MerakSpielman's Story Hour (A Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign)

[MerakSpielman]

And so they trekked, with the wagon slowing them down a bit, for several days.

Then they were ambushed by mounted brigands, to the delight of Astoria, who got to do some fighting on horseback. After the short, bloody battle, they tossed the 2 brigands who were still alive into their slave wagon, just in case they could get a reward for turning them in when they got to Kalokapeta.


A few more days, and they were there. They had to pay the ferry fee again, which was quite expensive what with the wagon and horses. Several PCs tried to haggle with the ferryman, without much success.

Once in the city, the PCs scouted around the different temples, and finally decided on the Order of Thought, who hold wisdom and mental prowess holy. Their hope was that the Seekers of Sagacity would find intelligence-drain a particularly heinous thing and cure it at a discount. To their delight, they were not charged for the material component for the Restoration spell, and came out of it with some extra cash.

Eagerly, they explained the situation to the restored halfling woman and asked her what she remembered about the day she was idiofied. “Well, I was out walking on the paths (there’s a lot of them around Tali Lake) collecting herbs to sell in town. The last thing I remember was looking up and seeing a beautiful human woman walking towards me… then everything went blank.”

Well, they had hoped for a bit more information than that, but that’s all she could remember. She was overjoyed, however, to learn that her son had been returned to her, and was eager to get back to Popowan and see him.

Grumbling, the PCs dropped their captured brigands off at the local constabulary, receiving a small reward, and left the city, escorting the halfling. They purchased some extra horses at this time as well.

Later the next day, they were attacked by hippogriffs – a flock of about 4 of the beasts, swooping in to try to make off with the horses. One landed on top of the cage-wagon, where Alron was entertaining the halfling woman. Having originally intended to pounce upon the wagon-horses from behind, it seemed a bit miffed when Alron began to vigorously attack it, by himself. The rogue was worried that the beast would make off with the halfling woman, and as a fellow halfling he felt he had to defend her rather than jump off the cart and out of harm’s way.

Meanwhile, Dust’s horse was being attacked, and the rest of the party was fighting bravely against the monsters. Flames shot through the air, swords rose and fell, blood flew. A scream rose from the halfling woman – Alron had fallen. The hippogriff he was fighting grabs his tiny form and flapped off, joined by its companions, one of which clutched Dust’s horse in it’s talons.

The party watched, horrified and helpless, as the hippogriffs tore apart their prey in midair, fighting for prize chunks, and departed.

After composing themselves and repairing their injuries as best they could, they realized there was nothing to do but press on, and mourn his loss.

Two days later the remaining party members encountered a man sitting cross-legged in the middle of the road. “I’ve been waiting for you. I’m Kerrick, a monk from The Hall of Oaths.” After a quick round of questioning, it turned out that clerics at the Hall had performed some divinations, and it turned out Kerrick should come to this place at this time and join the first adventuring party that passed. However, The Speaker of the Word (the god of said temple) was very unclear on exactly why this had to be done. But here he was.

Kerrick was quite insistent about joining the party, so they filled him in on what they were doing and let him join them.

 

[MerakSpielman]

(clearly Kerrik is played by the fellow who played Alron. I didn’t feel like spending the time to work him into the group any better, and I figure it’s okay to use the “my god told me to join your group” method just once in my DMing career.)

Soon after Kerrick joined them, the party is stopped by a contingent of soldiers traveling the other way. The soldiers, a mix of humans and halflings, insist on looking through the PCs packs for contraband. “There’s rumors of an upcoming assassination attempt on the Prince of Pekal,” they told the PCs, “We’re searching everything.” The party submits to this and to their surprise, the guards find something. “What’s this? Poison!” It is the jar of blue, pasty substance Raven, Dust, and Lysorn found back on the cultist’s ship in Bet Seder.

The PCs manage to talk their way out of being arrested, since they genuinely didn’t know they had anything illegal on them. But the Captain still takes down their names before he sends them on their way, “just in case.”

Finally, they arrived back in Popowan and reunited the woman with her son. Tearfully, the pair returned home.

T’Angel sent her wolf companion out to investigate the trail network on the south side of Lake Tali. Her wolf returned in about half an hour and told her it smelled many individuals, but there was one who was different – not human, not halfling, just a bit… odd.

Of course, the party leaps on this lead and troops off into the trail network, following the wolf as it tracked the scent back to its origin.

Eventually, the wolf led them off the trails to a clearing about three miles from the village. On the far side of the clearing was a small cottage, looking perfectly normal.

Feverish planning. Obviously, isolated cottages in clearings away from trails are not to be trusted.

Lysorn and Kerrick opt to go up to the front door and knock, while the rest of the characters decide to sneak around behind the cottage in the trees. Kerrick knocks on the door. A beautiful young woman answers it. “Excuse me,” says Kerrick, “I was wondering if we might…” The woman gives sort of scream and slams the door in their faces. They can hear the bolt sliding into place. “No, really, I worship the God of Oaths! I don’t lie!” Kerrick called. “Go away!” was the reply from inside.

“Er, what now?” asked Lysorn, “We can’t just break in. She might not have anything to do with this.”

So, long story cut short, T’Angel ends up summoning an octopus inside the hut, crashing and smashing sounds are heard, and the woman rushes out screaming. Melee ensues. Luckily for the PCs, she does indeed turn out to be a villain and hurls several vials which explode into clouds of Purple Mist poison (Fort DC 15, inhaled, primary damage 1d6 Int (permanent), secondary damage nil). Dust and Raven get a bit stupider. Actually, Raven gets a lot stupider.

Eventually they subdue the woman and tie her up. Interrogating her they learn that she is a half-dryad. She tells them that she’s been idiofying the villagers because they chopped down the tree that her mother lived in, killing the poor dryad.

Astoria Detects Evil and the half-dryad tests positive. They deal with her with great suspicion. The party demands to know a cure for the poison. She directs them to a chest in her house, where they find a single potion of Lesser Restoration, which they refuse to drink because it might be poisoned, though she says she always keeps one on hand in case she accidentally poisons herself. The half-dryad tries to strike a deal for her release, promising to give up her revenge and leave the area, never to return, and offering to reveal her source for Lesser Restoration potions. The party refuses because they can find no way to hold her to her promise. They tie her up and toss her in their slave-wagon until they can figure out what to do with her.

Returning to the village, they realize they’ve eliminated the threat, but the town is still full of idiots. Also, being 2nd level, even Lysorn is unable to cast Lesser Restoration, even if they wanted to hang out long enough for him to cure every villager. It could take weeks. And that’s if they could somehow get him another level.

So they decided to go find a cleric of at least 3rd level and hire him to travel to Popowan and stay long enough to cure all the villagers. They trudge out to the nearest village, Gorido, and look around to see if there’s a temple (they didn’t think of this when de-idiofying the halfling woman because they wanted a full Restoration spell, and the only city large enough to have clerics of sufficient level was Kalokapeta). I roll on the charts, and the local cleric is 3rd level. Good enough. He is a Flame of the Assembly of Light, a church dedicated, above all, to worship of the sun and the destruction of undead creatures. The Flame says he will accompany them to Popowan and live there long enough to cure the villagers, but first he needs them to do a task for him as payment.

The Flame informs the party that his scouts have located an abandoned village about a day’s journey to the south. They spotted zombies shuffling around between the buildings. Normally, the Flame would rally his clerics and they’d go take care of it, but all he has are two 1st level Sparks at his command, and they are tasked by the High Assembly with providing lay services to Gorido. So his hands are tied. He needs the party to go to the village, destroy all the undead, and see if they can find any clues as to what caused them to rise.

The party agrees.

Hauling their slave-wagon-with-dryad along with them, they set out along a long-overgrown road and reach the town. Somebody has the idea to plant Lysorn on the wagon so he can preach the ways of the Lord of Silver Linings to the dryad, which they figure is a form of torture.

Parking a few hundred yards from the village, they wait for morning and mount their assault, leaving the wagon and their horses behind.

The village consists of perhaps only a dozen buildings, one of which is a large Hall of the Valiant, the temple of the Knight of the Gods. There is a handful of residences and businesses as well.

The fights are nothing to write home about. Several zombies in the street get slain, and the party starts going door-to-door, selling entry into the afterlife to undead customers. Nothing of value is found.

In the smithy, they find the zombified blacksmith (I gave him the stats for a Large zombie) and slice him down without too much trouble. The smithy has a nice selection of swords marked with the insignia of the Knight of the Gods, which they remember for loading into the small cart pulled behind their wagon later. There is also a locked iron chest, which confounds them greatly, for they have no rogue.

Continue on, fight more zombies, blah blah blah, the party decides to save the Hall of the Valiant for last. Finally, enough hit points have been lost and spells expended that the party feels they should rest for the night and recharge. They stake out a small house and sleep peacefully through the night.

Note that they seem to have, for the moment, forgotten that they left a prisoner in their wagon unattended for all of this. Oh, surely the DM wouldn’t take advantage of this oversight, would he? Heh heh heh.

----
At this point, two new players join the game. They play, respectively, a monk named Galina and an Archer named Joxor (just a fighter with archery feats). It should be noted that for one session, the player of Joxor was unsure what class he wanted to play and had a character sheet for a rogue. Since he accomplished so little during the session, I decided to let him morph his character into an Archer and just sort of retroactively assume he’d been one all along.
----

So, upon waking the party goes to check out the Hall. Bursting in through the front doors, they find themselves in a wide hall with a balcony/loft to their right and a big statue of the Knight of the Gods at the far end. Standing around the statue is a collection of zombies, armored in full plate bearing the insignia of the Knight of the Gods.

Oh dear, things did get messy. Joxor and Galina were hiding in the loft, having been driven up there by the zombies several days ago. The zombies quickly forgot their presence (if Joxor had been an archer at this time, he would have sniped the zombies from the loft, but he wasn’t). The party smashes into the zombies, taking lots of damage. Joxor jumps down from the loft, fails his tumble check, and takes falling damage (his first action of the campaign). Galina jumps down unhurt and joins the melee.

The zombies seem normal enough, but the plate armor makes them difficult to hit. Eventually, however, they triumph with no loss of life and make proper introductions. Of course, Galina and Joxor decide to join the party, because otherwise their players would be very bored (ok, so I suck at introducing new characters, ok? Neither one of them had a background at that point, so it was tough!).

Continuing the exploration of the Hall, the party discovers the zombified Guardian (a cleric of moderate rank within the Church), who seems to have retained some of his spellcasting ability. He Inflicts Moderate Wounds on the paladin, but is quickly chopped down before he can do much else.

His journal, however, is quite interesting. Summarizing, it tells the story of this small outpost. It was a mission, established perhaps 60 years ago by the Servants of the Swift Sword (the fancy name for worshippers of the Knight of the Gods) to reduce the influence of the forces of darkness in this region of Pekal. Reading on through pages of records of mundane activity, a story slowly emerges. The Guardian becomes increasingly convinced that one of his clerics is sabotaging missions, and even might be a worshipper of the Confuser of Ways, a group of clerics that infiltrates good temples and brings them down from within. Unable to determine exactly who was the traitor, the Guardian slowly descended into insanity. The last entry reads, “I have but one option remaining. It is the only way I can be sure of destroying the traitor. I hope nothing goes wrong, but there is nothing else. May the Swift Sword be merciful.”

The party takes the journal and departs. Bashing open the iron chest they find a masterwork spiked gauntlet. They collect all the armor and weapons they found and drag them back to the wagon – where they find the half-Dryad gone, along with all their horses. Raven looks at the tracks in the area and reports that a band of perhaps 20 small-sized creatures arrived and took the woman with them. She can’t tell if she left willingly or was captured. The tracks seem to lead back towards the road. But without their horses, the party is annoyed at how long it will take them to return to Gorido, collect the Flame, and get back to Popowan. And they’re unwilling to leave their slave wagon – and all their loot – behind.

So Kerrick, runs off to Gorido (being a monk he finishes the journey pretty quickly) and tells the Flame what they’ve seen and done. He spends what little money the party pooled for him on a pair of horses to pull the wagon, then he and the Flame ride back to the party. The Flame looks over the village and takes great interest in the journal, insisting it be left with him. Hitching up the horses, the party and their newly-hired cleric return to Popowan.

The tracks, still visible here and there despite the traffic on the road, go the same way, eventually skirting the edges of Popowan itself and vanishing directly into Lake Tali. Even the horses.

A nixie pops its head out of the water. A conversation insues.

It turns out it’s a good nixie, and it tells the party that they’ve been following the tracks of a band of evil nixies – the ones that broke off from the good nixie village and attacked the party several days ago. He also tells them that the half-dryad was with them. They used their water breathing ability to get the half-dryad and the horses into the lake.

The party seems mainly pissed off about their stolen horses. They want to go into the lake and rescue their horses. Oh, yeah, and deal with that half-dryad once and for all. The party remembers that the good nixies have a naga on their side, but it’s been idiofied. They send Bubbles (the nixie) back to his village to fetch the naga so that the Flame can cure it. They also ask if it would be terribly troublesome if they could get enchanted to breath water so they could go take care of the under-lake mess.

They make a brief side-trip to the nixie’s cottage, but it seems unoccupied so they return to town and set up the Flame in a little house, asking him to please cure the naga first, as soon as it arrives.

Returning to the shore of Lake Tali, they are greeted by a host of nixies who gladly use their water breathing abilities and help the party get oriented in the water. The monks swim, but most everybody else has enough equipment to be heavy enough to walk on the bottom.

But the group is worried that the evil nixies will return and steal their new horses, so they leave Lysorn behind to “guard” them. Really, they think he’s kind of annoying.

Talking with Bubbles, they learn that the naga has lived in the lake far longer than the nixies. The naga seems determined to guard the area against possible evil incursions, so they figured the area right outside the naga’s cave would be a great place for a village. Also, they learn that a few miles away along the lake bed there is a sort of pit or well, which Bubbles refers to as the Bad Place. Nixies don’t go there, he says. They’re too afraid. It’s too evil.

Of course, it seems that that’s where the evil nixies are coming from when they attack.

It seems an adventurer’s work is never done. (Oh, and yes, they’re heading into a dungeon crawl without their cleric.)

more to come...

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for the "Temple under Lake Tali" adventure.

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "Magical journal and magical assaults"

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "Journey to and Arrival at Bet Rogala"

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "Attacking the Thieves' Guild" (Cooperative Dungeon 2)

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "Recovering the Tome for Sulat Mokira"

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "The Journey to Pel Brolenon"

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "Misadventures in Dowand-Brandel"

 

[MerakSpielman]

Placeholder for "The Engineer Slave"