In our prior session, we suffered the first PC death of this campaign…Morgan the Fighter went down fighting against scrablings in Goblin Gully. The party felt that they had explored as much of Goblin Gully as they were willing. They did not feel they were equipped for or up to exploring a deep shaft, especially since it was deeper than their torchlight extended AND Aja had been quite persistent that they did not want to enter the Underworld via a Midnight Elf compound. So the party headed out to make their way to follow the brigand tracks that they had found previously.
Jen, who had been playing Morgan, rolled up a new character and we ended the session with Ellery spotting two brigands dragging a body between them. The body had an amulet around her neck which looked much like a holy symbol. We ended with everyone–myself included–assuming that this would be Jen’s new character.
However, Jen was not able to make this next session and so time to pivot to the body being someone else rather than introducing her new character while she was absent. Everyone else was in attendance and played their own characters.
Parts of this session use a somewhat modified version of the adventure, The Shattered Fist Monastery, from Delver #1 by James Floyd Kelly. There may be spoilers below the break.
- Ellery returns to Aja and Norfek to tell them what she has found. The ranger heads off again with the pair following behind at a short(ish) distance. One brigand is dropped by Ellery’s first attack. The other dives for cover and prepares his crossbow. Norfek catches up and he and Ellery are able to defeat the second brigand with only minor wounds to themselves.
- The woman that the brigands had been dragging was dead with no obvious wounds. She was wearing a red dress and the symbol hanging from her neck was for one of the Princes of Chaos, Ximobarg (apologies to Mr. Moorcock). Eventually, the party elects to remove the dress from the body to search for signs of what might have killed her (Aja eagerly claimed the dress and shoes…both items look like they would fit here well enough). Covering the front of the woman’s was charred flesh in the shape of the Chaos Star, a generic symbol for the Princes of Chaos. It looked like she had been branded (and the branding instrument had been left a little too long) with the symbol. Norfek removed the amulet with the symbol (with a stick) and buried it a short distance from this trail. The bodies were also dragged a short distance off the trail.
- The party then continued on the path. It ended at a site of ruins, blackened and blasted as if by lightning but long ago. The trail lead to a makeshift blind of branches on the ground which concealed as crude trapdoor. Ellery believes that these are the ruins of Valvur Abbey. Opening the trapdoor, the party found stairs leading down to a to a small chamber with tracks leading to a door to each side of the room. Debris is gathered in the four corners of the room and a broom–a suspicious looking one to Norfek–was leaning against one wall.
- Through the north door was another hallway. Debris was piled up across the passageway a short distance away. As Norfek, taking the lead, steps over this debris, he steps upon a tripwire. There is no obvious effect and a nearby rock is placed on the tripwire to prevent it from rising back up. Norfek finds another door and hears, “Shhhh,” from behind it and then opens it. Four brigands are inside. They had doused their lights and had hoped to surprise the interlopers (aka the party), but things did not go the way the brigands had hoped. Although both Ellery and Norfek are hurt during the fight, the party prevailed. After defeating all four brigands, the party takes a good look around. There’s another door as well as some tables and chairs. The tables have some crates and other items upon them, including, if you based it on the reactions of some players, a lamp with invaluable oil within it.
- Outside of some weapons and the like on the brigands, there are three items of interest in the crates/on the tables. A pouch holds a potion labeled as a potion of healing (normally, it would be a pouch of some random gems, but I gave the choice of a potion of healing instead…would the gems have been of more monetary value…we’ll never know). Norfek drinks this quickly. Another crate held a smallish box with a wand inside. It is made of what looks to be burned wood with a cluster of red crystals (quartz-like) at its tip.
- The final item found was sitting on one of the tables and positioned as if someone had slid it all the way to the back of the table. It is a small idol, about a foot tall of an androgynous dancer with their legs and feet wreathed in flames. The figure has no actually head. Instead, where the head would be, is a small globe of glass filled with what appears to be a smoky liquid or gas of some sort. With the exception of this globe, the entire idol appears to be made of human flesh and is slightly warm to the touch. Aja experimented with the idol a bit. When shook, the globe responded much like a snow globe but with small miniaturized human eyes in place of the snow. Eventually, Aja was able to activate the item and one of these eyes “popped” out of the globe, grew to the size of a small grape and Aja could see through this eye as opposed to her own. (All of this was randomly determined on the spot. The adventure has a random table for the treasure found in her, including a gold idol. I expanded on that with the random tables from this Random Idol Generator and then decided it was magical and determined it based on the treasure tables in Shadowdark. Mostly full details are at the end of this post.
- Gathering up this treasure, the party headed back out…too much damage was taken by Ellery and Norfek to keep pushing their luck to further explore the compound beneath the ruins. With Ellery hiding their tracks, the party head out a short distance from the ruins…close enough to keep an eye on the trapdoor. A bit later that day, six brigands come out. They look around for tracks and, finding none, they head down the established trail. The party goes deeper into the woods to camp to rest and recover. The night passes uneventfully.
- In the morning, the party return to hide near the ruins. Two brigands exit the trapdoor and go to relieve two other brigands who were hiding in the ruins…not yet detected by the party. Ellery is able to sneak around and quickly relieve each of the brigands of their hit points. The party takes up positions in the same locations as these brigands, Ellery in one spot and Aja and Norfek in the other. Aja took a crossbow and some blots from one of the brigands. The group readies themselves to shoot at anyone else who exits through the trapdoor.
And that is where the session ended. If it seems a bit short without much happening, speculation and exploration related to both the dead woman in the red dress and the creepy flesh idol (as the players have labeled it) did take up a good bit of time…not to mention Aja checking to see if each and every bandit is “hot” (aka attractive) and worthy of flirting with. đŸ˜‰
Many elements of this session were not planned ahead of time, randomly determined during play, or was the “situation” responding to the actions of the player characters. There are now a number of pages in my notebook about the creepy flesh idol and the woman in red which answer how they ended up here and what happened. Oh, and the wand too. It is quite possible, of course, that the players will never learn this information. However, this stuff–in response to what happened in the session–is helping to flesh out the world and create one or more new situations that the party might encounter in the future.
Here is my player facing write-up of the Creepy Flesh Idol. It does, of course, have a proper name now, but not one known to the players. And I’m quite sure that there aren’t any curses or anything other powers or properties that aren’t included below. I’m 100% sure (not) that they’ve fully discovered all of the magic related to the idol.
Creepy Flesh Idol
This idol of a dancer of indeterminable sex is approximately a foot tall. The feet and legs of the dancer are sculpted as though they are wreathed in flames (up to mid-thigh). The head is a small crystal globe that is smoky in color. With the exception of the “head,” the entire idol appears to be made of human flesh and is warm to the touch. When shaken, the crystal globe appears to be filled with a swirling, smoky liquid. Dozens of miniature human eyes float and swirl in the liquid…much like a bizarre and macabre snow globe.
Benefit: The idol functions as a wand of arcane eye (pg. 55). On a successful spellcasting check, one of the eyes in the globe pops out, grows to the size of a grape, and functions as the arcane eye for the spell. The user must maintain focus (as though they had cast the spell) for the eye to remain.
Curse: None…why would a creepy flesh idol have any curses at all. I can’t think of any item that would be less likely to be cursed than this warm to the touch, human flesh idol with a snowglobe of human eyes. Can you?
I suppose that if there is a curse that we’ll find out in some later session, but I’m sure it isn’t cursed. Really, I’m sure.
