The Black Fief!

[blackadder23]

Far north in the Gal Hills, where the mists rise all day from rolling fields of heather and sedge, lies the Black Fief. Here can be found some of the finest farming and pasture in Hyperborea, as well as mines of iron and silver. There is but one problem: for as long as anyone can remember, whoever has accepted lordship of the Black Fief has died in nine months. Only the mad or the insanely courageous would mount the throne in Caer Carneddau, save it were unwillingly...

Six months ago young Lady Rhiannon the Fair was wed against her will to Lord Llewellyn the Bloody-Minded, who had lately accepted the Black Fief on a drunken dare. One month ago Lord Llewellyn was killed in a hunting accident, and Lady Rhiannon inherited the accursed lands. Now she is marked for death in less than a year. Rather than surrender to merry-making or madness as most heirs have, Rhiannon has chosen to invite adventurers from all over Hyperborea to the Keltic town of Greenlee and her brooding hill fort of Caer Carneddau. This has a two-fold purpose: to push back against the bandits and monsters that have come to threaten the Black Fief over years of uncertain rulership, and to seek some way to exorcise the curse that hangs over her lands. Anyone who finds a way to lift the curse has been promised a rich reward. If no solution can be found, in eight months Lady Rhiannon's cairn will join the hundred others that encircle Caer Carneddau... the latest victim of the Black Fief.

I have retooled my campaign to begin in a cursed and haunted portion of the Gal Hills. It should be beginning quite soon; watch this space for session reports. Can the players solve the mystery of the Black Fief before it claims yet another life?

[blackadder23]

This weekend I was (finally!) able to hold the first session of my AS&SH campaign. There were four players, along with two NPC fighters hired for extra muscle. The party consisted of the following:

Anya, a Common Cleric of Artemis (PC)
Borghast, a Viking Barbarian (PC)
Ginnungagap the Hyperborean, a Warlock (PC)
Thee-Ven, a Common Legerdemainist (PC)
Lars Larsson, a Viking Fighter (NPC, later became a PC)
Stinky Sven, a Viking Fighter (NPC)

I take no blame for the PC names, except insofar as they may have been inspired by looking at the pre-gens I made. I am responsible for “Stinky Sven”.



“The Forsaken Outpost”

The party, bound for the Gal Hills, was part of a mammoth-drawn wagon train crossing the Spiral Mountains in the teeth of a howling snowstorm. At the height of the storm, an avalanche separated the party from the rest of the wagon train, leaving them with nothing more than what they carried on their backs. The party desperately sought shelter as the temperature plunged and the blizzard worsened. Just when all hope seemed lost, they spotted an opening in the side of the mountain and gratefully stumbled inside. They had initially taken it for a natural cave, but they quickly recognized worked stone and a passageway leading into darkness. The place had obviously been sealed by ice for a long time, and had only recently been uncovered by the avalanches that still rumbled all around them. The party established a marching order, lit their torches, and ventured into the immemorial darkness.

Two hundred feet inside the mountain the tunnel ended in a bronze portal, closed by a lead seal inscribed in an extremely ancient dialect of Hyperborean. Ginnungagap was able to just make it out: “THIS OUTPOST IS DEEMED FORSAKEN IN THE NAME OF KA-VEN THE SAGACIOUS, MOST RENOWNED KING OF HYPERBOREA. LET WHOSOEVER ENTERS BE CURSED FOR ALL ETERNITY BY OUR DREAD LORD XATHOQQUA.” The party had never heard of this “King Ka-Ven”, but reasoned from the ice covering the place that the outpost must have been abandoned even before the coming of the glaciers to Hyperborea. Little heeding the threats of an unknown and long-dead king, Borghast smashed the seal with a few blows of his great axe, and the party eagerly passed through the portal in search of ancient treasures.

Beyond they discovered a complex of rooms, miraculously heated to a comfortable temperature. They soon realized the walls were radiating damp heat, and speculated that the Hyperboreans had built channels to pump naturally-heated water through the walls, mighty works which had survived the millennia since the place was abandoned. The first three rooms they entered contained only the badly decayed remnants of broken furnishings and fallen tapestries, while the fourth was a former armory filled with weapons long gone to corrosion and rot. Thee-Ven discovered a secret door in the rear of the armory (luckily so, since the only other corridor was blocked by the rubble of a collapsed ceiling) and noted that it was radiating a freezing cold. The party quickly assumed a combat formation, and Thee-Ven opened the secret door. Beyond was a frozen room, with rime coating the walls and icicles hanging from the ceiling. Clearly the heating system had failed in part of the complex. Bundling themselves against the cold, the party continued their quest for plunder.

At the far side of the room, a withered corpse was frozen in the ice – and in its hand it clutched a large red gem! Thee-Ven rushed to collect the treasure as his companions secured the room. The gem was stubbornly frozen in place, and Thee-Ven resorted to yanking. Unfortunately this caused the corpse to burst – releasing three giant white centipedes that had been nesting inside! A surprised Thee-Ven was bitten and perished from the poison [the first in the party to die, an ignominious death from dungeon vermin]. The rest of the party crushed the vile creatures with weapon blows, and Lars Larsson soon proved himself a bold adventurer who merited a full membership in the party. The survivors had little time to mourn Thee-Ven (who had turned a ghastly milk-white and swollen grotesquely from the poison), for at that moment the whole complex shook with a thunderous rumbling from the entrance. Rushing back to the opening – or what had been the opening – the party discovered it was hopelessly buried in tons of collapsed ice and snow [an unlucky random encounter table result]. Now the party’s focus shifted to finding another way out, lest the curse of Xathoqqua make this forsaken outpost their tomb.

Girding their loins and lighting fresh torches, the party ventured back into the frozen portion of the complex. Here were several rooms entombed in frost and icicles. Unfortunately this had been the place where most of the garrison died, and over the millennia their corpses had become shriveled ice mummies. Even more unfortunately, spirits of the Hyperborean ice had inhabited and animated these corpses and they now sought to destroy the living with single-minded malice. The party fought several combats with the awful creatures, and although Anya was able to drive some away with her faith, the rest had to be destroyed with fire and sword. (The party didn’t let the near-certainty of slow death inside the frozen outpost - not to mention the strong possibility of a quick death at the hands of ice mummies - overcome their greed. When they came across a chest frozen in the ice, they chipped it free and gained several silver ingots from a long-vanished Hyperborean royal mint.) Finally the party succeeded in running the gauntlet of the frozen dead, and reached a bronze door that radiated a faint warmth. They devoutly hoped the ice mummies wouldn’t follow them into a heated portion of the complex, a hope that ultimately proved to be correct.



Beyond the door was a large chamber waist-deep in churning warm water, with steaming fluid gushing from series of breaks in one wall. Here, reasoned the party, was the explanation for the failure of the heating system in the other part of the complex. After crossing the bubbling water – with considerable trepidation about what might be hiding underneath – the party mounted a short flight of stairs into another heated complex of rooms. The first two rooms contained nothing but rotting furnishings, but the third (whose locked bronze door was broken down by Borghast) was the living quarters of the former commandant. As the party examined an obvious treasure chest in the corner, the former commandant – possessed by a particularly powerful evil spirit – rose from beneath the rotted bed radiating freezing cold and a ghastly blue light. Sven was grasped by this wight and instantly turned black and shriveled away [the second party death, albeit an NPC]. Fortunately fire and holy water are effective remedies against wights, and (along with a magic missile cast by Ginnungagap) soon banished this abomination to the Black Gulf. Borghast then turned his attention to more important matters - to wit, the treasure. He suspected a trap on the chest, but the only party member who could discover such had died of a centipede bite. Taking no chances, Borghast smashed the lid with his great axe. By doing so, he avoided the poison needle on the latch, but also broke a potion bottle [of heroism] whose contents leaked away onto the ancient flagstones. Despite this loss, the chest still contained several gems, some gold ingots, and a glowing long sword which Borghast claimed on the grounds of “finders keepers”.



The party entered the final room, Borghast posturing heroically with his new magic sword. On the far side of the room a stream of almost-boiling water descended thirty feet from a grate in the ceiling to a corroded grate in the floor. On the left wall was the collapsed and broken remnant of a metal ladder which once had given access to a ledge and door twenty-five feet above. On the right wall was a twenty-five foot bronze statue of a Hyperborean warrior in archaic armor, bearing a gigantic broken iron spear and a brass hoplon shield some ten feet in diameter. Borghast attempted to climb to the ledge, from which he would lower a rope to the others (who prudently retained some of the treasure to encourage him to do so). Unfortunately the wall, slick with condensation, proved to be beyond his skill. The party examined the floor grate and realized they could flood the room by blocking it after closing the door. But it seemed certain that they would be scalded to death before the water level rose to the point that they could reach the ledge.

Finally the party [with no hints from the referee!] hit upon an ingenious scheme. Borghast and Lars used a pry bar to combine their strength against the statue’s brass shield, and successfully broke the corroded bolts and sent the shield crashing to the floor. All four party members dragged the huge shield over to the wall beneath the ledge; they then placed it open side up and tied it to a twenty-five foot length of rope that they secured to the wall with an iron spike. Lars donated his large shield, which Ginnungagap wrapped in his own sealskin cloak for waterproofing. The party members lined the gigantic brass shield with their other cloaks and furs as some protection against the heat. Borghast then closed the door and secured the sealskin-wrapped shield over the floor grate with four iron spikes before rushing to join his companions on the brass shield. The room began to fill with scalding water, and Anya prayed aloud to Artemis. A moment later, what the party had hardly dare hope would happen happened: the lightweight Hyperborean alloy of the shield floated, and the party began to rise toward the ledge.

The brass shield became hellishly hot, and the room was filled with blinding steam [requiring the party members to make Death saves to avoid a point of damage every round]. Still, it was less fatal than swimming in the boiling water would have been, and the four survivors were all still conscious (if suffering) when the shield reached the level of the ledge. The shield had floated a few feet away from the ledge in the infernal torrent, but the rope prevented it from drifting any further, and Borghast was able to hook the edge of the ledge with his great axe and pull the shield closer. The party scrambled onto the ledge, grabbed their cloaks and furs from the heated brass shield, and fled up the passageway beyond as the near-boiling water began to spill over the ledge and follow them. Fortunately, the water found its own level after thirty feet and rose no higher in the upward-sloping tunnel. The party collapsed to the floor a few scant feet from the seething water and enjoyed a much-needed rest.

After the party had rested and arranged their gear, they left the cooling water behind and proceeded up the tunnel. To their horror and disappointment, it ended in an apparent solid rock face after a hundred feet - and there could obviously be no return through the flooded passageway and room! However, a close examination discovered a hidden catch, and the rock face swung open on cunning hinges. The muted sanguinary light of Helios flooded the tunnel, and the party beheld a gentle slope of melting snows descending to foothills already touched by spring. Beyond, two days travel at most, they could just make out a hilltop village. The adventurers were saved, and had come to the Gal Hills at last.

The first session went pretty well, in my opinion. No one gained a level yet, but everybody seemed to have a good time. They did miss some treasure by not searching carefully, but those are the breaks. There were no problems with the rules (not surprisingly, since we all played AD&D before and it isn’t that different). I probably didn’t always follow the combat sequence exactly, from long habit of doing it differently, but the players didn’t seem to notice or care. I was very pleased that they deduced a method of escape without my emphasizing the statue’s shield very much. And to anticipate a question: if Borghast had managed to climb the wall, they could have avoided the whole rigmarole of flooding the room. I don’t like to force challenges on the players – the dice usually create sufficient challenges of their own!

[blackadder23]

(Here is one of the "new" monsters from this adventure.  Yes, it's basically a zombie with the special abilities changed. )

Ice Mummy (Undead Type 2)
No. Encountered: 1d6 (4d6)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: M
Movement: 30
Dexterity: 3
Armour Class: 8
Hit Dice: 2
No. of Attacks: 1 (pummel)
Damage: 1d8
Saving Throw: 16
Morale: 12
Experience Points: 64
Treasure Class: J, K, L, M

Ice mummies are corpses that were preserved in a gruesome withered form by cold temperatures, and which become inhabited by evil spirits of the Hyperborean ice. Their only goal is the death of living beings; these victims are then buried in snow and rise as ice mummies a day later. Ice mummies take reduced damage from non-magical weapons, but are very vulnerable to fire. An ice mummy exposed to ambient temperatures above freezing may fall to pieces.

Special:
• Immune to poison, paralysis, fear, and cold-based attacks.
• Normal chopping or slashing weapons (such as axes, scimitars, and swords) do ½ damage to ice mummies. Normal blunt and piercing weapons (such as maces, hammers, spears, and arrows) do ¼ damage. Magical weapons of all kinds do full damage to ice mummies.
• Suffers double damage from normal or magical fire.
• If exposed to ambient temperatures above freezing, must make a Death saving throw every round or fall to pieces. Automatically destroyed if exposed to an ambient temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.

(Giant white centipedes have identical stats to giant black centipedes, but are furry and colored white with gray stripes.)

[odysseus]

But, who gets the Lady ? and what is that curse ?
(who said I'm the kind of person to start a mystery book by its end ? )

[blackadder23]

The players have to earn the answer to the mystery.

(Always assuming they care... they might decide to just go someplace else and hear about her untimely demise later.  )

[Ghul]

Very entertaining, Ben. Thanks for taking the time to type it up!

[blackadder23]

Here are the updated lineup and character portraits for the second session this weekend. Between adventures, the party reached the Keltic trading town of Hawkford and unloaded the gems and ingots. With a couple hundred gold pieces each, they were able to upgrade their armor and weapons. During the first session, Thee-Ven's player took over Lars literally the same round that Thee-Ven died. However, he doesn't like playing fighters and was willing to sacrifice the gold and XP that Lars gained in order to play a fresh character (an assassin). He has made it clear that he intends to cautiously hang back and shoot things with his crossbow. Lars has reverted to NPC status, and a new NPC fighter (Tristan) has joined the party. Borghast has named his magic sword "Ymirstongue". Though seemingly only +1, the blade of the sword bears some ancient Hyperborean runes that not even Ginnungagap can read.

So the party now consists of:

Anya, a Common Cleric of Artemis (PC)
Balto the Bad, a Kimmerian Assassin (PC)
Borghast, a Viking Barbarian (PC)
Ginnungagap the Hyperborean, a Warlock (PC)
Lars Larsson, a Viking Fighter (NPC)
Tristan, a Common Fighter (NPC)



Fingers crossed that everybody can make it!

[odysseus]

Aug 22, 2013 17:41:13 GMT -6 blackadder23 said:

The players have to earn the answer to the mystery.

(Always assuming they care... they might decide to just go someplace else and hear about her untimely demise later.  )

Have no fear, even Conan couldn't resist helping and rescuing a seldomly clothed princess in distress. 

[tec97]

Aug 23, 2013 12:35:44 GMT -6 odysseus said:

Have no fear, even Conan couldn't resist helping and rescuing a seldomly clothed princess in distress. 

Who can?

[blackadder23]

"The Mountain Ape's Face"

After two days of travel, the weary party arrived in the Keltic trade town of Hawkford. It was a bustling center of trade between the Gal Hills and points north, with mammoth-wagon trains coming and going and a comparatively lavish open-air market. After convincing the guards to allow them through the stout wooden stockade that circled the town, the adventurers sold the gems and ingots for hard coin and purchased new weapons and armor for themselves. They then repaired to the common house where they soon made the acquaintance of one of the many adventurers headed for the Black Fief, a scowling fellow named Balto the Bad, and invited him to join their party. There is, after all, strength in numbers. In addition, a man-at-arms named Tristan was hired as a guard for the journey east. They would make plans on the morrow, after a refreshing night’s sleep on a dirty straw pallet. [At this point the adventure actually began.]

The party sat at a table in the common house the next morning, arguing over what animals and equipment to buy for their journey to the Black Fief. According to their map it lay about a hundred miles to the east, along a road that could more accurately be described as a cart track. There were certain to be dangers along that road, and in addition the adventurers soon realized that their purchases of arms and armor had left them with but little coin to buy supplies for their trip. Balto suggested that they look for some paying job in Hawkford to raise traveling money: “The [rude word for female dog] isn’t going to die for seven months, is she? What’s the hurry?” Balto received a few choice words from Anya concerning his lack of charity, and then was sent to look for some such opportunity to earn gold. After he left, the rest of the party noticed a young white-robed druid, sitting alone and smoking a pipe. Ginnungagap tried to engage him in conversation about the Black Fief and Lady Rhiannon, but the druid answered only with monosyllables and variously-colored smoke rings.



Balto returned an hour later with a dour, richly-clad Keltic merchant named Fergus Nine-Fingers. His daughter Fiona had been taken that morning, snatched from the woods north of town by a person or creature unknown while picking berries. The Hawkford watch was only good for taking bribes from merchants to protect their wares, and would do nothing to help. Fergus was prepared to pay a thousand pieces of gold for the head of the beast who had taken his daughter. If Fiona could be returned alive, so much the better; but revenge must be had in any case. The party held a quick whispered discussion over whether to accept this offer – something didn’t seem quite right about the whole thing – but in the end their greed won out (with a slight tincture of sympathy for paternal concern in Anya’s case). Fergus provided a sketch map of roughly where he had last seen Fiona, and wished the party luck. As they left the common house, the party noticed the druid watching them intently and blowing blood-red smoke rings.

After being let out of Hawkford by the surly guards, the party circled around to the north side of town. Beyond were a few miles of fields and farms, and then the dark and mysterious pine forest began. The party followed the map provided by Fergus to a glen filled with blackberry bushes. In one corner of the glen, beside a stream of cool water, lay a wooden pail half full of blackberries. Borghast knelt and examined the ground, and found the faint tracks of at least two people headed north along the course of the stream. It all seemed to confirm what Fergus had told them: his daughter had been picking berries and had been grabbed and carried away by assailants. The party took up their weapons and shields and plunged back into the shadowy and unnaturally quiet pine forest.

After the party followed the tracks along the stream for several miles, the dark tangled woods abruptly parted. Beyond rose two low stony hills draped in moss and lichen; a waterfall descended from a rock face to form the stream they had been following. Borghast tried to find tracks on the stony ground, but failed. In his opinion, the abductors had either gone up the hillside and into the cave from which the water flowed, or into the narrow ravine between the two hills; he couldn’t be sure which. The party held a brief and animated debate before opting for the cave. They scrambled up the rugged hillside, weapons in hand and looking warily about them. They saw nothing but some ravens circling overhead, whose cries sounded faintly mocking. At the top they reached the cave, and inched carefully around the flowing stream that filled most of the entrance; a slip here would have sent them over the waterfall and onto sharp rocks thirty feet below. All the adventurers made it inside the cave safely, and soon had a pair of torches burning. The tunnel, and the swift-flowing stream, ran into darkness.

The party cautiously proceeded along the stream in marching order, weapons at the ready. A few small side passages opened along the way, but they proceeded on the theory that the kidnappers had been following the stream. Anya thrust her torch down one of the side passages and glimpsed something large and shadowy scuttling away in the darkness. After about twenty minutes, the tunnel veered to the right and opened into a much larger space. The stream was flowing out from a low opening in the wall and could no longer be followed. The party listened for some indication of where to go, perhaps even the cries of the kidnapped girl, but they heard nothing but the quiet murmur of the stream. In the end they decided to continue down the larger tunnel. It was obviously a natural passage formed by ancient flowing water, yet they couldn’t shake the impression that it had been widened and enlarged by the hands of thinking creatures.

After following the twisting tunnel for some distance, the party abruptly encountered a dozen bird-men of Hyperborea with bronze-tipped spears. The bird-men glared at the party suspiciously, and their leader issued a hissing challenge in his own tongue. Ginnungagap stepped forward with a hand open in a sign of friendship, hoping to avoid an unnecessary battle with these numerous creatures. [He then rolled an unbelievably bad reaction check.] After a few seconds of smiling and making friendly gestures, Ginnungagap realized the bird-men were staring past him in horror. Ginnungagap glanced over his shoulder and saw Borghast nonchalantly gnawing a roasted chicken leg while awaiting the results of the parley. The bird-men screeched in rage and charged to the attack.

Ginnungagap, Borghast, Lars, and Tristan closed ranks in the passageway and presented a solid wall of shields, swords, and axes to their attackers. The warriors hacked and hewed, and soon broken and dead bird-men were piled at their feet. Their attackers were wavering, but then the warriors heard a warning cry from Anya behind them. Too late! A second group of bird-men had approached from the rear with a huge weighted net. The net fell over the party [none making a successful Avoidance save] and almost knocked them to the ground. The bird-men then attacked the adventurers about the head and face with padded clubs. Hampered as they were by the net [and needing to make a Death save with every hit to avoid being knocked out] the party was soon beaten unconscious, bundled into the net, and dragged off into the darkness.

When the adventurers regained their senses, they found themselves disarmed and imprisoned in a gigantic wicker birdcage (or perhaps more accurately, “man-cage”) hanging in a large cavern lit by numerous torches. Gathered around the cage was a flock of bird-men, all glaring at the party in a decidedly unfriendly manner. Two richly-dressed bird-men stood near the cage and discussed the party’s fate in a screeching parody of the common tongue: the obese and hungry Raak’aak, and the lean and gloomy Skwawk.



RAAK’AAK: What shall we do with these tasty morsels, Skwawk?
SKWAWK: Throw them to the mountain ape who lives in the ravine, Raak’aak. They’ve been too much trouble already.
RAAK’AAK: Shall we make them into a soup with mushrooms and wild rice?
SKWAWK: Chop, chop, chop. Too much bother.
RAAK’AAK: Then shall we roast them on a spit? So tender.
SKWAWK: Ugh! All that turning.
RAAK’AAK: Fine! Let’s cook them in the oven, with chestnut and sage stuffing.
SKWAWK: You gather the firewood. You know the ape kills any of us he catches in the forest.
RAAK’AAK: But I’m hungry!
SKWAWK: You’re always hungry!

Having listened in growing horror to these proposals, the party interrupted the squabbling bird-men with urgent demands that they be set free. Raak’aak replied that the party had killed eight good bird-men, and must pay a weregild in either gold or their own (to his eye, rather stringy) flesh. Ginnungagap replied that they were indeed stringy, to say nothing of tough and bitter on the tongue. Nor, unfortunately, did they have much gold. But perhaps, he suggested, they could pay their debt by means of a service? Raak’aak sneered: “Of what service could you possibly be to the bird-men, save as the most meager of appetizers?” Let us kill the mountain ape, Ginnungagap replied, and then you shall have free range of the forest once more. The bird-men turned and conferred upon this offer in their own harsh language. [Fortunately the reaction roll here was much better.] Finally Raak’aak turned back to the cage and screeched: “Very well, we agree. Kill the ape and your weregild is paid. Fail, and it shall be he who dines on your stringy flesh.” “I hope he chokes on them,” muttered Skwawk.

The giant cage was lowered to the floor and the party released. Surrounded by a flock of glaring hostile bird-men, the party traveled down several tunnels under they came to a huge door of woven wicker, secured by several wooden bars. Here most of their gear and weapons were returned, but Raak’aak was reluctant to give back the magic sword Ymirstongue, claiming it as “a lagniappe weregild for my dear slain sister’s son”. Borghast was wroth and the situation almost erupted in violence once more, but Anya pointed out that Borghast would need his sword to slay the ape, which was what they all wanted. Raak’aak returned the sword with ill grace and then ordered the party through the door, saying they would be killed if they tried to return. The wicker door was slammed and barred behind them, leaving the party to face a foul-smelling tunnel descending into deep gloom. They checked their packs and discovered that most of their equipment was intact, save that all their coins were gone and all their rations had been eaten. Balto vowed to return one day with casks of incendiary oil and roast the entire aerie of bird-men alive.

The party traveled down the gently sloping passage for a hundred feet, only to find it blocked by a deliberately-placed boulder. The rank odor was especially strong here. Ginnungagap, Lars, and Borghast were able to combine their strength against the boulder and [succeeding at a major feat] were just able to move it enough to allow a man to pass. The reek that poured from the darkness beyond was near-choking. Fearing an ambush, Ginnungagap asked Balto to sneak through the gap and assess the situation. Balto refused in no uncertain terms. Borghast sneered at Balto as a coward and went through the opening himself, moving silently as barbarians are wont to do. The rest of the party waited with weapons drawn. Borghast returned a moment later to report that a gloomy cavern lay beyond, with beams of sunlight dimly visible at the far end. There was no mountain ape or any other threat in sight. Furthermore, Borghast eagerly reported, he had seen the glint of gold.

The party slipped around the boulder in single file, and soon discovered that Borghast was correct. They were in a dank cavern filled with the unbearable reek of mountain ape. The cavern was shadowy, but sunlight could be seen filtering through some kind of opening on the far side. A pile of bloody furs and torn human clothing formed a crude enormous bed on one side of the cavern. Beside the bed, tucked between two stalagmites, a pile of coins and other objects (including a small wooden chest) could be seen. The party cautiously walked over to the bed, alert every moment for danger and ambush. As they neared the gruesome bed and the heap of treasure, they spotted something on the floor nearby: a teenage boy and girl, bound hand and foot and gagged with unspeakably filthy strips of fur. Anya rushed to their side as the rest of the party watched the gloomy cavern for any threat. Removing the girl’s gag, Anya asked her name. “Fiona,” replied the girl. “This is my lover Tam. We’re running away together.”

The party held a brief heated discussion as the freed couple held each other and watched them with frightened eyes. Balto suggested having the boy’s head off then and there, and taking it back to Hawkford to collect their reward. Borghast proposed the relatively less ruthless method of trussing the couple again and carrying them back to town like sacks of grain; let the merchant Fergus deal with the situation as he saw fit. Anya stated darkly that Artemis would punish murderers, and further that she didn’t appreciate the fact that Fergus had (in all likelihood) knowingly lied to them. Ginnungagap pointed out that there was a place to discuss this, and that place wasn’t the lair of a mountain ape who could return at any moment. The party needed to grab the treasure, grab the equally valuable young couple, and get out while they could.

Borghast began cautiously scooping the coins into a large sack. Buried in them he found a dagger with a softly glowing blade, which he took “for safekeeping”. Borghast then ordered Balto to check the chest for traps. Balto replied that he would in no wise do so. Borghast suggested that Balto start pulling his weight, or else die with a sword in his gut. Ginnungagap snapped at them to stop arguing, and told Balto to just check the chest for traps and be done with it. Balto examined the chest and found nothing, so he carefully used his dagger blade to flip the latch and pop the lid open. Inside were more gold coins and a cylindrical bone case inscribed with runes. Balto then closed the lid and picked up the chest… thereby rupturing the colony of mustard mould growing on the bottom. A choking cloud of spores filled that corner of the cavern, and Balto dropped to the ground dead [making that player 0 for 2 characters – ouch!] with his skin turning a sickly yellow color. Borghast too was caught in the spore cloud, but [having saved successfully] managed to hold his breath in time due to his barbarian instincts. The party’s young prisoners chose this moment of distraction to attempt an escape. They sprang to their feet and [having gained surprise] made a mad dash for the cavern entrance. But they pulled up short after just a few feet, and Fiona unleashed an ear-splitting scream. The mountain ape had returned.



Lars [now once more a PC under the control of Balto’s erstwhile player] snatched up Balto’s crossbow and joined Ginnungagap in firing quarrels at the towering brute. Borghast, who had dived to the ground to avoid the mustard mould spore cloud, slipped into the shadows and moved carefully among the stalagmites, trying to flank the mountain ape without being seen. Fiona and Tam fled pell-mell away from the ape to cower in a corner of the cave. Anya hurled a sling stone at the beast but missed badly. Tristan, unnerved by all the chaos [and failing a morale check], fled back up the passageway toward the lair of the bird-men. The mountain ape, enraged when one of the quarrels struck home, grabbed a boulder and hurled it at Lars, who was smashed to the ground bleeding and unconscious. The reeking brute then bellowed and charged, swinging a whole sapling as a club.

Ginnungagap ducked under the blow and swung his battle axe, but inflicted no appreciable harm on the ape. Meanwhile, Anya called upon Artemis to heal Lars of his near-mortal wounds, and the warrior arose – bruised, but ready to fight. Borghast, having gotten behind the mountain ape, struck a savage blow from behind with Ymirstongue. The brute whirled with an angry roar and hit Borghast, knocking him to the ground. Ginnungagap and the revived Lars then attacked the ape, sending it staggering to its knees with a flurry of axe blows. Stumbling to his feet and spitting blood, Borghast finished the beast with a sword thrust through the heart. The ape lay dead in a spreading pool of blood, and the heavy silence of the gloomy cavern was broken only by Fiona’s sobs and Tam’s whispered words of comfort.

Leaving Borghast and Anya to guard their prisoners, Ginnungagap and Lars went in search of Tristan. They found him pinned to the great wicker door, blood running from a half-dozen spear points to form a puddle at his feet. He had tried to break through the door to escape and, true to their threats, the bird-men had stabbed him to death through the gaps in the wicker. Hostile beady eyes glared at Ginnungagap and Lars through the spaces in the door, until the adventurers finally turned and made a somber trek back to the ape’s cave. Avoiding the corpse of Balto, which was already growing mustard mould from every visible bodily orifice, Ginnungagap carefully transferred the treasure out of the chest and into a sack. He opened the bone case and found a slim silvery wand, which he packed away for later examination.

The treasure secured, the party held another discussion about the young lovers. Borghast again suggested trussing them and dragging them back to town, but the others felt there had been enough violence. Anya knelt and talked quietly to Tam, pointing out that the wilds of Hyperborea were unsafe. Did he really feel able to protect Fiona from threats like the mountain ape? After a long moment [and a positive reaction roll] Tam sighed and admitted he couldn’t. Anya patted his shoulder and told Tam his time would come; he just needed to be patient. Meanwhile, Fiona had to go back to her father… along with the head of her kidnapper. So saying, Anya directed Lars and Ginnungagap to hack off the ape’s head and put the gory token in a large sack. Taking up the bags of treasure and the sack holding the bloody ape head, and forming a protective wall around Fiona and Tam, the party marched out into the sunlight.

They found themselves in the rocky ravine, and above them both sides of the ravine were lined with rows of silent, motionless bird-men staring down at them. The party walked through the ravine with a measured pace, weapons and sacks dripping blood and gore, while Fiona sobbed quietly and Tam whispered what words of comfort he could. Finally the party reached the mouth of the ravine, near the stream that would take them back to Hawkford. Raak’aak and Skwawk blocked the way, staring at the party with inscrutable glassy eyes. Ginnungagap reached into the sack and produced the bloody head of the mountain ape, raising it for all to see. A vast sighing and chattering arose from the bird-men above; Raak’aak and Skwawk gave a ritual bow and stepped aside, allowing the party to follow the cool stream back to civilization.

Just short of town, Fiona and Tam embraced and were parted; Fiona vowed to wait for him, and he to come back for her one day. The adventurers looked at each other and shrugged cynically – maybe, maybe not. But that wasn’t their problem. The party had some difficulty convincing the watch to admit four such blood-splattered figures, but in the end the adventurers strolled into the common house with Fiona walking meekly in their wake. Fergus was sitting at a table with two armed, hulking bodyguards. Ginnungagap slammed the open sack down on the table, and the ape’s head rolled out to practically land in the merchant’s lap. “Here”, said Ginnungagap, “is the head of the thing that took your daughter. Here is your daughter, safe and alive. Now where is our money?” With a look of obvious chagrin on his face, Fergus asked them if they were quite sure that this creature had taken Fiona. Had it not been, rather, a young man? Cleaning his nails with the magic dagger, Borghast asked if Fergus was impugning their honesty. Fergus looked from the dead face of the ape to the grim faces of the adventurers, and back again, and then signaled to his henchmen. One of them handed Ginnungagap a bulging sack of gold coins. Ginnungagap bowed slightly to the merchant, and then the party left him there – Fergus still staring at the horrible dead face of the ape in mild disbelief while, very tentatively, starting to embrace his weeping daughter.

That evening, the adventurers were enjoying well-deserved mugs of ale in the common room while watching a wench scrub bloodstains off one of the tables. Suddenly the young druid was at their side, looking at them with bright green eyes and blowing blue smoke from his pipe. “I admire the way you handled that,” said he. He handed them a clay token inscribed with the symbol of Yoon’Deh. “Show this sign to the Lady Rhiannon’s advisor, the high druid Gwydion. He will offer you his help.” The nameless druid smiled cryptically. “But whatever you do, don’t trust him. Don’t trust anybody. The time may come when you’ll wish you had problems as simple as killing a mountain ape and tricking an overprotective father.” And then, despite a babble of questions from the party, the druid bowed and walked away, leaving a trail of smoke rings that had once more turned a sinister blood red.

I’m feeling a bit more confident about myself and my players, so this was a lot more elaborate than the first session, with far more NPC interaction. I’m more than a bit chagrined that there have been two PC casualties so far, and both were the same player. He seemed to take it pretty well, but still. On a happier note, thanks to the XP gained from acquiring a wand of magic missiles, Ginnungagap has reached second level! Anya, Borghast, and Lars (if he remains a PC, which is still not decided) are not far behind. Everyone did a good job of playing their alignments this time, but it led to a lot of party bickering. I may have to discourage actively evil PCs like Balto (or not – it was kind of amusing, to be honest, at least in reasonable doses). The adventurers have a fair amount of money now, but they still need travel supplies and mounts, which should eat up most of it. On to the next session!

[blackadder23]

Here are the roster and character portraits for the next session. I was discussing the slow character advancement in AS&SH (relative to AD&D) with Jeff T. and he pointed out that I wasn't awarding 50 XP per hour played as recommended in the rules. D'oh! He's right! So each PC was retroactively awarded an extra 400 XP, which allowed Anya and Lars to advance to second level along with Ginnungagap(despite grabbing every magic weapon that wasn't nailed down, Borghast fell just short). The late Balto's player has elected to continue playing Lars, since (and I quote) "God's told me twice not to play a thief class." So the party doesn't have anyone with trap-finding or lock-picking ability; we'll see how that goes. Three of the PCs spent the next two game weeks (and 200 gp) training while Borghast drank himself into a stupor in the common house. The PCs are all now either kitted out in banded or splint, except that Borghast has chosen to remain in studded leather to allow for stealth and climbing; in fact, he's even ditched his shield and is now dual-wielding the sword Ymirstongue and his new +1 dagger, Ullrsthing. After paying for training and new equipment the party is once again broke - just like real sword and sorcery characters! Rather than strike out overland ill-equipped, the party has elected to remain in Hawkford for another session and see whether they can get into some further lucrative mischief (I'm guessing the answer is yes). Once again a couple of NPC fighters - Kirowan and Rezko - have been hired to pad out the party. I'm hoping to get at least one more player soon, so that all these NPC redshirts aren't necessary!

So the current roster is:

Anya, a Common Cleric of Artemis (2nd level PC)
Borghast, a Viking Barbarian (1st level PC)
Ginnungagap the Hyperborean, a Warlock (2nd level PC)
Lars Larsson, a Viking Fighter (2nd level PC)
Kirowan, a Keltic Fighter (1st level NPC)
Rezko the Kimmerian, a Fighter (1st level NPC)

[odysseus]

Aug 26, 2013 14:54:21 GMT -6 blackadder23 said:

Everyone did a good job of playing their alignments this time, but it led to a lot of party bickering. I may have to discourage actively evil PCs like Balto (or not – it was kind of amusing, to be honest, at least in reasonable doses).

Quite a problem indeed. Having to impose an alignement to PCs isn't always a pleasant solution but it sure gives a more stable group which can be quite worth it on the long term.

One more thing I'm curious to see how it evolves in your game.

[Ghul]

Aug 29, 2013 13:21:53 GMT -6 odysseus said:

Aug 26, 2013 14:54:21 GMT -6 blackadder23 said:

Everyone did a good job of playing their alignments this time, but it led to a lot of party bickering. I may have to discourage actively evil PCs like Balto (or not – it was kind of amusing, to be honest, at least in reasonable doses).

Quite a problem indeed. Having to impose an alignement to PCs isn't always a pleasant solution but it sure gives a more stable group which can be quite worth it on the long term.

One more thing I'm curious to see how it evolves in your game.

There's nothing worse than having an overly enthusiastic player of a paladin finding out someone else in the group is playing, say, an evil assassin. Antithesis of weal, indeed.

But a little bit of party tension can be a good thing. It adds to the experience, IMO, but it can get out of hand with some role-players. I prefer it if the group plays good and neutral characters. If they want evil, I would prefer evil and neutral characters.

[blackadder23]

So far we've had an LG character (Anya), a CG character (Borghast), a CE character (Balto), and everybody else has been Neutral. I'm not being as strict about alignment in AS&SH because I see it as a case of "greedy with LG tendencies" versus "greedy with CE tendencies"; at the end of the day, they can all agree on the "greedy" part. When I'm running AD&D I'm a lot more strict, and usually I will give the players a list of "recommended" compatible alignments (typically this is something like N, CN, NG, and CG - I don't see adventurers as very lawful, frankly) and players have to convince me to allow a character of another alignment. Oh well - once you tell people CG is the "Han Solo alignment", that's what they all want to play anyway.

[Ghul]

Sept 3, 2013 7:10:23 GMT -6 blackadder23 said:

So far we've had an LG character (Anya), a CG character (Borghast), a CE character (Balto), and everybody else has been Neutral. I'm not being as strict about alignment in AS&SH because I see it as a case of "greedy with LG tendencies" versus "greedy with CE tendencies"; at the end of the day, they can all agree on the "greedy" part. When I'm running AD&D I'm a lot more strict, and usually I will give the players a list of "recommended" compatible alignments (typically this is something like N, CN, NG, and CG - I don't see adventurers as very lawful, frankly) and players have to convince me to allow a character of another alignment. Oh well - once you tell people CG is the "Han Solo alignment", that's what they all want to play anyway.

But is he really CG? If Greedo shoots first, sure, but if Han shoots first, he's clearly toeing the line to CN.

[blackadder23]

“Shrine of the Bat-Toad”

The adventurers spent the next two weeks in Hawkford honing their skills with arms and spells – except for Borghast, who spent them drinking, wenching, and boasting of his exploits. Once they felt fully prepared, the party met in the common room to discuss how to proceed. They were anxious to continue their journey to the Black Fief, for they had seen numerous other adventurers passing through Hawkford; it wouldn’t do for someone else to solve the riddle and claim the prize first! And yet, all the gold earned in their last exploit had somehow sifted through their fingers without them actually purchasing any mounts or travelling gear. The adventurers considered striking out in haste and on foot, but in the end judged it too risky. Another lucrative local job was needed to raise sufficient coin for the trip. The party members had all heard rumors of potential adventures [provided by the referee] but in the end decided to call upon the druids of Hawkford, who (so it was said) would pay well to have a certain object recovered. Among other reasons, the party felt this would give them a chance to ask about the mysterious druid they had encountered two weeks before. [At this point the adventure actually began.]

The next morning the party left Hawkford, accompanied by two newly-hired mercenaries, and went to seek the druids in the farmlands north of town. They weren’t hard to find, for a huge wicker cage in the shape of a man had recently been erected in the midst of the fields. White-robed druids could be seen milling about its base, piling firewood for the coming sacrifice. As the party drew nearer, they could hear the bleating of the doomed sheep and goats imprisoned in the image. As they drew nearer still they could see, much to Anya’s displeasure, at least six hopeless-looking naked men awaiting their death inside the gigantic wicker cage. The fuming Anya headed directly for three elderly druids, red-robed and laden with gold jewelry, who were standing off to the side apparently discussing the sacrifice; her subdued companions followed in her wake, nervously eyeing the numerous druids who were watching them with less-than-friendly eyes. They fervently hoped Anya wouldn’t be so offensive as to provoke these religious fanatics to violence.

When she reached the druidic leaders, Anya asked point blank what the men in the cage had done to deserve such a death. The oldest of the druids raised his eyebrows and asked her name. Once she identified herself as “Anya, a priestess of Artemis”, the druid was silent for a long moment, and then asked if Anya was a follower of Law. She proudly proclaimed she was. The druid then pointed out that the men had been duly tried and condemned for serious crimes. Furthermore, did not some followers of Artemis sacrifice convicts by riddling them with arrows? Anya admitted this was so. What then, wondered the druid, was her cause for complaint? Anya ground her teeth and then – prompted by her companions, who didn’t give a fig if the Kelts burned their undesirables, and who furthermore wanted to get back to the business at hand – asked the elderly druid’s pardon for her impertinence. The druid inclined his head: “Just so. But you surely haven’t come here merely to criticize our religious customs. I am Black Duncan, chief druid of Hawkford. What would you have of me?”

Ginnungagap stepped forward and explained that they were bold adventurers in search of employment, and had heard that the druids needed a certain object recovered. If the price was right, the party would accomplish this. Black Duncan rubbed his chin for a moment, and then beckoned the adventurers to join him and the other druidic leaders in the shade of an oak tree. Once there, he told the party that the Kelts honored Yoon’Deh the Elk Goddess above all other deities, and that the sacrifice today was in her honor. Perhaps, then, it was fate that had brought the party to the druids at this propitious moment. In ancient days, the chief druid lectured, Xathoqqua had been the chief god of Hyperborea. Then worship of Yoon’Deh had spread and slowly supplanted him. With the coming of the Green Death a thousand years before, the worship of Yoon’Deh had mostly faded away outside of the Gal Hills. Now the Bat-Toad once again reigned supreme, his bloated leering statues being seen on altars in virtually every corner of the land. But not, Black Duncan emphasized, in the Gal Hills. Here Yoon’Deh was still paramount, and shrines to the Bat-Toad were in fact forbidden. Only one such shrine survived: an ancient relic of the chaotic time after the Green Death. The shrine had been reared then by those who revered Xathoqqua, and a sacred image of Yoon’Deh had been placed on the altar in mocking captivity. So long as that image remained imprisoned on the altar, neither a druid nor any other faithful follower of Yoon’Deh could pass through the mystic veil that surrounded the shrine. But an outsider could do so, and could then recover the image from the shrine and return it to those who revered it. The druids would be willing to pay two and one half thousand pieces of gold for the safe return of the image.

Ginnungagap asked if the shrine would be guarded. Black Duncan shrugged and said that the evil worshippers who built it were no doubt long gone; still, a shrine to Xathoqqua would naturally tend to attract beasts and monsters, so anything was possible. The party then stepped aside to confer on this offer. Borghast was not eager to violate some ancient shrine, and said so in no uncertain terms. Ginnungagap as well was less than thrilled at the idea of crossing the god of his ancestors, especially since the Bat-Toad was still widely regarded as the chief god of Hyperborea. Anya denounced their cowardice, and expressed a desire to burn the wicked Chaotic shrine once they had plundered it. The adventurers were at loggerheads until Lars suggested a compromise: they would ask the druids to double the money, and when Black Duncan refused the party could decline the offer without giving offense and look for less dangerous work elsewhere. Ginnungagap then returned to the chief druids and demanded five thousand pieces of gold to recover the image of Yoon’Deh. The druids gasped at this audacity, then put their heads together in whispered conference. A few moments [and an incredibly positive reaction roll] later, Black Duncan returned to the party and said, much to their shock: “Done. Will you swear to do this thing?” The adventurers looked at one another, and then gave their oaths that they would. For the first time, Black Duncan smiled through a mouthful of rotted teeth: “It is well. Return to this place at noon and we will lead you to the edge of the veil. Do not foreswear yourselves in this matter; oath-breaking is considered a serious crime in the Gal Hills.” So saying, he pointedly turned away from the party and gestured to the lesser druids to light the wicker man. As the party walked away they were followed by reeking smoke and the screams of dying men and animals; they could only hope it wasn’t an omen of thing to come.



At noon the party returned to the field, fully laden with weapons and equipment and accompanied by the phlegmatic mercenaries Kirowan and Rezko. Three of the white-robed novice druids waited near the smoldering ashes of the great wicker man. They bowed to the party and beckoned them wordlessly to follow. The adventurers arranged themselves in a marching order, weapons and shields at the ready, and followed their silent guides. The druids struck out into the woods, which made the party somewhat nervous lest they should venture too near the aerie of the bird-men; it seemed unwise to test the forbearance of those strange creatures! But the druids led them well north of the stream that flowed from the bird-men’s lair, and the party found themselves in unknown woods. After an hour of following the taciturn guides through trees and glens, the adventurers began to fear some trick. Borghast morbidly suggested that the druids meant to lure them deep in the woods and sacrifice them, and whispered that he was going to shake one of the guides until he talked; that proposal earned a violent demurral from Anya. Just as the party reached the verge of demanding answers from the voiceless druids – possibly at sword point – the trees and brambles parted into a clearing. Some twenty feet away there rose a curiously solid and opaque wall of fog. The guides halted and gestured at the wall of fog, once more bowing courteously. The adventurers looked at one another grimly – this could only be the veil Black Duncan had mentioned, and untold horrors lay on the other side. But the lure of gold on the one hand, and threat of perhaps burning in the wicker man on the other, bolstered their courage. They took firmer grips on their weapons and passed through the misty veil.

Beyond lay a gloomy nightmarish place, so dark that they were obliged to light torches even though it was the middle of the afternoon. They found themselves on a twisting path through a dense forest of sinister-looking trees and vicious twisting thorn bushes. The same heavy fog that had formed the veil was above them and all around them, reducing visibility to no more than twenty feet. Weird miasmal odors rose from the forest, as well as stealthy uncanny sounds just beyond the range of hearing. As the party ventured forward, they realized they were in a maze of labyrinthine paths, all hedged by the unwholesome trees (which seemed to move in subtle and horrible ways when the adventurers weren’t watching them) and the cursed unnatural mists. Weapons at the ready, torches burning with greasy smoke, eyes straining to pierce the miasmal gloom, the party proceeded into the dark forest.

After a seemingly endless trek down winding forest paths, the party suddenly broke into a large clearing. The heavy mists continued to block the sky overhead, but within the clearing they were much thinner. A jumble of large broken blocks and stunted trees, all wreathed in wisps of mist, filled the hundred-foot diameter space. Could this be the ruins of the Bat-Toad’s shrine? The party crept into the clearing, alert for any signs of danger, but were nonetheless surprised when a crude bone-tipped arrow plunged from the mists and struck Rezko. The mercenary fell to the ground, wounded but alive, while the other party members sought safety among the stone blocks. A barrage of the primitive arrows rained down on the party, accompanied by inhuman shrieks and cackling. Ginnungagap and Lars could just make out a half-dozen dark figures crouched among the blocks on the other side of the clearing, and the two men began to fire crossbow quarrels in their direction. The shadowy figures answered with more arrows, along with derisive screeches and insane gibbering. Borghast responded with profane speculation about the ancestry and bed partners of the archers, while his companions kept up a steady fire of quarrels.

With both sides well-protected and under cover, minutes of bow fire passed with no arrow or bolt striking home. Finally Ginnungagap resolved to break the stalemate with sorcery. He had earlier determined that the wand found in the mountain ape’s cave, clearly of Atlantean manufacture, would discharge silvery bolts if waved in a certain peculiar pattern. Of course, there was no telling how many times it would work before failing – possibly spectacularly. Heedless of this danger, Ginnungagap passed his crossbow to Borghast to continue a harassing fire, and then took up the magical wand. He traced a weird, non-Euclidian figure with the tip, and then discharged a barrage of sizzling silver bolts that crossed the clearing and unerringly struck their half-hidden foes. Howls of pain and rage echoed across the clearing, and still more as one of Borghast’s quarrels finally struck home. Ignoring the scattered return fire, and the very real threat of the wand exploding, Ginnungagap again rained silvery death down on their foes. Two of the figures slumped motionless on the ground, while the rest babbled and gibbered in insane rage. A moment later, the remaining shadowy figures rose from behind the blocks and glided into the mist, followed by parting shots from Lars and Borghast.

The party drew their blades and crossed the clearing to their fallen foes, ducking among the stone blocks in case the archers began to fire again. But none did. At the far end of the clearing the party discovered the corpses of two savage hyaena-men. In addition to the burns from the silvery bolts which had slain them, the bodies showed vicious bites in the abdomen where their comrades had stopped for a quick snack before fleeing. Borghast cared little about these signs of cannibal appetite, but he was outraged when he discovered that the departing hyaena-men had also looted the bodies of any coins! Anya counseled following the remaining beasts of Chaos and slaying them, lest they return in greater numbers. The others demurred, pointing out that their enemies would almost certainly set an ambush, and that their ability to see in the dark would be an insurmountable advantage in the gloomy depths of the forest. Anya conceded that this was so, and then suggested that they be gone from the clearing – which seemed to be some other ruin, rather than the shrine they were seeking – as quickly as possible. The party agreed on this course of action, and plunged back into the misty forest in search of the Bat-Toad’s shrine.



The party wandered down twisted gloomy paths through the sinister forest for what seemed like hours, only to find themselves back in the clearing with the ruins again. They immediately noted that the corpses of the hyaena-men had been dragged away, leaving smears of blood that disappeared into the mists. Lars and Ginnungagap stationed themselves behind a block, covering with their crossbows the path the hyaena-men had fled down, while the rest of the party investigated the perimeter of the clearing for other possible paths. Unfortunately there didn’t prove to be any; unless they wanted to hack their way through the trees and thick underbrush, it seemed the adventurers had no choice but to take the same path the hyaena-men had. Borghast strenuously objected to that course of action – his barbarian instincts were screaming of danger and the uncanny. His counsel was to flee back the way they had come and forget the shrine. The others were no more happy at the idea of following the blood trail into an almost-certain ambush, but Ginnungagap pointed out that the druids would probably be waiting to see if the party broke their pledge. Even if not, the party would have to flee Hawkford as outlaws and lose everything they had worked for. Following the hyaena-men was a risk they simply had to take, as even Borghast reluctantly agreed.

Down the final path the adventurers went, Borghast in the lead with his keen eyes searching every moment for danger. Ginnungagap had abandoned any thought of husbanding the remaining power of the wand, and held it in hand for instant use. The others had their weapons poised to strike, and tried desperately to see through the gloom and mists that engulfed them. When the blood trail abruptly ended, they became even more wary. Despite all these precautions, they were still taken by surprise when disaster struck. Anya caught her foot in a tripwire which had been passed unseen by Borghast and Ginnungagap. Instantly a log suspended on two ropes descended from the trees above and hurtled directly at the front of the party. Most dived safely aside [having made their Avoidance saves] but Lars was struck a glancing blow and Rezko, bringing up the rear, was hit squarely in the chest and hurled ten feet through the air to land in a lifeless heap. Maniacal inhuman laughter sounded all around them, and they could feel their enemies closing in. Anya closed her eyes and called upon the goddess Artemis. Instantly a golden light bloomed on her shield, driving out the shadows around them and making the sinister mists seem less threatening. Even the air smelled a bit cleaner. The watchers in the woods howled in rage and disdain, and then their snarls and mad cackles could be heard fading away in the distance. Anya turned toward Rezko, meaning to offer him the last rites of her faith; but at that moment a sharp iron hook on a rope sailed from the mists and snagged his broken form. With a swift jerk, the mangled corpse was dragged into the woods. The sickened adventurers resumed their journey in the shelter of Anya’s blazing shield, trying to ignore the awful gobbling and tearing sounds echoing from among the trees.

Through the unnatural woods they wended, until they were suddenly brought up short. The path widened to thirty feet or more in width, amply illuminated by Anya’s gleaming shield. Ahead was a low rise, up which weathered stone steps climbed; at the top of the rise was a small shadowy building with a domed roof. Between the party and the steps was a ravine, fully twenty feet wide and of unknown depth, the bottom being lost in a cloud of swirling mists. Ginnungagap and Anya looked down into the murky ravine and discussed possible ways of getting a rope across without a grappling hook [which both the late Thee-Ven and Balto had carried, but which no one in the current group had]. Borghast finally snorted impatiently at “civilized weaklings”, made a run, and – with a heave of his mighty barbaric thews – covered the distance across the ravine with three feet to spare. He shouted for someone to throw him a rope, which Lars replied he would. But Lars then stood frozen with horror as a giant crab spider, its gross form bloated with poison, sprang from among the trees at the base of the hill. A civilized man might have died surprised, but Borghast whirled and struck with his sword Ymirstongue, severing one of the abomination’s front legs. The spider’s slavering mandibles snapped shut as Borghast avoided death by inches. Then a quarrel from Lars and two sparkling silvery bolts from Ginnungagap’s wand hit the gigantic arachnid, staggering it. Borghast stabbed the creature in the eye with his dagger Ullrsthing, and the horror lay dead in a spreading pool of ichor.



Nervous that another such monstrosity might lurk nearby, Borghast urgently demanded the rope be tossed to him. Lars secured one end to a tree at the edge of the ravine and tossed the other end to Borghast, who likewise tied it to a tree near the fallen corpse of the giant spider. The rest of the party then climbed hand-over-hand across the ravine while Borghast watched warily for any sign of danger with his two sorcerous blades in hand. Finally the party was safely across, and began to slowly climb the wide stone stairs toward what they hoped (and, at least in Anya’s case, prayed) to be the shrine of the Bat-Toad. As they reached the halfway point of the descent, six figures stepped from the building: hyaena-men, dressed in armor of animal hide and brandishing wicked-looking serrated scimitars and axes. The largest of the six roared a challenge, while the remainder shrieked and giggled insanely. Ginnungagap responded by attempting to unleash a barrage from the Atlantean wand; two bolts flashed forth and singed the hyena-men before the wand gave up the ghost in a shower of sparks and a cloud of foul-smelling smoke. Ginnungagap tossed the now-useless wand aside and drew his axe. Shouting their battle cries, the adventurers charged up the steps toward their foes, who came howling down to meet them.

Ginnungagap and Borghast were in the thick of it first, laying about with axe and sword at the sneering bestial faces of their enemies. Lars and Kirowan were just a step behind, hacking desperately at their foes. The hyaena-men unleashed a savage assault of their own, but despite their animal strength and advantage of higher ground their blows were turned by the heavy armor of Lars and Ginnungagap. Kirowan smashed a hyaena-man in the face with his shield and then stabbed it in the gut; as the mad beast fell dying, two others struck the lightly-armored mercenary in the back with their axes, knocking him to the ground. They then fell on the wounded Kirowan, worrying him with their teeth and claws. Anya charged at the brutes devouring her companion and swung her morning star, splashing the blood and brains of one like water. The other hyaena-man leapt at her, driving her back down the stairs. Lars, Borghast, and Ginnungagap engaged the remaining three in a duel of vicious slashes and thrusts. Though the human warriors suffered cuts and bruises, their superior armor and skill soon told and two of their foes lay dead on the steps. The third – a particularly large and savage specimen that seemed to be the leader – screamed its defiance and then fled up the hill toward the shrine. Lars and Ginnungagap riddled it with quarrels (very nearly their last) and it fell dead just short of escape. Meanwhile, Borghast attacked the hyaena-man grappling with Anya, nearly severing its head with Ymirstongue.

As the warriors panted and surveyed the carnage on the steps, Anya knelt to render aid to Kirowan. But he had already bled to death, so she began to administer the last rites instead. Ginnungagap dryly commented that they would soon find it difficult to hire mercenaries at this rate, then joined his companions in looting coins and jewels from the fallen hyena-men. Their wounds bound and the strain of their exertions mended by a few swigs of wine, the party girded their loins and crept up the steps toward the building, which could only be the shrine. It was a plain stone building some fifty feet in diameter, with a domed roof, the outer walls overgrown with thorns and creepers. The lintel of the door was carven with a series of sardonic-looking figures (apparently ancient Hyperboreans) engaged in debaucheries and sundry unsavory practices. The darkness within the shrine seemed almost alive; neither the fading magical light on Anya’s shield, nor the light of the torch which Ginnungagap hastily lit, could penetrate that tenebrous portal. The adventurers looked at each other with uncertainty, but there could be no turning back at this point. Lured by gold, goaded by threats, they stepped into the shrine of the Bat-Toad.

Contrary to their fears, they could in fact see once inside the shrine, albeit dimly. Across from them in the single huge chamber, atop a great dais of polished obsidian, was a statue of Xathoqqua easily twice the height of a man. On its gross toad face were stamped the highest degree of sloth, gluttony, and cynicism, and its vast wings spread to the touch the dome overhead, seemingly threatening to envelop the party. On either side of the dais was a great stone vat, and between these two was a crude stone altar on which they could glimpse the object of their quest: the image of Yoon’deh. It was a terra cotta elk statue some two feet tall, with black jewels for eyes; the tiny eyes of the statue seemed to glitter and shimmer in the light of their torches. As the party inched forward under the sardonic gaze of the great statue of Xathoqqua, Borghast muttered that the stink of evil magic was strong here. Furthermore, he could hear uncanny and unsavory sloshing sounds from the two vats. As the party grew nearer, they could see that the vats were filled with some glistening black oily substance. Borghast urgently demanded that the contents of the vats be burned before they approached the altar. Ginnungagap countered that the vats could easily be a devious trap, and might even explode if touched by flames. Borghast stubbornly insisted that the vats held some untold horror, and proceeded to light torches and throw them inside. Soon the noisome liquid in each vat was burning with little light and much greasy smoke, and the face of Xathoqqua seemed still more sardonic and mocking in the shadows thus cast.

Her companions somewhat reassured but still wary, Anya slowly climbed the steps and (with a whispered prayer to Artemis) reached for the statue of Yoon’deh. As soon as her fingers brushed it, a vile column of black slime – wreathed in flames but unharmed by them – rose from the vat on the left and struck at her. She was tossed like a rag doll by the force and slammed against the wall. Borghast roared his defiance at the loathsome violation of nature in the vat, then charged to attack with a sorcerous blade in each hand. Lars and Ginnungagap were but a step behind, swinging their battle axes at the black ooze. Their blades sliced through the abomination, and it burst like a bladder with an indescribably foul odor. Lars and Ginnungagap were forced to drop their axes – which had begun to dissolve from the acidic ichor of the thing in the vat. Anya stumbled to her feet, peeling off her breastplate which was likewise disintegrating from the touch of that foul monstrosity. At that moment, a second glistening amorphous horror rose from the other vat. Borghast, his magical blades seemingly immune to the corrosive fluid, leapt into battle with mad courage. Ymirstongue tore a great rent in the side of the black ooze, but a moment later the abomination fell on Borghast and crushed him to the ground. Anya cried out in grief and swung her morning star while Lars and Ginnungagap stabbed at the slimy monstrosity with their dirks. The horror burst as the first one had, filling the chamber with an even more overpowering stench. The adventurers dropped their weapons, which were already sizzling and fuming from the creature’s ichor, and rushed to Borghast’s side. But it was too late: the brave barbarian had perished from his wounds. Most of his body was horribly scorched by the acid, but by some whim of chance his face had been spared, and the visage of Borghast – who had always lived boisterously, by and for the moment – seemed almost to be composed in peaceful sleep at last. Wiping away a tear, Anya rose and walked slowly to the altar as her companions appropriated Borghast’s gleaming magical blades “in memory of a fallen comrade”. Anya looked up at the gruesome face of Xathoqqua and then, with a deliberate sneer at the Bat-Toad, removed the image of Yoon'deh from his altar.

An instant later, the party blinked to find themselves in bright sunlight. The mists, the dense forest, the shrine, the steps, the ravine – all had vanished, if indeed they had ever existed at all. The adventurers were back in the clearing with the ancient weathered stone blocks, which they now saw was (somehow) the same clearing to which the druids had originally guided them, seemingly ages before. And yet the three guides still stood in the same places, and the red sun had moved not an inch in the sky. Shaking their heads at these bizarre and inexplicable events, the party could only follow the beckoning and now-smiling guides back to Hawkford – Lars and Ginnungagap carrying Borghast’s body between them, and Anya bearing the precious statue that she loathed and longed to smash; the price of obtaining it had simply been too high. The clay elk’s eyes seemed to glitter at her still, and she thought she detected a certain smugness about its lips. Yoon’deh had gotten her sacrifices that day, and then some. It wasn’t something that Anya would soon forget, or ever forgive.

At length the dazed and injured party limped out of the forest, bearing their fallen comrade and the ancient image, to behold all the assembled druids of Hawkford awaiting them. Druids played solemnly on pipes and drums as Black Duncan stepped forward and requested the return of the image of Yoon’deh to her most faithful worshippers. The party looked at each other, suspecting treachery but too exhausted and heart-sick to really care. Finally Anya walked slowly to the chief druid and, with a curl of her lip, handed over the statue. The druids gasped and babbled in awe, and the pipes and drums rose to a crescendo before abruptly ceasing. Black Duncan smiled his horrible smile, and then spoke a word in some druidic cant. Two druids emerged from the crowd, staggering beneath the weight of a chest filled with gold. They laid it at the feet of the adventurers, and reverently bore away the image of Yoon’deh after Black Duncan handed it to them. The chief druid inclined his head: “Thank you for returning our sacred image to us, and laying the shrine of the Bat-Toad to rest at last. Here is your gold. I trust it was well worth what you… sacrificed?” Anya glared at him, and he shrugged: “So. You should be on your way soon, if you want to have any chance of saving the poor foolish girl who rules the Black Fief. The alignment of the stars in this matter is bad… very bad indeed. I’m not convinced you can help her, not convinced at all.” He then turned and joined the joyful procession of druids bearing the image of Yoon’deh to its new home. Anya stared after them for several moments before she realized she had forgotten to ask Black Duncan about the nameless druid. But in truth she no longer cared. She glanced at the laden chest of gold sitting forlorn in the mud, and then sighed and went to join her companions in gathering firewood from the forest.

An hour later another pyre burned a half-mile from the one that had earlier consumed six men and a dozen beasts of the field. The adventurers sat and watched the body of their comrade burn – Anya praying to Artemis, Ginnungagap taking refuge in his cynical philosophy, Lars wondering what kind of armor he could buy with his share of the gold. When the fire had died away to ashes the adventurers rose, saying nothing to one another, and began their walk back to Hawkford. Anya carried Borghast’s boar-tusk necklace, which she had taken as a keepsake, while the men carried the overflowing chest of gold. In that manner they returned to town.

The fruitless exchange of fire in the clearing was probably the longest combat I've ever run in an RPG - well over ten rounds, with no one able to hit due to cover and range penalties. This was also the adventure with the highest body count so far, with half the party dead. As well, all the deaths occurred from physical damage (being reduced to -10) rather than special attacks like poison or energy drain. I hated to see Borghast die, because he had added a lot of entertainment value. Still, his player will still be in the game, so hopefully that tradition can continue in a new form. The characters got a lot more gold out of this one than I expected, thanks to an outrageous demand and a lucky reaction roll, and in fact all three of the survivors gained another level. Still, I can see it mostly going to equipment and training costs… and I did manage to goad Ginnungagap into expending all the charges in his wand! Hopefully they can get back on the road next session, for an overland trip which the players (probably rightly) assume will be a real horrorshow…

(By the way, a black ooze is a grey ooze, but black! Feel free to use this stunningly original idea. You're welcome!)

[Ghul]

Holy smokes, I'll have to read this tonight over a beer!

[blackadder23]

Yeah, the length of these is creeping up. I need to make an effort to be more succinct.

[odysseus]

That Black Duncan smells like trouble.

Here, I found two shots of him in his early days 

[blackadder23]

Exactly. And I found a more recent picture:

[odysseus]

The older the meaner 

[blackadder23]

Here is the roster for last weekend's adventure:

Anya, a Common Cleric of Artemis (3rd level PC)
Elena Pandoros, an Amazon Witch (1st level PC)
Ginnungagap the Hyperborean, a Warlock (3rd level PC)
Lars Larsson, a Viking Fighter (3rd level PC)
Tobasko, an Ixian Berserker (1st level PC)
Arn the Axe, a Viking Fighter (1st level NPC)



We have a new player! And a new character, the Amazon witch Elena Pandoros. Meanwhile, Borghast has an heir! A hulking brute named Tobasko showed up at the bank in Hawkford to claim the several hundred gold pieces Borghast had saved. It seems the late Borghast signed a document during his recent drinking binge making Tobasko his sole beneficiary - a strange gesture with no obvious explanation. Tobasko himself is an escaped slave gladiator from the fabulous city of Khromarium, and is given to fits of insane rage in battle. That spells F-U-N! This week only one mercenary was needed - a dour Viking named Arn the Axe.

Last week the three characters in studded leather died and the three in banded or splint survived. This was no coincidence, and my players took due note of the fact. The three survivors all kitted themselves out in plate mail, even Ginnungagap who must risk spell failure as a result (but considering that he's only cast one spell so far in the campaign, this might not be much of a "risk"). In addition, Lars and Ginnungagap outfitted themselves with repeating light crossbows to triple their firepower if they get into another shootout. They even bought chain mail and a repeating crossbow for Arn! Meanwhile, Tobasko has used his legacy from Borghast to buy plate mail, leaving only Elena as the soft underbelly of the party. And they still have no one with thief skills...

The players made an admirable job of preparing for the overland trip, purchasing riding horses for themselves and three mules which they loaded with bedrolls, a tent, weeks and weeks of iron rations, gallons of wine, and all manner of spare equipment. They even slipped out of town before sunrise to avoid attracting the notice of other adventurers. Did all this prep work do any good? Stay tuned for my recap of this week's session and see.

[blackadder23]

“On the Strongfort Road”

For three weeks the adventurers prepared: practicing with arms, praying to their gods, selecting the best animals and equipment that their recent windfall could buy, recruiting new companions. Finally they could delay no longer; the call to adventure in the Black Fief was simply too strong. The party slipped out before dawn, to avoid prying eyes, and turned their horses and their string of pack mules southeast. Out there, beyond leagues of forest and heath, lay the Keltic settlement known as Strongfort – and beyond Strongfort stretched the Black Fief. The party spurred their mounts and left Hawkford without a backwards glance. [At this point the adventure actually began.]



All day the party rode, following the cart track as the woods grew thicker on either side and dark clouds gathered overhead. For the first few miles they occasionally saw small fields hacked from the forest, and weathered Keltic farmers stared at them sullenly as they passed. But soon the last of these were left behind, and the adventurers rode down a wagon trail flanked by towering trees draped with moss and ivy. Once, perhaps a thousand years before, there had been fields here as well. But since the Green Death, only the merest fragment of Hyperborea belonged to the remnant of humanity; the wilderness had taken the rest. The adventurers wasted little time on such speculation, however, especially as it soon became obvious that a terrible storm was brewing. By early evening the sky was black as pitch, and gusting winds blew twigs and dead leaves into the faces of the party. Soon the woods were enveloped in a deeper gloom, and the wind began to howl as the downpour began.

The rain came down in torrents, mixed with sleet, and drenched the party to the bone. Brilliant bolts of lightning split the sky like swords, but in between these the adventurers could see nothing. The horses screamed and the mules brayed incessantly, and the strength of the party was pushed to the limit keeping the maddened animals from stampeding. Elena cried that the storm was a most dire portent indeed, while her black cat Grimalkin hissed agreement from within the folds of her cloak. Ginnungagap retorted that portents could be hanged, along with those who read them. A moment later, as if in response to his remark, a dazzling bolt of lightning split a tree a hundred feet from the party and sent it crashing to the ground. Anya shouted that she had seen something in the light of the flash – it looked like there was a house of some kind not a hundred yards from the track. Lars disliked entering the dark forest and wasn’t shy about saying so. Tobasko was no happier about it, but bellowed that they must find shelter or drown like rats. Anya insisted again that she had seen a house, so at length the party followed her into the woods, dragging their panicked animals behind them.

As they struggled to guide their mounts through the darkened forest, occasional flashes of lightning showed that there was indeed some kind of building ahead of them. As they got closer, the party saw that it was a small cabin. It seemed somewhat decrepit and showed no light, although Anya swore there had been a red glow in the window when first she saw the cabin. After an interminable struggle through the downpour, the party at last reached the small clearing where the structure stood. To the right a pair of twisted trees leaned over and practically touched the cabin, forming a crude shelter of sorts. The party dragged the animals (whose eyes rolled wildly and whose muzzles were dripping with foam) into this space and tied their reins to the trees. Oddly, the horses seemed scarcely less panicked once they were sheltered from the storm. While his companions checked the baggage on the mules, Ginnungagap ducked back out into the torrential downpour. He tried to peer into both windows; but they were opaque with filth, so he banged on the door and shouted for assistance. No one answered or appeared, so after a moment Ginnungagap tried the door. It swung inward with a loud creaking noise. Joined by the rest of the dripping wet party, Ginnungagap crept into the silent cabin.

They could see very little at first, so Elena lit a torch. The cabin was a single large room, with a battered iron cooking-pot sitting in the ashes of the fireplace. The furnishings were sparse and simple, yet very odd indeed. A tiny chair sat in front of a low table in the middle of the room, while a very small bed sat against the wall by the fireplace. It seemed this furniture was meant for someone perhaps half the height of a normal man. The adventurers looked at one another mystified, and Lars whispered that mayhap the occupant was a dwarf. In one corner was a small bookshelf full of musty tomes, while another held a tall dome-shaped object covered by a heavy cloth. The party shrugged off their drenched cloaks and sat on the floor, while Grimalkin jumped onto the chair and glared around the cabin with bright green eyes. As they ate a meager meal of iron rations, Anya admonished her companions not to take or damage anything; it was bad enough they had been forced to invade somebody’s home without leave. Tobasko shrugged and said the place was probably abandoned anyway. Lars went to the cooking-pot and looked inside, but couldn’t say whether or not it had been used recently. Ginnungagap agreed that they wouldn’t ransack the place; they would just wait out the storm and then go. Anya insisted they should leave some gold on the table when they departed, a suggestion her companions greeted with shrugs and eye rolls.

They then began to discuss the possibility of gathering some wood from the forest, and whether there was any chance of successfully getting it to burn in the fireplace. Meanwhile, Elena wandered about the place, looking at the doll-like furniture with interest. She picked up a book, drawing (and ignoring) a sharp reproof from Anya, but the weird writing in the volume was a mystery to Elena. As Lars was boasting he could kindle a flame from even the wettest timber, Elena walked across the room to the humped object under the heavy cloth. As if in a trance, she reached down and removed the cloth. Under it was a large iron birdcage with the door standing open; it seemed the latch had been broken. Elena looked closer, then urgently whispered for her companions to look at what she’d found. In the birdcage was a small metal dish, and in that dish was a thin crust of dried blood. Furthermore, small misshapen paw prints were visible on the dust in front of the cage. Elena knelt with the torch, and the same tiny paw prints were immediately obvious all over the floor. At that moment they heard, even over the full fury of the storm, their mounts beginning to scream.

Lars, Ginnungagap, and Tobasko rushed out into the downpour, blades in hand. In a flash of lightning they saw the horses panicked and straining at their tethers. One of the mules was lying on the ground. As the party rushed toward the fallen beast they saw a small dark shape and a pair of gleaming red eyes, but the mysterious form had vanished by the time the warriors reached the animals. The mule was obviously dying, with two small punctures in its neck still feebly oozing blood. Tobasko stared at the stricken animal for a long moment, a muscle in his cheek twitching. Then he took his scimitar in both hands and, with bull-like strength, struck off the mule’s head with a single blow. Without a word to his companions, Tobasko headed back inside. Ginnungagap and Lars followed, shouting that something had killed one of the mules. They found Anya and Arn on their guard, and Elena hiding behind them. Lars stopped abruptly and whispered that something was crouched on the rough stone mantel of the fireplace.

Arn turned, raised his repeating crossbow, and sent three bolts firing straight at the thing on the mantel. Two bolts missed, clattering off the mantle, but the third pierced the dark form squarely. The creature made no sound, but reached down with a small paw-like hand, pulled out the bolt, and tossed it on the floor. Then the being simply sat and looked at them, eyes gleaming red in the torchlight. Ginnungagap took the torch from Elena, who showed no inclination whatsoever to approach the fireplace any closer, and thrust it in the direction of the mysterious creature. The party was filled with loathing and horror to see an abomination crouched atop the mantel: a rat the size of a human infant, with an upright posture and front paws that were curiously like human hands. Its face too bore a disturbing and sickening likeness to humanity. But its hellish eyes were as unlike humanity as anything that ever crawled from the Black Gulf, and its mouth was wet with blood. Worst of all, it spoke, in a high and mocking voice: “Good even, masters. Why do ye fire such nasty darts at poor old Gnaw-Bones? Aye, it were his home that ye invaded, so what cause for anger have ye?”



The party gaped at the weird and unexpected spectacle of the grotesque creature speaking, while Grimalkin arched his back and hissed in fear from his perch on the chair. Anya was the first to shake off her amazement, and cried that the thing was a daemonic familiar and should be done to death at once, for it was dangerous to even listen to such a being speak. It was, Anya said, undoubtedly the servant of some wicked witch or warlock. She noticed both Elena and Ginnungagap glaring at her, and then allowed that it was “probably a necromancer”. Gnaw-Bones laughed at them, and claimed to serve a powerful sorcerer indeed who would surely return soon. Meanwhile, why should they quarrel? The familiar would lead them to valuable treasure. Or perhaps they were more interested in secrets? “Perhaps ye seek the answer to the riddle of the Black Fief? Gnaw-Bones can reveal this, aye. Ye can make a most agreeable bargain in this matter, masters. Take ye the easy path, and enjoy the fruits with no labor.” The familiar looked at them with glittering eyes and licked the blood off its lips with a gross tongue.

Keeping an eye on the crouching fiend, the party quietly debated the merits of this proposal. Anya stated outright that they dared make no such foul bargain, and that the creature would undoubtedly tell them nothing but lies in any case. It would be most prudent to immediately kill the thing with magic steel and holy water. Lars said they should at least listen to the proposal, for it might be better to learn the secret of the Black Fief now, rather than after a series of further ordeals that would undoubtedly leave some of them dead. Ginnungagap mused that his ancestors had profited much from bargains with such beings, to which Anya retorted that their empire had fallen into ruin from those very same dark dealings. Elena just held Grimalkin, whom she had called back to her side, and watched the little crouching daemon with frightened eyes. Gnaw-Bones gave her a sardonic leer and wink as the remainder of the party continued to bicker.

Finally Tobasko ended the wearisome argument by snatching the magic sword Ymirstongue from Ginnungagap’s belt, charging the mantel, and slashing viciously at Gnaw-Bones with the glowing blade. The familiar screeched and leapt nimbly through the air, landing on a ceiling rafter. Ginnungagap cursed, then shrugged and chanted a magic missile spell. The sickly green bolt blazed across the cabin and struck Gnaw-Bones squarely in the rump. The daemon howled in apparent pain, then scampered still higher on the ceiling rafters. It perched in the peak of the roof and glared at the party, calling down curses on them and all their descendents. For a long moment there was a stalemate; then Grimalkin mewled piteously, struggled free of Elena’s arms, and ran to the door. Elena followed him and peered out into a mere desultory drizzle: “The storm is passing. Let us be gone from this place, and leave this creature to its own foul devices.” Still eyeing the fiend in the rafters warily, the party left the cabin. Anya kept a watch on the door as her companions readied their mounts and redistributed the load from the decapitated mule onto the other animals. Then, in a frenzy of loathing, Anya tossed two flasks of alchemical oil through the door of the cabin, setting the building ablaze. As the party rode off into the night, Ginnunagagap predicted sourly that they might well regret refusing the bargain and then angering an unknown sorcerer by burning his home. Anya replied that her cloak might be muddy, but at least her conscience was clean.

The party made certain to leave the burning cabin several miles behind them before stopping and making camp for the night. They set watches, but nothing disturbed them beyond an intermittent cold drizzle and the hooting of night-owls. The exhausted adventurers slept until late in the morning before once again resuming their journey through the gloomy forest. All day they rode, seeing nothing alive beyond a few birds and some wolves that slunk off into the woods as they approached; Arn sent a couple of bolts after the latter to hurry them on their way. But as the red sun sank below the horizon and the shadows lengthened, the party became aware of a flapping noise approaching from the south. The adventurers cautiously dismounted and tied their anxious horses, then peered out into the darkness with weapons in hand as Elena lit a pair of torches. The sickly flapping grew louder, and a black cloud was visible above the trees. The party sighted their weapons and waited.

A moment later horrors burst from the tree-tops: twenty or more noisome furry things the size of a beagle pup, each with feathered wings and a long wicked proboscis. These could only be the fabled blood-drinking stirges of fireside lore! As the grisly flock approached, reeking of blood and death, they were met with a hail of quarrels from the repeating light crossbows. A half-dozen stirges tumbled dead to the ground, and then the rest were among the adventurers, jabbing with their vicious blood-sucking snouts. The warriors (all but immune to the stirge attack in their heavy plate and chain) hacked and slashed at them with their swords, while Elena shouted and swung the torches and Grimalkin crouched hissing at her feet. Finally the surviving stirges flapped away into the trees, leaving more than a dozen on the ground riddled with quarrels or hacked to pieces. As the other adventurers refilled their depleted bolt-cases from the bundles of extras packed on the mules, Elena had to scruff Grimalkin to stop him from gnawing on the unwholesome flesh of the dead stirges. The party camped nearby, burning the little horrors in their fire, and no further attacks disturbed their watches that night.

By noon the next day, the party finally reached the edge of the forest – which they left behind with little regret. Once out of the woods the cart track passed over a rolling heath, and the snow-capped mountains that sheltered the Black Fief rose in the distance. The party rode along the track, alert for any signs of danger or trouble. After an hour a man in a dun-colored cloak rose from behind a boulder and hailed them. He found three crossbows pointed in his direction, and wryly noted that the hospitality of the Gal Hills had suffered of late. Ginnungagap bluntly asked his name and business. “I’m Diarmid, a ranger from Gal City, and my business is in Hawkford. What do you in these parts, gentle folk?” Anya apologized for the rudeness of her colleague, and explained that they were adventurers bound for the Black Fief. Diarmid asked if she had a meal for a hungry traveler. Anya tossed him her pack of rations with a blessing from Artemis. Diarmid gratefully accepted the food and allowed that there were some who still honored the traditions of hospitality. He scratched his chin for a moment and then warned them: “Mayhap you be honest travelers after all. Know then, that there is an ambush ahead. A large gang of bandits has constructed a gate across the track, and they demand tolls from all who would pass. Those who refuse to pay are attacked, and those who do pay are followed and murdered in their sleep. The way I see it, you would do well to follow some other path.” Diarmid then saluted Anya, slung the sack of food over his shoulder, and trudged off in the direction of Hawkford.

The party conferred on the best course of action, assuming this warning was true. Lars suggested leaving the track and crossing overland, but the others were less than thrilled at this prospect. They still bitterly rued the loss of the woods-wise Borghast, and the fact that they had neither a ranger nor a scout among them. Ginnungagap asked Borghast’s “heir” Tobasko whether he could find the path overland, and Tobasko sneered that he was had been born in Khromarium and had never even seen woodlands until a month earlier. Anya pointed out that they would have to send a scout ahead to warn them before they reached the toll gate; yet who among them, she wondered, was stealthy enough for the task? The party pondered this for a moment, and soon all their eyes were resting on Elena, who was stroking her familiar Grimalkin. Once she realized their meaning, Elena forcefully stated her displeasure at the idea of putting the cat in such danger, both because she loved the animal and because its death would surely mean her own as well. But she was eventually convinced that the situation left them little choice. So Grimalkin set out, crawling stealthily through the heath, while Elena lagged a mile behind leading her horse and trying desperately to be invisible (which talent she had not yet mastered) or at least look harmless. The remainder of the party followed a hundred yards behind her.

After a few miles of creeping through the heather and furze, Grimalkin suddenly stopped short and dropped flat on his belly. He could see the toll gate, built of several large logs and flanked by a pair of twenty-foot timber towers with crude arrow slits. Only two men were visible behind the gate, but his nose told him that more lurked unseen in the towers. Elena, who had stopped short a mile back, sent her stealthy familiar to scout on either side of the road. To the west he saw nothing, but to the east he saw a rude timber stockade about a half mile from the toll gate. Elena recalled her familiar to her side, and the cat ran like a streak across the heath. The rest of the party rode up to Elena as the cat returned, and dismounted to discuss what the familiar had seen. Once again the idea of a diversion across open country was raised and discarded; the chance of becoming lost was just too great. The adventurers disliked the prospect of attacking the toll gate, with an unknown number of men in the towers and more likely to be summoned from the fort by a horn or other such signal. After a moment of consideration, Lars proposed an audacious plan: attack and take the fort, and the men at the toll gate would either surrender or flee. Ginnungagap agreed with this plan, and demanded that Grimalkin scout the fort so they could plan the attack. Elena at first adamantly refused to risk the cat a second time, but relented once the others agreed to wait until nightfall. With the cat’s eyes, that would be no handicap at all. The party camped a mile from the toll gate and awaited the coming of dusk.

An hour after dark, Grimalkin clambered up one side of the timber stockade and slipped over the parapet. Armed bandits stood watch on every side of the fort, but the familiar passed unseen in the darkness. Moving swiftly around the fort, Grimalkin (and Elena, through his eyes) noted the state of the gate, the number of sentries, the two crude log structures inside the fort, and the fact that a number of men and women were huddled miserably within a circle of stakes at the rear of the fort. Hearing this last report, Anya demanded that care be taken not to harm these captives during the attack – a proviso which occasioned further shrugs and eye rolls from her companions, but to which they eventually agreed. Once Grimalkin returned to the party, the adventurers considered how to proceed. Ginnungagap wondered if Grimalkin could perhaps open the gate for them at midnight, but Elena absolutely refused to countenance risking the familiar again; tempting Fate three times would surely mean death for both of them. So the party considered the other resources available to them, as well as the layout of the fort, and carefully drew up a plan of attack.

Just after midnight, a flask of alchemical oil (fired from Anya’s sling) sailed over the front wall of the fort and crashed into the roof of the barracks beside the gate. The roof of the structure was instantly ablaze, and the guards on the walls rushed toward the fire as other bandits poured out of the building shouting and choking on the thick smoke. A horn blew loudly out in the darkness, adding to the confusion and causing some of the bandits to fire aimlessly at some unseen threat. At this signal, and unseen by the distracted guards, four grappling hooks struck the parapet at the rear of the stockade. A moment later, Ginnungagap, Lars, Arn, and Tobasko reached the top of the wall. As Tobasko jumped down into the fort, his three companions rained quarrels down into the mass of bandits who were stumbling around in the smoke. Some of the bandits, who were still quite numerous, began replying with their own bows and crossbows. After a brief exchange, the finicky repeating crossbows of the party began to jam, so they cast them aside and clambered down after Tobasko.

Tobasko had meanwhile rushed into the midst of the bandits, roaring with battle rage and laying about him with a scimitar that severed heads and limbs on every side. The bandits shouted in terror at the first onslaught, but soon regained their courage and rained blows down on the berserk gladiator. Tobasko suffered little more than a few cuts as he reaped a bloody harvest of the dead and dying. Still, the weight of numbers might have soon told had not his companions joined his side, laying about them with swords and axe. The bandits wavered before this assault, but then took heart at a cacophony of snarls and barking. A half-dozen vicious starving dogs charged into the melee, followed by the bandit leader, a huge brute of a man with an eye patch and a great two-handed axe. For a long moment the decision hung in the balance, as the outnumbered – but more skilled and better-armored – adventurers faced blades and spears from every side while reaping a red harvest of their own. Just at that moment, the bandits from the toll gate – having heard the horn and general clamor – approached the fort shouting to be let inside. One of the men in the fort opened the gate to admit these reinforcements – whereupon Elena, hiding in the darkness with Grimalkin’s cat-eyes guiding her hand, cast a spell of sleep that dropped the newly-arrived bandits in their tracks. Anya charged through the open gate, cutting down the man who had opened it with her sword and then joining the general melee. She had no mercy for these men who had preyed on innocent travelers, and the bandits soon began to waver at this unexpected attack from the rear. Then Lars cut down their leader, and the remaining bandits dropped to their knees and cried for pardon. Tobasko, covered with small lacerations and panting with the excitement of battle, cut down two of the surrendering bandits before Lars and Ginnungagap convinced him to stop. The party had won, and the fort was taken.

The party freed the trembling, half-starved prisoners – twenty-three men and women who had been waiting to be sold into slavery – and plundered the fort. Quantities of gold and silver were taken, as well as some gems and two potions and a scroll from a chest in the leader’s room. There were also considerable mundane supplies, such as food and wine, which were of little immediate use to the party. Anya suggested distributing these victuals to the freed prisoners, to which Ginnungagap grudgingly assented. The question then arose of what to do with those newly-freed prisoners, as well as the bandits who had been taken captive and bound by the party. Most of Anya’s companions were eager to be gone, and felt it best to execute the bandits on the spot and leave the former prisoners to their own devices. Certainly they would in no wise agree to escort and protect the prisoners, many of whom could barely walk, all the way to Strongfort. Anya readily agreed that they couldn’t afford such a delay, but offered an alternative plan: the former prisoners would be left well-supplied and in charge of the fort, which had not suffered badly from the party’s attack, and the captive bandits would be their responsibility. Once the adventurers reached Strongfort, they would send back a rescue party to assist the former prisoners and deal with the bandits as they saw fit. Lars pointed out that the bandits would just end up burning inside one of the wicker men, so perhaps it would be kinder to kill them now. Anya replied that she carried nothing about kindness for such men – only that justice should be done, according to the law of the land. Her companions reluctantly agreeing to this scheme, Anya asked the spokesman for the freed prisoners – an old Viking named Karl – whether they would take an oath to abide by these terms and hold the bandits for proper justice. The Viking replied that they would so swear, and Anya’s plan was adopted.

At noon the next day the party rode from the fort, as the prisoners they had freed waved farewell from the walls. Ginnungagap remarked that Anya looked troubled, and asked whether she was worried that the bandits they spared might escape and seek revenge. Anya sighed and replied that the bandits would no doubt die just as Lars had predicted – assuming that their erstwhile captives didn’t renege on their oath and kill them first. Ginnungagap agreed that was likely, but pointed out that something was obviously still bothering her. Anya chewed her lip and confessed she had seen something during the battle for the fort; on the parapet in the darkness, at the height of the fighting and killing, she thought she had glimpsed a small dark shape with gleaming red eyes. A trick of the light, Ginnungagap suggested. Yes, Anya agreed, a trick of the light. What else could it be? Then she tossed a flask of alchemical oil into the toll gate and left it burning behind them.

The party MASSACRED a fort full of bandits with only a little difficulty and no losses. In fact, there were no losses at all this adventure; even Arn survived! I'm going to have to reconsider what counts as "challenging" for the group. Meanwhile, Elena fits right in. Her player is going for "sweet and naïve" rather than the usual seductive pulp witch, an interesting choice. I don't know if she or Tobasko gained a level - it depends how the magic items are distributed - but certainly no one else will. On to the next adventure!

[blackadder23]

Here is a new monster from this adventure, or maybe it's an old "familiar" one (hahaha I kill me ):

Daemonic Familiar (Undead Type 13)
No. Encountered: 1
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Size: S
Movement: 60 (leap 60)
Dexterity: 18
Armour Class: 0
Hit Dice: 2+2
No. of Attacks: 1 (bite)
Damage: 1d4
Saving Throw: 16
Morale: 7
Experience Points: 53
Treasure Class: -

A daemonic familiar is sent by Thaumagorga to serve only the wickedest of sorcerers.  Its mandate is to encourage its master to greater deeds of evil and depravity. A daemonic familiar appears as a small animal, such as a cat, dog, pig, or gigantic rat. But it will have disturbingly human characteristics as well: an upright posture, hands instead of paws, and a subtly human cast to its face.  In fact, it is widely believed that a daemonic familiar is in some revolting way the child of the sorcerer it serves. As long as the daemonic familiar is within one mile, its master gains the following infernal powers: 1 additional level, infrared vision, and the same spell resistance as the familiar itself. These powers are lost if the familiar and master are separated by more than one mile, and if the daemonic familiar ever dies the master immediately loses 4 levels. The daemonic familiar must be fed the blood of its master in the same manner that an infant suckles; should this need be neglected, the familiar will go at large in search of blood.

A daemonic familiar feels no true loyalty to its master, and will readily betray such in order to serve a more powerful or wicked sorcerer instead.

Special:
• 5-in-20 spell resistance versus CA 12 casters. For every CA level less than 12, the chance-in-twenty increases by one (+1) (see VOL. III, SAVING THROW, spell resistance).
• +1 or better weapon to hit.
• Cold, electricity, fire, and gas attacks inflict ½ damage, or no damage if save is made. Due to its partly-mundane nature, holy water inflicts ½ damage on a daemonic familiar.
• Drains victim of blood for 1d4 hp damage per round following a successful hit; after 12 hp are drained, the sated familiar slinks away.
• Can cast the following spells at will (though only one at a time): detect good, detect magic, detect invisibility. Once per day the daemonic familiar may cast suggestion.
• Once per month, the daemonic familiar may contact otherworldly being (as the spell) and ask up to three questions. The answers may or may not be true, but will always be calculated to inspire some evil course of action by the familiar’s master. There is no risk of insanity from this procedure.
• Can make preternatural leaps of up to 60 feet and climb any surface with no chance of falling. Can move silently and hide in shadows as a level 12 thief.

[odysseus]

No losses ! That's new !
I guess we'll have to wait for the end of the next session to maybe have a PC with thief abilities.

[Ghul]

I am reminded of Brown Jenkin, from The Dreams in the Witch House.

Witnesses said it had long hair and the shape of a rat, but that its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human while its paws were like tiny human hands. It took messages betwixt old Keziah and the devil, and was nursed on the witch's blood, which it sucked like a vampire. Its voice was a kind of loathsome titter, and it could speak all languages.

[blackadder23]

Sept 13, 2013 4:37:35 GMT -6 Ghul said:

I am reminded of Brown Jenkin, from The Dreams in the Witch House.

"Only steal from the best" is my motto.

Sept 12, 2013 14:11:42 GMT -6 odysseus said:

No losses ! That's new !
I guess we'll have to wait for the end of the next session to maybe have a PC with thief abilities.

They realized they could use Elena's familiar to do their sneaking for them.   It was pretty bold, because if the cat dies it will pretty much kill her character.  I suppose I could have had the war dogs in the fort sniff him out when he was spying, but I hated to seem like I was punishing creativity.  So I let it slide this time, but I hope they realize they shouldn't push it.  It's weird; when I run AD&D I never have any problem getting one or more people to run thieves.  But this time [name redacted], who almost always runs thieves, lost two thief classes in a row and said that was it - he's playing a heavily armored class instead.  Oh well, I'll just present the challenges, and they'll have to find some way to deal with them without thieving skills. After all, I'm just the referee...

[blackadder23]

Here is the roster from the weekend game:

Anya, a Common Cleric of Artemis (3rd level PC)
Elena Pandoros, an Amazon Witch (1st level PC)
Ginnungagap the Hyperborean, a Warlock (3rd level PC)
Lars Larsson, a Viking Fighter (3rd level PC)
Tobasko, an Ixian Berserker (1st level PC)
Arn the Axe, a Viking Fighter (1st level NPC)



Nobody died and nobody gained a level, so the roster was unchanged from the previous week. They did make it to Strongfort between adventures. Elena has a scroll of protection from lycanthropes, Anya has a potion of healing, and Lars has a potion of invisibility. The PCs kicked in 80 gp each and bought some plate mail for Arn, so the fighting contingent of the party is well hard. In fact, they're starting to swagger a little at the idea that nothing can hit them, so it may be time to break out the acid attacks and the rust monsters.

The adventure turned out to be a cliffhanger, so I may write the whole thing up at once after the conclusion next week. Or I might write it up as "part 1" and "part 2". We'll see.

[odysseus]

For one, I wouldn't mind a cliffhanger.

[blackadder23]

“Messiah of the Orcs Part 1”

The next day the party reached Strongfort, a brooding hill settlement with a tall wooden stockade and several guard towers. The Kelts at the gate were suspicious and far from friendly, but admitted the adventurers after some pointed questioning. The party immediately noticed that the garrison of the fort was small and its mood was tense, if not outright fearful. While the rest of the party sought rooms at the common house, Anya presented herself to the commander of Strongfort and pleaded the case of the men and women the party had left to hold the bandit fort. The garrison commander Cullum – a great fat barrel-chested Kelt with a bald head and red bushy mustache – was gruffly sympathetic to his grave and lovely visitor, but bluntly stated that he could spare no men for such a rescue mission. The fort was undermanned, and the daemon Picts (or orcs, as they were known to common folk) had recently been raiding in numbers east of Strongfort. Anything might spark a general attack that the fortress might not be able to repel. If Cullum had his choice, the constant traffic of “adventurers and other bloody fools” travelling between Hawkford and Greenlee would be halted until the orcs were quieter.

Anya could well understand his concern. The unhallowed progeny of half-blood Picts and daemonic swine, birthed during the darkest years following the Green Death, orcs were infamous for their love of torture, rape, scalping, and arson. That they should be nearby in large numbers was enough to give anyone pause. Anya returned to her companions and explained the situation, arousing no great concern from them. Ginnungagap shrugged and said the former prisoners at the bandit fort would have to take their chances; the best opportunity for profit and glorious deeds lay in the Black Fief. Anya was eventually convinced that there was little the party could do, so she sat down for a late supper. As the adventurers were enjoying ale in front of the fire, Cullum entered the common house accompanied by a frantic-looking young man. Cullum approached the party and hurriedly introduced the other man as a dispatch rider who had just arrived from Hawkford. Stammering in fear, the rider told the party that the bandit fort was burned. From the signs on the ground, he reckoned dozens of orcs had swarmed the walls. In response to urgent questioning by an aghast Anya, the rider reported that perhaps a dozen men and women lay dead in the ruins of the fort. The rest – former prisoners and their erstwhile bandit captors alike – had apparently been taken by the orcs.

Cullum then explained what he wanted of the adventurers. It was clear to him that the orcs were on the move, and a major attack on Strongfort could not be long delayed. The garrison commander needed information, but he could spare few if any men to act as scouts. The party members were, he could well see, brave and doughty souls. Cullum proposed that they follow the orc-trail into the hills, guided by a ranger whom he would provide; not to fight, the commander hastened to add, but merely to determine the numbers and positions of the orcs and return to the fort with that vital intelligence. Ginnungagap then asked how much Cullum would pay if the adventurers accepted this “fool’s mission”. Cullum admitted he had no gold, having sent the garrison treasury to Hawkford with a trusted agent to hire mercenaries, but he was prepared to draw up a draft of credit that could be redeemed for five thousand gold pieces in the Black Fief. When Ginnungagap scoffed that it was hard to eat paper, Cullum further offered to write a personal letter of introduction to Lady Rhiannon and her advisors. The adventurers then conferred on this offer. Ginnungagap opined that they should leave Strongfort that very evening; if orcs were preparing to descend on the place, all the more reason to be on their way. Anya then unequivocally stated that she personally would stay and help Cullum regardless, for she owed that much to the people she had left behind in the bandit fort. If the others wished to proceed without her, so be it; she would stand alone. Her companions shifted uncomfortably, and then Lars (shamed by her courage) mumbled that he would stay as well. Elena also volunteered to help, and the rest followed a moment later – albeit Ginnungagap showed especially poor grace in doing so. Arn, arriving late to the common house with a new suit of plate mail over his shoulder, said he would go wherever the fighting and beer were. So the party agreed to meet Cullum early the next morning and set out in pursuit of the orcs.

By nine the next morning the party found themselves riding back to the bandit fort in the company of Conan, a surly red-headed Keltic ranger on a dappled mare. Anya gasped with horror when she saw the blackened timbers of the fort and the scalped and tomahawk-hacked corpses of the people the party had left behind. Conan dismounted and, reading signs in what seemed to be nothing more than a mass of churned earth, grunted that the party should follow him to the northeast. Anya argued that they must give the dead in the fort a decent burial, which drew an incredulous look and a snort from Conan. Tobasko pointed out that there was no time to waste, and that the living that might still fall to the knives and axes of the orcs – rather than the dead who were beyond harm – should be their main concern. Anya finally agreed to leave the corpses where they lay in the ruins of the fort, though she whispered prayers to Artemis for the souls of the slain as she rode away. For his part, Conan showed little patience for the contentious and chaotic behavior of the party that accompanied him.

For hours they rode into the hills, the ranger stopping every now and then to check the orc-tracks on the stony ground. The trail led them deep into the hills, and finally into a ravine where Conan became even surlier and warier than before. Halfway into the ravine Conan sniffed the air, then shouted for the party to take cover. The adventurers dismounted and dragged their horses under a rock ledge. Seconds later blood-curdling shrieks filled the air, and stones and tomahawks clattered off their makeshift shelter. Conan cursed, drew his short bow, and began firing at the shadowy figures along the top of the ravine; the adventurers drew their crossbows and sent a hail of quarrels at their ambushers. Horrible screeches echoed in the ravine, and several foul orcs tumbled dead to the floor of the canyon. Behind the archers, Anya shouted a warning: orcs were creeping toward the party from both ends of the ravine. Relying on their armor to protect them from the stones and arrows raining down from above, the adventurers burst from under the ledge and engaged their attackers in a savage melee. Meanwhile, Conan crouched under cover and picked off orcs along the edge of the ravine with expert shots, while Elena huddled behind him and clutched Grimalkin in fear.



In a matter of moments nearly a dozen orcs lay dead and dying in the ravine, and the ambushers above began to withdraw as Conan’s eagle-eyed marksmanship whittled down their number. But then war whoops filled the air, and a fresh troop of orcs streamed into the ravine, brandishing knives and tomahawks. Shaking off her terror, Elena rose and cast a spell of sleep over the orcs, sending most of them tumbling to the ground in magical slumber. The remaining orcs were filled with superstitious panic and fled, with several more of their number falling to crossbow quarrels in the back. A heavy silence hung over the ravine after the battle ended, and then Conan pragmatically drew his knife and went to slay those orcs who lay helpless under Elena’s spell. Ginnungagap looked to Anya for an objection, but she – remembering the horror of the burned bandit fort – shook her head and turned away with a sickened look on her face. Tobasko and Lars joined Conan in the grim task of execution, and soon all their foes lay dead in a heap, which Ginnungagap set alight with a flask of alchemical oil. Lars grinned as he showed Anya the gold and silver coins he had looted from the bodies, but she only grimaced in dismay. As the smoke rose high into the air above the canyon, Conan urged them to leave before it attracted any more orcs. The party hurriedly mounted their horses and resumed trailing those orcs who had burned the fort.

Finally, as the red sun began to fade into evening, the group crested a ridge and Conan gestured for them to dismount. Beyond was a misty vale, in which stood a twisting tower of strange design and curious violet color. It was, Conan whispered, the Purple Tower – a place superstitiously avoided by the local Kelts because it was (so said legend) built by a race of men who had dwelt in Hyperborea even before the Hyperboreans. Ginnungagap scoffed at the idea that any men had preceded his ancestors in Hyperborea, but Conan only shrugged in response. Of more immediate importance than myths and legends were the numerous orcs guarding the front door of the tower. Conan tied the horses to a tree and told the party to remain where they were while he looked for another entrance. Lars offered to accompany him – he was eager to loot more gold and silver from dead orcs – but Conan retorted that he didn’t need the “infernal clanking” of metal armor to alert their foes. So saying, he drew his sword and disappeared into the mists. He was gone for some time, during which the party watched the orcs wandering in and out of the Purple Tower and argued whether or not the adventurers could take them in a direct fight; cooler heads ultimately prevailed on that issue.

Elena had to stifle a startled shriek when Conan finally did return, so silently and suddenly did he appear from the darkness. Blood dripped from his blade, and he impatiently gestured for the party to follow him. Conan led them in a wide circle around the tower and up a steep hillside behind it; the adventurers had to struggle to keep up with the fleet-footed Kelt. At length they reached a rocky trail behind the Purple Tower, and the ranger led them warily through a narrow defile. At the end of the trail the weird twisting surface of the Purple Tower rose from the broken landscape. Here there was a heavy stone door of deep ebony, and Conan pointed out the silent forms of two orc sentries he had slain and hidden behind a boulder. The party cautiously approached the door and examined it, noting some writing on the lintel in a language none of them had ever seen before. There was no obvious way to open it. Anya asked if Conan thought the door was trapped and he just shrugged – that wasn’t his area of expertise. Ginnungagap told them to stand aside, and he would open the huge door with magic. He raised his arms theatrically and chanted a knock spell while his companions waited expectantly; to Ginnungagap’s considerable mortification the door remained firmly shut, and he sheepishly cited interference from his steel armor as the cause [I warned him this would happen if he wore Heavy armor]. Finally Tobasko shoved the chagrined warlock aside and attacked the edge of the door with a pry bar. Exerting all of his bull-like strength until the thews in his neck bulged, Tobasko was able to lever the enormous door open just wide enough for the adventurers to slip inside.

Beyond stretched a long dark corridor decorated with weird murals and more of the incomprehensible etched runes. The smell of ancient dust was tinctured with the fresh reek of orcs, so the party assumed a defensive formation and advanced ready for trouble. Conan was in the lead, flanked by Lars and Tobasko, when disaster struck: as the party rounded a corner, a cunningly-concealed pit lid opened beneath the feet of the three men. Lars was able to spring back to safety [because he made his Avoidance save] but the other two plunged ten feet onto a seething bed of ghastly green slime! Ginnungagap hurled a rope to the victims in the pit, and Tobasko was soon hoisted to safety. Tobasko rapidly removed his prized plate armor (which was rapidly dissolving from the touch of the grisly green horror) and stoically submitted to having stray slime burned off his skin by Elena’s torch. Meanwhile, Lars and Arn had thrown a line to the struggling Conan and began to hoist him out of that accursed pit. Halfway out, however, the ranger suddenly and hideously turned into green slime which flowed down the rope to join the rest in the pit. Sick with horror, the party tossed both the tainted ropes and Tobasko’s melting plate armor down into the pit, followed by two flasks of alchemical oil hurled by a shuddering Anya [she really loves that stuff]. Soon the slime, along with what remained of their companion and guide Conan, had burned away to nothing but greasy greenish smoke.

At that point, the party was in considerable disagreement as to what they should do next. Ginnungagap proposed returning to Strongfort and reporting that there were some fifty or so orcs at the Purple Tower; that much was certainly true, and it would be fulfilling the letter of their contract. What happened next was none of the party’s concern. Anya vehemently disagreed with this notion, and stated boldly that she intended to stay and find the captives from the fort – without or without the help of the other adventurers. Ginnungagap snapped that she was using that argument a little too often for his taste, and that prudence (i.e., leaving a tower crawling with orcs and gods knew what else) was not the same as cowardice. Tobasko raised his voice and cut off the discussion. Stark naked, he announced his intention to find and kill all the orcs who had made that pit and cultivated the green slime inside of it; they had cost him a perfectly good set of plate armor. Lars and Arn murmured that they would go where Tobasko went, so Ginnungagap was forced to agree in disgust. He did, however, toss Tobasko a blanket with a sneer: “At least make yourself a loincloth.”

Crossing the ten-foot gap proved no obstacle, as an unarmored Tobasko was easily able to jump it and secure a rope (their last) that the others could use. They gave the bottom of the pit a wide berth in case any lurking slime had escaped the cleansing flames. The party then carefully searched the tower, occasionally mounting a flight of stairs to the next level. They found only empty rooms, although tracks in the dust and occasional orc-garbage told them that the place was far from completely abandoned. Halfway up the tower they encountered a corroded iron door with an obviously new padlock. Since no one in the party was able to pick locks, Tobasko risked the noise made by smashing it with a hammer. Beyond was a large shadowy chamber filled with stone slabs. On each slab, to Anya’s horror, lay the shriveled corpse of one of the men and women from the fort. Each showed a single round wound to the middle of the forehead, which dribbled some weird white fluid, and they had all withered or desiccated in some bizarre manner which seemed at odds with the climate hereabouts. In fine, they had seemingly mummified despite being dead less than a day. Beyond this chamber of horrors lay another doorway filled with a soft white glow.

Alert for danger at every step, the party moved warily into the next room. The walls here were lined with glass jars, each containing a strange faintly-glowing pale fluid. Lying in chains at the rear of the room was the battered form of a man. Anya recognized Karl, the spokesman for the prisoners at the fort, and knelt hurriedly to minister to him. A sip of her healing potion did nothing for Karl, and Anya gasped as Elena held her torch closer and revealed the weird wound in the old man’s forehead. Anya asked the dying man what had happened. He whispered that the orcs weren’t alone, that they followed a “red man” who was far more cunning and wise than they. It was he who had slain the captives, extracting the white liquid from their heads using some kind of “alchemical apparatus”. Those who had the fluid extracted withered away and died; Karl had only survived for a time because the “red man” had been forced to attend to some other matter and had left the process incomplete. But now Karl was dying as well. He whispered a final request as he slipped away: “Burn me… don’t let me walk… as a soulless husk… like the others.” As the old man breathed his last, the party members looked at each other, and then turned toward the doorway. The withered corpses from the doorway were massed there, staring at the party with empty eyes. Anya raised her holy symbol and rebuked them in the name of Artemis, but the soulless dead only looked at her. Anya breathed a mild profanity, then drew her sword and charged with her companions into the oncoming undead horde.

Five minutes later the large room was strewn with the hacked remains of the soulless husks, and Tobasko lay near death against one of the slabs, having been repeatedly bitten and battered by the restless dead. While Anya restored Tobasko with her healing potion and prayers to Artemis, the others dragged the corpses (including the unfortunate Karl) into a heap and ignited them with a flask of alchemical oil; Ginnungagap noted ruefully that they would soon be out of the incendiary substance at the current rate. Meanwhile, Elena chased Grimalkin in an attempt to relieve her familiar of a human hand he was gnawing, but in the end she gave it up as fruitless and let the cat have his grisly treat. Lars sniffed around the rooms for gold and gems, but, to his considerable disappointment, found none. Elena suggested taking as many of the jars of “soul substance” as they could carry, since surely such a thing would have some magical use or value; the others agreed, and their packs were soon laden with softly-glowing jars. Recovered from the exertions of battle and fortified with a few swigs of wine, the party ventured to the next level of the tower.

At the top of the stairs was a wide stone passageway, and as the party turned a corner they nearly ran into a dozen orcs, well-armored in brigandine and carrying well-forged swords and spears. The orcs seemed shocked at the party’s unexpected appearance, and the adventurers took advantage of this surprise to riddle them with crossbow bolts and drop half of them in their tracks. As the survivors turned to flee and perhaps sound the alarm, Elena cast another sleep spell and sent them tumbling to the ground. This time Anya had no compunction about joining in mercilessly executing the creatures responsible for the dehumanizing horrors she had witnessed. Tobasko was soon outfitted in orc-armor and an orc-helmet, although he complained incessantly of the foul smell. Lars, however, made no complaint about the odor of the orc gold and silver he collected. The party then crept forward once more, toward the red glow of evening sunlight and a faint chanting in the distance. The passage soon opened into a great stone balcony, and the party crouched low to avoid being seen from below. The adventurers crawled forward, to peer between carven stone balcony rails at the awful scene sixty feet below them.

On the ground were more than a hundred orcs, all armored and waving iron swords and axes. Facing this chanting mob was an enormous naked man on a litter – eight feet tall and obscenely fat, with a bald head, hideously porcine features, and unnaturally ruddy skin. Standing on either side of this monstrous figure were pigs with burning eyes standing on their hind legs and gripping silver platters full of food in their horribly human hands – clearly daemonic familiars such as Gnaw-Bones had been (and perhaps still was). Seeing this, an appalled Anya whispered that the “red man” could only be a daemonic swine, the likes of which had given birth to the orc race in the first place! This fiend out of legend sat calmly before them, drinking in the praises of its subjects and devouring meat from the platters with slobbering relish. After long moments, the daemon raised his food-stained hands for silence. As the orc-babble faded away, the gigantic naked man spoke in a horrible inhuman lisping voice.

“My children! For centuries man has hunted you, killed you, driven you into the dark places of the world. Yours were the swamps and forests and caves, while man kept the wide plains and the great cities for himself. But no longer! We stand at the dawn of a new day for the orcish race. You have brought me many members of that weak race – man! And I have tested my plans upon them. Tested, and perfected. Behold the future of the orcish race!”

From behind the daemonic swine issued two lines of orcs, clad in steel armor and marching with precision. These orcs stood a head taller than was usual, with exaggerated piggish faces, bright red flesh, and blazing orange eyes. The two dozen daemonic orcs brandished hide shields and wicked scimitars as they snarled and bellowed for human flesh. Upon the forehead of each was a large round wound. The daemonic swine gestured at them with pride.

“Behold, my children! Man is weak and humanity is a weakness. Your true heritage is the line of Thaumagorga. These, your brethren, have been cleansed of their human weakness. Now they are truly strong – the veritable legions of the Black Gulf! Soon all of you will be as they are, once I have obtained more of the substances I need. Soon all orcs will be as they are. You will be not men, but daemons! But you must prove your faith and courage, for Thaumagorga disdains the weak. Go forth, then. Destroy Strongfort! Bring me more captives to perfect my methods. One day, soon, the whole of Hyperborea shall belong to the orc!”



In a howling frenzy, the orcs waved their blades and abased themselves before the creature on the litter. Eight of the daemonic red orcs lifted the litter and carried it into the growing darkness, while the rest formed into ranks; their lesser brethren gathered into a loose mob on either side. The largest of the daemonic red orcs raised his sword and bellowed a terrible word in their awful language. The chanting, raving mob then poured into the gathering dusk, leaving their reek and the echo of their grotesque voices behind them. The adventurers looked at each other in dismay, for that daemonic horde was headed directly for Strongfort.

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT SESSION!