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Palanan
2014-06-25, 05:54 PM
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Here follows a tale from Wirrapemioc, of an entanglement he chose of his own free will--partly from curiosity, partly from whispers he heard among the younger trees; and partly, I am sorry to say, from a flicker of greed, to which even a thoughtful heart is not entirely immune.




Session I: The Tower and the Ambush

Dawn at the Tower

It was an odd group that stood in a loose, uncertain semicircle at the base of the crumbling tower. That tower, having once commanded a strategic horizon during the Right War, had slowly shed fragments of itself during the following centuries, settling gradually into the sleepy comfort of rural legend, a slumped and almost homely ruin.

In the early morning light, with heavy dew bending the tall grasses among its halo of fallen stones, it still held some measure of shadowed dignity, bent and diminished yet standing on, keeping its ancient watch. Beyond the low ridge that supported it, the land swept broadly down and away, undulating gently beneath pale grey pennants of morning mist. The folk who lived in the wooded hollows and wide fields below, men and their ancient allies, knew the tower only as a minor landmark on a distant horizon; few now remembered it as an emblem of the pledge their ancestors had once made.

And likely fewer in that small group would have known the tower's tale, either; they barely knew each other, having come their separate ways in the damp chill before sunrise, each for his own reasons having answered a summons borne by no mortal hand.

Two arrived by different paths on horseback: one a slender young man in billowing robes, bearing a sunburst at his throat; the other taller, careless of style, rough-cut and hard-used by the profession of war. Two more had made the journey on foot: one a stocky mass of beard and muscle, a dwarf by build and glowering brow, but swathed in some foreign attire; and the other a mildly unkempt halfling, hair tousled as if just woken, with intricate curlicues of woad on his face and bare arms, a torc about his neck above his fine-worked leather vest, and a smallish fox nosing alongside.

And two others had appeared soon after: one a homely halfling, with a tattered common tunic and a long flopping hat, entirely unremarkable save for the greenish-grey thing of scales he rode, long and low, the halfling perched easily on a well-made saddle and harness; and the other the most peculiar of them all, some wild-haired gnomish creature, bearing a lance like a knight from the ancient wars and riding a beast the others could not name, something like a dragon the height of a tallish man.

That pair set the fox's nose to twitching, the compact riding-wyrm and its midget chevalier, both as taut as mandolin-strings and evidently as likely to snap. The halfling by the fox's side, young Wirrapemioc, held back a few paces as wary introductions were made: stiff and sparse of grace from the dwarf, downright curt from the mounted warrior, polished and urbane from the well-dressed young priest.

A more friendly, open greeting from the halfling astride the great lizard, a few words exchanged in their own language; and then the young priest named himself as Lucian, and displayed a finely-written letter, copies of which had drawn each of them to the tower this dawn, those copies having appeared where no hand could have placed them--and those copies apparently blank, with no message to be seen except by the bearer alone.

The dragon-steed snapped its apparently useless wings, venting the impatience of its mad-haired rider, who was saying something sharp and intense about dragons, or dragon-eggs, something Wirrapemioc didn't entirely follow; but of a sudden the gnomish figure urged his dragon-steed ahead, towards the dark hollow at the tower's weary base, and vanished beneath the lichen-crusted arch of stones.

There seemed little to do but follow.

The Table Above the Stair

Both from natural caution--and a nagging instinct to keep his distance from the rather volatile gnome--Wirrapemioc lagged well behind, joined in the afterguard by Lucian, likewise willing to allow the more heavily muscled to venture first into the rising dark. Enough of the greyish dawn filtered through eroded arrow-slits to show the remnants of a thick winding stair, spiraling around the tower's inner wall with some promise of solidity.

The tower had long since taken its place in local legend, but it was not dark legend; the wide land about was too long-settled, the ridge too well-traveled for anything unwholesome to make a go of tower-haunting.

The stone stair, at least, was firm enough to hold the determined gnome and his steed, and the others following more cautiously behind--who found, when they finally gained the first and only solid landing, a small round table placed neatly in the center of the white-streaked stone floor, generations of swallows having built their nests in the buttressed stonework above.

About the table were placed six chairs: all of them man-sized, Wirrapemioc noted with a touch of chagrin, and he elected to stand a little ways off instead. The other halfling, one Tailor by name and profession, helped himself to a chair and propped his feet on the next one over, straining a little across the gap. From the neck of his tunic, a small copper-eyed head rose up, a slender tongue flicking the cool dry air.

The others seated themselves--and hardly had they settled when a man appeared on the table itself, of indeterminate age and unremarkable height, sweeping his gaze across the upturned eyes below him.

--Harprin, he named himself, and no one needed to be told what he was. He had, he informed them, summoned each one in the expectation that together they would provide him a service: the return of a certain wooden box, forest-green and inscibed with runes, which had been taken from its place of hiding. He was unwilling or unable to retrieve it himself; he had hoped that together we might prove equal to the task. The service, of course, would not go unrewarded.

The sum of two hundred platinum was named, apiece, and that was enough to wake the glitter-lust of even a halfling who slept under leaf and star, and had thought himself free from common want. The price was a fortune, enough to buy a county's worth of prime farmland, or a minor lordship and all its trappings. Taken together, the price offered for this "service" could have bought a small squadron of warships to patrol the distant coastline.

The mad-haired gnome snapped out something impatient about a dragon's-egg. Harprin allowed that one was indeed available, and would serve as the gnome's reward.

The gnome demanded to see that egg immediately. Harprin, caught somewhat off-balance, replied that the egg would be given as promised only after the green box had been recovered and returned.

The gnome demanded to know how to find the box.

Harprin, unruffled again, explained that the box would be on a goblin caravan which he had learned would be passing along a certain road later that same day--a road only a few hours' travel away.

The gnome was ready to leave. That moment. Others, Wirrapemioc among them, had other questions--first and foremost, what exactly was in the box?

Harprin made it plain that this was for him to know, and for those he had called not to concern themselves with. The line between employer and employees thus underscored, and a few more details briefly discussed, Harprin vanished. The gnome was already halfway down the stairs.

Immediate Divisions

From the tower, a well-used track ran along the ridge to intercept the wagon-road where Harprin had claimed the goblin-caravan would be found. It took some hours to reach the spot--and immediately on departing, to Wirrapemioc's discomfort, a deep difference of opinion had already emerged on how the goblins should be dealt with.

The mission-focused gnome, riding point on his small dragon-steed and evidently obsessed with the promise of a true dragon's-egg, was already discussing plans for outright goblin-slaughter, with the tacit assent of Cain, the war-scarred horseman, and hard proclamations on "justice" from the dwarf, aptly named Thunderfist. To judge by the dwarf's repeated declarations, this involved his fist connecting with other faces, rapidly and often.

Privately Wirrapemioc felt this was bending the notion of justice rather too far; and as they set out, he spoke quietly with Lucian, voicing his misgivings. As traders and nomads, no longer with any homeland to call their own, goblins were natural middlemen, and they legitimately peddled all manner of goods. Harprin had been vague as to how the missing box had been stolen; he had certainly not claimed that the goblins themselves were responsible. Ambushing and killing a wagon-train was banditry and bald murder, and wouldn't it be better to at least try to talk first?

The young priest was receptive to this line of thought, and Wirrapemioc suggested Lucian should be the one to raise the question, since his voice might carry more weight as a representative of the divine.

Sadly, this was rather naive on Wirrapemioc's part, and as soon as Lucian spoke up a vigorous debate broke out. The gnome was vehement in his desire to kill every goblin in his way--and if he had to go out of his way for them to be in his way, then so be it. The dwarf, invoking his god of justice, was certain that a few goblins one way or the other would hardly tip the cosmic scales; and from the back of his hardy war-horse, Cain seemed grimly pleased with the prospect for a few good swings, no matter the targets at hand.

Riding on his giant monitor lizard, Tailor at first was swept up in the general enthusiasm for ambush and goblin-disposal; but as a rather humble fellow himself, he began to wonder if these goblins might not be all that different, simply hired drivers trying to make a living, transporting something they knew nothing about. By the time the company of travelers reached the wagon-road, Tailor had come to agree with Lucian and Wirrapemioc that at the very least, common decency required some effort at talking--and Tailor had an idea for how to begin the conversation.

Unfortunately, two halflings and a rather slender young priest were the only voices for goblin tolerance. The battle-scarred horseman, the heavily muscled dwarf and the dragon-mounted gnome with a wicked lance were still bent on a swift goblin massacre.

Dialogue and Death

For better or for worse, the wagon-road offered plenty of opportunities for easy ambush. The bare grassy ridge had long since given way to wooded hills, and the track of the wagon-road followed a winding course between sloping hillsides, shaded by a high forest-canopy with ample undergrowth, especially along the sides of the open track itself.

Not yet accustomed to smooth cooperation--or indeed, any form of coordinated strategy--each of the company took up the position he thought best for his own version of the plan.* Tailor, now resolved to lead the dialogue, spoke in some serpent's-tongue to his monitor lizard ("Boots"), encouraging it to lumber off, up through the forest to a low hill-crest, keeping out of sight so as not to alarm the goblins. Doing his best to appear nonthreatening, Tailor stood squarely in the wagon-track, Lucian calm beside him.

Any attempt at appearing nonthreatening was ruined by the gnome right next to them, brandishing his lance astride his dragon-steed and looking eagerly down the track. In fact, those in favor of goblin-killing seemed to view the attempted parley as a mere tactical distraction; at the very least, their hearts weren't quite in it. The warrior Cain, evidently more used to fighting in open country, drew his horse off the track and into the lee of a nearby thicket, where it wasn't in the slighest camouflaged.

For his part, the dwarf Thunderfist ripped up a small sapling tree, standing by the side of the wagon-road roughly between the not-hidden Cain and the not-really-unthreatening trio ahead. Wirrapemioc would have objected to the ruin of the tree--done for no purpose that he could tell--but he was on the far side of the track, concealed behind a vine-draped thicket with an idea or two of his own.

Soon enough two covered wagons lumbered into view down the track, the first bearing a gaggle of goblins on its canvas roof and a husky hobgoblin gripping the reins; the second wagon was driven by another hobgoblin. ...Those hobgoblins changed the equation somewhat. Tough enforcers rather than vagabond traders, they might have been along to provide protection from bandits--or to guard something more valuable than crates of salted whitefish.

But Tailor was committed, and stood there in his floppy hat as the first wagon slowly bore down on him. The hobgoblins had already seen Cain, and rather than waste time they clearly wanted to move past this little gathering. "Out of the way!"

With a murmured word and a twist of his fingers, Tailor made eye contact with the first hobgoblin and gave him a broad, welcoming smile.

The hobgoblin felt a telltale whisper of arcane energy pulse across him--and he didn't like it. He spat something vile in his own language, glaring at the source of the failed enchantment, and made it plain he was coming through.

Caught, Tailor did his best. "...Okay, yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that--thing is, we're kind of stuck here, and yeah, I tried to massage the situation a little, and I'm sorry about that, I thought it would be for the best...."

Another murmur and twist of the fingers--and another angry obscenity from the looming hobgoblin, who failed to look remotely charmed. Tailor had to scuttle sideways to avoid being trampled. The next moment he was by the side of the track as the second wagon rolled up, and with a slightly strained smile he gave a murmur and twist to the solid horse pulling it.

The horse, at least, was thoroughly charmed.

Meanwhile, as the first wagon bore down on him, Lucian called out, "I have a question." The hobgoblin hardly looked in the answering mood--but his eyes widened when the young priest slipped a small, weighty purse from his robes, and continued, "I merely wish to converse with you."

The hobgoblin pulled at the reins, both intrigued and slightly confused by the invitation. As Tailor began tugging at the bridle of the second horse, trying to pull it off the track, Lucian politely asked the lead wagoneer if they were by any chance carrying a smallish green box.

As the gaggle of goblins jeered from above, the hobgoblin brusquely snapped that he knew nothing of any box.

"GIVE US THE BOX OR DIE!!" bellowed the dwarf unexpectedly, and threw the uprooted sapling with such force that it speared through the wagon's canvas side, its leaves fluttering sadly above a rear wheel.

This quickly led to an unfortunate breakdown in dialogue, which was especially regrettable for Wirrapemioc--that, and the fact that the gnome Blixi had pulled his dragon-steed across the wagon-track, not far from where Tailor was locked in a tug-of-war with the other hobgoblin for the second horse. (Only the horse's newfound affection made it a contest at all.) Wirrapemioc was doing his best to catch Blixi's attention and urge him a little further off the road--but Blixi, avidly watching for violence, had no interest in moving.

Later none of the survivors could recall the exact timing of what happened next; but Cain thundered in swinging from his horse, aiming for the goblins on the crest of the first wagon--and suddenly two bugbears had appeared from the second wagon, Tailor had lost the struggle for his new horse-friend, and Lucian wisely took several steps back.



*
For want of a better term.

The Gnomish Face of War

As Cain broke cover to the south of the track, Blixi charged in from the north, expertly lancing the first hobgoblin and nearly killing him in one savage strike. Abandoning all subtlety, Tailor cast another enchantment at the second wagoneer, again to no effect--and now that same hobgoblin was swinging angrily at the troublesome halfling below.

The gaggle of goblins piled off the first wagon, doing their best to pursue the gnome on his dragon-steed; and now that Blixi was further from the lead wagon, and Tailor scrambling back into the shrubs on the north side of the track, Wirrapemioc finally had everyone where he wanted them.

--A stirring of grasses all around, as if in a sudden gust none could feel, and then the grass-blades were whipping about, vines and runners reaching in from the thickets on either side, even the goldenrods and queen's-lace and the humbler herbs now snapping for something to grip onto--the horses' legs, the wagon-wheels, and most importantly the hobgoblin leaning over Tailor and the two bugbears lumbering up behind.

Then the dwarf waded into the fray, pummeling a goblin that had been flailing at Blixi and his dragon-mount. The hobgoblin wounded by the gnome's lance had barely regained his feet when Cain swung his way; the great sword missed, but the warhorse finished the job with a stroke of its hooves.

With an angry heave, the second hobgoblin pulled forward, trailing broken grasses still wrapped around his limbs, and smote a glancing blow down on the unfortunate Tailor--who spoke a desperate word and sent the hobgoblin's sword slipping out of his hand.

Just ahead of the first wagon, Lucian, Blix and Thunderfist engaged the gaggle of goblins, while Cain spurred his horse to Tailor's rescue, plunging straight through the frenzied vegetation. With the second hobgoblin still grabbing for his glistening sword, only Tailor spotted one of the bugbears rip free of the tangling tendrils and struggle in the opposite direction, disappearing into the back of the second wagon.

With half the company engaged by goblins, Cain now attacking the second hobgoblin and Wirrapemioc weighing a risky crossbow shot, only Tailor was free to scuttle alongside the second wagon, waiting for what he was certain would be the appearance of that troublesome green box.

Now goblins began to flee the wrath of dwarf and gnome; one darted straight for Wirrapemioc, who made his own hasty attempt at a charm and failed just as badly. Thunderfist pounded up in hot pursuit, missing the goblin but at least distracting it; meanwhile Cain's horse was savaging the second hobgoblin, who had learned that prone was better and was doing his best to simply crawl away. One bugbear remained snared in the midst of a taller patch of grasses--and now a great cloaked figure erupted from the rear of the second wagon, thundering back down the wagon-track.

Tailor shouted an alarm and did his best to pursue, despite his wound; his hasty sling-shot had no effect. Blixi charged straight into the wide circle of still-whipping vegetation, and was immediately caught--and with the others distracted by other targets, Wirrapemioc leaped up into falcon-form and winged off after the escaping bugbear, carrying something bulky beneath its dark cloak.

Falcon's Pursuit

Between the wagons, Cain and the remaining bugbear faced off, while the surviving hobgoblin did his best to crawl quietly into the thickets beyond. Lucian and the dwarf were occupied with the final goblins, Blixi and his dragon-mount still struggling through the clawing grasses, and Tailor made his best effort to trot after the fleeing bugbear, before admitting each of its legs was longer than he was tall.

Those long legs now sent the cloaked bugbear pounding off the wagon-track, angling northeast into the wooded hills and taking a gentle slope with ground-eating strides. Wirrapemioc flew close behind in falcon-form, darting and weaving through branches just under the forest canopy and giving a series of falcon-shrieks all the while, hoping the others would be close behind.

Much later, he learned that as he was winging hard after the fleeing bugbear, two of the surviving goblins had surrendered--one of them not quickly enough to avoid being engulfed by a grappling dwarf--while Cain and the second bugbear remained locked in combat amid the reaching grasses. Lucian, meanwhile, mounted the rear-board into the back of the first wagon, searching through the crates and barrels for anything resembling the wooden box. Outside Tailor was calling at the top of his lungs in an unknown language, trying to catch his great lizard's attention on the other side of the hill.

A good deal closer in that direction, Wirrapemioc drove himself forward in a sudden burst, curving in a broad arc ahead of the massive cloaked form and seeing clearly that it carried a heavy, cloth-wrapped lump beneath one thick arm. The bugbear glanced up as the falcon swept around and resumed its pursuit; and a moment later Wirrapemioc banked hard as the cloaked form suddenly erupted in a dark cloud of expanding smoke. An instant later the bugbear emerged at a sharp new angle, and Wirrapemioc beat harder as the great shape below pounded uphill to the north. Surely, surely the others couldn't be far behind!

At this point, in fact, Blixi and his dragon-mount had pulled free of the tangling grasses and were charging after a fleeing goblin; with one stroke the gnome speared the unfortunate creature clean through, proudly hefting its impaled body high on his lance, grinning with blood-flecked glee. Cain had gained the upper hand on the remaning bugbear--his horse had bitten it savagely--and Tailor, inspired by a new thought, was now yelling northwards in the halfling-tongue, directing Wirrapemioc to steer the bugbear towards the next ridge, where Tailor hoped his monitor lizard might be lumbering in for an intercept.

In fact Wirrapemioc hadn't heard this last part at all, and was instead weighing another approach altogether. Again the falcon surged forward, outpacing the surprised bugbear and slipping low to the forest floor, cutting up into a sharp chandelle barely a hundred feet ahead, stalling and dropping lightly to the leaves on bare halfling-feet. One hand outstretched forbiddingly--or as forbidding as a slender three-foot halfling can manage against a hulking nine-foot bugbear--Wirrapemioc stared down the massive charging shape, and willed into being a globe of writhing flame.

Goodness Gracious...

The bugbear skidded and scrambled to one side, the burning-globe searing a path through the underbrush close behind, leaving a charred trail of coruscating leaves. Breathing hard, Wirrapemioc gathered himself and leaped into falcon-form again, pushing the mass of flames ahead of him in hot pursuit of the retreating bugbear. Once more as he flew he let out a staccato series of piercing falcon-cries, hoping that this and the rolling fiery globe might alert his companions to the chase underway.

Meanwhile, an ever-widening distance to the south, Lucian tended to Tailor's wound, Cain finally smote the remaining bugbear its fatal blow, and the dwarf--having thoroughly lashed down the remaining goblins--was now investigating the back of the second wagon, sorting through provisions and gear in faint hopes of finding, if not the coveted box, then perhaps some welcome ale.

Far to the north, in the wooded hills above them, a tiny cloaked shape churned its way along the distant ridge, followed by a flaming-bright spark leaving a long smudged tail of smoke, with a falcon crying rather piteously somewhere behind.

The dwarf, finding ale, decided it was only justice to sample the spoils of victory.

On that wooded ridge, the bugbear vanished in another wide burst of charcoal smoke, reappearing on another tangent heading north again. Wirrapemioc half-folded his wings through a tangle of branches and rolled down in renewed pursuit, the burning-globe now falling behind, trailing a long banner of flame and smoke that could hardly be missed.

Scenting trouble--or at least the opportunity to ride down another target--Blixi cast around, spotted a lingering trail of smoke to the north, and sent his dragon-steed crashing into the thickets and into the woods beyond. Tailor, for his part, continued calling out to his monitor lizard, yelling a description of the target that its dim mind could grasp and urging it to attack.

By now the cloaked bugbear, still tenaciously gripping his charge, had far outrun the burning-globe, and Wirrapemioc let it puff out in a final smouldering wheeze to better continue his low-level pursuit. To one side he caught sight of a long, low shape wending its way through the undergrowth, a fine saddle strapped to its back; then the falcon had swept ahead, leaving the monitor lizard to follow as best as it could.

Ahead, the bugbear charged through the thinning trees, and in moments broke out onto a broad grassy reach, miles of open country ahead. Still clutching his burden, the bugbear showed no signs of slowing--and he was heading directly for a cluster of tents not far away.

Field of Dreams

While Lucian, Cain and the dwarf remained at the wagons, Tailor began making his way north up the first forested hill. Several more hills away, Wirrapemioc continued his winged pursuit of the indefatigable bugbear, charging heavily through tall grasses and bellowing in its own harsh language. Further behind them, the riderless monitor lizard loped along through the grassy field, with the gnome on his dragon-steed crashing through the woods: still a ways to the south, but making good time.

And now two horsemen had set out from the cluster of tents, hooves pounding toward the approaching bugbear; and as Wirrapemioc circled above, they intercepted the bugbear and received that lumpish object wrapped in cloth, one of the horsemen wheeling and immediately setting off for the tents again. The second horseman, a hobgoblin, remained by the winded bugbear--just as the monitor lizard erupted from the grasses and clamped down on the bugbear's leg. No sooner had the mounted hobgoblin tried to intervene than he was charged by a shrieking gnome on a miniature dragon, and a vicious melee ensued.

The other mounted hobgoblin, bearing his precious cargo, covered the distance back to the field-camp in short order, dismounting and ducking into one of the tents. From two hundred feet above the plain, Wirrapemioc watched the swift denoument to the nearby melee: the dragon-mounted gnome making quick work of the unfortunate hobgoblin, and the monitor lizard seizing firm hold of the exhausted bugbear.

The last hobgoblin emerged from the tent, bearing a scroll which it was clearly attempting to read; and Wirrapemioc rolled into a power dive, talons ready to rip the scroll to ribbons before it could be cast--but the hobgoblin twisted away at the last instant, the falcon flapping frantically to avoid the onrushing earth. As the gnome charged in, the hobgoblin abruptly vanished--and reappeared several hundred yards away, already sprinting for another patch of woods with a heavy object clamped beneath one arm.

Beating for altitude, Wirrapemioc set out yet again after the well-wrapped box and its new bearer--and Blixi, having been foiled on his last charge, swung his dragon-steed about and went churning after the hobgoblin, the box, and that curiously persistent hawk.

Boxed In

As Cain, Lucian and the dwarf settled into the wagons, well to the north the last upright hobgoblin continued his mad dash across the grasses, followed by Wirrapemioc above and Blixi gaining not far behind. Tailor, for his part, continued jogging up to the crest of the first wooded hill. "I don't know where anything is," he said to the forest at large, "I just know my monitor lizard is there, and he's dumb."

The monitor lizard, in fact, was already settling down to a meal of bugbear with its intriguing blend of flavors, despite the fact that the meal was still struggling. Tailor needn't have worried: with both food and entertainment right under its nose, the monitor lizard was quite helpfully staying put.

Well beyond him, the sprinting hobgoblin was closing on a dense patch of woods, with an increasingly tired Wirrapemioc shadowing him not far above. Seeing his latest target about to disappear, the gnome cast a speed-charm on his dragon-mount, surging ahead with a velocity not yet seen and overtaking the hobgoblin beneath the heavy forest-eaves, lancing him down with a single mortal thrust.

As the falcon took up a perch in the branches above, panting heavily, the gnome triumphantly affixed the hobgoblin to the earth with his lance, slid off his dragon-mount, and quickly hefted the heavy object that had fallen in the leaves.

Wooden? Check. Green? Check. Runes? Check.

The gnome pulled his lance out of the fallen hobgoblin, remounted his dragon-steed, and Wirrapemioc spread his weary wings again.

Runes and Debate

The field-camp had been deserted, apart from a happily munching monitor lizard; but as they returned they spotted Tailor making his way towards them, and together the halfling and the gnome examined the troublesome box. Clearly magical; stubbornly locked; covered in mysterious runes. Blixi identified them as Draconic, together forming a peculiar phrase: "lightning over river's pass," though whether riddle or koan, he couldn't say.

By the time the halfling, his lizard, the falcon, and the dragon-mounted gnome made their way back through the hills to the wagons, it was mid-afternoon, and there was the question of the two captive goblins. Tailor, who had failed several times to make an impression on the hobgoblins, now managed to charm a goblin, who unfortunately knew very little about the box--the hobgoblins, it seemed, had been giving all the orders. Apparently the box had been loaded aboard at their clan's camp: and apparently it had been supplied by a drow. The goblin knew little else, apart from a vague destination: the "eastern clans," evidently another grouping of the nomadic goblin-tribes.

This information, or lack thereof, generated two more or less simultaneous lines of argument--the one revolving around what to do with the box, and the other involving the goblins. Blixi, despite having killed more goblins and hobgoblins than everyone else combined, was adamant that the two remaining goblins should be slain. He was furious when he learned that Tailor had quietly allowed the charmed goblin to leave, and the gnome refused to allow the second goblin to be freed; instead Blixi glared at the tightly bound creature for several hours, constantly sharpening his lance.

The matter of the box was more convoluted. Clearly, as certain members of the company had suggested earlier, the goblins themselves knew nothing about the box or its contents; whatever plot was afoot, they hardly seemed the driving force.

And yet, and yet--hobgoblins, hard enforcers and known to be well-organized; bugbears, heavy muscle in these settled lands; and <drow>, the name alone an ominous hint: and the question was whether, by blindly following Harprin's orders, the company might be doing more harm by handing over something of great importance, without making some effort to understand it first.

The only conclusion reached, after a long and wandering discussion, was to find an impartial opinion, someone skilled enough in the arcane to give some better idea of what the company might be dealing with. And now that evening was settling in, the choice of where to find this person was left to the morrow.

As for the final goblin, Blixi steadfastly refused to hear any talk of reprieve--the only questions were how and when. But even gnomes must sleep, and eventually Blixi nodded off, allowing the dwarf--the dwarf, of all unlikely saviors--to recover the goblin and let it scamper free.

Two Questions, and Two More

After an uneventful night in and about the wagons, the next morning found Lucian preparing one of his most potent spells; and once he was ready, one of the slain hobgoblins was manhandled (or rather, dwarf-handled) next to the wagons.

The wording of the questions had been carefully considered, and now Lucian embarked on a long, intricate ritual, at the end of which he spake thusly: Where had the hobgoblins obtained the rune-etched box?

The answer came with a sort of stiff defiance: "You will never stop the goblin nation from rising again!"

Unperturbed, Lucian then asked his second question: Who had the box been intended for?

"The leader of the eastern clans."

This was every bit as brief and cryptic as Lucian had expected, and it gave the company much to consider as they pulled their commandeered wagons around, heading back down the wagon-track towards the last town the goblins had passed through. Here the company expected to find a temple of the dwarf's faith--although "temple" was perhaps too grand a word for the structure they found, not to mention "town."

The goblin-wagons were recognized, although the locals chose not to comment on the change of ownership; and with practical folk all around, the contents of the wagons were soon sold off. (The dwarf, having belatedly come around to a different point of view, elected to donate his share of the proceeds to the local temple, as penance for having deprived the goblins of their property.)

And so, finding themselves in possession of something troublesome and deeply arcane, the company resolved to seek out someone who could tell them two things: what, exactly, they had on their hands--and what in the world they should do about it.



Player Notes

This was the first session of a new campaign, and it ended up being a lot of fun. We have half a dozen players, spanning a wide spectrum of gaming experience. Most of the group are old hands at Pathfinder and d20 in general, although we have one or two who are new to the Pathfinder rules, including your humble scribe.

Most campaign journals start out with a character lineup, with notes on class and basic backstory. Since our characters are strangers in the game, and most of us hadn't met before this first session, I figured I'd lead with the campaign intro and let readers work out which characters are what. I don't know the backstory for the other characters, and I'm not sure about some of their builds, so here's a basic rundown:


Blixi: gnome Summoner 5, possibly with something else in there. His dragon-steed is his eidolon. Played with relish as thoroughly nuts.

Cain: human Fighter 5 (maybe?) with a warhorse that's insane. Or at least has a disturbing taste for humanoid flesh.

Lucian: human Cleric 5 of Sarenrae. A voice of quiet reason.

Tailor: halfling Sorcerer 5, with a copperhead familiar and a giant monitor lizard for a mount. Evidently has a serpent-themed bloodline.

Thunderfist: dwarven Monk 5, I think. Very Beardfist.

Wirrapemioc: halfling Druid 3/Bard 2 with a fox animal companion.

Palanan
2014-07-07, 11:03 PM
Interlude

Histories of Orlia



In the time before true history began, there was a Darkness across the land.

There was writing in those before-days, at least of a sort; and some of it has survived, mainly dwarf-runes cut deep into ancestral stones, or the rare bark-books written in lost tongues of men, or the desperate prayer-glyphs which halflings etched on worn seashells. Of the countless lost and forgotten who cried out in the Darkness, some few voices yet remain.

And through their scraps and fragments, those voices tell what the elves have always sung: that in the Darkness Before Dawn, all the great land was seething with tiny principalities, every hill and coombe beneath a chieftain who styled himself king. Some of these petty realms endured for a time, and fortunate was the hill-chief who saw his heirs rule after him; but all too often the unremembered kings died young, ritually murdered when the harvest failed, or slain by an enemy's hand. Ever there were jealous neighbors across the next ridge, ever some new headman to rise and gather his war-band, and ever the tiny kingdoms warred and bled and fell.

In this time of Darkness none of the many races had a homeland to call their own. Such was the ebb and surge of clans and tribes, in struggle and flight across horizons near and far, that whence any race had come none could truly say--in the Darkness all were scattered and strewn about, so that dwarf-clans fell like sparks from a forge among the broken petals of elven-tribes, all the many races speckled in violence across the land. Chieftains of men made war against halfling bands; bugbears rode against gnomish warrens; dwarves and orcs made ephemeral cause against elves and goblins alike.

With tribes of every race contending for every vale, strange interminglings arose from force and happenstance: half-men sprung from orc-sires, twisted sports born of goblin and gnome, dark-elves tainted with the blood of men. And far stranger creatures haunted deep woods and rocky hilltops, nesting in gullies or beneath riverbeds: sly-fingered snatchers and heavy-horned beasts, nightmares of scale and shadow that stalked what prey they pleased. Few among the chieftains could face them, and fewer of their peoples dared to venture far. Inhuman things laughed mockery in the night and made it their own.

What there had been before the Darkness, none but the very wise could now say; and on this the wise have not spoken.

The Darkness lasted for long centuries beyond count, but there was no sudden light at its ending: instead a deeper darkness unfurled. It began with the orcs, ever cunning and cruel, from whom a nameless leader came forth to bind his brother-kings as one. What pact they forged, none can now say, only that they stood clan beside clan in numbers never known. The goblin-bands found safety in their shadow, if they made themselves useful; the bugbears and hobgoblins threw in their lot, priding themselves on their brute force and grim skill at arms.

And a thing began to grow which had not been seen in all of memory: a nation of several races, together stronger than any tribe of men or elves, spilling like a charcoal cloud across wood and dale, bog and field and mountainside. All in their path they slew and devoured, and devised torments for captives when they had eaten their fill; it was at this time the goblins first learned to delight in wicked machines. Like a fire burning outwards, the Dark Nation left charred ruin behind, and their soldiers brought order among the bones and ash.

But men learned quickly--or perhaps they remembered--and the elves too drew near, and together withstood what alone they could not. In hill-forts and marsh-islands they made their desperate stand: and survived, the Dark Nation caught unprepared for determined resistance, unsure how to answer these first flickers of defiance. A bellowing charge was no longer enough; and when men and elves struck in earnest the Dark Nation wavered, unable to easily grasp the ways of defense.

And in that space of uncertainty the men and elves grew bolder, and the hill-forts began speaking one to another; and as tribes of men gathered, so too others began to appear, remnant dwarf-clans seeking haven, halfling wolf-riders bearing the last of their children. As the Dark Nation rose and renewed its assault, the last free peoples pledged their alliance, bound together to stand or fall as one.

Of the long tumult of the Right War, and the many decades of conflict that washed across the land, much and much has elsewhere been told. The first true histories were written in the shadows of war, born of the records kept in tents and fortresses, and histories have been written ever after: of how the five Pledged races upheld their oath, despite struggle and slaughter and loss; of the strokes and counter-strokes between the races of the Pledged and those of the Dark Nation, each in turn becoming more adept at the hard arts of war; of the late betrayal of the dark-elves, who abandoned their unloving kin and chose alliance with the orc-tribes and goblin-swarms; and of the terrible uncertainty of each battle, the years piled on years lived almost without hope.

Until there came a day, long and long after, when the last broken remnants of the Dark Nation could no longer stir themselves, when the weary survivors of the Pledged Alliance could finally rest beneath their shredded pennants. A few hard voices argued for the utter destruction of the Dark Nation; but what remained had become almost pitiable, and the Pledged had no appetite for a final slaughter. Those last defeated scraps were disarmed and turned loose, to wander where they would.

For the first time in memory, the Pledged looked out across lands that were broken and torn, bloodstained and ill-used, but no longer aflame with war. In high council the lords of the Pledged divided the lands among the several races, each according to their habit and nature. To the elves went the warm dense forests, where the injuries of war could be washed with daily rains; to the dwarves the piedmont and mountains beyond, with ancient stone to ease their heavy souls. To the gnomes went the hill country and its high plateau; to men the broad plains and fields and woodlands; and to halflings the scatter of islands far offshore, draped in cold sea-mists, which some claimed had been their ancient home.

In the centuries that followed, the peoples of the Alliance made good use of the lands which they had won. The hands of men built high and well, and towers looked far across town and field, millponds glittering and rivers gleaming down to harbors on the western sea. The dwarves hollowed great halls in the heart of hill and mountain; with men they raised mighty aqueducts to bring glacier-melt to the growing cities below, and sturdy stone quays on the sea-coast that could weather any storm. The gnomes burrowed deep, out of delight instead of fear; and the halflings slipped quietly into hidden dells which none but they could find.

Few and sorrowing, the elves withdrew to the deeps of the great forests they had claimed, there to heal the raw wounds the Dark Nation had inflicted from its wellspring of malice. A handful of elven-folk were scattered in other lands, and in time their numbers slowly grew; but ever the most of their people remained within their canopied realm, with little interest in exploring beyond--excepting only the mariners who set out across the great ocean to the west, searching its uncharted expanse; and few of those ever returned.

Where the fires of the Dark Nation had burned first and fiercest, nothing yet would grow; but elsewhere across the lands every shade of green returned, farmed and tended and yielding a bounty reborn. As new settlements appeared and roads spread among them, travelers ventured further than any had before, and everywhere trade became common. Heroes from every victorious race smote down the worst of the old nightmares, and put many others to flight; those which remained kept to the darkest recesses of the land, having learned the value of discretion.

As for the tattered few that remained of the Dark Nation...they had been set to wandering, and wander they did ever after, learning to survive on what crumbs and leavings they could find. In the early years after the Pledged established their new kingdoms, there was still land enough for the defeated to huddle in undiscovered camps, hidden and exhausted. But soon enough the races of men and dwarves, gnomes and halflings began to recover from the decimations of the Right War, and as new farms and towns appeared, the defeated races were made unwelcome, and they took to wandering over longer and longer distances.

Some braved the mountain-passes to the far east of the known lands, risking dwarf-rage in hopes of escape to unknown realms beyond; but the most of the defeated remained in the only lands they knew, never anywhere at home, but able at least to travel on the margins of counties and settlements, scavenging and surviving in families and bands. Eventually, as centuries passed and commerce grew, they found a niche as tradesmen and drovers, traveling merchants and middlemen; and there were always a few that found work where muscle counted for more than old memories. Not a few fishing-fleets counted orcs among the crew, hauling at nets and rigging, and a bugbear or two could always be found as stevedores on the quays.

The elves alone nursed bitter memories, and suffered their dark kinfolk no entry into their woodland kingdom; but elsewhere across the lands the dark-elves roamed freely, though never in any numbers. With ebon skin and night-keen eyes, they were drawn to thievery and worse, and more than one court quietly employed a highly trained team for matters of sensitive diplomacy. But in the way of things, this only added a frisson of danger to their reputation, and a dark-elf traveling alone through settled lands would cause more of a stir for his novelty than anything else. Only beneath the eaves of a forest did the dark-elves feel the heat of angry, watching eyes, and no dark-elf would take a forest trail when an open road could be found, though the road take three times as long.

And so the kingdoms of the Pledged grew in proud prosperity, their borders becoming mere formalities, and then old traditions, and any of the Pledged might travel through any kingdom without the slightest official concern; and through every kingdom the defeated races wandered in their caravans, bartering and selling, watching and enduring, ever bearing a simmering resentment in their shadowed hearts.



Player Notes

This past Saturday would have been our second game session, but four of our six players weren't able to make it and we had to reschedule. I did, however, get a chance to ask our DM about the history of the campaign setting, which was only hinted at in the first session. This is my retelling of the outline he gave me, with a few touches of my own.

Doorhandle
2014-07-09, 09:57 PM
Interesting journal so far. Did your group become more coordinated eventually?

Ailowynn
2014-07-09, 11:46 PM
Love the thread title :smallwink:

Cool journal so far, looking forward to more.

Palanan
2014-07-24, 08:23 PM
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Session II: The Goblin-Box and The Glittering Drow



Prologue: The Empty Village

There were only four who remained of the Company by then: only four to witness the silent cottages in the evening-gloom, the broad sweeps of clotting red spread across walls and wooden beams, beneath thatched eaves which had borne the brunt of the night's heavy rains.

There were only four to prepare for the grim work of the following dawn: only four to ready themselves with fire and sacred water, earnestly beseeching guidance from above, preparing what orisons of flame were theirs to command--few though they seemed when set against what waited them to the west, in this newly uninhabited land.

They knew what they faced on the morrow--or they thought they did; and for all their preparation, none of the four slept well that night.



The Goblin-Box: A Quandary


- eleven days earlier -



Immediate profits made for a happy morning: the proceeds of the sale of goblin-gear, the carts and horses and supplies which the Company had taken possession of after their ambush and pursuit of the hobgoblins and their prize. The hamlet itself could hardly support the purchase; only the presence of several traveling merchants--the term itself exaggerated their standing--allowed for enough ready cash to cover the sale, which brought each member of the Company a solid hundred gold apiece: an agreeable bonus for the seasoned traveller, a fantastic sum for the bemused residents, who would be talking about the transaction for many years to come.

The goblin-box, however…made for a difficult decision: evidently an item of some importance, and the Company had no clear understanding of what should be done with it. The greenish wooden box, cut with runes that spelled out a phrase in the ancient dragons'-tongue, was evidently prized by the long-defeated orcs and already sought after by at least one wizard with uncertain motives. Despite the heavy weight of welcome gold, that morning the question of the goblin-box weighed all the heavier.

The Company quickly agreed that at the very least, they needed to learn more about Harprin, the wizard who had hired them to "recapture" the goblin-box, although the Company had come to suspect the legitimacy of his claim. Questioning the young half-elf at the hamlet's only "magic shoppe"--barely a countertop and a few rickety shelves--revealed that Harpin was unheard of here, and so the Company set out for a slightly larger town, in hopes of belatedly learning more about the wizard who had promised so much and shared so little with them.

Taverns, Temples, and Tithes

The Company set out on horseback, but not all of them; the gnome Blixi and the horseman Cain departed on their own private errands, with little comment as to where they were headed or when they might return. The remaining four took to the road: Lucian the devoted servant of Sarenrae; Tailor, the lizard-riding halfling; Bazhar the dwarven champion of justice; and Wirrapemioc, the tattooed and wild-haired weaver of tales.

Another two days on the road found them reaching a slightly larger town by evening-fall: Elm Creek, a wide huddle of shops and stalls and homes, with several modest shrines and a temple to Sarenrae. After two days on the king's-road, Tailor's first priority was a tavern, where he wanted a good meal and sturdy ale. Wirrapemioc joined him, with more of an interest in chatting with the locals and listening to their concerns--which included a worrying trickle of disappearing livestock.

For his part, Lucian chose to visit the temple of his patroness, with Bazhar in tow. Lucian offered to make a donation, and when he and Bazhar were shown into the chambers of the high priestess, Lucian offered a tithe of one thousand gold pieces.

The high priestess was understandably floored. Once she had recovered herself, Lucian allowed as how he might be interested in some information, if she would be willing to help.

She was very willing. Unfortunately she had never heard of Harprin, but she thought the town's local spellcaster--a man who made it clear he knew all manner of things--might be able to help. Lucian thanked her, and left the high priestess deeply impressed.

Back at the tavern, Tailor sized up his returning companions. "You don't have the look of someone who's found anything terribly useful," he commented to Lucian, who for the moment had to agree--but the morning promised more.

Thandar the Mighty and Wise

The following morning, after Tailor brought his monitor lizard back into town, the four travelers went in search of Thandar, the proprietor of what until recently had been Elm Creek's only magic shoppe.

As the dwarf, the two halflings and the priest entered the maze of shelves, Bazhar made the greetings: "We hear that you are the great Thandar, and your knowledge is vast."

"Why, yes I am," Thandar replied, "and yes it is."

Whether or not his knowledge was vast, his humility was certainly as thin as spider-thread; but once the four travelers asked him about the wizard Harprin, it became clear that Thandar knew more than anyone else they had met so far. Harprin was evidently known to the arcane community--but more as a figure from history than current times.

According to Thandar, who seemed quite happy to talk, Harprin had been a half-elven wizard who vanished some fifty years ago, having already parted ways from the company of adventurers he had once helped to found. Thandar allowed as how he might be able to tell us more, but it would require some research, and perhaps we might return tomorrow?

Feeling a certain urgency, Tailor made it plain that faster would be better. Thandar invited the four travelers to return by mid-afternoon, and they separated for the nonce. Wirrapemioc wandered the town, chatting and listening, and learning among other things that Thandar was generally held to be an insufferable blowhard, but dependable nonetheless--at least by town standards, which meant that his potions generally seemed to work.

Whatever his arcane skills, Thandar was clearly a resourceful researcher; by the time the travelers returned to his shop, he had much more to tell them about the long-lost wizard Harprin. "He was a great adventurer in his day," Thandar pronounced, and it seemed Harprin had formed a capable group in the elven-realm to the north: man and halfling, elf and half-elf they were, representing skill at arms as well as both divine and arcane magic. But Harprin became "power-centric," according to Thandar, and parted ways with his companions to pursue old myths and rumored sources of power. Some ten years after, he disappeared completely--and only now, fifty years later, had his name resurfaced again.

Consulting Higher Powers

Thanking Thandar--who charged a surprisingly modest fee for his research--the four travelers conferred outside. Tailor allowed that Harprin might well be power-hungry, but perhaps he might still be doing some greater good in the world. Not all of the Company shared this view, and it was decided to ask the local high priestess of Sarenrae for a detailed consultation.

As it happened, she was immediately available; and she granted some leeway on the matter of the giant monitor lizard, whom Tailor insisted on bringing into the temple with him--because if he left it alone outside, "It gets bored, and it eats someone, and then I'm the bad guy."

Once the four travelers (plus giant lizard) were alone with the high priestess, Lucian explained what they knew of Harprin and the goblin-box, and asked the priestess for her help in determining the box's provenance. She was agreeable, but after a divination or two could only say that it bore some connection with dragons.

By now several of the company were champing at the bit to open the goblin-box, no matter how unwise this seemed to certain others. The high priestess suggested a locksmith who would be competent and discreet--but as for the necessary arcane specialist, Thandar was ruled right out.

All this time Wirrapemioc had been increasingly uneasy, and now he asked the high priestess if she might commune with Sarenrae--not as to how the goblin-box should be opened, but whether it should be opened at all. Again perfectly willing, she encouraged the travelers to return the following morning.

With the rest of the day still before them, the Company paid a visit to the town's newest (and second ever) magic shoppe, having recently opened to Thandar's annoyance. Tailor, with his monitor lizard still beside him and apparently on fire to open the goblin-box, showed it to the young proprietor and explained the particulars: that it required a passphrase to open in conjunction with a light touch on the mechanical lock. This was rather beyond the young proprietor's talents, and Wirrapemioc continued to counsel patience and a cautious approach to the issue of tampering with unknown ancient magic derived from dragons. Tailor, for his part, was more concerned with the passing of days and the impatience of wizards, especially mysterious power-hungry wizards who reappear after long absences.

That evening the tavern's hubbub included a new topic: not only the missing livestock from nearby farming communities, but also a mention of the sudden absence of beggars and street-folk in a more distant city. "Taking what's available," Tailor mused aloud; but the folk of Elm Creek were hardly interested in the lost dregs of urban life--their concern was the steady trickle of their own animals disappearing, their own livelihoods eroding away.

And thus the Company ended their second evening in Elm Creek, and looked forward to answers on the morrow.

Temples and Tumblers

The high priestess had good news that morning, at least to the ears of certain travelers: there was nothing inherently dangerous in the goblin-box…but it could lead to something more powerful, although whether the contents were a physical or metaphysical key had not been clarified.

Tailor had no interest in philosophical hairsplitting; he immediately led the way to the locksmith the priestess had recommended--to find that the man was out for the day, with only the apprentice locksmith left behind to watch the shop. "Any locksmith in a storm" was the general (but not universal) sentiment, and the hapless prentice found himself bustled off to the temple of Sarenrae.

The high priestess, accommodating as always, provided the Company with a spare chamber for the operation--although only Tailor and the prentice were actually in the room, all others at various distances in the corridor beyond. In theory it was simple: Tailor would use his smooth tongue to convince the goblin-box of the correct passphrase, while the prentice tickled the tumblers of the mechanical lock.

Outside in the corridor, there was a tense waiting silence; Tailor's voice murmuring, and the tiny snick-click of a latch--and a sharp ping, and a sudden, "Oh, f--"

A heavy concussion rocked echoes throughout the temple. Lucian and the others rushed in to find Tailor injured and the prentice locksmith barely alive. Lucian tended the prentice first--by some amazing quirk of luck, he had survived the full impact of the arcane blast--and then Tailor, stunned and bloodied but alive.

Inside the open box, resting peacefully in quiet grandeur, was a single heavy dragon-tooth, with a Draconic rune inscribed on its broad flank.

Wirrapemioc was able to determine the tooth had come from a gold dragon--the patterns of wear on the upper carnassials were always diagnostic--but he could learn little else. It might be a key to something, but what? Evidently a greater source of power; but all Wirrapemioc could say for certain was that this touched on ancient lore, such dragons not having been seen for centuries. The tooth itself might have been a hundred years old, or a thousand, or ten thousand: no bones were as strong as teeth, and there were no teeth as strong as dragon-fangs.

As the travelers considered this, Wirrapemioc gave the locksmith's apprentice ten gold pieces--half a year's pay--for the young man's assistance, as well as his exceptional discretion.

A Moral Quandary with Bite

By this point it was clear to all involved that the Company was no longer working for Harprin. "I get that we said we'd bring it back to him, and that's all well and good," Tailor allowed--but he also voiced the Company's general feeling that they had been misled.

Thandar could hardly be relied upon, and the decision was quickly made to strike out for Riverdell, a coastal city two days' further travel to the northwest, which offered the best prospects for in-depth research. Tailor wanted to investigate the dragon-tooth, while Wirrapemioc felt certain that looking into the other members of Harprin's old adventuring group might provide new leads.

And so the Company set out in some haste, riding their horses in shifts and traveling through the night, in order to reach Riverdell in a day and a half. Again Tailor's monitor lizard posed a challenge: unlike Elm Creek, a small town with no practical methods for lizard-containment, Riverdell was a sprawling port city with caravansaries on its inland flanks, wharves and quays along the ocean to the west, and an organized system of professional gendarmes everywhere in between. Monitor lizards, and especially giant monitor lizards with a history of humanoid consumption, would very likely be unwelcome.

As it happened, Wirrapemoic was able to provide a temporary solution: a bit of questioning found a druid-grove to the north of the city. While the druidess herself was absent, Wirrapemioc bespoke the wolf that remained, and the monitor lizard was put up for the night--with a warning from Wirrapemioc to mind its manners with the wolf.

Tailor's next priority was a good rich meal, which the four travelers found at one of the better inns near the caravansary quarter, a two-story affair with a popular dining floor and a maze of private rooms on the level above. As was his wont, Wirrapemioc circulated among the patrons, enjoying their various accents and asking about figures of local legend. He heard a great deal about various feats of monster-slaying (indeed, half the feat was even finding monsters in these settled lands) but nothing even hinting of Harprin's old comrades, whose reputation had evidently not reached this far south from the elven-realms.

For his part, once he finished his solid dinner, Tailor asked about the missing beggars, which he discovered was barely noticed here; most of the cityfolk seemed to think fewer beggars was an automatic positive, and no one seemed too concerned about what might have happened to them.

The next day promised to be a busy one, pursuing research both mundane and magical; and with bellies full of heavy food, and exhausted from the past two days of hard travel, the four travelers retired to an upstairs room and quickly fell hard asleep.

On the Prowl in the Dark of Night

Sometime deep in the night, both Bazhar and Wirrapemioc woke briefly. The halfling sank back into his luxurious pillow; the dwarf noticed a slim dart embedded in one massive forearm. "That seems kind of suspicious," he mumbled, and looked over to see a drow standing close by in the darkness, with a very familiar box tucked under one arm.

There was an instant of mutual surprise as darkvision met darkvision, and then the drow sprang for the room's one window, vanishing like a breath of darkest fog.

"****-A-DOODLE-DOO!!" yelled the dwarf at the top of his lungs, and leaped blindly out of the window.

A great deal of confusion followed. Wirrapemioc had just enough time to see the dwarf's silhouette fall past the wreckage of the window-frame, and then a hint of motion as Tailor leaped out afterward. Lucian was groggily half-awake; and when Wirrapemioc looked for his fox-companion, who had been curled in the corner, he saw only a still and silent shape.

Only much later, after several unfortunate interludes, did Wirrapemioc learn that the dwarf had leaped from the window directly onto the drow below, knocking him to the ground on the front steps of the inn. Tailor then promptly fell on the dwarf.

The drow, meanwhile, scrabbled to grab the goblin-box, which had been knocked away from him by way of falling dwarf. As the drow scooped up the box, Tailor cast a light-charm on his copperhead snake, to see a shadowy figure pelting down the darkened street with a dwarf in churning pursuit--and a second shadowy figure coming behind. As Bazhar was hit by another dart, which he again ignored, Tailor gauged the distance and cast a glitter-charm well down the street, covering the first drow as it fled with the goblin-box and its precious contents.

Somewhere in the shadows, a third drow joined the pursuit, leaping easily from trellis to scaffold and thence to the rooftops above.

By this point Wirrapemioc had managed to bring Lucian fully awake; the young priest grabbed his scimitar and quite sensibly ran for the stairs. For his part, Wirrapemioc leapt into owl-form and winged silently through the gaping window-frame, into the darkness beyond. Below him stood Tailor, in the circle of light shed by his glowing snake; running much further ahead was a sparkling golden shape, closely pursued by Bazhar and trailed by another dark form behind. Wirrapemioc drove himself through the air, fiercely intent on overtaking the fleeing figures ahead.

Another indistinct period of confusion followed, during which Bazhar overtook the gold-glittering drow and struck him hard, staggering but not felling him. At some point another dart found Bazhar from above, to no more effect than the others. The glittering drow took a sharp corner onto another street, while the one following the dwarf threw a smokebomb to little effect.

Flaring slightly to avoid the billowing cloud, Wirrapemioc had just banked hard onto the cross-street when a sharp sting brought sudden cold to his wings, and in a brief sickening moment he faltered, tumbled, and fell senseless from the utterblack sky.

Sacked Out

Much later, Wirrapemioc came thickly, slowly awake, pressed between layers of some foul-smelling fabric. Voices came to him from beyond the heavy, half-suffocating folds--familiar voices, together with others he couldn't recognize. Tailor was talking quickly, almost excitably, with the smooth cadence of a story in progress. There was something urgent about a horse.

Not moving, feeling slightly ill, Wirrapemioc listened to Tailor's silver-tongued explanations, which danced lightly among half-truths and glitterdust drow, flaming cinders and that maddening horse. Through his strangely foggy thoughts, the broadest outlines of what had happened began to take shape, although it took him much longer to piece together the details, and even then a great deal remained unclear.

Much too intent on reaching the gold-glittering drow on the street below, Wirrapemioc had failed to notice the drow keeping pace along the rooftops to one side. The dart had struck home, the orchid-extract had done its work, and Wirrapemioc would have broken half his owl-bones on the hard street below if he hadn't, by some absurd chance, fallen almost directly on top of the dwarf, who managed to catch the owl and plunge it into some sack he had on his person. The owl secure, Bazhar continued hitting the glittering drow, badly weakened but somehow still upright.

At roughly this time, give or take a falling owl, Lucian came pelting down the stairs and out the inn's front door, far behind the others. He passed Tailor, who managed to cast Delay Poison on the priest as he ran by, and then the halfling set off at a run after him. By the time Tailor reached the billowing remnants of the smokebomb at the first corner, Lucian had already sprinted ahead--and now the pitch-dark streets flared with a shuddering reddish light as the young priest flung a javelin of fire at the drow at Bazhar's back.

Meanwhile a melee had developed between Bazhar and the glittering drow, who had dropped the precious box to fend off the dwarf. Lucian sent another flaming javelin at the second drow, crying out "Surrender now!" just as another smokebomb billowed out.

Then Tailor, who had just arrived, showered the darkened street with another glittering cloud, which had the unfortunate effect of immediately blinding both Lucian and the dwarf. The glitter-cloud swirled, fire-lit from within by another flaming javelin; cries rang out, and galloping hooves were heard.

A sudden gristly snapping-crunch and a drow fell lifeless, ended by a flailing blow from Bazhar; somehow the dwarf managed to grapple the second drow, who now had possession of the troublesome wooden box. Bazhar hauled the drow around by its waist as yet another drow rode down on a strong horse from the far end of the street--only to receive a faceful of golden-glitter from Tailor, blinding the dark rider but not his steed.

And so the blinded drow on horseback bent low, grabbing wildly at the blinded drow now caught about the waist, who in turn was reaching out with the box in desperate hopes of transferring it to the rider. This, at least, was the most of what could be understood afterward.

"Where are they?" Lucian called out desperately. "I can't see!"

"They're over here!" came Bazhar's voice, thick with struggle.

"Are you badly hurt?"

"No!"

A sudden howling blast of flame filled all the street, blowing at walls and windows on either side and roiling high above; the hot gleam of its birth gave a smoky-reddish tinge to the low underbelly of the smothering clouds.

In the singed aftermath of the fireball, Bazhar somehow reached up and grabbed the mounted drow off his horse, which galloped riderless away--bearing the precious box in its saddlebags: the grappled drow had somehow stashed it there. In the confusion that followed the fiery blast, this critical detail was overlooked for several moments--and even as flecks of flaming ash sifted down through the swirling glitter and residual smoke, three city guards pounded up to the mouth of the street, loudly shouting for a halt.

"They stole our property!" Bazhar yelled into the night, and with a single punch he promptly killed the drow he had pulled from the saddle.

As the guards observed this with intense suspicion, the single surviving drow dropped to his knees and begged for mercy. Tailor, desperate not to lose the glittering horse, tried and failed to slip past the guards. "Stop that horse--it has our box!"

No action was taken on the matter of the now-distant horse. Instead, as the glitter began to fade and residual flames wavered down to embers in the charred alleyway, the guards tied up the last remaining drow and conducted the travelers down several streets to a watch-house, where Tailor lost no time presenting his version of the facts.

As Wirrapemioc stirred to groggy awareness inside the sack, Tailor was explaining the box, the dragon's-tooth, the assault and theft by the drow. "Fortunately my compatriots are very capable individuals," he told them, and brought his story up to the point where the gold-glittering horse galloped into the darkness with the stolen property in its saddlebag.

Perhaps owing to the halfling's fluid narrative, the guards of the night watch were mildly sympathetic--or perhaps they appreciated the dash of excitement at three hours past midnight. After promising to search for the horse, the night watch allowed the travelers to leave, and they made their tired and crestfallen way back to their inn.

Too Far Ahead

Not willing to wait, Wirrapemioc took to the air, searching the city streets from above for what should have been, given any luck, the telltale gleam of a gold-dusted horse wandering through the darkened avenues. But it was not to be. An hour later, Wirrapemioc returned to the inn and to his halfling-form, exhausted and dispirited.

His companions, it seemed, had changed to another room; and the small fox had been somewhat revived, suffering from the drow-poison that had brought down Wirrapemioc and had no effect on the dwarf whatsoever.

No one was in the mood for sleep. The dragon's-tooth was lost, and there were too many interested parties prowling about to let another minute slide by. Now in fox-form, Wirrapemioc returned to the streets--together with Tailor, whose copperhead tasted the air for the horse's scent. Wirrapemioc found traces of many horses, but only one which bore drow-scent as well, and they followed its route through the maze of streets, far out to the shanties and tumbleshacks on the fraying fringes of the city's edge.

And there they found the horse, glittering no longer, tiredly standing at a water-trough after its long and harrowing run.

The saddlebag was empty.

At this, Wirrapemioc was at a loss; but Tailor bespoke the horse with his own arts, and at his urging the horse began to follow the scent of whoever had taken the goblin-box. On this new trail, the companions followed the horse away from the ramshackle huts clustered along the shoreline, further inland and through gently rising forested paths, until the horse led them into the eaves of a long-abandoned barn.

There they caught the scent of yet another drow, on another horse, leading inland; but now the dim grey dawn was slowly seen beneath the lowering clouds, and the companions knew they could not follow a fresh-mounted rider for long. With renewed regret they turned back to the city, sharply aware that with every step they took, their quarry covered great galloping strides in the opposite direction.

Quality Time in the Morgue

Returning through the city streets, now dim with a threatening gloom, they gathered their other companions and retraced their steps to the watch-house. Tailor bespelled the first guardsman he came across, and asked for "alone time" with the two dead drow. The changing of the watch between night and morning gave the companions the opportunity to enter unremarked--save for the entranced guardsman, sent happily on his way--and Lucian, who had prepared for this possibility, put two questions to the spirit of the horse's rider: Where were they planning to take the goblin-box, and why had they taken it?

"To the eastern orc-clan," came the gutteral croak, and, "We were paid a lot of money."

This latter answer in particular was a disappointment, owing to misinterpreted phrasing, and clearly the spell needed to be cast again--but the body could not be questioned further for another week at least.

There was, however, a second body.

After a certain degree of discussion, the second drow corpse was unceremoniously manhandled into a bag of holding--the drow had been rather slender, after all--and the four travelers made their innocent way out of the watch-house. Unfortunately Tailor, unwilling to trust in simple discretion, boldly asked one of the other guards why there was only one drow body in the morgue? The conversation quickly devolved into an argument--"Hey, I'm a halfling, how could I take an entire drow body?"--and Tailor had to be hustled away from the increasingly suspicious guards, who were beginning to wonder why we had been in the morgue at all, and why their friend from the night shift was smiling vaguely in the corner.

Contract of Carriage

The sudden tension with the guards only heightened the need to be away from Riverdell, as clear and fast as possible. At the caravansary, the travelers found themselves in need of a map, and information--specifically, the current location of the eastern orc clan. As it happened, there were traders who could point the travelers in the right direction: two weeks' travel to the northeast, in the ancient dwarven realm.

While his companions stayed to negotiate the purchase of a carriage and team, Wirrapemioc went ahead to the druid's-grove on the northern outskirts of the city, only to find the druidess still away. In the secret druid-tongue he wrote her a request, for names and contacts of whatever members of their brotherhood might lie ahead, on the road he and his companions planned to take; he asked her to send whatever names she could to a settlement a week's travel ahead.

By midmorning the clouds had opened up, and any remaining scent-trail was lost in a thundering deluge. The first storm of autumn was no respite for the druid's thoughts; he was heart-sick at the loss of the dragon's-tooth, and exhausted from a night of no sleep, save for the unnatural slumber enforced by drow-poison. As the carriage rumbled, swayed and splashed across muddy trails to the northeast, Wirrapemioc slept thickly and long.

The following morning dawned sharp and clear, and the questions were put to the second drow body: Who wanted the tooth? And what was the name of the clan the drow were contracted to take it to?

"Ragen," came the reply, and, "The eastern clan," evidently all the name the drow knew. The body was replaced for future consultation.

In the Mists at Evening-Time

All that day, and the following and the third, the skies were bright and the carriage stayed in motion: Wirrapemioc flying above in hawk-form while Tailor drove in daylight, with Lucian and night-eyed Bazhar driving after sundown. The fourth day saw another long downpour, which continued unabated by nightfall as the carriage drew into a compact hamlet. A small caravan had been taken, the travelers learned, its team vanished a day ago; and on that news, the travelers turned in beneath the drumming rain.

The morning was misty-grey, and so the day remained as the travelers pursued the road; and by evening they found themselves following a country lane to a small village, where the travelers hoped for steady, unjouncing beds for a second night.

Beds there may have been, but none to offer them: none at all to be found in that village, though food could be seen beneath flies on tables and hearths, untouched by whatever had left those broad sprays of darkening red. As the travelers moved cautiously among the cottages, they found clear signs of bodies having been pulled away through mud and trampled undergrowth--but none remained to tell them more.

Then Wirrapemioc bespoke the birds nearby, and they told him they had seen people of unknown kind moving through the forest, but somehow not people: man-shaped, the birds thought, but with a grayish hue, moving slowly out of the west, and later dragging heavy burdens into the forest to the west again.

With a queasy certainty, Wirrapemioc knew what had befallen the village; and Lucian, sending forth his awareness, felt echoes of a powerful evil in the same direction the forest-birds had told.

A change came over Lucian then--he stood the straighter, spoke the firmer, and told his three companions that it was his highest calling to pursue and strike down this manner of evil. "This is something I have to do," he told them in a quiet but unyielding tone; "and if I must, I will go alone."

Lucian was, in fact, ready to set out into the western forest at that very moment, even as evening-gloom drew heavily down through the lingering mists; but Wirrapemioc, while sharing his friend's hatred of those abominations, counseled patience and preparation, the night to rest and regain both strength and magic. Afire with a zeal for the purge, Lucian nonetheless listened well, and reluctantly conceded the point.

And so they settled into the empty village for the descending night, and made ready to wield flame and magic upon the morrow.



Player Notes

So, we finally managed to get together for our second session, and it was a busy one. We covered a lot of ground in this session, going from hick towns to The Big City and then striking far out across the continent.

As a party, we still have a ways to go in terms of strategy and coordination. And whether our DM was planning this or we simply got sloppy, we allowed ourselves to be snookered into a sense of safety in the big city, and didn't set a watch in our room at the inn--apart from the fox and the snake, and they were watching the door, not the window. We're fifth-level characters, and presumably we've been around the block a few times, but we managed to let the window issue get right by us. I put it down to all that rich city food.

As for the action later that night, it's never a great feeling when your character is knocked out of a fight before it begins--and all the more so when it was owing to plain stupidity. When Wirrapemioc flew out of the broken window after the drow, I had visions of another long chase, this time winding through the streets and alleys of a stormdark city. Unfortunately, I was much too intent on chasing the drow-dwarf-drow assembly to pay attention to my surroundings, and I paid the price. The DM handled it fairly; the drow on the rooftops made his attack roll with the dart, and I completely blew my Fort save. Sensibly or not, I spent the rest of the encounter kicking myself--and all the more so once that dragon-tooth slipped away.

We were also a couple guys short this time around; Cain the mounted warrior and Blixi the nutbar gnome were AWOL, and it's not entirely clear how they'll catch up to us, since I don't recall our leaving any messages for them in-game. We don't seem to have anyone capable of casting Sending, so that may be a challenge for the next session.



Also, I appreciate the feedback I've received on the journal so far--by all means, more is welcome!

:smallsmile:

Palanan
2014-08-13, 10:46 PM
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Session III: Where the Bodies Led



Dawn and Afterward

Came the dawn, and the four who remained braced themselves for the task ahead.

The mists of the prior evening had muted, if not softened, the streaks and fans of drying red across wooden posts and wattle walls; now the rising light of a clear morning showed them in crisper, darker detail. From the gouged earth and broken foliage, it was clear someone--many someones--had been dragged bodily away, by things which were man-shaped and yet no longer men.

Lucian had been determined, the prior evening, to follow the obvious trail wherever it might lead, to pursue that unwholesome echo he had sensed far to the west. It had taken some effort to convince him not to go striding straight off into the evening gloom, heedless of the falling night; now he woke early, communing with Sarenrae and opening himself to her fiery power, while Wirrapemioc followed his own morning-rites and the dwarf contemplated his armored fists.

As the first cicadas began their morning whine, the four travelers set out from the unnamed village, Wirrapemioc reluctantly leaving his small fox behind. The evidence of struggle and passage led to the west--first through the small plots and fields the freeholders had tended, and then into the low forest beyond, the trail becoming less obvious as it passed over deep leaves and rocky patches. Whatever had made the trail had no use for the winding cottagers' paths that occasionally snaked through the forest, nor the fox-runs and deer-traces which only the accustomed eye would notice; whatever had made this trail obeyed a pull which drew it over hills, through marshy seeps and across rocky streams, without regard for rest nor ease of passage.

The four travelers were sparing of rest themselves, though Lucian grudgingly admitted a pause after midday, for a brief bite and foot's-ease before leading them off again, ever following the hints and traces that led almost directly west. He knew--they all knew--that the un-men were not acting of their own accord, that somewhere a master commanded and waited their return: and it was this master that Lucian was determined to end.

The trail led on, sometimes requiring Wirrapemioc's sharp eye to follow it across lichen-sheathed boulders, sometimes blatant in the crushed reeds and churned mud of a streamside crossing; and at mid-afternoon, the four travelers reached the wooded summit of a broad shallow hill, and a crisp breeze blew ocean-scent across the grassy meadow that opened up before them, sweeping down to a low line of dunes and the faint salt-haze of surf beyond.

At the far edge of the meadow, where it nestled into the lee of the dunes, an old stone fort hunched beneath the sand-crest, and the four travelers could just glimpse manlike things standing guard on the battlements.

The Plains of the Fallen

And so the Company reached the coast of the Western Ocean, much sooner than they had thought possible, and come to the place known as the Plains of the Fallen. Here a desperate battle had been fought near the end of the Right War, centuries ago, when one of the last remaining orc-lords was driven to that place; and here he had made his final defense, holding a small keep against a far greater army of men and dwarves and elves, until at last their combined force shattered the stout gates, swept over the defenders and destroyed them utterly.

So recalled the dwarf Bazhar, who had read much concerning the Right War--though even he could not recall the name of the keep, nor that of the orc-lord who fell defending it. The small fortress had been occupied by the victorious races of the Pledged, and held in preparation for a counterattack which never came; and then garrisoned for a time thereafter, and at last abandoned in the dawn of a lasting peace.

The sun was already partway down the sky above the ocean, and while the dwarf was eager to pursue the trail to its end, Lucian and Wirrapemioc felt it was only sensible to move by cautious steps. Leaping into osprey-form, Wirrapemioc flew not directly west across the grassy slope, but instead east and north through the hilltop trees, emerging from the maritime forest some ways further along the coast, and then winging his way above the ribbon of sand, by turns hovering and circling, soaring and skimming, all the while moving south and surveying what lay below.

He had expected something foul in the empty stone fort, which he soon found in plenty; what he had not expected was a ship of some sort lying close in to shore, apparently moored to a long dock running from the beach into the surf and shallows. Only a handful of shapes could be seen on the ship's upper deck; it was on the battlements of the small keep that most of the skeletal forms were arrayed, and many in the courtyard below: bones that stood and moved without a trace of life, wearing the ragged remnants of leather coats with blades hanging from their unfleshed hands.

Others kept an empty-eyed watch above the heavy wooden gate, barred shut and facing east; the inner chambers of the keep, on the western flank of the courtyard, were roofed in solid wood. The ship seemed trim and in good order--although in truth, Wirrapemioc knew nothing of seafaring--but its handful of crew were as bare of flesh as the dozens of things that stood watch in the keep across the dunes. Search as he might, bank and wheel as close as he dared, Wirrapemioc saw no sign of any living thing. Even the grasses had withered and frayed in a pitiable fringe around the fort's outer walls.

Wirrapemioc made his way back to the north some distance, before descending into the ridgetop forest and winging fast and low beneath the canopy, speeding south to return to his waiting companions.

Once he had told what he had seen, Bazhar was immediately eager to begin the fight, already planning to draw out the unfleshed guardians from their defenses and face them on the grassy meadow. But Wirrapemioc had his eye on the lowering sun, and was reluctant to give up the solid advantage of stealth without knowing more of what he and his companions might face.

After some discussion, Wirrapemioc elected to return for a closer look--this time with a spell from Lucian which would shield him from unliving sight. Now in the homely shape of a seagull, Wirrapemioc again flew north and east through the cover of trees before gliding out and down the coastline again, eventually coming to rest on the taffrail of the ship's quarterdeck, above the stern where Mariana was painted proudly below the aft cabin windows.

The skeletal things standing slackly on the quarterdeck paid the seagull no attention, not even when it hopped from the taffrail and glided down to the main deck, peering cautiously down a hatchway before gingerly flapping below. Several more unfleshed guardians likewise ignored the seagull, which hopped its way to the aft cabin, evidently long deserted and empty of books or charts. As the wavelets slupped gently at the waterline outside, the seagull peered down another hatchway to the hold below--and saw, with blank puzzlement, that the entire bottom of the ship's hold appeared to be covered in dirt.

Not just dirt scattered thinly across the oaken planks, but heavy, deep earth.

With a sudden chill of understanding, Wirrapemioc launched himself up from belowdecks and through the hatchway, into the open air and away from that vile and unwholesome ship. He wanted nothing more than to find a cool waterfall and wash his feathers clean; but instead he flew beside the empty dock, over the spreading beach and the rumpled dunes beyond, down to the backdune crest where he could examine the western wall of the old stone fort: solid and bare, no entry to be seen.

A quick hop and glide onto the fort's inner keep showed the roof was sturdy wood, tight-fitted and hardly weathered--not at all the roof of a dilapidated fort abandoned three centuries past.

Wirrapemioc cast an eye at his own shadow, now stretching far ahead of him. How long had passed since Lucian cast the masking-spell? How much time did he have left?

Tense and ruffled, the seagull flapped up from the wooden roof and down to the open parapets, where things of flesh-crusted bone gripped longbows of recent make. None of them batted an eye socket at him. Feeling slightly bolder, he glided down to the courtyard, waddling carefully among the aimless guardians towards the inner keep--where tall iron grilles blocked the two separate entryways. Nosing his beak between two bars, he could see the withered wreck of a once-man pacing with a fluid energy, despite its leathery cladding, and beyond the thing a heavy dark curtain blocking another passage.

He was out of time: surely the spell was nearly spent. Wirrapemioc took to the air from the courtyard, winging along the dunes to the north for a mile and more, letting the wind whip the odor of that place from his feathers; and then the now-familiar turn inland, south through the trees, and back to where his companions had been waiting with various degrees of patience.

Wirrapemioc's first words struck a cold chill in Lucian's heart, answered immediately by calm resolve. A vampire--a fearsome but not invulnerable foe. The young priest was buoyed by faith and confidence; but for his part, Wirrapemioc hadn't moved past that first cold chill.

But how to proceed? A long, sometimes heated discussion ensued, as the westering sun settled lower through the evening sky. Wirrapemioc felt the need to return in a different shape the following morning, to penetrate where a seagull could not. Bazhar was eagerly considering the possibility of punching a hole through the outer fort walls, although how this tied into broader strategy was unclear. There was much and much discussion concerning the ship--whether it should be quietly sunk or blatantly set ablaze, or perhaps unmoored and allowed to drift off with the tide.

Eventually the outlines of a plan were agreed to: Wirrapemioc would return to the fort in snake-form the following morning, to penetrate the inner keep and learn what waited within; from there he would move down to the ship, which he would sabotage in whatever way seemed most appropriate. His companions, meanwhile, would be waiting nearby, all of them shielded by the masking-spell.

With this at least tentatively agreed, and with the sun sinking ever lower, the four companions withdrew at their best speed to the south-southwest, making a quiet and fireless camp several miles from the unhallowed fort.

Even at that distance, echoing screams reached them sporadically throughout that long night.

The Snake and the Keep

They woke at dawn, having kept a staggered watch throughout the night. Lucian had spent the dark hours in tense frustration, torn at allowing innocents to suffer while he waited miles away for the safety and comfort of dawn. He would not, he resolved, spend another night listening to their distant torment.

Once the sun had risen fully, the four travelers retraced their path to the crest of that hill beneath the forest-eaves; the old stone fort seemed much as it had before. Lucan cast the masking-spell upon them all, and in snake-form Wirrapemioc moved quickly through the grasses, down the shallow slope towards the low battlements, while his three companions set off down that same slope to the southwest, planning to hold themselves at the ready just outside the south wall.

The heavy wooden gates loomed high above Wirrapemioc, a redoubtable defense that would hold off a field of mounted warriors; but Wirrapemioc found a notch betwixt the gate and the earth, and slithered his way into the courtyard, carefully winding among the skeletal things to pause and listen at one of the iron grilles to the inner keep. A strange low voice came to him through the unmoving black curtain.

Taking a long breath, Wirrapemioc slid through the bars of the grille into the first corridor of the inner keep--so far unnoticed by the leathery man-relic pacing nearby--and slithered up to the black curtain. From beneath its folds came an incoherent muttering, and the sounds of something sloppy and wet.

Slowly, with a tremulous caution, Wirrapemioc slid his head beneath the curtain.

Two of the leathery man-wrecks were hunched low to the stone floor, barely visible in the near-complete darkness; their heads dipped and tore at a partial corpse lying between them.

That was enough: Wirrapemioc withdrew, and eeled his way along the ancient stone pavings to another curtain not far away. It shielded the light from another chamber, one dominated by two long, angular forms which seemed, from Wirrapemioc's low perspective, to be the size and shape of caskets. Nearby he sensed the warmth of bodies larger than his, and his flicking tongue tasted the scent of blood and sweat and fear, stale earth-scent and fouled clothing, and he heard the mind-lost murmurings as the patterns of heat shifted back and forth, back and forth, the two men rocking in some halfway state, three women beyond them against the far wall.

Past them, in a third open chamber, rested a shape which Wirrapemioc took to be a carriage of some sort, with two half-fleshed horses standing at the ready. Swallowing his disgust, Wirrapemioc carefully wound his way up the spokes of one wheel, and nosed past the black canvas covering the window.

Earth, spread thickly within.

Distancing himself from the carriage, its contents and especially its team, Wirrapemioc made his way up the narrow stairs behind the carriage, on what he took to be the inside of the southern wall. Cautiously he lifted his head into the open dark space spreading out on the upper floor. From the scents he tasted on the stagnant air, and the distracted hubble of numerous voices, he guessed perhaps a dozen more folk were kept here above, guarded by things that stank of decay and yet gave off no heat of their own.

This, it seemed, was the extent of the inner keep--and Wirrapemioc was all too ready to let his serpentine body curl back and spill down the stone stairs, skirting those unliving stallions and escaping to the open air and blessed sunlight of the courtyard beyond, and from there to the battlements above. It was not yet midmorning.

A Moment of Silence...

When Wirrapemioc had first set off, his three companions had taken a wider route to the south, themselves unseen by the skeletal watchers and making a careful survey of the old fort's southern flank. Two small windows high on the wall were the only apertures, each covered in black canvas from within.

They were still studying those windows when a mottled, earth-toned snake wound its way through the withered grass, its tail splitting lengthwise as they watched and drawing upright into all three feet of the halfling's form. Quickly he gave his report--two caskets, dozens of unliving guardians and upwards of twenty men, women and children still alive.

A hasty, muted conference ensued. Clearly the ship lying past the dunes was no longer a priority--but what was?

For Lucian it was hardly a question: the freeholders needed immediate rescue. But how? Sooner or later, the vampires would have to be dealt with--and again the question was, how? The discussion continued, and soon grew as warm as the midmorning sun. As usual, Bazhar favored a direct and strident assault; but fearing for the captives in an all-out fight, Wirrapemioc urged that they should be evacuated first, before the vampires were engaged. Given the dwarf's prodigious strength, he suggested the caskets be kept closed by the simple expedient of placing the carriage (minus horses) on top of them, as a precaution should the vampires emerge.

With this by way of plan, Bazhar climbed to one of the second-story windows, brushing aside the canvas curtain, and made his way down the stone stairs to the carriage with its hideous team--and almost immediately heard the slow, hollow scraping sound of a wooden casket opening.

Outside, his three companions waited and watched by the southern wall. Just inside that wall, hiding behind the carriage, Bazhar heard the second casket open as well, and a silky, serpentine voice hissed, "Brother! Someone is here."

At this, two of the leathery man-relics made their way upstairs, striding directly past the carriage--but the masking-spell held true, and Bazhar remained unseen.

Trusting to the spell, the dwarf risked a glance from behind the carriage--just in time to see one of the vampires looking directly at him.

"Do you hear something?" it asked its sister, who evidently did not.

Quietly as he could, Bazhar carefully untied the harnesses of the half-fleshed horses from the carriage--noting two large cellar-doors set into the floor beneath--and then retreated up the stairs to the second level, where the ghoul-things were searching haphazardly among the half-catatonic captives.

Crouched by one canvas-covered window, the dwarf fumbled for his personal journal, and wrote a hasty note--"vampires awake, request assistance"--and dropped it out into the sunlight.

This was not good news for those waiting below. Tailor, knowing his silver tongue and sparkling talents would be wasted on the unliving, elected to remain outside. For his part, Lucian immediately gripped the rope Bazhar flung down, and made a determined effort to climb; but while the spirit was willing, the flesh was somewhat weak. Bazhar easily hauled him up, and Wirrapemioc nimbly scrambled up the fingerholds in the weathered stone.

Once inside, Lucian briefly conferred with his companions: his first priority was to find the caskets and saturate their vicinity with Sarenrae's sacred energy; only then could the rescue of the captives begin. With only minutes remaining on the masking-spell, the young priest led the way down the stone stairs, the dwarf and the druid close behind.

Lucian strode confidently from the bottom step. "YOU!!" snapped the sister-vampire, and a double blast of white fire exploded into Lucian's chest.

…Before the Action Begins

As the sister-vampire called out for her unliving servants, Bazhar seized the carriage and flung it directly at the brother-vampire--who neatly avoided it. The carriage crashed onto the stone floor between the vampires and their impudent intruders.

While Wirrapemioc began a summoning-spell, Lucian--injured but unfazed by the fiery blast--boldly stepped forward and began the sanctification. "You've fed your last this day!" he warned--and the brother-vampire abruptly pulled away, discomfited by the sudden surge of holy power.

A living wisp of fire appeared, and at Wirrapemioc's command it lunged for the sister-vampire, who adroitly slipped aside. While the halfling darted for cover, Bazhar stepped away from the stone stairs; from above came the sound of heavy feet making their way down, the upper level's guardians making their way below. Pressing his advantage, Lucian ran and leaped the first casket, flinging a brilliant sunray at the brother-vampire, burning it as it retreated past the second casket.

The ghoul-things were already crowding at the base of the stairs; Wirrapemioc hastily cast another spell and set the first one afire, while his fire-wisp made another futile swipe at the sister-vampire, who drenched it with a gout of frost in reply.

Seeing the way of things behind him, Bazhar drove the carriage back against the stone stairs, trapping the ghouls, and then pivoted to send a powerful blow into another ghoul stepping through one of the curtains nearby. From the other curtain, on the other side of the two men still rocking back and forth, came skeletal guardians, responding to their mistress' command.

Still retreating from the holy sting of the priest's sanctification, the brother- and sister-vampire had backed themselves into a corner--exactly where Lucian wanted them. A sudden flash of fire billowed out, searing the vampires and setting one of the caskets ablaze.

While Bazhar traded blows with the first ghoul, itself scorched by Wirrapemioc's fiery glance, Lucian slipped out into the corridor beyond the curtains, stolidly ignoring the bone-claws of the skeletal guardians that raked him as he passed; and at the last curtain he surprised the vampires where they had backed into a final corner, and sent a nimbus of sacred energy pulsing out all around. The skeletal guardians twisted and fell, their unholy sinews crumbling, and the vampires shrieked their pain and rage.

But more of the skeletal guardians were clattering their way in from the courtyard, longswords raised high in decrepit finger-bones; Wirrapemioc's fire-wisp was quenched and gone; the fire-scarred ghoul still matched Bazhar blow for blow; and the carriage against the stairs was rocking and scraping ominously. Another moment, and the carriage would be shoved away, and a stream of unliving guardians would overwhelm the chambers beyond.



Player Notes

This session had to be delayed a couple of times, and we ended up only having three players--the smallest group we've had so far.

Even so, it was probably our best session yet, with some good buildup to the all-out action at the end. We had to suspend the finale because the library was closing, but we're planning to pick up again this weekend--by popular demand, since we're all motivated to finish this fight and/or roll up new characters.

We're still having a difficult time with our tactics; in retrospect, we probably should have either taken out the undead on the upper level first, or somehow blocked the stairs to keep them from coming down. (This is an area of special concern to me, since Wirrapemioc is currently the closest to the stairs.) We're also not that coordinated during a fight--everyone is either pursuing their own objectives or trying to survive the next few seconds.

That said, this session was really Lucian's time to shine. Searing light, fireballs, channeling surges of positive energy--he really brought it this time.

The bad news: he's all out of fireballs, and Wirrapemioc is out of fire elementals. It remains to be seen whether Bazhar is out of carriages.

Palanan
2014-08-19, 07:46 PM
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Session IV: A Vexation of Vampires



Batting .500

As the carriage began to slide away from the stairs, rocking insistently from the efforts of the ghoul-things trapped beyond, the brother-vampire seemed to darken, elongate and snap into a dense flurry of small winged shapes, streaming up and billowing along the stone ceiling, surging over the flaming casket and into the widening gap between the carriage and the wall, vanishing in a long flowing cloud into the narrow stairwell beyond.

Wirrapemioc scrambled up onto the closer casket--the one not currently ablaze--and sent a flaming glare at another ghoul-thing as it tore through a hanging curtain; but to no avail. Across the chamber, he heard the sister-vampire snap out, "Deal with this riffraff!" before she, too, broke into a fluttering mass that chittered over him and streamed down to the carriage and the safety of the stone stairs behind.

With a final jolt the carriage scraped out across the stone floor, enough for the ghoul-things to force their way past, adding to Bazhar's troubles as he threw a blur of punches at the one before him. Lucian, more concerned about the villagers still bound captive above, hurried back down the corridor--again raked by the bone-claws of the skeletal minions--and again flung out a diaphanous pulse of sacred force.

Again the skeletal guardians crumpled, their unsinewed bones clattering amid the falling leathers and longswords; but even as empty skulls rolled freely, more of the unfleshed things crowded in from the courtyard. A leathery man-wreck struck at Lucian, while Wirrapemioc singed another and Bazhar pounded his familiar target--which drew back through the hanging curtain and struck at Lucian as well. As another man-wreck clawed at the dwarf, Lucian somehow slipped nimbly through the grasping finger-claws and towards the carriage, intent on reaching the captives above.

Three more of the ghoul-things clawed at him then, and Lucian sent out another flaring nimbus of holy power; they hissed and shrieked, spasming with whatever inhuman pain the unliving might feel, but they did not fall. As Wirrapemioc spoke low words over a handful of sling-stones, Bazhar leaped for the carriage and slammed it hard against the south wall again, crushing several man-wrecks even as others scrabbled away. With a mad light in its hateful eyes, one of the things sprang for Lucian, wrapping him with withered arms, fetid and strong as cables.

While Bazhar went to Lucian's aid, another ghoul-thing was clawing at Wirrapemioc as he stood atop the undamaged casket. Too late, the halfling realized his mistake; what had seemed an island of safety was now a trap, as more of the skeletal guardians surged into the chamber, a stiff-limbed mass of abomination moving between him and his friends. Surrounded and shaken, his first sling-stone went wild.

The leathery man-wreck clinging to Lucian was suddenly hauled off of him, and Bazhar tossed the young priest against the carriage to keep him out of danger. But the man-wreck flung itself at Lucian and pinned him again; Bazhar pulled it off again, as more of the things flailed at the halfling from over the side of the casket. This did nothing for Wirrapemioc's aim; his second shot was wilder still.

Burning with some insatiable rage, the man-wreck leaped for Lucian and pinned him a third time--and now Wirrapemioc's third shot struck true, and the man-wreck felt the impact of a mighty sling-blow, and once again Bazhar wrenched the thing away from the young priest, though it bit hard as it went.

"Wirra!" Lucian called out, staggering into the chaos of the smoky chamber, the tattered shapes of dead men scraping and reaching through the firelit haze, as the burning casket poured out an unwholesome smoke and sent mad fire-shadows licking at every surface. "Where are you?"

"I'm here!" came the high voice, "--on the casket, I'm cut off!" No sooner had he cried out than he was gouged by one clawing man-wreck, and then seized by another, crushing its long arms tight around him and plunging ochre teeth deep into his flesh. Another desperate sacred pulse from Lucian, and another half-dozen of the skeletal guardians twisted and fell apart, while the ghoul-things shrieked and spasmed--but still they did not fall.

Once Bitten

Gripped hard by the ghoul-thing, unable to reach a knife, Wirrapemioc desperately gripped it back and sent his own pulse of healing energy into the creature's flank. What was a balm to life only burned the unliving; it howled and gibbered, but did not release him, instead biting and gnashing all the harder. As a fiery lance seared through the smoke, and the dwarf bellowed nearby, something wet and cold washed through Wirrapemioc's half-crushed body, and a numb chill lassitude stole all sensation from him.

As a violent clatter echoed in from somewhere in the courtyard beyond, Bazhar wrenched the man-wreck away from the halfling, dropping the small limp form by Lucian's side. Another man-wreck struck at Bazhar--and a thunderous crash sounded from outside, some rampaging creature none of them wished to face. "Grab Wirra!" Lucian shouted at Bazhar, "we're getting out of here!" The young priest sent out yet another pulse of sacred power: and now the man-wrecks seized and fell, along with more of the unfleshed guardians--but yet more were slowly crowding in from the corridor outside.

It was then that Lucian heard, above the scrape of bony feet and the choking roar of the casket-fire, above the rising pandemonium in the unseen courtyard, the sudden terrified screams of men and women echoing down from above.

--Now their screams were closer, and the carriage began to tremble again; and now Lucian understood that the men and women were on the stone stairs behind the wall, deathly afraid of something which had driven them down, fleeing in panic, but unable to move past the carriage jammed against the wall. As a final man-wreck leaped on Wirrapemioc's unresisting form, Bazhar swept the halfling over his shoulder and hauled the carriage away from the wall, striking at the last ghoul-thing as it leaped to the top of the carriage.

Screaming in desperation, men and women began running out from behind the carriage--straight into the corridor crowded with unfleshed guardians. Lucian scrambled to the top of the carriage, trying to warn the escaping captives; they ignored him, and he dropped down again in some hope of corralling them. As skeletal things closed in around him, Bazhar traded blows with the last man-wreck, balancing the limp halfling across one broad shoulder.

Overpowered by a clawing thing of bone, Lucian was pinned and knocked to the ground, frightened men running over both him and the skeletal thing in their pelting escape. Unaware of Lucian's plight, Bazhar was busily trying to pull apart the harness between the carriage and the half-fleshed horse, a task hampered by the dwarf's unfamiliarity with harness fittings. No sooner had he broken something critical than a man-wreck snapped its long arms around him, and another clawed at the halfling stirring weakly on the dwarf's shoulder. As Lucian struggled vainly with his skeletal foe, Wirrapemioc burned another with healing energy and leaped free of the dwarf, just as Bazhar pulled the man-wreck free and slammed it bodily into the other. And still the creatures came.

Auld Acquaintance

The crashing echoes from the courtyard came louder and closer still; the snap of bowstrings and the clatter of arrows came clearly into the smoke-thickened air of the half-smothered chamber. Unliving things continued to stalk through the corridor; the casket continued to burn, and men and women darted and ran where they could. Bazhar was on the verge of being surrounded; Wirrapemioc was weighing desperate options; and Lucian lay prone beneath the flesh-crusted bones of a thing which had him pinned against the ground, helpless and defenseless.

A mad shout and a strange clatter, and something shot through the bare skull only inches from Lucian's eyes, wrenching it bodily up and off him. Still sprawled on the floor of the corridor, surrounded by scattered bones and fleeing villagers, Lucian looked up to see a wondrous, indeed an amazing sight: a broad face backlit by the glow of sunlight from beyond, a face haloed with a soft radiance that might have been some gauzy echo of celestial glory, bold streamers merging with the brilliant sky.

Lucian squinted into the sunlight. The gauzy halo took on a wispy-grey clarity, a cloud of mad white hair above a compact visage lit up by a manic grin. Beneath that grin flowed a scruffy white beard, below which a small body perched astride a dragon-steed, bearing a lance with part of a skull impaled on the blade. It was no less impressive for being upside-down in Lucian's field of view.

"Hi, Blixi," he managed, and pulled himself upright, and was immediately struck by another skeletal thing.

The mad-grinning gnome casually lanced its bare skull into fragments, and although Lucian was confused and off-balance, he knew cavalry when he saw it.

"What are we doing?" came Wirrapemioc's cry from just within.

"We are leaving!!" was Lucian's response, and he led the way into the courtyard and blessed open air, warm clean sunlight and a wide scatter of disarticulated bones across the beaten earth. The heavy wooden gates had somehow been broken inward, as if kicked askew by a bored and angry giant; but Blixi had come alone.

Arrows sang past them; a handful of the skeletal guardians, still making their slow way down from the battlements, had paused to loose at these new targets. An arrow grazed Lucian, who hardly noticed, focused on shepherding what survivors he could out through the broken gates. As Blixi charged down the corridor at targets of opportunity, Bazhar followed the others outside, and Wirrapemioc leaped into falcon-form, driving for altitude and circling to scan the area.

The pitiful remnant of survivors stood in a dazed group outside the broken gates, staring listlessly at the grassy sand-meadow and the forested ridge beyond. Whatever panicked energy had driven them this far had now deserted them. As Blixi continued running down the skeletal things in the corridor, Wirrapemioc flew over the battlements to where Tailor was still waiting by the outer wall; the falcon cut a sharp circle around the watchful halfling, twice, and then winged east to the open space of the sandy meadow.

Lucian found the surviving villagers exhausted and quietly terrified, with an abundance of cuts and gouges and raw rope-burns, and nearly all of them with telltale twin wounds on their shoulders or necks. Walking into their midst, Lucian sent out a final pulse of sacred energy, knitting their wounds and restoring what little vitality he could.

Inside the keep, Blixi finally paused from his eager pandemonium to notice that his erstwhile companions were nowhere in sight. He spurred his dragon-steed into the courtyard and out the ruined gates (ahh, memories) and found Lucian speaking with the survivors--humans, Blixi noted without much interest--as the dwarf stood by and the silver-tongued halfling trotted up, panting and unsure of what had been going on.

Despite the sudden healing--one more shock, after so many others--the few survivors, less than a dozen, fearfully insisted that Lucian and his companions escort them back to Greyson, their hamlet and only home. An older man claiming to be sheriff spoke for them; and Lucian, suddenly exhausted and torn by upwelling guilt, could not but agree.

A Regal Visitor

It was a long, morose walk from the seaside forest, retracing the outbound trail, the villagers moving in tired silence and Lucian striding ahead, lost in grim self-reproach. He had been overconfident in his boast; the vampires had escaped, and most surely would feed again. Many of their foul unliving servants had been destroyed--but many more survived; and worst of all, many innocents had died, caught in the melee or left behind in the general flight. That morning he had woken to a pure certainty of purpose; but as late morning drew on to early afternoon, and then to a fading evening, Lucian's spirits plunged ever lower at what he viewed as near-total failure.

This he shared with Wirrapemioc, who had abandoned falcon-form to walk beside him. Despite Bazhar's attempts to claim a victory for justice in the abstract--vampires driven off, many villagers rescued--Wirrapemioc was disconsolate at their failure to destroy the unliving masters of the keep.

Dusk drew in thickly by the time the weary procession reached the few cottages of Greyson--although the gathering darkness was a blessing in a small way, for it spared the survivors the sight of the darkened blood still spread in crusted sheets across their homes. Lucian immediately called the survivors together, making what arrangements he could for their defense--a ring of torches, a watch to be set. The sheriff, if he truly owned that title, was happy to let Lucian take the lead; and for their part the surviving freeholders had many tired words of gratitude for the young priest, though he hardly felt worthy to accept them.

Still unwearied and gifted with night-seeing, Bazhar gladly took the first watch, followed by Blixi, who had been pleased by the day's work so far--a successful job of tracking his comrades, an excellent fracas in the courtyard and a thundering great time lancing dead things up and down the corridor. He wasn't entirely sure why Lucian was so long in the face--in fact, he had no idea, and didn't really care; Blixi had long ago given up on actually talking to humans, with their tedious soppy emotions and their generally lumpish ways.

Blixi was happily reminiscing about one of the creatures he had speared--like a man wrapped tight in sun-burned leather, which sprayed an entertaining gout of something grayish when his lance cut through--when his dragon-steed snorted and snuffled, aiming its ears at the snick of a branch in the darkness.

A tall, regal-seeming figure stood before him, a male of the elf-kind or so it seemed. "What is your name?" it asked in a tone of cool command.

"Blixi," the gnome answered automatically. Was there some reason why he shouldn't? It seemed for a moment there might have been, but the reason slipped his mind. Some people were just curious, especially slender, pale elf-lords who appeared in the darkness, wearing ornate clothing that even Blixi could tell had gone out of fashion a couple centuries ago.

"Who are your companions?" the figure asked. "Tell me their names."

Blixi did so.

"Thank you," the elf-lord said, with what might have been a trace of irony; "I shall see you again ere long."

The rest of his watch passed without incident, and it was only when a brooding Lucian came to take his place that Blixi thought to mention his encounter. "Say, there was a pale elf asking about you all--he seemed really interested in you, wanted all your names, turned into bats, and I'm going to bed."

Lucian stared at the gnome for a long, long moment.

Then Lucian woke the others. Wirrapemioc was concerned about the sharing of names; he knew names had power, though whether the vampires could use it somehow none of them could say. For his part, Lucian was more worried about the last few residents of Greyson Hamlet, and soon enough the decision was made to leave immediately, there in the small hours of the night.

Departure and Return

And so the five companions withdrew, swiftly and quietly as they could, passing through the fields and into the forest to the west, where they made a tense and fireless camp. After a tired, sometimes sharp debate on tactics, it was decided the ship at anchor should be destroyed.

They were on the move before dawn, following the now-familiar trail toward the west and the ocean. By early afternoon they once again stood at the last forested ridge, looking out across the grassy slope to the stone fort, its gates broken and gaping, its battlements still and silent.

Quickly Wirrapemioc took to the sky, and almost instantly he saw their journey had been a waste. The courtyard was desolate, littered with unmoving bones, with no sign of a single animate guardian--and worse, far worse, the ship was gone.

Beating for altitude in a last, desperate hope, Wirrapemioc circled higher and higher, until the stone fort was a child's toy nested against the long ripples of the dunes, at the white-edged hem of the immense ocean spreading far and far beyond.

The ocean was empty.

Still in osprey-form, Wirrapemioc fell through the sky to where his companions had been trudging toward the shattered, silent gates. With his talons he scratched a broad X in the sandy earth.

Inside the keep, nothing remained; the caskets were gone--even the one that had been aflame--and beneath the soot-coated ceiling only scattered bones and shriveled man-wrecks remained, every weapon already scavenged. The carriage remained, doors opened and its contents removed; and on the side had been affixed a note in a florid hand, address to Lucian.

He read it in a long instant, and closed his eyes.

There was little more to be done. With sacred water Lucian painted a symbol of Sarenrae across the courtyard, even though it was clear that the vampires and their remaining entourage would not be returning.

But Tailor, having listened and considered over the past day's march, remembered an obscure spell that Lucian had mentioned several days before--one that granted the power to know where the creator of an unliving servant had gone. At the time it had seemed irrelevant; the companions had known exactly where the vampires were.

But now…now, everything depended on that spell.



Player Notes

Partway down the third page of my notes from this session, I scribbled a parenthetical comment: Everything officially gone to frack. If anything, I should've written it a page or two sooner.

Sometimes it's hard not to be invested in your character's hopes and plans, and hard not to be frustrated when those plans are so thoroughly and deeply tanked. We had high hopes when we started this session: our characters were locked and loaded, grim of purpose and ready to roll. It was an animated, even boisterous session--Blixi's player managed to join us again, which was sorely needed cavalry--and yet we ended up getting our glutei handed to us. At the very top of the third page, I noted, Officially changed from "go after vampires" footing to "get the hell out of here alive" footing.

For my part, one of the few positives was that I gained a new appreciation for Magic Stone, which I think I might have used once before, ever. I liked it so much that Wirrapemioc prepared it twice the following day, along with a number of handy ship-burning spells, only to find the vampires' brig long gone.

I've been kicking myself for days, imagining how it could have gone differently. Instead of escorting the villagers directly home, we should have gathered grass from the meadow, carried it to the ship, and set the damn thing on fire. Or, climbed up to the roof and set the wooden beams on fire, which eventually would have plunged down on the vampires and let the sunlight into their inner sanctum--or unsanctum, as the case may be.

Or, or, or. But in the event, we were depleted of spells, battered and disheartened, and we simply didn't have the spirit to come up with a plan for Round Two. In one sense, we did accomplish a rescue, sort of…but Lucian and Wirrapemioc had been set on destroying the vampires, and evidently they take more destroying than we could easily bring.

The question now, which we will need to decide in-game, is whether we should spend more time hunting down the vampires, or if we should give them up and return to our probably-hopelessly-delayed pursuit of the drow and the gold dragon's tooth. It's almost a quantum dilemma; we know where to find the likely new owner of the tooth, but we have no idea what he plans to do with it--whereas we have no idea where the vampires are, but we have a pretty good sense of their modus slurperandi.

On another personal note, it would be nice for Wirrapemioc to make it through one combat without being drugged, paralyzed, or otherwise incapacitated. Never have I felt the need for Natural Spell so keenly. I designed him with an eye to scouting, but hadn't realized just how ineffective he would be in most combat situations. If I ever manage to get second-level bard spells, I'm going for Invisibility and Spider Climb.

Mapping Note

For anyone who's interested, the encounter map of the stone fort came from a member of the Cartographer's Guild, who designed it for a campaign of his own and then very kindly posted it (http://www.cartographersguild.com/finished-maps/9652-quick-encounter-maps.html) in the section for Finished Maps. (It's the second map in the thread's OP.) I had it in my files and printed it out at 30" x 20" for our DM to work with. As far as I'm concerned he did a great job of adapting the map to his scenario.