Session 1 was a brilliant success, despite sadly missing a player due to allergies. As such, the adventure deviated off of the group's main goal (exploration) for a small pre-adventure, investigating the tall tales of Androj the Bellicose (see his drunken display here).
Today's Bold Bravos
Wilhelm Corvus. Scavenger and psionic warrior of the shifting Southland dunes.
Rumplestiltskin. A rare, peaceful summer-folk, with a scholarly obsession with magic (and primeval, witch magic to contrast).
Rhagorthua. A mind-flayer of the Far Realms, come to Sturkhmar for shadowy purposes.
The Tale of Two
Having come to the city for their own reasons, our heroes encountered each other in a white-washed coffee house and soon began to discuss the possibility of a pact of alliance, at each other's backs against the city's dangerous milieu. A quick discussion led to a hasty contract, sealed and signed by all.
Before they could take up Dražan the Twice-Dead's exploratory enterprise, however, Rhagorthua disappeared for his own purposes. The other two, left alone with the hunger for battle and gold, set out of the city on the bartender's rumour of giants in the nearby forest, not before acquiring the services of three hirelings: Two palanquin-bearing Goliaths and one prisoner-of-war from the Summer Country.
No giants were discovered west of the city, amongst the clinging fungus, verdant boughs, and twilit canopy. However, a bush-wacked trail lead south– as if something large had been moving in that direction. Could it be a giant, after so many years of exile in the Summer Country?
The trail took them from the trees to the open moors, sloping gently towards the distant mountains. Mists clung to the violet rocks and pale grasses, with the four moons hanging hazy in the sky above. On the horizon stood a squat tower, like an upended molar wracked with moss and verdant growths. The trail continued towards this ruin. Leaving their slaves to watch the door, the two ascended the stairs and drew their weapons.
In a brazen sally, Corvus entered the tower with a shattering blow to the moist, rotted door. It crumpled inward, and they found the dusty and untouched remains of the guard-tower's first level to be inhabited by twin emaciated corpses in frayed kaftans. Corpses which swung at the heroes upon investigation! This ambush was soon dispatched with the flashes of Corvus's broadsword and the booming, primeval assault of Rumplestiltskin's ancient tradition. After the spar, Rumplestiltskin sensed an inkling of psychic magic, hanging above them on the tower's crest. It was unsure whether this psychic magic affected them.
The second level, however, took our heroes by surprise. Upon shattering yet another rotted door all too loudly, Corvus found himself trapped between the rusted quarrels of three rotted, crumpled crossbowmen. Five of the bolts found home, nearly toppling the bull of a man. Unfazed (or experiencing acute blood-rage), Corvus charged at the crossbowman ahead, slaughtering him with a stolid slash across the collar. Wheeling around, he served as the anvil to Rumplestiltskin's hammer, who sent the final twin crossbowmen flying towards him with an arcane declaration. Bloodied and battered, our heroes had survived a second ambush.
Two further corpses and another level later, our heroes found themselves beneath the battlements (in the penultimate story of the tower). The pyschic aura grew in it's proximity and strength, and our heroes knew it was only just above them. The five shrines to various war-gods were untouched for quite some time, and the staircase to the battlements had been bolted and boarded– from the inside.
With his characteristic disregard for hesitation, Corvus hacked away at the boards that sealed them from the outside. Almost as soon as he broke them, a mangy set of claws– each at least the size of his thumb– raked downwards, almost catching Corvus on the throat. The blue-green sheen of the fur only served to further the mystery of their foe.
Sallying forth, Corvus pushed up the stairs, and found himself face-to-face with a horror. Six legs and a twisting body of undulating muscle, layered with mangy, black-blue fur and topped with an antlered, thousand-toothed head– and a set of brilliant yellow eyes. A drekavak (note: more on this creature in a TBA post). Corvus relayed the foe's nature to Rumplestiltskin, and wanting to let his ally a clean shot, dodged out of the way: but not before the creature's rows of hundreds of tiny teeth could rake his arm, blooming blood. With the bite came a reeling sensation of further, psychic pain, brought about by simple proximity to the beast, even for a fortified mind such as Corvus's.
The battle that ensued was a bitter and bloody one. Chains of lightning and wheeling, fury-driven strikes were not enough to slay the creature before it could unleash it's characteristic, psychic howl. The minds of our heroes burned, and they were close to death. Even as the psychic wounds made his vision blacken, Corvus leapt at the creature and brought it into it's death-throes by plunging his blade into it's breast. Even it's frenzied death-throws could not phase Corvus as he wriggled his blade deeper. The creature was dead, and seemingly enough, the ruined tower already seemed cleaner because of it.
About the place was found a pair of fine items: The first a towering two-handed sword that Corvus could sense would bite all the more harder with each challenge the Tiefling issued. The second floated from a strongbox of it's own accord, a lantern that shone with warm, white witch-light and circled around Rumplestiltskin's head. But it was strange: the weapon-racks and strongboxes had not been seen before, and certainly not these fine pieces of work. Confused but gold-happy, the pair descended the staircase.
To their mixed horror and realisation, the Drekavak's psychic magic had been affecting them. What they saw as corpses and animated cadavers were red-blooded, very-much-living city guardsmen, no doubt sent here to watch the moors for approaching armies. The blood of the guardsmen on their hands, the two began to drag the corpses outside to be burned. To add insult to injury, their slaves had disappeared: Though leaving a slave alone would usually prompt such a reaction, the two reasoned.
We end our session with a pile of burning corpses behind our two heroes, new gold ladening their packs, and the blood of seven city watchmen on their hands. What will become of this?
The Loot:
75 grivna
A fine, silk kaftan
A pair of rabbit-trimmed boots
3 hunks of rhodocrosite, from necklaces
1x +1 Oathblade Greatsword
1x Floating Lantern
Total Worth: 483 grivna
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