Session Eleven
After spending several more bone crunching, belly aching days in the company of Ontharr the party was thoroughly done with the physical and gastronomical rigors of life with Ontharr. They were all relieved when Leosin returned with news of the Cult’s movements.
Leosin revealed that the wagons were headed to Beldath and from there they would blend into larger caravans, moving under cover to their final destinations. The Harpers, Leosin’s organization, and The Order of the Gauntlet have arranged passage on a river barge to Beldath from Erlantor, they estimate that the party would have 4-6 days in Beldath before the cultists would arrive and transit to the northern side of the city to join northward caravans.
The river excursion was completely uneventful and the party found themselves at the foot of a several hundred step mist covered stair case to the City of Beldath from the wharf. Their horses were led away to be swayed up and tranported to the far side of the city and arrangements to swap the carriage for a similar one on the north side of the city were made.
Beldath was a damp and misty affair, if life were like this all the time here it would be a miserable existence. A quick round of questions about lodging later they arrived at an inn named the Soggy Anenome. Upon entry they were greeted with an immense 6 foot circular fireplace in the centre of the common room with an equally massive stone and brick cap overhead acting as a chimney, the food and accomodations were good and they sank into sleep before work began the next day.
The next morning they planned to begin seeding their availability for guard work and made contact with Ackyn Selebon, Ontharr and Leosin’s contact in Beldath. He reported that there had been no cultist activity as of yet.
On day 4 Selebon reported that the cultists had made Beldath and that they were transshipping their goods to a caravan due to leave in 2 days time. The party hired out as guards for that caravan and they left Beldath.
On the road for only a few days they noticed a golden stag in the fringes of the forest in the distance, several hunting parties put out and a 500GP bounty was put on the stag. Gianna, being a woodland cleric, thought that this practice was heinous and the party set about to do something about it. They convinced one hunting party that this wasn’t a great idea and then raced ahead of the others due to some great tracking.
They found the golden stag eventually and it gave a cryptic message in Sylvan and dropped a longbow on the ground as it faded away. Soon they noticed a naked elf with antlers growing out of his head. He claimed to be cursed by the father of a woman he dared court and had lived life here amongst a ruin of a castle, any time he ventured outside the ruin he turned in to the golden stag and was chased for his pelt. He felt that there would be mages in Riverward that could reverse the curse
The party hatched a plot to claim that Gianna had communed with the gods and that the stag would be her companion henceforth. This allowed them to guide the stag to Riverward in an effort to reverse the curse.
The next 10 or so days went by without any excitement until the caravan rounded a bend to see a head sticking out of the ground in the middle of the road. Further investigation revealed that, yes, there was a body attached and, yes, the man was still alive. Digging the man out and filling the hole in the road took several hours. Gianna cast cure wounds on the man restoring him to consciousness and the party began to interrogate him. Gianna and Eloen found that he had a tattoo of the Harpers’ logo on his upper arm.
At first he, Carlon Amoffel, claimed to be the victim of a vengeful family, he had broken an oath to marry a woman when he found out that the family was a family of bandits and highwaymen. Smelling a rat Zoltan cast Detect Thoughts on him and gleaned that this was in fact a lie. Through use of questioning and the Detect Thoughts spell they winkled out that he was in fact a Harpers agent and that he was on the trail of the cultists who had caught him passing information and then had told a group of bandits who waylaid him but were not ready to kill him outright so they decided that the fates would decide if he lived or died. He joined the caravan as a guest of the party and stayed in the carriage to nurse his wounds
The next week was uneventful and the session ended as the caravan pulled into the first of the towns along its route, Cornath.
Session Twelve
After departing Cornath to continue north, a couple of wagons left the caravan and a couple added to the caravan along with a few hangers on, one of the cultist wagons smashed a wheel and the party wandered over to “help” them.
While helping Gren tried to steal some of the loot and Zoltan taunted the guards into attacking him. The fight broke up quickly and Gren and Zoltan were ushered away from the scene. Almost immediately two seemingly lost and bedraggled figures hove into sight.
The two were sisters Arietta and Zelina Innevar, they were very good looking under the grime of travel, almost too good looking to be true. They claimed to be worried about ambushes by bandits and to be extremely grateful to be able to hitch a ride with the caravan northward. Gianna didn’t buy it however, she got the feeling that these two were absolutely not worried about bandits. Zoltan offered to read one of the girls their fortune, under the guise of reading her palm cast detect thoughts on her, all he got from the spell was an overriding sense of hunger, pressing deeper he got a vision of a pair of hands pulling raw flesh from a corpse and bringing it up to a mouth to devour. Arietta pulled back out of the fortune telling pose with a smile and a glance.
The party started careful watches and Gianna saw through Samy the girls wander the entire length of the caravan and get spooked and wander back to their bedrolls. Later that evening whilst on watch Zelina approached Zoltan for a fortune reading, claiming to know of a place nearby where they could relax and perhaps swim. Zoltan, having seen a vision from her sister, refused cold and Zelina retreated back to her bed. The next day passed without any excitement.
The next evening Gianna saw and heard some rustling in the caravan and saw that there was an empty bed in one of the campsites. As she went to sound an alarm a halfling teamster came out of the bushes claiming that she had had to “do some business” and was going straight back to bed.
The next day Eloen noticed the wagon that the teamster was driving was behaving erratically, the party questioned the guards and others in the campsite after the caravan stopped for the evening. The other members of that wagon’s party claimed that the teamster had been drinking the night before and was hung over for the bulk of the day’s drive.
Arietta was nowhere to be seen that day either and the very frail excuse that Zelina offered up was that since they were moving so far from home that it would be months or years before they were back this was that Arietta was visiting a friend on a farm not far from here and would catch the caravan up by night fall.
That evening Gren approached Zelina with a bit of coarse humour implying that Zoltan would be waiting for her on his watch and that they could “do the business” then. During his watch, Tyjit Skesh, A female dwarven guard came to the fire and talked about her misgivings about the sisters and the halfling teamster that was supposedly drunk the night before. Gren let slip that he was expecting one of the sisters to visit their camp shortly and that they could question her then.
In short order Zelina made her appearance and went immediately to Zoltan. Instantaneously Zelina and Tyjit attacked Zoltan and Gren, grievously wounding them in the process. The remainder of the camp began to wake up as the human and dwarf sounded the alarm.
In a quick battle the two sisters were vanquished, Eloen slicing one nearly in half and Zoltan mind spiking the second exploding her head in a violent display of bone and viscera. Unfortunately as Gianna was using Samy as an aide to her fighting, during her retreat Zelina attacked and poofed the owl into the fey plane as she tried to make her escape. Upon death the two reverted to their real form revealing them as doppelgangers who had killed the halfling and Tyjit and had taken their places in an attempt to throw suspicion off of them.
Over the next day it became obvious that one of the cultists had recognised Gianna and that he was beginning to talk to his friends about perhaps doing away with her in the near future. Zoltan cast suggestion upon him and gave him the suggestion that he had been mistaken and needed to find a place to think about what had happened. Gren executed the cultist whilst he was away from the caravan. The loss was mourned although there were some suspicions they died down both for lack of proof and the fact that things in the woods could kill you after all that’s why the caravans existed in the first place.
The next day the caravan stopped as a massive fungal growth cut off the road and when the fruiting bodies were touched they let off moans and screams as of humans being tortured or in great amounts of pain along with puffs of black spores.
Gianna examined them and claimed that she knew these from home and that while she hadn’t seen this size of growth of them before, that they were harmless aside from the sound.
None of the rest of the caravan denizens really believed her and so it was left to the party to deal with the growth however they could. Ironically it was Gianna who couldn’t take the sounds and the spores and who had to quit clearing the road, having nightmares for nights after cleaning the road up. Apparently in enough quantities the spores were a slight hallucinogen which took a while to leave the body.
Session Thirteen
Several days later the caravan rolled up to a cart whose draft animals had been slaughtered and whose occupants had created a makeshift barricade of crates and other bits of freight. There were a band of hobgoblins in the woods likely waiting for dark to storm the position as the defenders had crossbows and were gamely plinking at the attackers.
The party rushed forward and Gianna cast spike growth while Eloen advanced whilst shooting her bow at the nearest enemy. Gren ran forward and lobbed a smoke grenade between the hobgoblins and the trapped wagoneers effectively ending the fighting between the parties.
Unfortunately the hobgoblins advanced quickly and overwhelmed Gren quickly. An enlarged (thanks to Zoltan) Eloen had advanced by this time and lopped one of the aggessors in half with her glaive which had the effect of getting the remaining attacker to focus on her instead of finishing off Gren who by now had been healed back to consciousness by Samy.
Meanwhile the Hobgoblin Captain pushed through the spike growth at great cost to himself and took two ineffective swipes at Gianna. the defenders managed to pincushion one of the other hobgoblins before two others flanked them and shot them in turn.
Gren, using the distraction from Eloen, stabbed to death one of the hobgoblins that had nearly killed him and then ran around to flank the Captain. Zoltan used a mind spike to explode the head of the last hobgoblin that was a threat to the party and they quickly mopped up the last two, badly injured, hobgoblins.
The wagoneer was grateful for the help and offered a few weapons as reward after much persuasion from Zoltan, claiming he had no extra funds as he needed to purchase new draft animals for his wagon, a legitimate reason.
A week went by and the caravan pulled into Dawnholde where a couple of wagons left the caravan and a couple of new ones joined. Amongst the new people who joined were a Gnome, Jamna Gleamsilver, who hired on as a guard for one of the new wagons and Azbara Jos, a reclusive human who immediately went to the cultist wagons and only interacted with them.
Jos, it turns out was a Thayan wizard and seemed to be coordinating with the cultist leader on what would happen when the convoy reached Riverward and Gleamsilver turned out to be working for another group worried about the dragon cult and an uneasy truce was formed after Jamna informed the party of a deadly trap found in one of their bowls of gruel.
A couple of days before the convoy reached Riverward one of the cultist guards was murdered in the middle of the night, accusations were levelled against Gianna but strangely Azbara Jos was one of the most moderating influences, calming the cultists and claiming that there was no proof.
Once the convoy made Riverward and broke up the cultist wagons moved quickly through the city to the northern gates and a warehouse nearby, they were getting ready to move out early the next day with another caravan. The party and Jamna hired on to the caravan as guards again, considering their glowing work on the previous journey, much to the cultists disgust an this time around the cultists didn’t just keep to themselves but eyed the party with unveiled hatred.
This was a work caravan bringing materials and people to continue re-construction of the north road around the Mere of Dead Men to Wintermoor and it was venturing well into to wilds away from any patrols or civilisation. This journey could be arduous.
Four days into the trek, as the caravan was making camp for the evening’s rest, several noises were heard on either side of the campsite and near to the party a troll crashed through the woods and into their campground, no doubt attracted by the noise, light and smell of prey.
Having a small preparation time Gren laid out a trap and the rest of the party got ready to fight the troll. Zoltan yelled out that only fire and acid could kill the troll. Keeping that in mind Gren threw two alchemist’s fire vials at the troll, missing both times, he began cursing. Eloen sunk a longbow arrow into the troll only to watch in horror as in a matter of moments the arrow was expelled from the troll’s body and the wound sealed as if it had never happened.
The troll pushed through Gren’s trap without setting it off attacking Eloen to little effect. Gianna blessed the party during the melee, Eloen managed to do some damage while Gren snuck behind the beast smashing a vial of acid against the troll where the neck and shoulder meet and a gruesome display of acid, blood and flesh melted away in rivulets down the beast’s torso. Seeing her opportunity Jamna hit the troll in the back with her swords nearly finishing the beast off. Zoltan cast a spell and a loud hollow bell tone sounded and the troll quivered and fell over as the acid continued to work through the troll’s chest, destroying its heart.
Session Fourteen
The Cultists still stared at the party with naked hatred and eavesdropping on them revealled that they would get revenge as soon as their burden of treasure was lifted.
The drudgery of caravan life was punctuated with several fights against human, orc and ogre bandits. Jamna was especially targeted and was knocked unconscious once.
There were some moments of levity as the group was attacked by a gaggle of giant frogs and Gianna’s ability to charm animals came to the fore again. 7 of 8 of the beasts were taken in by the charm and they killed the only one that proceeded to attack the caravan. It was quickly discovered that the frogs were hungry and the party fed them rations and the frogs departed.
At the end of 10 days hard travel, three of the caravan guards lay dead from the near daily attacks but the roadhouse finally hove to view.
Carts were quickly offloaded any of the supplies that couldn’t stand being out in the cold and often rainy conditions were put into a latched but unlocked warehouse. Any of the supplies that were extremely valuable were put into an inner, locked, room. Careful observation allowed the party to see that the cultists’ stolen valuables were also brought to this inner store room.
After the wagons and carts were off loaded the members of the caravan were ushered upstairs to the kitchen to get a hearty, warm, meal. Much nicer than what the caravan offered on the road this meal warmed heart and body. The dynamics of the road persisted in the cramped area, cultists keeping to themselves, labourers doing likewise and the caravan guards keeping to a smaller third grouping.
Once the meal was eaten and ale drunk Gristle Pete, the cook, ushered the road weary groups out complaining that if he didn’t get to sleep soon that he’d get no sleep as the rats downstairs would soon be at the fresh provisions keeping him awake all night. On the way out Zoltan cast locate object on some of the loot that they had seen previously and it was in the strong room as expected.
Bog Luck, a half-orc, the roadhouse superintendent seemed to be chummy with everyone, including the cultists and a close look revealed him to have a dragon motif on his sword scabbard. Normally this would not be of particular note as dragon motifs are not exactly a rare thing, however, this exact motif was a replica of one that the party had previously seen in the dragon temple deep in the caves where the cult camp and dragon eggs had been. He seemed to have the only keys to the store house locks which he kept on his belt at all times whenever he was in public.
That evening as the party took their assigned rooms they set up watches using Samy and Madame Zita as sentinels outside the warehouse area to observe anyone going into or out of the doors. They saw no one going in or out of the area however they heard a lot of scraping noises coming from the strong room area.
In the morning Zoltan cast locate object on the same treasure piece as the previous evening only to come up with nothing, somehow the treasure had disappeared in the night despite the sentinels. He re-cast the spell on a different trinket and it appeared to be located in another of the guest rooms in the roadhouse, there was no indication that the particular piece had ever been in the strongroom or if it had been pilfered beforehand.
Session Fifteen
The next morning at breakfast a huge cultist woman challenged Eloen to one on one combat to atone for a death early in the campaign. It turned out that Eloen was rather uninterested in the grudge match and after much ballyhoo and dirty words she refused to fight although it meant being branded a coward by the populace of the roadhouse.
Zoltan used the confusion and aftermath of the failed fight attempt to try to get the guard away from the strongroom and the rest of the party filtered in after a while, leaving Jamna out of the picture. Gren picked the rather simple lock to the room and they gained entrance. At first they spotted nothing out of the ordinary but on closer inspection Gren stumbled over a crate that had a hinge on it so that it felt solid from 3 directions but moved in the fourth direction, this revealed a long tunnel under the roadhouse that lead into a dense copse of trees in the mere.
There was a marked trail that the party followed for the balance of the day only being interrupted once by some will-o-wisps which posed little trouble. At the end of the day they came upon a dry spot where they found a camp with some dugout canoes.
The camp was abandoned for the moment but they felt that this was a temporary situation so they made their camp a little ways off to wait for anyone coming. Their suspicions were correct and just after dusk 9 lizardfolk in an additional 3 canoes came up to the camp and made to follow the trail to the roadhouse, probably to pick up some or all of the remaining treasure from the Green Sea raids.
Zoltan took the image of a cultist and engaged with the lizardfolk to gain information. After a couple of missteps the lizardfolk leader called for an attack, only one of the lizardfolk got an attack off before Zoltan cast Suggestion and had the leader call off the attack as a mistake. The leader told one of his men(?) to guide the party to Castle Naerytar.
The next day Snapjaw, their lizardfolk guide, led them to the Castle, as Zoltan could speak Draconic and Snapjaw knew a few words of common there was a lot of conversation in the canoes. It was revealed that the lizardfolk are chafing at the conditions at the Castle and a large minority of them would probably rise up against the cult and the bullywugs if there were any signs or omens that suggested the winds of change were blowing.
The lizardfolk, it turned out, are being paid in steel and iron weapons (things that they usually cannot make themselves) and “magic” fetishes and trinkets. The lizardfolk are unaware of what happens to the treasure after it arrives at the castle, all they know is that they don’t see it again.
Snapjaw led the party without incident through the lizardfolk and bullywug pickets and guards to some visitors quarters. It appears he was unaware that Azbara Jos is already staying in this room. On inspection the party found and succeeded in opening (without setting off a magical trap) an ornate locked box that contained a spellbook. Zoltan took immediate possession of this.
Sessions Six through Ten
Sessions Sixteen through Twenty
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