Quail Valley Session 25 (SW)

In the last session, the heroes had defeated the ogres under Momma Graul and demolished both the farmhouse and barn. However, not before setting the creature Zeke free. Followed by Faelan, Zeke escaped to a mine a few miles away. With the rescued but essentially catatonic girl, Etel, in their charge, the group retreated back to Borsod and told the Baroness of what they had found. That’s where we pick up after the break.

This write-up is from Todd. It is good that it was Todd’s turn as Stelisto pretty much took center stage and took the session in a completely unexpected direction. As usual, my GM comments are in [brackets and italics].

In the morning, the party heads downstairs. There is a full wine-skin waiting for Raspin. After breaking their fast, the party leaves to go to the mine. Outside, the sky is filled with dark storm clouds, and it is raining heavily.

[Raining? Really? Quail Valley gets a LOT of rain, especially in the spring. I’m not sure there’s been a day that it hasn’t rained.]

Heads down and hoods up, the adventurers slog their way up the road, towards the house and palisade to pick up the trail to the mine. The travel passes uneventfully. Cailana find a place to camp and they stop for the night. They setup the night’s watches.

Raspin is on first watch.

Stelisto is on second watch. Though Raspin has laid down to sleep, he is still does not trust the intentions of Stelisto. He fakes sleeping and watches Stelisto, all the while taking small sips from his wine-skin. Stelisto ignores him.

Stelisto hears voices on the wind. They sound a ways off, but he wants to check them out. Remembering that he told the group that he would let them know before wandering off, he tells Raspin that he hears something and is going to check it out. Without waiting for a response from Raspin, Stelisto slinks off into the night. Raspin wakes Serena and tells her Stelisto went to investigate a noise.

A little distance from the campsite, Stelisto casts Malluma Vido [darksight]. His eyes enhanced to see in the dark, Stelisto follows the voices. As he gets nearer, he recognizes the orc language. Before moving closer, he casts Nokta Hauto [armor with a trapping of darkness that enhances stealth]. The darkness coalesces around him and hardens. Now armored and harder to detect, Stelisto stealthily moves towards the voices. So intent on the voices, Stelisto doesn’t see the hole in the ground, and falls in. He lets out a cry of surprise.

[There was a critical failure on the stealth check. We have a house rule that it costs two Bennies to re-roll a 1 on a critical failure. When Todd offered the two Bennies, I offered an extra Benny to keep the failure (something I often do). Critical failures make the game interesting AND can help build the setting…it did this time.

The hole was also kind of hidden.]

Stelisto falls a good ways. His breath is knocked out of him. His spells are disrupted. Though stunned, he knows that he landed on some hard objects, that broke when he landed on them. It is dark. He can see the hole above him. As he gathers his wind, he hears a slurping sound, and he feels something slimy sliding across his forehead. He feels something else moving across his body. Fearfully, he jumps up and away. He hastily casts his dark-sight spell, and sees a very large tentacled slug reaching for him. He is in a cavern, the opening to the surface 30 feet above him. Successfully casting Aranea Grimpado [wall walker], sticky webs cover his hands and feet, and he starts to climb the wall to the opening above.

The slug climbs up the opposite wall, towards the opening. Stelisto gets to the shaft first, and climbs up. As he nears the opening, he hears the orc voices getting closer. Looking down, the slug is at the bottom of the shaft, blocking the way. Deciding to take his chances with the slug, instead of a group of orcs, Stelisto draws both of his daggers. He drops down on the monster, intending to stab the creature with both of his daggers. His first attack is ineffective, as his hand catches on the side of the shaft. His body weight dislodges the slug, and they both fall to the cavern floor. While Stelisto’s fall is cushioned by the slug’s body, he lands awkwardly and manages to cut his own throat with the second dagger.

[I believe that there was another critical failure.]

His spells are disrupted again. He can’t see, but he hears the orcs above him. In desperation, he rolls away. The slug tries to hit him with a tentacle, but misses. Stelisto rolls farther away from the slug. Stelisto hears more voices from above, they echo in the cavern. He hears a couple of bows being shot, and the thuds as the arrows strike the slug.

Bleeding and in pain, Stelisto crawls farther away. He tries to cast his darksight spell. He can’t focus enough, because of the pain. He hears the orcs in the cavern. He knows they will hear him if he tries to cast another spell. He puts his head down and holds his breath, hoping the orcs won’t see him. Soon, he hears chopping coming from the direction of the slug.

Eventually, the chopping stops, and he hears the orcs leave.

Focusing and trying to ignore the pain, Stelisto is able to cast his dark-sight spell.

He sees the slug thing, hacked to bits, in the middle of the cavern. There is a tunnel. He follows it just a little ways, until he notices that it goes deeper into the earth. He goes back to the cavern to wait. He has exhausted himself and is unable to cast any spells. He hopes that his traveling companions will come find him.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group impatiently waits for Stelisto to return. After Stelisto has been gone for an hour, Serena and Faelin decide the group needs to go look for him. Faelin shape-changes into a bird. He returns and says that there is a group of orcs sitting around a cook-fire. Whatever was being roasted [the slug thing] was too big to be Stelisto. Cailana refuses to lose any sleep over a stupid human. The group is taken aback by Cailana’s sudden racism. After some discussion, Cailana grudgingly begins to track Stelisto’s trail. She doesn’t wait for the others, and soon leaves them far behind.

[In the prior session, a magical elven bow had been recovered. Cailana had “attuned” herself to the bow. One of the drawbacks of this was a new sense of the ultimate superiority of the elven race. Muse played it up quite well and quite contrary to Cailana’s normal personality.]

Cailana follows Stelisto’s trail to the top of a hill. She sees a group of orcs sitting around a cook fire. On some hills nearby, she sees two orcs sentries. She sees that Stelisto’s trail continues down the hill. Cailana takes careful aim at one of the sentries, and fires her newly acquired bow. A not very bright bolt of lightning shoots across the way, and strikes the orc in it’s head, vaporizing the head. The orc tumbles down the opposite side of the hill. The kill not being detected, Cailana takes aim at the second sentry. Again, a dim bolt of lightning streaks towards the orc, and kills it instantly.

The group around the fire consists of ten orcs. Eating and drinking, they are not paying any attention to their surroundings, trusting the sentries to alert them of anything amiss. Cailana extremely confident in her elven abilities takes aim at the two orcs nearest to her. She shoots, but nothing happens. She tries again, and again nothing happens.

[The bow also tends to enforce its sense of elven superiority by not working if it feels that its bearer is not living up to its expectations. Endangering herself in order to find and likely rescue some human thief did not meet the bow’s expectations.]

She turns, and starts walking back to her camp, muttering that the others can handle the rest of the orcs, she did her part. On the way to the camp, she comes across Serena, Faelin, and Raspin. She tells Serena that she did her part, the rest is up to them. Serena questions Cailana’s sudden attitude change towards the rest of the group, and reluctance to help find Stelisto. As they are talking, Wink finally catches up with the group. [He has the Lame Hindrance.] Wink speculates that the magic bow might be having some effect on Cailana, similar to the way the staff did to him and the gloves did to Serena. Serena and Wink ask Cailana to give up the bow. She adamantly refuses, saying an elven bow should only be in the hands of a elf. Serena brings up her elven heritage. Cailana scoffs at the notion of a half-breed being worthy to call herself elven. She points and tells the others they might find Stelisto in that direction. Cailana turns her back on the group and walks off into the darkness.

Serena, Faelin, Raspin and Winkelthorpe start walking in the direction that Cailana pointed. It’s slow going because of Wink’s bum leg. Eventually, they come to a hill and can hear voices on the other side. Serena crawls to the top of the hill, and sees the group of orcs around the fire, eating and drinking. She sneaks back down to the others.

The depleted party ambushed the orcs and had some good success, despite the darkness and rain hampering the vision of the predominantly human group. Eventually, the orcs were defeated but a few ran off into the night.

In the cavern, Stelisto is waiting to be rescued. He hears the sounds of combat. Though it is dark, he can see the opening in the ceiling of the cavern. He gets the grappling hook and a rope from his pack. He hooks the opening on his first try. He starts climbing. The faces of his traveling companions appear in the opening. They pull him up.

Serena looks at the wound in his neck. She can’t heal it magically, its been to long since it happened. They make their way back to their camp, slowly. Even Wink can travel faster than the wounded Stelisto. Stelisto promises not to go investigating, without discussing it with the group, in the future.

They get back to the camp. Cailana is there. There are more harsh words about Cailana leaving the group and not helping. Cailana goes on about doing her part and how elves are superior to all other races. Tempers hot, they all rest the rest of the night.

In the morning, they talk about their next course of action. Stelisto doesn’t want to slow the party down. He is willing to make his way back to Borsod while the others continue on to the mine. The group decides to go back to Borsod and inquire about a healing potion for Stelisto.

Arriving in Borsod late in the night, they decide to wait to go to the temple in the morning. They go to the Goat’s Beard Inn. Rumble runs off to inform the baroness. The baroness comes down and asks why they are back so soon. They explain what happened with the orcs, and with Cailana’s abandoning them during a fight. The baroness asks Cailana about it. Again, Cailana says she shouldn’t have to help the stupid human. Serena and Wink tell the baroness that they believe the magic bow is having an affect on Cailana. The baroness asks Cailana to let go of the bow. Cailana says sure, and moves to hand the bow over. Wink explains that Cailana will have to let it go by unattuning from the bow. At this, Cailana halts. The baroness orders her to “let go” of the bow. The internal struggle is evident on Cailana’s face. After a few moments, she says it is done. The baroness runs to Cailana and gives her a big hug.

[The change in Cailana’s behavior really upset Baroness Varga…despite her maturity, her young age still shows through at times. The eight year old was nearly in tears arguing with Cailana about the change in behavior. Perhaps, the Baroness has grown rather attached to the group…or specific members.]

The party goes to the temple to see if they can get some potions. Priestess Jolana says that a potion to heal Stelisto’s wound is more potent, therefore more costly. Stelisto shows her the dragon scale brooch with ruby chips. She accepts, and gives him a vial. Stelisto drinks the contents of the vial, and the wound in his neck heals. The group barters for some more potions in exchange for the silver necklace. These potions are “normal” healing potions.

[The potions were actually acquired from Trinu, Borsod’s “witch” and not Jolana. The Baroness accompanied the group to Trinu’s and ordered her to give a fair price. Presumably, Trinu did so.]

The group gathers their things, and once again begin to travel to the abandoned mine. The first day and night are uneventful. The second day, they make it to where the palisade should have been. The palisade is gone. In its place are the remnants of a large fire, a large pile of ash. Something seems not quite right. The amount of wood from the palisade wouldn’t have left such a large pile of ash. Stelisto finds a board and starts to dig through the ash. Near the middle of the pile, he uncovers some large bones. Digging further, he finds the misshapen skull of an ogre. They wonder if this is what remains of Crowfood. There are tracks of bare feet all around the area. The trail that would take them to Momma Graul’s farmhouse is much more trampled than before.

[That’s where we ended for the night.