Dalnor/Campaign1/session-5
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Session Date: November 8, 2008
Orienteering is a competitive form of land navigation. It is for all ages and degrees of fitness and skill. It provides the suspense and excitement of a treasure hunt. The object of orienteering is to locate control points by using a map and compass to navigate through the woods. The courses may be as long as 10 km. --4orienteering.com
Harvest 5, 53
Having defeated the ochre jelly, the party takes a quick breather in the checkpoint office. After a couple of minutes the party decides to take an extended rest. They leave Crash to guard the bridge, and Alex to monitor the gates. The party leaves a light source on the far side of the bridge.
An hour into their rest break, a group of goblins is seen on the other side of the bridge. The goblins see the light source and Crash. The goblins go back and get a large group of goblins.
After a call from the goblin side of the bridge, the party decides to negotiate. Safiria masks her face so the gobins cannot identify her. Safiria and the goblin boss negotiate the release of the missing merchants. The goblins are happy to part with the merchants: After the duergar took over the checkpoint he also brought in the slave trade. The party and the goblins will also split the proceeds of the Duergar's lockbox 50/50. Alex is tasked with splitting the contents of the lock box.
The goblins go back to get the merchant prisoners. While the goblins are getting the prisoners, the party hears a spirited discussion that breaks down into screaming. Moments later the party sees the remaining kobold animal handler coming up with the stairs with his remaining "pets". There is a short brutal fight where the party deals with the rest of the kobold's "pets", including two firebeetles, a scorpion, and a very large cave grub that was getting caught in the passages.
The goblins do not participate in the fight. In their opinion, it is no skin off their nose no matter who gets killed. The party means nothing to them and the kobolds had been brought in by the Duergar. Getting rid of the remaining kobolds just resets the original status quo that had been place before the Duergar took over the checkpoint.
Once the fight is done, the goblins agree to enact the prisoner transfer with no further issue or interruption. The party escorts the merchants back to The Reaches. No other parties seen during the trip.
When the party arrives at The Reaches Lucius, Safiria and Elrohir stop and announce that they would like like to have a full accounting of the money and other treasures recovered from the checkpoint before they return to the surface. There is a spirited discussion and some veiled threats with Lucius, Elrohir and Safira on one side, Alex on the other and Varien and Crash somewhere in the middle. After much cajoling, Alex dumps 200 gold pieces on the ground and walks away from the party. Party injures Alex. Lots of distrust all of the way around.
During the division of the loot, Soolian shows up looking to conduct business. Soolian is looking for surface pharmacuticals (ie poisons). Safiria decides to head up the negotiation while the rest of the party is busy with Alex. Safiria and Soolian come to an agreement that Safiria will provide some surface pharmacuticals next time she is in the Honeycomb.
The party divvies up the money. Alex receives a service fee for recovering and carrying the gold.
The party exits the Reaches and passes through Main Transfer and then the exit tunnel. After a brief uneventful walk, everyone ends up on the surface. The party and merchants set up camp outside the tunnel. During this time, Alex does not speak to the party if he can avoid it. A watch is set and everyone gets some sleep.
Harvest 6, 53
Everyone walks to town. At the gate, the merchants are taken away to the Guild hall for debrief.
The guards grab the party and hustle them to a temple. Guards don't give a lot of info except they were instructed to grab the party and escort them to the temple.
Once the party is in the temple they are introduced to Kredick, the chief cleric. He escorts the party to a chapel. The chapel has a dead girl in it. Upon inspection, the girl has cuts in her skin similiar to the dead merchants. The party decides to investigate and cuts open the corpse. Inside they find the body is full of squirmy undead organs. When Varien touches the corpse, the organs weakly try to work again.
Ruben enters, saying that his daughter is missing. She had gone out last evening to run chores. Both girls are of a similar age, and disappeared around the same time.
Party goes looking for both girls and what they had been doing last night. Crash guards the body of the dead girl. Party tightens their search to the central road. Party interviews several shop owners, who provide some guidance. Alex interviews a begger who gives some information, saying that the girl was being lead away by a man in a cloak, but she did not appear to be struggling.
Lucius tracks the man and girl on the back alleys. Party back tracks the girls to the bridge leading to the town mortician. Sensing that things are about to go downhill very fast, Elrohir rushes back to get Crash. The return of Crash and Elrohir gives the party confidence to cross the bridge to the cemetary and confront whatever has taken the girl.
The party gathers at the front entrance, and is about to jimmy the lock when they realized their resident rogue is nowhere to be found. This pisses off Safiria because the lack of communication with the party rogue, already strained from the prior day's disbursement of treasure, is now placing their success at risk! They run around the back side of the house where Alex is waiting for someone to rush out the back. Safiria chastizes Alex for the lack of communication, but approves of covering all the exits. The party (less Alex) return to the front of the house and enters the house with all the subtlety of a brick.
Alex hangs out side waiting for something to attempt to make a break for it out the back, then gets bored when no one tries it and starts searching the cemetery.
The party searches the ground floor, passing through the work areas of the mortician and finding a set of stairs leading underground, clearly not part of the original construction of the house. The mortician, who hears the party rambling around upstairs, makes the comment to someone else in the basement "Well my dear, it seems like they have come for us early". The mortician invites the party down. Party heads down the stairs in a lower lower level cavern/lab. Party confronts the mortician who is holding the living girl by a silver leash.
The motician tells the party to stay back, or the girl will be "in a bad way" if he drops the leash. After the warning the mortician starts to monologue like any super-villian. Before the motician can complete two sentences Lucius "splits the tree".
Dropping the chain, mortician bolts out the back of the lab leaving the party to deal with his zombie minions. The zombies attack and the mortician slips out a stout back door, shutting it behind him. Safira grabs the leash and gets jolt while trying to keep the girl alive.
Alex sees the mortician emerge from a grave. Stabby stabby, necrotic beams. The mortician brings out a fresh zombie that he had buried for such a contingency. The zombie holds onto Alex, preventing him from pursuing the mortician. Back in the lab, the party chops through the horde of zombies, ripping up the lab in the process.
The mortician makes it to the river as the rest of the party emerges from the house, hot on his heels. Lucius attempts a couple of long distance shots.
Safiria searches the mortician's lab for notes on the girl's condition. She and the girl beat a hasty retreat when the contents of the leaking jars start to mix on the floor.
The mortician turns to water and pours into the river.
Previously: A Single Light in the Darkness
Continued in: Live and Let Die
Campaign 1 Index
