The Heroes:
- · Ecna Lubma: dwarf priest grudgebearer healer
- · Gruntbelly: dwarf magician sorcerer wizard
- · Kane Arroway: human warrior fighter sharpshooter
- · Mathias: jotun jotun juggernaut spirit warrior
This entry encompasses the events of the last two sessions.
The heroes find a secret room in Dr Feldman’s apartment
behind his office and this leads down to an ancient crypt beneath the
Asylum. The crypt appears to have been
built during the time of the Empire of Gog, over 900 years ago based on the
designs and images on the walls and posts.
It’s not long before the heroes encounter a room full of ghouls, which
flood out into the hall and attack!
Mathias is momentarily overwhelmed, but Ecna, Kane and Gruntbelly join
the fray and the ghouls are slain. Inside
the room they emerged from the group finds a gory mess of torn bodies; the
ghoul’s dining hall.
They search the room then move on and find two doors that
appear to be carved in the likeness of two portals – one that enters Paradise
and one that enters Hell. The group
chooses the door leading to paradise and emerge in a large chamber that has a
number of ghouls and an open sarcophagus.
A mist curls out from the sarcophagus and the heroes are confronted with
the vampire Lucretia. Before they can
attack, Lucretia tells them that she is not their enemy and that she is here
only to retrieve her property, the Eye of the Demon Lord, that was stolen from
her by Kane’s ancestor, the demonologist Moore and is now in the possession of
the Brotherhood of Shadows. She claimed
that the cult was using it, along with other stolen relics, to complete a
ritual designed to open a vast gate, through which the Demon Lord would enter
this universe and destroy it.
Skeptical about her claims, the group asks what she would do
with the relic if it were returned to her.
Lucretia tells them that she wishes only to keep it away from those who
would use it for the purpose that the Brotherhood of Shadows is using it. The relic is linked to the Demon Lord, who
wants nothing more than to destroy all of creation. Since she exists on this world, she does not
want to see it destroyed, so she would keep the relic safe, as she did for
hundreds of years before the fool Moore took it from her.
The heroes ask why she didn’t just get it from the
Brotherhood herself and she responds by stating the Brotherhood is hidden from
her and has erected powerful wards to prevent her from seeking them out. She has no other choice but to have others
reclaim it for her.
The heroes say they will get the Eye on the condition that
Lucretia stop her murderous rampage through the city. She agrees to do so until the next full moon,
three weeks from that night. At that
time, if the Eye has not been reclaimed, the Brotherhood will have completed
their ritual and all will be lost regardless.
The heroes ask how they will be able to locate the Eye if she cannot,
and her response is that there is another relic that has an affinity to the
Eye; the Sword of Unmaking. If they can
acquire that sword, it will lead them to the Eye, wherever the Brotherhood have
it hidden. The Sword is currently in the
possession of the fool demonologist Moore, who still lives, but is now in a
clockwork body. She learned that he has
been in Iron Mountains in the keep under the Demonstorm for the last few centuries
and recently acquired the Sword of Unmaking.
She even gives them a map to the Iron Mountains showing trails leading
to the keep.
The group agrees to this task and take their leave from this
tomb. Before they go, Mathias asks if
Lucretia knows of Nareesh, the man Mathias has hunted for the last year. She says they may find that this man is also
with Moore at Demonstorm, but doesn’t explain herself. She then turns to mist and leaves the
crypt. The group plunders the rest of
the crypt and leave to get rest before planning their next move.
After a lengthy rest, the heroes review the map and decide
to see if they can find a faster ride to the Iron Mountains than horse or
buggy. They head over to the Smokestacks
district to seek an audience with Gundren the Ironmonger, whose mine they
cleared out a few weeks earlier. They go
to the Engineering Academy building where his offices are found and find a campus
full of wonderous mechanical devices.
The two guards are large clockwork men themselves, who let the heroes
into the campus. They make their way
into the building, and after a harrowing trip up the mechanical elevator that
Mathias broke on the way up, they find his offices and are welcomed in by his
secretary.
Gundren is pleased to see them, believing them to be there
in response to his job offer, but the heroes say they are simply there to see
if there is a way to get a train ride to Foundry as they have another job to
work. Gundren says that they can catch a
train from the town of Thorpe, but he suggests that if they are on their way to
Foundry that they may be able to take on his job offer as well. He explains that his job involves finding
some equipment that was recently lost en route from Foundry to Thorpe. The train that had the equipment never made
it to Thorpe and subsequent train rides have not turned up the missing train or
equipment, so he wants to hire them to find what happened to the train and the
missing equipment. The PCs ponder this
and agree to do the mission for a “favor” to be later named. Gundren agrees and reveals that the “equipment”
is actually 3 warmachines – giant clockwork warriors that were ordered by the
Emperor a couple of years back, but since the Orc uprising, they’ve been
sitting in Foundry. However, Gundren
became alarmed when Sixton was sacked by an orc warband, so he decided to bring
the prototypes down to Crossings for defense.
However, while en route, the train was lost and the warmachines along
with it. He wants the heroes to track
down the machines and put them on a train back to Thorpe.
The heroes agree to take the job and Gundren says he will
put them on a guarded coach to Thorpe first thing in the morning. The PCs leave the Academy of Engineers and
decide to do some shopping before they go, but they find that the rest of
Crossings seems to have been commandeered by the Inquisition. The group ask a browncloak what’s going on
and he says that Inquisitor Randofus was arrested by a new Inquisitor, some guy
named Malius, who threw Randolfus and a bunch of others in the Inquisition
dungeons. Martial law has been called in
Crossings and the Inquisition seems to be running the show, including the
Browncloaks, since one of the ones arrested was Commander Crowley. The PCs decide to try and see if the mayor
was still in power, but when they passed the Browncloak headquarters on the way
to the Gavel district, a Lord Inquisitor called Duush, emerged with several
inquisitors and browncloaks and demanded that the jotun and his companions
leave town immediately as they are obviously “outlanders” and do not belong in
the city. The heroes try to explain that
they were on a job for the mayor and they are informed that she is no longer in
power. The heroes decide to leave
peacefully to avoid bringing the Inquisition down upon them, and go to a copse
of wood outside of town to plan their next move.
Using an enchanted item, they have Ecna enter town to try
and find Gruntbelly, who did not accompany them and instead went to visit his
master’s tower to see if he could get information about the Demonstorm
keep. Ecna transformed into a bird and
tried to fly into the tower, but it’s magical protections caused Ecna to land
and transform back to his normal shape.
He attempted to go to the front door, but was warned away by the nearby
browncloaks. Ecna decided to leave the
area, went back to the Moore house but found it empty. He then went to the Honored Dead Shrine and
Brewery and found Gruntbelly there grumbling about his lost friends. The two decide to drink and stay the night in
the house and meet the heroes out by the gate in the morning.
End of session.
