In Between the Hallows: The Chronicle of an Evil Campaign

[werik]

So I’ve recently had the fortune of playing a really fun campaign that has inspired me to write all of this down and hopefully share a bit of the enjoyment that I get out of it with the rest of you. I was inspired to do this by dralnu’s Swordsage journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169149)which if you haven’t read it, you definitely should.

The setup:

So here’s the setup for our little campaign world. At the beginning of playing the eventual party consisted of only three players. I’d tell you the races, classes, and backgrounds of my two friends’ characters, but the first mission gave us some NPCs that went along with us and I think it would be fun to present each character in my recounting (aside from my own of course) as a possible NPC to add a bit of mystery. In any event the world we play in is an interesting mix of campaign settings. Essentially each of the four continents of the world is run as a different campaign setting. So Forgotten Realms, Darksun, and Rokugan are out there in places that I have never been to before. Our main story has thus started in the Greyhawk continent.

As I mentioned we are playing an evil campaign and this definitely shapes my character’s worldview. My character is named Selumil and he is an elven cleric of Vecna. As a child his parents were murdered by a cult of Vecna that he came to serve because they, as archeologists, had found a powerful magic tome and were translating it. Selumil was lucky to keep his life because he knew very little of the book and was also lucky to receive his cleric training. He was even luckier to eventually smuggle away the book of translations that his parents were working on, though without the original copy. He has vowed to kill and subvert the order of his cult for forcing him into this life and to obtain his power and the power of the companion book he’s carrying. That being a rather long term goal, however, Selumil is currently under loose orders to find some sort of powerful staff in the North. So off he goes looking for it. He also wants to find some cronies that he can order around to help him kill the head of his order when he comes back, staff in hand. This seems like a good opportunity to get out and do just that.


The Character Sheet:

So here’s just a quick look at my character sheet. We started at level 5

Selumil Halathunal, Elf Cleric of Vecna 5

STR: 12
DEX: 15
CON: 11
INT: 15
WIS: 20 (Periapt of Wisdom +2)
CHA: 13

Feats: Still Spell, Spell Focus (Necromancy), Spell Focus (Enchantment). Third feat from my Arrogance flaw (will explain in text later).
Domains: Knowledge and Magic. I took the alternate class feature from PHBII which allows me to spontaneously cast domain spells of the chosen domain (Magic) in lieu of spontaneously casting inflict spells.
25 HP, 20 AC

The Hook:

While surreptitiously gathering rumors about powerful magical items in the north, I am approached by a man dressed in black. Since I’m wearing long black robes myself, I’m not really thrown by this at all. The man pulls out a black scroll case from his robes and tells me that he has heard mention of my power and that there is a possible job for me to do if I agree to do whatever is asked of me by the scroll. He also mentions that others like me have been asked to do this job. Mysterious job delivered to me? Sounds great, right? Of course, the catch is that once I open the scroll case there is no turning back and I will be magically bound to complete the mission. I find it very troubling that the fine print to this contract is completely hidden from my sight, but finding no leads on this whole staff mission I feel that this could be a great opportunity to find some henchmen to help me in my eventual plans. Of course I agree. I crack open the case to find a simple note saying to meet at the Prancing Pony (this is what happens when names are given on the fly) in the next town and to ask for Johnny when I get there. Once I’m done reading, the man in black is gone. Typical second rate courier service. No tip for you, mysterious stranger.

Faithful to the anonymous note’s instructions I show up to the Prancing Pony and go to the bar and ask to speak to Johnny. The barkeep bangs his fist on the bar, points to a door at the end of the bar and tells me to go downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs I find a large room at the end of a hallway that is lit. Inside is the man in black who I saw the other day. He tells me that I’m the first to arrive and that everyone should be there shortly. As I wait four more people come downstairs one by one shortly after I hear four loud thumps from above. The first two to arrive are Asian looking (see Rokuganian) humans. The first guy appears to have some standard ninja gear on him and he is stone silent. The second guy seems to be loosely dressed, bare chested with tattoos, and carries no weapons with him at all. See: Monk. Whatever mission we’re going to set out on, kung fu is going to be involved. The third person to come downstairs is also a human but Greyhawkian, heftily chested and an imposing figure. I eye him up as a fighter. Sometime after that a cloaked Halfling finally makes his way downstairs. He’s carrying a rapier, which is an ambiguous clue towards his class, but he appears to be wearing lighter armor. I’m thinking rogue. Or burglar. All halflings are burglars, right?

With the gang all assembled the man in black explains to us that there is a town two days away that is causing him and his boss problems. The mayor has recently decided that the pirates smuggling drugs through town have gone too far and he is putting a stop to it. To end this, he has hired some adventurers to stop the smuggling. Our job is to go to that town and send a message to the mayor to stop this effort to clean up the town however we see fit. Well, not exactly HOWEVER we see fit. We should try to do it subtly and preferably without killing the mayor if this is possible. Also, we have three days to do this…and since the town is two days away, we really have one evening to do this. One evening to kill some good guys and threaten the mayor? We’re all in. The man in black leaves after explaining everything and right when he does, the bearded fighter stands up and says that in his there opinion we should meet outside of the gates of town just before sundown of the third day. With everyone agreeing, we file out of the room without speaking or sharing spice cake recipes. The joys of paranoia and mistrust in an evil campaign.

Meet and Greet Outside of Town:

When I arrive outside of town two and a half days later I am not the first one there. I see the ninja fellow standing in a field with some cows and he appears to be meditating. The unarmed guy is sort of awkwardly standing there, looking like he wants to talk to the ninja but wouldn’t get anywhere if he did. I start talking to the monk about how it looks like we’re missing the other two when beardy finally shows up being loud and forceful. When I remark that we’re only waiting for the Halfling, he appears out of nowhere. Whoa! I’d say he’s some sort of ninja, but we already have one of those.

Now that we’re all together I propose that we come up with some sort of plan. The fighter seems taken aback by this. I guess he thought we needed to be organized enough to get here, but not organized enough to coordinate once we got here. Idiot. Since we have no reconnaissance on the town and we know that adventurers are waiting for shady characters to show up, I suggest that we enter in groups (two groups of two and one person by themselves) and see if we can figure out who these adventurers are. After we figure that out, we should meet back up, and decide how to take them out. Sound good, team? Break!

Night on the Town:

The Rokuganians walk in to town first and after about 15 minutes the Halfling and I follow them. The fighter has instructions to follow us 15 minutes after that. As we walk in to this small, walled in town we notice four main clusters of buildings. Imagine the town as a walled in rectangle and then four quadrants of buildings. We walk into the upper right quadrant because all of the other entrances are sealed off for the night and find some rather poorer houses. More importantly, my keen elf ears hear something shuffling around on the top of the first house. Adventurer #1, check. But then I see something from the corner of my left eye amongst some large piles of bags of grain: the ninja uneasily sunk into one of the bags. Oh good, this is starting off well. We walk down the right side of the wall and see a large farmhouse before us on our right, making up the lower right quadrant of the town and further to the left of the farmhouse a Dwarf leaning against a well in some full plate male and leaning on some massive shields. Adventurer #2, check. Knowing how rare creatures like elves, halflings, and dwarves are in Greyhawk, I start to approach him to ply some information from him about where his other buddies might be hidden, but as soon as I start to walk towards him he interrupts me. “If you’re lookin’ for the inn, it’s that way!” Nuts.

Thanking him the Halfling and I walk to the center of town. In the lower left corner we find a wide assortment of shops and other buildings. In the upper left quadrant we find the largest building in town with many glass windows (the mayor’s residence) and a couple of other buildings further up. Since we still don’t know where the other adventurers are in town we head in to upper center portion of the town and find the monk looking around. He tells us that when he and the ninja walked in, the ninja saw the dwarf and attempted to stealthily jump across the bags of grain, and clearly failed. I share with him the information about the adventurer on the first building and we start to talk about the dwarf when we notice the bearded wonder stumble in to town much earlier than he was supposed to. His idiocy has been reaffirmed but at least he has now been joined in the ranks of the idiots by the ninja.

Ignoring those two, I tell the monk and Halfling that we need to know exactly if there are others guarding the town and if so who they are. Revealing himself to be quite the crafty rogue, the Halfling picked the lock on a house and snuck up the stairs to peer onto the roof where I thought I heard someone. When he comes back down, he verified my instincts. Score! The monk then decides that he can crawl up onto another roof and see if he can spot anyone else. Up he goes. And then I hear voices. Oh yes, the monk appears to have picked a rooftop with another adventurer on top. Adventurer #3, check. More concerning is the fact that this adventurer could have been easily watching us the whole time we had this conversation. I decide to move down to the lower central part of the town to see if I can spot anyone else. The monk continues to talk to what sounds like a woman on the roof. The Halfling sort of disappears from my sight.

Looking over at the well I see the fighter guffawing with the dwarf who is less enthusiastic about this unwanted conversation. From my angle I can’t see on to any other rooftops and I have no one else to strategize with. But seeing that the monk had not been attacked by anyone, I reason that he was able to talk himself out of danger. I sneak around a building and cast Clairaudience on their rooftop, hoping that I can glean information about who else is protecting the city. Unfortunately, by the time that I decided to listen in, they mostly decided to sit in stony silence up there together. The monk did say something about how we (him and I) were also defending this city and the woman sort of seemed to accept it. I want to get more information about other defenders, but I come to terms with the fact that I can’t find it on my own. I decide that the only way to find them is to flush them out.

Light the Match:

Playing off of the “defenders of the city” angle, I pretended to see something over the wall at the bottom center portion of the town. The monk and the woman he was with rushed over to investigate.

Woman: What did you see?
Selumil: Strange bat people! They swooped in over the town. Do you see them?
Woman: *magic spell casting and large splashes of light emerge from her wand on to the other side of the wall*
Selumil: Well, do you see anything?!
Woman: No…
Monk (signaling to me behind her back): Should I snap her neck?
Selumil: *shrug*

At this moment we heard loud stumbling from the other end of town and some bags of grain spilling out: the idiot ninja tried to jump across the grain and biffed it again. This time, with all of the commotion of the spell casting the dwarf starts to charge in the direction of the grain with his shields and whoever was on the first building jumps down. Seeing her two friends spring in to action, Cat Woman runs along the outside wall towards that quadrant as well. The monk runs after her. Well, that’s one way to get this party started.

I run to the center portion of the town and then head back towards the road that the Halfling and I veered off from when the dwarf told us where the inn was. I don’t see the Halfling anywhere, but I do see the human fighter who had apparently decided to walk towards the inn before. Alerted by the noise we approach the end of the road and look both ways. Towards our left and the entrance/exit we see our ninja friend getting his ass kicked by the dwarf and his rooftop buddy: a human with some nasty throwing knives and ninja stars. To our right, where the farmhouse and the well are we see the monk doing remarkably better. He has stunned the woman with his mighty fists and taken her weapons and magic items. My quick tactical mind springs into action and I tell the fighter to hide behind the corner until I tell him otherwise. I turn towards the farmhouse and cast a spell of cause fear at the 12 or so cows boarded up there sending them into a panic and bursting out of their paddocks. I then yell to the dwarf and his buddy who are clobbering the ninja. “Leave that one! We need your help over here! Bat people are swooping in!” That’s right, when I find a ridiculous cover story, I stick with it.

The objective of my plan was to get them to abandon the ninja, run towards me, have the fighter attack them solo until the monk finished the woman and could help him, while I sneak past them all to heal the ninja. But so goes the best laid plans of mice and men. I guess the dwarf and knifey boy weren’t buying the “I’m on the good guy side” after all. The human pulls out a sling shot, magically animates a bullet so that darkness surrounds it, and then he shoots it at me. And wouldn’t you know it, the thing sticks to me. Not that I can see what’s going on, but I can sort of sense things working in my favor and spiraling out of control at the same time. The cows bust out of their cage and sort of trample the woman. That’s good. But then they start heading towards me. That’s bad. The farmer and his wife come out and the monk convinces them to help him kill the woman. That’s good. The ninja gets crunched hard by the dwarf. That’s bad. I’m able to sort of navigate my way to the animal gate and am hopefully standing out of the way of the cows. That’s good. The dwarf and the human seem to be running towards me and the cows. … That’s bad.

The bulls do stop the human and dwarf momentarily. Long enough for me to shake like mad hoping that the bullet will fall off of my robes. Alas, it was in vain. The cows also hit me in the process and start to rouse the rest of the town. At least they fell in to my clever fighter trap though, right? Right? Fighter guy? Yeah, he must have split sometime after the darkness enveloped me. And now the dwarf charges into the darkness and slams me against the gate. Guess he figured out that 20’ foot radius, huh? Well, I’ve only cast one spell in this fight today and now seems like a good time to cast another one. I reach my hand to his shoulder. “Hold person!” One successful will save later, he hits me again. Ow! Okay, new plan. I drop to the floor and crawl under the gate leaving Grumpy behind. The monk seems to be fighting the knife thrower from what I can hear, but then the farmer and his wife decide to start stomping whatever they hear writhing on the ground in the mysterious ball of darkness. Things aren’t going well.

I try to dispel magic on the darkness, but I roll a crappy check and fail. The dwarf gets over the fence and this now becomes a tiring game of hide-and-go-seek in the dark with repeated climbing up and over fences. The monk fights well against the knife thrower, but he’s eventually joined by the dwarf who determines that I’m not going anywhere. The monk flees, easily scaling the wall and leaving those two behind…but leaving me behind as well. Once I hear the knife thrower enter the paddock and swinging blindly for me I’m quite dispirited.

Me: I guess I’m going to have to cast dispel magic again and hope that works.
DM: You know there is a much simpler way to do this, right?
Me: … I take off my robe.

Success! The bullet was stuck to the robe. With it gone I am free to sneak out of the darkness and run like hell. I know a fight that I’m not meant to solo when I see one.

The Turnaround:

Apparently the monk wasn’t leaving for good. He drank a potion climbed back up the wall and called the dwarf and human out. The human is still looking for me and the dwarf was trying to calm and reassure a group of townsfolk who had assembled. The monk starts to fight the dwarf and the human is interrupted by the farmer who is sick of all these outsiders scaring his cattle away. The farmer takes some bad swings at the human while the monk tries to convince the crowd that their secret heroes are actually their enemies. When the knife thrower cuts the head off of the farmer in order to help the dwarf tackle the monk, the crowd goes crazy. They attack both the dwarf and the human, stomping the dwarf into an unrecognizable mess. The human starts to get beaten up but then decides that he needs to get out of town with 2 of his 3 friends toast. The monk pursues and I see the monk chasing after him, so I follow as well. I do some limited spell casting that invariably helps very little but encourages the monk to finish this fight. Eventually they take their hot pursuit out of town and I pick up my robe considering the job done.

Dénouement:

Walking towards the center of town I find the Halfling who had disappeared earlier. Apparently he had looked at the lock to the mayor’s mansion and determined it was easy enough to pick. Once inside he drugged and poisoned the mayor, eventually killing him and his three kids all with no whacky ramifications. Lucky bastard. We can’t find the fighter who abandoned me, and the ninja was smashed up really good. We eventually meet up with the monk who had captured the knife thrower. After some unhelpful torture, we killed him. Back to the other town for our just reward!

When we get back to the inn that we had first met in we find the man in black and the human fighter there. The human complains that we botched the plan by creating a ruckus and killing the mayor and that he should get the reward and we should be killed. We all object and say that while it wasn’t ideally executed, the three of us actually accomplished the task while he did nothing. Just as I was readying an action to cast hold person on this idiot, the man in black slashes his throat. He congratulates us for completing the task and gives us a big bag of gold then leaves. We greedily take our gold, only to discover that it was poisoned! Translation: We completed the mission, but we kind of messed it up. If you can survive the poison you can keep the gold.

We were able to cure the poison and live before ominously hearing a king’s messenger state that the adventurers that he had sent to protect the town had been killed and that vengeance would be sought. Keep in mind, the mayor is the one who hired the adventurers. Whatever is going on with the king, we don’t want his ire to rest on us. We stop here.

Reflection:

This was a really awesome first adventure. It gave us a good chance to meet our new dungeon master who ran the whole thing really well and we had a good time playing it. To end the suspense (if I successfully built up any to begin with) the Halfling and the monk actually were the other two PCs and the ninja and fighter were the NPCs. It was really cool that it sort of naturally worked out that we were the most successful. I had walked in to the mission thinking that I would play the evil character thing correctly and try to recruit the people that I thought were the most competent on this mission, regardless of if I knew they were a “PC” or not. It was also cool because the DM wasn’t forcing us to be best buddies. The ninja just happened to roll two really poor checks when jumping on the grain sacks and the fighter was more or less prepared to throw himself in to the fray when I held him back for my plan. It just turned out that he thought my plan was stupid and decided to leave me to it. But because of that the monk and the rogue really had a chance to shine. They were both definitely the MVPs of this mission. I only managed to cause distractions until the other two could do their jobs.

So that is session one. I actually have three other sessions of the nine that we've played already written up, but I thought that I would put this out as a sample to see what you all think of it. So, thoughts?

[Palanan]

Sounds like a fun session, although I'm not really a fan of evil campaigns. But I do have to admit the ninja falling into the sacks of grain, twice, made for a good LOL.

In fact, I was convinced he was a PC just for that reason. Twice!

Also, please note your link to Dralnu's campaign journal isn't working; it has an extra "http//" in the code. The Swordsage's Journal does make for excellent inspiration. :smallbiggrin:

[werik]

I'm glad you liked it and thanks for the catch on the link. I corrected it. Would you be interested in reading more?

[Palanan]

Definitely, go ahead and post the next session.

One thing I would suggest is to give the names of the characters, PCs and NPCs alike--or, if you don't know their names, give them a handle or a tag, something other than their generic class descriptions.

There are some passages where it's a little difficult to follow the storyline and the action; sometimes individuals appear out of nowhere (in a narrative sense) and it's not always clear if they'd just walked up or had already been involved. Might be worth it to read through the first session again, just to double-check for clarity.

[werik]

Session 2

So before beginning the second session I think that it might be good to give some more background information about our characters now that I’ve introduced who they are. In addition to Selumil (me) the party consists of Yamma, a Rokuganian monk and Urkin a Halfling rogue. Yamma is apparently a war chief from some tribe of humans off in one of the mountain ranges of the Greyhawk continent away from his tribe to get stronger or look for something. I’m not quite sure. He’s currently a monk but he’s working towards the tattooed monk path and will be raking in the special bonuses after that. Urkin is a mysterious little guy. He seems to have contacts everywhere and he goes by different names in different places. I don’t know if Urkin is his “real” name or not. He seems to like the finer things in life and comes up with complicated plans. Oh, this reminds me. We all decided to take flaws for our characters in exchange for bonus feats. My character’s flaw is arrogance, meaning that at any time during a session another player or the DM can force me to act condescendingly to someone I’m interacting with. Yamma’s flaw is ambition. We can activate his to make him make a power grab. And Urkin’s is scheming, causing him to come up with convoluted plans when normal plans would work just fine. This will come in to play in the session today.

When the ghost hand comes knocking don’t look it in the palm:

At this point it is overly generous to call us a party. We had one successful mission, but we’re otherwise complete strangers. We barely even know each other’s names. But one of my biggest reasons for joining the last mission was to get allies and these two seem to be fairly competent. Furthermore, I’ve heard of a recent disappearance in the magical community that has caught my attention. A husband and wife, Ulang (an elf) and Sangla (a dwarf) have gone missing. The two are renowned magicians, Ulang being a powerful wizard and Sangla being a mighty bard and they are known for crafting the finest magic items imaginable. They are also particularly well known for their monthly parties when people from all over would revel with them. I naturally want to investigate their disappearance because I’m concerned about their safety. And by their safety I mean their magical riches. Who knows, maybe they have a staff or two lying around.

I magically contact Yamma and Urkin with a ghost hand spell and give them my sales pitch. Since the king seems to be directly involving himself in the town that we visited (See: killed the mayor, his children, and the group of adventurers he had hired to protect it) it might be a good idea to get out of town and lay low for a while. I know of some people who live off in the hills who might create some magic items for us if we go visit them. That newfound gold is burning a hole in your purse strings anyway. I don’t bother to tell them that the duo has actually gone missing. I figure I can do my best surprised face when we get there. Yamma and Urkin agree and so we head off towards the north.

Sleepy Hallows:

Ulang and Sangla’s home is nestled in a group of hallows that lead off into forest and mountains the further north and west that you go. As we get close to their house we come across a sleepy small hamlet that would otherwise be unremarkable except for the elaborate furniture that we find everywhere. Finely crafted signs and benches that seem far too nice for the type of income these farmers are pulling in. Oh yes, we’re getting close.

We stop in at the local inn to stay the night and ask some questions. The inn keep informs us that it’s been quite a while since anyone has been travelling through the hamlet recently. It seems that the dwarves from the hills above have stopped passing through with their ore. I ask about Ulang and Sangla and if they know anything about them, but according to the villagers they never came in to town, so it’s unsurprising to see them or their son. Son? I ask. Yes, they have a son, but he never comes down either. Everyone in town seems to verify this same story. Yamma and Urkin see how excited I am about these two and begin to get suspicious about my motives.

Yamma: Did you know that they had gone missing before we left?
Selumil: Hm? Oh, no. No, of course not. I just wanted them to make me something. So anyway, innkeeper, how long has it been since the dwarves came down?
Urkin: Are you sure you didn’t know anything?
Selumil: Of course I kn- No. I didn’t know anything.

The next day we decide we’re going to pay a visit to Ulang and Sangla anyway, and we hire a carriage to take us there. Oh, did I mention that today is Halloween? That’s rather important, too.

As we are travelling along the road through the hallows we suddenly hear high pitched screaming and we see a young girl jump out in front of our carriage. At first we think she is simply a human girl, but there’s something…strange about her. She’s rather stout looking, but she has pointy ears. Could this be Ulang and Sangla’s son? This is clearly a girl though. We don’t have time to think about it though because she tells us that she’s running from “Trogs.” Sure enough, a large group of troglodytes come running through the trees towards us. Urkin, Yamma, and I abandon the carriage to fight the trogs. We tell the carriage to ride off to Ulang and Sangla’s. The three of us easily combat the trogs and send those that remain running into the hills.

Tiptoeing Into the Mansion:

The three of us hurry to catch up and within an hour we come across some wooded areas with a large clearing before us and at the center of that clearing is a large mansion. We see the carriage parked outside, but it’s empty with no sign of the carriage drivers or the little girl and we start to walk up. As we approach, we notice some strange things. The trees appear to have claw marks on them and some of the trees seem to be missing with large scorch marks underneath them. Clearly some magic was used here, but by whom and for what purpose? We approach the outer gate and we see that the portcullis has been broken down. We’re officially on yellow alert: shields up and scanning for threats.

As we walk through we see that there are no lights and the place is very dark. There is a large dining table in the first room as well as a doorway leading to a room on our left, one before us, and a staircase going upstairs. We go through the central door and see what appears to be a music room. Amazing instruments adorn the walls, a few of which have been smashed. I also see a large and strange grandfather clock at the end of the room that catches my eye. I go to check it out while Yamma peeks into the next room, which happens to be the kitchen. Urkin is standing in between both rooms. As I start poking around the back of the clock I suddenly push through something and am no longer there. Urkin and Yamma quickly follow and before we know it we are in a very, very dark room. We light a torch and see wine racks stretched out before us, some barrels of grain alcohol and some closed doors off to our left. We appear to have stumbled into the basement. We also see some dead troglodytes on the floor as well as one troglodyte that is covered in a cloak. Urkin moves up to it and kicks it to see if it’s still alive. Surprise! The cloak was actually a cloaker! It starts to grapple Urkin and stab at Yamma and Selumil. The thing is vicious, but we soon put it down without serious injury. We also discover that that grain alcohol has healing properties. Weird.

We stop to check out the three doors and we find that they look like cages full of dead troglodytes except for one of the cages which contains a barely alive one. I peer inside and start to ask it questions in draconic. “No!” It screams “Don’t hurt me master!” Ah, since I’m an elf, he must thing that I’m Ulang. I try to get him to tell me what happens. He barely says anything. He’s clearly starving so we feed him some dead rats and then he talks. He tells us that other troglodytes busted in, and were attacked by the cloaker before dying. Yeah, we pieced that together. What happened to Ulang and Sangla? You’re right here master. Awesome, I’ll take that as you don’t know. Do you have any other useful information for us? No. Can we open this door? No. Urkin shoots him and he dies.

Turning back towards the room it seems to me a little…small. I mean, I know that Ulang and Sangla had a kid and maybe they didn’t want him (or her?) dipping in to the liquor cabinet, but creating a whole secret basement seems excessive. I decide to look for secret doors and lo and behold I find that one of the walls is illusory. Stepping through I see a marvelous wizard’s library. Full of books and gizmos and spell components I am in heaven. I encourage Urkin and Yamma to leave me be and they step outside to look at the wines, which they actually discover most of which are outstanding potions. I find a ton of things, but the most interesting things to me are what appear to be Ulang’s spell book and some components used for making staves…but no complete ones around. Damn. The spell book is the largest of any kind if I’ve ever seen and seems to ooze magical power. Oh yeah, this is a sweet pay off. You know, provided that he doesn’t want it back or anything.

Having cleared the basement we head upstairs and move back in to the kitchen. Despite the kitchen’s many cabinets there is no food inside and the fireplace is full of ashes. But not just ashes, there’s also a live dog with a collar around his neck in there. The dog appears to be more than meets the eye. He and Urkin start to have meaningful looks. Do I really care? Hell no. “Out of my way, dog!” Grr. He doesn’t like me and I don’t care for him. Yamma peeks outside another door that leads to the back yard and sees three mounds of very recently moved dirt. Oh. Have we caught the masters of the house at a bad time?

Q&A and More Q:

Just at that moment somebody walks in behind us into the kitchen. A human man, he appears to be suffering from a massive head wound and sputtering words with difficulty.

Man: Oh! I didn’t know we were having company for dinner. Let me make something for you. *peers into the empty cabinets* Oh…it appears that we’re…out of food.

Well, this clearly isn’t his best day. We ask him what happened and he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that anything’s happened. We determine that we need to sit this crazy person down and get some answers from him. That is, if he is in fact crazy and not the murderer of the household. We walk back in to the main room and go upstairs to a small landing that leads into his room: the butler’s room. He keeps complaining about how his head hurts and he doesn’t remember anything. I suggest in a sidebar that I could heal him and maybe that would jog his memory, but we haven’t eliminated the possibility that he killed them.

Yamma decides to slap some manacles on him and take him downstairs and out the back. We dig up the mounds of dirt and find three bodies. Ulang, Sangla’s, and what appears to be their child’s body, but not the child that rushed out of the woods. This child is clearly a boy. There are some differences between them. Ulang and Sangla appear to have been buried before the boy and they suffered from different injuries. While all three had claw marks on them, Ulang and Sangla’s were smaller. The boy’s were very large. We search their bodies for items and find some sweet wands and rings. Unfortunately, this CSI investigation has yet to actually answer anything. We decide it’s best to interrogate the butler again.

It’s revealed to me on my way back that the dog can speak telepathically. Great! Does it know anything? Hm…not really. “They came.” Who came? “They came.” Fantastic. Oh, he also wants us to remove that collar from his neck. Maybe in a bit. Oh wait! Maybe never. Maybe the dog transforms in to some terrible creature and it killed them all. But what do the dead troglodytes in the basement have to do with this? We just don’t know. We go back to the butler’s room and I start in again on my plan to heal him. Yamma seems highly resistant to this. Apparently he can sense that the butler is trying to probe his mind somehow. He doesn’t tell us this though because he doesn’t want to tip off the butler that he knows something is up. Urkin and I don’t sense this though, so I insist on healing him. This might give us more information, and I’m not going to completely make him better. Eventually I convince him and after I heal him he’s thinking a bit more clearly. He tells us that the troglodytes came and killed Ulang and Sangla. And their son? Yeah, him too. All of this seems odd. Ulang and Sangla were extremely powerful, like epic powerful, and they died to troglodytes? We were wasting those suckers on the side of the road earlier. But the butler and the dog agreed “they” the troglodytes killed them. I guess I should re-check the CR on those guys when I get a chance.

Redrum. Redrum.:

Urkin and I decide that we need to investigate the upstairs of the house, but we don’t necessarily want both potential murder suspects to come with us. The dog, named Ashtar, is in love with Urkin and will follow him wherever. Ashtar is also interested in finding the girl, who he tells us is called Jana, so we think he should come with us. We ask Yamma to guard the manacled butler while we go upstairs and look for the little girl and carriage drivers. At the top of the stairs we see a ton of different rooms, but we hear the little girl’s voice from only one of the rooms. We go in and see the carriage drivers sitting uneasily next to the girl who appears to be drawing. She is so excited to see us and even more excited to see Ashtar! How great of us to come! The carriage drivers look terrified. When we get a moment alone with them they tell us that the girl is absolutely crazy. She thinks that her parents are still alive and keeps talking about how someone named “Solum” is coming tonight. Now that I think about it, Urkin told me Ashtar kept going on about Solum coming tonight. Huh, well, that ain’t good.

We subtly ask Jana if the carriage drivers can go. “Oh. All right. That’s fine.” And they run like hell from the house. Ashtar seems very insistent on playing with a ball; so on the pretext of finding one, Urkin leaves the room to go search the other rooms of the upstairs. While he’s doing that, I start to talk to Jana about what she knows. “What do I know about what?” she asks as she’s drawing pictures of horrible black scribbles. I compliment her on her pretty drawing and ask her to describe it to me. “Well that’s mommy and daddy and my brother.” That accounts for the scribbles. What about that wolf like creature? “That’s Solum.” Of course it is. Halloween. Full moon. “He’s my boyfriend.” Of course he would be your boyfriend.

On the landing downstairs Yamma’s guard duty became very difficult very quickly. First of all, he gets the same feeling as if something is trying to peer in to his mind but that he’s fighting it off. Then, before you know it, the butler seems to slip out of the manacles somehow, despite being well fastened and he attacks Yamma. Luckily, Yamma is able to outfox this guy in unarmed combat (monk) and he kills him. Well, there’s a point in favor of the “he was the murderer the whole time” theory.

Urkin finds many lavishly furnished rooms: bathrooms, bedrooms, libraries. In what appears to be Ulang and Sangla’s room he sees a family portrait. Why there’s Ulang, Sangla, and their two boys. Wait, two boys? He swears that he saw a near identical portrait of Ulang and Sangla with their son and daughter in her room…

I determine that I need to think of a new way to get information from this girl. Clearly asking her questions is doing no good because she is both a complete liar and the murderer or so traumatized she can’t consciously recognize that her family is dead. Or both. I ask her if she wants to play a magic game.

Jana: I love playing with magic!
Selumil: I thought you might. Here, I’ll cast a spell and I’ll try to guess what you’re thinking about, okay?
Jana: Okay. Can I cast a spell on you when you’re done?
Selumil: Uh, sure…

Bam! Detect Thoughts without her resisting. I can start to sense minds. Her mind, Urkin’s mind, Ashtar’s mind, two minds downstairs though one is severely subdued. Ashtar senses that I’m peering in to his mind and drags Urkin back with him into the girl’s room. Grr. That’s round two. Round three gets me the surface thoughts of those I’m scanning. What have you got for me, little girl? RAARGAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, sweet Vecna! That girl’s mind is MESSED UP!

Jana: Yay! Now it’s my turn!
Selumil: *spell craft check* She’s casting…Insect Plague.

Bugs come pouring through the window and very nearly disrupt my detect thoughts spell. I’m so busy with the bugs that I don’t notice that the sun is setting.

Jana: Ooh! Solum’s coming!
Ashtar: Oh no, Solum’s coming!
Selumil and Urkin: Oh crap, Solum’s coming.
Selumil: Oh, by the way, I could only hazily make out one of the two thoughts downstairs so Yamma may be unconscious or dead. Sorry, I forgot about that.
Urkin: …

They did the Mash. They did the Monster Mash:

Urkin and I run down the stairs following the footsteps of Jana and her dog. We stop at the landing and see that Yamma had killed the butler. At least what once was the butler. It appears that he was a doppelganger the whole time. Did he happen to make a dying confession about killing the family? No. Damn.

At the bottom of the stairs we can’t see either Jana or Ashtar. But wait a moment, there is that room to our left when we entered the mansion that we never investigated. Maybe we should see what’s going on in there. We head in to this room and the décor is a bit different. We see candles, a pentagram, and a dead troglodyte in the middle. Clearly someone was summoning something. Yamma examined the summoning circle because he does a lot of ritual sacrifices and found out that the spell was still in progress. It turns out that someone had started this spell and it was set to complete itself by midnight tonight. Keep in mind, we’re now in the evening hours. Well, this adds a new element to this already strange, strange house.

While Selumil and Yamma are staying in this room investigating the circle, Urkin heads out into the main dining room area. As he’s looking around Ashtar comes up to him and speaks with him telepathically.

Ashtar: He’s here!
Urkin: Oh, no.
Ashtar: If you can get this collar off of me I can help you.
Urkin: Uhhh…let me see what I can do about that.

As Urkin tries to think of what to do a large werewolf comes in through the door leading to the music room and the kitchen. He growls. Urkin calls for Selumil and Yamma. I run out to see what is going on and am stunned to see what’s before me.

Urkin: The dog says that if we can get its collar of it can help us, but I can’t get it off.
Selumil: Do you want me to cast dispel magic on the collar?
Urkin: Yes!
Selumil: Dispel Magic!

Yeah! And by yeah I mean I rolled a natural one on my dispel magic check. The DM decides that I actually cast detect magic instead. Oh well! I can totally tell that that collar is magical now. That’s gotta help us somehow, right? Urkin remembers that he had found a chisel and hammer of breaking earlier so he busts off the collar with it. Help us, Ashtar! The dog blinks away. Oh, wonderful. We’re saved. So with my magical eye sight and the house blink dog gone we definitely stand a good chance against this werewolf. Urkin does some quick talking to extricate us from this conflict. He tells Solum that Jana is downstairs in the lab because Ashtar told him that she was and that he should go visit her. The werewolf stares at us, snorts, and then turns toward the music room and the basement. Phew! Crisis averted. Oh wait, there’s still that whole summoning circle thing.

We run back to talk to Yamma. He tells us that the circle appears to be summoning a chain devil and that stopping the summoning is going to be too difficult. The best we can do is to try to contain it. Furthermore, the DM decided to spring his Ambitious flaw meaning that he really wants to seize the chance of controlling this devil. But we’ll need more materials and information to accomplish this. I think back to my thorough search of Ulang’s laboratory and I’m fairly confident that we can find some components to help us, but I don’t recall finding any books dealing with this type of devil summoning. But now some things start to click about this house, what happened here, and this strange family. Everyone in the family was a spellcaster: Ulang a wizard, Sangla a bard, Jana seems to be a druid, so why shouldn’t the son be a caster, too? Furthermore, the son was sort of teenage aged and if his father was a good guy, this type of magic might have been the perfect form of teen rebellion. But why the devil and why now? This remains unclear, but we remember that of the three bodies outside the son’s was the only one to have claw marks that seemed to match the werewolf’s. So maybe Ulang and Sangla were killed by troglodytes and their son tried to summon the devil to get revenge, but the werewolf freaked out and killed him. Maybe the troglodytes were aided by the doppelganger. There are still some gaps in this story, but it seems like a good working hypothesis.

Urkin runs downstairs to get material components and awkwardly edges around the newly reunited crazy girl and her werewolf boyfriend to get everything that we need. I head upstairs to the boy’s bedroom and find some evil magic books. Looks like the teen angst theory is panning out. I grab one dealing with summoning and I head back to the summoning room. We spend the rest of the time adding components, chanting, and hoping that we will be able to control this creature once it finally comes. At midnight the summoning appears to be completing. The flames on the candles dance and we hear a loud clanking sound as a chain devil appears before us! We roll fear checks and I fail though Urkin and Yamma pass. Yamma and the devil stare each other down before Yamma dares to challenge it, telling it that it obeys him. They appear to be having a battle of wills until…the devil relents. Yamma instructs it to leave this house and head into the mountains where it is to find a General somebody and kill him. The devil stands up, turns around, and leaves the mansion. Hot damn! This is great news for Yamma and bad news for me. The DM decided to activate my Arrogant trait. The monk showed me up in knowing more about the summoning, directed us in how to oppose it, and ordered the devil around while I was cowering in fear. Doesn’t he know how much better than him I am? I’ll have to put him in his place soon.

Time to do some Evil:

Wow, man. We just sort of pieced together the mystery of this house, we completed the ritual safely and stopped the devil from killing us all, and the dog even comes back, happy to have gained his freedom from the collar that was imprisoning him. I guess we should just go ask the surviving daughter and her werewolf boyfriend for some sort of a reward and be on our way, right? Hell no. We’re not good, we’re not even neutral. Urkin fancies that this house would be quite lovely to own for himself, and we could live there too, why not. I guess the only thing left to do is kill the rightful owners.

Urkin doesn’t want Ashtar to see us kill his former owner as Ashtar has become quite fond of the scamp so he tells him to blink away and go buy a ball in town with a silver piece so they can play catch later. The dog leaves and we head upstairs to where Solum and Jana had migrated.

Urkin: Good news! We stopped the devil from killing us all.
Jana: Oh how wonderful! Let me give you a hug!
Urkin: *rapier in the stomach for full sneak attack*

Wonderful surprise round. That just took care of the caster for us. Now we only have that werewolf on our hands. Yamma runs up to him to get an early hit, but it’s a swing and a miss. I decide to spend one of my third level slots on Mark of Doom (PHBII). Now every time that the werewolf attacks with his claws and his bite he takes a d6 of damage, no saving throw. It doesn’t really matter that Yamma and Urkin can’t seem to hit the werewolf, because every time that it hits them it’s taking damage itself. I mean, sure, Yamma and Urkin both almost passed out, but I would have healed them eventually. Yet even before either one of them had to roll to stabilize, my spell did the trick. Bam! Dead werewolf, dead former owner. Everything is coming up us.

The Spoils of Murder:

So what did we get out of this whole adventure into madness? A lot it turns out. Rather than enumerate all of the magic items and potions that we found I’ll just list the most important ones that are sure to come up later. First of all, Urkin and Yamma discovered that most all of those wine bottles in the basement were various potions while I was nerding out in the library. Because of that, they can sell those potions for a fortune that they only need to split between themselves since they didn’t bother to trouble me with this discovery. I found a bracelet of friends which I can see being very useful. Though not an item, Urkin received Ashtar the loveable (to most people although we both dislike each other) blink dog. Likewise I found a homunculus in the laboratory that is now mine despite what it says in the Monster Manual about them dying with their masters. I also found a long sword in a sheath hidden behind the strange painting of Ulang, Sangla, and the two boys. When I drew it, it started singing and telling me how I needed to fight evil. It also told me that I should go after Evmond the lich who appears to be nearby. Now that I think of it, I think I’ve heard that name before. This lich could have been by the whole assault (there was a lot of evidence of magical battle outside). Perhaps he was seeking the wizard’s riches including book I picked up. This is troubling news. In any event, the best treasure in my estimation is this spell book that I snagged early on. Even though I can’t open it, it’s just oozing with power and I am not eager to part with it. Figuring this thing out is my new top priority.

Reflection:

Today was thoroughly awesome. This adventure was great: full of adventure and intrigue and it really kept us all on the edge of our seats. The DM really did a great job of making this place come alive and actually got me to jump twice (once when I was in the lab and the homunculus jumped out at me and the second time when I detected thoughts on the girl’s mind). It was so good that the Urkin’s player almost left because of work in the morning but ended up staying because we were having so much fun. I was also personally glad that I was able to be useful in the fight with the werewolf. In the first mission I proved to be a sufficient distraction, but I wasn’t exactly slinging my spells with the greatest efficacy and the chain devil incident was not letting me shine very much either. But now we’re all victorious, we have a ton of sweet gear, and an amazing house to make our base of operations. The DM was also nonplussed by the fact that we inherited all of this stuff in our second mission. In his own words, he’s not afraid of that and I believe him. We’ll just have to see what new challenges come with all of this material wealth.