Isona Adventure Logs: Current

The beginning of this set of tales, in which a group of mismatched characters forms and then meets some of the movers and shakers of the mysterious Madlands.

The Cat Who Walked By Itself

Adventure Notes 11-28 KE

The party, much reduced and somewhat in low spirits, makes forth from Lenart. The quest to free Hjalrig has been left in Ed's (empty) hands, which feels like a defeat. Njenq wonders about the spider fang - what happened to it? Last anyone saw it, the skeleton was carrying it... Frimhandler admits she knows where the fang is. Despite some pressing from Njenq to give the spider fang to Ed, Frimhandler decides to heed the skeleton's advice and leave the spider fang where it is.

The pair decide to venture to Azsana, a goblin city in the Goblin Hills, Frimhandler's old haunts. Frimhandler, half-seriously, says she'd like to confirm that Vermilion is still there. So they wander southwest of Lenart, and reach the river, which they cross and begin to follow upstream. Surprisingly they see no one.

Also surprisingly, they do not starve, led by Frimhandler's enterprising resourcefulness. Around midday they reach the edge of a large forest - not really sure where they are, so they don't know which one. (Guardian's Rest.) They follow the river into the forest, and soon find themselves beneath towering trees, mostly evergreen but with some broadleaf mixed in. The forest floor is damp and dark and fairly dense with great tree trunks and littered with fallen branches. They are observed, but they do not know it, and venture on.

After half a day's walk they come upon a small clearing, as the light begins to fade. When they pause a woman steps out of the shadows in front of them, and approaches slowly, bare-handed.

Like lightning, Njenq draws her katana. The woman takes a step backward, but otherwise makes no sign.

And so Njenq and Frimhandler meet Hajira. The talk is awkward at first, but then it turns to supper. Hajira leads them to a suitable sheltered spot where it would be good to camp, and they pool what they have to form a fine communal meal.

Frimhandler takes a watch, then Hajira's turn, then Njenq. Just as the sky is just beginning to lighten, Njenq suddenly makes out a figure sitting right in front of her is... a huge black hunting cat. Huge. Did we mention huge? Big big big. And bearing a signet ring in its fangs? Whaaat. The signet of which Njenq, in the shock of the moment, understandably fails to recognize. Backing away, she runs into Frimhandler, she glances away from the cat for just a flicker of a second, and - the cat vanishes. Njenq swears like a sailor, waking up both Frimhandler and Hajira.

Consternation. Frimhandler finds the cat left a heat signature, but disturbed not a leaf in its passing.

Njenq and Frimhandler would just as soon get away from this uncanny creature, but Hajira, fascinated, persuades them to stay for a day. It seemed friendly enough, she says, but Njenq (who after all is the one who actually saw it) has her doubts.

Frimhandler goes back to sleep. Hajira begins searching the area, looking for tracks of the cat's handler, if any. But she hasn't gotten very far when Njenq, glancing back at where Frimhandler is sleeping, is amazed to see the cat there, playing with a little wooden figurine. Again, the cat vanishes, although this time Njenq is able to see it is moving away, incredibly fast. Frimhandler wakes, and confirms that the cat has taken her small wooden figure of a dragon. That darn cat!

The trio tries sitting in a circle, watching in every direction, but soon enough the attention wanders - Njenq daydreams of tossing dice. So now Hajira sings a song, a song of waiting that she knows. And maybe that works? Frimhandler is hit in the back of her head, by what turns out to be a fruit: it's hard but incredibly delicious, and once tasted Frimhandler can't help but eat the whole thing, savoring the rich flavors of [a long mouthwatering list I can't remember] and relishing the delicate aftertaste of fennel.

Tracking back the trajectory of the fruit, the trio find a paw print just over the lip of their hollow. Hajira begins tracking it, with Frimhandler walking with her and expertly searching. Njenq brings up the rear, muttering about how this fairy tale they're in always turns out very bad. They are going south.

In this way they follow the paw prints to the bank of the river. Frimhandler spies her figurine about 40' up in the air (in a tree), and air-walks to get it. Whoever/whatever put it there also left another fruit there. Frimhandler thanks whoever left the items there and brings them back across the river to the others; the three of them split the fruit. Frimhandler notices it seems to be restoring mana at great speed.

After some discussion, they decide to cross the river (to the east side) and search around the tree. Frimhandler promptly finds another paw print a dozen yards or so from the tree, and they continue to follow the cat as it ranges generally southward, leaving a mark only every 35 feet or so. The cat now begins to swing its progress from south to west.

Now Njenq spots the cat itself - isn't that its tail? Right up ahead? But when she points it out, the cat is already gone. The other two don't see it. What is it about Njenq, that she is apparently the only one of the three who can see the cat?

They continue. They don't find any paw prints for a while, but then.... half-hidden under a bush, a gruesomely sliced carcass - flayed by something sharp. Not eaten: it's all there but all spread out. It was some sort of snouted creature the size of a dog. A tapir?

But now we hear a yowl, some ways off. And then we hear a bunch of creatures tearing toward us through the forest, and as they burst into the clearing we can see they apparently are... giant rats. Ick.

Only moments before they are upon us. Frimhandler has the quickest response: she airwalks up the tree we are next to, and finds a branch to sit upon. Njenq arms herself with katana, and tries to invoke her, um, double self - you know, that thing she does (although not this time). Hajira pulls out her quarterstaff and prepares to meet the rush. It seems to her the rats may not be interested in the trio - they may fleeing from whatever made the yowl, and she alerts the party to this possibility.

Half of the rats do indeed scamper past harmlessly, but the other half find their way impeded by Hajira and Njenq, and attack as a way to get through. Njenq fends them off and gives them retribution, and Hajira fends off all the attacks but one, and thus gets bit. Four of the rats are now wounded, including one burnt by Frimhandler from above, and then the most amazing thing of all happens - the thing none of us were expecting...

A Sappy Ending

Adventure Notes 12-13-17 KE

So there we are, knee-deep in rats, except for Frimhandler who has wisely hidden up a tree.

Rats. Why does it always have to be rats.

The rats, unwisely for all involved, continue to attack. In fact two go berserk about it. Njenq and Frimhandler continue to chop and blast them. Hajira parries in full-on defense mode and hits one, but then unwisely drops her staff. Uh oh. In the heat of the moment she forgets that she is a LUCKY INDIVIDUAL and things like this don't happen to her. Double uh oh. In retrieving the staff she gets bit, bad. Uh oh oh oh. When the fur settles four rats are dead, the others have fled, and she's bleeding.

Frimhandler descends and heals Hajira most of the way. Njenq and Hajira lay out some dead rats, in anticipation of the arrival of whatever made the yowl, and we all stand ready to greet it. But nothing emerges from the wood.

Until Njenq sees something? hears something? There is a small sound, the other qualities of which are left to the imagination. Njenq leads the way following this new sign. We have a lovely walk in the woods. We pass by a majestic oak-like tree that soars out of sight, the full dimensions of which are difficult to discern. Hajira landmarks this spot, so she can navigate to it again.

We find another cat print, leading to a trio of redwood-like trees now set in a vine patch maybe 30 yards in diameter. The vines are an ugly, putrid gray-green color, bordering on the goblinesque even. Shiny leaves. Unnatural. We circle it, warily. Frimhandler moves forward to observe it closely and discovers it's caustic if it gets on you. It burns, it burns.

Frimhandler determines that something has been nibbling away at the vines, apparently trying to keep them from spreading. Hmmm. But it's like they don't have the right tools for the job. Hmmm, well, WE certainly do. We decide to try to whack back the uncanny vine using our sharpest instrument: Njenq and the Katana of Vine-Shearing Sharpness.

Njenq the Lawnmower has only cleared about 2/3rds of a square yard when she has to stop because there's sap running down her blade and generally splattering everywhere. A hundred more square yards remain. Njenq cleans her blade. Now what? To no one's surprise, Frimhandler suggests fire.

We scrape aside a small amount of vine trimmings for a fire test. Frimhandler applies a perhaps overenthusiastic flame jet to them and poof! they vanish! Leaving just a hint of smoke. Are the vines some sort of half-real construct, like the cat apparently is? The whiff like smoke – it smells like sap when Frimhandler, curious, steps into it.

Well, if the vines are a construct that vanishes with flame, then it will be easy to get rid of them! Frimhandler sets out to clear the vines with a flame jet. BUT when the jet hits them in quantity, their true nature is revealed. They are not a half-real construct, but rather incredibly flammable, like flash paper. The vines burn out, VERY quickly. The heat is intense, but short-lived. Fearing the onset of a fire, we rush forward, but it turns out only one branch of one tree is burning. Whew!

Hajira tries to hold her breath, run into the burn area, knock the branch down with her staff, and run out again. She tries twice, but fails both times – the footing is precarious. She takes care not to breathe the fumes. Meanwhile, Njenq throws a rope over the branch – she tugs but cannot break it. But then finally does, preventing the tree from catching fire.

The party then withdraws, camouflages then chameleons itself, waits to see what will happen. Nothing much does, some squirrels sniff at the border area for nut, a deer comes by, etc. Nice normal comforting woodland things: our hearts sing to observe them. Well, Hajira's does, anyway; Njenq is probably dreaming of the gaming table.

Night comes. A bear and her cub pay the burn a visit. In the morning, we are mostly rested and healed. When we set out, Frimhandler finds another cat paw print, and Hajira begins tracking it. She loses the trail, finds it again: the cat trail is very odd, irregular, all the way along, because of course THIS IS NO ORDINARY CAT. It is a cat that is real/touches the earth rarely if at all. The trail heads north; we are heading into deeper forest, the trees are taller, the light is going greener.

In time we come to the end of the trail: the party sees a majestic tree, not large but possessing uncommon grace. Plus it bears the wonderful fruit we encountered earlier! The tracks come up to this tree then stop, as though the cat jumped up into the tree, but if it is there now we cannot see it, which is of course entirely possible.

We knock down 3 ripe fruits, and eat them, savoring every bite. As before, we thank the tree for its gifts. Frimhandler retains the seeds. We then sit down to wait, facing every direction. Hajira flips through the Songs of Waiting that she knows, chooses one for when you are expecting friends to arrive, and begins to sing.

1 CP

The Guardian of Guardian's Rest

Adventure Notes 12-20-2017 KE

Hajira finishes her song. We are seated beneath the dome of the tree (it's not very large really) atop a small mound. It doesn't seem to be a tomb. Frimhandler examines the mound very carefully. Hajira meditates on the surroundings: is there anybody out there? Looking carefully, Frimhandler finds a trio of moss-covered dice! Made of stone. Marble? Frimhandler keeps them secret from Njenq, shows them to Hajira. Hajira thinks they are a gift from the tree – a wish fulfillment for Njenq? Gives them to Njenq who cleans them off. The dice don't have pips, they have unfamiliar symbols on them – the same symbols on each dice. Hajira meditates on her surroundings: no animals nearby, no birds in the tree, they seem to keep a respectful distance? Her feeling is, peace and isolation.

There are 9 fruits left, all ripe. We discuss options and let them be (Njenq grumbling a little or maybe that was just her stomach).

Hajira landmarks where the fruit tree is. We search for cat prints leading away, don't find any. Hajira goes off to do some hunting/gathering, is successful. We camp under the fruit tree – uneventful night. In the morning, we begin searching for tracks again, in an ever-widening spiral, and spend the day doing it. Find no more tracks. More successful hunting. Again we camp under the tree, again an uneventful night. In the morning, Njenq attempts to climb tree, falls, injures herself, but gets right back up and climbs into it successfully. She goes as high as she can, then looks around. Doesn't see anything interesting, comes back down. Healed by Frimhandler.

We retrace our steps back – Njenq is wishing to get to a city and get hired out – Hajira navigates us back to the majestic tree (we've come about a quarter mile); it's now off to our right, and we approach. As we approach it we see a growing number of animals around the tree: three rabbits there, a deer there, and so on. Frimhandler observes the animals: doesn't see any predators. They keep their distance from us but seem much less concerned than they normally would be. The tree soars into the sky such that we can't see the top of it. The tree is 35 yards in radius, full of leaf litter under it, only small trees here and there. On the far side: a large brook running. Animals of all types all around underneath, including predators and prey together. Animals coming in from all directions – coming and leaving.

When the party gets within 5 yards, a peacefulness comes over the party – we feel protected. We go and fill our canteens in the brook. Frimhandler searches around the tree, the animals that congregate there are reluctant to move out of her way. The feeling of comfort is definitely strongest right around the tree. Hajira goes to the base of the tree to meditate – at first, she almost has a panic attack, but then recovers and goes into a trance. She cannot discern the identity of the benefactor exactly, but gets a sense of a mother's concern. The Mother of the Forest? The Guardian's Rest?

Njenq looks into climbing up into the tree. But decides not to. Njenq wants to go back to town! She's bored! We go back, retracing steps again (navigating) back to where we burnt the vine… Leaving the wolves behind at the tree, we hope.

Back at the vine burn, nothing happening there. No upshoots. We determine to go back to the river and head back upstream – we're traveling on the eastern side (we met on the western side, actually). Heading for the city… Hajira less successful at survival, eats some bad berries… healed by Frimhandler.

At day's end, we reach the edge of the forest, encounter a "pile of buildings" – we go to scout them out and see if there's a place for us to camp. Frimhandler sees it may once have been a much larger city, maybe 50 by 30 yards, but most of the buildings are gone. Ruins of a palisade. By the river, some posts still in the riverbank. By the buildings, a few trees, but they seem stunted, different (out of the protection zone?)

By the main ruins (somewhat away from the river) Frimhandler finds a relatively intact 3-room building, and while investigating it, she uncovers a trapdoor made of stone with an iron ring in it. Curious, Frimhandler bids Njenq open it up – to everyone's astonishment, Frimhandler muscles the door open! Stone stairs lead down, Hajira leads the way down with staff in hand, a curious Frimhandler close behind, Njenq behind with torch and katana.

To the right: decently sized room, bigger than the room above. What was it? Hard to tell now. Furniture ruin along the sides, clear in the middle, but some intact cabinet along the far wall. We all have vision enhancements. Hajira does tracking: just rats (as was the case up above). Njenq finds fragments of glass, parchments, and a small silver knife and 20 silver coins aggressively cut upon? Frimhandler finds a cabinet – locked! Beneath an overturned cabinet, otherwise empty, Frimhandler finds some papers that still have writing on them (some of them) which are in a language we cannot read; Frimhandler tucks them away carefully in her formal wear.

Hajira carries the silver knife for now. Attention turns to the locked cabinet, which is surprisingly intact. Frimhandler asks Njenq to hammer it open, with her small hammer and piton to chisel away at the hinges. Njenq takes one swing and it blasts apart, much too easily? Lots of glass shards pour forth – broken vials – but at the bottom, a few vials still intact. All of them contain desiccated stuff except for one, which still has a wax seal still intact? Inside the vial is a green-brown sludge; all the vials seem to have held this stuff at one time. Hajira tucks the glass vial carefully away in her pack.

We secure the trap door, and prepare to camp. Frimhandler's watch passes uneventfully; Hajira with a lantern lit passes her watch, then Njenq and then it's morning. We thoroughly search the area, with all vision bonuses aflame: find some rusted metal by the river, old jagged blade maybe. The ruins don't seem like human, or dwarf, or elven, so probably goblin? We shrug and move on.

We continue upstream, on the east side of the river. We trek on steadily to the southwest. We glimpse a trail from time to time on the other side of the river. And then at a certain point, as we pass into a rocky bit of terrain, we see some characters nonchalantly lounging next to some bushes. Crossbowmen. With swords too. They are apparently watching the trail leading to Azsana through the bush; they haven't seen us. We all stealthily creep behind a bush and observe them.

Frimhandler casts Chameleon on us, and we skirt the watchers. As we creep in a circle past them, we see there are two other ruffians lounging by the trail, near boulders. Possible ambushers? They seem to be waiting for someone to come up the trail. They probably have a fifth, a lookout, farther down the trail? Who will alert them when their quarry comes into sight.

We continue creeping southwest, on our side of the river. We could leave them behind, but – Frimhandler has gotten curious by now! We have to see what happens! We are looking for a place to cross so we can creep up behind them, but there is no good place to cross. We're in the foothills, and the river is wide and running fast. It seems to be too wide for Frimhandler to air walk across reliably (50' limit), so we pause out of sight of the rough boys to consider what to do.

1 CP

Into the Goblin City

Adventure Notes 12-27-17 KE

We look for a way across the river, just you know because we're curious, so curious about those apparent ruffians lounging around the path across the river. But it is not to be. We find one possible crossing point, and go so far as for Frimhandler to air walk our rope across the river, but then Njenq pulls the plug on the attempt. We continue overland, paralleling the river, trending southwest and further into the foothills. No other crossing point presents itself.

Soon we catch sight of the smoke of the city, and then the towers and the chimneys of the city haul into view. There is something odd about the smoke: one stack goes in an odd direction, another is all sparkly? We climb a tree to get a better look, but don't learn anything more about the smoke; Hajira however sees dust rising from the path – some group is apparently moving along it toward Azsana.

We continue toward the city, through the scrub pine. As we near the very industrial-looking city, Hajira explains she can't go in, the city makes her afraid. So she finds a grove to shelter in, and the other two go into the city.

They find the streets cluttered with an overrun of tent encampments? In the city, Frimhandler and Njenq split up, Njenq to do the shopping and Frimhandler in search of a book. Njenq tries to find the suitable merchants for her shopping list and eventually does so, and negotiates fair prices to the best of her ability. Unfortunately her ability is not great, and we end up paying two to three times the going rate. We get a swath of black fabric, a first-aid kit, 20 yards of rope, a sewing kit, and Iron rations for Njenq and Frim for about $500.

Frimhandler goes in search of a basic thaumatology tome, and eventually she finds one, but the bookkeeper wants $600 for it, so Frimhandler declines and goes to reunite with Njenq. They retire back to the woods, rejoining Hajira and they camp uneventfully.

In the morning, we all three go up to the city gate. Frimhandler and Njenq go to the ferry and inquire about other roadhouses or inns in the area; we learn they are all a day's journey away. Hajira waits outside the gate (and assists the denizens of the huts there in their menial tasks) as Frimhandler and Njenq go into town to look for work.

In a bar they learn of a possible job opportunity and go in search of Crowbeak in the College District. They are approaching the formidable house where Crowbeak seemingly is to be found when there is a disturbance behind them. A sheriff is berating a pair of goblins and, getting some lip from them, decks one of them…

…and Frimhandler turns just in time to see a cutpurse slit the strings of Njenq's purse! Containing about $350! All our remaining money!

The cutpurse bolts. Njenq attempts to summon the force but fails. Frimhandler casts fleetfootedness (Rapid Retreat) on Njenq and then on herself, and takes off in pursuit also of the cutpurse – with the bellowing sheriff in hot pursuit as well.

The pursuit leads them back through the town square and then beyond, into the nastier part of town. Frimhandler has faster speed and pulls ahead of Njenq; she tries twice to grab him to slow him down, but he eludes her grasp. He shouts, "STOP, THIEF!" as he veers into an alley.

Frimhandler follows him in as he piles into the corner of an alcove, and Frimhandler whacks him a good one with her jo. But they are not alone in the alcove! There's one ruffian to her left, who pulls out a knife, and two more to her right. One to her right steps forward and grapples with Frimhandler, while the other hefts up a club.

Njenq bursts into this scene, and evokes haste. The ruffians strike, to no effect. Frimhandler flames the ruffian grappling her at point-blank range, but he hangs on. Njenq begins to strike and strike and strike at the two armed ruffians, setting them back. But meanwhile the cutpurse recovers and bolts past his compatriot to continue down the narrow alley. The knife-wielder turns and flees behind him.

Njenq slashes at the ruffian grappling Frimhandler, causing him to drop to the ground, then takes off after the cutpurse. Frim, now freed, takes off after her. Njenq shoulders past the knife man, and running hard and careening off walls, closes with the cutpurse and stabs him. The knife wielder, hearing Njenq bellow, turns back, only to find himself caught between Njenq and Frimhandler; at Frimhandler's invitation, he drops his knife and runs away past her. Njenq recovers her purse, still full, from the cutpurse, who conveniently passes out from loss of blood before Njenq can learn anything from him. The other ruffians have vanished into the slum.

PRESUMABLY Njenq and Frimhandler find their way back to Crowbeak's and find out more about this possible employment… if, that is, they manage to evade the sheriffs?

Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of all this ruckus, Hajira is acting all domestic and aw-shucks with the local people, sewing, cooking, catching some fish in the river… keeping her ear to the ground… and possibly learning some valuable information as well? Or not.

1 CP

A Fair Cop

Adventure Notes 1-10-18 KE

Frimhandler and Njenq head out of the city, to rejoin with Hajira, and find her entertaining the rustic folk outside the gate with another of her strange songs. Hajira reports that she’s gathered some information about the town, namely the names of those wielders of magic that hold the reins of power in this town. No surprise to find out that the bailiffs are there to protect the magic-users, not the citizenry.

After a short relay of news Frimhandler and Njenq go back into the town, headed back to Crowbeak’s opulent house, to find out if there’s work to be had. They take the shorter route, up South Street, with Njenq proceeding with a notable swagger. They proceed along the idea of its fence and through the idea of a gate, up to the door: Frimhandler knocks; a servant answers, and Frimhandler (speaking in Goblin) inquires about work. The servant is uppity, but Njenq faces him down, and they are granted a short audience with Master Crosbin.

They are led down some stairs, past some hulking human guards, into a well-appointed office. Including, Frimhandler is keen to note, fine bookcases and other cabinets of curiosity. Master Crosbin turns out to be something akin to a half-goblin? if the human half was Nordic?

Frimhandler launches into the business at hand, and Crosbin responds well, inviting them to sit to discuss a prospect. They give their actual names to him. He’s looking for “hardy types, who can hold their own against strange things.” Njenq avers that they have, with many trips between Rushas and the Madlands under their belt. Crosbin presses them for details, about Njenq and her katana first of all, and Njenq is taken aback slightly. Crosbin explains that he was hoping for more detail, because after all one must know oneself well if one is to take on the hidden powers of the universe. Frimhandler also dissembles, noting her skills as observation and herself as limited in offensive power, to Crosbin’s evident disappointment.

He inquires as to a sparring match for Njenq, does he want live steel? Crosbin says that he does, what is the point of fake weapons? Njenq assents to that with a shrug, and they all go back upstairs and arrange a fighting space. Njenq is paired opposite a brute in chain mail with sword and axe; she prepares her shield but leaves her katana in its sheath. Njenq summons the force successfully; here comes the blue sparks and the blue glow, and Njenq begins to leave blue afterimages of herself. Her opponents eyes narrow, he tenses, but makes no move.

Njenq takes a giant step and strikes with the katana from two yards away; easily parried with the sword. Njenq’s second attack is parried with the axe. He takes a cautious step forward. Njenq then attacks twice, parried with the two weapons again (the axe parry almost fails). He parries the third attack, both parties step back – but then he rushes forward and strikes with the axe, but Njenq blocks and retreats.

Is he pulling his blows? Possibly not. Njenq ups her game and swings back into the attack, again parried by the brute, she steps back. He attacks but Njenq easily defends.

Again they go around, with Njenq’s attacks parried. The brute then charges Njenq for a shield slam, but she does an expert retreating dodge and he loses his balance. As he recovers, she lays into him from behind and the side. One attack barely fails but the second gets through – Njenq withholds her second attack, holding her ground.

The brute checks himself: he’s bleeding. He sheathes his weapons. Njenq cleans her blade, with measured nonchalance. The brute says “that’s quite a trick you have up your sleeve.”

Crosbin sends the injured guard off to be healed (and take some time off). “How are you doing that?” Crosbin asks; “it’s a gift,” Njenq says. When pressed, Njenq provides no further information. Crosbin presses her to “take notes” to learn more about this ability, and is exasperated when Njenq shrugs that off.

Anything else to reveal? “Do you have a fire you want lit?” Frimhandler asks. This piques Crosbin’s interest. “I sneak about, I find things out, I report them to the one who hired me,” Frimhandler says. They go into the kitchen; they put out the wood stove fire; Frimhandler lights it up. The cook jumps back in amazement as steam and ash billow out; even Crosbin takes a step back.

Crosbin can’t guarantee anything, but is intrigued. He asks where they can be found, and Njenq spills everything – that there’s a third party member named Hajira who won’t come into the city, where we are staying, and more. Crosbin doesn’t want to pay a third person, unseen, and Frimhandler assures her that won’t happen. They depart.

Meanwhile, Hajira revisits her poor goblin friends and successfully sings them another song. She learns that most of the humans live on the other side of town, and use the Farmer’s Gate.

The party rejoins, Njenq confronts Hajira about the limits of her city aversion, and after much back-and-forth they determine some better ways to handle situations like these. They eat some rations, have an uneventful night, and in the morning Njenq and Frimhandler go back into the city to continue the search for work. At Hajira’s suggestion, they intend to work their way through the city to the markets on the Farmer’s Gate side of the city, where the humans live.

They continue; they pass over a bridge onto a half-moon-shaped island in the river, and then over a bridge to the other side. They begin looking for an opportunity to find work, there in the dock district on the far side, but can’t find a market. Njenq leads them into the dock district, to look for a bar or something; using streetwise skills they locate one with a cute cartoon of a dancing bear on the sign. A mix of goblins and humans, working people from the look of them. Njenq enters into conversation with a dockworker, but demurs when pressed to buy a round.

Frimhandler observes for a while, but detects no opportunity; it’s just a bunch of workers drinking after work? They decide to return to the market. Oh, by the way, the large citadel is in this area, where the dock district abuts the farming areas.

Back in the market district, Njenq looks for an opportunity, using her streetwise skills. In an area of the city one step up from the bottom, they search diligently, but come up empty. As they emerge, they encounter a group of six city guards, led by the same female sheriff they had seen before. When they see the pair, they bore their way toward them, parting the crowds as they come. They confront Njenq and Frimhandler and demand their surrender, due to them being accused of committing crimes against the citizenry.

Njenq protests, stating they were merely recovering a stolen purse, but the sheriff will have none of it. The guards close in, but Frimhandler walks on air to escape onto a nearby rooftop. The guards grab Njenq and haul her away, Njenq still protesting her innocence.

Frimhandler casts Chameleon on herself, and attempts to shadow the guards from the rooftops. They cross the square, which challenges Frimhandler, and exit the square onto Shit Street and into the college district. As Njenq continues to protest and insult them, they rap on her to get her to shut up. But the sheriff turns on them and stares them down, and they quail under her gaze and leave Njenq alone. Njenq quiets down a little.

They appear to be heading for the citadel, but then turn left into a group of warehouses and then into a square where there is apparently the garrison building. Njenq is taken inside and into the six-cell row; two others are occupied. She is locked up there. They take all her possessions, including her armor, but return her purse. The sheriff informs her she’s been accused of murder and disfigurement, and informs her she can notify someone – for a sufficient fee – and be represented by a lawyer, also for a sufficient fee. Njenq pays $40 to send Hajira a message: “currently stewing in the prison for murder, I have no idea who I murdered” and a messenger is sent.

Frimhandler is observing the building, with Chameleon on her; it has two wings jutting out from a central square building. Frimhandler can’t see the window of Njenq’s cell. She returns to the city gate to wait for Hajira, aware there are guards at the gate. At dusk, the messenger delivers the note to Hajira, but it’s in goblin. But Frimhandler appears and draws Hajira aside. Hajira gives her the message, which states what Njenq had dictated.

Frimhandler states her intention to go back to the prison and air walking to its roof, and attempting to free Njenq. Hajira can’t think of any way she can aid the plan, so she waits behind, observing the gate and planning ways to hold it and keep it open.

Frimhandler gets back to the prison building but is stymied in finding a clear way in. Frimhandler walks on air over to the building and tries to get in a window, but gets stuck and panics a tiny bit, falling back out and making a noise. The guards hear and investigate, but fail to see her chameleon self, even though they fetch a ladder to survey the roof. After they return to their posts, Frimhandler slips successfully into the window, and finds herself in a main office with desks and cabinets. She cautiously goes down the stairs, with dark vision and chameleon, moving and then stopping… the guard at the bottom of the stairs looks pretty alert, but he’s looking down the right-hand branch, so she slips down the left-hand branch, looking for prison cells and Njenq.

She eludes a pair of (inattentive) patrolling guards and then detects a breeze – from the open front door? She peeks around a corner to see two guards, one leaning against the door to the cell block. She finds a doorway to an alcove and settles in there, to see if an opportunity comes up.

After a while, the sheriff arrives with two guards and walks into the guardroom, and a conversation ensues. She berates the guards for laziness and urges them to be vigilant because of the air walking goblin on the loose. She also notes that the goblin has stealth skills, and Frimhandler’s ears burn at that. Did Crowbeak rat on them? Or did one of the vagrants who saw Frimhandler move across the rooftops sell the information for a few coppers?

To be continued…

1 CP

The Price of Blood

Adventure Notes 1-24-2018 KE

Frimhandler looks to fade back down the hall, looking for a good place to hide, like a broom closet. But nothing presents itself. She looks up at the ceiling – beams? rafters? There are rafters, but not thick enough for Frimhandler to rest upon. It’s now about 3 am. Since she has ascertained to her satisfaction that Njenq is in the building, she now seeks to return the way she came.

She does very well and makes her way back up the stair, back to the room with desks in it, where she checks the window: it’s still open. She checks for hiding places up high: she spots some high cabinets, but they’re not high enough to completely obscure her. Hmmm. Can she read something? Maybe, if she casts See In The Dark on herself, which she does. She begins searching for papers with Njenq’s name on them. She doesn’t find those, but she does find what appears to be a tally of bribes paid to the police chiefs. She continues searching the drawers, opening them verrrrry verrrrry quietly. Several drawers appear to be locked. In the end, she’s only able to open one drawer, and it only contains notes “of a romantic nature.”

She goes out the way she came. She squeeeeeezes easily out the narrow window, airwalks away from the gaol, and then makes her way back across the rooftops to outside the gate, where Hajira awaits. It’s now 6 am. Hajira is immensely relieved to see her. They head back to their wilderness camp, and on the way Frimhandler tells her everything.

Frimhandler has two ideas: one, we lay low for a couple of days, and try to spring Njenq then, or two, we use these documents – she produces the bribe reports – to blackmail Njenq’s release? Hajira has a third idea – go into town to see Crosbin, and ask him to pull strings to get Njenq released? They decide quickly to try the third, later that day, and go to recoup their lost sleep.

Meanwhile, Njenq, well-rested, rises in her cell, and in due time is informed that her arbitration is scheduled for noon. Any messages to send? An arbiter who might argue on her behalf? The guard can’t think of anyone, offhand… Njenq dismisses him with choice words.

Promptly at noon, Captain Myr appears, and informs Njenq that her arbiter has arrived, and it’s time for her hearing. “I don’t think you understand the seriousness of the charges against you…” which, by the way, are murder. Njenq: “The rich get off while the poor languish in prison?” M: Of course not! NO! No! No. –Well, yes. Exactly. Pay with coin or with sweat, but pay you will. Because money.

The guards glance this way and that, wary of some sort of break attempt. (Gee, I can’t imagine why.) Njenq shrugs off their grip. Myr goes down the hall, and in due time the guards prod Njenq out of the cell and down the corridor, to the gate. There a well-dressed goblin stands, arms folded, and next to him is the thief that Njenq stabbed, who looks to be in pretty bad shape. He is scared to be in the jail, but his face hardens with anger when he sees Njenq.

The arbiter begins the proceeding, and asks the cutpurse to state his charges. He stammers them out: “she killed my friend, and stabbed me in the back. I can’t work no more.” What claim? “Huh?” The arbiter prompts, blood price? “Oh yeah, that.” All this took place in Goblin, so then everything has to be translated by Myr.

Njenq delivers an eyebrow-raising defense: she admits to the stabbing, but what killing is this? And she stabbed the guy because he stole her purse! The arbiter turns back sternly to the cutpurse, a conversation ensues, a body-removal form is produced, which reveals that the person died of burns and cuts.

(Oh, that guy.)

Njenq delivers a spirited self-defense defense; the arbiter asks about witnesses; Njenq lists them off. The arbiter turns on the thief, who squirms under the interrogation. The arbiter turns back to Njenq and accuses her of stabbing the thief and killing the friend, who was armed “only with a club.”

The lawyering goes on. Njenq claims to understand the concept of excessive force. There is back-and-forth regarding the people involved. Njenq’s lack of supporting witnesses is noted. The arbiter says to Myr in effect, what mess have you gotten me into?

Finally, decision time: there is a certified body, and a missing witness, so there was a grievous injury; I will apply a minimum price for the death, and only 50% of injury for the thief due to mitigating circumstances, and an appraiser is summoned. Blood price for killing a layabout, minimum scale: 3 gold per year, 5 years: $15,000; for the thief, $3500. 18 and a half gold, total.

The arbiter stalks off, without a glance back. Myr explains that Njenq will be auctioned off if unable to pay, in about a week. Any messages to send? At the usual price? Yeah, sure. “Racked up a bill of $18,500 defending my honor…” she starts.

Njenq is happy to take on the entire blood debt; doesn’t want her friends to be dragged into this. Myr says carefully that such a thing could be done, but only with the proper coin.

Njenq finishes the message: “Hajira - I've incurred a debt of $18,500 as a result of being responsible for chasing down the cutpurse. Go figure. Sorry about that. I'm to be sold into slavery until I pay it off. Should only take ten or twenty years. Anyway - it would have been nice adventuring with you.”

Back she goes to her cell.

Hajira and Frimhandler wake and form their plan: Frimhandler tells Hajira in detail how to get to Crosbin’s house, so that Hajira can get there reliably on her own: Frimhandler must be free to take flight (literally) if need be. Hajira explains that she will prepare herself through meditation and then she will sing her way to Crosbin’s house, singing a song of traveling she learned as a child.

At the gate they learn that a messenger had been looking for Hajira, with a message. She can either go to the jail to retrieve it (ha! not likely, pal) or the messenger will probably return again tomorrow. Hajira tells the gate guard it will be the latter.

Then Hajira prepares to go into the city, and Frimhandler prepares to follow her, disguised as best she can. She meditates for a time, and finds herself at peace with her decision to do this thing.

Hajira starts singing, and her voice rings out loud and clear and beautiful. As she goes in through the gate, an eerie calm settles over her: her control of her fear is solid, almost masterful. Off she goes, with Frimhandler unobtrusively following.

Hajira quickly picks up a following – of pickpockets and cutpurses, hoping to capitalize on the distraction her singing and unusual visage provide. As she makes her way from the poorer quarter across the square to the college district, Frimhandler is forced to divert due to a group of a half-dozen guards on watch; Frimhandler finds a group of goblins and manages to disguise herself effectively among them, and so skirts the guards and continues to discreetly follow Hajira.

Hajira arrives at a house and a passerby who speaks Common confirms that it is Crosbin’s. She knocks on the door, identifies herself as Hajira, the companion of Njenq, and is brought in to see the master. Amazingly, her nerve holds even as she makes her way deeper and deeper into the building.

Hajira meets Beck Crosbin in his study, and finds him to be just as Njenq and Frimhandler described: apparently a half-goblin. They have a careful conversation, in which Hajira sweetly tells him that she understood that he wanted to see her, and so here she is! But there is a shadow of concern on his face, which he does not explain, but after Hajira explains what little she knows of Njenq’s predicament, he states that that is concern as well, he had just gotten rumor of it, and that it is of serious concern. But why then had he looked hard at her, her face, and her equipment? Why did he glance past her face at the shield on her back? She shrugs: ’Tis a puzzlement.

When Hajira expresses her wish that Crosbin help Njenq out of her unfair predicament, he agrees. She says she must be going now, and she asks if he will walk her personally to the back gate, so they may continue their conversation – but he counterproposes that they walk now to the jail, to begin the process that will free Njenq. Huh. Some first date THIS is turning out to be.

Oh, great. The jail. THAT will definitely not set off any raging paroxysms of fear or anything. But Hajira’s calm resolve seems to be holding, so she agrees without thinking about it more than a sliver of a moment. With bodyguards in tow, they set off for the jail, and unbeknownst to them, when they go outside a waiting Frimhandler picks up their trail and begins shadowing them again.

At the jail, Beck Crosbin, “Old Crowsbeak,” is shown deference; they are shown to a well-appointed meeting-room. He obtains the paperwork for Njenq’s case and looks it over, concern creasing his half-gobliny face. Meanwhile, Hajira mentions her message from Njenq, and Crosbin has it brought to her. She reads it: Oh, my. This is a pretty pickle…

Crosbin summons the guard captain, and asks about the charges; the captain relates the narrative of Njenq’s sentencing. Crosbin then states they wish to see Njenq. The captain moves to escort them into the jail proper, and Hajira feels panic trying to rise up in her, all that steel, steel walls, but before anything happens Crosbin says easily, “Oh, I think you can bring her to us here, Captain,” and after a moment’s pause the Captain agrees. Close call.

Hajira takes this moment to relate to Crosbin that Njenq’s “crime” has been mischaracterized: Njenq and Frimhandler chased the fleeing cutpurse, who led them into an ambush where it was 4 of them against 2, and their opponents were indeed armed, well enough that they waded into combat against an obviously armed and armored Njenq. Njenq and Frimhandler prevailed, upon which the cutpurse began running again, and Njenq took her last opportunity to stop the thief by striking him with the only thing that could reach: the tip of her katana.

Then Njenq was brought in, and being Njenq immediately accused Crosbin of being the instrument of her imprisonment. She quite convincingly vows to bring nothing but death and misery to anyone who tries to get an ounce of slave labor out of her. Hajira lays out the argument slightly more diplomatically, and Crosbin is forced to admit that something about Njenq’s predicament reeks of set-up, and asks if Njenq has any enemies in the city? Or maybe her companion does? Hajira’s mind immediately leaps to: Vermillion! Njenq says no one in the city knows or cares who she is. But she is adamant that somebody was behind the charges pressed by the cutpurse.

The deal is arranged: for Crosbin to use his influence to get Njenq released into his service. She should be freed soon. As soon as she can Hajira gives Njenq a reassuring squeeze and heads back to the gate, guided by one of Crosbin’s henchmen. She again sings as she goes, and her voice remains strong and clear. Past the gate again, Frimhandler and Hajira reunite; Hajira tells all, and they head off to the woods to camp and plan and to see what tomorrow might bring.

Hajira muses on her luck. If she had gotten Njenq’s note in a timely way, she may very well have left the others to their fate as the note urged her to do. Her mission, her love, her destiny all call her to abandon this foulest of places and head north again. But she didn’t get the note, instead she got Frimhandler quietly commending that they keep to their plan, that Hajira could walk through the valleys of wall and fear no evil, and she had listened to Frimhandler, and thus it had proved to be.

Well, we wanted to gain employment from Ol’ Crowsbeak, hadn’t we? The monkeyspaw has granted our wish!

1 CP

Into the Dwarven Delves

Adventure Notes 2-7-2018 KE

“Njenq will be released in a few days,” they say… In the pines, Frimhandler is trying to self-study thaumatology, without much success, while Hajira is going to the back gate every morning and checking for news about Njenq, and hobnobbing more with the goblins who live there. Hajira relates the names of city personalities to Frimhandler that Hajira learned earlier from the old goblin:

• Rodolf Korteweg, crazy artificer of the Clock Tower. Described with a good deal of fondness, and a bit of disdain.
• Old Crow's Beak, master of strange forces and the College District. Mentioned with respect for his lastingness.
• Rena Yost, beautiful 'alchemist' (poisoner) in the Gear District. The old goblin's face conveys both fear and longing.

Oh, and Hajira gives back to Frimhandler the papers that rose up and walked of their own volition out of the police station into our hands… and Frim discovers, as she packs them away, that the old papers recovered from the ruin have crumbled into bits during their rough journey.

As she makes herself useful again at the back gate, Hajira inquires more about these notable city personalities from the folk there, but learns very little more except that the Rena the Poisoner has a shop and you can walk right in, if you can find it. But whether you walk out again is a different matter…

The Farmers Gate leads to the farm enclave (an enclave because it has river on one side and moat on the other three). Hajira learns that there is a third gate: the Dower Portal (Dwarven Gate) leads deeper into the goblin kingdom; valuable trade goes through here; it’s right under the watchful eyes of the Citadel. The road from the Farmers Gate leads west and maybe a little north, heading presumably for Reme and hence Vonmek; the road from the Dwarven Gate leads west and then south, into the goblin kingdom, and likely winds its way eventually to Durham?

On the afternoon of the second day, Njenq is released; her items are returned to her. She can tell someone has been fondling her katana. Bastards! After a bit of paperwork, Njenq is shown the door. Someone has taken care of all the miscellaneous fees… but she is under no illusion that she will never see them again… Njenq is trembling, and realizes she has very quickly and powerfully developed an intense quirky dislike for fees.

Njenq steps out into the street, warily, and immediately takes steps to secure her purse more securely. She makes her way out the back gate, meets up with Hajira, they then rejoin Frimhandler. The three make a plan in case they get separated or the deal with Crowsbeak goes south; they are to meet at the old ruin by the river, at the edge of the forest.

Njenq and Frimhandler go back into the goblin city, bearing a note from Hajira, which essentially tells Ol’ Crowsbeak ‘there are interesting things happening up north’ and she recommends sending them there. Is it a bit flirtatious? You are imagining things. Njenq’s total debt turns out to be 19 gold (with additional fees)… Njenq opines that she is now Crosbin’s indentured servant, and he agrees amiably that that seems to be the case. He produces a contract, in Goblin, which sets out terms, which include 10% interest per year by the way. Frimhandler reads it out to Njenq. Njenq is hard-nosed about the terms; she wants the details ironed out now; they settle at last on a garnishment of 40%? 45% is the counteroffer? And 45% finally accepted by Njenq. The pay rate: 2 gold for the threesome per month for the three of them, which is 800 for Njenq, 700 with Frimhandler, and 500 for Hajira; Frimhandler asks for more, 3 gold; but the merchanting skills elude our party. Two gold it is, but Crosbin promises a re-evaluation in two month’s time. He has accommodation available for 600 a month, are we interested? The numbers are the party would get 2000, have 900 garnished, pay 600, so only netting 500 a month minus food. For the three of them. Frimhandler and Njenq say they want to discuss the lodgings arrangement with Hajira.

Njenq casually mentions that she has no way of knowing if Crosbin negotiated a lower rate for her release and now is charging her the full rate, and Frimhandler sees that he is utterly shocked at such an idea. That would be, dishonest!

Frimhandler inquires if she could learn thaumatology from Crosbin, and he replies in the affirmative. “Expensive, though.” Fees.

Does he have a job for us in mind? Yes, yes he does, it would be under the city. Would that be a problem for Hajira? Frimhandler thinks not. He explains there are old tunnels under the city; an entrance in one of his warehouses; dwarves of old did some explorations, apparently, which found nothing but did leave the excavations. Which he would like to have explored, and the creatures noted which are encountered: to map the locations of interesting creatures. Frimhandler is willing to learn the necessary mapmaking skill, because then she will command a higher fee. Crosbin notes that “one or two” parties have been sent in, but… [shrugs]

The creatures to be found include spiders, large spiders, apparently, Frimhandler mentions we have some experience in that area. Crosbin seems to be most interested in spider venom… with a level of interest which is frankly just a little bit creepy. (You get the venom from the venom sacs by the way – they are apparently the part that’s valuable, not the fangs.)

Frimhandler wants to see the entrance immediately, and it’s arranged we will do a first recon tomorrow, then will regroup to learn the necessary mapmaking skills from Ol’ Fee-Based Crowsbeak.

The two are shown the warehouse, and are shown the entrance, quite large, with a stair descending into the earth.

That done, the two head back to Hajira at the back gate, scouting the city as they go to try to find a direct route from the city edge to the warehouse, to ease Hajira’s way; but the close way is via the Farmer’s Gate, which involves Njenq’s Bane, fees, because you must take the ferry to get to the farmer’s enclave.

After rejoining with Hajira, we decide to look for accommodation on the Farmer’s Island; Frimhandler and Njenq can go through the city to get there, but Hajira decides it’s best if she goes around. She successfully haggles down the ferryman. But then Hajira finds she must trot up the road upstream for about 10 miles to cross the north fork of the river at the road bridge, then trot down the road another 10 miles to reach the Farmer’s Gate. So when she finally arrives it’s getting near dark, and we camp out for the night.

In the morning we successfully find a frugal accommodation in a farmer’s storage shed. With basic food it comes to 600 a month, through Hajira’s mild success at negotiating a price with the farm wife. Better than what Crosbin had proposed, because food is in the deal. That taken care of, we prepare to enter the city.

Hajira attempts to meditate in preparation, but her mind is not composed. Oh well. Hajira makes her singing good, with ancestral help, and singing her way, passes easily into the city and to the warehouse – which we don’t have to cross the river to reach. We are admitted and brought to the stair leading down. Njenq and Hajira chat up the guard on duty, and learn that as Crosbin said, we are the third group to go down, to the guard’s knowledge; he confirms that the first two never came back, and their fate is unknown. Okay, cool, if we see them we’ll just say hi. Down we go.

We have no cartography skill, and seem doomed to more or less blunder around, but at the utmost limit of her luck, Hajira invokes a memory of watching her mother draw a map of her farming community for a stranger when she was little. Aha. She takes the parchment and charcoal stick that Crosbin gave us and begins to draw and take notes as we go. Ha! one more fee avoided.

The stairs wind down, creeping around and around the walls of a square shaft, landing after landing. We see several strata of rock go by as we descend. Until finally the shaft hits a layer of apparently the right kind of rock, which the dwarves then explore. We emerge right at a crossroad with passages that run in the cardinal directions; the stair emerges in the south wall of the west passage, right at the crossroad itself. Frimhandler casts dark vision on Njenq; we deploy a lantern, carried by Frim, we all look as far as we can down each passage. Hajira checks the dust on the floor for tracks but apparently nothing has come by recently. She checks air movement, using one of her hairs as a gauge; there seems to be a fair amount of air coming from the west passage, a little from south and east, and none from the north; the air moves in from the passages and flows up the shaft. She names the crossroad Warehouse Cross and the passage running north-south to be Warehouse Road.

The group lines up Hajira then Frim then Njenq; the idea is that if something bad comes from the front, Hajira will parry it while Njenq reaches over her and kills it and Frim flame-jets around her and burns up the now-doubly-dead body. Hajira wants to go east, which would take them to places under the center of the city, but meditating on that idea gives her a bad feeling. We file away that information and go north instead, which is toward the north fork of the river, but the passage soon comes to a dead end. The end is rougher than the walls – maybe the dwarves simply abandoned this direction as unpromising. Hajira checks: the ground is not wet here (no seepage from the river, which is way overhead), nobody’s tracks.

The three go back to the crossroad and explore Warehouse Road to the south. This passage brings them to another crossroad. We peer down each passage, and see the one to the east soon curves out of sight to the south; the south passage continues due south; at Njenq’s suggestion we choose the west passage, thinking that maybe we will find a passage going north again which will encounter the earlier westbound passage and so we can map out a loop.

Not to be. We soon encounter some rough side-passages, going north and south; we explore the north first, it soon dead-ends; strangely, the last one-third of it has smooth finished walls. Frimhandler looks for secret doors, but does not find any; Hajira looks for tracks, but finds only scant trace of rats. She dubs this side-passage to be Rathole Alley. We then explore the south Rathole Alley, but it dead-ends as well. No rat tracks here. Note that everything, even the rough side passages, seem to have a common floor and passage height, and we are walking on the level.

Back to the main passage, and along it again to the west, to find another pair of rough passages north and south. Peering down the main passage further west, Hajira gets a very bad feeling about going further that way; the hairs on her neck stand on end. Njenq wants to investigate the side passages but Hajira, thinking tactically, doesn’t want to get trapped in them if something bad comes from the west. Hajira dubs this main east-west passage Evil Dwarf Road. They retrace their steps all the way back to the Warehouse Cross and venture west from there.

That smooth main passage bends southward but then! gasp! takes a 90ºish turn to the northwestish, which prompts Hajira to name this passage Drunken Dwarf Road. The road then runs straight for a fair length. While walking it, Hajira thinks to look for tracks; she doesn’t find them, but notices something; hard to say what, exactly; in trying to make sense of it, she checks her ancestral memory; and the idea comes to her unbidden that the dwarves would on occasion create defensive corridors, which were protected by sigils of defense or protection; these sigils might be invisible to the naked eye. The party pauses in the corridor while she relays this intuition and we ponder what this information might portend. In the pause, Hajira gives her shield, staff and bow an extra bit of food and water; today might turn out to be a long hard day.

• Hajira's map – day 1:
  

1 CP

A Kiss on the Cheek

Adventure Notes 2-21-2018 KE

Suddenly Hajira gets mapper’s vertigo – the map now seems like a bunch of meaningless squiggles and who knows which way is north anymore? She calms herself somewhat, but her ability to map has left her. On top of her ancestral memory warning about protective dwarven runes, she wonders: did she hit a disorientation rune?

Frimhandler searches carefully but finds nothing. Hajira has simply lost it, apparently.

We go up to the intersection ahead; it’s a T intersection; the branch to the right goes nowhere, ends quickly – apparently the dwarves just stopped digging it. The left branch heads off into the darkness.

Hajira feeling poorly about this whole situation; we head back up uneventfully. We exchange a few words with the snide guard.

After lunch back at their shack, we re-enter the city, Hajira feeling undaunted, even confident in the city this afternoon. We pass the guards again, go down the spiral-squared stair with the open central shaft, and arrive at Warehouse Cross.

We strike out east on Drunken Dwarf Road, quickly come to an intersection: roads north and south go off in a normal orthogonal manner, but the east continuation of Drunken Dwarf Road, true to its name, veers southeast. Hajira tries to meditate on going N, but fails to enter a suitably calm state.

We go north on Bendy Road; it starts curving to the right, which is east, but then quickly encounters another 4-way intersection, and this one is a bit crazy: none in direct line with each other, and we can see they all curve in crazy directions.

Hajira suddenly feels good about mapping again – (a crit success roll, a natural 3!) she begins mapping again, at a higher level than before.

Hajira looks for tracks: nothing. Hajira meditates and gets the same feeling as earlier today: something a bit bad around here. They go south. This passage has natural rock walls which vary a bit but the passage itself goes fairly straight. Until it ends.

They go back to Bendy Road and follow it east; it curves south and then ends after a while. The north passage curves east and ends after just a short distance; this road is therefore named Short Cane Road, for the shape it makes.

Back down Bendy Road to Drunken Dwarf Road, then east. Hajira meditates but gets the feeling that meditation isn’t giving a feeling on particular options, but on the place as a whole. This leg of Drunken Dwarf Road bends pretty far south and then a new 4way intersection. Hajira looks at tracks and sees something to the southeast. They check southwest and it curves around in a familiar manner and then ends, also in a familiar manner. They then go southeast, but soon the ceiling begins to drop until the passage gets quite narrow and low. To continue, the big members would have to go on hands and knees.

Hajira checks tracks: yes, something has gone through here recently, but unknown as to what. Frimhandler wants to check it out – the others feel uneasy, but it does make some sense. She casts Chameleon on herself, and proceeds stealthily, very successful. Njenq proceeds a ways after Frimhandler, not nearly as stealthily. Hajira guards behind, looking back the way they came.

Frimhandler finds the low-ceiling passage slopes down and gets quite damp; there is dripping ahead, down into a pool. Frimhandler tells Njenq to wait. Frimhandler looks around: the passage seems to open up ahead, signs of water, damp air coming her way. She goes on hands and knees and proceeds stealthily to where it opens up, to observe from there.

She’s entered a very large chamber, with a low ceiling; it doesn’t rise much from where she is, and she can’t stand up fully where she is. The chamber stretches out widely and is almost full with the blackest of water, very still. Before her, the land slopes down into the underground pool. Frimhandler keeps to the right wall, goes down to the water’s edge, to sniff it and even taste a drop, and see/hear what she can sense. Brackish.

Faint jingling from Njenq and her armor. Frimhandler observes the drops falling into the water, and detects a driplike phenomenon – maybe like a minnow broaching the surface? Frimhandler observes closer, sees there are minnows or other small dark creatures, a lot of them.

Frimhandler observes further, and after a minute the fish seem to disappear into the depths. Frimhandler checks pockets, does she have any food with her? Yes she does! She flicks it out into the pool.

The morsel hits the water with a tiny splash, which is magnified by the cavern. For several moments, nothing. Then the water begins to ripple with movement, between where the crumb hit and the shore. Then in a near-silent splish a creature leaps from the water, seemingly straight towards Frimhandler face; but it misses and hits the wall beside her. It then squirms its way back to the water. Frimhandler sees it is a sluglike leech. Okay, ick.

Frimhandler turns back to return to the others – a stealthy retreat. Behind her, more leeches are launching themselves, seemingly in random trajectories. One hits Frimhandler in the back, and clings to her clothing; Frimhandler brushes it free and sees it’s like a lamprey. Another one hits her, but also drops off when it hits non-flesh. Frimhandler looks to see if she has a cup to put one in? But abandons the idea and gets out of range of the lampreys, back to her friends.

Curiosity being a dangerous thing, Frimhandler wants to go back to capture one of the creatures in a cup. But Njenq prevails: she should do it, because she has a shield. Noisily she proceeds, shield first, waiting for that Olympic-caliber fish to hit her shield and flop onto the ground. The fish go for the bait. Njenq tries to figure out how to capture the fish that are hitting around her, but in an unguarded moment a lucky fish hits her face and attaches to her cheek.

She attempts to rip it off, but only succeeds in banging her katana into the rock wall. She drops it. She squirms her way back and comes face to face with Frimhandler, who sees the lamprey has dropped off.

Frimhandler tries to capture the now-fat leech as it wriggles back to the water, but can’t arrange it. We retire up the corridor, Frimhandler heals Njenq, and we rest for a half hour. Hajira meditates on Njenq’s health, but hey, Njenq’s a walking disaster, she could die at any time for any reason, so that’s inconclusive.

We name it: Leech Lake! Njenq’s Folly!

We check the northeast passage from the intersection. As it passes near to the pool we check the corridor as best we can for plunge traps, but there are none. Hajira looks for tracks: seemingly nothing. This corridor goes a long long way but it also ends.

We figure that’s enough for one day, and head back up to report to Old Crowsbeak. Frimhandler tells him what we’ve found so far. He seems relatively uninterested in the leeches, and reveals he’s actually interested in supernatural creatures. But he does seem to perk up when the party talks up the unique qualities of the leeches; he reconsiders. After some discussion he determines that he does indeed want a sample, and we are to procure one for him.

He deems it a good foray, and gives us tomorrow off. We go back; we look for food for sale, but don’t find anything good. We retire for the evening.

The next day we go shopping; Hajira doesn’t do very well at haggling, but for not outrageous prices we obtain a net, a bucket with a lid, some chalk, a dark lantern and a hundred yards of twine. Hajira goes for a walk in the woods, practices her mapmaking, and does a little hunting and bags a rabbit. We retire and sleep, and in the morning, we wake, ready to continue… back into Crosbin’s Lovely Underdark…

1 CP

The Lizard Hits Rock Bottom

Adventure Notes 3-7-2018 by Ken

It is now the 18th day of this adventure. It seems to be sometime late in spring. We awake early and head into town, to go back into the Underdark.

Hajira forgets to sing! And her urban phobia seizes her. She trails helplessly in Njenq’s wake as they plow through the city and through the warehouse. Njenq is in a foul mood and having none of Hajira’s scaredycatness. They get no lip from the guards, who sense that “now is not the time.” The guard at the shaft itself seems to be attending to something, and Hajira masters her fear enough to ask him what it is. The guard can’t put his finger on it; it’s too quiet, maybe? “We’ll soon change that,” Hajira grouses, and down they go.

And at the bottom, somewhat inevitably, she gets map vertigo something fierce. Her mapmaking skill has completely deserted her. But finding the road they sought was easy – it’s just left out of the stair, then the first right – but that passage goes south, bends left, and after 100 yards it ends.

Back at the stair, Hajira sings a song of recovery to calm herself, which works okay, and she meditates, which definitely aids in calming. But she discovers her profuse sweating has ruined her charcoal, so no mapping possible today.

They go to the second small pair of passages, and first explore Shinbone Alley North, but it ends after 25 yards or so. Same for Shinbone Alley South.

They proceed further down the main passageway, but it seems to get dark, and very soon they reach a point where the path ahead goes completely black. Frimhandler examines it with enhanced perception and determines that there is a lip ahead and beyond it, seemingly nothing. There is some sort of lip or effect all around the perimeter.

Njenq finds a small pebble and throws it through the portal into the blackness. Quite a bit later – as if there is a great drop just beyond the portal – we hear a slight tink.

Frimhandler creeps forward, a rope around her, looking for an edge. She finds it – it’s odd how sharply the rock ends. Left and right, the walls recede away, rough in surface. at about a 75-degree angle; up and down, the cut is abrupt, at 90 degrees.

Frimhandler walks on air, rope in hand, along the right wall; she sees the chamber is like a large cylinder, extending down. She confirms this with a trip along the left wall. She goes straight out, and can dimly see the far wall; it seems to be over 100’ away and is solid – she doesn’t see any passage on the far side. Exploring downward, this cylindrical shaft seems to keep going. Exploring upward, she soon finds the semi-dome ceiling overhead.

Using the 100’ string, Frimhandler goes down as far as she can – still nothing. She goes back up and we try tossing a pebble well out into the void. We hear nothing. But Njenq thinks she hears something from the upward direction, so we back off and listen quietly. Nothing presents itself.

We try the pebble again – still nothing. We take the smudged parchment, soak it in oil, and light it, and toss it out into the void; as near as we can tell, it drops endlessly. Frimhandler drops air walk and enhances perception, and she can dimly see it far below, possibly still dropping. The shaft seems to be endless.

Questions abound! Why does this chasm exist? Is this what the dwarves were looking for? Who knows? Shrugging, we prepare to go, BUT then two of the lumps on the rock wall move to the opening and attack! They are actually lizards of some kind – stoneskin lizards?

Combat! Frimhandler dodges back as Njenq charges forward, katana in hand. Hajira, staff in hand, is slow to respond. The lizard smacks into Njenq and knocks her down.

Njenq squirms her way free. Hajira steps behind the south lizard and strikes at it, but misses. Frimhandler flames the south lizard, amazingly effective, but the end effect is unknown. The lizards strike again, but Frimhandler dances away again. Hajira strikes at the north lizard, intending to distract it from attacking Njenq, who is trying to stand; Hajira lands a good blow to its leg. Stone chips fly!

Flames from Frimhandler again at the south lizard, and now a slash from Njenq also. The south lizard seems done, it squirms backward. Njenq accidentally slashes herself, but recovers, slashing now at the north lizard, which lunges for Njenq but misses.

Hajira knocks the south lizard one last time, and it eases over the edge and is gone. Njenq slashes away at the north lizard, a flurry of blows, and it begins to retreat. As it heads for the edge, Njenq rains blows upon it, Frimhandler flames it, Hajira takes several whacks at its already damaged leg, finally rendering it useless. Under the rain of hurt, the lizard backs off the edge, loses its grip, and plunges into the abyss.

We listen as it caroms off several prominences and finally, after a long pause, seems to hit bottom. Not a splash – it seems to be solid ground?

We gather the stone chips that are left behind, including one that Frimhandler notes has a skin pattern on it. Then we go back up and make our report to Ol’ Crowsbeak.

He’s interested when we tell him about the lizards and show him the chips we gathered. We try to convey how fascinating the abyss is, as an unusual structure under the earth, but he seems not very interested in it. We talk about the possible reasons that the dwarves were delving here, but it was before the city existed here, and no legends about it seem to have survived. We agree that it seems the dwarves were creating exploratory passages, operating under imperfect information, pursuing some sort of vague signal? But Crowsbeak is more interested in the lizards. That’s the sort of creature we’re supposed to find, good job team. Rah rah team Crowsbeak.

We rest that day and then the next, we go back into the city. Hajira goes to buy a pitch-heavy torch in the market, and is rattled when the goblin merchant mutters something under his breath during the transaction. By luck Hajira catches enough of the muttering to repeat phonetically to Frimhandler, who comes up with “could this be the thief?” Means nothing to Hajira, but it bothers her.

They go down and decide to catch a slug first. They head over to the pond, where Frimhandler goes first, creeping toward Njenq’s Folly with pail, lid and net. Again the slugs begin leaping at the slightest sound but Frimhandler is unable to catch any of them until one latches onto her neck. When it drops off, sated, it drops into the net and from there into the bucket, which we deliver to Crosbin’s. He’s busy, so we leave the lethal bloodsucking parasite in the care of his lieutenant. That’s enough for one day, so back we go to our accommodation, to rest up for the adventures ahead.

+1 CP

A Luckily Day (Except Spiders)

Adventure Notes 3-23-18

We take a day off. While Njenq successfully loses her money less quickly than usual, Frimhandler spends the day practicing shadowing people, and Hajira has a domestic day: she carefully prepares some good drawing charcoal sticks; sews herself a rabbitskin sheath for her silver knife; practices her mapmaking skills by making duplicate maps for ourselves, carved into thin slabs of wood. Hajira goes out to do these things under the trees in a nearby copse, to recharge her batteries and do some self-therapy against further panic attacks.

Only to discover, as Hajira finishes up her day, that she apparently had a watcher: her tracker’s eye notes that someone hid in a nearby hollow, apparently watching her; and more alarmingly, took some care to hide their tracks as best they could when they snuck away, going back to the city.

Together again, we discusses who it might be and what they might do. Frimhandler chameleons herself and inspects the surroundings, but doesn’t see anyone that has them under observation at this point. Hajira sleeps out in the wild, which causes her to lose a bit of sleep; she rises early to see if anyone now has them under observation, but apparently not?

A bit warily, we go back to work, down in Crosbin’s Lovely Underdark. Hajira manages her city phobia, which seems (to her at least) more like true sight with every passing day.

How are Hajira’s cartography skills today? Seemingly not so good, but then she luckily gets her mind set better, and voila! Charcoal in hand and spacial positioning in mind, we enter the Underdark.

We map out a bit of explored, but unmapped, central corridor (the south end of Bendy Road) and then venture to further our exploration of what lies at the north end of Drunken Dwarven Road. The result is shown in the Day 20 map. The tunnels here are generally different: they are narrower, rougher, more raw; they are messier (there’s more pebble and other rock debris than the normally clean passages). These tunnels may be following seams of a special rock material, one that is more crumbly or sedimentary than the surrounding rock.

This is how we proceeded: we followed Drunken End Road until it turned south; we kept westerly on Tunnel Highway, then split off to the north on Slopedown Tunnel; Hajira thought maybe the passage sloped down here. When we came to Loopy Tunnel, we followed it to the right, where Njenq thought it soon sloped up. In time we came to Vertebra Tunnel, which we first followed south through The Ribs and so to a significant feature: the tunnel had been deliberately blocked up at some point; an extensive blockage, with huge boulders. (Not against flooding: no sign of any water incursion.) We examine the whole area carefully, and Hajira tries to meditate on it without success, but find no further clues. Blocked up so as not to connect with the Lizard Abyss? Possibly.

Then we followed the Vertebra Tunnel north, to find it came to a similar end. (Might there be another Lizard-type Abyss ahead? Seems unlikely?) Although there seems to have been some sign of disturbance here (not recent). Some rocks dislodged. Plus there were samples of a softer, crumblier rock, the first time we’d seen them? Or just the first time we noticed them? Hard to tell. Frimhandler takes samples.

We then took Loopy Tunnel to the west, where we notice that we are crossing over larger piles of debris. Frimhandler quickly determines that these piles are the crumbly rock – we seem to be intersecting seams of it? It goes on either side of the passage, horizontally, but not vertically. This is the third one – we had already crossed two without noticing; but this seems to be unique to this area, as near as we can remember. We continue and cross over a fourth.

This passage connects up with Tunnel Highway, one of the unexplored branches we had revealed earlier. Njenq guides us down the middle passageway leading south. Which after an odd jog becomes much more regular and straight and heads straight south. We seem to have discovered a new well-delved area, with clean well-shaped tunnels.

Sure enough, we come across a normal orthogonal intersection! With a shaft extending upward like there is at Warehouse Cross. The stair seems to be lost though. But there’s no time to note much else because a giant spider drops straight out of the gloom above onto Hajira. Spiders, why does it always have to be spiders.

Combat reflexes for the win: Hajira dodges back and parries the spider’s biting attack with a sharp rap to its mouth parts. Quick for their size, which is quite impressively large by the way, thank you for asking – The spider leaps back to avoid Frimhandler’s flame jet. A second spider now plops down. Hajira tries to invoke tactics: nope.

Hajira is trying to hold the corridor. Delighted to be presented such a morsel, both spiders lunge forward at the same time, and collide in the passage opening. Both almost lose their footing.

Hajira takes this moment to call for a fighting retreat. Njenq of course will have none of that, steps forward and begins slashing. Oh, well, okay then: Hajira joins in with attacks as well. Frimhandler sends another flame jet and forces the spider to dodge back around a corner, into a side tunnel.

The other spider lunges at Njenq, who blocks with her shield. To Njenq’s amazement the spider fangs pierce straight through the shield and her armor – but luckily stop right there, apparently touching but not breaking her skin. But then there’s a splash of something icky – Uh-oh, here comes the acid burn.

The spider takes damage from counterblows, and leaps upward to disappear into the heights. It may have thought that it had successfully poisoned Njenq and is now stepping back to let the poison do all the hard work. The other spider is out of sight around the corridor. Hajira calls again for a rolling fallback and this time it’s what we do. Frimhandler is casting a heal upon the now-suffering Njenq.

We haven’t gotten very far when the lurking spider makes his leaping play. It springs off our corridor wall in a shaolin move and attempts to get behind us by sailing over our heads. Njenq tries to impede it with her shield but that doesn’t work. Hajira, who was on guard, tries to get her staff up and braced against the ceiling, but her effort seems to be a total failure BUT THEN SHE GETS TOTALLY LUCKY, the staff clicks into place, and the spider caroms off it into the wall behind us, stunned. The staff, being alive, is willowy and gives a lot but in the end it fractures, with Hajira left literally holding the short end of the stick.

Frimhandler flames the spider at point-blank range. Njenq, who is not happy at this moment by the way, totally takes it out on this spider hulk. By the time Hajira retrieves the long end of her staff, the spider is crawling off down the corridor to die. We take a moment to regroup, and to try to stop the poison burn on Njenq; with a wary eye on the corridor for the approach of the other spider, but it does not return. Hajira retrieves both ends of her staff. She puts a couple arrows into the spider hulk, including one into its head, to make sure it is dead.

We want to return, and quickly, lest Njenq’s burning situation become dire from lack of attention. But we do want to take a sample of the poison with us, and after some discussion we determine that to take the entire spider head might be the safest way. Cutting the head off tests Njenq’s bile-suppression reflexes to their maximum, but in time we succeed. Putting a rope around the head, we drag it behind us, and retrace our steps back up to the warehouse.

The guard is goggle-eyed, seeing us emerge with the spider head. Frimhandler attempts to heal Njenq, but apparently is too tired. We set out for Crosbin’s but a guard offers to find us a sack for the spider head, and also offers Njenq a swig of an adult beverage, which she gratefully accepts.

A trio of gore-splattered adventurers dragging a sack-lump of something oozing ichor through the main streets of the city manages to generate about as much interest as you would expect. Alert, Frimhandler doesn’t see anyone following or paying undue attention, however. We arrive at Crosbin’s place - where we are not allowed onto the good carpet, nor do we want to go there. We go instead to a servant room, the spider head put upon a table, and where Njenq can be led to a side room, with a sink where she can clean up. Njenq takes off her armor, sees the acid venom has eaten away at her clothing and even the inside of the armor itself is pitted. "My, that's going to be a nasty scar when it heals..."

Crosbin comes up, is impressed to see the spider head. Frimhandler also wants to show him the rock samples, but his full reaction to that and our tale will have to wait for next session!

(Oh, and Hajira has pulled aside a few rock samples for ourselves – we don’t give them all to Crosbin…)

1 CP

The Curious and the (Near) Dead

Adventure Notes 4-4-18

We resume the adventure in Crosbin’s house. Crosbin is fascinated by the spider head and stops Njenq from cleaning away any more venom. He is keen to know the details, so we tell him all about the encounter with the spiders. He calls for sketchbook and pen and in a way that is not morbid or grisly at all, sketches the severed head and Njenq’s wounds.

Hajira soaks the broken ends of her staff and splints them together, so that they can heal. Meanwhile, Crosbin promises her a new one, and replacement armor and shield for Njenq.

He mentions possible promising results from studying the leech, mentions that the leech might benefit healers? Crosbin is investigating that.

Hajira asks him if he sent someone to shadow her. When he says of course not, she says it must be one of his competitors then, who have heard about the brave adventurers and are plotting to hire them away from Crosbin. Which would be too bad, she says; we are enjoying working with Crosbin.

Njenq asks about value fo Crosbin of a whole specimen. Crosbin agrees, we talk about possibly bringing a whole dead spider to the bottom of the shaft where Crosbin’s men could haul it up.

Bonus! Crosbin produces 20 SP (= $200), gives to Hajira. Hajira later adds this to the party purse.

Crosbin retires for more study of the spider head. The party gets the $$$ to replace the lost items from a recalcitrant servant, overseen by Hajira and her watchful eye. Hajira and Njenq go off to replenish their armor etc. and to buy Njenq a bottle of up-from-swill brandy, and do some carousing, while Frimhandler goes off to practice her shadowing.

Njenq and Hajira find a good replacement for the items, for the price paid to them by Crosbin. Njenq and Hajira then locate some brandy. Meanwhile, Frimhandler is diligently practicing shadowing people; she has about 7 days of the 40 necessary to learn this skill.

Njenq and Hajira spend $40 on carousing, Njenq has a very good time, not in the Dancing Bear, which was boring with boring people, but in the Unnamed Hole In The Wall, which is much more interesting. Njenq finds kindred spirits there, others who appreciate a tall drink after a hard day. Hajira hears Njenq’s grim story of how she met Frimhandler and why she owes Frimhandler ten or a dozen or maybe a hundred million coin.

Hajira overhears three scruffy goblins loudly discussing who has wronged them: Corteweg comes up, up in his tower, so much better than us, mouths platitudes about honor and honesty but is as corrupt as the next guy. Corteweg refused to buy some items because they were illegitimately obtained. Then they move to the next object of scorn.

Off to home and supper and bed we go. Hajira does a circuit around their shack after the sun goes down, just to see what may be there; she is very stealthy and has her wits about her, and… all seems quiet.

Night is uneventful. Morning comes. We check Njenq’s wound; it seems to be healing nicely.

Hajira prepares some charcoal sticks and singing a happy go lucky song, defeats her fear and enters the city. Down into the Underdark we go, Hajira with mapping skills at the ready. Frimhandler casts See In The Dark for everyone, which replenishes as we walk from Frimhandler’s energy reserve.

We take the Tunnel Highway south, and it curves west and intersects with Spiderjump Shaft. As we approach, we discuss strategies: bring firewood and light it to smoke spider out? (Also see if smoke emerges somewhere back up on the surface?) But in the end we decide to just sneak forward and check out the shaft.

Hajira fails her stealth roll. But nothing drops on us.

Shaft rises taller than the one we come down. Quite a bit more, actually. It may be endless? We can’t see the top. We see there is some stairway still intact about 20’ up, although it seems to be collapsed or destroyed in places as it goes up. Spider debris, bodylike bundles hanging, some spider strands hangs above.

We do not dawdle in the shaft, but turn left and head south.

Another intersection, Frimhandler detects some light to the right, so we go that way. Hajira not being successful at being stealthy. The corridor ends but just before the end on the left there is a discontinuity, a vertical gash about two fists wide with some light leaking in. The gash seems to go horizontal – whatever it connects to, has light in it? We hear something faintly but cannot hear it distinctly; we note that cool air where we are is gently being drawn through the crack to the other place.

The other way also dead-ends very soon. No secret doors, no tracks.

We head south, which dead-ends also. Frimhandler is sure she has found a secret door, but Hajira is sure she is mistaken; she meditates on it to be sure. After much time spent here, we return the way we came. We approach the intersection – Hajira and Njenq are super quiet but Frimhandler of all people makes a racket. But no incident, we explore west.

Any signs in the dirt? Hajira sees disturbances from a long long time ago? But impossible to make out what exactly happened.

This corridor is blocked with a cave-in! Dwarves didn’t do a good job here? No ore here. No clues found. Back to the Spiderjump Shaft intersection. Frimhandler gives in to her curiosity about the bundles and no one talks sense to her. She air walks up, going up with a rope. Hajira switches to bow, knocks an arrow, looks to provide covering fire.

Frimhandler goes up. Is this crazy or what? Frimhandler comes up to a webbed bundle, pokes it with her jo. Continues up the stair, walking on air, and pokes the next bundle. It’s even less substantial than the first one. She looks up, for spiders, or something to tie the rope to. There’s a spider, 50’ up, huddled near the top, possibly injured. Not being aggressive. Frimhandler starts back down, BUT

A second spider drops on Frimhandler. Hajira can’t shoot it before it slams into Frimhandler, injuring her. Hajira then shoots the spider in the torso, to little seeming effect. Frimhandler flames the spider at point-blank range for a critical hit.

Frimhandler is gored by the spider, and passes out. in critical condition.

Hajira, inexperienced at fast-drawing arrows, knocks another arrow.

Spider attempts to jump away as stair collapses, fails and falls as Frimhandler does too. Spider slams into ground but appears uninjured, gets up. Frimhandler takes more damage, is in critical condition.

Njenq draws her spare katana and slashes at the spider, wounding it once. The spider jumps away to the remaining (lower) bit of the platform.

Hajira calls for a retreat, drops bow, runs to Frimhandler, drags her back down the corridor, with Njenq covering their exit. As we rush Frimhandler back up and out, the poison runs its course, but although sorely tempted to, Frimhandler does not die. When we get back up looking for a healer, we get a potion from a guard and administer it, it heals a wee bit. Crosbin’s servant leads us to a healer in the College District, Frimhandler pulls through this first period and begins a long healing.

Njenq and Hajira vow to go back and retrieve their dropped weapons the next day. And maybe exact some retribution?

1 CP

Spider A La Cart

Adventure Notes 4-18-18 by Ken

Once we ascertain Frimhandler is out of danger of an abjectly horrible shuddering heel-drumming death, Hajira and Njenq go to retrieve their weapons. That turns out to be on the following morning (Day 22, if you’re keeping track). Hajira has ideas about bringing torches and lighting the tumbled timber on fire to shield them as they recover the weapons but look! A squirrel! In the end we just bring our two dark lanterns and the oil.

The day dawns. We depart our modest accommodations (our stalker forgotten for the moment). At the city gate Hajira tamps her fear of this treeless soulless goblinesque monstrosity of a city into a ball that she tucks into her left cheek, like a wad of tobacco, and spits it out from time to time. We breeze into the warehouse and down the stair, not interacting with anyone.

In Crosbin’s Lovely Underdark, first we approach Spiderjump Shaft from the north. The headless spider corpse is still there where we left it, not predated upon, or buried/eaten by its kin, and most importantly not yet stinky-gaggy. We all approach stealthily, except for Njenq. Njenq also seems not to remember how not to shine a dark lantern into her eyes.

No matter. From a ways off, Hajira thinks she can see her bow! Forward we go, and as we get close to Spiderjump Shaft Hajira can see Njenq’s katana. Njenq wisely suggests approach from the east – where the bow is – rather than kinda over the wrack, so we do that, we go back and around.

A stealthy approach, better this time, but of course we have two lanterns lit so it’s not like we’re fooling anything. Anything with eyes, anyway. We set the lanterns down and position them, and get ready for action. Hajira gets within 4 yards of the shaft, and staff in one hand, uses the other to toss her hook-on-twine to snare the bow. She gets the bow hooked first try, but – as soon as she moves it an inch – like cats teased with a bit of string – two spiders drop down!

Njenq goes all sparkly. Like, immediately. As if she has some insight that these two giant spiders landing suddenly at the entrance to our tunnel with two giant plops that shake the earth might try to kill us again.

Hajira yanks the twine – the twine doesn’t break – the bow shoots out from practically underneath one of the spiders to land somewhere in the corridor behind her. Hajira drops the twine because –

Here comes one spider, straight at Hajira. It leaps and attempts to stab her with its mouth parts but desperately, feverishly, she puts on a full defense, parries and steps back. In the parry she whacks it a good one.

The other spider leaps up out of sight. The smart one.

Things now happen amazingly quickly. The spider comes at Hajira again, trying to grapple her, but still in full defense mode AND HIGHLY MOTIVATED NOT TO DIE IN AGONY she parries again and steps back, out of its grapple. Again, her parry delivers a strong blow. Now to the side of the spider, Njenq is a sparkly blur as she slashes at it to good effect.

The spider comes at Hajira again, but this time she sidesteps it adroitly, whacks on it as it goes by. Njenq is now a blur of blade behind the spider, but the cuts although numerous seem to be doing relatively little damage.

But the spider is hurting, and Hajira attacks it, hoping one good blow will knock it to all eight of its knees. The spider however seems to be running on nothing but vicious fury. It whirls and leaps at Hajira again. Once again Hajira defends successfully, this time dodging back. Njenq is slashing away still – raining blows. The spider crouches to leap on Hajira yet again, but the accumulated damage is just too much for its rage to overcome. It passes out before it can complete the attack, oozing ichor from three dozen wounds. Hajira stands guard against wily spider deception while Njenq kills the beast by impaling it, because, you know, we don’t want to spoil the pelt or anything.

Njenq organizes the katana recovery: we two scuttle across the shaft, edge forward to the katana, Njenq picks it up with Hajira guarding against death from above. We then scuttle back across, recover the bow, the twine, the lanterns, and everything else. The dead spider is the one that attacked Frimhandler – Hajira recovers her arrow from it, embedded deep – no wonder it VERY CLEARLY WANTED THE ARCHER DEAD DEAD DEAD. Hajira now has 9 arrows (there’s one she dropped still out there at the bottom of Spiderjump Shaft).

We consider dragging the spider body back to the shaft, but it’s HEAVY. We leave it, and wind our way back without incident to the Warehouse Shaft.

At the top of the shaft the guard sheepishly informs them that Crosbin’s wishes were that no one go back into the Underdark. Oops. Well, we will certainly respect his wishes from this point on. (Unless, of course, we don’t.) The guard says no hurry to repay him for the healing potion he gave Njenq in her time of agony, hint hint. At first we say, okay, but then Hajira’s brains come in and she says, you know what, let’s settle that obligation of ours right now. Fine, the guard says, excellent. One hundred coppers. Hajira, who is just a bit fatigued from having to suddenly shrug off A GIANT SPIDER’S PASSIONATE KISS AND EMBRACE FOUR TIMES IN AS MANY SECONDS, does the merchanting math wrong in her head – he’s gouging us! – but then luckily some intuition about him kicks in before she says or does anything. She redoes the math: his price is reasonable, actually. Whew. That would have been SO. AWKWARD. We cheerfully repay the guard 100 copper for the healing potion he loaned Njenq, thank him for his kindness, and things are friendly between us.

Out we step into the streets. Yeah, that’s MORE spider ichor we’re drenched in, what of it? Get used to it, o ye citizens of Azsana. We go first to the apothecary, and check in with Frimhandler. We tell her of the adventure and that she has been revenged. She informs us that while we we working hard, she was spending our (her) hard-earned money on a book. A book on thaumatology. (Hajira’s eyes light up – maybe she can read that book after Frimhandler is done with it one of these days? Oh, it’s written in goblin. Maybe not.)

Time for Frimhandler to get more healing rest, her physician tells us. We continue on and go to meet with Crosbin, who sees us immediately. He inquires about Frimhandler and her health and informs us that he has guard duties for us until Frimhandler gets back on her feet. Yawn. But actually some days not being killed at call to Hajira. Sure, boss. Whatever you say.

But then Njenq divulges that there’s another spider carcass down below, “just in case you are interested in retrieving a whole fresh body,” which sets off every greed tell that Crosbin has (reminder to self: play poker with Crosbin some time). After some discussion about what it would take to retrieve that carcass (we would have to muscle it onto a cart, Hajira says authoritatively, having collected firewood for a household before), Crosbin decides that yes, he would indeed like to have a fresh whole spider carcass and it is arranged: he will supply us the cart down below, and we will go and fetch the carcass and bring it back to the foot of the stair, for his people to haul up the shaft. We determine to start early the next morning (Day 23, if you’re keeping track). Our languidly inactive guard duties will begin the day after.

Oh, and Crosbin has arranged for a discount rate of healing for Frimhandler. Nice of the chap. And it’s not being charged to us now, but added to Njenq’s bill. Hmmm, maybe it’s time for Hajira to put her housekeeping skills to work again and actually keep a budget?

That day dawns well. Hajira feels quite OK about the abomination that is cities on that day. Everything is as Crosbin indicated it would be: three guards come down the stair with us (and not a foot further); the cart is lowered down the shaft in pieces; two craftsgoblins descend and assemble it (not entirely well, it turns out). They make a gawdawful racket doing so but nothing looms out of the darkness to put an end to it. We leave the guards behind and trundle off down Drunken Dwarf Road to the west, pulling the empty cart behind us by a rope attached to two spikes hammered into the front of the cart.

From Drunken Dwarf Road we continue on Drunken End Road. At the intersection of Drunken End and the Tunnel Highway, Hajira senses something. Hajira and Njenq investigate a ways down the Highway; Hajira finds no tracks, but hears pebbles being dislodged (the sound of digging?) quite a ways off. We go back and continue with the cart, but with Hajira hanging back and checking the rear.

We arrive at the carcass, and without wasting much time prepare to load it into the cart. The cart has fairly large wheels (16” in diameter or so) so its cargo platform is high up, but we have brought planks so that we can slide the carcass up an incline onto the cart. Which we do, aided by Njenq’s lifting skill. The ichor on the carcass helps to lubricate the process.

The spider is belly down, so the legs slide along the ground – not much we can do about it. We lash the carcass to the cart, so as not to slide off, and begin to trundle it back, each pulling with one hand on the tow rope loop, the other holding a weapon.

We pause and reconnoiter at Tunnel Highway, but all seems calm. Njenq notices a wheel on her side is wobbly, and knocks it back into place. We pause to rest again where Drunken End and Drunken Dwarf Roads meet. All is quiet here as well, the only sound that of the guards to the south.

Shortly thereafter, disaster threatens when Hajira belatedly notices that a wheel is coming off on her side! It seems the wheel will come off and the apple cart will be upset, so to speak, but in an incredibly lucky moment she raps it back into place with her staff, just in the nick of time. We check and knock all the wheels back into place this time and continue to the Warehouse Shaft.

We stand guard (and enjoy the show) as the guards realize there’s no way in hell that spider carcass will go up a 3’ square shaft. They look at us; we shrug; hey, not our problem. Crosbin is consulted and he goes so far as to come down to inspect the corpse. In the end all the legs must be cut off, and the spider body hauled with much cursing and grunting up the shaft and into the warehouse. Next the legs are hauled up. The cart remains, and Hajira goes up to borrow a hammer so that the wheels can be fixed more permanently. The cart remains at the bottom of Warehouse Shaft, presumably for our use when we need to haul out Our Next Great Discovery.

Back up into the city we go, coated once again in fresh spider ichor. By now it’s hardly drawing second glances. Oh, them again. The spiderblood gaijin.

Meanwhile, late at night and without permission, Frimhandler experiments with self-healing: just a little at first, but then more and more as she’s successful. She does very well (must be all that stuff she’s learning from that book she’s reading) but then slows down at some point to not cut short her book reading time.

On guard duty, Hajira and Njenq seem to fight nothing but boredom. They have a fair amount of free time to do what they will. Hajira cares for her bow and shield and especially, looks to her staff which she hopes is recovering nicely? Quite a few days go by, and all is well, and we look forward to the day when Frimhandler will be discharged from the care of the apothecarist’s, and our adventure as a fearsome threesome will continue.

PARTY POSSESSIONS: I will compile a list and put it here. Right now Hajira is down 1 arrow, and Frimhandler will eventually need some new rag to wear, to replace the one with the spiderhead-sized hole in it. We repaid 100 coppers and accrued debt for a few days of care for Frimhandler, with more undoubtedly to come.

1 CP

Die Another Day

Adventure Notes 5-2-2018

It’s now day 24 of our glorious adventure. In the warehouse Njenq works on her katana form, at the expense of a wood pillar. Hajira tends to her bow, shield and especially her broken staff. She meditates with each one in mind to discern who it is and what it wants from life. With the staff, she spend some time meditating on its health and what she can do to help it mend. (Is it mending? Is it in fact alive? The answer is uncertain.)

Hajira goes over the books of the party's finances with Ol' Crowsbeak, as part of setting up some proper Housekeeping. Crosbin spares a few minutes from his spidery vivisection to brief her. Njenq owed 19, now 20 gold due to the cost of the book and Frimhandler’s apothecary care at 100 copper per day. At this point, we’ve been 10 days on the payroll, with Frimhandler in the apothecary under care for three days. The three of us earn 2 gold per month, but net 1100, with 900 copper going to retire Njenq’s debt. We are paying around 600 to live and eat each month, and so netting 500 cash in hand per month for the three of us. So to date, after 10 days of service, we live in a hovel, we have net-earned about 70 copper, but increased our debt by 1000. Hmmm. By the sweet Goddess, this is no way to run a household.

Hajira begins practicing the Fast Draw Arrow skill. A lot. Every chance she gets. Hajira is now going around with her bow in hand when she's not in the smoky dirty loud intolerable infernal machine of the city. And whenever she has bow in hand, Hajira is invoking the racial memory for Fast Draw her arrows.

Hajira asks: how might I acquire some tactical training, o Crosbin? That’s usually for noble children and the like, he answers. Hajira wonders: Perhaps she could hire on to a caravan and learn from the caravan master? It’s possible, he responds, but not likely anytime soon – looks like Hajira will have to scare up her own opportunities to get skilled in tactics. Hajira hints at missions out in the wild? Surely he has interest in this, because isn’t danger (the foul Ascendancy!) creeping closer and closer to Azsana? He’s not (much) interested.

On their way home from Ground Zero of Boring Boringness (the warehouse), Njenq catches sight of a person in hooded cloak peering at her. She (female maybe?) has white hair. Sees her again a block later. Njenq realizes she’s actually looking at Hajira. Njenq pretends (badly) to be window shopping; Hajira, catching on (why else would Njenq stop and look at dresses?) Hajira acts in support, “Stop that, you know we can’t afford to buy you yet another pretty dress” – er, which doesn’t fool anyone, probably.

We glimpse the white-haired person as she darts off. We try to observe where she went but she shakes us easily.

We step aside, outside the gates, and from hidden positions observe passersby for an hour, to see what we might see. Hajira is keeneyed but notices nothing worth mentioning. After an hour, we go home.

Meanwhile Frimhandler is healing herself, ambitiously at first but then she slows: she has the idea not to leave her sickbed until she finishes her book. On her fourth day as an invalid Frimhandler fails her first heal but succeeds in subsequent attempts. She’s back up to 1, and now settles in to heal naturally as she finishes her book.

That evening, a restless Njenq goes into the city looking for a game. She ends up in a house she’s been at before, but in a game with some new goblin running the table, a sharp named Nal. Normally Njenq plays this game by Gentleman’s Rules (which limit her exposure in case of a most unusual outcome to an embarrassing act), but tonight somehow Nal switches out the Gentleman’s Rules for the real ones – which carry a huge, if exceedingly unlikely, risk. And sure enough, Njenq has a lucky moment, so that she gets a gold piece into play – but then (suspiciously) an unlucky streak, rolling a 1 then 2 then 3 then 4 then 5 then 6, which means she now owes Nal 9 gold. Nal says, you can pay me or perhaps you can give me something? Njenq, fuming, says “let’s settle this tomorrow night” and turns to go – but with great presence of mind, plus dexterity, plus strength, wrests the die from out of Nal’s hand and takes it with her. “To throw in the river,” Njenq tells Nal as she storms out the door.

Njenq storms home, and tells Hajira everything. Hajira is utterly dismayed at first, but then she thinks back on the machinations that were so common among Ouelleb and her fellow goblins; is that what’s going on here? Hajira counsels taking the matter to Crosbin in the morning, and she and Njenq go to sleep.

Thus dawns the morning of the 26th day. Njenq and Hajira go to Crosbin, but before we get there, we are accosted by a goblin, “a friend of Nal’s” who warns us against telling Crosbin of what has transpired. “He will not take kindly to someone who compounds one debt by accruing one with another.” We continue anyway, disregarding this warning, if anything cheered by the sign that we are doing something that Nal doesn’t want us to.

Hajira tells Crosbin that Njenq has been taken by a goblin subterfuge, and that Nal is asserting a claim of 9 gold, or “something” in lieu of the gold. Crosbin is less than delighted at this turn of events. Crosbin asks for what happened in detail, but Njenq can only relate it through the veil of her anger. Njenq produces the die in question. Crosbin promises to look into whether the die has been hexed, but if it hasn’t, then Njenq does seem to be in a spot.

Off we go to the warehouse, where Njenq flays the pillar to within an inch of collapsing. Hajira thinks and thinks, but can’t come up with a plan on how to handle Nal. Except that he should be allowed to name what it is he wants, because then we will have some clue as to why this trap was laid. Is Njenq going to be asked to betray Frimhandler to Vermilion? Or Hajira to – somebody who seems to be interested in her?

But then – the plan of action presents itself. On the way to Nal’s, we encounter Crosbin’s trusty servant, who murmurs to us, “Crosbin bids you: bring Nal back to me alive, and able to roll a die; anyone else – well, they are just collateral damage.” A quick nod and off he goes.

Ok, now we’re talking. This is more like it.

We discuss the matter, and decide to get Frimhandler. If Nal is suspecting any sort of rumble with us, he likely won’t be expecting Frimhandler. And Frimhandler’s chameleon spell may get her and Hajira into the building unseen. If Frimhandler is keen to go, that is.

Frimhandler is more than keen. She heals herself immediately, and off we go as a threesome again. Frimhandler’s plan is to cast chameleon on herself and Hajira and we will come in after Njenq, in her wake as it were.

Which works beautifully. Nal’s gambling den seems to be closed this evening, in the usual way that stings tend to roll up and disappear once the sting has been made. The lone goblin posted in the main room follows Njenq as she heads into the back room, and does not hear Frimhandler and Hajira as they stealthily creep in behind.

Njenq strides into Nal’s office, and unbidden pulls up a chair, slouches at his table, and puts her boots up on a table. She has a salty exchange with Nal, who is flanked by two burly goblin thugs. Nal makes a pretense at collecting his money but Njenq calls him on it: You know I don’t have the money, so what is it you want that I do have?

Nal nods: all right then, let’s get down to business. It turns out he wants his own map of the Underdark. And reports of what’s down there. Oh, and information about what Crosbin hopes to find there. And information about Crosbin and his house. And especially what’s in Crosbin’s lab, what he’s working on. Oh, and other things to be named later. And a pony. And free beer.

“Well,” says Njenq, slowly. “In.” Boots off the table. “That.” Boots on the ground. “Case.” Njenq stands up.

Nal, sensing he’s losing control of this situation, looks up – to see Hajira framed beyond the doorway, bow taut. But before Nal can move or cry out, Hajira releases the arrow which flies straight into the gut of the goblin thug to Nal’s right, who instantly goes down.

The thwang of the bow and the thwack of the arrow galvanizes everyone. The goblin at the door turns toward it – only to receive a jet of flame full to the body from the hidden Frimhandler. Down the goblin goes.

Njenq turns all sparkly, and in a flash has katana in hand. The other goblin thug moves forward to protect his boss – and gets slashed twice, with Njenq saving a thump with the flat of her blade for Nal. Frimhandler moves forward and Hajira runs into the room.

Njenq draws her second katana. Now she has one in each hand. This is too much for Nal and his thug. Nal runs around the table and toward Frimhandler and Hajira – only to be met with a jet of flame from Frimhandler. Down he goes, passing out in agony. Hajira has fit another arrow to string.

“Give it up,” Njenq advises the second thug, who is still standing. “You did your best but it’s over.” Faced with twin katanas, a flame jet, and a likely arrow in the gut, the thug sees the overwhelming logic in what Njenq is saying: he steps back and drops his club.

Njenq and Hajira sling their weapons and each take an arm, to haul Nal away. Frimhandler casts a rapid retreat on them all, and they dash out of the house and through the streets to Crosbin’s estate, and no one dares to accost them.

At his estate, Crosbin is there, with the (familiar to us) constabulary, and a well-dressed goblin with assistant who turns out to be a city administrator. After Frimhandler (with some trouble) heals Nal enough for him to be conscious and coherent, there is an exchange between Nal and Crosbin, with the administrator in the middle. Nal realizes there’s no real evidence against him, and loudly promises to lodge a complaint against this wanton goblinhandling – until a sack is brought in, and the die from the game in question is brought forth. Crosbin bids Nal to make a wager with him: for Nal to bet against the die rolling first a one, then a two, then a three, then a four, then a five, then a six. Surely this is an irresistible bet for Nal? The odds are 40,000 to one in his favor?

Nal picks up the die and flings it across the room. Sure enough, it rolls a one. Then a two. Then a three. Then a four. Then a five. On the last roll, Nal attempts to crush the die, but is stopped from doing that. It rolls a six.

Crosbin produces a magister, who drolls on and on about the magicks used on the die, until everyone (but Frimhandler, who is fascinated) assures him “that’s enough.” The cheat having thus been explained and demonstrated, the administrator makes his decree, and Nal is led out in irons by the constabulary. The administrator nods to Crosbin and also takes his leave, assistant in tow.

I wonder if Njenq’s quick action in grabbing the die – coupled with the unwitting quarantine we placed upon it (it never got rolled again, until Nal did it) is the thing that preserved the hex upon the die?

Crosbin now engages us in what proves to be a difficult conversation. It starts off innocently enough, with Crosbin feeling he has the upper hand, and snarky that his bidding about Nal’s condition – that he be conscious and able to roll a die – had been trifled with, and that everyone had to wait a whole half hour for Frimhandler to heal Nal enough for the trial to proceed. To his immense dismay, we apparently care not a whit that his bidding was trifled with! And then, there’s the matter of Frimhandler’s miraculous recovery. But then, before we can resolve that – the talk turns to the thing that Nal wanted from Njenq – what did he ask Njenq to give? – and the utterly unthinkable happens and we say, well, we can tell you, but there may be a price on that.

Now there is a heated exchange of viewpoints, of positions. In Crosbin’s view, he has been impeccably generous, mobilizing first medical and then legal help for us. He is flustered when we counter that the reason we have needed such help is due to him, especially in the situation with Nal. Njenq would never have been targeted for the scam if not for Crosbin, we tell him. Somehow Crosbin ends up with the spider he wants, and we get stuck with the bill; somehow we do the hard work and take the risk to foil an enemy’s plot against Crosbin, and now he’s implying we owe him for that, also? If he wants to keep getting results from us – and we do get results – something has got to give.

In the end we do not bill him for the information we got from Nal: Njenq tells him freely that Nal wanted Njenq to divulge the secrets of the Underdark and to spy on Crosbin’s person and household. In an ill-advised moment, Crosbin reminds us that his intercession saved Njenq from a 9-gold debt – which Hajira points out, Njenq could have accepted as a way to get out of the 20-gold debt to him – but didn’t. Crosbin’s intercession was a means of preserving his asset, Njenq. We do not owe him anything for preserving his own assets. Does he owe us for preserving his assets?

More was said, which will not be recorded here. We leave Crosbin with the impression – strengthened over the next few days – that Crosbin is struggling to resolve the party’s (exceptional) results vs. the unexpected trouble that we seem exceptionally prone to. Crosbin wants to control his assets, but we seem to be partly beyond his control, and by our claim at least, our ability to get results and our uncontrollability are two sides of the same coin.

Hajira is of the opinion that our relationship with Crosbin has changed – that he will either value our results and promote us or shy away from our trouble-magnetism and demote us to some less troublesome area. The “troublesome area,” however, is Azsana itself, in the form of Crosbin’s competitors and enemies in the city.

Hajira will point out to Crosbin, if he hasn’t realized it for himself, that our unpredictable nature is many times more distressing for his enemies than it is for Crosbin. One of his competitors paid a pretty price for the Nal sting, and lost it all. Isn’t that fact alone worth the price of keeping us on, and keeping us happy?

PARTY POSSESSIONS: I will compile a list and put it here. Hajira is now down 2 arrows.

1 CP

Feeling a Mite Restless

Adventure Notes May 30, 2018

We wake in our hovel, on the 27th day. Where do you want to go today? Do we have the day off? Unclear. So we take the day off. Which to Frimhandler, means: reading. To Njenq, it means: gambling! Because NOTHING EVER GOES WRONG when Njenq gambles, no no.

Njenq with Hajira tagging along, ook for a game outside the city – no luck. (We have abysmal area knowledge)

So we finally join a game Njenq knows about – we get a frosty reception, because they’ve heard about Nal, but we’re allowed in. Hajira is OK in city today.

Hajira notices she’s being shadowed – person (female?) hooded, but with dirty white hair? gray? Oh, her again. Closer observation – her shadow, she’s definitely female. She chews tobacco! Seems able to handle herself. Mace. Dagger. Armor under her cloak. Hajira ponders what to do. Njenq now doing better at the table…

Hajira attempts convo with bartender, but he speaks only Goblin. No one else of the adventurer type in the bar. By now Njenq has lost 130 dollars… turns out to be everything she had. Goblins won’t extend her any credit (that frosty thing). Hajira tugs at her sleeve, says let’s go home. They do that. Hajira whispers to Njenq about her shadow - “she’s back” – the shadow stays with them until they hit the main road, then disappears. Definitely not following them across the bridge into the farm lands.

They tell Frimhandler about their day. Frimhandler has been reading Thaumatology and practicing it by casting Chameleon.

Next day we go to see Crosbin. He’s considered the party’s position and, to be blunt, the party needs to be aware that Crosbin’s services are expensive. He has decided to split his share of his take from Nal’s bail with the party, BUT also splitting the cost of the spell-detecting wizard, which was 1.5 gold. So it’s anticipated that will be a net loss to the party yet again.

Crosbin can see we are in an untenable situation, so he offers to up our wages – if we go down into the Underdark every day, he will double our wages to 4 GP a month for all of us. So that’s tempting. And we accept it after a brief discussion, effective immediately.

Discussion about how the party feels about its collective debt. Hajira is pitching in her share to retire Njenq’s debt, feels Njenq will pay her back some day with a favor to be named later, or some such. Hajira reserves the right to cash out her entire share herself if she feels so inclined, but that’s a worry for some other day.

Crosbin says the word “renegotiate” and this kicks Hajira’s merchanting skill into play, such as it is. She manages to renegotiate their contract to 4400 a month, plus free room and board in the warehouse from Crosbin – so an effective 5 GP a month earned by us three. Crosbin specifies we will pay down our collective debt at double the rate we were before.

Crosbin pays us now to retire our old contract with him: we get 867, of which 390 goes to retire debt, 260 goes to pay living expenses, the remainder split evenly among the three.

Crosbin has cots set up immediately in the warehouse for us… accommodations to be built over the next few days. Hajira will have to figure something out, though. She can probably only take two nights in the city. She will have to scout out someplace to sleep rough, someplace with trees? Make herself a lean-to or other shelter. A treehouse!

But for now we just go into the Underdark. Two ways are still unexplored: The Tunnel Highway and Evil Dwarf Road East. We decide, pretty much at random, to go explore Evil Dwarf Road East.

Which turns out to quickly dead-end, as usual. We venture northwest, to The Tunnel Highway, and continue cautiously on it. Hajira tracking, everyone sharp-eyed. Very quickly we come upon another seam of the curious rock we’ve seen before: it’s darker and softer than the normal bedrock, and more crumbly and powdery; they seem to always cross the mine shafts at right angles.

Frimhandler puts on acute vision and notices that these seams have loose rock to either side; it’s possible they are delves of some kind, that have been filled in? We determine that we should come back with shovels to explore them.

As we continue, we run across many more, almost at regular intervals. The Tunnel Highway curves to the north then east then back south again and then west in a big loop, and the seams may line up as if they all emanated from some kind of central point.

At this point however Hajira accidentally destroys her map! and her drawing stick!

The corridor keeps spiraling in, and finally ends in an ending that’s different than usual. There is a seam here, which has a pile of rock on it that impedes our forward progress.

Frimhandler wants to unpile the rocks, to see what’s underneath them, but Hajira talks her down from that. They may want whatever is buried to stay buried? But to continue along the path we need to displace the pile. We work at it a bit, but we don’t get far: we need better tools. The tunnel seems to turn past the pile and head along the seam itself. Okay, that seems promising, or utterly dangerous, or something.

We go back up and ask for shovels, a short prybar, a pick, and two buckets, and they arrive sometime after a lunch taken lounging on our cots. Back down we go, tools in hand, Njenq grumbling and swearing – something about earning her living with a shovel, she’s sunk low before BUT NEVER THIS LOW, if her momma could see her now, etc.

Back we traipse, to near the middle of the spiral that is the west termination of The Tunnel Highway. But as we arrive we notice things are different. Two new rock piles have appeared; Hajira notices they seem to have arrived by coming over the top of the big rock pile from further along the tunnel. Frimhandler notices they seem to emanate some heat, and they smell hot and burn-y, so curious, she puts out a hand to touch one – maybe she can decipher their magic? At her approach, the rock pile resolves itself into a rock mite, which opens its eyes of flame and a maw of molten rock to accept Frimhandler’s hand.

Frimhandler is stunned at this development, but Hajira swoops in and carries her back to relative safety. Njenq comes forward and hacks at the rock mites, scoring some successes before bad luck intervenes and the parry by the rock mite twists Njenq’s shoulder, disabling it for a time.

In grabbing Frimhandler, Hajira had bobbled her staff, so she switches to her shield. As she’s doing so, a rock mite is biting at her legs, to no effect.

“I’m guessing fire is of no use against these things” – Frimhandler.

Hajira and Njenq fight their way free of the two mites, but we soon discover they are radiating out from the center along the seams, to cut off our retreat. Frimhandler casts rapid retreat on us and we get past the first one we so encounter, and a couple more solo ones, but then in the last whorl of the spiral we confront a pair that successfully block the way out. Njenq by now is wielding a katana in her other hand – ah, the joys of ambidexterity! Hajira has bow out and an arrow ready. As the creatures advance, a plan is hastily formed: Frimhandler will air walk over the creatures while Njenq and Hajira will get around them somehow, leaping over them if need be. It’s totally ad hoc but it works, thanks in no small part to the damage that an all-sparkly Njenq is dishing out to the rock mites.

The party trudges back, weary after yet another lesson in the fragility of their link to mortal existence. Njenq's thoughts are difficult to discern. Hajira is remembering the tools they brought and abandoned in the center of the spiral. She shoulda grabbed that crowbar! That probably woulda been a hella weapon. But oh, right – her aversion to steel. Frimhandler is dreaming up cold spells and water spells to dump on these unsuspecting creatures. Gonna be tough, for sure, to capture one of THESE live for ol’ Crowsbeak…

(Updated Underdark map below)

1 CP

Me and My Shadow

Adventure Notes Jun 13, 2018

It’s now the afternoon of our 28th day. We come up from the Underdark and go to Crosbin’s manse; Frimhandler wants to tell him what we have found. After a bit of a wait, we are let in to see him:

“What is it that you wish to discuss?”

Frimhandler bids Hajira to bring out the map, and we show Crosbin the spiral passage and the wriggle radii and explain how we encountered them and how the lava mites use them, to near-fatal effect.

Crosbin then reveals a big secret (as Frimhandler was hoping he might), as to what he is looking for:

Crosbin says that he suspects there’s an entrance to one of the ancient elven strongholds under Azsana. These strongholds were built by “extremely ancient elves, who made their homes far under the earth” – the ur-elves, dark elves? (Drow? Drow!) These strongholds were located mostly under the mountains, but Crosbin thinks they had an outlying one here where Azsana is now. There are some few clues of their existence extant in Azsana, says Crosbin. Crosbin suspected that’s why the dwarves failed to settle here – they were defeated by the ancient defenses of the stronghold.

Siren Zedekiah, the Master of the Arcane College, is rumored to have a relevant map. She’s a rival of Crosbin’s, though; they are the two dominant gang bosses, um, I mean worthy citizens of the College District. Crosbin says he is not interested in the map per se, he’s interested in what’s in the stronghold, but maybe the map could help them get into the stronghold, if they had it.

We now have a long conversation about the lava mites and their possible weaknesses, and return to this theme often. Thoughts keep returning to water as a weapon – is it possible to somehow flood the tunnel?

Crosbin calls SZ “reckless,” which instantly makes her more attractive to both Njenq and Hajira. Crosbin hints that maybe, to get the map, we take a nighttime excursion to her quarters? She lives in the old clock tower, apparently. Crosbin confides that he may be able to acquire masks the secret police use? When you are wearing the mask, you are legally anonymous… of no use, however, if you get caught. We’re not keen on this course of action, having had more than our share of the goblin legal system already… and Siren Zedekiah has done us no harm that we know of...

The conversation turns back to the lava mites and how to kill them. The idea comes up of building a flue that can bring water into the spiral section of the tunnels, and dump it on the other side of a short dam in the tunnel… with the end result of flooding the spiral with a half-foot or so of water, which might prevent the lava mites from using the wriggle tunnels.

This course of action seems way too involved, but no one has yet had a better idea… so we finally settle on a course of action where we clear out the Spiderjump Shaft and investigate the top of it, so that Crosbin might be able to acquire the property above it and keep a stranglehold on access to the Underdark. Likewise we are going to investigate the crack leading to the outside on the west end of Crackthrough Road, because that may be another way to get flood waters into the Underdark?

But meanwhile that’s enough for one day. We bid adieu to Crosbin and head for our new home in the warehouse. Hajira buys another staff (but her mind must be elsewhere, as she is lucky to get one at a basic fair price). As Frimhandler settles in to read more of her book, and Hajira practices hard with her katana to keep her mind off all the money she could be losing, Hajira realizes she can’t stand to sleep in the city, so she heads out for the South Gate, planning to find a place she can sleep in the treeful wilderness beyond.

Hajira hasn’t gone very far when she remembers her white-haired shadow, and kicks herself for not arranging for Frimhandler to shadow her shadow. Because sure enough, Hajira’s shadow is there, keeping her distance. The shadow follows her right out the South Gate and into the woods. Hajira thinks of the terrain ahead and picks a good spot where she can step aside out of sight of her shadow, and thus accost her from behind.

Which she proceeds to do. Hajira steps aside and hides successfully, and the shadow moves right on past. The shadow has two weapons already in hand as she travels – a mace and a small axe – which is a warning that Hajira does not heed. Hajira hails her, but the shadow turns out to want more than just talk. The white-haired woman tells Hajira that she knows Hajira is an escaped slave, and has been paid a bounty to end Hajira’s escape one way or another. The bounty hunter will get more money if she brings Hajira back alive, and Hajira’s journey back will be relatively torture-free if Hajira cooperates, but… the other way is OK too. All the while she is saying this, she is hefting her weapons and sidling closer to the trees where Hajira is hiding. Uh-oh.

The bounty hunter continues to talk, and to warn Hajira about the costs of resisting and the inevitability of the outcome. For her part Hajira has gone stone cold and calculating. She circles the three trunk cluster of trees, keeping the trees between her and the bounty hunter. Around and around they go, with Hajira using every ounce of outdoors instinct to eke some small advantage from the terrain.

The bounty hunter calls on Hajira to throw down her staff. Hajira takes the opportunity to throw down her shield instead, and lighten her load.

And then at last there is an opening. Hajira shifts a rock as she passes, then slides leaves over it as she passes again, and the bounty hunter steps on it and stumbles, and Hajira attacks.

But the bounty hunter parries. And counterattacks, and Hajira parries and retreats, buying time. With the range of her staff, she can keep the bounty hunter at a distance, so that the bounty hunter has to continually rush at her to get close enough to strike. Meanwhile as the bounty hunter is rushing to close, Hajira is evaluating the duel, building up a plan to strike at advantage as an opportunity presents itself.

And so they dance around the trees, with the bounty hunter striking twice for every blow launched by Hajira. Only two exchanges later, the bounty hunter leaps forward and it is only by luck that Hajira avoids the blow. Hajira is aware that she is tiring herself, evading all these attacks, and the bounty hunter seems totally at ease, parrying the staff easily. Maybe too easily… Hajira evaluates how maybe to use that nonchalance on her next strike?

And so it happens. Hajira swings her staff and it slides right by the axe, cracking the bounty hunter hard in the chest. The bounty hunter steps back but shrugs it off; her taunt seems as strong as ever. But to Hajira this is the turn of the tide. She focuses on continuing to do what she is doing; her luck is with her; the woman’s bravado is all show; Hajira is now leading the dance.

The bounty hunter charges forward as Hajira retreats, and then again, and lands the mace on Hajira’s chest. It’s slight damage though, and Hajira strikes back through her pain, cracking the bounty hunter hard across the collarbone. The woman backs off, and Hajira can see the effort it takes her to straighten up and hide her fear.

“Well, you have put me off this time,” the bounty hunter says, continuing to back slowly away. “Then begone,” Hajira says, thinking of her bow.

The bounty hunter drops her axe, and puts up her hand, signaling the end of the battle. She sheathes her mace, and raises her other hand, still backing away. Hajira is waiting her moment: when the bounty hunter gets far enough away, she will arm herself with her bow, and then we will see who is hunting who?

The bounty hunter continues to back away, and then Hajira acts: dropping her staff, she pulls out her bow. “Wait,” the bounty hunter says, but Hajira continues, drawing and knocking an arrow.

“Who are you working for? Who sent you?” Hajira is aiming the arrow now.

“Oelleb,” the bounty hunter says, immediately. “Of course it was your master, you ungrateful slave” and is in the middle of another such sentence when Hajira fires.

The bounty hunter dodges the arrow, but barely, and then is charging at Hajira, her mace appearing like magic in her hand. Hajira pulls another arrow and knocks it, but is too rattled to snap-shot it at the bounty hunter who is closing ground fast. By the time she is ready to fire the woman is looming large and the range is point-blank.

It is a perfect shot. Hajira twists aside as the woman hurtles past and collapses on the ground, unconscious, with Hajira's arrow embedded deeply in her chest.

Knife in hand, Hajira searches the bounty hunter, relieving her of the mace and of two cruel long knives hidden elsewhere on her person. Hajira finds the binding thongs intended for her and uses them on the bounty hunter instead, binding the woman hand and foot. Cutting off the arrow shaft, in time Hajira gets all clothing and armor off the bounty hunter. The woman only has her "walking-around things" – her other possessions must be back in her room in Azsana.

In a purse: coin to the value of 496 copper, and a parchment spelling out the contract between Oelleb and “Granny Alice”: a payment of 700 copper to initiate the bounty hunt, and a bounty of 700 for completion of the hunt, and another 500 copper should the fugitive be returned alive.

Only now does Hajira have the presence of mind to scan her surroundings: no one else seems to be there. She recovers her lost arrow. She evaluates the woman’s health, but cannot determine if Granny Alice is likely to live or not. Hajira takes Granny’s coin for herself; she collects all Granny’s other possessions and hides them nearby, camouflaging them. After some thought, Hajira takes her knife close to Granny Alice and cuts off a half-handful of her white hair, and tucks it away in her purse.

Hajira thinks for a while about what song to sing, and settles on one that the hunter sings after a successful hunt, a song for coming home. It is a challenge, but her voice is steady if not strong. Her rib still hurts. She then sets to meditate on what to do with this helpless enemy, but cannot calm her mind nor still her quaking hands.

1 CP

Up From The Depths

Adv Notes 6-27-18
Addenda: Granny Alice also had in her possession a tin of tobacco. Disgusting creature!

It is now Day 28, getting on toward evening. Hajira prepares to practice her acting skill, and then (knife in hand) gets close to Granny Alice and whispers in her ear:

"Ah, Granny Alice, I see that you are a pawn in matters much too deep for you. They told you I was an escaped slave and who knows what other lies besides, and you believed them. For a mere 700 copper they sent you to your certain death, except you did not die!

"If you are as you appear, you will be the same as you awake, if you awake: a callow bounty hunter at the end of her days. You will spit in my eye and succumb to your own callous hate. But there is a chance you are not as you appear. There is a chance you are what in my tradition we call the shibumi, the one-in-ten-thousand. If you are shibumi, then you will be hearing me as I whisper these words. If you are shibumi then you will certainly awake. If you are shibumi, then you will be realizing your old life has ended, but a new one can begin. You will enter your new life as naked and helpless as a baby. If you are shibumi everything about your old life you will burn away as you lie here sleeping, you will gladly set fire to all old thoughts and schemes; you will awake a new person. If by chance you are shibumi, the one-in-ten-thousand."

Then she takes up the axe and cuts branches to build a rough lean-to over the woman, and then settles down to keep watch on her all night. At this point Hajira assesses that as near as she can tell, Granny Alice has only a 50-50 chance of surviving the night.

At some point Hajira sees that Granny Alice’s eyes have opened. Hajira goes over to the bounty hunter and bids her to speak. “I see that I underestimated you,” she gasps out. “You are not the fool girl they told me you were.” Hmmm, Hajira wonders: did she hear the whispered message? Is Granny indeed shibumi? But then Granny goes on, “But I can see you are no different than the others. From me da, who also tortured me. Until I stuck a knife between his ribs.” Ah, me, the woman has not changed. She is not shibumi. Shall Hajira make sure? “Tell me your fortune, Granny Alice.” Granny says, “I see things have come full circle,” the old woman gasps out, and says no more. She has spoken true, Hajira realizes, and puts her knife through Granny’s ribs, into her heart, and so makes a clean end of it.

Then she gets busy: arranging the body nearby where it is not likely to be seen, then taking all Granny’s possessions (save her coin) and hiding them some distance away, well camouflaged; and then taking herself out of the copse of trees into the open, and finding a hollow and making camp there. To sleep, untroubled.

Dawn comes: the morning of Day 29. Hajira is not afraid of the city, in fact there is remarkably little she might fear this morning. She makes her way back to the warehouse, where Frimhandler and Njenq instantly see that something has happened.

While Frimhandler heals Hajira's bruided rib, Hajira explains what has happened – although she says "...and then she died," glossing over Granny’s actual end. We three discuss what to do, and what emerges is that, although we are wary of alerting goblin law (because who knows what obscure clause of it might be brought to bear against Hajira?), Hajira has done nothing wrong in defending herself. Njenq is adamant that we return and attend to the body, and the depth of her conviction wins Hajira over. Hajira is not used to seeing Njenq be adamant about anything, and so she likes the change.

We three return to the site and find the body as yet undisturbed by man or large scavenger. Njenq expertly assesses the wounds on the body, especially the clean stab wound to the heart; she also sizes up the fallen woman’s capacity for harm. “Are you sure you took this ol’ Granny down all by yourself?” she asks Hajira, more than once. Njenq has gained a new respect for her new often-immature-seeming companion.

Searching about, we find a hollow left by the pulled-up roots of a large tree that has fallen over recently. We bury Granny in the root hollow with a small ceremony; at Njenq’s urging, her body is composed and one of Granny’s long knives is clasped in her hands on her chest. Hajira says a few words about how she hopes that Granny, having had a long life seemingly full of pain, has finally come full circle and found a measure of peace.

We leave Granny’s possessions where they are for now, and return to the warehouse without incident – back to the problem of the lava mites.

We discuss the problem at length, but come up with no ideas on how to deal with them directly. We arrive at this interim plan, because we can’t think of anything else: Clean the spiders out of Spiderjump Shaft. By smoking them out.

Will smoke emerge at street level? We send a lookout a set number of yards to the west of the warehouse. It’s still in the warehouse district, by the docks; somewhat closer to the docks, which are to the NW. Buildings there are older, smaller, streets narrow and irregular.

We fetch some green wood (to help make sure that the fire is smoky enough) and lug it down to Spiderjump Shaft. But on the way, as we pass the Tunnel Highway, Hajira can hear grinding of rocks in the direction of the spiral. Hmmmm? To be investigated soon. For now, we continue to the shaft, where we add our green wood to the pile of wrack wood at the bottom and, after some bumbling around with flint and lantern oil, Frimhandler proceeds to light it on fire most convincingly with her flame jet.

The plan works acceptably well. Rather more smoke goes into the side tunnels than we expected, forcing us to step back and for the tallest of us to take a knee. Twenty-five minutes into the burn, with the wood burning merrily, Hajira hears many many feet up the shaft, and then: an axe against wood. Uh-oh.

Then then goblin voice echoes down the shaft. Frimhandler translates it as: what is all this? where is this fire? Then yells and screams. A spider drops from above and smashes into the ground, its body split open. It’s a small spider, a baby spider. Njenq goes all sparkly, but nothing else happens; we decide the fire will prevent any spiders from escaping this way, and we go up to chase down the location of the top of the shaft, and do the spider extermination that is likely to be necessary.

The guard at top says: the other guard said some kind of attack happened on the street. We tell him we are going there directly; we navigate the streets, and see some spiderlings escaping across rooftops. More uh oh. We at last come to the right door, only to find it damaged and open, with smoke coming out of it. We go in (all pass health checks).

We find ourselves in an odd-shaped room, in the midst of renovation, floorboards pulled up to expose bare earth. In a corner, there is a subfloor that we can interpret to be the seal at the top of Spiderjump Shaft. Goblins working here evidently cut it open with an axe; there’s a big spider hole in it now, and the three goblins are here dead.

Njenq and Hajira drag the bodies out of the room, then block the doorway as best they can, using a nearby wagon to obstruct what’s left of the door. Okay: time to spider-hunt. Frimhandler air walks to top of one-story building, spots a large spider heading northeast about 50 yards away. Out of her range.

Njenq climbs up to the rooftop with Frimhandler, and the two of them hunt down the big spider. They pursue it until it comes to rest straddling the edge of a second-story rooftop, out of Njenq’s reach – but not Frimhandler’s. Meanwhile Hajira is having adventures chasing through the streets to join them.

While Njenq attempts to be a distraction, Frimhandler rises into the air well above the spider, then descends slowly down until it is in flame-jet range. The spider, however, surprises Frimhandler by jumping up at her surprisingly well – but Frimhandler is able to dodge its leaps and use her jet of flame. In one of their exchanges, the spider loses its footing and drops to the roof below, where Njenq is, who comes charging over.

The spider’s fall revealed what it was hiding with its body: three of its children come scampering down from the second-story roof. Njenq and Frimhandler ignore them for the moment, and their combined fury overcomes the big spider. Two of the spiderlings then come at Njenq and one leaps at Frimhandler, who narrowly dodges. With her last reserves, Frimhandler burns the spiderling attacking her to death, and Njenq engages the spiderling still pursuing her and kills it with katana strikes. The third spiderling, who inherited her parent’s good sense, is fleeing, but (after much storming through buildings and yelling at goblins) Hajira emerges through a window and incapacitates it with a lucky bowshot just before it can drop out of sight.

Was there another adult spider? How many more spiderlings might there be? Are we heroes or guilty of criminal negligence? Who cares about that, let's (a) go back down and (a) investigate that ominous rock grinding sound? or (b) go back down and explore Spiderjump Shaft as the smoke clears? or (c) go back to the smoke room and explore Spiderjump shaft from the top down? We regroup to quickly decide what to do next.

1 CP

The Corpses of Spiderjump Shaft

Adventure notes: July 18, 2018

It’s still Day 29 of our rollicking adventure. We are on the roof of some warehouse in Azsana, surrounded by spider corpses.

Where are the other spiders? We went north from the escape point, following this group; we saw other spiders (little ones) heading southwest and maybe south also.

We decide to head down to the street and then to pursue spiders southwest, which is not toward Ol’ Crowsbeak’s manse (the College District is to the northeast). We will go there and report to him if we lose the spider trail.

We go back to the window that Hajira exited from (and which seems to be somewhat damaged, hmmm Hajira?) and chat a bit with goblins peering out. We get passage to the street and make our way back to the spider escape point, where we sit Frimhandler down to have a rest in the shade of the wagon we pushed in front of the warehouse door. Hajira is able to track the spiders a bit; by the marks left in a mossy eave, she determines that about a half dozen of them went southwest, all spiderlings.

Njenq wants to pursue immediately but Frimhandler needs to rest, and Hajira wants to stay with (defenseless) Frimhandler. So we point Njenq in the proper direction (southwest) and send her out to reconnoiter.

Njenq heads out, looking for any signs of pandemonium, but the goblins she meets seem unaware of the spider incursion. Njenq sheathes her katana, to be less conspicuous or alarming (ha!). Njenq continues, gets somewhat turned around, finally ends up on a major road that she can see heads directly to the citadel. She sees a side street that leads to a courtyard, then up ahead she sees a number of guards milling around the citadel gatehouse. Njenq looks for goblins who seem to know something – the guards – and inquires in her broken Goblin about what’s going on. They are all talking excitedly among themselves and dismissive of Njenq – until she asks, “big spiders?” “What do you know?” a guard asks, appraisingly. “We killed several back there, we’re wondering where the others went.” This gets their attention, and a lieutenant steps forward to grill her about what she knows. But the goblin language is a barrier.

The lieutenant dismisses Njenq, and with a snort of disgust, Njenq leaves them and heads back to Frimhandler and Hajira. The lieutenant corrects her by pointing an exit and Njenq heads that way, comes across a bridge that crosses the river going through the city, and realizes the lieutenant was messing with her and pointed her in the wrong direction. She retraces her steps; back at the citadel, she takes a road directly west to find a gate that leads out of the city. There Njenq overhears a guard who seems to be saying that reinforcements are being sent to the docks, because monster. She asks him about it, and he mistakes her for a foreign mercenary. Njenq identifies herself as an employee of Crosbin’s. “What business is it of yours?” the guard asks. “My master might be interested in a carcass or two.” “So they’re valuable then?” the guard asks. The guard wants money at this point, before divulging what he knows. So in disgust Njenq storms away and goes looking to rejoin Hajira and Frimhandler.

Back at the warehouse, some goblins come by and chat with Frimhandler, full of questions about the spiders. Frimhandler gives them noncommittal answers and they leave. Then in short order one of Crosbin’s warehouse guards finds us and tells us the Crosbin is at the warehouse, and wants to find out what’s going on. We give him a small reply, full of plausible deniability, that the spiders came up through this warehouse and there are still at least half a dozen loose in the city. He wants Frimhandler and Hajira to come back with him, but Hajira says they have to wait for Njenq, and will come back to the warehouse as soon as she rejoins them.

Meanwhile Njenq is busy getting lost. She manages to navigate back to the main road, and from there to Crosbin’s manse. He’s not there, and the staff tells Njenq he’s at the warehouse, and she should go there immediately. She does, and finds him there. The guard has just come back after finding Frimhandler and Hajira, and Crosbin sends him back to fetch them. Crosbin demands answers from Njenq; Njenq indicates that she wants to speak in private; Njenq then tells Crosbin about the plan and how it went awry. Crosbin asks point-blank if anyone else knows about the party’s involvement – Njenq says no, only Crosbin and his men.

More details tumble out – the three dead goblin workers, for example – then Hajira and Frimhandler arrive, and the spin doctoring begins. Hajira spins out a story in which the goblins heard something and chopped through the cap on Spiderjump Shaft, stuck a torch through, dropped it, and tragically lit the wood at the bottom of the shaft. Crosbin ascertains point-blank that this is a fiction – oh yes – and then they put together the cover story: the goblins who cut the hole must have lit the fire, which forced the spiders out; Hajira and Njenq and Frimhandler were on guard nearby and we rushed to respond when we saw some spiders scuttle across the roofs.

Crosbin is disappointed that the escaped spiders are not causing mayhem, because that would be profitable. Hajira reminds him that once the spiders get hungry, the mayhem will begin? He advises us not to hunt spiders until the business model indicates that we should. Wow, kinda cold-blooded about all this, ain’t he? No more Mr. Nice Guy.

After he leaves we determine to head back down to Spiderjump Shaft, to fetch the cocoons in it before other people start investigating the shaft from above. We drag Njenq’s straw mattress with us, to serve as a cushion should Frimhandler fall. There’s no sign of any activity down Tunnel Highway, toward the lava mites. We stamp out the remains of the embers and position the mattress. Frimhandler air walks up to find a cocoon; she cuts it down, and it falls more or less intact; she finds another, much lighter one, and cuts it down too; it falls apart on its way down. Above her now the spiderwebs begin.

Frimhandler comes back down and searches the first body, and finds a desiccated person with leather armor in not hopeless condition, plus a broadsword and long knife with some rust and a purse with 80 copper. The second body is in poor shape, scattered as it fell; the only recoverable item is a pair of manacles, locked. Oh my, someone fed some hapless prisoner to the spiders.

Frimhandler goes back up and carefully cuts her way into the spiderwebs, to reach the three spider nests up there. She finds four cocoons and drops them down. When she searches them, she finds a body of a guard similar to the first, with old leather armor and a broadsword and long knife and a pouch with 70 copper; the second is so old that only some scraps of cloth and fragments of shoes remain; the third landed with an explosion of – knives! Five of them, seemingly identical, each double-bladed with a steel core and an edge of some different kind of metal. Hmmm, very interesting. The fourth cocoon fell apart upon impact and Frimhandler could find nothing of note – except a leather-covered folio or book.

Frimhandler goes back up and navigates her way to the very top, noting that the hole up there seems to be bashed in from above. She checks for crevices where spiders may have hid, but finds none. Back down below, we pack up the loot and go back up. The guard is there; we relieve him and Frimhandler and Njenq head back to their accommodation in the warehouse, while Hajira heads out for a night in the wood.

Frimhandler enhances her perception and sees in the dark, and examines the knives. She cleans some junk off them, to find that each bears a mark such as a maker’s mark; but although there is a tingle from them as though of residual magic, they don’t seem to be magical in themselves. What is that metal edge, though? What properties does it give the knife? To be investigated…

Frimhandler then examines the book. It is an explorer’s journal, written in Common. The unnamed explorer, gender unknown, has travels begin in the Ascendancy, wind through the Goblin Lands to Azsana, has a sojourn into the borderlands between the Goblin Lands and Kaethness, then back to Azsana, where the accounts end. There’s some detail here about adventures in abandoned fortifications along the Kaethness border that beg to be examined in more detail. A possible destination to explore once Njenq has won her freedom?

In their first visit to Azsana, the explorer tried to find their way into the Underdark, without much success; in the final visit, they were more successful, and note three possible entrances: the warehouse entrance (which one?), the entrance by the guard tower at the Citadel, and a third one associated with the old Dwarven Stronghold by the Dwarven Gate. Tunnels from there were meant to lead to the Citadel? to the Delves? Unclear.

The explorer doesn’t refer to people by name, but by occupation; he or she seemed to be a loner, and not very social. Perhaps from a disadvantaged background…

Frimhandler’s reading is interrupted by the return of Crosbin. He seems put out that Hajira is gone already, even though by now it’s now well into the evening. Crosbin announces that some city guards did encounter some spiders; no casualties, but they’re not inclined to spider-hunt; therefore he’s secured a small contract with the city for spider extermination – a bounty to be paid by the leg. We should get started immediately, he says, and Njenq is ready, but Frimhandler pleads fatigue… actually, of course, she just wants to get back to finish reading the journal.

Explorer's Journal

The journal is made of parchment sheets bound between two thin but very hard sheets of wood and wrapped in a thick leather cover that can be tightly closed. It's unclear how old the journal is and the entries don't seem to have any dates. The author generally seems to focus on the interesting places they explored with little space given over to the route taken to get there and even less to the people encountered along the way. Here are some of the interesting bits gleaned by Frimhandler so far...

1. The explorer, thus far unnamed, started his chronicle in the Ascendency then traveled through the Goblin lands (including Azsana) to the border of Caithness. From there he (or she) returned to Azsana where the entries cease with about 1/4 of the pages left blank.
2. In the Ascendency the explorer visited two cities, a series of coastal caves, and then delved into an old ruin in the mountains to the south-east
3. During his first pass through the Goblin territory and Azsana the explorer didn't find much other than rumors and a few uninteresting tunnels beneath the city.
4. Moving south to Caithness, the explorer found a couple of ruins of long-abandoned forts along the border.
5. Upon returning to Azsana, more tunnels were found extending from two entrances: one in a gate-hous of the Citadel and another in a warehouse near the docks. Information about a third entrance was obtained (but the entrance never found), rumored to connect with a Dwarven stronghold: possibly from the Citadel or an above-ground Dwarven outpost.

1 CP

The Spiderling Bounty

Adventure Notes 8-2-2018

Addendum to previous: Ol' Crowsbeak steps back into the warehouse to add that there’s a 30 silver bonus for each spiderling, which he is generously giving us a one-third cut of. So – 10 silver each for us. Njenq tries to do the math – which would indicate that we only need to turn in 190 small-spider pelts to retire her debt? – but fails. We can also make use of the warehouse guards but should anything descend upon them such as injury or death, it would be very expensive. Oh, and we need to act fast to avoid being scooped by the other exterminators. He walks off into the night, chuckling.

So Njenq and Frimhandler go out to confer with Hajira, who had left already for her bower-bunk in the woods.

When Njenq tells her about what Ol' Crowsbeak said, Hajira recalls what she (and her ancestors) know about spiders:

Spiders hunt at night. young spiders might be frightened

Yes, they also might want to go back to where they came from

We discuss what to do, and settle on the idea of staking out the Old Spiderjump Warehouse, for spiderlings who may want to return. We think maybe some spiderlings will try to come back to their old haunts, maybe with a cocooned alleycat or dog in tow. Frimhandler casts See In The Dark on everyone, and we stake out the room.

Frimhandler suggests that she check out the space between the floor and the top of the shaft (the old underflooring). She doesn’t see any spiderlings cowering in those narrow spaces. Frimhandler continues airwalking down into the shaft and looks for any spiders who have returned, but sees none.

So now our attention turns to the door, which the spider parent tore apart on its way out. But then Njenq notes that if a spiderling does return… it will just go back into Spiderjump Shaft… where it will wait for us to come and kill it. As good as money in the bank! So now we change course, and decide to go hunting.

But first, we realize that the bounty applies to the spiders we’ve already killed. So we go back to obtain those corpses. We’d like to go up onto the roof via the two-story warehouse, as Hajira has already done, but unfortunately she opened the warehouse door a little too forcefully and broke it? So now we find two goblin guards at that door, and even after we explain our totally bogus-sounding mission to them (“we are here to, ah, clean spider bodies off your roof”) they somehow remain suspicious. Njenq warns them that the bodies will begin to stink. Hajira warns them that the bodies will attract more spiders, who will get hungry and silently drop upon their heads to pierce their skulls with their fangs to suck out their brains. They don’t believe her (but do back up a step, to be under the door eave).

We go back up the alley, but not all the way. We step aside to the south and with great care Njenq climbs up to the roof. The spider bodies are still there, undisturbed. While Frimhandler and Hajira go and fetch guards and wheelbarrows, Njenq drags one of the spiderlings over to the roof edge above the courtyard and then drops it plop! to get a jump out of the guards.

We wheel away 3 spiderling corpses, at about 130 lbs each. Then Hajira tries to climb / be pulled up to the roof by rope. Hopeless on the first try (Njenq saves herself from being pulled off the roof), and nearly hopeless on the second, by luck Hajira succeeds at the climb and joins Njenq on the roof. They determine to cut off the spider head again, as the scalp to prove that kill – and in a fit of vanity Hajira also carves their names into the spider’s carapace to commemorate their kill.

As Njenq and Hajira prepare to descend by rope, the guards speak up: they want a trophy as reward for their forbearance during this operation. Just two front legs, that’s all? There’s is discussion and haggling and we finally settle on giving them two big spider claws in exchange for being able to come down by stairway rather than rope. One guard comes up and lets Njenq and Hajira in through another window (the one Hajira used before is a bit damaged) and we exit by the front door, turning over two spider claws as we do so. We leave the guards with their trophies, excitedly discussing how they will add to the many wonderful spider artifacts they’ve collected.

We return to the broken front door of Spiderjump Warehouse, where, buffed with perception spells, Hajira begins to track the spider herds as they fled the smoke. In short order Hajira is solidly on the trail of a group of about a half dozen spiderlings as they fled across rooftops. To avoid the rope-climbing challenge, Njenq goes back to fetch the guards – so they can follow us, wheelbarrowing a ladder. We get up on the single-story roof, and Hajira tracks the group of 6 spiderlings. Tracks go more south than west at this point, leading straight for the Citadel.

At the Citadel, the trail leads to a guardhouse, where as we had heard earlier, the guards stared down some spiders. After milling around the spiderlings then went straight north, then turned at the river to the west – bringing them to some tall single-story warehouses. One in particular is tucked into the curve of the river, and as we come up to it we see a group of four goblin hunters, staring at a door that’s been forced open by the spiders, and wondering what to do.

We have a brief conversation with them, mostly featuring Njenq and her broken goblin. She invites the Four Stooges to enter first, but they counter that they’re much more interested in riding in on our coattails. We have our guards with us, and at first we are inclined to have the guards keep the stooges out, but they seem to be semi-reasonable lads and so we let them in with us, to flimsily guard our rear and blunt whatever spider attack might come from that direction.

The hallway inside dead-ends at a bigger hallway running right and left. Hajira tracks the spiders to the left, and we hunt our way slowly down the hall, passing closed doors left and right. Near the end of the hall, we see a door on the right that’s open, and Hajira also spots a twinge of movement up in the rafters near the end of the hall – a spiderling.

We array against the spiderling in the rafters, and bid the Stooges to hold position in front of the compromised door. The ceiling is tall, so the spiderling is out of Frimhandler’s flame range, unless she gets too uncomfortably close underneath it. Njenq gets in front and prepares to get all sparkly, Frimhandler begins tracking the beast, prepared to flame it as soon as it leaps into range, and Hajira steps back and switches her weapon and skill to bow.

Hajira has time, so she draws carefully and aims well. But she’s being too obvious about it: the spiderling is able to leap just in time to avoid being impaled. In an exemplar of “Out of the Flying Pain, Into The Fire” the spiderling leaps down to the floor and into a roar of flame from Frimhandler.

Njenq whirls forward, but the spiderling is dodging, and her first swing arcs past what seemed like a sure hit and into Njenq’s own left leg for a cut. Her second and third blows, however, land to damage the spiderling. It leaps away, toward the opened door –

– just as four more spiders leap out, one directly onto the foremost goblin hunter. His friend right behind him attempts to drag him back, while his other two compatriots bolt in terror. Hajira has drawn another arrow. This could be very bad. Thirty pieces of silver, indeed.

1 CP

Forty Pieces of Silver

Adventure Notes 8-29-18

The situation: one spiderling, seriously wounded, is fleeing back through the open double doors back into the warehouse room, but four of her compatriots are coming out of the doorway. One has leaped upon a goblin hunter and grappled him, and already dealt him a serious wound. A second has lit outside the doorway, and two others are just inside. One other goblin hunter is attempting to assist his grappled comrade, the other two bolted and ran.

A tense moment for us: Hajira has her bow, and out of position to shield Frimhandler from a spider leap. If the spiderlings had all leapt out at us, we would have been overwhelmed. But two leap instead at the second goblin, who defies all expectations by dodging their grapple and, dismayed, these spiderlings retreat back into the warehouse room. A third spider leaps at Njenq, who blocks its attack and then slices it savagely as it dodges a blast of flame from Frimhandler. Hajira fires her arrow but misses.

Njenq incapacitates her spider and then the spider attacking the goblin. Heartened, the goblin hunters rush back to deliver the killing blow on Njenq’s spiderling. With the other three fled back into the room, we are able to take a breather, to regroup, and to enable Frimhandler to overcome some of her exhaustion. The goblin hunters decline to press forward on their own.

After some discussion Njenq prevails with a simple ‘I’m going to go in there and kill them’ argument. Hajira has heard two of them climbing on the wall just to the left of the doorway, and Njenq has spotted a third crouched behind some trash in the middle of the room, but is that really all of them? We were tracking a group of six. Njenq steps into the doorway, with Hajira guarding her flank and Frimhandler right behind her, and the two spiders on the wall leap at her. Njenq manages to dodge their grapple but they spring away again before any counterattack can be made.

Njenq goes in again, focusing on the healthy spider who leapt away to the right. It is skittering up the wall and Njenq can only get in one cut before it has gone out of reach. Meanwhile, Hajira has gone in to cover Njenq’s flank, with her eye on the third spider, the one behind the trash. It leaps out at her, but its leap goes awry and it lands well to one side. Njenq leaps upon it, as does Frimhandler, and it soon is mortally wounded.

Hajira covers for Njenq’s shift in attack, and the spider in the rafters does indeed leap full at her. Hajira parries with her staff, very successfully, but the impact breaks off the end of the staff. Njenq whirls again and now comes at this spider, and under her rain of blows it is doomed.

The goblin hunters surge forward, and Frimhandler sees why: the last spider, attempting to climb the wall, is the seriously wounded one, and it has succumbed to blood loss and is just hanging there. Before the goblins can steal the prize, Frimhandler’s flame lashes out and robs them of this opportunity.

We look through the room for the missing sixth spider, but find no trace. Frimhandler goes out to heal the wounded goblin. There is disagreement over the provenance of the kill of one spider – the party had rendered it unconscious, but a goblin had actually killed it. The goblin hunter making the loudest claim to it is one of the two that ran away. Fortunately, due in major part to Frimhandler’s kind healing, cool heads prevail. We give over the contested spider in exchange for a cut in its bounty – a cut of 10 silver, which just happens to be the cut we are getting from Ol’ Crowsbeak. The goblin hunters are glad of the deal and depart with their spiderling corpse. We hand over our four spiderling pelts to the guards outside, who take them back to Crosbin.

We’re tired – it’s been a long night. We check in with Crosbin and get our cut (which is actually 70 pieces of silver due to the three spiderling corpses we turned over earlier), then sleep until dark, when we are awakened and asked to see the Crowsbeak – something has come up. He explains that the owner of the other warehouse has seen through the troubles at his warehouse to the possibilities: Crosbin has learned that he has hired a party of adventurers to go down and investigate what’s at the bottom of the shaft. This must not be allowed to happen – the owner must not learn what is down there and that there is a shaft that leads up into Crosbin’s warehouse. So Crosbin is ordering us to go down now and make sure that these adventurers do not report back to their boss. If some sort of less-lethal way can be found to accomplish that, great, but to Crosbin the simplest ways are the easiest.

Njenq wastes no time in grumbling about the situation – she is not a mercenary assassin. Hajira feels similarly. The three of us go down into the Underdark, where we can assess the situation and determine what we will do. Maybe we should bring some firewood down, as we did before? And as the adventurers come down a rope, they are met with choking smoke and a blast of fire from Frimhandler? If it does not permanently solve the problem, it might buy us some time.

Or maybe the time has come for us to part ways with Crosbin?

1 CP

We Go All Walkabout

Adventure Notes 9-18-2018

Down in the Underdark, we are in a quandary as to what to do. Killing the Other Adventurers in cold blood does not sit well with Frimhandler or Hajira, and picking a fight with them seems to be a paler version of the same wrong. Frimhandler is of the opinion we should flee, but to where? Hajira reminds them of that spot in Guardian’s Rest where everything seems peaceful. Perhaps Frimhandler could finish her book there, in peace?

Njenq is adamant that she will not run away, and despite Hajira’s best persuasion that it isn’t running away, it’s walking away (from this cursed goblin city and its triple-cursed goblin laws and morality), Njenq is unconvinced. She is also unwilling, though, to come clean in any way with Ol' Crowsbeak. At her behest, we go back to Crosbin, to make sure of his instructions, which have put us at odds with each other.

Crosbin is still up, and we are shown in to see him.

Njenq gets right to the point: do we have to kill them?

Crosbin: that would be easiest. Is there a problem?

Njenq: if we ransom them, we could get more money, which could help retire my debt?

(Njenq’s acting is not so good. She’s trying to cover up her concern / revulsion at being asked to assassinate people)

Crosbin: I suppose. (Meaning: no.) Are you sure there’s no difficulty here?

Hajira weighs in here, her acting is superb. She wants to be clear that if the Other Adventurers are captured, they not see more of the Underdark or the stair up? Those are the goals, right? Crosbin seems not to care about that too much, which is odd, because he said earlier those were the things he was trying to prevent other people from finding out. Crosbin asks if we need anything to get the job done, and Hajira says no, we know the terrain and how they will be moving through it, it will likely be straightforward.

Crosbin looks from Hajira to Njenq, but nothing more of substance is forthcoming, and away we go, back down into the Underdark. Njenq is cursing goblins and goblintown the whole way, and Hajira points out that it’s goblins and goblintown that we should be acting against, not some group of adventurers that are basically just like us. Frimhandler asks are we sure that Crosbin is trying to get rid of the Other Adventurers? Isn’t it possible that getting rid of us might suit his purposes as well?

Our quandary is still deep. For lack of better plan we decide to wait in Drunken End Road, to prevent the Other Adventurers from venturing into the Underdark proper. It’s possible that the Other Adventurers will venture into the death spiral of the lava mites, which are likely to kill them and get us out of our situation? Nobody is very happy at that possibility, either.

After a bit of a wait, we hear them rather noisily coming down the shaft. Sounds like they are speaking Goblin?

After about 20 min Hajira hears someone approaching very stealthily… there is the faintest hint of a light coming along behind them… a goblin face appears, and freezes when he sees Njenq. The face retreats.

We move slowly forward, around the bend in the tunnel, toward the intersection with Tunnel Highway. As we round the bend, they all come into view: there are four of them, the goblin Thief, a human fighter with Shield, a mage in Robes and a fighter, a goblin with an Axe I think.

We stop and regard them.

Shield: Hey there. (in Goblin)

Us: no response.

Robe: who are you? (in Goblin)

Us: no response.

Robe: What are you doing down here? (in Goblin)

Us: no response.

With a gesture the robed one gets the party to withdraw, almost out of sight. He brings up Axe to stand with Shield, guarding the hallway. Njenq takes this moment to bring up an idea: the Other Adventurers can pretend they have killed us? And will help us to escape the city? Hajira sighs, as this was discussed earlier, but Njenq apparently was not listening, lost in the pain of her conflicting loyalties. On paper this might work, but do we really want to trust these Adventurers? What will it really gain us? After all, we can walk out of the city on our own.

After much whispering of their own the Other Adventurers all step forward again. Thief steps forward a few yards beyond the fighting wall and addresses us again: I speak for our leader, Gakril – who are you? What are you doing down here? (in Goblin)

Thief: (in Common) How about now? Can you hear me now?

Us: no response.

Robe animates a pebble, and through telekinesis guides it down the hallway toward us. Hajira responds by raising her bow and aiming her arrow at Robe. The fighters close up to protect Robe, but he must keep an eye exposed to guide the pebble, and Hajira aims for that eye. As the stone approaches, and Hajira maintains her aim with steely calm, the stone wavers and comes to a halt about five yards away.

Robe: what do you want from us? What do you want us to do?

Njenq: sheathes katana and sotto voce expresses doubt to Hajira: I don’t like this. What are we doing? Hajira says also sotto voce to just hold our ground.

Us to them: no response

Thief and Robe are now arguing. Shield takes a step forward, shakes his weapon at us, growls in frustration.

Robe: we are just trying to ascertain if you are real. Are you still refusing to speak?

Njenq: apparently not.

Robe: will you tell us who you are and why you are here?

Njenq looks at Hajira.

Robe: what do you want? Do you want us to leave?

Us: no response.

Shield, growling: let’s just take them out. They don’t have the wit to be useful anyway.

Njenq: I wouldn’t do that.

Robe: Are you just going to keep standing there?

Us: no response

The Other Adventurers are in a quandary. Thief tugs at robes, mage sighs, nods, and they cautiously retreat back down the corridor.

When they are out of sight, Hajira says, OK let’s go, but Njenq says, NOW you want to go? Fed up, she stalks off after the Other Adventurers, telling Frimhandler and Hajira to wait for her at the stair. They are shocked but agree. At the stair, they are stunned by this turn of events. What is Njenq doing? Her motives are opaque.

Njenq comes up to the Other Adventurers and tells them curtly “Parley. Meet me at the intersection.” The robe says, wait…. but Njenq says AT THE INTERSECTION. Njenq gets back to the intersection with Tunnel Highway with the Other Adventurers coming along behind.

Robe: Where are your companions? What do you wish to tell us?

Njenq points down the Tunnel Highway and tells them, “death waits for you that way.” She tells them what we know about the Lava Mites and the Death Spiral.

Njenq: maybe some day, if we meet again, you can return the favor.

Njenq rejoins the others, we go up, get our stuff, and go. Hajira grumbles something to the warehouse guard about having to relocate, and the guard seems to accept it, despite a twinge of I think maybe I am supposed to report this? Out we go, to Hajira’s woods, then into the wilderness beyond. Taking the lead, Hajira zigs and zags as we go, to make us harder to track, and to keep our direction of travel vague.

As we make our way northward, Hajira casts a glance every so often to Njenq, wondering if Njenq will be able to find any peace of mind about this haphazard and precarious change in their fortune. What did Njenq say to the Other Adventurers, and why? No easy answers. But mostly Hajira's heart begins to swell with its own quickening beat – delight to be on the road again! and headed northward! back to the forest! Moving once again toward her love and her mission and her destiny. Cautiously at first, but then more boldly, her blood begins to sing its ancient song. As the sun comes up on Day 31 the towers of Azsana grow distant and drop out of sight behind the foothills, and good riddance to them.

1 CP

Crosbin's Lovely Underdark: When We Last Saw It (Map)

Party Inventory: Day 34 (95)

updated 4-27-2019

updated 4-27-2019, as of Day 86

updated as of Day 95 (adv on hiatus)

_____________________________________________________

NJENQ

On Her Person:

• padded undershirt
• padded undertrousers
• belt:
  • sheath:
    • long knife
• pouch:
  • • personal basics
    • 1 rations

Battle Trim: add

• fine mail
• fine mail pot helm
• shoulder:
  • scabbard:
    • katana #2
  • medium buckler
• hip:
  • scabbard:
    • katana #1
  • canteen

Traveling: add

• poncho
• neck pouch:
  • perfume
  • trio of augury dice
  • 43 copper in coin
• hip:
  • reflex bow
  • quiver:
    • 32 arrows
• shoulder pack:
  • blanket bedroll [taken from slaver ruffians]
  • 1/3 of group basics
  • 10 yards rope
  • 8 rations
  • first aid kit
  • dark lantern [trampled by a boar]
  • pint of lantern oil in skin [trampled by a boar]
  • torch
  • two broadswords
  • two long knives

_____________________________________________________

FRIMHANDLER

On Her Person:

• ordinary clothes:
  • lederhosen
  • robe
• belt:
  • pouch:
    • dragon statuette
    • personal basics
    • 1 rations
    • seeds from the healing fruit tree
    • 20 silver coins, cut into

Battle Trim: add

• shoulder:
  • backpack:
    • jo
    • smithing hammer
    • iron piton
    • 10 yards rope
    • 20 yards twine

Traveling: add

• chest pouch:
  • 525 copper in coin
• shoulder:
  • blanket bedroll [taken from slaver ruffians]
  • leather bag:
    • thaumatology book
• add to backpack:
  • 1/3 of group basics
  • papers about bribes stolen from the police station
  • formal wear
  • dark lantern
  • pint of lantern oil in skin
  • 3 rations
  • waterskin
  • purse:
    • 90 copper
  • pouch:
    • 310 copper
    • magic metal gloves (leather is decrepit)
    • magic volcanic glass feather carving
  • purse:
    • 22 silver

_____________________________________________________

HAJIRA

On Her Person:

• undershirt
• work breeches
• belt:
  • sheath:
    • silver knife
• pouch:
  • black mask
  • spare bowstring
  • sewing kit
• back pouch:
  • personal basics
  • 1 rations

Battle Trim: add

• leather armor
• leather helmet
• shoulder:
  • shoulder quiver:
    • 15 arrows
• quarterstaff
• longbow (living)
• hip:
  • wineskin

Traveling: add

• back sling:
  • medium shield (living):
    • steel knife
• shoulder pack:
  • bedroll [taken from ruffians]
  • 1/3 of group basics
  • black cloth:
    • 3 glass vials, desiccated
    • 1 glass vial, green sludge
  • small pouch:
    • silver jewelry
    • silver diadem
  • charcoal sticks
  • lock of Granny Alice’s hair
  • duplicate maps of the Underdark on birchskin
  • five-knife set
  • explorer’s journal written in Common
  • spare blouse (linen)
  • waterskin
  • 1 rations
  • lashed to outside: 2 untanned wolf pelts
• neck pouch:
  • 62 copper in coin
  • 8 silver

Currently carried among us, awaiting sale (slaver-ruffian spoils):

• 1 long spear
• 1 fine scimitar
• 1 short sword
• 2 daggers
• 1 mace
• 2 helms

_____________________________________________________

Who Guards the Guardian?

Adventure Notes 9-18-2018

It is now Day 31 of our adventure together. It’s early morning and we are hiking northeast, away from Azsana, paralleling the river. Back toward Guardian’s Rest. We are carrying everything we own on our backs.

Today is a day in late spring. The weather: warm, cloudy with occasional sun. a little drizzly at times but otherwise good visibility. Perfect hiking weather.

Gradually, as we descend, the scrub pine forest and rocky terrain of the Goblin Mountains gives way to its more open foothill terrain.

We take a break, and Hajira settles in to meditate: are they after us? Her impression is: no, they aren’t. Crosbin has other worries at the moment, heh heh. But in time they might be… if Crosbin is willing to risk more money on his Njenq investment. Which Hajira has some doubts that he will. If Crosbin put out a bounty on Njenq and Frimhandler, the bounty hunters would have to take them alive… which in Njenq’s case at least is a doubtful outcome, and Crosbin knows it. But if they did manage to take Njenq alive, and returned her to Azsana, then Crosbin would have to pay the bounty… which might be throwing good money after bad? It would increase Njenq’s debt yet further… which means she would be even more incentivized to run away again…

Hajira hopes that Crosbin does the math and realizes that he paid 20 gold for the specimens, maps of the Underdark, and most of all, knowledge about the possible passage to the ancient lands… not to mention the undoing of Nal and its offsetting income, and that’s how the deal went down. It’s not like he was left with nothing.

Or so Hajira muses to herself, anyway, as she trudges along. As the terrain continues to open out Frimhandler chooses her moment and then casts Rapid Retreat on us all; as. we come out onto the rolling grasslands of the lower foothills, the spell kicks in well and we are making very good time.

By midday the sky is thick with clouds, so Hajira is unbothered by the midday sun. We press on.

As dusk approaches, we can see the dark forest spread out before us. It’s still an hour away, though, and we choose not to press further into the darkening landscape. Hajira finds a good sheltered spot by a ridge overlooking the river. Frimhandler camouflages the camp. Hajira finds some food (rabbits, fish).

We set watches: Njenq, Hajira, then Frimhandler, and it is an uneventful night. We rise, rested, before dawn, and venture into forest. We pause at the ruin we explored before, the one by the river; Hajira looks to see if anybody/anything has been there recently… but finds no trace of anything of note. We continue on into the forest.

Navigating through the forest, we are looking to retrace our steps back to the Guardian Tree. Frimhandler has enhanced our perception. Frimhandler and Hajira see some trees with few leaves, some trees being choked with vines – signs of forest unhealthy? Possibly too little predation? We can help with that….

We go deeper in and enter the deep wood. A chill creeps over us, not entirely natural. Hajira hasn’t found any landmarks: she must be in the wrong area. The woods have changed a lot in a month, but…. Hajira navigates deeper into the wood, but after some time she notices she’s going in circles. She’s found no familiar landmarks. By now it’s getting later in the day… Frimhandler spots something, a tree that looks green but isn’t, a vine is choking it, it’s dead and the forest is shrinking away from it.

We decide to try burning the vine as we did previous time. Frimhandler ignites it readily and… it flash-flames as before. But as it goes up, we hear a… howling? not too close, but not too far either. Chilling, as wolfish howls go. As the howl continues we prepare to receive these animals; we take up position near the burning tree, but they move around out of sight and do not come near.

We go back along our path in, back to a good camp place that Hajira had spotted earlier. Frimhandler camouflages our camp. The night passes uneventfully. In the morning, we plan to resume our work protecting the Guardian.

0 CP

Howlin’ Wolf and Steppin’ Razor

Adventure Notes 10-17-18

It is now Day 33. The Guardian Tree, the Mother of the Forest – the great tree is eluding Hajira. We make a camp about 10 miles into the forest, near to the river. Hajira is worried somewhat about the possibility of a bounty on their heads, or on Njenq’s head anyway, and we determine we will attempt to obscure our trail in the morning, by making it end at the river or some such thing. She and Njenq agree that it would be good to go on the warpath against the invasive vines, and befriend the spirits of the forest; Frimhandler is up for anything that involves burning things and giving her time to read / light to read by.

We spend most of the day obscuring our trail very well. We end up going to the riverbank, having Frimhandler string a rope for us, crossing over the river, going upstream on the other side while obscuring our tracks, stringing another rope, crossing back over, obscuring our landing, heading east, then crossing our own tracks and obscuring our own tracks as we do so. The trouble is that Njenq falls in on the other side of the river, and then is leaving big squishy marks as she travels. But we persevere. Once we finish all that, we’re heading east, at an angle away from the river, then swing around to the northeast. So now we are roughly paralleling the river, headed downstream, but some ways away from it.

Frimhandler climbs a tree, then airwalks above it to look for the Mother of the Forest – but the fog has come in, so she can’t see far. She’s looking for the crown of the Mother, which we theorize will be very distinctive, but she doesn’t see it in her limited field today.

Frimhandler finds us a good spot, by some blueberry thickets, and we make camp. Frimhandler camouflages it well. Hajira walks in a spiral away from the camp, looking for tracks, and finds some day-old wolf tracks. Hmmm. We set watches, and the night passes uneventfully.

It is now Day 34. Hajira meditates on where from here evil can be found, and it comes to her that on their previous visit, the magic cat led them away from the river about five miles, and deliberately led them to the locations where the bad vines were, so they could fix the situation. That means that that area was about five miles from the river, as they are now, but farther north than here. So they are heading in the right direction by going northeast – that’s her feeling anyway.

We break camp and go. After traversing five miles, to Hajira the feeling of the forest changes: from “normal” forest to something on edge. This might be the border where they enter the influence of evil? As Hajira ponders this, Njenq spots a green glint off in the forest – a dull green, like the bad vines we’ve seen before.

Sure enough, bad vines are taking root. The forest has not shrunk away from them, though. There are two dead trees nearby. We do what we can to reduce the fire risk – but there still is some. We proceed anyway. Frimhandler is perhaps overenthusiastic with her fire jet and a vine goes up in flames, which spreads to the second strangled tree, but then this tree catches fire and begins to spit out embers and sparks.

Frimhandler is ready with a soaked cloth and airwalks up to smother the stray embers, but gets a lungful of smoke and is forced to come down. Njenq takes a soaked blanket up into the tree and attempts to smother the fire, to some success, while Hajira stamps out the embers as they fall. But it is a close thing. We manage to keep the fire from spreading, but at a price: Frimhandler is overcome from smoke – and the vinesmoke seems to be particularly noxious. Njenq ruins her bedroll.

We continue on and find a good place to camp, by some blackberry bushes. We set watches (and hot bunk it to make up for Njenq’s lost blanket).

In the middle of the night, on Njenq’s watch, she realizes that the wolf howls that we have heard from time to time have gotten closer. And more insistent. Actually, they’re here! She starts away from camp to see what’s going on. Her movement awakens Hajira, who first sits up, then leaps up, staff to hand, when she sees Njenq move off with katana drawn. Hajira prods Frimhandler awake with her staff, then looks up to see four wolves leap up on a fallen tree and charge into camp.

“Njenq!” Attempting to organize a defense, if only in her head, Hajira takes up a defensive position in front of Frimhandler, who is struggling to get up. Njenq goes all sparkly and comes charging back into camp as the wolves reach Hajira and harry her, circling around her to try to get at Frimhandler. Frimhandler begins to walk on air, except that she is lying down, so it is more like Roll Around In Air. She’s only a meter off the ground.

One of the wolves has circled around the campfire and skirting the campfire, charges in a flying leap at Frimhandler. But Njenq is there first, and puts the wolf off its attack. Its jaws snap fruitlessly at Frimhandler. Frimhandler answers with a blast of flame, and another flurry of blows from Njenq kills the wolf.

Two more wolves now lope into the firelight, and one of them is huge. Frimhandler takes a knee, then rises 10 feet into the air. Njenq and Hajira go back to back as the wolves take up positions surrounding them, then, upon a howl-keened command from the dire wolf, all charge us at once. The lesser wolves seek to close with us but the direwolf leader goes straight for Hajira’s throat.

…only to be met with a parrying blow to its head. It falls back stunned as both Njenq and Hajira twist away from the jaws of the lesser wolves. Frimhandler rains down fire upon the dire wolf, inflicting a horrible burn. Njenq hacks away at a lesser wolf snapping at her face, but saves one slash for the dire wolf as it seeks vainly to recover. Hajira, furious now, thumps the dire wolf as hard as she can, once and then again. The big bad wolf is now reeling from the punishment, and with another slash-hack-slash from Njenq and another gout of flame from Frimhandler standing above put the big wolf down.

Hajira turns to the remaining four wolves, who surround her and Njenq. She puts her back to the campfire and stands ready to meet their charge. But a last blast of fire from Frimhandler kills the big wolf dead, and first one then another then all of the remaining wolves turn tail and flee. Njenq leaps after the one nearest her, and aims a parting blow at it.

Hajira looks around carefully, to see if there is anyone who has been watching the fight from a safe vantage, but sees no one. She then watches the fleeing wolves, to see if she can discern which direction they will end up traveling. She sees the ones fleeing south seem to bend around to the north-northeast, and the ones fleeing north seem to continue that way. That is also the direction they seem to have come from.

Frimhandler must rest a bit. Hajira and Njenq too. But then maybe we should pursue these wolves? She thinks three of them have been injured – and if they’ve been cut by Njenq, they should be bleeding and easy to track. They have lost their leader and will probably run straight for home. With luck we can bring the fight unexpectedly to the source of this evil.

1 CP

Cautery

Adventure Notes 10-30-2018

It’s the middle of the night, in the early hours of day 35. We have two dead wolves lying at our feet. Four others fled, off to the north. They seem not to be wounded? There’s no blood trail, anyway.

Inspecting the carcasses, we find normal-looking wolves, except the alpha wolf has bloodshot eyes –maybe it had been enchanted to compel it to attack us? or maybe something much less paranoiac.

We decide not to move camp – out of laziness, mostly. The rest of the night is uneventful.

What’s the plan for the day? We plan to be sedentary for the first half, and then explore for the second half. So Frimhandler reads, Hajira skins the wolves, Njenq practices with her katana. Hajira readily procures their survival fare for today: dormouse filets in a blueberry-herb reduction sauce.

But then around noon it begins to rain, torrentially. A little worried, we cross the little creek which has surprisingly started to flow and is already shin-deep. Moving north, we find a sheltered place on a high spot by some rocks - Hajira arranges a hasty lean-to with the bloody wolfskins as its roof. We’re pretty wet and miserable.

Around dusk the rain tapers off into something less torrential. Hajira gets a fire going, but it’s only so effective at dispelling the cold. Njenq and Frimhandler suffer from the cold, but Hajira – luckily – does not.

The night otherwise passes uneventfully. The rain stops. Dawn on day 36 shows us a blue sky morning, but Frimhandler is still feeling poorly. She tries to use her new Thaumatology skill so that she can alter her Heal spell to work on an illness, but it doesn’t work for her this time.

We coddle Frimhandler all day, so she will have the best possible chance to recover. Hajira walks a spiral around the camp, going out as far as a half mile. At the edge of that walk she finds a wolf print from a day ago – from a wolf fleeing combat with us, presumably. It was running north and a little bit east.

The night passes uneventfully. The next morning, Day 37, is chilly. Frimhandler still feeling poorly, and now so is Njenq. Hajira spends all day making improvements to our camp in the lean-to. It should now be cozy in anything less than a downpour.

Another uneventful night, not so chilly. In the morning Frimhandler is feeling much better, Njenq also. They seem to be coming out of it. Hajira once again successful in arranging our survival fare.

Frimhandler takes an airwalk, hoping to spot the Mother of the Forest, walking very carefully while being alert for eagles. She finds the day is clear, with a few wisps of low cloud. Frimhandler looks out across the sea of green: to the NE she sees that the character of the forest is different – older? Darker? Hard to tell. She sees a line of different green – the riparian trees that mark the river – it leads into the older forest. She can’t figure out the older forest, exactly.

BUT directly to the East she can see a whole stretch that’s the familiar dull grey-green of the flame vines. Yowsers. Frimhandler comes down very carefully and tells us everything.

Evening comes. Frimhandler tries to modify her Heal spell again, and this time tries it on Njenq. It is wildly successful – almost. If it were possible for this to work instantly, it would have. But alas, it is not possible without much more concentrated study.

In the morning, we head east, to meet the vines and hopefully to burn them. Hajira navigates us 3 or 4 miles in an easterly direction; we then come upon the vines and see they are creeping their way into the forest

Hajira wonders if there’s a way to cut out the tendrils going into the forest, before we light up the vines. But while she’s wondering that, Frimhandler flames the vines.

The flames spread quickly and turn into walls of flame as high as the trees. The walls move away from the point of combustion; we can see them move off down the vine-forest border, to left and to right. But as it burns deeper into the vine-covered area, the fire begins behaving strangely: rather than continuing into the vine wasteland, it curls back out toward us and the unburned forest. Frimhandler observes that flame seems to be shooting out of the thick vines – the sap boils off and ignites? And are the vines intelligently directing such flame – directing it away from themselves? It’s possible. The party retreats.

The fire peters out eventually, after burning about 150 yards into the forest itself. We can’t approach and it’s getting dark, so we go back to camp.

Now it’s the morning of the 39th: Njenq and Frimhandler feel fully healthy again! Hajira tends to their survival and hers. Soon we head back to the fire to see what has transpired there. We walk through about 120 yards of partial burn, then there’s a 20-30 yard band of complete forest burn, then about 20-30 yards of complete vine burn, and then the vine wall which is blackened only some yards in. The thick vines have resisted the fire somehow.

Frimhandler lays out her plan, which is to light the thick vines on fire, then run away before they can scorch her. She hopes she can gradually burn away the entire patch. Hajira warns that we should consider the vines as being intelligent and able to project fire intelligently. Frimhandler’s idea is that the burn zone serves as a firebreak, so burning the vines should be safe for the forest.

We decide to trek up to the old forest, where presumably the Mother of the Forest is, first, to see if we can learn from her whether what we’re doing is a good idea or not. We follow the burn line around and then leave it behind as we head north, only to run into another wall of vines. Frimhandler skywalks and can trace out this map:

The day is too far gone for us to make the Mother of the Forest today – we need to turn back to get back to camp by nightfall, so we do. Hajira navigates us back. Again she provides our survival fare.

Night falls. At the beginning of her watch, Hajira hears a singular weird howl, far off – which she assumes is one of those wolfish aberrations, the body of which we found in this forest earlier, slashed open presumably by the great cat. The rest of the night passes uneventfully; in the morning of our 40th day, we break camp and trek directly for the Old Forest. Hajira navigates us there.

We come to the border of the old forest. Njenq sees an orange flash – no one else does. Hajira senses a change come over the forest – it has turned dark and foreboding, ominously so. It seems to choke off the very light itself. Mirkwood. Frimhandler looks carefully around and finds (almost completely hidden) some vines with very sharp thorns on it. Very tough-looking. Hajira realizes she does not recognize this forest area AT ALL. Is this really where the Mother of the Forest is? Maybe this is what it looks like when you don’t have a great cat spirit guide to escort you in.

Or maybe this is a different area than the one we were in before? We back out of the old forest and Frimhandler goes up skywalking, again very cautiously, to look for the Mother of the Forest. First she looks in the old forest but then father afield in other directions. She notices in time that there is some obscuring power, irregularly placed, that prevents her from seeing the old forest directly. She skywalks over to a tree in the old forest, to see if by touching it she can feel its magic, but no magic detected. None of us believe that.

Hajira meditates on the forest, on whether we should enter. She gets a feeling that the forest is – not unfriendly, exactly, nor evil, but not for us at this time. We step away from the old forest, looking for a good place to make camp. Frimhandler spots a tuft of fur from an animal. It smells – bad. Hajira looks for tracks and finds a wolf went by here, two or three days ago, and – pieces of it fell off? An undead wolf?

Hajira tracks it as it goes west, and a little south. As she does she begins to feel what the animal was feeling. Anger, and sorrow, for it has fallen ill, it has a disease. Hmmm, is one of Hajira’s lost skills Animal Empathy? It seems so?

The sick wolf came west and skirted a ravine, then its tracks begin to mix with older ones of many wolves. The pack went by here and the sick one began to follow. Hajira turns us around, and we retrace our steps and look for a place to camp, as the day is nearly over. Hajira is no longer interested in finding where an undead wolf was returning to; her idea is to trace the wolf tracks back to whatever evil thing made it sick.

We make camp. Hajira begins to sing, not caring who or what may hear her. It’s been too long since she’s sung a song. And this song, like so many in her heart, are not songs she learned from her family. Hajira sings a song she learned from her elven soul, a song of Deepwood which maybe has not been sung for two thousand years, but which has found its voice again.

1 CP

Sick Burn

Adventure Notes 11-18-2018

It’s now next morning. Frimhandler feels under the weather, for some reason – she’s uncharacteristically quiet. So we let her rest (and read) for the first part of the day. Hajira meditates on whether Frimhandler is suffering from her previous ailment – or did she contract the wolf’s disease? But she gets no answer from the cosmos.

As Frimhandler reads, and Njenq stands guard, Hajira does a spiral outward from the camp, looking for tracks – with her racial memory active and her perception buffed by Frimhandler. Hajira is finding herself very powerful in this mode – she feels attuned to the forest and its creatures. She finds an old track that seems to have been made by the diseased wolf – but it is headed outward, not back. So the wolf seems to have gone east and then returned from that journey, which means it’s unclear as to whether it actually found anything. Hajira loses interest in tracking this wolf back to wherever it went, because it seems it was diseased before it made the trip? Because it seems not to have found what it was looking for? The help it sought?

After some discussion we decide to move back to the closest outpost island of dreadvines, burn its periphery, then move on to the blight previously burned and attempt to cauterize its core, in the way that Frimhandler had talked about earlier. And then we plan to move on to the upstart patches to the south of it and figure out how best to cauterize them.

So in the later part of day 41, we mosey across country to the first dreadvine island, which may be as big as about a half mile in diameter? And camp there. Short rain during the night, otherwise uneventful.

Frimhandler feels somewhat better in the morning. As day 42 dawns, clear and sunny, we burn the periphery off the new island at dreadvines. It goes pretty much as with our first burn – except that Hajira notices that the burn looks something like a flower unfurling? And Frimhandler notices that above the burning area, the air itself seems to catch on fire, as though there’s a gas released that combusts overhead, or some other such effect. But this time a slight wind carries burn into the forest to the west, about 300-400 yards vs. 100-150 in other directions. Which is a bit alarming. We control the outward spread of the fire as best we can. It’s all burned out in a couple hours, Now what?

We rest, and let Frimhandler do more resting and reading. Then we continue with our plan and travel to the previously burned dreadvine island a short distance, rest there. We notice that there’s a fuzz of new growth appearing, sprouting out of the black char from the burn. The vines also seem to be interested in light, as in they grow toward it, etc. So they are not unnatural in that regard? Uneventful night.

Morning of Day 43, Frimhandler is about the same, healthwise. We are going to try to burn the core. At dawn we take up a position about 5 yards from the black char. Hajira has her shield and is crouched down with Frimhandler, shielding Frimhandler and herself from any backflare. Njenq is some yards behind them, holding ropes that she can use to yank them away if necessary. Hajira is carrying only shield and knife, the rest of her equipment is safely stashed away.

Frimhandler lets loose a jet of flame. It washes through the char and blazes five yards into the dense core of vines. They start to burn, but only in fits and starts. The budding new growth flares up though, and about 30 yards of that flash-flames in either direction before that flares out.

Hajira notices the vine reacts to being ignited, almost instantly: a breeze, a breath, comes out of the vine, keeping the flame from spreading very far farther in. It’s all over fairly quickly: Frimhandler has burned a wedge into the vine core about 5 yards in and about 4 yards wide at the periphery, plus has singed off the new growth for about 30 yards to either side.

Hajira takes up a booty broadsword and hacks away at the char of the burned core. She can hack away at it without causing corrosion to the blade, but the blade edge isn’t too happy to hack the hard charcoal. Njenq criticizes Hajira’s bladesmanship, and Hajira shakes her head in frank disbelief that one who seems so wise to the way of the blade does not recognize the subtle power of the Elven Dancing Blade Arm.

So it seems that we could peck away at this island of vineness, and maybe if we worked at it for a year, we could cauterize away this patch… while, presumably, 9 or nineteen other patches grew all around us.

Hajira meditates, burns her luck on it in fact: Is the forest OK with what they are doing? She gets the feeling that the forest is wary about what the party is doing – it’s like kids with matches – but most of its attention seems to be elsewhere. The forest also seems largely indifferent to them, which is reassuring somehow. It doesn’t seem to be, “you’re our only hope”…

Njenq has been saying for some time that we should find the source of the vine, not nibble at its edges. Hajira is coming around to that point of view. We go back to camp and urge Frimhandler to rest and read while we decide what to do next. Stamp out the relatively new growths to the south, if we can? And then continue on, to the southeast, looking for where the vines came from? Are they invading from that direction, which is after all the Madlands?

As is her custom, Hajira opens her intuition and memory, and sings an old song. It is about maintaining vigilance, the zen of being a guardian. Old Crowsbeak seems like a distant memory already at times, but we haven’t forgotten him…

0 CP

The Vinal Conflagration

Adventure Notes 12-5-18

It being evening, we look for a place to camp. The night passes uneventfully. In the morning, we find Frimhandler is a bit rundown but recovering. At dawn of Day 44 we go 2 miles, with Hajira navigating, to the next vine infestation. It’s 200 yards across, an odd shape with an wedge-shaped appendage. Three football fields worth of vine-laden hell. As before, the vines are intertwining into the forest (no sign of the forest retreating from it).

After some discussion of options, at Njenq’s suggestion we decide to try burning our way to the middle of this smaller patch. So Frimhandler lights it up. The wedge-shaped appendage burns off entirely. This time Frimhandler notices that the defensive reaction of the vine center is not nearly as robust as it was when we burned on the bigger patches.

We wait most of the day for the forest to burn out. Hajira meditates in the meantime: Does the forest like the vines, or not? The answer comes back to her relatively clearly: Not. The forest has an entity, the Spirit of the Forest, i.e., the cat. It’s an avatar of the forest, and it seemed pretty clear that the cat wasn’t a fan of the vines.

As soon as the attack zone is clear, Frimhandler puts her attack plan into action: she is going to send a flame straight ahead, and then after the vine begins to react from the first one, she will try flaming to the left and right, as far in as she can see. Hajira starts to the right, and it works! The flame seems to now catch the vines unaware, and jets of flame shoot out in all directions. Two jets intersect with Frimhandler; she dodges one, but is burned by the other. Another catches Hajira directly, burning her. We scramble back, out of range.

Definitely a pattern emerging: parts of the vine try to direct the flame away from itself, but in these smaller patches the vines seem unclear as to where the center is, some of them direct it at other vines, and in a brownian sort of way, the flame spreads throughout the vine patch. In ninety minutes, it looks to have been entirely burned. We cleared a patch! Meanwhile, Frimhandler heals herself and Hajira.

The interior of the vine burn being still uninhabitable, we look to camp. We retreat a small ways into the unburned forest and Frimhandler watches the flames as they die down.

We make camp and set watches: the usual order, Hajira, Njenq, Frimhandler. We’re aware that we may have rung the vines’ bell this time. During Njenq’s watch, Frimhandler wakes, for reasons unclear to her, and notices deep gouges around her bedsite. They are in an oval around where Frimhandler was sleeping. It’s hundreds of paw sweeps making an oval starburst around Frimhandler’s bed. And it happened while Njenq was on watch right nearby, and entirely unaware. The two wake Hajira and we discuss what it might mean.

It’s Hajira’s idea that the cat has come to make a sort of protective pentagram around Frimhandler, and her examination of the paw sweeps doesn’t contradict that theory. We all agree that the marks seem to suggest approval (certainly not disapproval). Hajira feels the cat may be warning them that trouble is out there, so Hajira stays awake and alert to trouble as Njenq finishes her watch and goes to sleep, and Frimhandler begins her watch. Frimhandler stays inside the oval, and Hajira watches from just outside.

During her watch, Frimhandler notices that she feels better now than when she went to bed. The cat has healed her, or something? Rest of the night is uneventful.

Dawn of Day 45 comes; it’s a misty morning. Frimhandler seems a bit stiff when she’s out of the circle, but better when she’s in it. Her muscle aches seem different when she’s in the catogram – there’s a blue outline, an aura around her? She uses her magic knowledge to try to discern the nature of the protective spell, but it is too subtle for her. It’s particular to Frimhandler, though? It doesn’t seem to have any effect on Hajira.

We go back to the vine patch whose perimeter we burned first. Frimhandler has a plan for quick strikes to start the uncontrollable flame. Njenq is up front with Frimhandler, shield out to protect her as necessary. Hajira is well back, shield out, rope around Frimhandler and ready to drag her out of there if she’s hit or falls.

All is in readiness. Frimhandler shoots the spell but something goes very wrong, she shoots the sky! Frimhandler gets up, prepares and tries again. This time the spells go off fine and penetrate deep into the vines. The vines respond instantly, as though telepathically, and direct the flame of the igniting vines back at Frimhandler. The flames go out pretty quickly, but the fuzz of new growth on the outside is set alight and burns for quite a ways in every direction.

Both Frimhandler and Njenq get burned, but Njenq is mostly protected by her armor. Frimhandler heals herself.

In time we determine that it’s the smaller patches that are vulnerable, and the more irregular, the better. Regular patches, and larger ones, seem to have a better sense of where their center is. So we go and find the next one. It’s bigger than the small one we burned entirely, but seems vulnerable. Frimhandler lights it up as usual. No flame damage taken this time, BUT the flame does spread out of control and consumes most of the irregularly shaped vine patch. Unfortunately the forest catches fire and burns for three days, taking out a bit of forest to the west.

We decide to wait for rainy weather before we do any cautery that might affect the forest. If it’s not wet out, we burn off vines that are safe behind firebreaks already. When weather comes, we will burn the periphery of newly found patches, to make them safe for cautery. The warm dry days continue for a week, then the rains come.

In our exploring, we find another large splotch, directly south of the triangular splotch, and perhaps the same size. That makes three of the medium-large patches. We find 14 smaller patches, and work on those. We also go back to the big patch and burn off its fuzz successfully.

As we are doing this, Hajira is having trouble meditating successfully; plus we have troubles with some poor menu choices, which take three days to set to rights. But as the weeks pass we also have time for Frimhandler to begin to put her book learning about Thaumatology into practice… and Hajira has almost mastered her fast draw with the arrow…

Burning out the small patches goes well until Small Patch 8 – which burns too well, and a flame from it works its way over half a mile to the third large patch, which burns at its periphery for the first time and now sends flame west, around previous cautery areas… the end result is, after the smoke clears and the ashes settle, one large patch of burned forest. Small Patch 9 and 10 also get burned, so only 4 small patches remain.

We have a new concern. Up to this point, we have been returning to our campsite with the protective sigil, and Frimhandler has been sleeping in it. But now that protective magic seems to be wearing off, and Frimhandler is starting to feel bad. She has a pain like muscle cramps? Ominous and worrisome. Could it be that she has been infected or afflicted by something, when she was caught in the vine flame? Are the vines working their evil on her psychically? Hajira thinks about the plight of the sick wolf. As we enter Day 66, we’re thinking we must get her away from this area, and perhaps into the healing bosom of the forest, if such sanctuary exists and we can find it. As dawn breaks on Day 66, Hajira greets it with a song that her mother sang, when one of her children was (hopefully) recovering from an illness.

1 CP

The Cat Comes Back

Adventure Notes 12-26-18

It’s our 66th day together. The day dawns still smoky and ashen. Frimhandler is feeling bad: her discomfort has been growing worse over last few days. Pain all over her body. It goes away, mostly, after a little while, but it’s still worrisome.

We’re camped out just to the west of our first vine burn, and north of the big burn that got out of control, and sent two tongues of forest fire licking off into the west, toward the river.

What does the forest want? Frimhandler is keen to pursue this question. Frimhandler feels certain there was some kind of negative force affecting her, as the burner of the vine; the scratch marks defended her from it; is there a way for her to restore that protection? Maybe she needs to eat another of those restorative fruits.

Frimhandler uses her Thaumaturgy knowledge… determines that her ailment is not magical in origin, although it may have a magical component. Maybe a magically implanted disease – the magic is now gone, but the disease remains.

Hajira meditates about home, the Guardian Tree; it seems to be on the other side of the big vine tongue.

(To recap, at this point we have burned three medium blights: first the kidney-shaped one and then the round one and finally another medium blight southeast of the kidney one. We also burned most if not all of the small vine sprouts, individually and in the big burn that got out of control and swept into the forest to the west of the third medium blight. It burned two “rivers” into the forest quite a ways before it petered out.)

We head north, to find the north edge of the tongue, and then swing to the east at about lunchtime. Then Hajira meditates again to determine which way to go, facing east. But she gets the sense that to the east is not the party’s “home.” She tries again, honing in on the welcome home feeling, and this time facing north. But the meditation is not a success.

With little to go on, we go east, and maybe a bit south, with Hajira looking for signs of anything familiar, to return her to the Guardian of the Forest. But she sees nothing. As we begin to look for a place to camp, Hajira looks for tracks, finds quite a few, heading to the east and to the northwest. Tracks of a large bear, heading northwest. Hajira rustles up some grub and we make camp, Frimhandler having found us a good site.

Night passes mostly uneventfully; the people on watch hear some noises they cannot identify. Frimhandler wakes to find a large dead rabbit tucked right into her bedroll. Njenq sees the smear of dried blood across her forehead. Frimhandler has the pain again, a bit worse this time, but it passes.

The rabbit is particularly large and meaty. Hajira prepares it for breakfast, but before eating, meditates: “is this rabbit a gift from the forest? If so, thank you.” Her answer comes back: “...more than just a gift.” They eat, with Hajira giving Frimhandler an extra helping. There’s no immediate feeling of benefit, but our hunger is satisfied at least.

We go a mile, Hajira navigating, then she stops to look for tracks. One in particular catches her eye: a trail used by a variety of different animals, large and small. They are mostly headed east, so we follow the trail another mile. It runs east and a little north. Hajira does a spiral at this point, but finds nothing noteworthy.

We press on, a bit more quickly, continuing to follow the trail to the east. After another two miles, as we are taking a rest, Frimhandler notices something: through a break in the trees, she sees the Guardian tree? We approach and sure enough, it is the Mother of the Forest. As we move forward, though, we hear a somewhat harsh-sounding mrawl off to our left. Njenq assures us the cat is out there, but Frimhandler and Hajira cannot see it. We can see animals around the tree, and we respectfully approach.

We reach the open ring around the tree. The tree looks familiar: the huge trunk, the looming canopy, and the animals sheltering in peace around it. But as we step into the open space we hear a hissss directly behind us. We immediately stop and after a moment, Frimhandler sits down, followed by Hajira, and then by Njenq.

Hajira meditates: are we welcome here? The answer seems to be: “It’s complicated.”

After 15 minutes, Njenq sees the tip of the cat’s tail, twitching from behind a tree near the trail. But when she goes over there, nothing to be found. Njenq returns to the trail, and to the party. We move off the trail, along the outer ring of the open area; Hajira and Frimhandler move just a little ways along, but Njenq makes a circuit all the way around.

Hajira looks for anything amiss, different from last time. Hajira notices that the animals don’t come too close to the tree trunk; they stay mostly about a third of the way away from the trunk, with the occasional one or small group that wander right up to it.

Frimhandler is still feeling a twinge of her pain; she gets up and goes closer, right to the edge of the tree’s canopy, and sits down there. She feels relief at first, but then the twitches begin again, they seem to be pulling at her from inside. Which is alarming. Frimhandler moves closer to test if she can find relief, but there doesn’t seem to be any. A doe and her fawn wander over, but when the fawn gets closer to Frimhandler a yowwl from the wood sends them all scurrying to the other side of the canopy.

Frimhandler retreats back to the others. Njenq continues to walk the area, looking for – what? A bar?

After some thought Frimhandler stands and delivers an impassioned, bumbling apology, saying that we were trying to burn the vines and trying to save the trees, but some of the trees got burnt, etc. After, she gets the impression that the tree branches are bending slightly to the southwest? Does that mean we should go that way, or something to avoid that way, or just a trick of the light?

Hajira and Frimhandler hear something – a shout? Back in the direction of the trail. Njenq is gone! Hajira snatches up her weapons and runs off in that direction, Frimhandler following along stealthily. Hajira comes close enough for Njenq to tell her she has seen the cat and is following it. Hajira drops back and gives that info to Frimhandler, who moves up to follow Njenq as stealthily as she can. Hajira brings up the rear, honing her tracking skills on the cat, which is again leaving the occasional mark as though it were flying through the air, only now and again touching the ground.

The cat leads us all the way back to our camp and then to the northwest for about a half hour, but then the cat stops flashing its tail for Njenq to follow. So we pause there to assess the situation.

Hajira meditates: was the forest indicating we should go to the southwest? Empty reply: Hajira interprets this to mean the forest is no longer attending to us. After some discussion we determine to go southwest until we reach the vine line, then send Frimhandler up into the air to do a reconnaissance. Which we do. She sees the vine patch continues to widen out as it goes south and east; and to the southeast there is a mountain ridge. Is it possible the vines came from there?

Frimhandler comes back down, but then goes right back up again to find us a suitable campsite. She spots a few candidates from the air, and we investigate one on foot and finding it suitable, spend an uneventful night there.

On Day 68, Frimhandler has more trouble with pain as she rises. We determine to continue following the vine line, to see where it leads. We follow the vine line around for over half a day, and notice that the vine seems to be making no effort to spread to the north, where the forest is light. It seems to want to be growing west at this point. These are older vines, too, the stalks are much thicker.

Late in the day, Frimhandler airwalks again to survey the situation. She sees an ocean of vine stretching away to the west and the south.

The sun is setting on Day 68 as the vine line has curved around to run due east. We are entering the foothills of the mountain ridge, the northern end of which is due east of us. As the vines descend into the wooded valley, they pass over uneven ground, and as they do Hajira spots a vine trunk, maybe 700 yards into the mass, which is a full 4 1/2 feet in diameter. She feels there are a bunch of those. Hajira and Frimhandler and Njenq whisper among themselves, and nod: we are looking for the taproot of the fire vines, and a way to cut it. And what is the horrible place, from which this taproot grows?

1 CP

If You Stare Into The Mountain For Too Long…

Adventure Notes 1-9-2019

The day draws to a close (Day 69). We camp in the low foothills: Frimhandler finds us a sheltered spot behind some rocks, surrounded by light forest, the mountain ridge rising sharply above us. It’s a cold and clear night, cold in part because we are rising in elevation. We dine like princesses on day-old rabbit and tubers. Night passes uneventfully.

The next day dawns (Day 70). We continue to the east, skirting the vine sea to our right. The mountain seemed so close yet it takes another full day before we truly reach the base of the mountain. Right in front of us, the rock seems to spring right up in a vertical cliff. The ridge seems to be not so vertical to the north of us? We’re still in light forest. We camp and the night passes uneventfully.

As the next day (Day 71) dawns… Frimhandler is stricken with intensely painful cramps, and they won’t go away. Hajira does a visual inspection but can see nothing amiss. We can’t think of any options so Frimhandler takes a leisurely amount of time to self diagnose using her thaumatology. Frimhandler comes to the conclusion it’s unlikely that sorcery is involved, so she tries to heal herself, which fails. But in a few hours the cramps let go of her. Frimhandler is eager to move on from that place.

In an hour we’re at the cliff face, and Frimhandler urges us to look for cave entrances that might lead us down to the vine taproot. Which is, unexpectedly, exactly what we find:

In brief, we come upon a small lake (okay, a large pond) fed by a waterfall plunging from a cave. Also from this cave, three great vine trunks emerge and arch across the pond; they settle on the other side, where a number of vine offshoots have taken root. The vines continue to the west. Above the interwoven vine trunks, at the very apex of their arch, is a corona, a crown of flame.

We stand and observe, and quickly notice that there are a half-dozen flamebirds dwelling in or around the corona, plus one other larger flamebird. We observe also that there are water creatures – creatures made of water – cavorting in the mist of the waterfall. We further notice that there are fire creatures – salamanders – about 40 yards away a bit to the left, peering at us from around a great rock. As we continue to observe, we see the flamebirds’ attention seems to be drawn to the cave mouth, and from time to time one of them will venture a little closer to it – only to be repelled by a water elemental. Likewise with the salamanders – they venture toward the pond, only to step back when a water elemental makes a run at them.

Njenq asks Hajira if now would be a good time to take up a new career somewhere else? In a city, maybe. With a desk job.

Frimhandler uses her magick skills to assess the salamanders, and then the corona. The former are indeed fire elementals, whereas the latter seems to be a natural flame that has spawned or now hosts the flamebirds.

Meanwhile, Hajira uses her Yrth Naturalist skill to trace out a less vertical bit of rock above the cave entrance, and a path that skilled climbers might take to reach the cave entrance. Ever the perceptive tracker, Hajira sees the party is on a footpath that animals seem to use to get to the water.

We are agreed that to attempt the path to the cave mouth is to tempt a quick death by exposure to the elements. The various elemental forces seem to be at a standoff, but their ultimate goals are unclear; to venture into the middle of their cage match is to risk attacks from all of them at once. Instead, Frimhandler agrees to walk on air up the cliff face, to see what can be seen; then we follow cliff to the northeast, away from the cave, alert for any sign of a way up or a way in.

But there is no way up, nor way in. We continue following the cliff as it runs northeast until it breaks away to jog due south for a bit. The light forest peters out here, and to the east we can see that the rock face continues, running east, with the shoulder of the mountain rising to make a ramp that might lead us closer to the cliff top.

We move away from the rock wall into a copse of trees, to make camp. The night is uneventful.

The next day dawns (Day 72) – Frimhandler is experiencing chronic pain – but is only twinge-y this morning. But what is the cause? Is it a phantom pain? Frimhandler continues to probe what source it may have.

We have left the trees behind, so Hajira must work harder than normal to gather our daily sustenance.There is trouble when Hajira and Njenq are hunting a mountain gazelle, and they fall instead, injuring themselves. Frimhandler slightly injures herself coming to their rescue. Frimhandler then heals them all. We continue, and camp; the night is uneventful.

A new day dawns, bright and clear (Day 73). We continue to follow the rock face east, and after total of 9 miles east up the mountain shoulder, finally we get up on top of the plateau. From here we turn and head back, now going WSW, to find the area above the cave mouth and look for a way in. Now that we are atop the plateau, we can see that it holds three peaks in a triangular pattern; we are skirting the northwest side of the northernmost peak, to get to the valley in between them.

Hajira is phenomenally successful at providing for the party today – she flushes a mountain sheep and fells it with an expert blow to the head, and the sheep itself was grazing on a hillside of rainbow orchids which have delicious leaves and bulbs. We pack away 3 or 4 days’ worth of food.

It’s morning of the next day (Day 74). Soon after rising, Hajira sees the claw marks of a pair of mountain trolls – they have been stalking the party. Excellent! Troll’s liver is delicious, properly prepared: you sear the outside (if it hasn't already been seared), wrap them tightly in leaves of trundelsbane, pack all that in campfire ashes, bury deeply and let ferment for approximately a hundred years…

1 CP

Two Tramps in Troll Time

Adventure Notes 1-23-2019

Hajira examines the troll sign more closely, and concludes the trolls were here maybe 45 minutes ago. Hajira finds that even through racial memory she doesn’t know much about mountain trolls, and no one else in the party does, either. We discuss the rumors we’ve heard or half-heard and our options. In the end we decide to track the trolls, to see where they have gone. Not too difficult to track, it seems… The pair of trolls were heading west, made a half-circle around the party’s camp and continued on in the same general direction we were going – west. Is this possibly predatory / ambushing behavior? Are they moving to get ahead of us? Or to seek shelter from the coming daylight?

As we follow the tracks, Frimhandler notices signs and points them out to Hajira – which seem to indicate that a troll knelt here with its club and surveyed the party from a distance. Discussion here about what to do – should we continue to follow? Did the trolls avoid us… should we avoid them in return? If we continue tracking them, are we going to cause a confrontation we could have avoided? In the end we decide to veer more to the northwest, away from the troll’s seeming route. That means we give up the easier route west along the mountain slope.

By late in the afternoon, we are rounding the shoulder of the peak to the south. Frimhandler and Hajira glimpse a form up above them, on a ridge to the south. We pause but cannot make anything out. We continue; now it is getting toward dark. Frimhandler spots a troll shadow about 30 yards behind us. We take a position on a relatively level patch of ground near the foot of a cliff. We see no more of the troll and make a fire and camp.

Hajira is first watch. There is a half-moon. To the south there is about 30 yards of steep uphill slope and then a cliff face, going up another 30 yards. To the north the ground falls away in more steep slope. Hajira sees and hears something above them, up the slope directly to the south. Hajira wakes Frimhandler and Njenq.

Frimhandler takes to the air, and sees there is a second troll, unseen, clambering up the steep slope to the north, to attack the party from that direction. It is now maybe 10 yards from our camp platform at the top of the slope. Njenq, unable to see well by the light of our dying fire, rushes to light a lantern, but the cranky lantern is refusing to cooperate. Just as it reaches the top, Frimhandler attacks the troll with flame jet, and the troll tumbles down the cliff to avoid the jet.

Frimhandler pursues and attacks the north troll again, and hits it for a hard burn, and then again for another. It screeches, and the other troll, who had been working its way down the slope at Hajira, veers off to the east. Hajira straps on her staff and takes up her bow and quick-draws an arrow. But by now the troll is 58 yards away, as the arrow flies, and getting farther away by the moment.

Frimhandler’s flame attacks have killed the other troll; Hajira makes sure.

Morning, day 75. We have breakfast. What shall we do about the other troll? We decide to track it.

Hajira leads the way, tracking the troll successfully – it’s heading southeast. After only half an hour the trail turns back around to the north, but then Hajira loses the trail. Frimhandler enhances both their perceptions and Hajira gets on the trail again. It leads back to the area below where we camped. The troll came back to find out what happened to its companion; once it saw its companion was dead, it went away again to the east. We track it all day. It hooks to the south. We camp at the end of the day, then resume tracking it all the next day as well. Quite late in the afternoon, we seem to be closing with it. We reach a clifftop overlook, and from there, Hajira spots a dark spot in a cliff across the way – a cave entrance. We watch and Hajira sees the troll go up and into the cave – but it clearly looks back at us. It knows we are following.

We camp on the cliff and in the morning (day 77), storm the cave. Njenq first, then Frimhandler, then Hajira. It turns out the troll, in deathly fear for its life, has exited the cave via a secret passage… and was cunningly hidden over to the left as we went in the cave entrance. It rushes us from behind. Hajira, luckily, hears it dislodge a pebble a moment before the troll’s oversize body blocks out the light from behind. As the thing body-rushes her, she’s able to parry it and foil its rush, but the troll snaps her staff in two, and Hajira finds she’s left with the short end.

Hajira, knowing Frimhandler is right behind her, holds her ground, battling for her life with the troll. The troll moves into close quarters. Frimhandler gets situated and lets out a fire jet, which burns the troll horribly. Njenq then moves up, to get within striking distance and to shield Frimhandler behind her. Meanwhile Hajira tries to snake past to get behind the troll, but isn’t quick enough. The troll rakes Hajira with its claws. Another fire blast from Frimhandler misses. Hajira, desperate to get out of the way, then drops into a crouch and tries to leap past the troll, but again is not quick enough. But the way is now clear for Njenq, all sparkly, to slash the troll three times with her katana. The troll sags and falls unconscious. After quickly checking that nothing valuable will be burned, Frimhandler flames it into the oblivion reserved for creatures such as these.

Hajira can stand but is a bloody mess, so Frimhandler turns on her healing magic. Then she rests. Njenq stands guard as Hajira recovers and takes out her sewing kit, to repair the claw slashes and gores in her leather armor. Hajira begins singing a song of victory and loss – quietly, so as not to disturb Frimhandler’s repose. When that is done and Frimhandler has rested, we will investigate the troll’s lair.

1 CP

Stone-Faced

Adventure Notes 2-13-19

Frimhandler is rested. Hajira puts a last stitch into her armor, and picks up her new short staff. The ever-curious Frimhandler is convinced the troll cave holds a secret and she spends five hours searching for it. There isn’t much to the troll cave: a main chamber and a secondary chamber that has a troll-sized crack that leads back to the outside.

As opposed to the north side of the mountain, which was very rocky & barren, and dry (a talus slope, pretty much, with vegetation only in the drainages and protected areas), the south, however, is green and more hospitable. Down below, ahead to the SW, there’s a river that runs down to the SE. Its origin is up a valley that runs to the NW. The NE and NW peaks are connected by a highland that’s somewhat flat on top. This highland also connects to the south peak, starting at about the midpoint of the E-W highland and running S to the S peak. Looking across to the south peak, we can see it’s steeper, but more vegetated throughout, except for its cliff faces and topmost peak.

Hajira remembers that when we were on the north side of the northwest mountain, we saw a lower peak far, far to the north. Now, looking east, we can see the land descends into foothills, which get greener as the elevation lessens. In the farthest glimpses, we can just discern a plain?

From here, looking northeast, we can see the ridgetop that descends from the northeast peak heads northeast from it but then turns east, and descends with the foothills into the distance to the east.

Looking up at the peak we’re on (the northeast peak), at the terrain above us: it was climbable maybe from the north, but it’s much steeper to the south. Rocky and pretty inhospitable for the most part.

So now the big question: the water flowing from the vine cave – here does that water come from? A bit of snow on the northwestern peak is the only thing Hajira has seen so far.

While Frimhandler obsessively searches the troll cave, Hajira descends the slope, and walks happily among the trees below them, foraging for provisions. Njenq keeps half an eye on her from a distance. Hajira’s foraging is successful and she’s just about ready to head upslope, after lingering in communion with her beloved trees, when she sees a dark figure, possibly a bear, coming upslope toward her. She finds a good defensible spot and awaits whatever it may be. It’s dark like a bear, but doesn’t move like a bear; as it draws closer she sees it is a man, but with strange rock-textured skin and icy-blue eyes, heavy eyebrows, a glaring look.

The man speaks common. “Don’t see many folks around here. You alone?”

We’re just passing through. Where does this river lead to?

“Can’t say, never been there.”

Yeah, but. Hajira lets it pass. What’s on the other side of the mountain?

“Another valley kinda like this one, but not as good for foraging.”

Hajira has a question on her lip, something like, You heard of goblins around here? But the man speaks first; he looks up at the slope above Hajira. “That one of the others with you?”

Probably. Couldn’t say which one. Hajira does not take her attention away from the man. As Njenq approaches, the bear-man turns and trudges off to the west. Hajira lets him go and then moves upslope to join Njenq. Hajira and Njenq watch the bear-man head down to the river; after a bit, Njenq leaves and goes back to Frimhandler, while Hajira takes cover and watches where the bear-man goes. It takes almost an hour for him to amble across the river and then climb the ridge and disappear to the other side (where presumably there is a hollow or another valley). He has gone almost directly west from the meeting point.

Meanwhile, back in the troll cave, the obsessive Frimhandler has found a human corpse, ravaged by the trolls, and there’s something about it… to obsess on. With it there’s the shards of an all-too-ordinary sword, and bits of ruined armor, and then: some leather gauntlets, ready to fall apart, that issue a spark when her finger touches it. Magic! Frimhandler attempts to determine what kind of magic they might be, using her thaumatology skills…

It’s hard to discern, and Frimhandler’s curiosity being what it is, she thinks very little before she – just puts the damn things on. She puts one on, then as she is putting on the second, it rips and falls apart, and when she involuntarily curls her fingers on her other hand, the first glove falls apart as well. But the ruin of the gloves still emits the magical spark! Frimhandler finds a metal plate in each glove, that seem to be the core of the magic in them. Gloves of lightning energy perhaps?

Frimhandler investigates the smaller cave, that seems mostly unused by the trolls except as a place to scat their shat. In her exhaustive rooting-around, Frimhandler finds a carving, representative of a feather, carved out of volcanic glass or something lighter than stone. Is it magical? Yes, does seem so. A strange magic, though, seemingly. Not any sort of enchantment that Frimhandler has read about; seems to have several components to it, such as Protection and Knowledge? After asking the metal plates and the feather in her pidgin fake Draconic, “What do you do?” and getting a spectacularly silent response, Frimhandler puts them away carefully. Frimhandler eventually recovers about 800 copper worth of coin in all in her searching.

Frimhandler tells us all about her discoveries and shows them to the others. We help her pack them away carefully. We decide to camp tonight in the upper cave. Frimhandler is very tired; her extensive magical querying has exhausted her. The night passes uneventfully.

In the morning of Day 78, Frimhandler has some morning ague, and Hajira is suffering a little from being away from trees, despite her interludic idyll of yesterday. We draw our bearings and decide to head NW, sidehilling up the river valley, so as to reach the highland where we can bear SW to reach the cliff above the vine cave. So we head NW, continuing to climb, alert to any sign of a way into the mountain. The river to our left shrinks to a stream and then it is cascading down rocks as the terrain gets steeper.

About two-thirds of the way up, we see some movement to the west, a bit downslope of where we are, in an area of rough and rocky cliff. We hunker down to see what it is. We all see large lizard-looking creatures apparently moving into and out of an opening. Well, that’s a way to get into the mountain, but… Frimhandler recalls the stone skin lizards we fought in the Underdark, and we determine to avoid them if we can. We head north, uphill of the lizards, watching for chameleoned lizards, then bear NW again and attain the highland, the flatter top to the shoulder.

On the highland we find an abandoned cave, pretty wide entrance – seems to be a good place to camp, and to watch the sun set. Night comes and Frimhandler hears a little bit of noise from outside the cave: hard to say what. Hajira checks for tracks around the cave area, but finds nothing.

We head west-southwest along the wide flat highland, and at midmorning we come to a ravine crossing our path, and in it, we find some freshly broken rocks. Looking around, we sense the ravine we’re traversing seems to be the site of a struggle? But what kind of a struggle breaks rocks? Frimhandler thinks the struggle could be the sounds she heard last night; the distance seems right. Tracks are scant on the rock, but Hajira can see they go off downslope both north and south; Hajira leads the way as she follows the tracks leading downslope to the north.

We make our way down the ravine until we come to a spot where apparently, if the tracks be believed, a creature had waited for some time. Hajira discerns some older marks here also, maybe as if this spot is where the ravine crosses a sidehill path. The clues suggest that a creature came along here, perhaps as part of a regular journey it makes, then waited here for maybe two days before it headed up the ravine to the site of the struggle, and then onward.

We file away this information and resume our journey west toward the top of the vine cave cliff. We climb out of the ravine and move across the highland, crossing more ravines as we go. As night comes we find a good sheltered spot to camp; Hajira notices a smudge of smoke – such as a campfire might make – against the darkening sky to the southeast.

Morning comes, it’s day 80, and Hajira is suffering tree withdrawal – she’s in physical pain. Frimhandler in a lot of psychic pain this morning also. We head down the shoulder to a spot that we think is above the vine pool. We notice the shoulder seems to flatten out some as it approaches the rounded top of the cliff edge. We get as close as we can to the cliff edge without taking risks, then Frimhandler prepares to walk up into the air to reconnoiter.

Frimhandler walks up to stand fifty feet out above the cliff; from here she can see a sliver of the pool. So the waterfall is indeed almost directly north of us. But she can see no way for us to get any farther down the cliff. Also no sign of any way to get into the mountain, either.

Frimhandler walks up to stand fifty feet above the party, when she looks south, she sees a stone hut, where the smoke might have come from yesterday.

Also sees, coming from the southwest, a big man made of rock, followed by some little men made of rock. Aha: were the broken rocks we found actually bodies? The earth elementals seem to be following the shoulder, headed east – in our general direction, but they don’t seem to have spotted us. (For some reason, they don’t appear to be looking for goblins up in the sky) Frimhandler calmly comes down to us and gestures that we should be quiet and crouch down and hide…. cliffhanger ending!

1 CP

In The Shadow Of Condor-Boy

Adventure Notes 3-5-2019

Frimhandler prepares to cast Chameleon. The wind picks up; it’s cold. Frimhandler casts the spell on us and we hide stealthily.

The creatures lumber slowly west to east, passing less than two dozen yards from the party. Six creatures; one much larger, with large boulders as fists, whereas the others seem much more fine-featured (with smaller rocks in their hands) – they are less blocky than the big one, which seems to be the “punisher.” They’re walking parallel to the cliff, back towards where the party came from.

We could follow, because they may be going back to hunt down the being that ambushed them before. (If the broken rock we found was actually an elemental’s body.) But we are ailing, and decide instead to head west-southwest, to investigate the stone hut which is on the flank of the western peak, and then we intend to go beyond, find some woods where Hajira and Frimhandler may recover. As we ascend toward the hut, which is further up the mountainside, we see to our left a group of four of the smaller earth elementals, gathered around a rock outcropping. We decide to hunker down and see what they’re up to.

They’re clustered around a sort of pillar or spire of stone. It’s unclear what they’re doing; each is standing in place and waving its arms in indecipherable (to us) ways. Are they raising up the stone spire? Blessing it? Trying to topple it? Getting a transmission through the aether? Shrug. We continue on.

As we ascend, we get glimpses of the south valley: much like the valley we saw further east, but this river forms farther down the slope and then tumbles down to run off to the southwest. Hajira looks for trees, but they seem only to be found alongside the river itself. Sigh.

The hut is right at the snowline. We press on upward, trying to make the hut before dark. Hajira has excellent luck in securing provisions: we happen upon a spring laden with watercress and miners lettuce, moments after Hajira nails a marmot with a sharp rap of her staff. Continuing, we wrestle our way up, through stone crags and across a few treacherous snow-dusted crevices, and suffer a moment of being lost before Hajira sniffs out the correct path forward.

At the hut, Hajira knocks, and the door is opened by the stone-skinned man of the day before. Hajira greets him and asks for shelter, which after an eyebrow raise or two, he grants. The interior is rustic accommodations.

Njenq thanks him and says we have little to offer in return. He nods and adds some of his provisions to the pot on the fire, and tells us it will soon be ready.

Hajira sings a song of the Old Wood – (very well) – which their host seems to enjoy. In return, he tells us all a story: the story of Condor Boy and the Necromancer.

"While everyone knows the story of Condor Boy's captivity in the dungeon of the Ocelot King, few know the tale of how he got there.

“Condor Boy was traveling down a river on the carpet raft gifted him by the sprites of Twill Island when he was sucked down a drain under the river's bank and into a network of underground tunnels. After wandering the tunnels for days he found a stone portal which turned out to lead to the home of a man dressed in black who invited the still dripping Condor Boy in but refused to give his name. While exploring the man's house, Condor Boy found a secret door which lead to the workshop of a necromancer - his host. Condor Boy snuck away after staying two days in the Necromancer's company, but took with him one of the items he had found in his host's workshop: the famous Wolf Scroll.

“The necromancer quickly learned of this theft and hunted Condor Boy, finally catching up to him on the peak of the mountain overlooking the valley in which the river ran. Not wishing to be captured, Condor Boy threw himself off the mountain, holding the raft as a sail above his head. The carpet protected Condor Boy once again, but was destroyed by the time he reached the bottom, and the realm of the Ocelot King."

We admire the story and banter more with the stone-skinned man. Hajira asks about Condor Boy, and we learn that the mythical boy is not so much a clever trickster as he is a lucky adventurer. Also, he seems to have uncontrollably sticky fingers (but as fast as he lifts things he loses them). Called Condor Boy because… he’s feathered? He flies very rarely it seems, in the myths about him.

Ocelot King: hmmmm. Perhaps his kingdom (and its seemingly-fabled dungeons) is off to the north? The implication we get from the myth is that Condor Boy was journeying northward, and sailed off northward to get away from the Necromancer, who was south of the western peak.

The stone-skinned man’s name is Asp. Hajira tells him her name, and Njenq tells her name and Frimhandler’s as well.

Hajira asks, are there goblins in these mountains? His expression turns down a bit: “No, I should hope not.” Were there ever? “They get their grubby little fingers into everything – but not around here.” Hajira asks about ways down to the trees, and Asp says there are paths and he will show them to her in the morning.

Njenq tells the story of how she and Frimhandler met, a warrior’s tale. Asp has little comment, except to say that “yep, those are all the terrible things men do.” It seems he has retreated here, to leave that world behind?

Njenq asks if there’s anything we should know, going forward; anything we should watch out for?

Asp: this place is a hostile one, it will kill you if you don’t respect it. Trolls stay on the eastern side, mostly.

What about the rock lizards, rock men? Asp: “I give them a wide berth.”

Hajira sings a lullaby she learned as a child from her mother, and then we turn in.

When we awake, shortly before dawn on Day 81, the fire is still burning, but Asp is gone. He left behind some food, which we eat. We venture out; the day seems warmer than yesterday.

Hajira takes a moment to track where Asp went; he appears to have taken the way down that we traveled to come up, heading north and a little east.

Hajira feels about the same as yesterday: suffering without her trees. We decide to head to the closest trees, which are due south of us; Hajira spots a cairn that seems to indicate a path – Asp making good on his promise. We work our way down on the path, making good time; we arrive at the river by late afternoon. A mile farther down the river, there’s a good stand of trees; we make it there before dark.

Hajira is lucky again today, and provisions the party well with rabbit, brambleberries, and lilyroot. Frimhandler hunts us up a good campsite in the wood, not too far from the river. Hajira scans for tracks: nothing large or humanoid. Seems to be a place untravelled by any but the forest creatures…

We pass a peaceful night. Day dawns; overcast, but gentle winds. A little cooler. It’s day 82, and we find ourselves in a moment of existential quandary. We debate what to do: Circle back to the vine pool around the west side of the west peak? Hike back up the river, to see if there is a way into the mountain where it comes out? Hajira and Frimhandler reveal they had each hoped to be able to drop boulders upon the vine trunks from atop the cliff, but as it turns out that seems unlikely to be effective. We also expected to detect some sort of activity (beings going in and coming out of the mountain) but other than the stone lizards and their apparent nest, no indication of any beings under the mountain.

None of us are very keen to attempt to get to the vine trunks by entering the vine pool – the elementals seem too much for us.

Our talk turns to possible allies. Surely we are not the only people to have detected the vine blight? If we wait, won’t others be along presently to investigate its source? In a somewhat wildly looping way this leads to a wide-ranging discussion and recapitulation of the war of Madlanders vs. Ascendancy, which leads in its own hopping-meandering way to the Path of the Markhor. Njenq and Frimhandler remind Hajira that the Path is a closed path, that has a number of side loops, and that four nomadic groups of Madlanders travel the path regularly. (Including, notably for Hajira, the Aneeanmee.) The Path goes south between Rushas (controlled by the Ascendancy) and Guardian’s Rest, then southeast between Azsana and Guardian’s Rest, then east from there over the mountain range known as the Black Wall, which is seemingly the mountains where we are now. Over the months we’ve been together, in dribs and drabs Njenq and Frimhandler have told Hajira just about everything about this situation, except of course for the existence of a certain place that may be connected to the Path in a special way. Or not. Of course Hajira might have surmised certain things because of certain evasions and story holes. Or not.

Which brings up the very important question: does the vine blight originate on the Path? Is it connected to it somehow? (The Path crosses these mountains somewhere along here, but likely south of here, as Asp didn’t mention any nomads regularly passing through.) Will the Path bring us some allies who share our interest in trampling out the blight?

While Njenq and Frimhandler continue to mull questions and options, Hajira goes out to provision the group, and once again, is very lucky. When she returns with her bounty, she finds we are slouching toward a decision: we are inclined to follow the river downstream with Asp’s legend in mind, to see if we can find the necromancer’s lair or amiable Madlander mob or any other boon we can use to help defeat the vines.

1 CP

Paths Cross

Adventure Notes 4-10-2019

We’re making our way down the mountain range, down the river that runs generally southwest. As we follow the river, it tends more to the south – probably we are in a different watershed than the river that runs north towards that place [/Lenart/]. Hajira is looking for signs that the tribes following the Path of the Markhor have passed this way, but no sign of anything yet. She notices there is something odd about the vegetation, but can’t put her finger on what it is.

By evening, we have left the mountainside and entered the foothills. The night passes uneventfully. In the morning, we are enveloped in a gentle snowstorm, thick enough that we can no longer see the top of the mountain. We continue; now that we are out of the mountain, our way is easier. Njenq says she wants to see a town again, or a caravansary or inn (anyplace there is gambling, and where we might obtain a third bedroll). We would also like to find a healer for Frimhandler. We pause for Hajira to do some navigating; we know Azsana is off to the west of us, and thus the goblin capital is well to the southwest; Rushas is beyond Azsana to the westnorthwest, and that place, should it exist, to the north. We conclude that to continue following the river is probably the quickest way to find a settlement.

Hajira notices a pattern in the landscape ahead; the land ‘curls’ from right to left; as if maybe once the level landscape was bent down to the east. Not necessarily unnatural? River continues south, but then turns east, to match the slope in the landform. Even the grass seems to bend to the left. What could that mean? Sharp-eyed Frimhandler notices, at the far range of her vision, a few people who seem also to be following the river downstream. Hajira looks around for their tracks around the river, but can’t find any. We are not unduly concerned (or at least Njenq isn’t) so we just continue on our way.

We reach the point where the river bends east just as the sun is beginning to set. Hajira finds the group’s tracks: a half-dozen people of varying ages, on foot with a pony. They have come to the river from the west, and looking that way, Hajira and Frimhandler spot three horsemen coming up also from the west. Frimhandler thinks they may be Aneeanmee. They come up and regard us; the leader offers greetings, which we return.

Why are you traveling through this land?

Njenq gives a rather spectacularly dissembling non-answer. The leader is quick to respond that, essentially, we are to be taken in for questioning. Hajira comes back: Are we to understand that you are offering us the hospitality of the Aneeanmee?

Now it is the leader’s turn to dissemble. He starts off with no harm will come to you, unless… but embarrassed to present that as Aneeanmee ’hospitality,’ finishes with something more amenable. Hajira: “If you’re offering us company and a warm meal, by all means, lead on!”

As indicated, we now take a long walk escorted through the dark to the well-hidden Aneeanmee camp.

We find it to be a traveling camp, full of Aneeanmee people of all ages and skills – different from the war camps that Njenq and Frimhandler know from before. We are led to a small campfire off to the side, each brought helpings of the evening meal, as we wait for the leader to be informed we are here. An hour later, we are summoned before the leader, in front of her tent, with several Aneeanmee counselors and bodyguards gathered around.

The leader seems aged, thick-set, with a long braid of hair. Curiously, to Njenq at least, she has the face more like that of a proprietess of a quaint roadside inn than a caravan leader. She introduces herself as Liseli Oatwhisk, and asks us our names. We say them, with Frimhandler mumbling hers, as is her way. As Hajira says her name, one of the Liseli’s counselor- companions starts and begins attending to Hajira very closely.

Njenq namedrops Thron Windhoof, and the Aneeanmee are gobsmacked.

L: How do you know him?

Njenq: we had business together up north, on the Path.

L: you are traveling the Path, then.

Njenq: No, see, well, [it’s complicated].

L: What is the Path you have traveled? Tell me its name.

Njenq: No, um, look, we do not follow a path as the tribes do.

An Aneeanmee sycophant speaks up: Clearly they are spies, sent to infiltrate us. They tell us Thron’s name but he is not here to verify this. The Aneeanmee counselor speaks up: And they are scoundrels, as this one (indicating Hajira) is known as an ungrateful servant and a thief. Hajira does not react to this at all. Neither does Liseli.

Njenq: We are just travelers.

Liseli contemplates this. Then to Njenq:

L: Anything more to say?

Hajira speaks up now. She says it’s not unusual at all for people to have a passing connection with the Aneeanmee. Hajira tells briefly of her own time with a group of Aneeanmee, who she met in a land far from this one. She describes the woman she spent some time with, and Liseli nods, yes, she knows the woman.

Liseli however is still puzzled that we are apparently so connected to the Aneeanmee yet know so little about the Aneeanmee ways.

Hajira speaks again to say that our path is our own, yet is it so surprising that it crosses the Aneeanmee path from time to time? Both paths are drawn upon the same land. She is welcome to track our path back, to see that we have come down out of the mountains, following the river. Which apparently mollifies Liseli (if not her viper-mouthed squint-eyed counselors), enough for the night anyway. We are taken back to our campsite. Is there anything we require? Yes, Hajira says promptly, another bedroll. One is fetched for us, and we bed down, surrounded by rider guards, to sleep a luxurious sleep without setting watches or fearing for our safety.

We sleep a blessed sleep. Dawn comes, the start of Day 83. Rested, we take the morning meal brought to us and pack up, nonchalantly keeping the Aneeanmee bedroll. We are then taken to Liseli who asks us to walk with them for a while. We hoist packs and move out with them, the whole camp on the move past us, with Liseli and her circle moving more slowly to stay in pace with us.

Hajira asks about her beloved, and Liseli says that woman is not here. Hajira says she is glad to hear the woman is doing well.

Liseli starts with some gentle chat but then drops some news like a sword stroke upon Njenq: Thron has been killed and captured by the Ascendancy.

Njenq is confused: was he killed or captured? Which is it? either way, she is sorry to hear that news.

Liseli was studying Njenq’s face when she revealed the news, looking for something, and evidently did not find it. If you are to gain our trust, you must prove yourselves to us.

(Hajira puts some clues together and in a low voice, explains to Njenq: the Aneeanmee name refers to both person and horse. Thron Windhoof has been killed because Windhoof the horse was killed (or lost), and captured because Thron the man has been captured.)

Njenq to Liseli: Maybe we could gain your trust by freeing Thron.

Hajira thinks that is a good idea. She wonders how we would start going about such a rescue.

Njenq says, “Rushas” and Liseli agrees: Rushas is a good place to start looking for Thron. The Red Cloaks of the Ascendancy are likely to have him. Also, you should seek out the Nuhnaoon, who now protect the path. Given your party’s composition, you may fit better with them. Njenq takes a slight umbrage at the undertone beneath “our party’s ‘composition.’” Unless maybe the Nuhnaoon are goblins? Njenq and Frimhandler are aware the Nuhnaoon are another tribe that walk the Path.

We tell Liseli about finding the vine blight, and the threat it poses to the land, the Forest, and to the Path. She shows a detached concern for the Forest – which she has heard is a good place – but seems much less worried than she ought to be about the Path. Perhaps she knows of defenses the Path may have against such a threat? Perhaps she does not entirely believe us, that the vines are a rampant growing evil threat? Liseli tells us to seek out allies in the Old Forest. Tales say: Darkest area of the forest: an old temple, where the Guardian once made his home. Journal perhaps to be found there. We do not tell her that we have already looked in that direction, but didn’t like the dark path we found.

The time comes for us to part. The mass of Aneeanmee have moved on ahead by now, Liseli must ride on to catch up. Hajira asks Liseli to pass along her greetings to her beloved, who will surely remember the shy girl with the bleached face and the time they shared together at the house of healing. Hajira remembers the good luck charm that her beloved made for her, a figure of a horse woven from sticks and straw and the woman’s own hair, and at Liseli’s request Hajira gives it to her for her inspection. Hajira then carefully tucks it away again into the purse she keeps by her skin.

Hajira asks, on Frimhandler’s behalf, if there are any caves or ruins around the mountain. Liseli is reluctant to divulge anything about the Path, but does say no, there are none she knows of.

At this point Frimhandler crumples to the ground in pain: her disease is flaring up again. It is worse this time: Frimhandler feels a rage in her, that comes over her through her pain, but with effort controls it. She also feels an alien strength rising in her. Concerned, Liseli dismounts and examines her, and prepares a potion for her with herbs she has on hand, but it doesn’t seem to help. Hajira asks, but there is apparently no one more learned in the healing arts in this cohort of Aneeanmee.

Liseli feels that Frimhandler has a disease of some kind, not necessarily connected with the vines. Hajira wonders if it is something that was passed on to Frimhandler by the sick wolf whose trail they crossed. It’s clear we need to seek help for her as soon as possible.

Liseli is sorry she cannot do more for Frimhandler, or for us, but hey, you know, she has a tribe to move along. She indicates that if we do manage to free Thron, then we can come back and the Aneeanmee may be more amenable. Hajira waves off Liseli’s apology; after all, we are no worse off than we were before. But neither does she believe for a moment that freeing Thron will change the situation with Liseli and her tribe. Hajira says that she is interested in rescuing Thron because he was a companion to her friends, and because it is the right thing to do; she has no interest in bartering a man’s freedom merely to gain the Aneeanmee’s assistance with this or that. Liseli has a reply – blah blah something something you are young blah blah blah – which Hajira barely listens to. What she hears is: my tribe will always come first. Your problem will be your problem until it threatens my tribe also.

The Aneeanmee ride away to the east. Hajira takes up her bow and goes out hunting/gathering, and with good luck provides well for us, setting aside some extra against the hard travel days to come. As she busies herself with the hunt, Njenq and Frimhandler begin to plan our journey to Rushas.

1 CP

Tusk and Claw

Adventure Notes 4-24-2019

After some deliberation Frimhandler concludes she wishes to return to the Forest, to see the Guardian about her mysterious ailment. She has come to believe she has fallen under a geas. She reminds us that the Guardian cat did seem to give her protection from this ailment for a time.

Midmorning: the day is clear, but a little chill; light breeze. Hajira navigates us successfully to the northwest; we aim to skirt to the west of the leading edge of the vines. Off to the west, we see more Madlanders walking the path in small groups, with their horses and ponies, heading east.

As the sun goes down, we can see ahead, stretching from the northwest to the east, the forest in the middle distance. To the east, we can see the line of the vine blight. We make camp. Late in Hajira’s watch, she hears what sounds like a person walking away from our camp, far off to the west. She awakens Njenq, and they listen, but hear nothing else. We stay in place, vigilant, but nothing else happens.

Dawn comes, the beginning of Day 84. We are a bit tired. We enter the light forest by midmorning, and enter the mid-forest by noon, keeping the vines to our right. A fog settles over the land in mid-afternoon, and the temperature drops considerably. We camp again.

Next morning, we begin to see vines to the west now, so Hajira takes us west to go around them. As we veer northward again, we pass by the forest burn, the southernmost one we made. In due time we come across the next burn, and so come into more familiar territory. At mid-afternoon, we come to the leading edge of the vines – so the Guardian Tree (at the center of the forest) is to the east (about a day’s walk), the Deep Forest is to the north (and east) and the river is to the west. We head east, for the center, and make camp when the light fails.

Around midnight Njenq hears the cat yowl – by now a familiar sound. It is to the east-northeast of us. It’s heard again, now farther off and more northward. Njenq wakes the others, and we all listen. We all hear the yowling and Frimhandler detects a rumbling undertone as well. Frimhandler enhances her perception and she hears the drumming of hooves.

Frimhandler warns us of a possible stampede, headed our way. Frimhandler acts quickly and walks on air into the tree with the rope, and loops it around a branch. Njenq then climbs the rope and helps pull Hajira up into the branches, aided by Hajira’s racial memory of tree climbing.

Four boars run through camp, tearing things up as they go: fallen limbs, the underbrush, the odd bedroll. They rush through camp and continue on their rampage – but then they encounter the cat, it sounds like. There is yowling and porcine grunting and then they rampage back into camp, remotivated it seems to find and destroy all humanoids and their gear. One boar is much larger than the others, and he seems to be deliberately destroying our stuff (bedrolls and Njenq’s pack, as it turns out).

Njenq yells in anger at this, which leads a little boar to come sniff around the tree we’re in. The unlucky beast is flamed and shot simultaneously, and runs off, squealing in pain and dismay.

At this, the big boar charges our tree, straight into the trunk, and cracks it. As it backs away, stunned (or perhaps admiring its awesome accomplishment) it is flamed by Frimhandler, and Hajira shoots it, both to good effect. Frimhandler then flames it again – and the boar goes berserk.

It starts gouging the tree trunk with its tusks. Impressive, really, to see the wood splinters and shards fly. The tree is shaking and swaying so much it is spoiling our aim, so Frimhandler steps in air away from the tree trunk.

The boar slashes away, and the tree cracks again, and ominously begins to lean.

Njenq jumps down neatly, lands like a cat, and out comes her katana and buckler. Frimhandler flames the boar again, and now the boar is intent on trying to climb the tree, to get at Frimhandler and rid itself of the flaming menace. Its running leaps are thus slowly pushing the tree over. Hajira is riding the tree down as it slowly pushes its branches down through the undergrowth; she prepares to climb down the trunk and jump down to the ground.

The boar manages to leap and get good purchase on the less-than-vertical tree, and its tusks slash the air inches from Frimhandler’s foot. Yike! Njenq hacks at the big boar, once, twice but then one of the small boars charges her, and the other joins it. She’s now fighting the two small boars, but at a disadvantage, as the scene is lit only by starlight. She calls for help: “I can’t see!” Hajira walks down the trunk and jumps to the ground, only a yard or two from the big boar.

Frimhandler enhances Njenq’s perception and exhausts her magic. The big boar, seemingly intuiting that no more death-flame will be pouring down from above, looks around and sees Hajira. It charges at her, and Hajira takes her chances and fires her arrow point-blank into the monster. It is a lucky strike, doing good damage, but not nearly enough to deter the bloody-minded boar. She nimbly dodges the slashing tusks twice, but then a masterful lunge by the boar catches her and sends her backward, injured. She dodges back, ducking under the trunk of the still-settling tree.

Able to see, Njenq has mortally wounded one of the small boars, but now turns her full attention to the big boar and Hajira’s desperate situation. Under the lash of her slashing katana, the boar loses its focus on Hajira – and as its berserk rage ebbs out, so does its life. It sags and collapses. Hajira quick-draws another arrow and takes aim at the last small boar, but as she does so it also sags and collapses under the weight of its grievous wounds.

We regroup and rest, but nothing else emerges from the night to harass us. In due time Frimhandler heals Hajira’s gory wound. We take inventory: two bedrolls are destroyed (including the brand new one from the ‘Mee); Njenq’s pack was trampled, destroying her dark lantern and spilling her lantern oil. Hajira is down one arrow (still stuck in the boar that fled).

Hajira recalls this is not the first time the cat has seemingly induced a herd of animals to rush through and attack us: very early on in our time in the forest, the cat's yowl preceded us being assaulted by a pack of giant rats, two of whom also went berserk in their rage at us. Have we never actually been welcome in this forest? Do we stray so easily from the path of friendship with the forest?

in the morning of Day 86, we have bacon for breakfast, and fry up a lot of pork to eat in the days ahead. Hajira also collects the boar tusks, with the vague idea of making a necklace. When it is time to move on, Hajira has the idea of tracking the boars back to where they came from? but Frimhandler is feeling poorly – she has a fever, her body is quaking and cramping, in constant pain. Nightmares are how making it difficult for her to sleep. (On the other hand, pain and spasms seem to have made Frimhandler more resilient to damage. What might that mean?) At her urging we press on toward the Guardian Mother.

As we begin trekking our way eastward, we hear ahead of us the yowling, pretty constant but then after 40 minutes the cat goes silent. Then a flash of black behind Njenq; she is taken by surprise as the black cat leaps past her and attacks Frimhandler from behind. Frimhandler has no chance to defend herself as the great cat hamstrings her foot, crippling her, then leaps away and vanishes. Njenq saw the cat, course; but now so has Frimhandler; Hajira did not even have time to glimpse it before it was gone.

We regroup, and go on guard as Frimhandler attends to her foot. What could this mean? What message do we draw from this brazen attack? What ails Frimhandler, and how do we ease her pain? Has Frimhandler fallen under a geas, or is there something else at work? The healer Liseli told us that she thought Frimhandler had a disease, not anything magical. Was the cat acting to protect the Guardian Mother from a disease carrier? Should we be looking for the tree that bears healing fruit, rather than the Mother? To Hajira, the latest events have made the path ahead more elusive than ever.

1 CP

Dragg’d

Adventure Notes 5-8-2019

(A note relating to earlier: while butchering the dead boars, Hajira found the big boar’s meat to be off – corrupted somehow. (Not surprising: she thought of the sick wolf they had encountered earlier.) Hajira took pork rations to feed us for a couple of days, but only from the smaller boar.)

Frimhandler’s foot wound is not permanently crippling, and so she can move again without impairment when she heals the cat’s claw puncture. That done, Frimhandler kneels and makes a full statement of sorrow and regret about her role in the burning of the forest, out loud for the forest to hear. There is no apparent response.

We move forward, with Hajira trying to navigate us back to the Healing Tree. As we move forward the forest grows oppressively still. We quickly conclude this is not the way to go, so Hajira calculates a route that should take us to the Healing Tree without bringing us closer to the Mother Tree, because approaching it seems to be clearly counterindicated. It takes us about an hour, but Hajira does navigate us back to the tree on the small hillock in the clearing, which bears the golden healing pears. Frimhandler bestows us all with enhanced perception, and begins to approach the tree, although she notices that there seems to be no wildlife at all in the area. Hmmm. Oh well.

Frimhandler goes up to the tree, with Njenq shadowing her, and Frimhandler prepares to pick a fruit. But first Frimhandler apologizes again, profusely, to the Forest and its Guardian, and asks the Forest to send a sign if she is not supposed to eat of this fruit. No such sign emerges, so Frimhandler asks Njenq for a boost up so that she might pick a fruit. But Njenq steps past her and plucks a pear, and hands it to Frimhandler.

Njenq: I have bravely plucked the fruit from the tree for my friend.

Frimhandler eats the fruit, and her fatigue is wiped away and a bit of calmness comes over her. She even feels a small surge of energy. But the affliction within her does not ease.

After we have rested, at Frimhandler’s urging, and after Hajira expresses her dire misgivings (that the cat will not be happy) we begin to make our way toward the Mother Tree. We barely get out of the clearing, when the cat appears suddenly, ahead and to the right, and flying across the forest floor attacks Hajira from the front. Its bite snaps close to Hajira’s face, but Hajira retreats and parries it, dealing the cat a strong blow to its chest. The cat then swipes with claws at Hajira, one of which Hajira evades with great luck, but the other, not so much. Hajira staggers back, seriously injured.

Frimhandler gasps and quick as lightning, casts a healing spell on Hajira. Njenq charges forward, empty-handed, and attempts to grapple with the cat. But it leaps away nimbly and darting behind us all, bites and claws at Frimhandler, and its claws slash Frimhandler deeply.

Frimhandler gasps and tearing free, runs off to the side. Hajira steps forward, trying unsuccessfully to engage the cat, but it easily leaps past her, back toward the direction it came from, where it turns to face the party again in a don’t-cross-this-line-don’t-mess-with-me stance.

Whereupon Njenq stomps forward angrily, still empty-handed, and confronts the cat in return. The cat crouches then a flurry of bows erupt from it, one of which whaps Njenq upside the head. (Not as hard as it could: the cat is playing with her.) “Is that the best…?” Njenq begins, but never gets to complete the thought out loud. Njenq’s attempts to dodge the blows do not prevail against the Forest Guardian.

Frimhandler is retreating quickly, but turns to throw her fleet-of-foot spell, first on Njenq, then on Hajira, then on herself. Hajira is backing away, unwilling to engage any more with the Forest Guardian. But Njenq continues to try to explain to the Guardian that we were just trying to help, that we are not a threat, showing her weaponless hands, going down on a knee, turning her back… but all to no avail. The cat has messages of its own which it relays to Njenq by powerful blows to the head, once, twice, three times, four times, until Njenq is laid low, bloodied and all but senseless.

Seeing Njenq laid low, Frimhandler rushes forward to her aid – whereupon the great cat springs upon her, and seizing her by the throat, drags her off to the west. Hajira, who has rushed back to the Healing Tree and picked a trio of fruits, rushes back to help Njenq to her feet, and collecting their things, set off to track the cat as it bears Frimhandler off. Following the cat and the draggedy Frimhandler, we first go west, then northwest (to skirt the vines) then around again to the southwest. We are able to keep up for a while, but then the fleet-of-foot spell wears off, and Hajira and Njenq fall further and further behind. Toward evening Njenq collapses, and Hajira urges her to eat her fruit so that they can continue the pursuit.

Hajira: Frimhandler’s blood still drips fresh. She was still alive at this point…

We follow the track all day and into the night, to the west and south. Hajira grows sure that the cat is hauling Frimhandler all the way out to the edge of the forest – presumably to dump her there, as a final message that can’t be mistaken. Finally, past midnight, we are too exhausted to continue, and curl up to sleep where we have collapsed.

Meanwhile, Frimhandler is being battered and scratched and choked and lacerated as she is dragged willynilly through the forest, and passes in and out of consciousness, healing herself whenever she can scrape together the energy for a spell. She eventually passes out and to her dull surprise, awakes again to find herself in the basement of some ruin, vaguely familiar; she crawls up a ruined stair to find that the cat has left her in the ruin we found at the forest’s southwest edge, by the river. The cat has dragged her about 30 miles, through the forest, and she has all the bruises and scratches to prove it. She heals herself, then sits and waits, and by midmorning Hajira and Njenq arrive to find her there. We are reunited, but mirthlessly so.

Frimhandler: I guess my apology was not accepted.

The rest of the day (Day 87) is given to resting, healing, repairing, and mulling over the recent events. We all are restored to health, and Hajira is successful at provisioning us. We are agreed that Frimhandler will not find healing balm from the Forest, nor do we seem to have learning anything about what exactly ails her. We have no other ideas about where to find aid for her, except to try our luck with healers in a town. Aszana would be the closest town, but it is closed to us (to Njenq, anyway) so our goal seems to be Rushas. Hajira meditates on whether it is good to make this town, a large one now aswarm with Ascendancy troops, our destination, but the recent events have been too unsettling, and she cannot clear her mind, so she goes out to pick minersgreen for dinner instead. We make our camp down in the basement, as we did when we were here earlier – what seems now to have been half a lifetime ago.

In the morning of Day 88, we are clearer about our destination, and our path to get there: we will cross overland at first, heading northwest across the plains more or less in a beeline for Rushas, as the quickest way to get there. This path will take us across the Path of the Markhor, and probably into a meeting with the Nuhnaoon. (They are the Path tribe that Liseli mentioned has moved into the Path area east of Rushas, and thus into conflict with the Ascendancy. She said ‘we might fit in well with them’ – because we have a goblin among us? A hell-with-you gambler? A magically maimed person? Because we hail from the Island of Misfit Toys? Unclear.)

As we draw near to Rushas, we will turn west to enter the foothills, cross the river (somehow), and then take the Aszana-Rushas road north into Rushas itself. It’s a journey of 85 miles or so, Hajira estimates. Hajira meditates on this way forward, and determines that the universe does not frown upon the plan or whatevs or call back during business hours or some such vague acceptance.

Hajira wonders about the wisdom of bringing a sick creature, Frimhandler, into a stronghold of the Ascendancy. What would happen if her illness were to find fertile ground and take root there?

Idly, and a bit out of the blue, Njenq asks if either Frimhandler or Hajira has any beef with the Ascendancy – Njenq herself does not, of course, being from that land herself. Njenq is somewhat surprised to find that yes, Hajira does have enmity towards them – or rather, according to Hajira, a high regard for the Aneeanmee, and thus a “low regard” for its enemies. Hajira reminds Njenq of Thron in captivity, and Njenq reaffirms that she wouldn’t mind seeing him released.

Hajira has two fruits, and gives them to Frimhandler. Here, eat them little by little as we go, mayhap to ease your pain. Hajira also reminds Frimhandler that she carries some seeds from the fruit. Before we depart, Hajira proposes that she use all her naturalist knowledge to plant a seed here, at the edge of the forest. Frimhandler, you should plant one too. Even you, Njenq. We can return from time to time to care for them. Mayhap that will be a conciliation that the Forest will understand.

0 CP

Bad News for Bounty Hunters

(Second-to-last session!)

Adventure Notes 5-22-2019

Morning of day 89… day looking warm as summer appears on the event horizon… Nav by Hajira is lucky. The first task is to cross the river, and Hajira remembers a place that seemed promising in that regard. Hajira finds it, and both she and Frimhandler see that it’s commonly used. This is probably where the Path crosses the river, Hajira thinks.

At end of day the grasslands are giving way and the foothills of the Goblin Mountains are rising before them. We camp in a promising cave hollow, which is fortunately fairly sheltered when a windstorm rises outside. Lightning flashes and thunder rolls, and Frimhandler reacts quickly when she sees the roof of our hollow begin to give way. Both Njenq and Hajira take a hit from falling rock, and Frimhandler takes a fall. Frimhandler heals all our damage.

The next day, we continue into the foothills. Hajira navigates us true. Although it’s slower going, we reach the Azsana-Rushas road right at dusk. Hajira finds us an excellent camp well away from the road.

The night is uneventful. In the morning of Day 91, Frimhandler spots a band out on the road, heading away from Rushas. She looks at them closely, and sees three rough fellows leading a slave by a chain. For some reason we immediately take a visceral dislike to them. Frimhandler can see they are alert for opportunity, so a plan is quickly devised: Njenq will stand where they will spy her, and pretend to be unaware of them, so that they will come for her. Meanwhile, Frimhandler and Hajira will be camouflaged nearby, and try to surprise them as they move to surround her.

The plan works. The ruffians come for Njenq and when she sees them, attempt to engage her with friendly words. She turns and hastens away, ducking behind some rocks (which is also where Hajira and Frimhandler are hiding). Frimhandler begins to walk on air. As the ruffians huff their way up the talus slope and move to surround them, one comes far enough to see around the rock. Frimhandler drops the chameleon effect and lays a blast of fire upon him, which by the luckiest of circumstances he evades. He alerts his companions to another foe – “another fine bounty, lads!” and charges forward – not seeing Hajira, still in hiding. He strikes at Frimhandler, who is stepping up almost out of reach overhead, but misses as she dodges the blow. Frimhandler returns the attack with another jet of fire, which he dodges – as he is doing so Hajira leaps out of hiding and deals the ruffian a major wound with her staff. Reeling back, the ruffian finds himself confronted with a charging Njenq, all suffused in a blue glow. Her snakelike katana strike spins him around and knocks him senseless into the dust.

The other two ruffians, having both huffed their way to the top of the talus slope, are charging forward but skid as one to a stop when they see their companion first bludgeoned then burnt then hacked and then fall, as quick as one-two-three-four. As Njenq and Hajira come around the rock and move on them, (and Frimhandler walks on air, 11 feet up, to get behind them,) they at first stand shoulder to shoulder to meet them. But they see all their options are bad. They are cornered on the hilltop, outnumbered, and at the mercy of a fire-wielding magician floating above them. Njenq comes upon them, and blue halo and her lightning slash makes their situation unbearable. In unison they suddenly turn and hurl their weapons at Frimhandler, hoping to put her off so they have a chance of making it down the talus slope unburnt. But one weapon, a long spear, goes wide and the other, a scimitar, Frimhandler manages to dodge. They run to the edge of the slope, but Njenq and Hajira are right behind them, and they are unwilling to commit themselves to its unfavorable position and uncertain footing. They turn again and draw short swords as Njenq and Hajira engage them, and Frimhandler maneuvers to get behind them for a fire jet attack on their backs.

The fighting separates into two one-on-one duels, with the ruffians trying to work their way around our heroes so they might flee. Njenq makes short work of her ruffian, whom she had wounded already. Hajira engages hers, dealing him a smart blow and promises of more. As Njenq turns his way, and Frimhandler approaches from behind, seeing all is hopeless, he tries one last desperate move – right at Hajira, mayhap to shoulder his way through her and to flee. It appears to work, as Hajira falls back before him – but Hajira is no pushover. She gains the room to parry him back, and does so with a sharp blow to his midsection. (This time) her staff does not break. He staggers back to meet both a blast of flame and two quick slashes of a katana, and falls into a defeated heap.

As Hajira and Njenq attend to the fallen ruffians, pulling them (and us) out of sight of the road and relieving them of everything they will not need (which is everything they have), Frimhandler walks on air over to their slave, who is cowering behind a rock down the slope. By various clues, she determines that he is a fighter (he’s wearing tatters of what seems to have been underclothing for armor, for one thing) and invites him back to where Hajira and Njenq are, so that we might relieve him of his manacles and chain. These are riveted on. Njenq searches the fallen ruffians and produces a hammer and wedge, and these prove sufficient to break the manacles’ rivets and release the would-be slave.

The man is reluctant to tell of himself (“I am nobody, just an adventurer down on his luck”) but more forthcoming about Rushas, which to hear him tell it, is a misguided city ruled by a criminally stupid leadership embroiled in a pointless war whose only aim is to squander lives for scant monetary gain. (“So it’s just the same” as when they passed through, Frimhandler points out to Njenq.) The man does note that the city leadership is floundering even more than usual, because their foes on horseback (the ‘Mee) have been replaced seemingly overnight by another tribe well versed in the shield and spear. And primarily women, too. Hajira and Njenq exchange glances: so this is the Nuhnaoon, apparently. By the tenor of his words, the man seems to have no love for the Ascendancy – the reverse, in fact.

The man is headed away from Rushas. He refuses at first to say his name, or even what he does in life, or anything else about him or his history. Frimhandler needles him, noting that since we have done much for him, must he still mistrust us this way? Hajira takes a step, to put herself between the man and the spoil pile. Hajira says, “Look, friend, we don’t care about the bounty on your head. If we did, would we have taken off your chain? Fate has brought us together, and it looks like you could use a friend, or maybe three. What do you say to that?”

Taken away from the ruffians:

long spear

fine scimitar

cheap broadsword

two short swords

three daggers

three shields, well used

mace

brigand armor

clubs

three days’ rations

hammer and wedge

manacles, 6’ of chain

bedrolls and other camp gear

+210 copper pieces

The ruffians themselves are bound and seated on the ground with their backs to a rock, awaiting questioning.

Hajira muses on her emerging career as a bounty hunter hunter. First Granny Alice, and now these three… it’s a living anyway? (shrugs)

1 CP

The Alchemy of Freedom

Adventure Notes 6-5-2019

The end of this adventure cycle

The freed slave-to-be bounty huntee will not divulge his true name: “call me Mister Yards.” He is voluble enough about Rushas and the Ascendancy operation there, as a deserter from its military. It seems that when the Ascendancy hit upon the tactic of targeting the horses of the ‘Mee, because the horse deaths strike their riders down with insufferable grief – this was a bridge too far for Mr. Yards.

Aha. Mr. Yards (we learn later his real name is Jonah) is a deserter and thus not inclined AT ALL to travel with us to Rushas. We give him his pick of the ruffian spoil – and off he goes with broadsword, short sword, dagger, shield, some bits of the brigand armor, the worst of the bedrolls and one day’s rations. He says he will bypass Azsana and go south towards Caithness.

We then turn our attention to the captured ruffians. We now have them out of sight of the road, and tethered in good knots to the stubborn roots of a coyote brush thicket. Two of them are fairly grievously wounded (in the process of bleeding out) but all of them are unwilling to answer Hajira’s questions about their operations. Hajira lays it out straight to her companions: as far as she is concerned, these slavers are not fit to walk the earth, and she would just as soon leave them all finally at peace with a knife in their hearts as anything else. As they know, that’s what she’s done up to now. But she does not want to offend the sensibilities of her companions. Maybe they should move off out of sight for a few minutes, and Hajira will catch up to them?

At this, the least wounded of the ruffians speaks up, eager to make a deal. Move my two companions to within sight of the road, he says, so that they possibly will find aid. (Or become slaves, heh heh, Hajira thinks.) Leave me here, and I will answer your questions. Hajira agrees to this. He seeks for Hajira to swear to uphold the deal, but Hajira refuses: she makes it clear that she will not be obligated in any way to slavers: the road they have chosen is without honor. Njenq cuts the two bleeding ruffians free of the root, and drags them off to within sight of the road; the ruffian answers Hajira’s questions, and divulges everything about their slaving operation, as Frimhandler sits to the side, absorbing every word and prompting Hajira with questions of her own, by whispering them into her ear.

We learn the slavers operate as bounty hunters (as we knew), and we learned where in Azsana they go to find the currently open contracts both local and foreign. Vermilion’s contract on Frimhandler is very small – 500 copper I think – but the one on Njenq is more typical, at 10 gold (1/2 Njenq’s debt burden). The contract on Hajira was less interesting to the slavers, dismissed out of hand really, because they would have to travel so far to collect (and who knows if the contract is even collectible any more).

They also operate as slavers, running down Ascendancy deserters out of Rushas (of which there seem to be a large number), and returning them to the Ascendancy for a bounty. They were engaged in this process when they made the mistake of tangling with us (and we learn later the bounty on their captive was a measly 750 copper). Those deserters and other prisoners might then be sold as slaves or otherwise trafficked, and these ruffians did three of these “special jobs” themselves, hauling captives to slavemasters in Azsana on behalf of the Ascendancy, including one to Vermilion.

We learn that, as rumor has it, Crosbin was the one that set up the thief encounter that put Njenq into enslavement by debt.

We move away from the road and camp. Rain until morning, Day 92. Now the wind picks up. We arrive at the South Gate in mid-afternoon. The guards question us, desultoriously enough, and after we get through the long list of questions they wave us through. We pass through some camps of military squads into the merchant quarters. We look for a bar and as luck would have it, end up in the Silent Banshee, the bar in which the party first came together. We find a table and order some warm beer, and have a sit for the first time in a long time. Njenq asks the barkeep (in Ascendancy tongue) about healers and, it being a slow afternoon in the Banshee, the keep is pretty talkative. For the esoteric problem that we have, the keep refers us to Peruksuu (“Peruxu”), who is more on the north side of the city. To get there, we have to hurry – so we do. Off into the north section we go, asking for the healing mage.

We seem to be out of luck, as we wander the streets – no one seems to recognize the name (or Njenq’s mangled pronunciation of it). Finally we spot a small sign with the crossed staves of a healer, and luckily this turns out to be Peruxu’s shop. After divesting ourselves of our weapons, which have negative energy for the healer apparently, we are shown in to see the man himself. Frimhandler presents herself to the healer and explains her mysterious ailment. He is intrigued. To demonstrate her healing power, Frimhandler casts heal upon Peruxu, which kinda freaks the guy out. Is this guy for real? He examines Frimhandler and casts a spell, after which he announces that she doesn’t seem to be under a spell; he then runs more tests and casts another spell, after which he announces there seems to be an aura of sickness about Frimhandler; there’s something unnatural about Frimhandler’s disease; he could try a direct cure, but it might be a shot in the dark. Perhaps he should have an alchemist perform some additional tests, to raise the odds from 50%?

Frimhandler decides to go that route. Peruxu takes some phlegm and blood and forwards them to an alchemist he knows, plus a sample of her hair. He bids us return in a couple of days. He seems to feel it is unlikely to improve the situation, but “stranger things have happened.” The charges so far come to 750 copper, and we pay it. We collect our belongings and depart.

Cheap rooms cost us 20 copper. Njenq gets one, whereas Hajira prefers to leave the city and find a tree to camp under. She buys a new staff. We lay low for a few days; unbeknownst to us, Njenq looks into the deal available (if any) if one were to join the army. Apparently not, but Njenq does find there’s a recruitment going on for spies that can gather intelligence about the Madlanders. Plus there is a bounty for people who are conducting illegal activities, primarily thievery against the military.

(Mr. Yard’s real name: Jorah, as found on his WANTED FOR DESERTING poster.)

After two days we return to the healer’s shop, seeking news. It’s now Day 95. Peruxu harrumphs a couple times, then announces the alchemists have not made any discoveries (“simpletons, unimaginative, like all their kind; not true mages such as (harrumph) myself”) but they have confirmed that Frimhandler has been exposed to an alchemical concoction of some kind. Fast-forward to the upshot: Peruxu would have to have a sample of the poison itself, to reliably effect a cure. Otherwise, it’s a once-only shot with much guesswork, with as much chance of failing as succeeding. But of course, Peruxu being Peruxu, a true mage, we should have every confidence, etc. It costs one gold, up front, harrumph.

After much discussion, in which we theorize that Frimhandler was probably exposed to the alchemical poison during our nighttime encounter with the enraged wolves on Day 35 (in which the alpha wolf definitely seemed to be under the influence of something). Still an off chance that Frimhandler got the poison as a lungful of burnt-vine smoke, and so on. Which means we could return to the Guardian Forest and track down who- or whatever influenced those wolves, and perhaps recover a sample of the poison. But that seems unlikely to come about, and not worth the effort it would take. Frimhandler could be irreparably harmed, or die of the poison before we even made it back to the Forest. Frimhandler decides to take her chances.

The mage casts the spell, and somewhat to his own surprise, it works. (Which leads him into some further testing and he theorizes some foul goblins, somewhere, are testing a supersoldier potion on the wolf and other woodland creatures. Such a poison may be especially effective on goblins, which would be why Frimhandler was affected, even with scant exposure, and Hajira and Njenq were not.) In the next few hours, all of Frimhandler’s evil symptoms fade away, and she is pain-free for the first time in months.

And there was much rejoicing.

What comes next? We talk over some ideas. Peruxu has employment for us, running down some leads and rumors he has about places and items of interest to him. But although that seems attractive, Hajira is feeling uneasy and growing uneasier. We all have prices on their heads; word that we are in Rushas is bound to leak out; and the powerful of this town are known to be allied with our enemies, not at all sympathetic to our desire to be free. We have achieved what we came to Rushas to do, let us be away! Jonah told us true: anyplace is better than this sick town.

1 CP? (Our inventory has been brought up to date)

• Hajira-Njenq-Frimhandler in the forest:
  
• Hajira, Frimhandler, + Njenq at the Outpost: