In their mission to put a stop to an invasion of Winter Fey, the party got themselves caught up in yet another fine mess. Mostly friendly kobolds, hobgoblin slavers, clearly insane Orcus fanatics, lost evil temples, a dig site excavating some undead thing, human bandit slavers, sheep out after dark, pillar of the community shopkeeper secretly an Orcus cultist, and even more cultists tunneling under Winterhaven and into the Padraig family crypt. Sheesh…what’s next? Oh, let’s find out after the break.
After all of the excitement with the cultists under Bairwin’s shop and in the Padraig crypt, the party is escorted by the Lord of Winterhaven to Wrafton’s Inn for a good night’s rest. The next morning the party visits Lord Padraig and learn the following.
- Guards had been sent to find where the tunnels from Bairwin’s led. One came out at a farm on the outskirts of Winterhaven.
- The farmer and wife were also Orcus cultists based on the small shrine hidden in their home.
- Other farmers are part of the cult, but this duo would not provide any names.
The party heads back out to the dig site and the Bloodreavers camp they had discovered previously.
- The bodies of the slain hobgoblins are missing and the camp has been cleared of pretty much everything.
- Fearing the worst, the party hustles back to lair of the Withered Arm kobolds. All have been slain and raised as undead. Kin was impaled to the throne by a large spear. The party dispatches the undead kobolds.
- They then head to the ruined farmhouse where they first met Kin and first defeated some Bloodreavers. Although scavenged by various creatures, the hobgoblin bodies remain here with their equipment.
Back to Winterhaven, the heroes meet with Padraig again. It is decided that they need to head back to Nenlast and put a stop to Talavi.
- He introduces them to Valthrun, a local sage, who can access the teleportation circle in Nimozaran’s tower. Nimozaran is unaware that Valthrun can do this and the sage would like to keep it that way.
- Valthrun will research the Keep on the Shadowfell while the heroes are away.
- The party also speak with an elf hanging out at Wrafton’s Inn. Her name is Nena and she relatively new to the area. For the price of 300gp (which Lord Padraig agrees to pay), she’ll find the other Bloodreavers camp.
- Valthrun teleports the party to Nimozaran’s tower. Tobilar, Nimozaran’s apprentice, is in the lab when the party appears. As he and the party had bonded a bit previously, Tobilar helps them exit via a window before Nimozaran can learn of their arrival. He’d also appreciate it if the party could find out if Valthrun is interested taking on an apprentice.
Back in Fallcrest, the party immediately heads to Moonstone Keep to meet with the Lord Warden.
- On their way, they spot numerous people packing up wagons and preparing to flee town.
- Lots of the townsfolk are already at the keep, scared, and insisting that the Lord Warden tell them what he is going to do about the approaching winter.
- Apparently, while the heroes have been away, the winter around Nenlast has been spreading relatively quickly. Everyone is shouting and close to panicking.
- Captain Harrick silences the room with a quick breath of fire into the air above the crowd. The Lord Warden insists that all come with him to the town square, gathering other townsfolk as they go.
- At the square, he announces that the Crusaders (as the party is now known) are going to stop the unnatural winter. The Lord Warden arranges for horses and Woodward gallops heroically on (with the rest of the party following).
- Travel is pretty uneventful, if cold and snowy (winter has nearly reached Fallcrest already), except for a couple of encounters.
- One is against some mud creatures at a small river. (Talavi effect on the Vale was weakening the boundaries between the various planes and these elementals oozed in…not that the players or their characters were aware of this.)
- Next is a camp of goblins, bugbears, and hill giants who had a few humans as captives. A fairly epic battle ensues with the party victorious. The captives include Barton, the proprietor of the Five League House, and some of his guards.
- Barton shared that winter had kept spreading and that the giants et al were fleeing at as well when they attacked his place, taking them as hostages. Other captives had already been eaten.
- The rest of the journey to Nenlast is quite uneventful.
- Arriving in Nenlast, the heroes meet with Talavi and offer her Son’s Sliver. Talavi is furious and claims that it is not Sun’s Sliver. Before she can do anything to the party, the air becomes even more unnaturally cold and the air incredibly crisp. Another fey appears, her beauty puts Talavi’s to shame. She tells Talavi that this was her last failure, shrinks the failed fey, and crushes her.
- All of the fey disappear and the air starts to warm. Snow and ice melt. What had been a wintery ruin is quickly restored to a fishing village. Villagers start coming out. The last they remember is being attacked by a large force of gnolls. The only remnant of the fey is the frozen body of one of the villagers, Tyne, who had made the original bargain with Talavi. The party’s bargain with Talavi for Sun’s Sliver included that this individual would remain the fey’s.
After spending some time with the villagers, filling them in on what had happened to their village as well as to the captives that the gnolls had originally taken, the heroes start heading back to Fallcrest. There are only two interesting encounters on their way back.
- A pile of clothing and some equipment is spotted in the road. Nothing too interesting except a silver necklace with a pendant with the name Sylvar etched on the back.
- None of the clothing or equipment is magical, but Gandave does sense magic on the road some thirty feet away. As he approaches the spot, a circle of runes flares to life and Gandave turns into a smoky figure, his clothing and equipment falling to the ground.
- Gathering the now tow piles of stuff, the heroes follow the smoky Gandave as he floats off to the west.
- After a mile or two, smoky Gandave drifts down into a small valley containing several mounds…burial mounds. Gandave floats into one of the mounds.
- Long story short…
- A handful of skeletal undead in archaic armor are in the mounds and defeated by the heroes. Some intact human skins also animate and attack only to be defeated.
- Gandave slips through some stone slabs to go below the mounds.
- The party find a way down as well.
- Below, the party encounters an individual who is very similar in appearance to D’Votski (who they encountered in the Andok Sur complex).
- This individual is E’Benfa. He shares that he set the traps on the road as he needs elves or others with a fey essence in order to wake his mistress, Lady Lanma of Andok Sur. E’Benfa is aware that the heroes had encountered D’Votski and knows their names…just a little disturbing.
- E’Benfa, of course, is not willing to return Gandave until the party offers the ring they had found in the Feydark, the ring with the symbol of the Prince of Frost in its gem. This, he claims, will go far to his wakening his mistress.
- Gandave is returned, naked, but unharmed. I’m sure that this trade will not have any impact on the campaign in the future…nope, not at all.
- Days of uneventful travel with a nice stop at Five-League House.
- As the heroes are approaching the outlying farms of Fallcrest, a large and muscular stallion is galloping down the road towards them. Sulrinn magically speaks with it, but it only has one thing on its mind…FREEDOM! The horse is branded with an A. Four riders eventually pass the party trying to catch the stallion.
Back in Fallcrest, everyone is relieved that winter has been stopped and the party is celebrated as heroes! The Lord Warden throws a celebration in honor of the Crusaders! Breakfast with the Lord Warden the next morning and he gets down to business.
- Markelhay has received news (magically) from Winterhaven.
- There was a week or so of relative calm after the heroes left Winterhaven but then things got worse.
- More people have gone missing or have been abducted.
- Nena found the location of the Bloodreavers, shared that info with Lord Padraig, and then departed.
It is pretty clear that the heroes need to head to Winterhaven asap and they have the Lord Warden’s blessing to do so.
Before the party leaves Fallcrest, they notice that they are being followed.
- They stop and meet an individual named Owen Lloyd.
- He claims that he is an entrepeneur and would like to sell the heroes a map to a magical warhammer, Grovelthrash. It is made of solid obsidian, has images of screaming faces, and is said to cause more damage than one would expect.
- Some of what Owen shares seems to jive with information from Mari’s map and so the party buys the map.
They then make all due haste towards Winterhaven. (Woodward has Aspect of the Elk and so he doubles their travel pace.)
As they are traveling through the hills near Gardbury Downs, they spot two wagons on the road and quite a bit of blood.
- Tethers for horses are cut and bloody.
- Bloody drag marks, some large enough to be horses, head to the north.
- While following the drag marks, the party realizes that there are dozens of holes in the ground, not deep and none much larger than a golf ball.
- The marks and holes lead to a cave in a hill a mile or two north of the King’s Road.
- Gandave enters the cave invisibly and finds corpses of horses and humans along with various burrowed tunnels.
- Lots of large, skittering insect like creatures with blade-like legs come out of these tunnels. Despite his invisibility and dropping a number of them with a sleep spell, they swarm him.
- The rest of the party can see him go down under the onslaught in just a moment. As the party prepares to come to his rescue, the creatures start to drag Gandave’s body deeper into the cave.
And that’s where we ended our last session back in June and where we will pick up in our next session of the Nentir Vale campaign.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, Dave had to stop playing due to family responsibilities. RJ has taken up playing Gandave in his absence, being true to Gandave the Squishy going in first more often than not.
Evelyn, due to a change in work schedules, also had to stop playing a couple of weeks ago during our various “one-shots” since we couldn’t get everyone together to start Nentir Vale again. Sulrinn, I think, will head off to pursue her own agenda.
Now I need to go and try to figure out all that was going on in a campaign that’s been on hold for almost four months now. Wish me luck!
