The Scourge of the Ratmen [Scarred Lands] - Updated 1/26

[Amaroq]

Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 5

Morning comes on the first Wildday of Charder. We gather in the large common room of the Laughing Ogre Inn for breakfast. Saraya, the bard who Verenia introduced to us, is ready to travel with us. Goldpetal joins us, as promised, about half an hour after dawn.

When we are finished with the morning meal, Paks suggests, “Let’s leave right away.”

Stone, excited, says, “I'll burn the tower to the ground!”

Chuck elbows him, and points out, “Stone won’t burn.”

Stone replies, “People have told me I will eventually be burned.”

There’s no answer to this, and everyone prepares to leave for the tower.

We head south along the road, intending to approach the tower using the forest for cover. As we walk, we all introduce ourselves to Saraya.

Goldpetal walks at the front of the group, slightly ahead. He is an elf, small and slight, with long dark hair. His clothes appear to be handmade, and we think he is a druid. He is armed with only a scimitar. He avoids Stone.

Stone is clearly a half-orc, with a pugnacious set to his features, unkempt black hair, black eyes, and an odor which suggests that he has not found it necessary to take advantage of the bathing rooms at the inn since our flight through the swamp. He is fairly young, and carries a crossbow and bolts for it. He has a dagger by his belt. He is a monk in an order of Hedrada.

Next to Stone is Chuck the Younger, son of Chuck the Elder, grandson of Chuck the Eldest, and nephew of Uncle Upp. Chuck is about five foot eight, with green eyes and brown hair. He looks like he’s about nineteen years old. He wears light leather armor and carries two swords, a bow and arrows, and a quantity of silk rope. He's slightly sullen, but seems friendly enough. He mentions that he was helping guard the caravan, as the apprentice to Steve the ranger.

The tall, slender cleric Miriel has short red hair, and fine features which hint at a half-elven ancestry. She wears a traveler’s cloak distinguished by the painstakingly hand-embroidered pattern of peacock feathers, in shimmering multicolored silk thread, and carries a short spear decorated with peacock feathers. She is a priestess of Madriel.

Fergus McAllister says little about himself. He carries himself a little apart from the party, as though there has been a recent strain on the friendship. He wears a clan tartan, and carries a great sword, which he wields in two hands.

Finally Paks, a tall and burly woman with longish hair, introduces herself. She says she is a mercenary, who was a guard with the caravan. She is quiet, but has a likeable face and her demeanor puts everyone at ease. She wears a chain shirt, and carries a sword and shield.

We’re on the road for about five hours, seeing nothing more than the grassy hills that extend for miles on all sides of us.



Before we come within sight of the tower, we move into the woods so that we can again circle around behind the tower without being seen. We go single file through the woods, moving slowly, as the trees and webs are very thick here. Chuck and Goldpetal exercise their tracking skills, with Goldpetal looking for wagon tracks into the forest. They see no signs other than our tracks from our previous trip.

After two hours of hacking through the woods, we see the tower, stopping when we are about even with it. It’s a gray day, and we know the moon will be at about half full tonight, so we decide to wait for dark to approach the tower. We camp just inside the woods, with no fire, where we can see the tower, but they can't see us. It is still several hours until dark. Stone wanders off into the woods, looking for mushrooms or berries, but gets called back, so he lies down to rest.

An hour goes by. Nothing happens. It’s about mid-afternoon. Chuck and Goldpetal are continuously watching and listening - Goldpetal looking at the forest, pacing around the camp area, Chuck watching the tower. They see nothing.

By late afternoon, Paks is asleep, as is Stone. Miriel sits, reading a religious tome, while Fergus reads over her shoulder.

A piercing scream starts the party to wakefulness. Stone, who was sleeping off a little further into the woods than most of the party, is screaming at the top of his lungs. Two big spiders, nearly as large as he is, are gnawing on the prone half-orc. The spiders are about five feet in diameter overall, with furry bodies about a foot and a half across. Stone looks quite pale, and sweat is standing out on his brow.

Chuck draws his long sword to attack, and calls out, “Those are huge spiders! Be careful, their bites are poisonous, and there may be a few more of them!” He steps to Stone’s side to attack the nearest spider. As he swings his sword, the spider lets go of Stone and scurries out of reach, dodging.

Stone takes advantage of the momentary respite to stagger to his feet. He kicks weakly at one of the spiders, but with his strength sapped by the poison, he is unable to injure it. Saraya runs in amongst the spiders, jabbing at the nearer one with her long spear, but she misses, too. The spiders scuttle quickly, and dodge our blows nimbly.

Goldpetal draws first blood, slashing his scimitar across the body of the further spider. He slices off two of its eight legs, and black ichor oozes from the wound. The spider tries to charge and bite him, but it stumbles, missing its legs, and falls over at his feet. It scrabbles weakly.

The spider still standing bites Chuck, and he, too, looks weak from the poison. Like Stone, he is quickly turning pale and sweating. Miriel throws her spear at that one, but misses.

Paks gets to her feet. She was not sleeping in her armor, and so, instead of attacking the spiders, she moves to the edge of the woods. She watches the tower to see if anyone comes at the sound of the battle. Fergus moves over to join her, but neither of them sees any disturbance on the road or at the tower.

Chuck, wounded and poisoned, drops his sword. He backpedals, drawing his bow, and shoots an arrow at the nearer spider, hitting it. A single arrow seems to slow it not at all, but it does distract it while Stone steps between the spiders and punches it. His blow crumples part of its carapace, leaving it injured and barely moving.

Saraya stabs ineffectually at the further spider, the one on its back, with her spear, while Goldpetal attacks it with his scimitar, also missing.

The nearer spider tries to run away. Stone and Chuck attack it. Stone’s punch crushes its carapace, flattening it. Spider guts splash all over both of them.

Paks rushes the fallen spider, and hits it with her longsword, splitting it nearly in half. Both spiders are dead, and a brief quiet comes over the campsite.

Miriel gathers Chuck and Stone, and helps them clean off the spider innards. When they are clean, she tends to their wounds. She calls on Madriel’s healing for each of them. Chuck still looks weakened afterwards, but the half-orc’s injuries are mostly closed. Both still seem weak from the poison in the bites.

Goldpetal tries some of the herbs he’s carrying on Stone, trying to treat the poison, but they don’t seem to have much effect. He searches the nearby forest for a different herb, which he makes into a potion and a salve for the wounds. He tells them that they should be back up to full strength in a few hours. He seems to know quite a bit about the woodland spiders.

Fergus and Paks keep a watch on the tower through the afternoon, but nothing seems to be happening. The sun goes down and it begins to get dark. The night is not foggy and the moon is up, so Paks suggests we wait and rest until the moon goes down, a few hours after midnight. Fergus and Goldpetal take the first watch, and everyone not on watch sleeps. The night is quiet. Paks and Miriel relieve the first two shortly before midnight. By the time Chuck and Stone wake up, well after midnight, they have regained their strength and stand a watch with Saraya. Our sleep is undisturbed.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 6

A few hours before dawn on the first Charday of Charder, we get up, pack our small camp, and make our way towards the tower.

As we approach the tower, Goldpetal hears a thud from inside. We look in through the damaged wall, but see nothing. Stone leaves his pack by the ruined wall. We split up into two parties, each one going around the tower in a different direction. Both parties reach the front door without encountering trouble.

We look in the front door, and see that the bale of hay has been removed from the trap door. There doesn't seem to be anything else in the tower. Goldpetal looks for tracks around the door. There are some, but he can't tell if they're fresh.

We light the lantern and go inside. Stone, Paks, Chuck, and Saraya go over to the trap door, while Goldpetal guards the front door.

Miriel and Fergus go upstairs, to look around at the surrounding area. Miriel sees the woods, the ocean, and the cliff, but Fergus can’t see in the dim light of the stars. Miriel notices something very interesting about the cliff: About 50 feet south of the tower, the cliff doesn’t go straight down to the ocean. She thinks she can see, at the base of the cliff, some sort of beach or landing. Peering into the darkness with her good vision, she sees a ladder, which appears to be tall enough to use to climb up the cliff. It is currently lying down at the bottom, on the beach. She describes what she sees to Fergus.

“How high is the cliff?” he asks.

“It’s only about thirty feet high,” she answers.

“I’ll go tell the others,” he says.

“I’ll watch here, to make sure we aren’t surprised in the tower again.”

Miriel stays upstairs and watches around us, while Fergus goes back downstairs. He relays what they have found. “I think we should block the trap door with hay again,” he suggests. “Then we leave someone who can see in the dark watching from the top of the tower, while the rest go down the cliff.”

Chuck looks concerned. “Wouldn’t that block our escape?” he asks.

“Okay,” Fergus says. “I’ll stay here and watch the trap door. An enemy would have to come up the ladder one at a time.”

Before any further discussion can take place, Stone staggers inside, carrying a heavy white rock, part of the rubble of the collapsed tower. He sets it down over the trap door, with a booming thud which we can hear echo in the underground chamber below.

“Well, now they know we’re here,” Paks says, looking at it.

“That should hold,” Stone says.

Chuck shrugs. “Okay.”

Fergus and Goldpetal go up to the top of the tower, and they send Miriel down to join the rest of the group. The rest of the party goes to the cliff.



At the top of the cliff, Stone takes his rope from his pack. Chuck and Paks lower the half-orc down the face of the cliff. Beneath him, Stone can see that there is a big cove underneath the cliff face, in a crescent shape.

When his feet reach the sand, he finds himself on a beach in a dark corner of the cove. The cliff, beach, and ocean all meet just beyond him. He looks around. The center of the cove, closest to the tower, is illuminated by two torches, one on either side of a passage heading back into the rock. The passage appears to head in the general direction of the tower. By the light of the torches, he can see a red-haired woman and four smugglers. They are all facing away from him, looking expectantly down the corridor.

Stone steps back and signals up at the group on the cliff, making a “five” with his right hand. Under cover of the pounding of the surf, he picks up the ladder and carefully puts it up against the cliff. The bandits are still looking down the corridor and whispering to each other. Stone pulls out his crossbow and points it towards the outlaws while the others climb down. Paks comes down first. She draws her bow, and crouches with her shield between her and the smugglers. Chuck and Saraya follow. Miriel climbs down last.

Paks, Chuck, Stone, and Saraya, the four of us with bows, inch closer to the bandits, while Miriel stays near the foot of the ladder and watches out to sea. With the darkness, and the noise of the surf, we are able to get within about thirty feet of the enemy without alerting them. They appear to be waiting for us to approach from the other side. The four men have swords drawn, but the woman seems to have no weapons.

On Stone’s signal, we all fire. Stone wings one of the swordsmen with his crossbow. Chuck shoots at a second, and puts an arrow through his back. It looks like a nasty wound. Paks and Saraya both miss, bouncing their shots off the cliff face.

“Surrender!” calls out Paks. “You’re under arrest!”

One of the men yells “Never!”

“Get them!” the woman commands her troops.

Paks shoots again and hits, killing the bandit already seriously injured by Chuck. The woman gesticulates mysteriously, and speaks a word of power. She throws two glowing orbs at Chuck, and he lurches backwards, wounded by two Magic Missiles. Miriel comes up behind everyone and crouches down.

Stone hits his target with a second crossbow bolt, but the wounded outlaw is still standing. With one of his comrades dead and an arrow stuck in his shoulder, the injured one turns, and flees back down the corridor. The other two men follow, leaving the woman alone.

We begin to advance on the woman, all firing our bows. Chuck hits her, but though she grimaces in pain from his shot, she is still ready to fight. Saraya and Paks both hit her, but their shots are merely scratches. Outnumbered, the sorceress turns and runs down the corridor as well, so they are all out of sight.

Stone runs over to the entrance to the corridor. Peering around the corner, he sees her about fifteen feet down the corridor, which is at least three times that long. She's looking back at Stone, and seems to have persuaded the others to stand and fight. The rest of us run up towards Stone, gathering at the entrance to the corridor.

The woman begins to gesture and intonate another spell, stepping back to the front of the corridor. Stone swings to punch her, but he can’t stop the spell. She casts Burning Hands, and fire jets from her fingertips, fanning out and injuring most of us. Chuck slumps to the floor, unconscious. Stone attacks the mage with a flurry of blows and hits very hard, almost knocking her out.

Miriel kneels down. “Madriel,” she prays. “Please! Heal Chuck back to consciousness.” The goddess answers her prayer, and Chuck comes awake. He rolls to one knee, with his bow out, and fires at the spell caster. His arrow hits her, and she slumps to the ground.

With their leader lying, bleeding on the floor, the remaining bandits drop their weapons and raise their hands in the air. “I surrender!” calls the wounded one.

“Come out where we can see you,” Paks commands. Stone keeps his crossbow trained on them as the three smugglers come out with their hands up.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 7

Chuck ties up the prisoners, very skillfully. Paks performs first aid on the woman, who stops bleeding but remains unconscious. Chuck puts manacles and a gag on the woman, and one of the uninjured swordsmen, securing the other two with his rope.

We take the woman and the prisoners out to the ladder up the cliff. Chuck rifles the corpse, and the rest of us search our four captives. The woman has a gold chain with the symbol of Enkili on it, which Paks takes. She also has a key, which Miriel pockets. Paks counts their money, finding ten pieces of gold, and eleven of silver. Stone checks out their boots, but none fit. We also disarm the criminals, taking their four swords and four cheap daggers. Miriel takes the sorceress’ dagger, which seems to be of much better quality.

Chuck runs up the ladder and waves the torch to summon Goldpetal and Fergus, but those two do not leave their post. Chuck and Stone begin to drag the bound outlaws up the cliff face. The captives complain, especially when they scrape against the rock, but they are securely bound and have no choice in the matter.

Paks stays on watch, standing in the torch light at the mouth of the passageway. She pitches one of the two torches down the corridor. It lands about eighty feet down, illuminating a passage approximately a hundred feet in length. The corridor is very old, of rough-hewn stone. She sees nothing in the hallway, but there are doors along the right side. The torch lies at the end of the corridor. Miriel waits with her, and the two friends watch the passage while they wait for the rest of the party.

Chuck and Stone take the prisoners up to the tower. Saraya follows them back up to the tower, as she is wounded. When they reach the tower, they tell Fergus and Goldpetal what they have found. Fergus and Goldpetal begin debating what course of action to undertake. Stone heads back down the cliff to rejoin Paks and Miriel; when Fergus and Goldpetal do not follow, Stone goes back up and calls out for them, and they give up their argument and join the group below.

Chuck and Saraya stand guard in the tower.



The five of us below head down the corridor, dimly lit by the flickering torch lying at the end, and the torch outside at the beach. Three doors line the right hand wall at fairly regular intervals, and there is a fourth door at the end of the corridor. They stop at the first door, keeping as silent as possible in case there are any bandits remaining who were not alerted by the previous fight. Paks and Fergus have their swords drawn and ready.

Stone listens at the door, but hears nothing. He shakes his head. Paks and Fergus take position on either side of the door, and Stone pushes it. It resists, until he puts a shoulder into it. The door opens to reveal a smallish room with barrels and foodstuffs and such, about twenty feet square. Paks suggests searching the room, which we do, but see just dry foods, fresh water, and cured meats; enough supplies for a couple of weeks.

We move on to the next door. Stone listens again, hears nothing again, and opens it. Behind it, we find another twenty foot square room, containing a cot, a little desk, a cheap threadbare rug, and a small chest.

While Paks and Miriel move into this room, Stone continues along the corridor to listen at the next door. Fergus remains in the doorway, standing guard over us. Paks and Miriel look at the chest, while Goldpetal searches the rest of the room.

Paks tries to pry the chest open with her short sword, but can’t open it. She picks it up and hears glass rattling around in it, so she sets it down again.

“Hey!” Miriel says, with a sudden inspiration. “What about the key that sorceress was carrying?” She pulls it out of her pouch and uses it on the chest. The key turns, but she gasps in sudden surprise, pulling her hand back. “Ow!”

“What is it?” asks Paks, looking at her in concern.

“There was a trap. A needle. It stuck me in the finger,” Miriel says.

“Poison?” asks Paks, and Miriel holds out her hand. They both inspect it. There doesn’t appear to be any swelling.

“Luckily, if that’s what it was, it doesn’t seem to be having an effect,” Miriel says.

There doesn’t seem to be any other way to help, so Paks returns to the chest. The chest swings open easily, now. Inside, the two women find a ledger book, two sheets of parchment, a bag of coins, a silver ring with a rat motif, a carved rat skull, and a great number of vials.

Paks checks the chest for a false bottom but doesn’t find one. Miriel counts the bottles. There are forty-two, in all: twelve vials of glowing emerald liquid; fifteen vials of black gas; eight vials of viscous amber fluid; five vials of green liquid; and two milky white ones. Neither of them recognizes anything in the vials, and when they show them to Goldpetal, he can’t make anything of them either. “We’d need an apothecary, to identify them,” he says, shaking his head.

We move on to the next room. Stone hasn’t heard anything through the door, so we open it, finding a larger room, almost thirty feet square. It has eight cots. A brief search turns up nothing of value, and we return to the corridor.

We move on to the final door, at the end of the corridor. Stone listens once more and again hears nothing. He opens the door, and we find that it’s the room under the trapdoor in the tower. We have come through the wooden door on the eastern wall. Against the southern wall is propped the large rock slab, over nine feet tall and perhaps five feet wide. A bunch of large rocks are piled against it, holding it upright against the wall.

Stone gives the signal, a code of knocks, at the trap door.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 8

While the five of us are searching the underground area, Chuck starts interrogating the prisoners.

He removes the gag from one of the uninjured captives. “Who are you?” he demands aggressively, but the prisoner just glares at him. There is no response.

“Why are you here?” Chuck asks, but the prisoner turns his head away and refuses to answer.

“Look at me!” Chuck demands, using his right hand to force the outlaw to comply. “Who is the woman?” he asks. The bandit spits in his face, and Chuck angrily jams the gag back into his mouth.

“Let me try,” Saraya suggests, laying one hand calmingly on Chuck’s shoulder.
Shaking his head, Chuck turns the interrogation of the prisoners over to Saraya, stalking away to watch out the front door of the tower.

Saraya leaves the angry bandit, and removes the gag from the mouth of the wounded one. She treats his injuries, removing the arrow from his shoulder, and then starts bandaging him. While she works, she asks, “Why are you here, what are you up to?” There is a trusting curiosity in her soft voice, as though she were talking to a long-time friend.

He looks at her, and nods to himself, as though deciding that she is worthy of answers in a way which Chuck wasn’t. “That woman, Delonia, she hired us to smuggle these goods,” he tells her.

“What kind of stuff are you smuggling?” she asks.

“We go down to the marshes,” he says, “We take some iron and goods and weapons and trade them to a rat man, who gives us chests to bring back. We don’t have any idea what’s in the chests, we just got paid to bring 'em back.”

Saraya has a pretty face, and she seems to be having more success with her soft singer’s voice than Chuck had. “How long have you been doing this?” she asks.

“A couple of months,” he says, with a shrug. “The pay’s good.” He turns his most earnest smile on her “You can let us go now,” he assures her.

Saraya has finished bandaging his wounds. She looks around their environs doubtfully. “What can you tell us about this tower?” she asks, as though frightened of it.

“I dunno,” he says. “It’s been here a long time. Let us go!”

“What’s behind the big stone door down there?” she asks.

“There's a bunch of ghouls back...” One of his fellow prisoners elbows him in the ribs, and he trails off abruptly. When he next speaks, he says with feigned nonchalance, “Oh, that's where our treasure is.” He tries imploring her with his eyes. “If we tell you where the treasure is, will you let us go? We promise we won’t hurt you anymore, if you let us go. We were just getting paid to do a job – whatever she and the boss, that half-orc, said.”

Saraya asks, “How much longer were you going to work for her?”

“As long as she paid us,” he says.

“Were you supposed to go down to the swamp soon?” she asks.

“No,” he responds, “We just got back from the swamp a couple of weeks ago. We were waiting for someone to pick up the chest.”

“Who picks up the chest?” Saraya asks.

“A guy in a boat picks up the chest and brings another chest of weapons and stuff. We take that chest to the swamp, trade it for another chest, bring the new chest to the tower, give it to the guy in the boat, get another chest from him, take that to the swamp, bring another chest back, give it to the guy in the boat...”

He sounds like he would continue that run-on sentence indefinitely, until she interrupts him. “When does the guy in the boat come?”

“He comes on the new moon,” he tells her, and then asks, “You could let us go now, right?”

Saraya turns away with disgust only half-concealed in her eyes, and says, “Gag them,” in a cold, hard voice, utterly unlike the soft-spoken compassion with which she had spoken to him. Chuck gags the prisoner, and then ties all four of them in a circle. He and Saraya wait for the rest of the party to find them.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #2: The Tower. Episode 9

Finally, Chuck hears Stone knocking from below the trap door. Chuck pushes the rock away, and opens the trap door, reuniting the party. He comes down, and joins Fergus in searching the room with all the cots. They find nothing.

Miriel looks around to see who is most injured. Though we were all burned by the sorceress’ spell, during the fight, it looks like she and Saraya are the worst hurt. Miriel prays for healing for both herself and Saraya, and then suggests that we need to rest to regain spell strength. The others set up a watch rotation and rest in the tower. Paks spends a few hours thoroughly searching all of the rooms below, but finds nothing.

When we are all awake and ready for more adventure, we decide to explore the area where the bandit said that there were ghouls. Before we go, Chuck checks the bonds of the prisoners again, making sure they are secure. The spell casting woman is still unconscious. The prisoners are napping.

Paks, Stone, and the rest of the party go down to the room beneath the tower. We are ready to go through the large stone slab. Chuck and Goldpetal stand watch, with bows drawn and ready, with Chuck up in the tower, and Goldpetal at the foot of the ladder. The strongest members of the company, Stone, Fergus, and Paks, remove the rocks piled against the slab blocking the door.

When the last one is removed, we all draw weapons and make ready while Stone tries to pull the slab off of the door. Paks stands ready to pitch in a torch, but Stone can’t quite shift the slab alone. Paks hands the torch to Goldpetal, and lends her strength to Stone’s efforts.

The stone slab falls with a resounding crash, which echoes off the hard rock walls of the confined space. A ten foot wide staircase descends into the blackness before us. Goldpetal quickly tosses the torch down into the darkness.

The torch lands on the floor below. In its flickering light, we can see that the staircase that goes down for twenty feet. Beyond that, it is a hallway, perhaps thirty feet long, with doors along the right and left. One of the doors on the left is broken and hangs slightly ajar.

Paks steps to the top of the staircase, sword drawn. She descends slowly, and we all follow her. Chuck climbs down to the room beneath the tower, and closes the wooden door to the eastern corridor. He listens from the tower room, leaving a lit torch in the room under the trap door.

Paks reaches Goldpetal’s torch, and picks it up. She tosses it through the broken door on the left. It weakly illuminates a large mausoleum, perhaps thirty feet wide and fifty feet long. There are four large columns, evenly distributed towards the corners of the room. All around the outside walls, every ten feet or so, she can see crypt-like openings. The room smells old and musty.

Miriel looks around Paks and through the door; she sees nothing. Stone listens at the other door, but hears nothing. Saraya steps to Paks’ side.

Together, Paks and Saraya step into the first room. As they cross the threshold, four bipedal monsters jump out. They may have been human, once, but are now foul beasts with clawed hands. The smell of death and decay that roils off of them is sickening, and both Paks and Saraya are nauseated, overcome by the stench.

“Ghouls!” Fergus yells. Quickest to react, he steps between the two women and lays about him with his great-sword. He hits one ghoul and slices it nearly in half, and it falls to the ground, still twitching. With a spectacular follow-through, he steps forward and hits the next, a solid two-handed blow. It, too, falls, returning from undead to wholly dead.

Miriel pulls out her symbol of Madriel. Holding it high above her head, she steps to the doorway and yells, “In the name of Madriel, be gone, foul beasts!” Though she has read about turning undead creatures, her first attempt to do so has no discernable effect.

Stone runs past the three ineffective women, to attack the ghoul furthest into the room. It bites him as he runs past. Stone punches it in the head, but a punch which would have stunned a man seems only to have angered it. It attacks him with teeth and claws, scoring him with one talon. Though the wound appears to be only a scratch, the half-orc gives a strangled cry, and stiffens up like a board. He falls to the ground, either dead or paralyzed.

The second ghoul attacks Paks, leaping over her shield to reach her neck and shoulder. Wounded by its bite and claw, she collapses in the same manner. Saraya staggers back, to vomit at the foot of the stairs. Goldpetal yells something in elvish, and runs into the room slashing at the wounded ghoul with his scimitar. He also wounds it but cannot kill it.

Fergus pushes Paks out of the way, and she falls back through the door and onto the floor. He swings at the wounded ghoul, but his sword arcs too high, and misses. “Chuck!” he hollers, and Chuck begins running down the stairs to join the fight.

“Madriel, help us!” Miriel pleads, with her holy symbol before her. This time she manages to turn both undead. They flee in mindless terror, running straight past Fergus and Goldpetal. Goldpetal cuts the wounded one down with his scimitar, and it dies at his feet. Fergus swings wildly at the other, but misses. He hits himself in the leg with his own sword. It’s a big wound, gushing blood, and he falls down. His sword skitters across the floor, coming to rest against the left wall. Fergus lies unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

With the last ghoul cowering in a corner, Goldpetal and Miriel stop to heal Fergus, as Chuck enters the room. Goldpetal staunches the bleeding, and Miriel prays to Madriel to heal Fergus back to consciousness. While she does that, Goldpetal checks Paks and Stone, and calls out, “They’re still breathing, just paralyzed.”

Chuck advances into the room after the ghoul, shooting an arrow. His shot misses, but seems to have driven the fear from the ghoul. It turns about to face us, and begins advancing towards us. Goldpetal steps to his right, to sling a bullet at the ghoul. Though he hits, it seems to have little effect, other than to annoy the ghoul further. Fergus, his leg healed, climbs to his feet. Miriel holds her holy symbol aloft, and tries to turn the ghoul again. “Be gone, in the name of Madriel,” she shouts, but again she fails.

The ghoul lumbers up to Chuck and attacks. It hits with a claw and bites him in the shoulder, and he collapses, unconscious, with two serious bleeding wounds. Goldpetal fumbles with the sling, tripping over some trash on the floor, which causes him to fall and drop the sling. Fergus runs to the left wall, and picks up his sword. The ghoul reaches him before he has the sword ready.

“Madriel’s light!” shouts Miriel. A soft divine light shines from her holy symbol, and the ghoul freezes in the act of attacking Fergus. She manages to turn the ghoul a second time, and it retreats from her to the furthest corner of the room. Goldpetal gets up. “Don’t attack it,” Miriel cautions. “Wait until we are all ready.”

Paks, her paralyzation worn off, gets up and enters the room. Miriel heals Chuck, who stands up, and Stone is also standing up, shrugging off the effects of his paralyzation. Together, we all advance on the ghoul, with swords drawn. The ghoul squeezes as far into the corner as it can get.

Fergus, in the lead, reaches the ghoul first. He hits it with his sword, and it turns to fight. The ghoul leaps on him, getting inside the reach of his lengthy sword. It bites him in the chest, and knocks him unconscious. As he falls, it rends him with its claws.

Yelling a battle cry in elvish, Goldpetal swings mightily at the ghoul with his scimitar, cutting its head clean off.

Fergus is gushing blood. Paks drops to her knees to bandage Fergus, stabilizing him momentarily, though he is still bleeding. “Miriel!” she calls.

“I can’t,” Miriel responds. “I’ve no strength left for a healing.”

“Cradle his head,” Stone tells Paks, pulling out a potion of healing. He holds Fergus’ nose pinched closed with his thumb and forefinger, and pours the potion down Fergus' throat. Fergus’ sputters and coughs as he swallows the potion, but his wounds begin to close as he wakes up.

 

[Amaroq]

All done, there

All done, now, with the reorg. Thanks for your patience. And... what better way to offer amends than to begin the first part of the next issue?

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #3: The Spider-Eye Goblins. Episode 1 of 12

28th of April, 2002​

Issue #3

The Spider-Eye Goblins​

On our second trip to the ruined tower, between Southport and the Mourning Marsh, we found more bandits. We have killed or captured all of them, including a female sorceress, Delonia, who is bound, gagged, and unconscious.

Investigating further, we opened the blocked-off section of the tower, and discovered a crypt with a small group of ghouls. We have destroyed them all, but Fergus was nearly killed, and only a magical potion of healing, administered at the last moment, kept him with us. There is yet another door we have not explored, and we have not unraveled the mysterious lights which prompted us to first visit this place.



It’s about mid-morning on the first Charday of Charder. We’re underneath the tower, in the room where we killed the ghouls. Paks and Stone have been tending to the wounds of Fergus MacAllister.

After a minute, Fergus staggers to his feet, and says, “Thank you,” to the mercenary and half-orc. He still looks wounded, but the healing potion which Stone gave him has helped a lot. The highlander picks up his great-sword, which had fallen to the filthy floor, and begins cleaning it.

Stone and Paks are both wounded as well, and the priestess, Miriel, quickly binds their wounds in some makeshift bandages, but warns, “Those wounds will need to be thoroughly cleaned: the ghouls may have disease or poison.”

We quickly look in each crypt and see nothing other than bones and trash and such. As we look around, we notice that what Goldpetal tripped on was not really trash, but actually a mostly-eaten dead smuggler. Chuck searches the truly gruesome dead body and finds six pieces of gold and twenty of silver.

“Let’s make a more thorough search of the crypt,” Paks suggests.

“Sounds good to me,” Fergus says, and they set to it. Stone helps.
Chuck goes upstairs to check on the prisoners – Delonia and her three henchmen, who we had captured the previous night. The three smugglers are still asking to be let go, if he removes their gags, while the sorceress remains asleep.

Miriel wraps her cloak, with the beautiful peacock embroidery, about her and rests, with Saraya watching over her. Chuck waits upstairs, standing picturesquely in the door of the collapsed tower, with his leather armor. He carries two swords sheathed, one at each hip, and a bow is strapped to his back. He guards our captives, while everyone else searches the crypt.

We spend about an hour in the crypt making a thorough search. In the toe of the boot of the dead smuggler, Stone finds a blue gem. Paks finds that one of the bones on the floor is actually a scroll tube. Goldpetal looks for any secret doors, but all of the walls seem solid. There is nothing else of interest.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #3: The Spider Goblins. Episode 2 of 12

When the search party is ready to concede that there is nothing more to find, and Miriel is rested, Stone calls, “Chuck, come down!”

As Chuck comes back down, Paks asks, “Miriel, can you re-consecrate the crypt?”

“No,” the priestess answers, “I have not progressed that far in my studies.” After a brief moment, with a regretful look on her face, she suggests, “Shall we open the other door?”

“I’ll stay upstairs and watch the prisoners,” Saraya says, and takes Chuck’s place in the tower.

We all head over to check out the other room, with Stone in the lead and Miriel hanging behind in the first room. Stone attempts to open the door, but it's quite stuck. Goldpetal helps, and despite the elf’s slight stature, his assistance makes the difference. The door opens onto a ten foot wide corridor that goes down about forty feet.

On the left hand side, spaced five feet apart, there are cells with rusty, broken bars. Goldpetal shoots a sling down the hall and hits the far wall, but nothing else happens. Stone explores the first cell, finding nothing but bones and ancient trash. The cells have clearly not been used for many decades. They are about five feet wide and ten feet deep. In the second cell we see a skeleton. Paks gets an uneasy feeling. Without an explanation, the tall woman draws her sword and readies her shield, facing the skeleton in the second cell, but does not enter. Goldpetal and Fergus continue walking down the hallway, looking through the cell doors. In the third cell, they see nothing of interest, but in the fourth, there is another skeleton.

Stone finishes his exploration, and walks further down the corridor. He sees the skeleton in the fourth cell, and begins walking towards it. Goldpetal steps closer, watching Stone’s back as he steps into the cell. As the half-orc crosses the threshold of the cell, the skeleton stands up and attacks him! It misses, but Stone leaps back towards the main corridor.

Two skeletons come out of the last cell, the sixth door down, and attack Goldpetal, who was standing just to the right of the door of the fourth cell. One of them hits the elf, and Goldpetal staggers. Fergus steps up to Goldpetal’s side, and swings his great sword at one of the skeletons. He hits the one which had wounded Goldpetal, and it shatters beneath his mighty blow. The sword continues through, but misses the other skeleton. Goldpetal draws his scimitar. His first blow misses, and he gives ground a little.

The skeleton Paks is facing also stands up and comes out to attack. This is exactly what she had been expecting, and she sidesteps its clumsy swing easily. Her first blow with her long sword shatters it.

In the fourth cell, Stone punches his, hitting with both fists, and it explodes into dust. He catches the skull, the only remaining intact bone, before it falls, and tosses it against the wall, where it, too, crumbles to dust.

Chuck draws his bow and knocks an arrow, but waits in the doorway, in case any worse threat appears behind the skeletons. Miriel steps past him, moving down to the base of the stairs to see what's going on.

The remaining skeleton steps forward, pursuing Goldpetal, and slashes him with one claw. It rends a wound across his chest, and the elf screams, collapsing in a fetal position around the wound. Fergus steps around Goldpetal’s body and swings, but misses. Paks and Stone hurry over to help, but neither can hit. Paks’ blow is wild, and she almost flings her sword aside. Chuck tries to shoot at it from the doorway, but with his shot obscured by his friends, he aims high, and his arrow flies off into a cell.

The skeleton swipes at Fergus, and re-opens the horrible wounds he had received at the claws of the ghoul. The highlander slumps to the ground. Paks steps over the bodies of her friends, putting herself between the injured and the skeleton, and misses again.

Finally, Stone circles around it and gives a powerful kick roundhouse kick, which connects with the ribcage of the skeleton. It flies off of his foot and hits the stone wall behind it, shattering into dust.

Paks drops to her knees to find both Goldpetal and Fergus unconscious and bleeding. “Miriel!” she calls, “Hurry!” She begins bandaging Goldpetal’s injuries.
Miriel runs across the room and kneels beside Fergus. “Madriel, please heal this man,” she begs, and the wounds begin to close beneath her hands, though Fergus regains consciousness.

Stone steps to Goldpetal, who appears to be catatonic. He pulls out our last healing potion, and again he and Paks administer the vial to a fallen comrade. The elf wakes up, and his wounds have healed completely.



Fergus and Goldpetal have a brief rest, and the remainder of us catch our breath. After a few minutes, Chuck says, “Let’s search the room, then.”

Miriel nods, but she has made numerous healings in the past day, and looks very tired. She says “It’s a good idea, but I need to rest to regain some of my energy.” She goes upstairs to rest with Saraya and the prisoners.

The rest of us search all the cells. We find nothing else, but we make sure to smash the bones as we go, lest they become animate behind us. Finding nothing in the cells, Paks and Goldpetal search all the walls on both sides, knocking on the walls to search for hidden doors, but they find nothing.
We have explored the entire space, and there seems nothing left to do. We head upstairs.

“Let’s take the smugglers back to town,” Miriel suggests. The prisoners again argue to be let go, but we keep them bound and tied. Stone makes sure that Delonia remains unconscious, not wanting to take any chances with a rogue mage. If she as much as moans, he punches her in the temple, and knocks her out again.

We start to head out along the road, to the north. As we walk, Saraya and Chuck explain the plan that they learned from the smuggler, during Saraya’s interrogation. The smugglers were trading slaves and weapons for something unknown, in chests, from the ratmen in the swamp. At the moment, they were waiting for a boat, which would bring the next exchange for them, and take their next load. The boat, they said, was due to arrive at the next new moon.

As we head towards town, it starts to rain. The road becomes muddy, and the smugglers are uncooperative, so we get back to town well after dark: cold, tired, hungry, and soaked through.

We’ve missed dinner.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #3: The Spider-eye Goblins

As we reach the Laughing Ogre inn, Randall and Reginald, Fox’s adopted sons and assistants, come running out to meet us. These red-headed teenagers, 14 and 15 years old, never miss an opportunity to follow us around, asking questions about our adventures and providing us with a great deal more hero-worship than we deserve. Their older sister Rian, also adopted by Fox, works at the inn as a waitress.

Fox comes out just after his sons and sends us, with the prisoners, to the stable area, not wanting us to drag them through the bar and inn. Fox sends Reginald for Grilliam, the priest of Hedrada, and Randal for Constable Lamarack. While we wait, Stone and Chuck go into the inn to warm up and get something to eat.

Paks stays with the prisoners until the constable shows up. Lamarack is a tall, burly man with a big club, and he brings two men at arms. He relieves Paks of her watch, and she also goes into the inn to warm up by the fire and a bowl of warm stew. She is more than happy to slip out of her chain shirt, and into something more comfortable.

Grilliam arrives shortly thereafter, also bringing two assistants. He gathers our party in the inn, and asks for our story. While Saraya recounts the entire tale, he casually cures us all. Saraya, a bard, naturally embellishes a bit, leaving out the duller, muddier moments. In all, her tale is more exciting and heroic than the rest of us remember it. Reginald and Randall listen eagerly, and even Fox appears pleased with the tale.

When the tale is finished, we show him everything we brought back: the parchments, the chest (with vials and ledger), the blue gem, the carved skull, the bag of gold, and the symbol of Enkili. Chuck also pulls out the gold ring he brought back last time, but Grilliam waves it away.

After a quick inspection, Grilliam says that the vials look like poison, so he sends an assistant for the apothecary. He says he'll take a look at the other items later, as the prisoners should be questioned now.

We all go to the stables, where Constable Lamarack has the four prisoners under his control. Delonia, the spell caster, is awake for the first time since we captured her, but she is gagged so that she cannot speak the words of any spells.

Grilliam reaches out towards her face, but then looks around at all of us. “I’ll remove the gag,” he says, “But you guards and fighters should keep your bows ready. If she says anything that even appears to be a spell, you should shoot her immediately.” We all nod. Chuck draws his bow, and Paks rests her hand on the hilt of her long sword. Grilliam unties the cloth.

When her mouth is freed, Grilliam ask, “What is your name?”

“I am called Delonia,” she answers.

“What were you doing in the tower?”, he asks.

She gives him an innocent look and a smile. “We were just camping out, not doing anything wrong. I don't know why you're bothering us.”

Grilliam gets very angry. He is a big man, but in his anger he appears to swell and fill the room. “Don't lie to a priest of Hedrada!” he thunders.

Delonia goes white. She seems to have heard about the questioning methods of the priests of Hedrada. “I wasn't lying...” she whispers.

Grilliam’s face sets in a grim line. “What you deserve, so shall you receive,” he intones, and lays his hand on Delonia's head, clearly casting a spell. “You shall reap the reward of prevaricators,” he says.

Delonia says, “Really, we weren't doing anything wrong...” As she speaks, before she can even finish the sentence, her face swells up and her swollen tongue pushes out of her mouth.

“I warned you,” Grilliam tells her. “Every time you lie your tongue will betray you from now on. If you continue to lie, you may choke to death. It is not a pleasant way to die.”

The other three smugglers look aghast.

After a few minutes, Delonia's tongue shrinks back to a normal size, and he continues to question her. However, when she discovers that if she simply refuses to answer, her tongue does not grow, she refuses to say anything more.

Eventually, Grilliam says “We'll take her away to try to learn something from her. She may be able to hold out here, in a stable, but at our temple, she won’t be able to resist long. Meanwhile, the apothecary will study the vials you brought back. You should rest. Come to the temple in the morning.” He and Constable Lamarack leave, escorting the prisoners.

As they leave, we head into the inn for dinner. Saraya asks leave to play a few songs in the common room, which Fox grants.

 

[Amaroq]

Issue #3: The Spider-Eye goblins. Episode 4 of 12

Fox sits with the rest of us, arranged comfortably around a large circular table, while Rian serves another delicious meal. Fox seems gratifyingly impressed with us. Over the meal, we talk more about ourselves.

Miriel is a half-elven cleric. She has already told us her story, how she was found wandering the moors near the town of Lave as a small child, with her twin sister. Raised by innkeepers, she was taught to cook and brew ale, and also studied at the temple of Madriel. After her sister left home, she went to stay at the temple for further study. It sounds as though she were training towards an administrative position, and from a few comments she makes, Goldpetal suspects that she was being groomed for high position within the church. With the exception of the elf, she is one of the oldest members of our company. She was on her way to a convention of healers when the caravan was attacked.

Paks is a swordswoman, over six feet tall, in her early twenties. She is rather quiet and reserved. She ran away from home at the age of seventeen, and joined a mercenary company, where she was employed for the past two years. She reached the rank of squad leader before she left the company. She was working as a guard on the caravan when it was attacked. She’s still wearing the caravan uniform, but says that she wants to go shopping for new clothes tomorrow, now that we have some money.

Stone is a very young half-orc. He’s about five and a half feet tall, perhaps a hundred and sixty pounds, wearing a peasant’s clothes, and carrying a nice sack with a basket on top. He’s got a decent set of boots, which he took from one of the bandits in the tower. He’s an Exemplar of Hedrada, he tells us, though not very accomplished. He enjoys fighting, primarily with his fists, drinking, and eating, in any order.

Goldpetal is an elf, and the smallest member of our party. He is less than five feet tall, and very thin. He looks fragile, almost breakable. He doesn’t say much about himself other than that he is a druid, but from what he has said, he seems to remember parts of the War. We have the impression that his parents might have died in the Titan’s War, or perhaps in the Druid War afterwards.

Fergus is the largest member of the party, a big highlander, solidly built and over six feet tall. He wields a two-handed great-sword. His people were nomadic farming people living in a town north of the Blood Basin. His clan was destroyed, he tells us, and though the anger in his voice speaks volumes, he does not tell us by whom, even when Paks asks. He was trying to seek out other members of his family when the caravan was attacked.

Chuck the Younger is about five foot eight, of average to slender build. He was an apprentice of Steve, the Vigil, who was traveling with the caravan. His master was killed by the rat men when they attacked the caravan. He doesn’t talk much about himself. He does his own thing, and, as we’ve learned, he’ll search any corpse, any time. Fox, when he learns Chuck’s background, suggests that he might look for Jim, a Vigil who occasionally stops by town.

We’re all tired, since we didn't get a good night’s sleep, but we decide to divide up the loot before we go to bed. Saraya had been performing up on the stage, but she comes with us to get her share of the loot. The crowd is clearly sorry to see her go, and the house bard looks quite impressed. Fox accompanies us up to one of our rooms, as we don’t want to show off treasure in the common room.

Once we’re in a room, we each spread out the things which we gathered on one of the beds. We brought back:

A holy symbol of Enkili (a chaotic neutral god), on a gold chain
A dagger
2 parchments
116 gold, 31 silver
A bag of gold, with another 50 gold inside
An intricately carved rat skull
A silver ring
A bone scroll case
A blue gem​

As Chuck reaches out towards the stack, Miriel restrains him. “Let me cast detect Magic on everything, first.” she warns. She spends a minute in prayer and meditation. “Nothing seems to be magical,” she concludes.

Stone looks at the ring, and sees that the ring is very finely wrought, with rats running around it. The rat skull has the same sort of carving work, old and intricate. Fox, looking over his shoulder, says “The ring and the skull are obviously Slytherin art.”

“Slytherin?” asks Stone.

“The rat men,” Goldpetal explains.

“Oh,” Stone says, in his dull half-orc voice.

Miriel looks over the two parchments. One of them is a map, on which we recognize Southport, the coast, the tower, and it shows a path southwards to and into the swamp, the Mourning Marshes. The other has a strange pattern of dashes and X’s.

I: -XXX
II: X-X-
III: ---
IV: X-X-​

It is signed or stamped with a stylized ‘A.’ None of us can make much sense of it, nor can Fox.

As Goldpetal and Miriel scratch their heads over the pattern, Chuck grabs the scroll case and opens it. There’s a scroll in it, but he cannot read the writing. “What is this?” he asks.

“Here, let me take a look,” Miriel says, and he hands it to her. After she studies it briefly, she says, “This is clearly magic, not very powerful, and divine, not arcane. It is neither good nor evil.” She studies the scroll, using her years of religious training, and after a few minutes, she says, “It’s a scroll of Bless. Perhaps I should take it.”

“But, I want it!” Chuck protests.

Miriel looks at him levelly, and points out, “You can’t use it, and I can.”

“Fine,” Chuck says. “Can I have the holy symbol?” Nobody objects, and he picks up the symbol of Enkili. Goldpetal selects the empty bag and the blue gem. Stone takes the carved rat skull. Miriel gets the dagger, and that leaves Paks with the silver ring. Saraya is content with the gold. As usual, Fergus declines his share, which leaves twenty seven gold pieces and five silver for each of us.

Paks looks at the leftover four gold and a silver, which didn't divide evenly. “Let’s keep the remainder for a slush fund. We can use it for shared expenses, like buying healing potions, or that sort of thing.”

Everyone nods in agreement. Miriel says, “That’s a fine idea. Paks, you can hold on to it.” Stone nods in approval, and everyone else also agrees with this suggestion. We retire to bed.