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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mikeawmids" data-source="post: 7850943" data-attributes="member: 6776411">[Savaged] Rise of the Runelords / Sins of the Saviours / Week 4 [03/11/2017]The heroes were feeling pretty pleased with themselves after defeating Mokmorian and ending the threat to Varisia - when the giant warlord sat back up, eyes blazing with arcane fire.“So these are the heroes of the age?” Mokmorian intoned, “You look more like gasping worms to me.”The giant’s body moved jerkily as though being manipulated by an autistic puppeteer. His voice sounded different too, now it dripped with cultured malice.“Come then, heroes. I – Karzoug, the Runelord of Greed - will await you atop the golden spire of Xin Shalast. Know that every minion of mine that you slay only serves to make me stronger and your own doom more certain. After ten thousand years, is this pitiful band really the best the world can do?”The malevolent flame behind Mokmorian’s dead eyes flickered and faded and the giant slumped to the ground. Grogg stepped up and chopped off his head. He rolled his gory prize onto the balcony overlooking the giant encampment and threw it off to get the armies attention.“Giants of the Storval Plateau!” Grogg roared, “Mokmorian is dead! Galenmir is dead! Your dragon has turned against you! Your conquest of the lowlands is over! Disband and return to your homes! Return to the old ways and pray for the forgiveness of the gods you abandoned! Don’t make me come down there and bang your heads together!”With the head of the snake severed (and subsequently splattered across the inner courtyard), the stone giant army wandered off.“What should we do now?” Asha asked.“I will escort Ameiko and the other civilians back to Sandpoint.” Rast said, “I will ask Solaris to accompany me, for the road south will be long and fraught with peril. I will wait for you there.”“The rest of us could experiment with the teleportation circle and see where else it goes.” Asha suggested.Twisting the star-shaped control rune to the third position, the party found themselves standing in a dark cave that smelled like goblin. Another turn teleported the heroes into the midst of swirling blizzard. Karrack immediately turned blue and began to freeze. Asha twisted the sigil to the sixth point and the party found themselves underwater!“Glubglubglub?!” Asha cursed, turning the rune to the seventh/final point on the star shaped console.The party land in a stone chamber, soaked through and draped in foul smelling weeds. The walls glitter with a strange, sparkly purple stone and blue torches burn in iron braziers. A mysterious merchant offers to trade Karrack a jar of 100 eyeballs in exchange for one of his own. The party get a real ‘Needful Things’ vibe of the vendor and decline his attempts to barter. He is able to advise the party that they have stumbled into a chalice dungeon, a random assortment of traps, treasure and monstrous encounters that will be different every time they visit.“Well that’s neat and all,” Asha mused, “But it doesn’t help solve our runelord problem.”For lack of better options or signposting from the GM, the party return to the goblin cave and have another poke around. Grogg noticed a hole in the ceiling blocked by a heavy block of stone. Karrack climbed up on the half-orc’s broad shoulders and Asha clambered atop Andor. Working together, they shifted the obstruction and climbed into the room above. Karrack realised that they were back in the ritual chamber under Thistletop where they had fought Nualia Tobyn at the very beginning of their adventure and the stone block they just knocked over was the accursed altar to Lamashtu. Asha picked up a statuette of the Mother of Monsters herself and sets to bashing it in with a rock. Thistletop is a day’s travel from Sandpoint, so the party headed back there, wondering how they would explain their hastened arrival to Rast and Solaris.Calculating that they have two weeks to kill before the rest of the party make it back, Asha visited the Pathfinder Lodge in Magnimar, returning the amulets that the party recovered from the dead Pathfinders on the Storval Plateau. She asked to make use of the Pathfinder’s library to research the fall of ancient Thassillon and how to combat the Runelords, should one actually be waking up. She finds information pertaining to a site called Runeforge, where a magical metal called Ithilliom could be used to craft weapons capable of killing the Runelords. No one runelord could be entrusted with control of this resource, so all seven maintained a presence here. The only thing the ancient scrolls do not reveal is the actual location of this mythical runeforge.Meanwhile, Karrack, Andor and Grogg returned to the Storval Plateau to make sure the stone giants had abandoned their warlike practises. They find a group of elders restoring the abandoned shrine to Minderhal and Karrack promised to return the giant-killing spear Teraktinus once the Runelord Karzoug had been defeated. Grogg attracted the romantic attention of a young stone giant huntress called Sapphire. Andor persuaded the other hunters to take him mammoth hunting and they returned several days later dragging the corpse of majestic beast. The elders agreed to help the party decode Mokmorian’s journals and return to the Black Tower to do so. The party learned that Karzoug had compelled Mokmorian to seize several sites of interest (tenuously explaining the attack on Sandpoint), but seemed particularly interested in one specific ruin situated beside a frozen lake in the shadow of Mount Rimeskull, far to the north in the land of snow and swirling blizzards. Karrack curses his -4 racial hindrance in cold climates.To be continued….</blockquote>

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