Here is the write-up from our fourth session of our Back to the Basement AD&D (2nd Edition) campaign. Spoiler Alert: There probably aren’t any spoilers below the break for the module, Under Illefarn but I figured I’d better keep the spoiler alert for it anyway. There are minor spoilers for the adventure, A Local Legend, from Dungeon #31 (although with modifications).
This write-up is from Rachel and my GM comments are in [italics and brackets] as usual.
After escorting Tammas and his horse back to the Way Inn, we decided to spend the night there before heading back to Daggerford. While enjoying our dinner and some ale in the inn, Tammas entered the inn on his horse and proceeded to buy us a couple ales before our group headed to our rooms. The next morning we headed back to Daggerford, hoping that Tammas’ horse would get him home safely.
It took us 6 days to make it back to Daggerford on foot, and was a chilly though uneventful trip. We reported to the Commander at the barracks when we returned, and then headed our separate ways. Not feeling like he could return home, Tycyn headed to the Shrine of Tempus to offer to be an acolyte. Baergon Bluesword was not overly impressed with Tycyn’s explanation of why he wanted to serve Tempus and was not very receptive to him at this first meeting. Merrick headed to the castle, asking for an audience with Sir Llewellyn Longhand, the Duke’s master at arms, in hopes of receiving some training. Sir Llewellyn was quite busy, so Merrick was told he would be contacted if Llewellyn was able to give him an audience. Hannah headed home where her father suggested she practice her use of the shortbow on a tree out back. Ellio and Kethenor headed to their respective homes. Dory headed home and learned that her father and Channing were planning to have her engaged to Channing that evening. When Dory tried to tell her father that she was not interested in getting married at this point in her life, her father was unsympathetic and it sounded as though she would be forced into it, so she slipped away a couple houses when she was sent outside to wash up.
[Tycyn’s reasons for becoming an acolyte were, without exception, centered on him. Baergon was not pleased and, even after attempting to teach the would-be acolyte about how it could not be just about him, Tycyn still answered that he wanted to become an acolyte because he needed it and it was his calling. Needless to say, Baergon kicked him out.
Merrick, on the other hand, apparently expected that the Duke’s Captain of the Guard would be able to just drop whatever he was doing to train a recruit. Again, not surprisingly, that wasn’t the case. ;)]
While hiding from her father and swearing, a hooded figure appeared beside her and motioned for her to follow. The person helped Dory sneak away, and led her between buildings and over roofs until they ended up in a courtyard in the middle of some buildings. When the person lowered his hood, Dory saw it was an elf, who introduced himself as Filarion. He told Dory that she could stay in a room off the courtyard since she wanted to lay low for a bit. For about two weeks, he provided Dory with food, a place to stay, and training in picking locks, moving about relatively unseen, and other skills.
[So here’s the deal. I already knew what was going to happen a couple of paragraphs below and that the party was going to be rewarded for their actions at the Ilmater monastery. The Duke was going to offer to call in a few favors to get the characters the training they needed to become 1st level. See…sometimes I do plan ahead (or maybe the module did). I also knew that Dory was going to become a Thief and that didn’t quite seem like a favor the Duke should call in. So enter Filarion…plus he had overheard Dory’s dilemma and he’s not a bad guy even if he is a little confused by this particular human tradition of forced marriage.]
The day after Dory disappeared, the rest of us were summoned to the barracks, where the commander told us that we were invited to dinner with the Duke that evening. We also were told that Dory’s parents thought she had been abducted the day before, so some of the militia were out looking for her. None of us had heard from her since leaving the barracks the day before, but hoped that she was okay.
That night we had dinner with the Duke and a priest of Ilmater named Czeslaw. The Duke and priest both thanked us for having helped the spirit at the temple (formerly the Monastery of the Broken Hand) and to show his thanks, the Duke offered us a monetary reward or training with folks who owed him favors. We were all eager to receive more training, so the Duke told us to return to the castle the next day. The priest asked us if we had come across any relics in the temple. We told him of the items that the spirit had indicated we could have but acknowledged that we did not see anything that looked like a religious relic. The priest did not think the items we had found in the chests were relics, so he was fine with our keeping them.
[Czeslaw also offered his own reward to the characters. If they were ever in need of assistance to endure suffering, they should come to the Monastery once it is returned to its former state and they would provide such assistance.]
When we returned to the castle the next day, Merrick and Ellio were introduced to Llewellyn Longhand and their training as fighters began. Hannah began training in bows with Kelson Darktreader, the Duke’s master of the hunt. Kethenor began learning magic from Delfen Yellowknife. Tycyn arrived a bit late [an hour late] and Baergon Bluesword was a bit taken aback that Tycyn was to be his new acolyte, but the Duke convinced him to take him on. Tycyn quickly learned that Baergon’s method of training involved a lot of attacks aimed at Tycyn, whether he was ready or not.
After a couple weeks in hiding, Filarion tells Dory that he heard the Duke wanted to thank her along with the rest of our group, and that the Duke would offer her a monetary reward for what we had done at the temple. Filarion suggested in no uncertain terms that the monetary reward would be an appropriate payment for the training he had provided to Dory, so Dory headed out and found Merrick, who accompanied her home first. She let her parents know that she was okay but was not going to marry Channing. Dory’s mother seemed to be okay with Dory not wanting to marry Channing (though she couldn’t really let her husband know that), but Dory’s father was furious. Dory and Merrick took off for the barracks before Dory’s father could grab her.
At the barracks, Dory speaks with the Commander, who does not seem pleased that militia resources were wasted trying to find Dory when she was fine all along, but the Commander does arrange for Dory to have a meal with the Duke. The Duke does offer Dory a monetary reward, which she accepts, and gives to Filarion back in the room off the courtyard. Filarion accepts the bag of coins gladly, only tossing one or two to Dory when she asks if she really needs to pay him the whole bag of coins.
[Commander Sherelyn did, in her own way, express her own sympathies for Dory’s situation.]
After about a month of training with our respective experts, we are called back to the barracks and given orders to patrol nearby hamlets/farming communities to make sure they are safe. Kethenor was too busy with magical studies to come along and Ellio had been injured in training, so it was just Tycyn, Dory, Merrick, and Hannah on this trip.
[Both Mark and Todd were missing this week and so it was simply easier to have them off training/injured than have them come along. I fully expected that this mission would wrap up before the next session.]
The first two hamlets we checked out were fine—we spent an uneventful night at each of them. The third hamlet, Hoss, was a different story. When we woke after spending the night there, we overheard Kolorand (the farmer with whom we were staying) talking with another famer, whose son had gone missing the night before. The son had been cutting across the fields on his way home from the tavern and his tracks suddenly stopped in the middle of the field, where his cap was found. There were no other tracks around and no sign of where he had gone or what had happened to him. Kolorand and the other farmer told us that three people are “taken” or go missing every nine years, and that a demon spirit is the culprit. Kolorand suggested that we speak with Marcella, another of the hamlet’s residents, about it.
We went to speak to Marcella, who told us that every nine winters, the demon spirit comes for three nights of the full moon and takes one person each night. The demon spirit had been a farmer in the hamlet, but she does not know how he died or why he comes back every nine years. She tells us that one person claimed to have seen the spirit fly off toward the hills after taking someone once, and that a farmer named Othair once tried to hunt after the demon spirit, but that he never returned. Marcella seemed quite superstitious about the spirit and did not seem to think that it would do much good to try to stop it.
We stayed in Hoss the next three nights—asking all the residents to stay inside at night, and the first two nights the four of us patrolled the hamlet on horseback. We saw no sign of a demon, and no one went missing from the hamlet. After the second night, however, someone from the next hamlet came and told us that someone had gone missing from their hamlet that night. We stayed in Hoss the night after that, Merrick staying outside by himself while the rest of us were hidden inside a barn, but with the door open so we could easily come out if the spirit went after Merrick. Nothing happened. Over those few days, no one had seen Marcella, so we went to her house a couple times to make sure she was okay. The first time, Marcella did not respond so Dory played with the lock on the door a bit. Marcella was not happy we let ourselves in and quickly told us to leave her alone. She seemed to think that we were interfering by trying to prevent the demon spirit from taking the three people he took every nine years.
After a third uneventful night in Hoss, we headed on to the next hamlet. Nothing of note happened while we were there, or at the next couple of hamlets, so we headed back to Daggerford.
[Sometimes things just don’t go how anybody wants them to and sometimes you just gotta let that happen. The demon-spirit knew the party was patrolling so it wasn’t going to attack. By the time they settled on using Merrick as bait, it had already moved on to a new hunting ground. The first day after the first victim disappeared, the party also flirted with the idea of searching the hills and even headed out that way. However, they had no plan for how to search the hills or even where to start a search. I think some might have thought that if they just rode out to the hills, they would find what they were looking for.
I’ll fully admit that I’ve been doing some railroading so far but that’s not how I typically want to run things. If I did, I’d just run one of the Paizo adventure paths or the like. To be fair, in a lot of modules that’s exactly how something like this might work. But, in this case, it was a demon-spirit that didn’t want to be found and our adventure didn’t require that this particular path be followed (not that we’ve stayed too much on track with the actual module Under Illefarn so far).
So, I let it go. It didn’t help that the table was tired, one player was really distracted (for good reason), and I hadn’t been able to do much of anything in terms of preparing. We had a repair guy at our place until just about an hour before game time and I still had to set up the tables and everything. If I had some more time, I would have made some significant changes to the module I was borrowing from and things would have gone better. I didn’t and they didn’t. Oh well. Like I said, things don’t go how anyone wants sometimes. I’ve had sessions like this and I’m sure I’ll have sessions like this again.]
We took the pouch of gems from the temple to Korbus Brighteyes for appraisal. He estimated the gems worth at about 390gp, and his appraisal fee was 30gp, so we came out with a total of 360gp to split amongst the 6 of us. With 60gp each, we were able to purchase a few things we figured we would need as adventurers.
[Korbus had the party leave the gems with him to appraise. When they returned the next morning, he told them their worth (390gp) and Merrick immediately blurted out, “You can have them for 400gp.” Up until that point, Korbus was planning on waiving any fees for the appraisal or his customary 10% exchange fee as he had heard of the fledgling heroes but the rudeness of the response convinced him to do otherwise. And I’m pretty sure that Merrick’s mouth is going to cost the party a lot more than 30gp in the future.]
The rest of the winter passed and we received more training. In the spring, while on patrol at the town walls, we spy a rider on horseback approaching Daggerford. As he drew near, he reached out an arm and cried out “Lizardmen! Lizardmen attacked Baron Cromm’s holdings! Help us!” before falling off his horse.
[That, of course, is where we stopped.]
