Introduction
This week we begin with some rumors circulating in Sojenka:
28 May Old Market
There is some gossip in the street about two men who are selling strangely-colored metal bars in the market. They say they are made from dragons.
They say a 5 pound bar is worth 1,000 gold crowns.
30 May Old Market, The Spire
A local Voran nobleman is actively searching for his missing wife and is offering a large reward for information. It is said she has run off with the Prophets of the Chosen to the Crystal Necropolis.
Another similar rumor says he is offering 1,000 gold crowns and a saddle-broken griffin to the warrior who brings her home!
Two players were available this week for the Tuesday session:
Cassander, Berzerker Fighter
Zach, Dwarf Fighter
DM NOTE: This is the first dwarf character, and we haven’t really decided on the motif or theme for the Dwarf community/culture, so we are going with tradition. I plan to develop the culture more fully soon. As of right now, the Halflings and Elves have both been developed, with special Class-as-Race features. Both of these are playtest versions of the classes, we shall see how they work out. Please feel free to use them in your own campaign, and share what you learn.
Halfling Classes
Elf Class.
Pre-session Downtime Notes
Castile went to visit some alchemists, about adapting the “Phoenix Flower” (fireworks) concept to a smaller, more portable version that can be used as anti-personnel weapons. (This is some outstanding creativity!)
DM: Castile is able to find that at least two alchemists in Sojenka make "phoenix flowers", small clay pots filled with a magical liquid. These pots are fitted with a wick and launched into the air with small catapults, where they burst into bright, sparkling flower-shapes. They are often used for celebrations, and you know the army sometimes uses modified versions for night-time signaling.
Depending on the size of the 'flower', these pots cost 8-20 GP each. They are dangerous, misuse can cause a premature "blossom" which can burn your hand off.
Castile: Sounds perfect for this group. Castile will discuss application in small quarters and attempt to get a mock up product. Aiming at maybe 30-40 ft diameter area of effect, something portable, preferably impact triggered but a fuse will do in a pinch. Will offer a contracted deal with the Sons of Mithra for exclusive production and training partnership. Keep it private as possible.
The Dungeon Master: FYI, mechanically, it is a Pyrotechnics spell in potion form...
The Sons of Mithra receive a visitor at the camp in Kaslav:
29 May 1023
Two young Kordu Bravos come to the Sons of Mithra camp, asking to speak to Cassander. The younger one (named Krunoslav) says he spoke to Cassander earlier in the week about Ghost Town, and now his cousin (named Zvonomir) would like to share something with Cassander.
Castile, Mithra's Bastard
Are guest rites a thing in this setting? Share a drink, split bread, salt, tea, etc? Feel like we ran into that with Varga yeah?
The Dungeon Master
Yes, but you can just say things like
We welcome him as a stranger, or as a guest, or honored guest or family
Castile, Mithra's Bastard
Ok. Cassander will meet with them with Zeljko and the sgts, obviously any PCs that might want to be nearby. Make an effort to welcome them as guests and share the appropriate etiquette. If Ima be assassinated they're going to SojenkaHell to do it.
The Dungeon Master
Zvonomir claims to be an Apprentice mage from the The Brethren of the Order of the All-Seeing Eye. He says he was asked to leave after he started going to gatherings of the Prophets of the Chosen and asking questions about the new goddess EELATHOH, the goddess of Evasion and Escape, "who will lead all who believe to safety from the coming apocalypse."
The Masters told him there was no such Apocalypse, that the Chosen were deluded and good riddance to them.
Zvonomir had offered his services to the Prophets, as a Diviner. The Prophets were excited to have him, and asked that he use their Seeing Crystal to determine the location of the Mycelium Path.
The Chosen believe the Mycelium Path will bring them to safety from the apocalyptic horror of what is to come from the mountains.
Zvonomir says he saw nightmarish visions in the Crystal:
a ruined city with gargantuan statues, wreathed in silver fog;
a small woman, seated in meditation, with mushrooms growing on her body, and a flower for a head;
a broken tower with a hole under it that goes down to a slime-filled hellscape...
The Prophets told Zvonomir they found this Crystal in the ruins of the Ghost Town and the flower woman told them how to escape the apocalypse.
The visions confirm what she told them, that the Necropolis was the road to safety.
The two young men look at you earnestly, they seem to believe what they are saying, and appear to be looking for a reward for the information.
Castile, Mithra's Bastard
Gonna sketch the general likenesses of Tonisborg and Ghost Town, see if Zvonomir can identify either as the one from his vision. The tower with slime infested hole underneath
The Dungeon Master
He recognizes the mill wheel in Ghost Town
On 29 May the Sons recruited some men at arms, Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry and crossbowmen, plus two sergeants to lead them.
Weather
The weather is unpleasant, there are soft,light rains from 23-28 May. Enough to get things wet, but not so bad as to affect travel too much.
30 May 1023 - a Cloudy Day
The Sons of Mithra depart Sojenka in the afternoon. It is two hours to Opatiza, three hours to Samichi. They camp on the plains. The night passes uneventfully.
31 May 1023 - the Sun Comes Out!
It is a beautiful day! The Sons get started early and reach ghost Town by noonish, do a bit of recon, and at 1pm Zach and a Heavy Infantryman descend into the shaft beneath the ruined tower. This shaft is very deep, 100 feet, and used to have a stairwell, but it has been ruined and shattered in some catastrophe that struck this village.
Zach and his helper secure a sturdy net over the hole in the floor, nicknamed ‘the stirge well’, for obvious reasons!
The rest of the Sons and the men at arms follow, rappelling down the rope without incident.
They split up into two teams, a breaching team and a fall-back team. The fall-back team is there to prevent any rear attacks and to provide support in case of running into something the breachers can’t handle.
Today they are going to explore the NE portion of the complex. They enter a room, painted black, with a hideous mural of a baboon-faced monster with six arms and one great eye! Entering the room triggers a magical effect, a horrible, grating voice booms out, “GAMOSH HUNGERS!”
Cassander raises his weapon and smashes the eye of the mural. They take some time to completely deface the mural before moving on. There are two exits from this room, N & E. the eastern door leads to a short stair, at the bottom are some prison cells. The first three cells hold only stains and dry-rotted straw, the sign of previous inhabitants. The fourth holds an apparition of a finely dressed older man, in very old-fashioned clothes. This apparition does not seem hostile, in fact it looks up from a book or something in its hands and says, “Gregor took the master's crystal, the master is wroth”. Then it looks back down at the book. The Sons decide to let this one lie.
Back up into the mural room, then N, through a door into a larger, 50 x 50 room, with a 20 foot ceiling and a wooden gallows in the center. The skeleton of a man in shabby, rotted clothes hangs from the noose. The crossbowmen fire a couple of quarrels into the body, but it does not move. Cassander cuts it down and it is carried back to the entry shaft for burial later.
The gallows room has a door in the N wall, which leads down a short passage to another stair, 20 feet down to a locked iron door with a very unusually-shaped keyhole. They peek into the room and discover it is a torture chamber of some kind. There is a black-robed body lying on the floor in the center of the room. Unable to defeat the lock, they turn back.
Crossing the large room off the entry shaft, they scare up some rats, which skitter off to the south. The door in the west wall leads to another large room, with two large “columns” forming smaller rooms within. There is a door in the N and S walls.
On the floor here is another dead body, this one in livery of fine quality, now dry-rotted. Rifling the pockets reveals a set of three keys, but none are the odd-shaped one for the prison room.
The door to the north is jammed, but they force it open and encounter four skeletons!
After a brief battle the skeletons are defeated and two large barrels of wine are discovered, marked with the year 976. 47 years old! There is also the un-animated body of a soldier, with high quality armor and shield. The fallback team rolls the barrels back across the large, central chamber to the entrance shaft.
The two smaller rooms are broken into, the northern one containing a bunch of construction and excavation equipment, the southern one is a wine storage room, with another apparition. It is holding a cup of wine, which it raises in a seeming “toast” gesture, but they slam the door shut!
They decide to pull back to the main chamber and investigate the copper-clad door in the north wall. This has a stylized face carved in bas relief in the center. As they approach the face animates, shouting, “NONE MAY PASS UNLESS THEY KNOW THE WORD”.
Zach tries the door and is zapped with a blast of electricity, which knocks him back, but not out.
The face in the door shouts again, “DID NEUREM SEND YOU? I SHALL TELL HIM YOU TRIED TO ENTER”.
They start trying all sorts of passwords, finally hitting on “Gamosh”, the name of the baboon-cyclops in the mural.
The door opens, revealing an alchemy laboratory filled with tables of equipment in a state of serious disarray. Something terrible happened here. They do a fairly thorough search and find a few interesting-looking books, some bottles of strange liquid, a jar with a live frog in it, two scrolls with unreadable writing, and two metal keys. One is of a very distinctive, angular shape. It looks like it will open the prison door!
They do find a secret door, and go through. It leads to a short hall, a staircase down to a locked iron door. The door is locked with an unusual lock, fitting the strange key.
A couple of hours have passed, and they are satisfied with their progress and the loot they have uncovered. Cassander says, “we need some packing material to carry out this alchemy equipment!”
The group returns to the entrance shaft, and there is a terrible odor. They see two reptilian humanoids slipping into the water and they swim downstream, through the damaged grate in the wall.
With the men at arms keeping watch, they haul the loot up to the surface, then climb the ropes four at a time. Once on the surface they cover the hole with rubble again, to hide it from prying eyes. They load the loot into their wagon and the patrolling men at arms encounter a giant trap-door spider. It kills one of them before it is defeated. Its den only contains animal bones, and those of a small humanoid. Goblin?
Zach harvests the poison and silk from the carcass.
They head back toward Samichi for a couple of hours, and make camp. The night passes uneventfully.
1 June 1023
In the morning it is only two hours to Samichi and five hours to Sojenka.
They bring the loot to the Tower of the Council of Ancients for identification.
XP LOG 30 May Session
Liquid Treasure
20 GP
2 EP
12 SP
8 CP
Loot GP
Alchemy Notebook - 1000 GP
Petrified Wood - 3 GP
Green & Blue liquids - 10 GP
Codex 1 - 3000 GP
Codex 2 - 4000 GP
Codex 3 - 2000 GP
Scroll 1 - 400 GP (2x LI spell, 1x LII spell)
Scroll 2 - 600 GP (2x LIII spell)
Ivory Dice and Game Board - 100 GP
Frog in jar - 10 GP
Wine Barrels - 160 GP
Spider parts - 70 GP
Magic Chain Mail - 600 XP (or gold value if sold)
Magic Shield - 250 XP (or gold value if sold)
Combat 40 XP
Total 12,247 XP
Zach - 1
Cassander - 1
Zeljko (Hench) -1
PC 4,899 XP Each, NPC 2,449 XP
Take the loot to the Council of Ancients for analysis. Pay 200 GP to get some info on the armor and shield. Both appear to have been made by the Imperial Armory, probably about 70 to 80 years ago, from the design work. It likely was made for a Guard Captain for a household or caravan.
(Each item is +1 and weighs 1/2 of what it should)
The Council offers you 5000 GP for the two items.
Downtime
Zach has enough experience to go for level training.
The Alchemy book is primarily about creating elixirs affecting human flesh, both living and dead. There is some information about the creation of Zombies through special poisons and rituals.
The book has references to Dyrantil, a god of Alchemy, and to Tharaton, a god of Undeath.
There are instructions for making an ebony rod, shod with gold and silver, that can drain energy (levels) from humans & use that energy to animate corpses in hideous undeath.
There are formulae for two kinds of poison, and their antidotes.
The three codices are magical books of spells. The Council offers to purchase them for the above listed amounts.
Codex 1 - 3000 GP
Codex 2 - 4000 GP
Codex 3 - 2000 GP
They make no mention of which spells are in the books.
The group sells everything but the Alchemy book.
