Wormsnacks: An Age of Worms story hour (updated 9/4)

[dungeon blaster]

Rule #1: Never split the group

On the other side they stepped onto a narrow stone bridge, which extended to the far side of the room. Thousands of fist-sized stone spheres formed a floor about 10 feet below. ‘who has the time to do this kind of thing?’ Ehrune wondered. Etherik boldly began to walk across the bridge, fully expecting some sort of trap to spring. At least he wasn’t disappointed.

Stone spheres slammed into him from all sides, nearly causing him to fall off the bridge. The warlock withdrew to the mouth-opening, nursing his bruised ribs. Lindingar grabbed his arm and hissed, ‘I sense a spirit in here!’. Etherik didn’t need to sense it, he could see it at the edge of his eldritch vision, hovering in the ethereal plane and glaring at them malevolently. Etherik, being the only one able to actually see it, quailed at its horrific appearance.

The apparition looked to be no older than 13, although it was difficult to be certain. What was certain, however, was that this kid had died from a broken neck, as his ghostly head rested perpendicular to the rest of his body. As if dead kids weren’t creepy enough.

The ghost, realizing that at least one person could see into the ether, fully manifested, testing the group’s will against its horrific appearance. Lindingar had agreed to investigate the Cairn in the hopes that he would find spirits, and now that he finally encountered one (because elementals don’t really count), he did the thing he does best. He chastised its ectoplasmic ass back to the nether realms. As you’ll soon learn, it was probably not a good decision to destroy the spirit.

With the spirit gone, the group inspected the large metal door at the far end of the chamber. Despite ‘taking 20’ with their Search checks, they were unable to discern a method of opening the door. In fact, they had found the method (the ghost) and destroyed it. Utterly at a loss, the adventurers gathered what treasures they had found and returned to Diamond Lake, hoping an audience with Allustan might uncover the secrets of the impassable door.

Allustan offered to sell them a scroll of dispel magic, which they purchased. Ehrune noticed that Allustan was wearing a nice, shiny new ring. With a feather motif. The sage insisted that he was only keeping it until all the legal issues of ownership and payments for services rendered were cleared up.

Etherik, who had once again run afoul of the law, had taken to sleeping in the local graveyard. There he encountered several priestesses of Wee Jas and became interested in the enigmatic deity of death and magic. If only they weren’t so frigid, I mean rigid.

So, with scroll in hand and hope in heart, the adventurers returned once again to the Whispering Cairn. They figured that the impassable door could mean only one thing: they were almost at the end.

Back in the room with the stone spheres, they were surprised to see that the ghost had returned! Knowing that these guys meant business, it quickly offered parley. The ghost told them that it was once a 13 year old boy named Alastor Land, and that the skeleton lying on the floor in the previous room was its own. It offered to open the door, but only after they gave its bones a proper burial beside the bones of its family (who had long since died). Alastor instructed them to carry his bones to a farmstead a few miles outside of town. Not fully trusting the apparition, the group decided that Etherik would remain behind while the other two took care of the bones. Ehrune and Lindingar departed, leaving Etherik alone with the incorporeal spirit.

Alastor drifted slowly towards the warlock, a demoniac glare in his eyes.

‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Etherik asked, unknowingly taking a step back. ‘stay where you are’.

‘it’s been so long since I’ve felt…anything’. Alastor inched closer, grinning wickedly.

Etherik leapt back, trying to stay out of arm’s reach, but the ghost was faster. It darted forward, disappearing into Etherik’s body. His insides felt like ice and his vision blurred.

Deep within his own mind, Etherik could sense the presence of another entity possessing him, but even this tiniest of sensations was quickly fading. He could feel it controlling his body, forcing him to walk forward along the bridge…straight towards the trap.

The last thing he heard the apparition say before his mind went black: ‘this is going to be fun!’

 

[Ruined]

Heh, so they blasted Alastor's spirit at first sight? Yeah, my game has a priest with sun domain, so I'm halfway expecting his greater turning attempt as soon as they get into the room. Good stuff, dungeon blaster.

 

[dungeon blaster]

I made a mistake by having them all be affected by the horrific appearance when Alastor was supposed to use it on only one person. That said, I believe they would have blasted him anyways. I was just lucky to make Alastor's 'reformation' roll, so he was destroyed, but not permanently.

 

[dungeon blaster]

6 Reaping, 595 CY

Ehrune and Lindingar found the Land family farmstead a few miles outside of town, just as the ghost had said. At the bottom of a small bluff stood several headstones, the Land family graves. There was only problem: the graves were empty. Whoever had desecrated these graves and taken the bones had done so recently.

The PCs approached the Land farmhouse, hoping to find clues. The house was in disrepair, clearly no one had lived here in a long time. Inside the house was a wounded owlbear chewing on a severed human arm. Interestingly, the arm bore a tattoo identical to the one on that half-orc, Kullen's, face. Once again, Lindingar attempted to use his wild empathy to make friends with the beast. And once again, the beast attacked him.

With the owlbear defeated, the PCs searched the Land farmhouse but found nothing of interest other than the tattooed arm. Rightly believing that burying the bones next to empty graves wouldn't fulfill their half of the bargain, the two traveled back to the Whispering Cairn to grab Etherik and track down the graverobber(s).

They found Etherik huddled in a corner of the stone sphere room, whimpering and feebly rocking back and forth. He was covered in deep purplish bruises, but it was his soul that truly hurt.

The group was pretty sure that Kullen and his Gang were involved in the graverobbing, but couldn't agree how to best approach the situation. Directly confronting the brutish half-orc was ruled out immediately. After many minutes (real-time), they finally had a plan, which was to create several false graves just outside of town and wait for the graverobbers to come.

Two days later, it was apparent that no graverobbers were coming. On to Plan B. If only there was a Plan B. The group fell again into heated discussion, with Lindingar finally remarking that this would be easy if they could just charm one of the graverobbers into revealing what was going on. Oh wait, they CAN just charm one of the graverobbers into revealing what was going on. Foreheads were liberally smacked.

That night, Ehrune waited outside the Feral Dog for Kullen and his Gang to emerge. As the night wore on, various members of the Gang exited the tavern to drunkenly stumble home. The last to leave was the wiry goon, Rastophan. He looked positively smashed. Could the opportunity be any more perfect?

Ehrune began tailing Rastophan, and when no one was around to see, charmed him. Hey, friend, how are ya? Not a night to walk alone and piss-drunk don't ya think? Here, I'll walk ya home. Say, by the way, remember how you told me about those bones ya dug up? No? Well, you did. So, what were you doing with those bones anyways? Gave them to a necromancer named Filge huh? He's in the Old Observatory? And on orders from Smenk too? Interesting. Well, this is where you live, so I'll be getting home. It isn't where you live? Sure it is.

And just like that, they knew where to go and what to do.

"Time to kick ass and take names"

"we've already got the name"

"you know what that means"

"time to kick ass"

 

[the Jester]

This remains really cool so far ... how far along has your group played the campaign?

 

[dungeon blaster]

Thanks for the praise; I find that writing about the adventures really helps cement the characters and story in my mind.

Currently we are about to begin Hall of Harsh Reflections. After the cakewalk that was Blackwall Keep, it should be fun reasserting the deadliness of this Adventure Path

 

[JollyDoc]

I made a mistake by having them all be affected by the horrific appearance when Alastor was supposed to use it on only one person. That said, I believe they would have blasted him anyways. I was just lucky to make Alastor's 'reformation' roll, so he was destroyed, but not permanently.

Don't know how far along you've read in the AoW campaign, but you might want to be careful with Alastor.......

SPOILERS!!

































He makes an important reappearance in Kings of the Rift

 

[dungeon blaster]

I didn't know about Alastor until I finished reading your story hour, last night. A very entertaining read, by the way.

I wonder how my PCs are ever gonna survive it since they aren't optimized for combat. I'm going to make a few changes to the Alastor story arc because I don't particularly like it or think it makes sense.

 

[JollyDoc]

I didn't know about Alastor until I finished reading your story hour, last night. A very entertaining read, by the way.

I wonder how my PCs are ever gonna survive it since they aren't optimized for combat. I'm going to make a few changes to the Alastor story arc because I don't particularly like it or think it makes sense.

Thank you! Yeah, this adventure path is lethal. I saw that you started your group at 3rd level. You might want to consider using the Scaling the Adventure sidebars to decrease the crunch factor with some of the coming adventures, ie Hall of Harsh Reflections, Spire of Long Shadows, Library of Last Resort, and all that come after.

Good luck with you group!

 

[dungeon blaster]

9 Reaping, 595 CY

The Old Observatory stood at the top of a small hill on the edge of town. Now that Ehrune thought of it, it was the perfect place for a deranged necromancer to ply his trade.

The front door was locked, but was that a problem? Never! Once inside, the PCs were fired upon by crossbow wielding skeletons, and there was only one place these skeletons could have come from: the Land family graves! They dispatched the skeletons easily and began to move through the observatory like a well-oiled machine. Clear 1! Clear 2! All Clear!

On the second floor, they came upon a scene that could only be described as ‘grotesque’. In the center of the room was a large dining table, surrounded by ten chairs, and in all of the chairs but one there sat a rotting humanoid corpse. Most of the bodies lilted to one side or another, and placed before each corpse was a plate filled with sumptuous looking edibles. At this point, the adventurers knew they were dealing with one demented dude.

Etherik proceeded to eldritch blast every single corpse, bathing the room in gore and chunks of flesh.

The third floor appeared to be the Necromancer’s living quarters, and it too was quite obviously decorated by a ‘disturbed’ mind. In one place stood a statue of an angel with the name ‘Filge’ inscribed at the base. In other part they found a mummified goblin holding a silver platter, resting on which was a woman’s well-preserved head. They also discovered some notes on top of his desk, which they took. A stone stairway led to the observation level at the top of the tower. A stinking, yellow-tinged liquid spilled down the stairs, soaking into the beautiful lammasu fur rug. Ehterik cast darkness on a handful of coins and tossed them up the stairs into the room above. He efforts were rewarded by a loud curse and the sounds of bottles being knocked over and shattering.

Suddenly, a hulking corpse emerged from the doorway at the top of the stairs. The bloated monstrosity dripped with yellowish fluid. The zombified troglodyte shambled towards Ehrune, but Lindingar was ready with a summon nature’s ally spell, and he summoned a hippogriff to block off the stairs. While the two creatures fought, more zombie trogs appeared in the doorway and began leaping off the stairs at the PCs! So, naturally, Lindingar summoned another hippogriff into this fairly small room. With feathers flying and zombies dying (again), things looked pretty good for the heroes. A few minutes later, it was apparent that no more zombies were going to come down the stairs, and whoever was up there wasn’t making any noise, so the adventurers called out, “hey, don’t make us come up there!” A muted string of curses followed, but eventually a gaunt, pale, sinister looking fellow stumbled out of the magical darkness. The necromancer, revealed.

“who in the nine hells are you!?” he demanded. “And what do you want?”

A brief conversation revealed that the necromancer, Filge, did indeed have the skeletons of the Land family, although he had no knowledge of this. In fact, poor ole Filge had no idea where the skeletons had come from, seeing as how it was Smenk’s goons who had procured the bones for him. The PCs eventually determined that Filge had actually only broken one law: animating the dead. Nonetheless, the adventurers had a pretty low opinion of the necromantic arts, and they were faced with the decision of what to do with the guy.

Filge promised to leave, never to return, and to take only his spell book and the clothes on his back. The party agreed. But, just as Filge was almost at the lower stairs, Lindingar had a change of mind.

“No. You leave with nothing.”

“Wha..what do you mean nothing?”

“Nothing. No spell book, no robes, no nothing.”

“I ain’t got nothing under these robes!”

“That’s your problem. It’s either you leave with nothing, or you leave in chains.” Lindingar created a ball of flames in his hand to accent his attempt at intimidation.

Filge’s look of incredulity quickly turned to one of horror, and he turned to Etherik, the man with whom he had brokered the original agreement? “We had a deal! Are you going to agree with this…. Halfling?!”

“We’re a team. Sorry.” Etherik responded, a hint of pity in his voice.

Filge gave each member of the group one last pleading look. Then he bolted.

Etherik, being a sadistic bastard, took off after him, hurling eldritch bolts at the fleeing necromancer, who covered a hundred feet of ground before taking one right in the back and tumbling down the rest of the hill. Ehrune casually walked up to the broken and bleeding wizard, and picked up his spell book.