SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: SESSION 11 - QUINTET: PART 2, 07/23/19

The Cast:
·         Brother Aron: Human priest/cleric of the New God
·         Calista: Ferren rogue/thief
·         Perry Flaxseed: Halfing Hunter/Fighter
·         Nikolai Petrechko: Human Veteran/Fighter

After slaying the revenants, the heroes proceed to the next chamber which is choked with  debris from the walls and ceiling that have collapsed.  They are forced to climb over the debris and discover 3 gargoyles hidden among the boulders.  They fight the gargoyles and manage to slay them all, allowing the group to proceed to the last chamber of this level.

Inside this chamber stands a number of statues from another era.  At the rear of the room is a winged figure that has an unearthly aura about it.  The figure maniacally works on a statue of sorts, composed of bloody body parts from the poor villagers above.  Brother Aron recognizes the creature as an angel, and the celestial being turns at the heroes' approach and sees them as fine additions to it's art and attacks!  The heroes fight the clearly insane angel around the statues and gore, and manage to wound it sufficiently to cause it to glow with a blindingly brilliant light, then disappear.

The heroes find no signs of the angel, and after searching the room they decide to go back up to the previous level and try another stairwell.  They enter another level of the dungeons and after moving through a twisting hallway, they find a strange chamber with iron cages hanging from the ceiling.  As soon as the enter the room, summoning circles flare up and strange, thin and gaunt men appear within the circles, all bearing cleavers and carrying bloody sacks full of disembodied parts.  The creatures, identified by Brother Aron as devils known as Butchers, attack the heroes.  Calista is entrapped within one of the cages, which magically snatched her up, while the others engage with the Butchers, only to learn their deadly precision with the blades cost them body parts.  Brother Aron lost the toes on one foot while Nikolai loses fingers from his hand.  The battle is grueling and bloody, but the heroes manage to dispatch the Butchers and Calista frees herself from the cage.

Proceeding down the next hall, they eventually encounter a torture chamber, where another angel is in the process of torturing a man strapped to a stretching rack.  The angel fights the heroes, but they are again victorious against it.  However, they discover the man is also an angel, who attacks them as well.  The group survive that attack, dispatching the angel in another blinding flash of light.

The heroes proceed back up to the surface so that they may recuperate from their wounds and return afresh in the morrow.  But there is no rest for the weary, as they find the tavern where they left Unit One and the children a mess of cogs and clockwork parts scattered across the room.  Something dismantled Unit One and the children are no where in sight.  But upon inspection of the room and the way the children's foot prints are all around, imprinted by the various clockwork fluids that have leaked upon the floor, it is apparent that they are the ones that did this dastardly deed.

The heroes gather all of Unit One's parts to try and figure out how to put him back together, but discover his key missing. Luckily, they still had the key from the Emancipator, so they inserted it into Unit One's ruined torso and found the key to be imbued with magic!  The key pulled the various parts of Unit One's body together and reformed him, larger that he was before!  Unit One's demeanor changed as well, taking on a more aggressive attitude, swearing vengeance upon the little fuckers that did this to him!  But a search of the town turns up nothing, so the heroes go back to the inn and Unit One agrees to keep watch while the others rest.

End of Session  

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY - SESSION 10: QUINTET - PART 1, 7/9/19

The Cast:
·         Brother Aron: Human priest/cleric of the New God
·         Calista: Ferren rogue/thief
·         Perry Flaxseed: Halfing Hunter/Fighter
·         Nikolai Petrechko: Human Veteran/Fighter

Upon leaving the living cave, the heroes decide to take their chances in the next closest city in the Confederacy: Nessus - the City of Decay.  They decide to take a train to this city rather than continue their overland travel and Unit One informs them that there is a station not far from their current location.

They pass a few settlements on their way to the town of Flenfeld, where the train station is located.  Many friendly farmer and passersby offer greeting to the

group, who are wary of becoming involved with any of these folk, as they seem to have a knack for finding settlements where there is trouble.  Flenfeld is no different, for when they arrive they find the town seemingly abandoned with only a group of a dozen or so children on the outskirts.  The children seem hungry and abandoned, and when the group approaches them, they seem afraid of them.

Calista approaches the oldest 3 of the children; Tom, Huck and Becky, and learns that the adults in town have been acting increasingly strange at the direction of the town's priest.  The town's church is dedicated to the New God and the priest had demanded more and more of the adult's time, finally calling them all to the temple on a stormy night, three days past.  The townfolk were locked in the church and have not exited since.  The children claim the church to be silent and a foul smell coming from within.

The heroes decide to investigate and when they get to the church, find the front doors chained from the outside.  Calista picks the locks and when they open the doors they find the townfolk dead, throats cut, and bodies stacked up against the walls.  With no apparent signs of struggle from any of them, the entire town seems to have allowed themselves to be ritualistically killed.  Brother Aron recognizes the ritual to be similar to one found in the holy book of the New God, where a crazed priest performed a similar ritual which called upon angels known as the "Quintet" to cleanse his town of a curse that had befallen it.  In that story, the angels Nulomos, Drosiphon, Veziel, Gidril and Sardael appeared and cleansed the souls of the sacrificed so that they may travel to the Underworld without being forced into the fiery pits of Hell to endure the tortures of the Devil before being reborn into the world, as the cycle of life demands.

The heroes remove the bodies from the church to burn.  Later, they take the children into the town's inn for the night and inform them of the fate of their parents and of all of the adults of Flenfeld.

The following day, the group return to the church and find a tunnel under the altar, which leads down into subterranean chambers.  They enter and begin exploring, first finding a chamber where gruesome work was done with bodies, and a pair of skeletal undead guarding the gory remains.  They dispatch the undead and proceed deeper into the complex, finding a pit full of ashes, where bodily remains were disposed of.  Calista finds controls which activate the pit, but upon turning it on and off, the pile of ashes within animates into a monstrous creature of ash, which flails at them with its tentacles.  They manage to fight off that monster as well and in the next chamber find a series of stairs leading down further into the earth.  Hearing no sounds from any of them, they pick one and descend.

The next level they find some bloody bodies that had apparently been involved in a fight, and are surprised when two of the bodies rise up and attack them.  They manage to kill one,  only to find that it rises up again to continue fighting.  They beat the two undead down and destroy the bodies to prevent them from rising again.

End of session.

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: SESSION 9 - THE LIVING CAVE

The Cast:
·         Brother Aron: Human priest/cleric of the New God
·         Calista: Ferren rogue/thief
·         Perry Flaxseed: Halfing Hunter/Fighter
·         Nikolai Petrechko: Human Veteran/Fighter

The heroes travel by foot to where the cave from Brother Aron's dreams would be found.  After a day's journey and another harrowing nightmare that nearly killed the priest, they find the cave.  Tracks around it suggest others have recently entered, so they enter cautiously.  They come to a partial cave-in and are forced to climb a wall of boulders to continue.  The passage beyond the boulders was clearly the entrance to a massive creature's body. They enter the mouth and proceed to an opening that leads to the creature's brain.  In that chamber, they arouse a sleeping drake that they must kill before interacting with the brain.  Once the drake dies, Brother Aron touches the brain and is force-fed images of how the massive creature came to be in this place.

From the creature's perspective, Brother Aron watches it emerge from it's mother, an even larger monstrosity that resides in a massive cavern.  The creature is told by it's mother to seek out the creatures of this world to slay and eat, for they forcibly brought her into this place.  The creature emerged from the cavern and found it's brethren already doing their mother's bidding, causing destruction wherever they went.  The diminutive residents of the island, which their mother hated with all of her being, lived in communities surrounding several towers that were protected by magic.  The creature and its brethren watched as the little people of the towers called forth a magic that trapped the monsters on the island.  But their mother also had power and used it to send her children outside of the barrier to the other lands of the world.

The Gargantua continued their mother's bidding, but were opposed by the many peoples of the world, who worked together to kill the creature's siblings off one by one.  Brother Aron watched as the creature ate hundreds of these people, but one in particular, a holy warrior who bore a weapon that caused the creature great pain, entered its body and made his way to the creature's heart and buried that weapon into it, incapacitating the creature.  But the spark of magic from the mother kept the beast alive, though it was unable to heal itself due to the weapon being embedded in it's heart.  The creature's body was buried over time until it was indistinguishable from the surrounding hills. There it languished as other creatures found and exploited its undying corpse for thousands of years.

Recently, the spark of magic from its mother grew more powerful and enabled the creature to reach out with its mind to any who could hear it, beckoning them by manipulating their dreams; as it had with Brother Aron.  It did this to force them to come and rid its body of the foul weapon that kept it from healing.

Brother Aron tore himself from the brain and realized that he must remove this weapon, even though doing so may restore another Gargantua to plague the world.  He knew he must do so, as he had a true vision from Astrid the Prophet of the New God, that showed him this weapon long before this monster had tampered with his mind.

The group followed Aron through the maze of tunnels throughout this Gargantua's body, but they were attacked when they entered some cancerous caverns that had a giant ooze and ghouls residing within.  They group fought through these monsters, nearly dying in the process, but were able to defeat them all and continue onward to the heart.  There, Aron found the weapon embedded in one of the heart's chambers.  He removed it, which immediately began the regeneration of the creature's body.  The group follow Aron out and eventually emerge on the surface of the hill.

They realized that their actions would result in the restoration of another monster, but Brother Aron assured them that the weapon he now held would be instrumental in the Gargantua's ultimate defeat, as revealed to him by Astrid.

End of session.

SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY: SESSION 8 - FINDING CALISTA

The Cast:
·         Brother Aron: Human priest/cleric of the New God
·         Calista: Ferren rogue/thief
·         Perry Flaxseed: Halfing Hunter/Fighter
·         Nikolai Petrechko: Human Veteran/Fighter

The heroes return to Ronson the Artificer and give him the plate from his clockwork titan and claim Unit One as their reward.  They depart and spend the next few weeks pursing their own interests.

Nikolai Petrechko intended to spend his downtime practicing with his weapon, but was inadvertently drawn into a near revolt that occurred outside of the Artificer's Guild where a large group of clockworks protested the rumored destruction of one of their own, the clockwork that called itself "the Emancipator."  Rumors of the Emancipator's demise spread after a group was spotted going into the Bowels to hunt him, and a massive explosion rocked the area shortly after.  The clockworks believed the Emancipator to be an activist working to gain freedom for its people.  Nikolai intervened between the clockwork mob and the city's Sentinels mediated a truce.  This bold act gained Nikolai the key to the city from the Autarch and allowed him to use Sentinel facilities for training.  Nikolai knew it was only a matter of time before the truth, that he and his companions were responsible for the Emancipator's destruction, would come out ,so his actions bought them some time.

Perry Flaxseed got a job to earn a few extra coins while in town.  After work, he would wander the city and picked up news from around Rul.  He learns that the huge monsters that he and his friends witnessed emerging from sinkholes is happening all over the continent and that these monster, which the news called "Gargantua" were wreaking death and destruction throughout the empire.  People from around the empire have called for the emperor to cease hostilities against the surrounding kingdoms to address the threat, but the emperor has not stopped the mobilization of the orc army against the Kingdom of God and Tear.  In local news, he spots Calista getting married to a noble and takes this news to his companions.

Brother Aron spends his time at the Grand Cathedral of the New God, studying from the church's vast libraries.  While there, the priest is assaulted by violent dreams of a "living cave" where a holy weapon is to be found.  This vision originally came to him in Caecras, but he had not had another since escaping the city, but the vision returned and the intensity of it physically injured Brother Aron to the point where the priests of the cathedral had to administer healing to him.  Aron believed the visions to be forcing him to find this holy weapon and that if he did not do so soon he would perish.

These three eventually met up and discussed Calista's sudden and unexpected nuptials, which did not explain why she left all of her belongings behind.  They decided to find her to get her story and Unit One led them to the upper parts of Lij to where the honeymooners were reportedly staying.  They were denied entrance to the lodgings, however, and were forced to wait in the lobby for Calista to show. 

Calista called for Blaine Dovian to meet her in Lij to continue their discussion on a business arrangement for her and her allies.  But when Dovian arrived, he seemed only to be interested in spending time with her.  Calista found herself in a whirlwind romance that ended in a wedding to Dovian.  During their honeymoon in the towers of Lij, she awoke and recovered her senses, realizing that she had been drugged and she found papers that indicated Blaine was an assassin working for the Black Hand and that he had been hired to kill her.  Why he married her she did not know, but she realized that she was in danger.  Blaine left town for business, but would be back in a few days, so Calista knew that she would need to leave before his return.  But before she could do so, she heard the approach of several men to her honeymoon suite and decided to leave the room through the window.  She changes into her cat form and uses the drain spouts to travel to the lower levels of the tower.  She makes it to the lobby level and spots her friends there, so she approaches them and has them follow her out. 

Once in a safe place, she explains what had happened to her and the group agrees that it would be wise to depart Lij for various reasons.  They go to Nikolai's lodgings to secure her things but find a group of thugs waiting there for her.  They kill the thugs and the monstrous two-headed snake they had hid in a chest, gather their belongings, and leave the city in hopes of helping Brother Aron with his violent nightmares and escape the Emancipator death investigation.

End of Session.