Campaign Journal: Along the East Road

Tonight's band of merry mushroom harvesters:

• Frederick
• Slick
• Jax
• Rondel
• Orzu
• and their various groupies

Watched by an inordinate number of town guards and zealots of the Paragons of the Comet, the party departed Acroria for points south the following morning. They had acquired, among other things, a few retainers for camp and horse-guarding duty including a cook, a drover, and a young dwarven man-at-arms who still carries a rag doll.

It was a crisp autumn day, and the party observed several armed patrols along the road, as well as caravans, both moving provisions for winter preparation, and rushing to Acroria to contract ships to move cargo before the winter storms.

Around midday, they came upon the hamlet of Huni, another wide spot in the road of perhaps 100 souls. They settled in at the well-appointed inn, and were greeted by the ebullient and portly proprietor. He set the party up with small beers and bread trenchers of stew. The party did the usual asking for rumors thing, and found that the settlement had been started by a few adventurers who had retired after a few scores. Interestingly, the thorpe's headman was a mage, a class not typically respected by the Theocracy. 

Wide spot in the road

As they chatted, Slick noticed a dwarf fiddling with a lock. The two met eyes, and the dwarf, recognizing Slick (and Flick) as individuals specializing in the art of acquisitions, tossed the lock to the thieves to try their skills against. Neither could crack it (although Frederick, with only modest lockpicking skills, got lucky). “Good enough,” said the dwarf, who introduced himself as Urin Duskborn. “Best to know how sharp your knife is before you try a cut.” He gifted Slick the lock (with keys) and they exchanged compliments. 

After lunch, the party went to meet Walchew, the town leader. They found him digging potatoes in his garden, and noted his burned, shriveled right hand. Rondel introduced himself as another student of the arcane arts, and inquired as to the mage's background. Walchew revealed that he and a few compatriots had been exploring ruins to the west a few years ago. They had found an old apparent watchtower with a significant underground complex. Unfortunately, it have been occupied by a band of hobgoblins, including a couple of shaman, and the party soon found themselves surrounded and nearly overwhelmed. Walchew admitted to having attempted a magic in desperation, and although it was successful, he had been injured and deformed, and had lost his spellbook. Watchtower, did you say? Did you see any red glass disks, perhaps? Walchew did recall a broken red disk on the tower by the party had not investigated it. Hmm.

By now Urin Duskborn was venturing back to his shop. He paused to chat with Jax, inquiring if she, too, was a long way from home? She noted that she was. The dwarf commiserated, and hoped that she could return home, as he couldn't, being an exile. The party asked more and Urin revealed that he was from the Smoking Isles, but left due to a family feud. Interest piqued, the party showed him a ruby glass shard that Orzu had been chewing on – could they cast this? Certainly. Where would they get enough ruby to make the lenses? Either in the mountains, of perhaps from rumored ruby sands in the southern desert.

Fascinating. The dwarf gave them a contact in Chirath, although getting access to the isles would be difficult. If they did reach the isles, just ask after his family and make sure they were doing well. 

With this, everyone mounted and headed south.

(Some time later)

Things were going quietly, when Jax suddenly found Faith Perpetual in her hand and screaming in her head. The barbarian suddenly turned her horse, charging headlong into the woods off the road. The rest of the party was somewhat taken aback. Her plant-collecting activities were usually much quieter affairs.

Combat noises indicated that it was more than medicinal herbs. Party members charged after to find her engaged with a Chaos mutant knight (yes, riding a Damned Horse) and surrounded by several others. Oh yeah, said knight bore a fear-inducing skull face and tattered insignia of the doomed Opharel expedition (as did a couple of other muties). 

something like this

The party sussed out leaders vs mooks, and after a couple of rounds of back-and-forth were able to disable another Chaos knight and a mage. The knight was faceless and bore an extra arm, while the mage surrounded himself in a choking cloud of spores. Unpleasant individuals indeed. Much nasty work was done to take out the foot soldiers as they leaped and flitted around, laying on with spears, pincers, and acid skin. In the meantime, Jax (and Goober) and the surviving Chaos knight continued to go toe-to-toe. 

The mooks were finally worn down with the aid of magic and steel. Rondel remembered that he had a fancy new haste spell, and accelerated everyone for multiple strikes. Slick and Flick, maintaining a safe distance from the Damned Horses, helped Jax overcome her opponent, and the remaining mutant leaders were put down. Loot was gathered.

Bleeding and filthy, the party rode up to the gates of Gunala at nightfall.

“What the hell happened to you?” and we closed the session.

DM Notes:

Whew, more fun. Anyway... 

I have a list of towns ready-made for the party to find on the road. Sorta like wandering monsters, but fixed in place... So I don't necessarily know where they are riding into, either. Each town is framed from Donjon's 'medieval demographics generator' with a few physical features and NPCs tallied up. So Huni was one of these, with the mage featuring a burned hand, and an exile dwarf. Serendipitous opportunity for a bit more lore and potential contacts. I missed my own note on Urin Duskborn being an exile, and had to shoehorn back him into the scene. I've decided that dwarves have a thing for Jax (see prior fancy ball episode). 

The battle. Well, Jax was getting bored with all the nerds talking about magic stuff. Also, Faith Perpetual was an inadvertent acquisition, way back in the beginning of my open-table play. A barbarian with an intelligent magic sword is amusing to me, but she was the only lawful PC in that session, so the only one who could bear said sword. And while it's been mostly a silent ally, hinting at evil and providing impressions of peoples' intentions, it seemed to be time to ramp up the sword as an NPC. This was the first time to sword both took control and actually spoke. It made for a dramatic moment. Also, this game (and world) is evolving as I pick up hints from players' questions or deductions, or even from the results of random encounters and rolls (see town above). So some happenings over the last number of sessions have now become 'canon' so to speak, and things will continue to evolve.

Back to the battle: chaos with Chaos. Again, a set-piece that I had planned, and I did enjoy the shock as the PCs encountered both some horrific mutations, and turned captives from the doomed expedition. It makes it personal. (By the way, if I haven't mentioned before, I use Jon Becker's "Comes Chaos" and Steven Cook's "Chaos Hordes" for all my mutation needs. Much gratitude to both those resources.) I managed the battle fairly well, but there were a lot of moving parts. I did lose track of a few mooks, and could have caused more havoc with the Damned Horses, but it was a fairly long fight by OSR standards. The three spell casters (elf, cleric, and illusionist) all have effective area-control or similar spells at this point, and they used them to good effect. The session, between chatting and fighting, came to a full 3 hours with no real slack time.

What's next? Well, Gunala is a walled town of around 1000, also a vassal to Acroria. They have a fair militia, and at least one reasonably powerful priest. So that's the starting point. We'll see where the conversation leads...