In our last session, the party set off for Borsod again, accompanying the Baroness to make her apology the mayor. They were attacked by some ogre-like creatures one night and then ambushed by gnolls the following morning. An ambush which was a setup for Graylock to assassinate the Baroness, his arrow ripping through the throat of the group’s child patron. Thanks to Serena’s magics, Baroness Varga was saved. Graylock escaped and the group hightailed it to Borsod, settling in at The Goat’s Beard. Miklós was “arrested” and the group settled in for the evening with the remaining man-at-arms guarding the mayor. When Cailana came to relieve him, he was dead–killed by one of Graylock’s arrows–and the mayor was missing. That is where we pick up after the break.
As usual, my GM comments are in [brackets and italics]. There are potential spoilers for The Vault of Larin Karr below the break.
When Cailana heads downstairs to relieve the guard and take over the watch, she finds the guard dead, shot by one of Graylock’s arrows and the Mayor is gone!! She snatches the arrow and bolts upstairs to immediately alert everyone before dashing back downstairs to rouse and drag a slumbering Rumble up the stairs to the Baroness.
Rumble is proclaiming his innocence, saying he knows nothing of what has happened. The baroness takes him at his word. Cailana says we need to check the mayor’s house as soon as possible. Faelan wants to make sure that the Mayor and Graylock have not taken the animals. Serena, Raspin, and Wink decide to stay with the Baroness just to make sure she is safe. Cailana decides to go check out the docks and see if anybody left that way.
Faelen runs to check the stables to make sure the animals are still there. The animals are there and everything looks to be normal. He heads back into the inn.
Cailana checks out the dock, the boats are still tied there that were there last night. At the bottom of the stairs there are some tracks, they look like gnoll tracks. She only sees one set of tracks and they look like they are deeper than normal, like the gnoll was carrying something. She heads back into the inn and lets us know what she found.
[The Goat’s Beard Inn backs up to the river with a small dock over the river.]
Faelan hears that Cailana found some tracks of a gnoll who she thinks is Graylock and rushes down to the docks to take a look. He transforms into a wolf and gets a good scent of the gnoll. He rushes after the scent. Even though he has been ambushed two times previously, he still bravely (stupidly) heads in that direction with no backup.
He follows the trail, it leads outside the village, and it stops at some reeds along the river. It looks like a boat was here at one point. He rushes back to the inn to let the others know.
After some discussion, it is decided to take the Baroness to Jolana at the temple. She gets some people to help make sure that the Baroness is safe while the rest of the party goes and looks for the mayor. They decide to head back to the inn when they realize that Faelan is not with them.
Faelan is back at the inn, wondering where everyone has gone. He sits down and Rumble brings him a drink. He is waiting to see if they come back.
Eventually, everybody heads back to the inn and Faelan hands Raspin his drink, “I was holding this for you.” Faelan tells the group what he found and wants to follow him (Graylock) in a boat but Cailana wants to look for evidence before it gets destroyed. Faelan finally agrees (even though he hears a voice telling him that the trail may go cold) and Raspin finishes the drink and we head to the Mayor’s house.
When we get there, we see a new door [to replace the one Raspin and destroyed in a prior visit] and stuck in the door is a dagger with a letter attached. The letter is written crudely, but says ‘Miklos owes me for the job I did if you want him back you got to pay’. It goes on to give directions to a canoe, near a certain tree, and to put 500 lords in it. It is not signed but we do think Graylock wrote it.
We go inside, the door was unlocked. Inside the hallway, the constable is lying on the floor with an arrow in his back and blood pooling under him. [The blood had already pooled, he wasn’t still bleeding.]. He is dead. We search around and find other of the mayor’s staff, with their throats slit. The place doesn’t look like it has been robbed, but we don’t find any coins. We do find tax books and grab those to take back to the baroness. We do have some questions as to how the constable got shot in the back. Was there someone in cohoots with Graylock? Was it Graylock who somehow got in and shot him in the back?
We head to the temple and let the baroness know what we have found. The baroness is still at the temple and she is safe. After we inform her she tells us that Miklos needs to be brought to justice. We discuss several ideas of how to bring him to justice. We eventually decide that we need to get the Baroness out of the village and back to Presov. The plan is that we will get a barge and take the baroness back down river. We will send the canoe out when we leave with a note to set a new place to meet, at one of travel towers. Raspin is very excited to back to his love and loves this idea. We set guards and will look for a barge in the morning.
[Barta, “Raspin’s love,” has shown no interest in his advances…quite the opposite actually.]
In the morning, we ask Jolana about the witch [which the group had learned about previously at Gazda farm]. She says disgustingly, “Trinu, she lives too close to the village.” She goes on to say that Trinu tries to get people to see her rather than going to the temple to solve their problems. Jolana says Trinu’s potions work, but her love potions don’t make the imbiber actually love you.
Raspin thinks that would be perfect for him with Barta. Jolana is horrified and suggests the person is being forced to love against their will and likely screaming inside. While Trinu isn’t evil, like her cousin Saara, Jolana has still had to deal with the fallout from some of Trinu’s potions. The priestess shares some information about Saara, who lives out in the woods some distance from Borsod.
Faelan asks if Trinu might have potions other than love potions, perhaps something to help track down the mayor or Graylock. He also lets slip that Raspin had promised to get a love potion for “the boy.” When Jolana asks about which boy, Raspin simply responds that he’s giving a boy advice since he, himself, understands woman and they find him irresistible. Jolana suggests that he is reprehensible and figures out herself that it is the Gazda boy[…poor kid still hasn’t been introduced by name yet.]
Wink chimes in and suggests that it is worse than Jolana knows as the boy is looking to “woo” the “larger” girl. This draws the ire of all the women around him.
Raspin and Jolana continue a discussion of how to woo a woman. When Raspin shares that it is Barta (who is “all woman”) that he is pursuing, the Baroness blurts out “Barta?” and begins to giggle. Soon, the group gets back to business.
Faelan wants to visit the witch Trinu and goes out to her cottage later that morning. He follows the directions given to him and goes and knocks on the door. A middle age women answers. She is rather brief and blunt in the ensuing conversation. Faelan asks if she can make him a potion to track someone and she indicates that she would need some sort of bodily effect to do so. It would cost some 500 lords and take about three days to prepare.
Healing potions would cost 150 lords or 500 lords for greater healing. Not having anywhere near those kind of funds, Faelan heads back and tell the others about what he had learned.
In the village, Raspin is approached by the Gazda boy. He asks about the potion and Raspin says its selling for 500 lords. The boy looks at him and tells him he can’t afford that. So Raspin passes on some of what his female companions had suggested, flowers, and suggests that the boy go out into the woods and pick some weeds.
Staring at Cailana [as he had back at the farm previously], the boy took off running. While he’s gone, his father lets the group know that they’ve had no additional problems…no more livestock stolen, no attacks…and thanks the group again for helping. His wife invites the group back for dinner.
The boy returns carrying some freshly picked flowers and gives them to Cailana, asking if they are the right kind of flowers to give a woman. Cailana says yes and that they are quite beautiful. The boy says that they are for her. Cailana thanks him and Raspin tells the boy to go ahead and kiss her. This brings on some blushing and stammering on the boy’s part, as he walks away.
Cailana notices another family with a (thin) girl about the boy’s age giving her a sour look. A smile on her face, Cailana walks over and tries to start up a conversation, but the girl simply calls her a hussy and storms off. The family looks surprised and confused as Faelan and Raspin are laughing and the rest of the room looks shocked.
Cailana explains the family that she believes that their daughter might be enamored with the Gazda boy. In no time, a marriage has been arranged by the two families, a wedding scheduled for the next day and over which the Baroness will preside. Rumble not only offers up one of his finest bottles of wine for the wedding drink, but also will host the wedding…although possibly not completely willingly.
In the morning, we get up and people are coming into the village. The word has gone out about the wedding and the baroness presiding over it. We take turns watching the baroness as she mingles with everyone. Raspin stays close to her, taking up the role of personal bodyguard.
The rest of us are just staying around her, some of us are inside and outside. Faelan hears Rumble grumble about the wedding. Come to find out that the baroness has told Rumble that part of his punishment is to cover the cost of the wedding. Faelan just grins. During the festivities, Faelan hears some people gossiping about a family that didn’t show up, the Kozma’s.
The wedding goes off without a hitch. Again no barge has come thru during the day. The party is going good and it’s a release for some of the people especially after some of the things the village has gone thru. People are laughing, drinking and some come up to Cailana hoping she can set up their son or daughter. The baroness decides to retire and we set guards again for the night.
In the middle of the night, someone starts banging on the door of the inn before rushing inn. A farmer insists on needing to the baroness. Cailana asks about what? The man responds that they are all dead. Cailana asks for more information and the farmer explains that his neighbors, the Kozma’s, are dead. Since they hadn’t shown up for the wedding, he was worried and so he went to check on them. The parents were flattened and crushed and all the children were missing. As he relays this information, he starts panicking.
Cailana tells him to calm down as she goes to wake everyone and bring them downstairs. The farmer retells his story, adding some new details…the barn door was torn off, the livestock is missing, and some of the house roof is gone. He gathered up his family and rushed back here.
The Baroness wants us to go and see if we can find the children. The man is willing to take us to the Kozma farm. When Faelan raises concerns about leaving the Baroness unguarded, she insists that the safety of her people must come first and insists that the group go and do what they can.
We take the baroness to the temple to secure her and we head out to the farm. It takes several hours to get there. [It was one of the most distant outlying farms.]
When we get there we look around and we see the bodies, it looks like something just flattened them. Cailana sees some tracks and they appear to be similar to ogre tracks. There are several sets of these tracks as well as of livestock, all leading west towards the river.
We follow the tracks and they go into the river. Faelan changes into a hawk and flies over and looks for any tracks but he doesn’t see anything. Everyone else swims across and we all look for and sign of the ogres but no luck. We decide to go downriver and hopefully look for any tracks. After several hours, we still haven’t found any tracks. We realize we are heading in the direction of the travel tower and decide to travel there to rest.
We reach the tower and still no sign of tracks. It is the same tower where we were attacked by the ogres on our initial trip to Borsod and by the smaller ogre things on the most recent trip. We are hoping to be attacked by ogres and take one prisoner to question it. We set guards, but nothing happens. In the morning we head back to Borsod.
Arriving, we find the Baroness at the inn. We inform her that we couldn’t track the monsters in the rain and lost the trail. Some of the people sigh and one of the mothers starts to cry out that we should try again.
Raspin is thinking we should try again and that would impress Barta…show Barta that he is a family man.
No barge has shown up yet but it could be due to the weather.
Faelan suggest that we could try and get Trinu to get a potion to find the children. The Baroness has no qualms over paying the price of 500 lords. As the group needs some “bodily effects” of one of the children, they immediately set out for the farm again. The Baroness will go make the necessary arrangements with Trinu.
We have no issues finding some hair and the like of the children at the Kozma farm and return to Borsod. These are given to Trinu and she gets to work. In the morning, the witch arrives with the potion and provides it to the Baroness. The Baroness gives us the potion and we decide that Cailana would be the best to take it. She drinks it and it has a metallic taste but no other obvious effect.
Cailana heads outside and thinks about the children. As she walks, she finds that she is veering to the right. We all gather our gear and head out. Cailana allows herself to be guided by her “veering.” It leads to the bridge crossing the river. On the other side is an old, overgrown road and she is “guided” down this road.
We spend the entire day on the road, the road heads west and then more southwest. As it is starting to get dark, we wonder just how long the potion will last. Wink believes that as long as Cailana stays awake, the potion should remain effective. We decide that we will travel on through the night.
In the morning, we are all tired, but realize that we are traveling in the direction of the abandoned Mélthyen Mines. We believe that is likely our destination and this road likely leads to it so we decide to risk getting some sleep. After traveling another half day, we head off the road and find a hill with something of an overhang to provide cover and shelter.
During Serena’s watch she hears a sound of whooshing, like wings. She then hears a screech, very high pitched. The sound is not loud she sticks her head out of the overhang slowly looking for the sound. As she is looking a shape comes crosses the moon, it looks like a huge moth, some twenty feet in length! Once it crosses the moon, she loses sight it. She hears it three more times during the night. In the morning, she lets us know what she saw.
We head out and we come to the top of a hill. Below, we see a building and farther on a palisade. There is a loud noise coming from the building which is only 100 yards ahead of us. A man is running out of the building in our direction right behind him is a large, misshapen ogre that bursts through part of the building. The ogre swipes at the man but misses. Right behind the ogre are two large rats [as in german shepard large] that run right at the man. One gets his leg and the other goes for his throat.
Cailana takes aim and shoots her arrow at the ogre’s head. He hadn’t yet realized we were there and is surprised when an arrow lances through a large boil on his head. Wink has his two earth elementals burrow into the ground towards the creates as he moves closer, hoping to hit the monster with a spell.
Serena takes aim and shoots, but her arrow bounces off a hardened boil on the thing’s head. Raspin fires his crossbow but misses, drops his crossbow and pulls out his longsword and moves closer. Faelan not expecting this, drops his axe, pulls his crossbow out tries to load it but fumbles and drops the bolt. He throws his crossbow down and reaches for his axe.
One of the rats comes up to Raspin and misses him. Raspin swings hard at the rat and splits it down the middle. A good offense is a good offense!!!
Wink gets into position and cast his rend the veil spell, hitting both the remaining rat and the ogre with it. Both monsters are obliterated, leaving no remains behind. We run to check on the man, but he is dead. We check the building out and it is an old farmhouse with busted furniture and an open door on the other side. We see the palisade, but nobody is on top of it from the door. We drag the man in and the body of the other rat.
We need more information so Faelan turns into a hawk and flies towards the palisade. There are dozens of shacks inside. There are some humans milling about but none of them look armed, also there are some children and he sees one [small] ogre leave a shack and go into another. Faelin flies around the whole palisade and realizes there is no entrance. The walls are at least 15 feet high and no walk way on top.
Faelan flies back to the building and lets everyone know what he saw. The group wants more information and sends Faelan back to observe.
After a couple of hours, nothing really changes. People mill about some but no sign of the ogre thing. Then, from the nearby hills, come four more [full-sized] ogres, heading to the palisade.
Faelan flies back around the building, changes and lets everyone know. We watch as they approach the palisade. Reaching it, one of the ogres reaches up and pulls himself over the palisade and then another does the same. Children are then handed over the palisade to the ogres outside, being set on the ground. The children just wait.
We decide that we need to quietly walk to the ogres while they are split and take them out. Wink sends us elementals forward, underground, as we quietly start heading towards the ogres. One of the children spots us and, tugging on one of the ogre’s pants, points in our direction. The orge turns in our direction.
[And that is, of course, where we stopped for the night.
None of the children that were passed to the outside of the palisade looked fearful of the ogres or concerned about being around them.
A few bits of additional information that weren’t mentioned…
It has been storming and raining pretty hard and consistently for the last couple of days. Yes, I have a calendar with a weather generator for the campaign. 😉
The area around the palisade was cultivated farmland. As it is pretty early spring, there are only sprouts at best.
The man killed by the ogre near the abandoned “farmhouse” was dressed in ragged clothing, looked malnourished, and had dirty and calloused hands.
Some interesting threads in this session include:
- What is the relationship between Mayor Miklós and Graylock? Did the Mayor really hire Graylock to kill the Baroness? Will the Mayor be brought to justice? Perhaps more importantly for Faelan, will the group find and kill Graylock?
- Is there a start of some sort of “romantic intrigue” with the young woman who married the Gazda boy? Will she really believe that Cailana has no interest in her new husband? Will the boy get over his fascination with Cailana’s elven beauty? Will Raspin make matters worse by offering his advice on love and romance? (I think we can rely on the answer to that last question being a yes.)
- What is this palisade all about? Who are these ogres? Are they related to the others that had attacked at the travel tower in prior sessions? Why weren’t the children afraid of them? Are these ogres responsible for the attack at the Kozma farm? And what in the world was that “Mothra” moth that was flying around during the night?
Lots of new things to add to all the other stuff going on already. 😀
Beer Log: Beers shared this session using, as always, our hit, miss, crit, and fumble rating scale.
- Benchmark Brewing Beaten Path: First beer from this brewery…a hoppy pale ale. Not bad…the bitterness was a bit harsher than I prefer but the aroma and other flavors were quite nice. A hit.
- Alesmith My Bloody Valentine: A bit of a tradition at this point in that I try to get this each year around Valentine’s Day. Amber ales aren’t a style I usually seek out…this is a good one. A hit.
- Westbrook Key Lime Pie Gose: Thanks to RJ! It nails the key lime pie. Personally, I prefer their regular gose, but this is tasty. A hit!]
