building burned around them. Crys tried a teleport spell to escape, but rolled very badly.

She had been thinking of the bridge of their own ship, the Mystery Machine, recently recovered in the battle in the sky with Gulthias. But the pair ended up in a similar location, miles away, on the bridge of a ship -- a troop ship, carrying a surprisingly reptilian army, dressed as claws of the dragon, just one ship in a fleet of others, sailing slowly towards Dyvers.

A few seconds later, before the ship's captain could bark an order to his crew, they teleported back out.

Back at the tavern, they tried to scry on the magister, with Solen's help, and saw her battered and bound, in the presence of a Tiefling, who was sitting there toying with a dagger, and the massive form of Sear, who spotted the scrying attempt immediately and scared them off with a menacing blink.

Also, Eli, at one point, was alarmed by a feeling of insistence from the dwarf's intelligent Axe, Oathbreaker. Oathbreaker had been tucked away, in an effort to keep Irk from hurting anyone, into the Elf's glove of storing. Now the elf could feel the Axe's empathic need to get out and speak. So, when they had a private moment, they pulled the axe out.

The axe insisted that it had a solution to Irks' problem -- he could take over Irk, in his mentally weakened state, and keep the insanity at bay.

The party discussed it a little, and Eli wasn't keen on trusting the axe, and then Crys delivered my favorite line, ever. "Will you swear, on your honor as a magic item, that you will help him and serve the party?"

The axe, Oathbreaker, shrugged his non-existent shoulders. "Uh, sure." And so it was settled. When they met back up at the tavern, with the recently escaped Uri, Ulric, and still insane Irk, they locked the dwarf in the basement with the axe for a while, until, finally he seemed to settle down. When the dwarf reappeared he had a smoky, dark look on his face and very little sense of humor. He would prove to be a bit on the senselessly bloodthirsty side for a while, but the fighting would come later.

Meanwhile, Pah, the halfling, was in the lair of the other party, Oom's band of mercenary adventurers, who were bustling around, digging through chests and armoires and bookcases, preparing for a battle with the Rakshasa. Pah, recovering from the shock of seeing her long lost love for the first time in years, realized that she had a very important mission. The destruction of the guild. She begged Oom to join her, to help her destroy the guild, but he had his own work to do, and she couldn't stay. He saw that he couldn't keep her there, so he gave her a ring (a ring of invisibility) that had been his own, and told her that he would be able to use it to help find her again. Then, finally she raced out of the hideout, into the . . . sandy street of a city she didn't recognize. A bit of investigation later, she found out that she was hundreds of miles of desert and mountains and water away from Dyvers.

She raced back to Oom's hideout, but the party was already gone.

Over the next few hours she managed to find the library of magic, and bargained away some very valuable gems for a teleport back to Dyvers.

So, she found herself in Dyvers, shortly after the party had given the axe to Irk. She used the ring of invisibility to sneak into Solen's tavern, snuck into his lab and stole his entire supply of gunpowder (stuffing it into her bag of holding) and then headed out for the headquarters of the thieves guild.

She planted a huge bomb and blew up the guild's safehouse. The party, hearing the explosion, hurried to the scene, arriving in time to see the city block going up in a huge fire. the cohort cleric cast invisibility purge, and they discovered Pah, watching her handiwork from a nearby rooftop. They tried to talk her into coming down, but spooked her again, and she too off running. They tried to follow her, desperately trying to keep her within the range of the invisibility purge, but she lost them and disappeared into the night.

While the party had been chasing the escaping halfling, the dwarf, under the control of the axe, turned his attention to the various thieves and cutpurses pulling themselves out of the battered, burning buildings. And started killing them, just for the fun of it.

The party, having lost the halfling, spotted a new threat on the horizon -- the fangs appearing in the sky, riding their red dragon mounts. A few were already circling the tower in dragontown, waiting for the rest to get airborne. Once all five were in the air, they wheeled in formation and headed towards the wreckage of the guild safehouse. The party, having talked Oathbreaker into giving up on his bit of fun and coming with them, ran for cover, ending in the basement of a nearby house.

Pah, having satisfied her need to destroy the Dyvers thieves guild, at least for the day, ran non-stop for the rakshasa manor house outside the city, where she found no sign of Oom , but the wreckage of a massive battle.

The rest of the party decided that things were degenerating enough in the city that it was time to give up on subtlety and get the jews out of the temple. The enchantress shapeshifted into Umber Hulk form, and started the slow process of digging an underground path to the warrens under the temple.

On the way they opened a small hole in the roof of a huge underground chamber. Through their hole they could see and army of kobolds, troglodytes, lizardfolk, and drow, marching up a long trail. They covered the hold they had created and kept moving.

On the surface, the fangs determined to their satisfaction that the destruction was the result of the famous powder that had been invented by the Magister's pet wizard, Solen. They used this as their excuse to go after Solen, burning his tavern to the ground. In the confusion, Solen disappeared.

And that's where we left it -- Pah poking around in the ruined manor house, the party digging towards the dungeons beneath the Dragon Temple. And several parts of the city of Dyvers burning out of control.




A Fine Mess: Return of the Goonies