Author: Cliff

← Session 18 | Campaign Summary

Last time, our heroes learned that directly opposing le Grind, influential mill owner and dealer in stolen artifacts, could invite retaliation against a friend.  They tried infiltrating the le Grind manor, but retreated when private security raised an alarm.

Gleador and Lucia meet up, hidden in the beet fields just downriver from le Grind’s docks.  They don’t want to fight le Grind’s watchmen, but the mysterious figures who sneaked into the drain under the docks must still be on the compound. Our heroes won’t let them get away, so they try a bold tactic: walking up to the watchmen.  There are four watchmen in the storage yard with lanterns on poles, looking for the source of the commotion.  They hail Lucia & Gleador.  Lucia checks if any of them are evil, but none of them are.  In her most authoritative voice, she says they are tracking some suspicious characters in a rowboats and demands to see what the watchmen have uncovered.  The watchmen buy it and show them the rowboat, which they have dragged up onto the dock.  No one has seen the people who were in the boat.

Gleador was able to briefly examine the boat previously, so he knows it has a false bottom.  He acts like he’s trying to enter the boat by bracing himself with his shillelagh, and intentionally strikes the false bottom with the club, making a hollow noise. The watchmen think they are very clever for recognizing a secret compartment and open it, withdrawing a few bundles wrapped in cloth.  One is a small box with a stack of Saarland coins inside. Another is a fancy oil lamp with expertly worked metal and glass.  Both artifacts from Saarland, no doubt!  The watchmen are sure this is loot stolen from the master’s mansion. The owners of this boat must be inside robbing the place right now!  Roddie, the lead watchman, sends one of his underlings to wake the master!  Lucia says someone should fetch the town garrison as well, and Roddie agrees because Lucia just sounds so authoritative!

While they are waiting for the various messengers to return with important people, Gleador asks Roddie to show him where the boat was found.  Roddie takes him down some rickety stairs under the main dock to the drain. The dock usually receives large cargo vessels, so it’s high enough for a rowboat to float underneath.

Gleador pretends to be surprised that the grate over the drain is unlocked. Maybe the robbers are in there!  Roddie goes up the drain with his lantern pole, then returns a short time later.  He didn’t see anyone or anything suspicious.  He locks the grate behind him.  Gleador stays down by the grate to ponder.

Gavin le Grind, master of the house, arrives. He’s wearing pajamas, but has put on boots and large coat.  He demands to know why he’s been so disturbed.  Roddie proudly tells him how they found the boat and the stolen items in the hidden compartment, so he sent for Gavin and the town garrison because there may be thieves about.  When Gavin hears about the garrison, he makes a displeased face which makes Roddie cower.  Gavin looks at the coins and oil lamps and says they aren’t his. That lamp doesn’t match anything in the house. And who is this knight?  Why is she here? Did the watchmen ever see anyone sneaking into the house? Roddie shrinks back. This is not going as well as he expected.  He confers with the other watchmen. One of them saw an armored figure fleeing downriver. Gavin presses for details: what kind of armor? Lucia here is wearing armor. The watchman can’t say for sure. It was dark and the figure was far away. le Grind finds it very suspicious that an armored figure fled from the watch downriver, then Lucia approaches, in armor, from that same direction and starts leading the investigation.  He tells Roddie to escort her from the premises!  Roddie rushes to obey and asks if he should kick out the Elf as well.  Gavin is furious. There’s another stranger on my property? You didn’t think to mention this? How can you say you haven’t found any suspicious characters when these two are right here?  Gavin changes his mind: Lucia and Gleador must stay and explain themselves to the garrison soldiers.

Lucia and Gleador are content to stay, so they spend a few awkwardly silent minutes waiting, unless a detachment of Dwarven soldiers arrive from the fort. The Sergeant approaches and demands a situation report. Lucia steps forward and starts explaining that she and Gleador were following some suspicious character coming up the river in a rowboat. Gavin le Grind cuts her off.  He’s the master of the house, he doesn’t know why these strange characters are on his property, and there’s this weird boat and goods that they say are his that he’s never seen before.  The Sergeant is annoyed. His squad came out her in the middle of the night to catch thieves, but no one has seen a thief, and instead of goods disappearing, there are extra goods that no one claims.  He does take interest when Lucia says the box of coins is from Saarland.  He checks the coins and confirms.  Strange.  Since there does not appear to be any crime happening, the soldiers take the lamp and the coins and prepare to leave.  Everyone can jsut go back to bed.  Lucia and Gleador are to leave the le Grind property with the soldiers, but after that, the Sergeant doesn’t care what they do. He doesn’t even make sure they have a place to stay for the night.

While Lucia is trying to keep them both out of jail, Gleador is befriending one of the le Grind guard dogs, a small terrier named Rex.  He asks what he can do for Rex to secure its help. Rex really likes chasing and catching people. That’s its life’s passion and it doesn’t get to do it often.  Gleador agrees to run from Rex and let it catch him if it tells him about any strange scents Rex has noticed.  Rex hasn’t smelled any strangers except for Lucia, Gleador, and the soldiers.  Gleador wonders about bringing Rex to smell the rowboat, but everyone has handled the rowboat by now.  True to his word, Gleador takes off running and Rex chases him.  Gleador runs towards Roddie, pleading for him to call of his dog, and the three of them collide and tumble to the ground.  Gleador swipes Roddie’s key-ring in the confusion.  Gleador is on his back and Rex is standing on his chest barking in his face, but they are really chatting in dog language.  Gleador asks to mark Rex, so he can see through its eyes later.  Rex agrees, if Gleador will throw a fun toy.  Gleador finds something in his adventuring gear, touches Rex to mark it, then throws the tool, which Rex darts off to retrieve.  Gleador gets up and expresses relief that he was able to distract that fierce guard dog!

With that commotion over, Roddie escorts Lucia, Gleador, and the garrison soldiers to the front gate, but when he tries to lock it behind them, he can’t find his keys!  Gleador suggests that he might have left them in the grate when he locked that.  Roddie is well-established as a sucker, so that sounds reasonable to him and he goes to check.  Lucia and Gleador leave, but circle around to the river out of sight.  Gleador checks on Rex, who follows Roddie down to the grate.  Roddie looks in the padlock, and feels in the water at the bottom of the drain, but can’t find his keys.  He ponders and realizes that Gleador knocked into him.  He hustles back towards the gate.

Fortunately, Lucia & Gleador are nowhere to be found. Somewhere upriver, Gleador transforms into a crocodile with echolocation and fire-breath and with Lucia on his back, he floats silently downriver, back to the drain.  Lucia unlocks the grate with Roddie’s keys, and they walk up the drain.  The pipe is about four feet around, enough for a Halfing to stand up, but Lucia has to bend over.  Smaller drains from above empty into this one, as expected, but at the back of the drain, there is a Halfling-sized door. There’s no lock, just a metal ring to pull.  Lucia pulls it open, but the door opens directly into a wooden wall.  Lucia carefully taps and prods the wall and finds a latch disguised as a knothole.  She feels the latch open when she pushes it, but the door still won’t open. It’s stuck.  Gleador takes the lead and uses his reptilian strength to force the wall open.  He feels the wood straining and knows it will make quite a noise if he breaks it, but he goes for it anyways.  He jams his wedge-shaped head through the wood and into shelves filled with jars of fruit preserves and dry goods.  He’s smashed through the back of a cabinet. The glass doors on the cabinet shatter and swing open, shelves break and dump food all over the floor.  He looks around and finds that he’s in a storage room.  Food, boxes of supplies, a linen closet on one wall.  There’s a door to one side t hat appears to lead out to the storage yard where the conversation with Gavin le Grind and the watchmen occurred. On the other side of the room, swinging double rooms lead to a kitchen.  This isn’t a secret basement, it’s the le Grind mansion itself!  There’s commotion upstairs as the residents are disturbed yet again!  Lucia and Gleador must think quickly. The smugglers are probably still in the mansion, but if they push forward they’ll probably have to find the entire le Grind extended family.  Gleador decides retreat, but to make this secret entrance impossible to ignore.  To draw attention, he breathes fire on the exterior door, setting it and part of the wall ablaze!  Back in Elf form, he and Lucia run back down the drain. The watchmen, led by Roddie who is having a very bad time, scramble to organize a bucket brigade to put out the fire.  Under the dock, Gleador transforms into a sea serpent.  Lucia takes a deep breath, and they swim away underwater and out of sight.

Heading back into the le Grind estate again seems foolhardy. They have exposed part of the mystery, but have been unable to crack it wide open.  If they could get the garrison to search le Grind’s house, he’d surely be exposed.  Lucia writes an anonymous note, summarizing their knowledge of le Grind’s scheme to hire looters to steal artifacts from Saarland. They suggest that the garrison grab Rose when she returns, since she has first-hand knowledge of the operation.  This note, plus the Saarland coins found on le Grind’s estate, plus the obvious shenanigans at the le Grind estate are enough for the garrison to start an investigation, which is an embarrassing scandal for le Grind.

GM Note: Poor Rose. Every time she meets our heroes, she has a bad time. First paralysed, then snatched up into the sky, her protective amulet taken, making her job much more dangerous. Then set down somewhere in the woods and forced to find her way back. When she does arrive, she’ll be arrested immediately and thrust into a high-profile case.  Well, she is a graverobber, so maybe she deserves it.

← Session 18 | Campaign Summary

← Session 17 | Campaign Summary | Session 19 →

Last time, our heroes escaped Saarland with their lives and some new information about who’s responsible for artifacts from Saarland ending up on the black market.  As they return to Sugar’s Crossing, they must decide what to do about it.

First, they return to the person who set them on this quest: Soren, the Elven storyteller who was there when the city fell.  They ask for her at the theater and have to wait a while because she’s with another client. Her expertise is in high demand.  She’s glad they returned safely and asks how Saarland is doing.  She readies pen and paper to record the information and add it to the historical record.  They report that Saarland is split between Ents trying to demolish buildings and return it to nature, and Spectres of dead residents who refuse to let go. The only people who go there are looters. Soren knew it would be bad, but hearing exactly how bad is still a blow.  She’s furious that people are desecrating her home. She picks up a second pen in her other hand and starts writing a vituperative diss track.

Gleador & Lucia ask Soren how the stolen artifacts might be moving around once brought back to civilization.  Traffic in such articles is illegal, but it’s not a crime that the garrison would notice, unless they were tipped off. Our heroes ask how to contact the underworld. Soren doesn’t get mixed up in such things, but the theater does employ some shady stagehands. They’re rough folks who probably know some rougher folks.  Lucia says that le Grind is the buyer for many of the artifacts.  Both of Soren’s pens stop suddenly.  The meeting room they are in is named after le Grind’s third son.  le Grind is a big financial sponsor of the theater.  Each year at the theater gala, he and Lady Evelynn try to outdo each other with lavish donations. If Soren performs a diss track against him, the theater would lose his funding and have trouble surviving. Gleador and Lucia say they’ll try to reveal le Grind so that the theater doesn’t take the fall. Soren thanks them for the information, even though it was upsetting.  Truth is good for history, and trauma is good for art.

Gleador & Lucia plan to gather information by touring the le Grind mill.  The original mill is preserved as a museum, while larger, more modern mills do the actual work of processing beets into sugar.

Lucia joins a tour group like a normal person. Gleador transforms into a wild cat with falcon eyes and allergenic dander.  The mill is built for Halflings (le Grind is a Halfling family) so even with larger hallways for moving loads and equipment about, it’s cramped for some guests.  Lucia is close to the ceiling at 5’0″. The  Elves in the group have to bend over, and one poor Naga has to spread most of his 11-foot length horizontally, taking up a lot of space.  The tour starts in the original mill and then turns to another room with drying racks and historical displays.  Finally, the tour group exits through the gift shop.  Gleador skips the tour and slips between bars of the fence around the le Grind estate. He infiltrates Mill A, which is bustling with Halflings bringing sacks of beats, loading them into the mill, and collecting the pulp and juice. The beets’ strong coloration stains the millstones, the floor, and the workers’ hands bright purple.  Gleador hops into a spot that he hopes is out of the way and surveys the scene but a bad roll of the dice means that his perch is right where the next heavy sack of beets goes. He leaps away at the last moment, out in the open, causing a commotion.  A wide-shouldered Halfing woman with very strong hands grabs him and tosses him out the window into the river.  Underwater he transforms into a catfish, avoids the churning waterwheel, and swims away as the woman starts itching and sneezing.

From the river, he investigates the docks and sees drain large enough for a Halfling to walk through. It’s closed by a grate secured with a padlock. Inside, he sees that it’s fed by many smaller pipes, as expected, but there’s also a door. Most suspicious.  He swims away, returns to Elf form, and reconvenes with Lucia, whose authorized tour of the facility was uneventful.  They plan to sneak in through the grate, find what le Grind has stolen, and steal it from him. It’s not stealing if it’s already stolen.  They are not sure what to do with the artifacts once they recover them, but that’s a Gleador plan for you: Enthusiasm and optimism!

They wait for nightfall, and Lucia removes her heavy armor so that she can swim.  They approach the gate and wonder how to bypass the padlocked grate. The bars are six inches apart. Gleador could easily transform into something small enough to fit through, but Lucia can’t. Smashing the grate and picking the lock are suggested, but their planning is interrupted by the approach of a small rowboat. Two Halflings pilot it with muffled oars and a hooded lantern, so they’re probably up to no good.  Gleador and Lucia dive underwater to avoid notice.  The rowboat pulls up to the grate, and one Halfling unlocks the grate and goes inside. The other Halfing remains in the boat.  Lucia can’t hold her breath for that long and starts choking on water.  Gleador pushes Lucia downstream and floats to the surface, using his camouflage ability to remain unseen.  Lucia surfaces beyond the range of the Halfling’s lantern, but he’s aware of something out there and moves towards the drain.  Gleador transforms into a crocodile with the water jet power of a sea dragon.  He grabs the Halfling’s leg, but is shaken off.  Both Halflings in the drain run up towards the hidden door, leaving the grate unlocked.

Gleador does not pursue them. He examines the rowboat. It can hold six people, the oarlocks are wrapped in fabric to avoid noise, and there’s a false bottom that can conceal cargo.  He uses camouflage again to wait by the boat. Lucia goes to the bush just downstream of the docks where she left her armor and puts it back on.  Both heroes wait for the next move from the le Grind estate.

After about 15 minutes, three night watch come out to the docks. They are official. The have fancy hats, and lanterns on poles to light their way. They spot the boat. One climbs down under the docks to retrieve it while the other two hold their lanterns out to light his way.  Lucia takes this opportunity to slip away, but is noticed. She’s far away and it’s dark, so the guard only knows there was a tall person in armor lurking about.  One guard is holding two lanterns over the edge of the dock while a second fetches a boat hook to help the third pull in this mysterious rowboat.  As they are trying to secure the boat, Gleador grabs the boat and yanks it back into the water! One guards goes into the river with it. Another swings at the strange creature with his boat hook. The third blows the whistle around his next, raising a general alarm.  Gleador disengages from the fight and swims away underwater, eventually reconvening with Lucia.  They blew their chance to sneak into the estate, and they don’t know what those sneaky Halflings were doing in the drain, but they’ll try again another time!

← Session 17 | Campaign Summary | Session 19 →

← Session 16 | Campaign Summary | Session 18 →

Last time, our heroes traveled to a ghost town and were trapped in an attic by actual ghosts! On the top floor of a forge/mint, Lucia found an entrance to a secret room, but was paralyzed by a trap. Gleador pushed her inside and guarded the door with his flaming body, since the Spectres fear fire. He looks around for a way out of this mess. There are chimneys from the forge in the center of the building that exit through the roof. The windows in the exterior walls are slits, because the building is fortified against attack from outside. Not an easy place to escape from.

Gleador tries a bold tactic: friendship! He asks if he can help the Spectres build something.  They are surprised and delighted.  Most living people who come to this building want to steal, not help. The Spectres can drag objects around like poltergeists, but can’t operate precision machinery like they did in life.  While the paralysis poison works its way out of Lucia’s system, the Spectres pantomime instructions to Gleador: how to restart a forge, melt some metal, and cast some silverware.

When Lucia is back in action, she casts Speak With Dead on one of the now-friendly Spectres and asks three questions:

1. What do you know about money from Saarland showing up elsewhere?  As far as the Spectre knows, Saarland coins are still accepted in other towns. Recently, coins are carried off by thieves. Sometimes, coins go missing even when the Spectres don’t detect any living intruders.
2. Is there anything magical about the coins or other items? The Spectre gestures to a weapon rack and says that the magical weapons on it are magical, but coins are not.
3. What have you learned about the attack, how to prevent another? Fiercely defending the forge from all intruders has prevented another attack so far, so the Spectres will keep doing that.  One slain enemy came back as a Spectre, but the Saarland Spectres drove it away.

Gleador asks permission to examine the storeroom that Lucia hid in one more time, offering to conceal the entrance once more.  It’s a storeroom. It contains many items that our heroes won’t steal, and has no exits besides the one door.

Lucia and Gleador leave the forge and Gleador transforms into a Chinese flying dragon with eagle eyes. Lucia rides him and they circle Saarland to look for interesting things. One side of the ruined town is controlled by Ents, the other by Spectres. Rose, a Halfling they met a few days ago, enters Saarland on the Spectre side. She sees the dragon flying above and hides from it. Gleador wants to pursue her, but Lucia’s not feeling so well. Gleador drops her off outside the city. She casts Sanctuary around herself and communes.

Gleador turns into a bee with poison frog contact venom, and the toughness of a rock.  A reconnaissance form that can’t be instas-killed by a flyswatter.  He flies back into the town and finds Rose entering a Spectre-filled house. The Spectres don’t react to her, which is weird since they usually attack anything living.  Gleador flies in to watch her and the Spectres attack him. They seem out to get anything living!  Rose sees the commotion, but figures Gleador is a normal bug and moves on. She finds a silver serving dish and puts it in one of her sacks.  Gleador retreats from the Spectres but gets hit again. He’s almost dead!  He keeps his distance and watches Rose go from house to house, looting them while undisturbed by their Spectre occupants.  After an hour he flies dow nad stings her with paralyzing venom. She slumps against a gate and won’t be able to move for a while.

Gleador flies away to retrieve Lucia and get healed. He comes back as a dragon, carrying Lucia.  As they approach, an Ent has noticed Rose and is moving in to menace her.  Lucia dismounts and charges the Ent, which knocks her across the street with a powerful branch.  Gleador starts a fire with his dragon breath and blows a smoke ring at the Ent to let it know how dangerous he is. The Ent retreats to get fire-fighting equipment. Lucia pulls Rose onto Gleador and the three of them fly off.

Lucia’s quest gives her an unfailing sense of direction to Saarland, but not to anywhere else. Now that they want to leave Saarland, how will they find their way back to Sugar’s Crossing?  They know they went north-east to reach Saarland, so they head south until they find the road from Fairmeadow to Sugar’s Crossing, then take that west. As they fly they question Rose, whom they have once again incapacitated. They take her amulet and ask where she got it. She found it on the body of a looter who wandered into Ent territory. It makes the wearer appear to be undead, which placates Spectres, but not Ents.  She started looting Saarland about 8 months ago. She got a tip from another adventurer that le Grind was paying well for artifacts from Saarland. She doesn’t care what he does with them. She had steady work that wasn’t too risky and paid well. Of course, they’ve taken her only defense, so no the job is much riskier.  They set her down in the woods once the paralysis wears off. She’s happy to be rid of them and can find her own way back.

The trip back to Sugar’s Crossing takes several days, even though Gleador flies quite fast. They aren’t taking a direct route. The first night they camp in the woods. On the second day they hit the road and turn west. They camp along the road on the second night. While our heroes sit around the campfire, an Elk approaches. Gleador recognizes this animal as a fellow Druid.  The Elk walks its back legs forward under its forelegs, which push out to the side as the Elk takes humanoid form. Yasha, a 6-foot-plus grey-haired Orc woman formally greets Gleador as a fellow Druid.  Gleador returns the traditional wave, bow, and vocalization and introduces himself.  Yasha has heard of him, and his exile from the Sapphire Islands.  The Druid leaders deep in the forest to the north, aren’t happy with Gleador.

Yasha is a sentry for Sugar’s Crossing. Instead of waiting for people to get to edge of town, then discover if they are troublemakers, Yasha watches travellers as they take the road past the forest, and intercepts undesirables far from town.  Our heroes ask if she knows Rose. Yasha has seen her coming and going. It’s odd that she goes into the woods instead of staying on the road, but she’s not violent and doesn’t get in trouble, so Yasha lets her go.  They ask about Oolite, the family that supposedly built the living statue that has given them so much trouble, but Yasha doesn’t know anything about them. Finally, Gleador says he’s ready to do pennace and be re-instated in the Druid community.  Yasha thinks that’s a good idea. There’s a messenger Druid named Hughes who can carry that message from Gleador to the higher-ups.  He comes and goes, so there’s no specific time to expect him, but Yasha will tell him to look for Gleador.

← Session 16 | Campaign Summary | Session 18 →