Wednesday, March 29, 2017

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: HUNTING BEASTMEN - PT 1, 03.28.17

The Heroes:
  • Ecna Lubma: Dwarf priest grudgebearer
  • Gruntbelly: Dwarf magician sorcerer
  • Kane: Human warrior fighter
  • Mathias: Jotun jotun juggernaut

Upon leaving the fey shrine of the Lady Aurora, the heroes make their way through the Sentinel Wood trying to get back to Farmer Ham's farm.  While en route, they find an area where a scuffle took place, apparently between some humanoids and a group of beastmen.  They continue on and eventually emerge from the woods and find that they are a few miles away from the farm, so they head in that direction. 

When they arrive at the farm, they rest and review the items found in the shrine, distributing magic items and money between them.  One of the items appears to be a relic of some power belonging to a powerful nymph named Circe.  The ring would bestow power upon its wearer but would also leech life from them.  Gruntbelly selected the ring but chose not to wear it.

During the early morning hours Gruntbelly notices a group of torchlights marching in the distance towards the Sentinel Wood.  Later that morning, when the group rises and prepares for they day, they search the rest of the property and find a basement below the barn that has a butcher area and a strange tub full of blood.  In the tub are two halfling bodies, both apparently sex slaves of Farmer Ham's.  Mathias searched the basement more and found a cubby with some money and a binder with papers, one of which is a contract with The Guild of Crossings to supply Ham with a halfling slave every six months or so; the last transaction having taken place about 4 months ago. 

The group also locate Ham's prize pig, Peggy Sue, wandering the grounds.

After securing the pigs and loading market ready ham shanks in the basement onto a cart, the heroes decide to see if they can follow where the torch bearers were headed earlier.  They find the trail and enter the Sentinel Wood again.  After a few hours of travel, they spot a large hill or small mountain where a group of beastmen are camped, led by a rather large warg (hyenaman).  The beastmen have apparently captured several humans and are feeding on them.

The group position themselves at the edge of the camp and launch an attack, attempting to take out the warg shaman, but the spellcaster is surprising resilient and manages to cast Hateful Deffecation on Mathias.  The others take out several of the fomor (goatmen), but as they whittle the beastmen down, the big leader begins to emerge from the cave...

End of session.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE ERRANT SWINE -Pt 4, 3/21/17

The Heroes:
  • Ecna Lubma: Dwarf priest of the Honored Dead
  • Gruntbelly: Dwarf magician
  • Kane: Human warrior
  • Mathias: Jotun

When we last left our heroes, they had just discovered an entrance to some natural caverns that were occupied by troglodytes.  The creatures pursued them, but stopped at the entrance to the fey shrine, apparently not interested in entering.  The heroes backed out of that room and found that the room containing the red glass dome had a new occupant; a beautiful fey woman floats above the dome watching the heroes with some curiosity.  When they address her she states that she is the Lady Aurora, who some of the heroes recognized as the daughter of the Fairy Queen, Titania.  She tells the heroes that she was curious as to why they were in her shrine and they in turn tell her that her shrine has some foul creatures in it.  She replies that she knows and asks the heroes to clean the shrine out in exchange for a Favor.  The heroes agree and learn that there are 4 bloody bones and 4 demons still infesting the place.  They go towards the room where they think the bloody bones are hiding and run into an ambush.  During the fight, two of the bloody bones run off and the heroes fight the remaining two but are worn out afterwards, so they decide to rest for a day. 

At the end of the rest, they go to leave the room they had barricaded themselves in and find the two bloody bones that ran off waiting for them to open the door.  They fight them and during this battle the door to the southern end of the complex opens and three tiny demons emerge, but seem more interested in killing the bloody bones than the heroes.  Once the bloody bones are dead, the demons start harassing the heroes, urinating and defecating on Mathias.  The heroes manage to kill the demons and then proceed to the southern chambers, moving through the strange room with the eye creatures clinging to the walls, which watch the heroes as they move through but do not leave the walls.  The heroes proceed down the stairs into a room full of humanoid statues, warped and twisted.  In the rear of the room is a large statues of an elven maiden that resembles the Lady Aurora and in her hands is a platter bearing 3 chaos shards and a ring.   The last remaining demon, hiding behind a statue, attacks but is quickly dispatched by the heroes.  Kane shoots an arrow at the platter to determine if the shards are another trap, upending the platter causing the shards to fall to the floor and skewering the ring.  Gruntbelly inspects the shards and determines they are real and not trapped.  The group collect the shards and the ring and depart the room.  As they do the twisted and warped statues seem to reshape themselves into more normal figures.

The heroes then move to the final unexplored room and locate one of the explorers that had accompanied Delia, but they had been flayed and were in great pain and seemingly in the midst of a transformation into a bloody bones.  Mathias ended the explorer’s pain.  

Having removed the bloody bones and the demons from the shrine, the heroes begin looting the place for any valuables.


This is where the session ended.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE ERRANT SWINE – PT 3, 3/14/17

The Heroes:
-          Ecna Lubma: dwarf priest
-          Gruntbelly: dwarf magician
-          Kane: human warrior
-          Mathias: jotun

The heroes press on into the fey shrine as they try to find Delia’s friends who were attacked by the skinless fey creatures called the “bloody bones”.  They enter a circular room with a red glowing dome set into the floor and 3 doors.  They go through the eastern door and enter a chamber lined with columns and are immediately attacked by two animated skeletons, which they fight and destroy.  They press onward and find a passage leading under the room with the red dome and find another circular chamber whose surfaces seem to have a mirror-like surface and which has 3 gem shards that glow with a bright red light laying upon the floor.  A golden bowl floats in the center of the room, empty.  Mathias and Gruntbelly enter.  The jotun bats one of the shards against the wall of the room to see what would happen and it hits the wall and lands on the floor with no other effect.  He then tries to hit another one (attempting to get the bowl out of the overlapping glow of the shards) and his axe goes right through it, dispelling the illusion but triggering a trap that causes the bowl to explode in a flash of light and heat.  The dwarf and joten are burned a bit, but avoid being blinded by quickly covering their eyes.  They decide to leave the room and rest for a bit, though Gruntbelly seems reluctant to leave what he believes to be Chaos Shards (pieces of a fey gem created by the Fey Lords in the Troll Wars, according to legend) in the room.  Mathias watches the dwarf, suspicious of his interest in the shards.

During the night, Gruntbelly hears a sound, rouses everyone, goes to investigate, but then a horrific tiny demon materializes in the midst of the group and starts attacking.  The heroes manage to destroy the demon, which explodes in a bloody, gory mess against the wall.  The heroes finish their rest and resume their inspection of the mirror room. Gruntbelly determines the 2nd shard is also an illusion and the first one that Mathias hit is real, so he picks it up and leaves the room.  Kane shoots the illusory shard with an arrow which triggers the light/heat trap again, but everyone had cleared the room.  The golden bowl falls to the ground and changes into a battered, cheap metal bow.

The heroes return to the circular room with the red dome and proceed through the southern door which has a hallway leading to another chamber, but is blocked by a large statue of an elven maiden that animates and moves to block the heroes progress.  Mathias attempts speaking to it in Trollish and the statue immediately attacks.  The fight is difficult and Delia falls in battle  and dies from her wounds. They destroy the statue and recover a magical coin that it had around its neck.  What it does is not yet known. The heroes decide to not proceed into the next chamber, which has strange eyeball creatures clinging to the walls, and back up in to the dome room. 

After working on Delia for a few minutes to try and revive her, Mathias spots a tattoo on her neck that matches the tattoo they saw on Candace Dreen, the merchant’s possessed daughter, and that matched the symbol sewn on the robes they found in the Moore House.  Thinking this to be a sign of possession, they check each other for similar tattoos but are clean.  Kane tells the rest that the green sword that warns of nearby demon presences is vibrating when the southern door is approached but stops when he moves away from it.

After considering their options, they decide to try the western door, which Delia claimed the bloody bones attacked her party.  They find a chamber with two more elven statues that do not animate when they enter.  The wall on the western end of the room as collapsed and beyond it stretches a dark natural cavern.  Mathias takes a look inside, hears sounds coming from the southern end of the caves, backs up and finds that 3 troglodytes spotted him and are now poised at the collapsed wall, bloody teeth bared, ready to fight.

End of session.

Friday, March 10, 2017

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE ERRANT SWINE-PT 2, NOVICE LEVEL, 3.8.17

The Heroes:
  • Ecna Lubma: Dwarf Priest
  • Gruntbelly: Dwarf Magician
  • Kane: Human Warrior
  • Mathias: Jotun


After the events of the last session and the disturbing ending, the heroes decide to spend the night in Farmer Ham’s house.  Kane moves Delia into the house to watch over her and the rest take turns taking watch, keeping an eye on the catatonic Theodore.  In the early morning hours, on Ecna’s watch, the dwarf hears some pigs squealing furiously over by the barn.  He rouses Mathias and the two go to see what is causing the ruckus.  When they round the corner of the barn they see a pig pen open and several pigs running off into the fields.  In the pen they see one pig laying in the mud, it’s squeals of pain highlighted by ripping sounds caused by the pig’s skin being ripped off its body by the horrific figure kneeling beside it.  Though still dark the figure could be made out to be a humanoid, but completely devoid of skin, it’s musculature glistening in the moonlight and it’s inhumanly long fingers ending in claws dripping with the pig’s blood.  The creature’s wide, lidless eyes jerk up at the arrival of Ecna and Mathias and it drops the pig with a thump, ripping the remaining skin from the body.  Mathias and Ecna move in to attack the creature, but it darts away and makes for a nearby tree.  Before it can get to the tree, Mathias moves up and strikes the creature down. 

Ecna and Gruntbelly, now roused by the noise, go to see what manner of creature was attacking the pig and after studying it determine that it is what legends call a “Bloody Bones”; a mythic fey creature said to have been cursed by the Summer Queen to forever be devoid of skin for displeasing her.  The creatures are said to steal the skins of other creatures to ease their suffering.  The three start to study the tree that it was running towards and discover that it has fey runes masterfully engraved into the bark so as to be nearly invisible.  Between Gruntbelly and Ecna, the dwarves discern the runes to be a form of travel magic.  They move the body of the Bloody Bones closer to the tree trunk and note that the area surrounding the runes begins to shimmer.  Gruntbelly puts his hand in the area and the hand passes through the bark.  He recalls reading lore about how the fey used what are sometimes referred to as “secret roads”, magical paths between two distant points that allowed the fey to travel great distances instantaneously.  Though this may be one of the mythic secret road, the heroes have no idea where it leads.  They determine that the portal seems to react to the fey creature’s proximity, so Mathias cuts off its head as a potential key to using the portal.

They start to return to the house when they notice a reddish glow in the early morning sky towards Hamlet and the faint smell of smoke.  It seems the village is burning.

They go inside the house and find Kane and Delia awake and discussing Delia’s companions who were lost in a fey shrine within the nearby Sentinel Wood.  Delia is insistent upon returning to rescue her friends (and also to plunder the fey riches).  Kane agrees to go with her and though there is some debate about returning Theodore or going to see what’s happening in Hamlet, the group agrees to accompany Delia.  They learn that Delia and her companions had traveled about 16 miles into the woods where they discovered an area of runic standing stones and a large circular stone covering an entrance into a fey shrine.  They entered and were attacked by the “skinless devils” who captured Delia’s companions but she managed to escape, but was pursued by one of the creatures.  The last thing she recalled was tripping and falling towards a runic menhir and then waking up on Farmer Ham’s property where she was found by the farmer and Theodore and taken into the barn.  She had no idea how she got there but the group surmise that she fell through the secret road.

The group goes to the tree and try moving through it in turn and all find themselves in the fey standing stone site, before a large menhir glowing with fey runes.  Delia shows them the entrance to the shrine and they begin descending the dark stone stairs.  Mathias leads the group and finds the bottom to be flooded, which Delia says was not the case when she escaped.   As Mathias tests the water and finds it deep, a huge creature rises up from its depths on the other side of the circular chamber. This horror appeared to be a mass of corpses chained together to form a roughly humanoid giant.  The giant swings a massive length of chain at Mathias, who attacks in return and the rest of the group join in.  It is a difficult fight due to the revulsion the creature creates, it smell of the rotting corpses and the deep water, but they manage to fight it from the stairs and break it’s chains, causing the component corpses to fall apart and go inert in the water. 


The group swims into the dark passage out of this room, but Delia is attacked by a swarm of biting fish.  Mathias drags her away from the fish and the group find a dry ledge in the adjoining circular chamber and escape the fish.  They now have the choice of checking the door in the flooded room or moving further into the shrine.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY - THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE ERRANT SWINE: PT 1, NOVICE TIER, 2.28.17

THE HEROES:
- Ecna Lubma: dwarf priest of the Honored Dead
- Gruntbelly: dwarf magician
- Kane: human warrior
- Mathias: jotun 

After the last adventure, our heroes find themselves with some downtime. 

Mathias goes about trying to get a suit of mail that will fit him, but his only option appears to be getting a new suit custom made which would take about 3 weeks.

Ecna Lubma spends some of his time working at the Honored Dead Shrine and Brewery, some of his time at the smithy and some of his time working on incantations. 

Gruntbelly pays the wizard Caribdus a visit to try and find out how to go about learning the true nature of magic and is basically told to study as many traditions as possible, avoid focusing too much on the Forbidden and similar traditions, but don’t ignore them, and to go out into the world and experience it. 

Gruntbelly informs Caribdus of the possession of Candace Dreen and the wizard says he will inform her father. 

A friend of Kane’s, who has access to The Guild, manages to get him a pass to enter The Guild’s hall in order to buy a set of lockpicking tools, which are not legally sold in Crossings.  Kane finds a vendor that sells him a basic set of tools and as he gets ready to depart, he meets Ambrose Quick; an aristocrat businessman who recognizes him and has a brief chat with Kane about how he was friends with his parents before they had a falling out.  Quick does not elaborate or detain Kane, but does extend an invitation to return to The Guild.  Kane asks his parents about Quick, which angers his father who refuses to discuss the man, and saddens his mother, who apparently had some kind of relation with him that caused the falling out between Quick and Kane’s father.

A week passes and the heroes find themselves at the Honored Dead sharing a drink when Stohk Ironbrow approaches Ecna and asks him to go to the town of Hamlet to find Theodore; a Halfling that works for the Honored Dead and handles most of the deliveries.  Theodore had last gone to Hamlet 8 days ago and had not yet returned and Ironbrow was concerned that he had run into some trouble.  After some negotiating of compensation for this “favor”, the group manages to get Ironbrow to agree to some exchanges provided they also pick up some pork “shanks” for him while they’re in Hamlet.

Later that day the heroes head out to Hamlet, spending two uneventful days and nights on the road before arriving at the village.  They stop at the local pub where Mathias’ is viewed as an oddity by the owner and patrons.  The owner says that the Halfling did drop off the shipment of brew and took a room at the flophouse across the street.  The group go over to the flophouse and learn that Theodore did stay there, but left the following day to get some pork from Farmer Ham, whose property is 10 miles outside of town at the edge of the Sentinel Wood.  The group also learn that there have been some trouble with beastmen raids in the outlying farms and that Farmer Ham himself had lost one or more pigs and was offering a reward of 1 gold crown for their return. 

The heroes head out to Farmer Ham’s and when they arrive they see the old farmer working on a fence in his yard. They call out to him and he recognizes Kane, who had just been there a couple of weeks prior, and asks if he’s here to “get the girl”.  Kane asks him to clarify and he states that one of the people that Kane and his father had taken to the Sentinel Wood had returned to the farm wounded and was up in the loft of the barn.  They ask about the Theodore but Farmer Ham says he’s not seen the Halfling and has no business with them.  Kane goes to the barn to check on the wounded explorer while the others search around for signs of the Halfling and as they make their way to the barn, some of them spot a slight dark figure in the 2nd floor window of the farmhouse.     

Kane finds Delia in the loft, gravely wounded but alive.  She tells him that she and her companions found the Fey ruins they sought but were attacked by terrible, skinless creatures.  She managed to escape but her companions were taken.  She begs Kane to help her retrieve them.  Kane asks if she was mistreated by Farmer Ham and she said that he and his Halfling found and cared for her, bringing her into the loft.  Kane gets Ecna to administer some healing magic to Delia (who, even in her weakened state makes advances towards him) and tells the others what she told him.  Ecna and Kane join the others after ensuring Delia is stable.

The group decides to distract Ham while Kane and Ecna enter the back of the house to search it for signs of the Halfling.  Mathias and Gruntbelly try to engage the farmer in idle conversation but are forced to restrain him when Kane makes a loud noise in the house, alerting the farmer of the ruse. 

Upstairs in the house, the two search some rooms but come up empty until they hear some chains rattling and follow the clues up to a secret entrance to the attic, within which they find Theodore, chained to the wall and wearing a ridiculous leather outfit surrounded by torture implements.  The Halfling is half mad with fear and reacts poorly to their arrival, but after Ecna administers some physical and mental healing magic, he begins cooperating. 

The two bring the Halfling out and confront Farmer Ham, who breaks down insisting they leave him be and that the Halfling is none of their business.  They bring Ham inside the house and decide to look for the person they saw looking out of the 2nd floor window earlier.  In a locked room they find what appears to be Farmer Ham’s deceased wife’s belongings and her rocking chair by the window.  The chair is rocking and a dark figure is seated in it.  Mathias approaches, but the chair swivels and reveals the hideous visage of the deceased Mrs. Ham, who proceeds to attack while shouting for them to leave her husband be.  All are shaken by the presence of a spirit but push aside their fears and attack the dark figure, but find their weapons to be ineffective against her.  They decide to target her chair and Kane drops an oil lamp on it, causing it to burst into flames which has a painful effect on the spirit of Mrs. Ham.  Mathias follows this up by chopping the chair into splinters with his axe, which results in the spirit bursting apart as well.  Within the room they find a money box with some of Ham’s savings (and probably the halfling’s money).

When the group returns to the living room where they left Theodore to watch Farmer Ham, they find that the Halfling had stabbed the farmer repeatedly and disemboweled him, shoving the entrails into the farmer’s mouth.  Sickened and disturbed at the sight, the group is not sure what exactly to do next…

End of session.