Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Eggie, Jerrod, Jalen, Beydaan
The player group, especially Luther’s player, has done a great job in Downtime trying to get hooks and things situated prior to the game session in the last few weeks. It’s really helped them get the action started. Of course then they decide to hire a bunch of henchmen which slows down the start a bit, but hey can’t win ‘em all.
There was some discussion with Lord Issac (Patron Paladin) about purchasing a treasure map at an absolute steal of a price. It had been sitting on his shelf since the campaign began and was priced to move, so the party snatched it up. Redcorn’s powerful cleric PC was otherwise engaged, so enter Team C’s elven ranger Cracaryn.
They made a special note to visit the grave of Team A’s long time henchman and mascot Cemil, who was slain and failed on a Restore Life and Limb check after the last adventure. They dropped big money on a sweet headstone and Cemil’s hench buddy Amadayo expressed great anger at the loss of his friend and eagerness to take it out on some monster somewhere. Luther the Paladin made some prayers, including an absolutely canon religious gesture suspiciously similar to “jazz hands”.
With map in hand and a general idea of the area to begin the search, they departed for the hills around Bellport, the capital of the region and seat of Baron Heinrick of Donwall. They took an unusual path for this group, traveling the road through the more settled parts of the interior of the region instead of through the borderlands area.
They passed through a town called Millon, a modest sized market where they learned of a local folk hero named Billock who single-handedly killed a band of brigands that attempted to burgle his mill. They didn’t show much interest in Millon and continued on.
Just outside of the agricultural town they discovered a young woman dancing naked around a strange tree in a field. Cracaryn was eager to discuss, you know, anything with her but the party shouted down the idea as a needless distraction and continued on. They made it to the capital with no further interruptions and rested up.
The treasure map that they had was drawn some time ago by an obvious bandit, detailing some hideout with an inventory in one margin of various gems that they had collected and many failed rhymes and verses in the other margins. It appears the author fancied himself a poet but Gwendolyn quickly realized that his talents were not up to snuff on any professional level.
The party trekked out into the hills using one of new henchman’s mapping proficiency to try to narrow in on where to find the score. They surprised a group of hippogriffs and we had to remind Cracaryn that he was not playing Redcorn who is typically obsessed with trying to tame every animal in the wild. For whatever reason that player was struggling throughout the session to separate his new PC from his old, which he doesn’t normally have much trouble with. Made for some laughs throughout as the two personalities are generally quite different.
The hippogriffs were pissed and wanted blood but the party was able to eventually evade them, narrowly avoiding a very dangerous encounter. They were missing the Explorer’s bonus to Wilderness Evasion that the Elven Ranger doesn’t have, but they dodged disaster by virtue of encounter distance.
A few hours into their search they found an area of the mountainous region where the plant life seemed to be afflicted by some sort of pollution or foul magic. They tracked it closer to the source, through a narrow winding cut into a small holler. Several destroyed shacks were in the space, with giant globs and strings of viscous black ooze spread in huge swathes as though exploding from the mangled and destroyed copper stills within. Bodies, undisturbed by scavengers or nature, were strewn about in various forms of death.
Mahin the assassin, who has alchemy and sneaky assassin things, was voluntold to sneak close to see what he could learn. He leapt from being startled and scampered backwards, swearing one of the tendrils of ooze had moved. Channeling their best Imperial Doctrine of the 41st Millenium, the party decided to CLEANSE IT WITH HOLY FIRE.
They didn’t have enough military oil to burn all three of the ooze origin points, so they picked the closest and drilled it dead on with fire. It popped and sizzled and all of the tendrils contracted into larger blobs that were clearly animated. The notSymbiotes had traits like Venom’s symbiote suit from Marvel Comics. When this blog goes viral I’ll have to edit that out so I don’t get sued.
The symbiotes shot out tendrils to nearby trees and slingshotted at the party. I thought for sure they’d do MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE but single digit attack rolls ain’t it. They learned that non-magical weapons that dealt damage to the creatures would disintegrate and even magic weapons would show visible signs of damage. The same held true of armor/magic armor, with damaged armor reducing the wearer’s AC by 1.
The fight was over in short order and the party poked around, discovering a mine shaft in the back of the holler. Luther’s mage hench also collected a sample of the ooze, which they had used Loremastery to discover was some kind of crossbreed experimental thing gone wrong.
They formed up and entered the mine shaft, expecting a dungeon but it didn’t lead very far in before getting to a dead end and partial collapse. There was a lone survivor of whatever happened crouched in behind the caved in spot. He was a thin, malnourished human male tucked in behind a spear and freaking out. The party tried various methods of calming him, but because he registered on Luther’s Detect Evil, he eventually got knocked out when the Paladin ran out of patience with the soft touch techniques.
Cracaryn’s passive elf senses picked up on some cubbies with gems hidden in them, which prompted a full search of the area and revealed the inventoried treasure from the map much to the party’s delight.
They weren’t getting much out of him even when he wasn’t losing his mind, so they gagged him and carried him back to Bellport. Luther wanted to take him to Issac because Paladin but the party opted to try the biggest temple in Bellport first, mostly because any time they mentioned Tharizdun the dude lost it all over again. Fortunately the Bishop Dante Relos was in, meeting with them at the huge gothic cathedral to Heironeous that overlooked the second highest tier of the city’s several levels.
After some discussion, the Bishop indicated that he may be able to help the poor chap for an appropriate donation to the temple’s coffers which the party obliged, putting many gems into the ornate collection dish set aside for just this purpose. Bishop Relos proceeded to drag all sorts of paraphernalia from a compartment under the primary altar and began his ceremony, splashing holy water and waving incense and casting a spell.
As more time elapsed and nothing seemed to happen, the Bishop seemed to grow more frustrated and aggressive with his actions. The afflicted bandit started frothing at the mouth and his feet raised off of the ground, his thrashing form trapped before the altar of Heironeous. Bishop Relos came around the altar and again grew more frustrated, gesturing forcefully and violently with his aspergillum before finally planting it with extreme force into the forehead of the floating, seemingly possessed man.
His skull was crushed, the Bishop Relos being an accomplished member of an extremely martial religion, and his body collapsed anticlimactically to the floor. Relos withdrew the dented and deformed implement and handed it to a waiting acolyte. While the Bishop wiped his hands clean on a white cloth, he spoke to the party in a relatively nonchalant tone, “I am sorry, my children, but he could not be saved.” He dismissed them to the care of another waiting acolyte and retired further into the cathedral.
While being shown the exit, the party was advised by Titus the acolyte to share any more information that they learned regarding Tharizdun or the black ooze with the temple. The party was pretty perturbed about getting no results from their previous interaction and left on rather tense terms after a back and forth about charging for their services and a gentle admonishment about greed that they took as hypocritical.
They contacted Issac’s store in Bellport where they traded a bunch of gems at a loss and some cash for some magic items. Seemed everyone was happy with the trading that happened so who am I to judge? They departed back through Millon and with session time to spare decided to poke around. Gwendolyn wrote a song in the style of the Hero of Canton (the man they call Jayne) about Billock the folk hero. IYKYK.
An attempt was also made to speak with the mayor after finding out he had three wives and a bunch of daughters but they were stuck talking to the butler. When they offered their services as adventurers, the butler said actually, one of the Mayor’s many daughters had been abducted some months back and he was offering a reward for her return. The party was convinced that the Mayor was up to no good, asking all kinds of prying questions about the health and welfare of the women of the household, none of which were present. They didn’t get much to work with from the butler who stayed mostly professional and started to grow uncomfortable with the prying.
The group decided they didn’t really have time to fool around with this town any longer and left for Talston where they arrived without any hassle and ended the session.
Musings:
The session was driven by a treasure map that has been in the game for nearly a year. The original circumstances of the map and treasure had to have changed in all that time right? So I started working through what that might mean. The bandits got into some things they clearly didn’t understand and the Dark Hymn took its toll on their lone survivor. Plus I like Venom.
I gave a chance for an Atonement to work from Bishop Relos, with a save being required by the bandit to repent and allow the exorcism or whatever to happen. My man rolled a 1, so it went another way. The party ran up against things that I’d written into the game a long time ago in Millon as well that I’d frankly forgotten. We’ll see if they care enough about it to take the Mayor up on his offer in another session and how those circumstances may have changed in all this time.
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