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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenobi65" data-source="post: 13771" data-attributes="member: 1515">Session #11 - 11/9/01The new Wraith HQ has been built about 25 miles northwest of Marington.  The “Gateway Room” has been completed (with magical assistance), but the living quarters are still under construction.    Winterhawk tells the party that she will have a new mission for them in the near future: to try to disable or destroy one, or both, of the Dracos’ island bases.  However, as she is still working on determining the exact location of these bases, she does not expect to be able to send the party back out for at least three weeks.In the meantime, she assigns the party the task of finding a secure location within the city of Marington, to place a Keystone (for ease of transit between the city and Wraith HQ).The party leaves their horses at the Wraith HQ, and uses the Gateway to transport to just outside of the city.  They then enter the city on foot.Upon returning to town, Rinna excuses herself from the party for a day or so, in order to catch up on personal business.  The rest of the party fans out in the city, and begins to take care of various personal affairs.8/4Rinna reappears, telling the party that she has just learned of a family emergency in eastern Saervik that she must attend to.  She has already spoken with Winterhawk about it, and received permission to leave the Wraiths in order to attend to it.  She believes she will be back within a month, two at the latest.Over the next few days, the party purchases some additional magical items, and also purchases an old manor house.  They place the Keystone in the manor’s secluded garden, and Ian and Phadian begin to set up part of the house as a laboratory, for use in spell research and magic item construction.8/16In the morning, the party again receives invitations to meet the Duke of Valeram in the Breman Gardens at sunset.  With Whitefire, Ulfgar, Nivek, and Rinna all taking advantage of the “down time” to attend to personal affairs, it is a group of five Wraiths who meet Valeram in the garden.  There, the “duke” asks them to undertake a mission for him: there is apparently something strange going on in northern Cascia.  His ministers have received several reports, over the past few days, of merchant wagons being attacked by swarthy humanoids (likely orcs).  Additionally, a small but important village, Apeccius, has been cut off from any contact for over a month.  The village is important because it lies just off a trade route between Cascia (and the rest of Dorlomin, for that matter) and the kingdoms to the west.  It is also important because it is the center of the Apeccian wool region – the sheep in this region produce a particularly soft, and thus valued, wool.  Because it is so far away from Marington, it has taken many weeks for the news to get here, and Kenton is concerned that matters may have already gotten out of hand.Winterhawk agrees to send the party through the Gateway to investigate.  The nearest place she can put the party down is at the monastery of Chung Chul-Seong, about 15 miles south of Apeccius – both Ian and Ming-Jeh have some familiarity with this monastery.8/17After gathering up some supplies, the party heads through the Gateway.  They find themselves in the hills of northern Cascia, about 300 yards from the monastery of Chung Chul-Seong.  As the party approaches the monastery, a small group of monks leaves the monastery’s front gate, and moves to meet them.  When the two groups meet up, about 100 yards from the entrance, the leader introduces himself as Chu-Sung, the head of Chung Chul-Seong.  He greets Ming-Jeh, and shows considerable surprise at seeing Ian. As the other members of the party introduce themselves to Chu-Sung, the party can hear a yell from inside the monastery.  A few moments later, they see a small woman, in monk’s robes,  racing out of the monastery gates, sprinting towards them.  As she approaches the party, she leaps into the air and tackles Ian, knocking him out of his saddle.  As the surprised party moves to defend Ian, they now see that the woman is happily kissing the young wizard.  Chu-Sung chides Kyung-Ri for her outburst, and the woman (now evident as a half-elf) quickly stands up, looking slightly embarrased.  Ian quickly explains that he had formerly trained as a monk at this monastery, and that he and Kyung-Ri are old friends.Chu-Sung leads the party into the monastery.  The party explains that they are here to investigate what has happened at Apeccius.  Chu-Sung indicates that the monks have tried to investigate what has happened in Apeccius; unfortunately, they have very few experienced monks in residence at the moment (many of their monks have joined the war effort).  They concur that they have seen signs of orcs in the area, and that Apeccius itself has been largely plundered by the orcs (although their last scouting mission indicates that there may be one or two homesteads that have survived).  The monks believe the orcs have taken over a long-abandoned retreat temple of Pelor in the hills just north of Apeccius.  They also caution the party that they have seen some sort of creature flying in the area several nights ago.By the time all of this occurs, it is after noon.  Chu-Sung tells the party that it is perhaps a six-hour trek up to Apeccius – given this, the party decides to wait until the following morning to depart, since they would rather deal with the orcs in the daylight.8/18The party departs the monastery, and travels uneventfully to Apeccius.  Upon arriving, they can see that the village probably once had 300 or so residents, but that it has been nearly completely destroyed – most of the buildings have been burned out and / or torn down.  Given this, they find it somewhat surprising that one homestead, lying on a hillside on the western edge of the village, seems to be still untouched.They head for this homestead, and can see that, while there are some signs of battle surrounding the house, it is still standing.  When they get to within about 100 feet of the house, a heavily-accented male Cascian voice calls out, “Who are you?  What are you doing here?”  The voice is quite belligerant, and seems unwilling to accept the idea that the party is there to assist – he continually warns them that he intends to shoot them.  Eventually, the party talks him down, and he he comes out of the house.  He is Oraldus, a weaver by trade, but also apparently an effective marksman with a shortbow.  Oraldus introduces his family: his wife Emmelia, his daughter Giusela, and his son Adernus – all of them are armed with shortbows, and rather aggressive-looking.Oraldus and his family sit down with the party in front of the house, and they all have some lunch while Oraldus tells his tale.  He explains to the party that a raiding party of orcs had first attacked the village about 4 weeks ago.  They came back each night, and, in less than a week, had managed to kill or capture the rest of the town’s permanent residents (many of the townsfolk are actually shepherds, and are up in the mountain pastures at this time of year, so they may still be alive and in hiding).  Oraldus had long ago taught his family how to hunt with bows, and he believes this skill saved them – after the orcs attempted several raids on his home, only to suffer losses at the hands of his family’s arrows, they essentially gave up.  While Oraldus has not seen any orcs in over a week, he does agree with the monks’ belief that they are using the old Pelorian temple to the north – this is the direction that they have been coming from, and returning to.  He also agrees that he has seen winged humanoids in the distance on more than one occasion.  (While all of this has been going on, Giusela, who is quite attractive and about 18 years old, has been sitting increasingly closer to Magnus).After a quick conference, the party decides to send Oraldus and his family down to the monastery, to wait out the results of their raid.  After the family packs up their few possessions, and heads down the road, the party heads up towards the temple.The temple is about a 90-minute hike from the village.  It is a large, rectangular single-story stone building, although about half of its roof has caved in.  The outer wall of the building has numerous alcoves, with statues of Pelor and other gods.  The front door is partially off of its hinges, and hangs partially open.  Ming-Jeh moves up to scout out the entrance, and is immediately set upon by several gargoyles, which had been posing as statues.  The young monk takes a substantial pounding from the stony beasts before he realizes his fists aren’t doing much damage against them – at that point, he instead uses his tumbling skill to stay out of the gargoyles’ way long enough for the other members of the party to take care of them.After defeating the gargoyles, the party enters the abandoned temple.  Most of the orcs are in the catacombs under the temple, and the party winds up engaging in a long running battle against them.  Finally, the party manages to kill both the orcish leader and a shaman to Gruumsh.  As the party checks their foes for anything of value, they make a most disturbing discovery – the leader is carrying six-sided gold coins, which are the currency of the Draconic States.8/19The party heads back to the monastery, to tell Oraldus that it is safe to return home.  Giusela seems quite sad that Magnus is leaving – the sorcerer tells her that, if she can find her way to Marington, that she should look him up.  After leaving the monastery, Ian uses a Gate Key to open the Gateway, and the party returns to Wraith Base.Once there, they fill Winterhawk in on what they have learned.  She shares their suspicion, based on the Draconic gold coins, that agents of the Dracos have infiltrated Dorlomin, and are paying evil humanoids to cause trouble.</blockquote>

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