The Aneman-Pirran Border Wars - Session 5

Why is it so much easier to write these reports in present tense, rather than past tense? I think it's because I take the notes in present and try to produce the reports in past. Anyway, let's try a different format for the recap this week.

~

The Party:

• David Van Stone, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
• Van Darkholme, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former Aneman city planner.
• Wellston Plumbago, 6th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.

The party continued exploring the tomb. The pool of black, oily water was still entirely ablaze and slowly filling the octagonal chamber with thick smoke, so the trio quickly moved on to deeper areas (after Van suggested shooting more Eldritch Blasts into it and David suggested trying to put the fire out with massive quantities of mayonnaise from his Jug of Alchemy).

The underground complex was discovered to be large and varied. Some highlights of the trio's exploration:

• A room was discovered to be almost entirely filled with clay statues of snake-man warriors. The party left it largely unmolested, save for the discovery of a secret passage underneath a statue of a serpent god. The party did not enter the narrow crawlspace.
• A scroll of an ancient, poison-based variation on what was now a common combat spell was discovered in a sarcophagus. None of the Warlocks could cast it, but they keep it for later sale.
• The party discovered a collapsed tomb chamber, and thumping sounds from beyond the rubble were found to come from a large and furious mutated snake-man skeleton wielding a jagged khopesh. Seeing no treasure, the party resealed the tomb door and decided to leave that guy alone.
• The Warlocks realized that they could just fly everywhere, even inside the tomb, and mounted their brooms more or less permanently.
• A particularly old and crudely-made tomb was found to house a strange ooze full of skeletal snake-man remains and hundreds of mirror-polished bronze rings. The caustic pudding was blasted apart and harvested for alchemical reagents, and David collected the rings for later use or sale.
• The most ornate door in the octagonal chamber opened onto stairs leading to an arena, where an animated stone knight with a cobra-hooded face waited to attack. Unsurprisingly, the stone guardian was almost immediately blasted to pieces.
• Wellston, on the stone knight's rapid defeat: "No wonder this civilization died out."
• Beyond the stone cobra knight's arena, the party discovered what seemed like a broad and bottomless chasm with a narrow, bat-shit covered ledge running along the edge of the pit. Despite being able to permanently fly, they're pretty freaked out by the idea of slipping in the guano and falling into endless darkness.
• Partway along the ledge, they found a sturdily-made stone door with a heavy stone bar set across it--just like the trapped door near the entrance to the tomb. Rather than attempt to disarm or circumvent the trap, the trio hovered twenty feet away and obliterated the door with a barrage of Eldritch Blasts. A large stone hammer swung out toward the chasm as the stone crossbar crumbled away. The party considered the avoidance of this trap a sign of their wisdom and prudence.
• While digging for gold foil in the drain trap of a dry fountain, the party was attacked by a Skeleton Jelly. Well, approached is probably a better word. The blobby, idiot thing was repeatedly battered backwards by their attacks but remained unharmed, and the Warlocks flew out over the chasm to put some distance between themselves and the invulnerable creature. When it didn't hurl itself into the abyss in an attempt to reach them, they knocked it into the chasm themselves.
• Van was particularly alarmed that they didn't hear it hit the bottom.
• The party spotted a dangerous patch of dungeon barnacles covering the chasm-edge walkway further to the east, but opt to leave them alone.
• Van found some incredibly lifelike snake-man statues and concluded that some element of petrification might be lurking nearby. He then, unreleatedly, proceeded to mess with a statue that (first) dumped a bunch of gold out of a recess in the base and (second) puffed out caustic powder all over the party.
• The party found some magical stone eggs that have been spattered with old blood, but stuffed them into Van's bag of holding without identifying them, as David's miniature manticore familiar heard something scuttling in the tunnels behind them. When David chased after the noise, he saw beady, red eyes glowing in the dark. Whatever it is, it retreated into the southern tunnels.
• Van really wanted to keep exploring the area with the eggs, rather than chase down weird critters in the dark. He's very sad.
• The party headed south anyway and found a filthy room suffused with a continuous hissing noise and a nasty, eggy smell. They're grossed out and don't enter. They were so grossed out, in fact, that they slammed the stone door hard with a Thaumaturgy spell and David spent ten minutes spiking it semi-permanently closed.
• While he waited for David to finish sealing the door, Wellston spotted almost a dozen pairs of beady red eyes lurking at the edge of his darkvision and making noises like a small dog choking to death. He immediately cast Hunger of Hadar on the pack of critters. Van and David heard the noise and rushed to rejoin Wellston. Whatever was in the Hunger was obliterated...
• ...but Van spotted the serpentine form of a six-legged basilisk in an untarnished bronze helmet watching them from a large room to the west. Van warned the party of the creature's presence, and David immediately turned and blasted it.
• In the ensuing combat, Van surrounded himself with magical darkness, causing Wellston to be restricted to blindly firing into the chaos of combat. The creature nearly bit David in half before also nearly turning him into solid stone while casually slapping Wellston across the room with a flick of its tail. Van dismissed his magical darkness, allowing all three Warlocks to bring their power to bear on the creature, killing it.
• Van made a mighty--but entirely fruitless--attempt to harvest useful alchemical reagents from the basilisk's corpse. In the process of butchering the thing, Van discovered a similarly-untarnished bronze key wedged between the creature's helmet and neck. He pocketed it.
• While resting after the fight with the basilisk, a skeleton jelly appeared. The ensuing flurry of blasts battered it into a previously-unseen swinging blade trap, and the skeleton jelly was bounced back and forth like a pinball for several seconds before the entire trap mechanism collapsed out of the ceiling, burying it under a pile of rubble save for a single foot.
• The Warlocks took the opportunity to test out the creature's invulnerability, and found it to be proof against any kind of attack they could muster. They literally mummified the thing in all the rope they had, cleared a path through the rubble, and returned to Ironfork with their hired help.

Once back in town, the trio dumped the squirming Skeleton Jelly ropemummy in a horse trough to freeze solid overnight, gave their samples of black pudding to Eva for use in exotic alchemical concoctions, and made a request for something that could put out the massive, permanent fire they started in the octagonal chamber near the entrance to the dungeon.

Next time: Back into the tomb for further exploration, and perhaps the presentation of a solid block of ice-skeleton-jelly-ropemummy to the Archpriest?

The Aneman-Pirran Border Wars - Session 4

The Party:

• David Van Stone, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
• Van Darkholme, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former Aneman city planner.
• Wellston Plumbago, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.

The party and the Archpriest found it easy to lose themselves in the shouting crowd when their smoldering train pulled into the station. Even before the cars had stopped moving, shouting passengers wrenched the doors open and flooded onto the platform. Some sprinted off into town, while a few captured the attention of alarmed guards and station agents. In the chaos, Wellston, David, and Van were unopposed as they passed through the hubbub and onto their connecting train.

As they pulled away, Van remarked that whomever had sent the assassins after the Archpriest had been willing to kill a surprisingly large number of civilians to achieve their goal.

In the week of steady rail travel that followed, no other attackers found the four, leaving more than enough time to examine the items retrieved from Barnabus--a suit of ring mail made from leather and magically hardened rings of glass, and an iron wand capable of hurling invisible razors. The four travelers arrived in Libussa without further incident.

The party was on edge--either they were to receive all of the rewards the Archpriest had promised over the recent weeks, or they were about to be swarmed by a mass of Pirran soldiers. The Archpriest stepped out of the train car, bereft of any disguise, and was immediately recognized by a pair of Black Endoguard--but Thomasz remained true to his word, and a brief command in flowing Temenite held their attention.

One Endoguard called to another, who called to another, and a mass of black armor and shifting bodies surrounded the Archpriest and the Warlocks like a human wall. The bow wave of black armor swept out of the station and through the streets of the holy quarter. The crowd parted in fear and surprise before the Archpriest's marching retinue, and the within minutes the party was escorted into the heart of the castle of St. Logan. Thomasz addressed the staff of the castle with aplomb, and the party watched as the entire mechanism of the Iadesian church lurched into motion as if the Archpriest's presence were a master cog slotted neatly back into a waiting mechanism.

~

A few hours later, the party found themselves bathed, fed, and alone with the Archpriest again in his private study--no more than a few score feet away from where Van had first plucked Thomasz from his private chapel. Thomasz made good on his promises, signing the documents assigning the trio their wealth, land, and titles in the name of the Church of Iades. In addition to 50,000 gold pieces each held in a Bharakat Holdings account, the trio found themselves homeowners and sinecures:

• Wellston received a townhouse built over a Libussan bridge, as well as responsibility over certain shipping tolls and a steward to manage his affairs.
• David received a manor on the outskirts of Libussa, an extensive greenhouse famous for producing heirloom fruits and orchids, as well as gardeners trained in the day-to-day care of the flora.
• Van received ownership of a comfortable gatehouse built into one of the old Libussan city walls. The city walls had long-since expanded beyond the radius of the gatehouse, but the building had been transformed into a barracks for a tax-supported city guard. Rather than resting solely on Van's shoulders, the management of the gatehouse barracks and guard was to be overseen by a career Captain and his support staff who would report to Van.

Remembering the notes he took shortly after their discussion with Isaac Bacterian, David handed over his diagram of the secret military tunnels beneath Salera to Thomasz. The Archpriest made a careful copy of the directions before returning David's scrawled notes.

The Archpriest was quite serious about putting his three erstwhile kidnappers to good use. Pirra had been established on ancient lands, and the tombs of forgotten nations were scattered throughout the hills and mountains. With the armies of Pirra and Anem locked in a standstill along the border, the Libussan government, academy, and Iadesian church all kept an ear open for rumors of magical artifacts that might tilt the balance of the war in their favor. Prior to the Archpriest's surprise vacation, the Church's efforts had been desultory at best--but, as Thomasz exclaimed to his newly-minted Prefects, he would not waste the opportunity before them.

Two days later, the party found themselves aboard a private train headed northwest to Seeseeden and the Archpriest's "winter chalet"--the impenetrable mountain fortress stacked on the side of Mt. Gaspar that Isaac Bacterian had first described to them. The entirety of the Black Endoguard rode with the Church's upper hierarchy, along with a trio of Pirran porters, two chatty scouts, and Eva Benedict, a diminutive half-elven Libussan alchemist kept on retainer at the party's request. As they parted ways, the Archpriest shook each Warlock's hand warmly, and reminded them of their first Prefectural mission--discover the fate of the Church Militant scout sent to investigate the nearby tomb, and plumb the depths of whatever they found in search of anything that might help turn the tide of the border war. The trio hefted their bags, tightened their winter coats, and marched off into the snow and wind.

~

Ironfork was a small mountain town three days' travel northeast from Seeseeden. The roads leading to the alpine herding village were snowy and treacherous but not yet impassable, and all nine travelers were happy to duck under a low wooden lintel and into the warmth of the rough-hewn tavern at the heart of Ironfork. While the porters, scouts, and shivering alchemist devoured bowls of warm stew, the three Warlocks asked the tavern owner about the rumors of local disappearances that had first attracted the attention of the Church, and were a potential explanation for the disappearance of the Church Militant scout.

The trio opted to frame this query within the fiction that they were Libussan academy birdwatchers on the trail of rare and dangerous quarry. The tavern owner was nonplussed, but answered their questions with a motivation born from the flowing coins of nine indefinite-stay guests (and their mounts) appearing out of nowhere during low season.

People had been occasionally vanishing if they spent the night in the alpine near a certain gorge. At first, people had attributed the disappearances to hungry wolves--a common threat, especially before and during the winter months--but the most recent event had turned minds toward darker theories. A traveling minstrel had recently made a drunken boast that he would explore the gorge on his own, but the only sign of him was the return of his horse several days later, exhausted and covered in strange bites all over its legs and hindquarters. The animal had been taken in and left to recover in the tavern's stables until either the minstrel returned to claim it or it healed enough to be put to work or sold.

The trio did not lessen the tavern keeper's confusion when they asked if the horse was available for questioning. It was, and the tavern keeper shook his head in wonderment as the three Warlocks dutifully trooped off toward the barn.

Wellston enacted a short ritual that would allow him to speak with the horse, and it offered several useful insights between bites of a fresh apple. The minstrel had lead the horse toward the gorge just as the tavern owner had described. The two had been caught in the alpine after dark and without good light, and when the minstrel had stopped to relieve himself, horse and rider were set upon by tiny, pale figures--"It was like a whole herd of baby people tried to eat my ass," to quote the horse.

David noticed that in addition to toddler-sized bite marks, the horse also bore wounds from what looked like a handful of stabs with a three-tined dinner fork.

Left with more questions than answers, the party turned in for the evening, ready to gather their retainers and head for the gorge at dawn.

In the morning, Eva handed them a small parcel of alchemical concoctions that the trio had requested the night before. She also gave them a fearful warning about the potential for triggering an avalanche if they misused the brick of fireclay she had prepared. Thanking Eva and leaving her in the warmth of the tavern, the three warlocks departed along with their trio of laborers and pair of scouts for the gorge. The plan was to find the tomb sought by the church and set up a defensible camp nearby before beginning to explore it.

A few hours later, the party lingered warily at a cleft in the canyon wall. Rusted fragments of a traveler's iron cook pot poked out of the shallow snow covering an old fire pit beside the ragged hole in the stone, and sunlight reflecting off the bright blanket of snowfall revealed a dun-colored skeleton in faded clothing lying a few dozen feet beyond the entrance. Below the most recent layer of snow, David found bootprints leading directly into the cleft.

Leaving their porters and scouts behind with instructions to return to town if they didn't emerge within a day, the trio entered what they could only assume was the tomb they had been seeking.

~

The tunnel was sparse, but obviously formed with intent. Side rooms held shabby wooden coffins on stone biers, and within the coffins were ancient clay statues of snake-headed warriors and scholars lying in repose. The walls were covered in sloppy, crumbling paintings of abstract geometric shapes and ubiquitous snake motifs--designs that none of the Warlocks recognized.

The skeleton, on closer examination, was browned by rot, its bones deeply pitted and corroded. Its clothes were bleached of all color--but clearly made in the style of a Church Militant scout. Wellston opined on the threat of "animating oozes" that squeezed off your skin and wore it among civilized people, and the party filed that thought away for future nightmares. A broken clay statue was discovered in the room nearest the scout's remains; it contained little more than a few serpentine bones, a small golden amulet, and a sharp, acrid stink.

The party opted to disturb nothing and approached the broad stone door at the end of the tunnel, which was barred by a heavy stone crossbeam resting on ancient iron pegs. Shifting the stone block required the effort of all three explorers--and all three were caught under the weight of the block when a portion of the ceiling swung down toward them like a huge stone hammer!

Wellston barked an arcane syllable and vanished in an oily cloud, reappearing further down the tunnel. Van and David weren't as quick to react, and the stone weight slammed into both of them. The two half-elves were smashed to the sides of the tunnel, and the hammer pounded loudly against the stone door, which gave way under the heavy blow. Harshly battered but alive, the three gathered themselves and advanced before the hammer mechanism finished resetting itself. They left the treacherous stone block where it lay.

A larger chamber loomed beyond the stone door. The walls of the room beyond were daubed with serpentine designs and forms. Gravel crunching under their feet, the three observed the centerpiece of the room--a massive lacquered wooden coffin on a raised stone platform, flanked by two of the lesser coffins they had already seen. Cautious as ever, Wellston searched for magic in the room and found lingering necromancy within the coffins. They debated setting the entire mess on fire as a preemptive tactic, but Wellston demurred.

Wellston: "While I do appreciate the idea of an ambulatory man-candle, it's only on an aesthetic level."

Van moved to open the central coffin. His efforts were assisted from within as three skeletons rose to face them! Dull red light leaked from their eye sockets, and the forms groaned and clattered as their movements stretched ancient wrappings and shook mantles of corroded bronze jewellery. Their jaws gaped at the trio, showing long fangs growing from humanoid skulls.

The warlocks made brief work of the ancient undead; a flurry of eldritch power blasted apart one, and the others were shattered by frigid retributive power when they laid their claws on Van's magically warded body. The trio examined the teeth of their foes. Finding them entirely unlike the wounds on the minstrel's horse, they concurred--"These are not the ass-eating skeletons we seek."

Across the chamber from the trio of (blasted, ruined) coffins loomed a grotesque statue. Part human, part snake, the stone idol alternatively beckoned and threatened with eight muscular arms. Its hooded head was lit by flaming jewels inserted into its eye sockets. The trio contemplated removing them, but held off from abject tomb robbery after discovering that the aura of flame surrounding each eye-jewel was quite real and quite hot--and they had nowhere obvious to store a perpetually burning gemstone. A note was made, and the party proceeded down a manhole-sized erosion in the floor that Van discovered behind the ominous statue.

Below the shabby burial chamber, a finely-cut stone tunnel extended into darkness. The tunnel was flanked on both sides by massive stone snake-god idols in the style of the first they had seen, albeit bereft of flaming eyes. Beyond the gallery, a murky pool of anise-scented water waited in the center of an octagonal room flanked by a heavy door on all but one wall.

The trio suddenly remembered that they still carried their magical flying brooms. After so many consecutive weeks of travel by train, each was eager to remount the devices, even within the confines of the chilly, alien tomb. They advanced as one into the chamber under the looming, graven eyes of snake gods. As they hovered over the noisome waters, David noticed movement--two wakes pulsing through the water directly toward Van!

The trio ascended as far over the pool as they could get. They debated how whatever was moving within the pool might respond to conversation. Van ended the debate:

Van: "Whatever's in the pool of water will respond to being shelled."

The chamber--perhaps for the first time in centuries, if not millennia--echoed with a weird roar as the three warlocks spent the next five minutes circling above the pool and blasting it with eldritch force. The water was churned to a froth, and the smell of anise and oil boiled up even to the ceiling's height.

The warlocks paused, surveying their work. Two dismembered, shredded arms floated to the top of the pool, barely identifiable for the pounding they had received.

The warlocks glanced warily at each other, then wordlessly repeated their onslaught of indiscriminate violence for several more minutes before dumping an entire flask of alchemist's fire over the surface of the black pool, setting it ablaze.

The Aneman-Pirran Border Wars - Session 3

The Party:

• David Van Stone, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Celestial Patron) - Former Aneman army officer.
• Van Darkholme, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Sentinel Patron) - Vigilante crime fighter and former Aneman city planner.
• Wellston Plumbago, 5th level Half-elf Warlock (Great Old One Patron) - Rake, roustabout, and the world's only known Drow ambassador.

The plan, then, was to get the Archpriest back to Libussa as fast as possible. All three kidnappers were concerned that their absence would be noticed by Isaac Bacterian (despite their conclusion that he had expected them to fail), and so they plotted a northern course, swapping between broom flight and passenger trains.

A small amount of cold-weather travel preparation was all that was required before leaving, although Wellston found it necessary to passionately kiss the sputtering Captain Hans as a precursor to their departure.

The flight over the border was brief and uneventful. The three warlocks and the Archpriest passed over a border skirmish, but opted not to stop--they couldn’t tell which side was Aneman and which was Pirran, and nobody wanted to catch a stray bullet. After landing, the Archpriest was fitted with a false nose and nondescript, dirty clothing to better blend in with the other travelers. The trio debated arming Thomasz, but concluded that it was a poor idea.

David: "Should we give the Archpriest a weapon in case something bad happens?" 

Wellston: "What, so he can kill himself?"

As the train passed along the inland sea coast between Horrisch and Rencher, the Archpriest described in greater detail the rewards that would await them if they safely escorted him back to Libussa--they would take on the station of “Prefects to the Archpriest”, outranking everyone but the Archpriest, his Cardinals, and any Church Militant cleric in matters of Pirran and Church security. Furthermore, they would each receive Church lands as their personal domain or manor, and an account drawn from Iadesian funds totaling 50,000 gold pieces.

The three warlocks found this acceptable, but dreams of wealthy retirement were interrupted when a large group of Church Militant soldiers boarded the train at a small coastal town. The Archpriest’s earlier warnings about the machinations of traitorous Cardinals came to mind, and the party debated what to do as the soldiers moved through the train cars, inspecting passengers in each carriage as they advanced. No clear decision was reached before the sliding door of their compartment was wrenched open and a look of recognition passed across the faces of the soldiers.

The trio was asked their names. All three lied unsuccessfully. The Archpriest was addressed by name, but Thomasz wasn’t put at ease by the presence of the soldiers. Requesting a moment to pray for his mysteriously identifiable kidnappers, Thomasz joined hands with all of them, locking his hand firmly around the soldier’s hand and loosely gripping that of Van. The Archpriest launched into a rapid-fire patter of prayer--which the soldier, supposedly a sworn member of the Iadesian Church Militant, was entirely unable to repeat, let alone keep pace.

The trio caught on to the Archpriest’s message, and cast the entire train car into magical darkness before leaping up to engage the soldiers.

Startled, the soldiers unleashed a barrage of blind gunfire into the darkness. In response, each of the trio fired back with eldritch blasts of power, slaying soldiers almost as fast as they were replaced by reinforcements rushing down the line of train cars. One soldier, still standing in the open cabin doorway, drew a fighting knife and slashed the Archpriest, who barely managed to dive to the floor. What would have been an arterial spray was only a brutal gash on the forearm, and the knife-wielding soldier was quickly blown away by Van. David rushed to magically heal the wound.

The soldiers retreated up the train’s length, firing wildly into the swirling mass of darkness and the sound of Van’s menacing voice, heedless of bystanders. The soldiers loudly called for backup from their unseen leader, Barnabus. 

The trio split into two groups--David and Van remained in the train car to fight off the soldiers while Wellston and the Archpriest moved further back along the train to get beyond the range of flying carbine rounds and flying splinters of shattered wood and glass.

Van and David chased the retreating soldiers with blasts of eldritch force, but were rebuked when the soldiers’ leader, a man in a Church Militant tabard and steel helmet, pointed an iron wand at them and growled out a resonant spell. A glowing orange bead hissed down the length of three train cars before blossoming into a storm of roaring flame. The car was instantly set ablaze, and the two warlocks were badly burned. David retreated to heal his wounds, leaving Van alone to face off against the war mage Barnabus from within the burning train car.

Wreathing himself in mystic ice, Van mounted his broom and hurled himself through the train at the war mage--but not before Barnabus pointed the wand again at Van and unleashed a bolt of white lightning straight into his chest. When his eyes cleared and his ears stopped ringing, Van briefly noted that the carpet and walls between himself and the war mage had also been set aflame. He wouldn not survive another unmitigated strike.

Meanwhile, David and Wellston concerned themselves with the handful of still-living bystanders that the war mage’s fireball hadn’t already killed. Wellston had little sympathy for them.

Wellston: "Civilians are combatants that haven't realized it yet."

Wellston, hiding in a conjured illusion of even more fire, poked his head out of the heatless flames and saw that Van’s duel with Barnabus was going poorly. He turned back to Thomasz.

Wellston: “How does Iades feel about collateral damage?”

Thomasz: “The Church tries to avoid it at all costs!”

Wellston: “That’s unfortunate.”

Wellston walked up the train, made sure that Van wasn’t in the radius of his spell, and ripped open a gateway to the darkness of space, unleashing the Hunger of Hadar on the train car occupied by Barnabus and a score of screaming passengers. Boiling darkness spilled from the hole in reality and impossible tentacles ripped the car and everything that remained in it into frozen, corroded chunks.

But another shouted spell could be heard from within the darkness. Barnabus, mauled but alive, launched into the open air above the train car on invisible wings. The war mage leveled his iron wand at the train car containing the Archpriest and prepared to blast it off the rails--but Van was waiting for him and unleashed a point-blank flurry of eldritch power, ripping him apart like a hammered apricot.

The last Church Militant soldier swore loudly, threw down his rifle, and leaped from the train. His jump was ill-timed, however, and the passing bough of a tree swatted him from the air with a crunching finality.

After ensuring the survival of the Archpriest, the trio busied themselves with escorting what few survivors they could find to the front of the train and separating the burning train cars from the undamaged ones.