Month: March 2018

SESSION 193 Tuesday, March 6, 2018

We meet back at the safe house and Aldus, Mortimer, and Cvelnid have packed up and are taking Em to the small dwarven khel up river. It is not an ancient Khel. They want to keep Em safe.

Rallion waits until the others are away and sets his magic aside and ties a rope to the shard and shuts the rope inside the shard with it.

On his way back to join the party, the still invisible Nash has Serithaz influence the minds of all he passes to believe in Lysander and wake up shouting about Lysander. As this is midnight or so, we are not around to hear the result.

Nash arrives at the safe house and tells Em to pray to Lysander, the woman of his vision. He takes off Serithaz before speaking about this.

We find wating for us a warrant signed by Cuddy Hawke authorizing us to take a barge downriver with a contingent of guards.

We pass by the haberdasher on the way to the barge, and we find some thugs beating up – Benedict, a prior associate of Bavmorda’s new henchman, Estill. Estill hides in shadows evading him. The thugs, lead by Asa, claim he had a 50 gp reward on his head for burning the refugee camp and letting a bunch of Midmark refugees into Feldmark.

Rallion drafts the lot, including Benedict. Nash learns that Estill thinks very poorly of Benedict, but they come to an agreement to dump him in the river on the way to Landing.

Nash has Serithaz program the Haberdasher to go with us to finish the training of Bavmorda and Laris.

We stop by the ship and borrow the iron chest of the captain to put all our magic in so we can more safely take out the shard. We make the thugs carry it.

We get to the appointed dock, take charge of a barge and the two guards near it and head down river.

We go downstream and after 30 minutes, we meet up with survivors fleeing Landing, and learn that the infected are on the other bank perhaps 50 of them. 30 minutes later we see movement on the bank and they are the infected, many more than 50 but less than 100. They step to the shallows and one tries to get to us and is swept downstream. The rest stand watching and waiting. Laris bangs his grappling hook on the side of the barge to attact more of the infected.

Bav and Laris take turns trying to hook an infected and finally get one, and cross to the the other bank and tangle it in a fishing net we took (Rallion left 10 gp with the captain for the poor fisherman), and restrain it and Lambertus casts cure disease on it, and it quits moving. Bavmorda spinkles a bit of her cure disease potion on it and it rapidly turns the fungal growths black, much faster than the cure disease was doing. We bring the body along on our journey downriver to make sure it is truly deadly. Before restraining it, Rallion stowed his magic items and tried the shard, and it did not work. We really need to deal with this disease, in case magic is destroyed. All clerics need to go seeking the infected and cure them before we complete our mission…..

We reach landing at dawn and it is a scene of the chaos of battle. We go to the guard ship that we met going to Feldmark, and hear men calling for help. We board the ship and “kill” a severly infected cleric of Lysander. We use cargo nets for the cannons to tie it to the deck and rescue the trapped crew. Nash gives the commander his cure disease potion, and cures his wounds. Two other crew were scratched and Bavmorda sprinkles a few drops of the cure disease potions on the bite marks and it looks better.

We have learned that those killed and infected rise quickly. Those made ill take longer to die and turn. It appears that the combination of cure disease and the cure disease potion work. Perhaps two cure diseases per victim will have the same results. This makes the corraling and controlling of the afflicted who are undead the most crucial to control.

While questioning the commander and working out what to do, we are rammed by the undead whale. We get to the side of the ship that was pushed out of the way, and Rallion used his sword in its scabbard to slide down the rope tied to the barge and the lead guard cut the rope. The whale broke past the ship, and Rallion has just enough time to stow his magical gear, while Oskar prepare to open the chest with the shard….

{We roll for initiative next week….}

SESSION 192 February 28, 2018

River of the Damned/Dammed

7:00 PM 21st Senrilden

Dwarven Apocalypse Clock: 000.00.01.24

(1 month and 24 days until the dwarven space armada arrives. That’s 7 weeks and 3 days. Remember to subtract 1 week for training, 1 week to get to Lonely Isle, and 2 weeks to modify the ship – AFTER we get control of it, leaving 3 weeks and 3 days of wiggle room….)

While still in the Council Chambers of Feldmark, we learn that the inquisitor who replaced Greta had no direct support from the Dragon Empire. The heavy hitting dervishes, we took out when we interrupted the assassination. All that are left are the low level operatives any decent sized polity would have.

WOW – The Dragon Emperor sent in a strike force of dervishes to get control of the orbital defences. They failed in that regard, but they brought back a piece of Prixithalma to the mainland, and since they have plenty of dragons to get dragon blood, they raised her. Serithaz doesn’t think that we can raise Prix if she is alive elsewhere. It would waste our supply (one shot) to try.

Upon learning this news, Nash was inspired, and asked Serithaz if we could sacrifice DVLs instead. Serithaz didn’t see a reason it wouldn’t work, as the ritual only specified dragon blood. Serithaz pointed out we know where a dragon is…. (Lonely Isle – Lysander).

Not having a dragon ally to raise, our plans changed.

The council likes out idea and have identified all the clerics and druids in the area that can cast cure disease. They will send a task force to kill any infected, and cover the mouths of the task force when they burn them. The job of the clerics and druids is to keep the task force healthy. (This means certain death to all the refugees.)

First we want to get to Greta’s house and find any goodies and communication devices/transportation devices (mirrors), other magic, and possible gold & gems. The council gives us permission and sends word.

We arrive and the city watch has just gotten there to surround the place.

We wait for them to do so, then Nash tries to kick in the front door and fails. Rallion easily kicks it open. We go upstairs first. We put the fear of traps and magical death into the guard officer, so they stay outside to maintain the perimeter.

We go upstairs and Nash “hears” someone (with his Psionic clairaudience ability) and we go towards that door. This time Rallion can’t force the door, but Nash runs into Rallion and gets it open.

Inside is an old man burning papers. He stops, not sure what to do. Nash commands him to stop. Rallion stepped forward and put his sword to his throat and told him to ‘Kneel’. The old man complied.

We learned he is the butler of Greta, and was totally fooled by the Inquisitor, and thinks we are agents of a coup by Cuddy.

Nash knocks out the old man. Serithaz confirmed that the old man worked for Greta and had no idea. The papers are all about the boring machinations (what Serithaz thought of them.) of the rope makers guild, in a city where the various guilds mostly got along.

There is a magical mirror that has what appear to be spider web like cracks. Nash puts his hand in and feels wet and resistance. Serithaz questions the copy of the inquisitor, and the other mirror was on the airship that is now at the bottom of the port at Midmark. We ask Kalgun and he thinks a mending might work to fix the other mirror if cast through this mirror. We eye that as a potential escape route. (If we can recover it without flooding someplace.

Nash is nearly petrified by a magical trap on the door to Greta’s private quarters, as he had taken off the skull cap and not asked Serithaz to question the copied inquisitor. Inside we find the chest with a false bottom, that we previously learned of via Serithaz. The false bottom has 500 gp in Midmark coin, and 15 standard 1,000 gp gems. We pocket that, and put everthing else back, even the gold necklace of office as guildmaster of the ropemaker’s guild.

We turn over the house to the guard, giving them the all clear.

We go to the Evenkeel temple and Lambertus, AKA ‘Sam’, the vault inspector, cons a young acolyte, in combination with a charm person spell from Laris, to show us the tombs and vaults.

After conning him out of the vault key, we learn that there are 10 scrolls with some cool spells, even resurrection! More importantly, there are three chests, each with a DVL/magical trap. Only the key of the Patriarch (who is actually the Matriarch) will open them safely. Laris and Bavmorda make an impression of the vault key.

We leave and Bavmorda’s new henchman puts a sleeper hold on the lad, and Nash has Serithaz erase our visit from his memory. Rallion grimly shakes his head….

The rest of us sneak out, those with elven or dark elven cloaks don them first, after Kauri casts invisibility on Nash, who sneaks in and uses Serithaz to zero in on the “Patriarch”. Scanning the mind of the Patriarch Nash learns what the key looks like so he can draw it out. The Patriarch is in a meeting with other clerics making plans to go with the city task force tomorrow at noon.

Rallion keeps pointing out that he thinks we should head down river and at least take care of the whale. He is willing to go forward with the shard to see if it works on the diseased undead. We know it will work on the whale, since we turned it. We can also see if cure disease works or not, but it should based on the experience of Thorfus and Axel after returning from the pathology lab under Xen Khel.

Our other option is to take the sub to where the Hull and Sheaf fleet is and commandeer one of them, if we can’t quickly save the city for Bavmorda and Laris to complete their training….