Category: Campaign Diary

← Session 14 | Campaign Summary | Session 16 →

Last time, our heroes relaxed and learned a lot about the town of Sugar’s Crossing and about Saarland. They promised a survivor of the Saarland disaster that they would find out why coins from Saarland were found in the living statue they fought back in Fairmeadow.

They head to the docks, which are on the west bank of the river, just south of the bridge. Their apartment and the theater is also on the west side of town, so they don’t have to cross the bridge to reach the docks.  Most of the boats traffic is barges that drift down the river. They are maneuvered into place by small tugboats. They are really small tugboats because their crews are Halflings.  Most people who live in Sugar’s Crossing are Halflings.

One barge has two Giants that push the barge along with poles, like the gondolas in Venice.  The Giants are about 12 feet tall, so these poles are 20-foot tree trunks that are long enough to reach the bottom of the river.  The Giants look ready to go to a Goth club.  They have baggy cargo pants with straps all over, and mesh shirts made out of rope.  The Giants maneuver their barge alongside the dock, and a swarm of Halfling dockhands rush in to begin unloading the barge.  The Giants act as cranes. They reach up to the top of the stacked boxes, and Halflings use the straps and ropes on the Giants’ clothes to climb up and grab packages. A bustle of carefully coordinated activity.

There are two other barges at the dock.  One is being loaded. There’s a line of cargo and passengers.  Some passengers have carts that they will roll on, tie down, then roll off at their destination, like a modern ferry.  Gleador and Opal recognize some people waiting to board.  There’s Opal, a Dwarf woman who assaulted Lucia on her first night in Fairmeadow!  She’s with two other figures, one taller and one shorter than her. They have a cart, drawn by a pony and covered by a tarp. Gleador was tranformed into a panther when he met Opal, so she would not recognize his Elf form, but she does spot Lucia!  There’s a bit of crowd between the two groups. Lucia hesitates to see Opal’s reaction.  Gleador splits off from Lucia, trying to look like an unrelated person who happened to be walking alongside Lucia for a moment.  Opal tries to subtly warn her companions about Lucia. They furtively glance at her and the short one checks the tarp to make sure their cargo is hidden.  Lucia moves towards them.  Opal hails the nearest guard, pointing at Lucia.  Sugar’s Crossing is a major port, so there are guards everywhere to protect commerce.  Gleador tries and fails to shapeshift into a Elf that looks just like himself, but with fox ears for better hearing: Gleador, but more anime.  The guard is convinced by Opal, motions a second guard over, and confronts Lucia.  They say, “What’s your business here on the docks. We hear you’re a troublemaker. If you’re not boarding a ship or picking up cargo, you need to leave.”  She says she’s sightseeing, and there’s no rule against that.  There’s a tourist area at the end of the dock with rides and souvenirs and such.  The guards say that, if she’s a tourist, she should go down there and stay out of this section of the docks.  There’s heavy cargo moving in and out all the time. She could get in the way or be hurt.  She and the guards start moving towards the tourist area.

Lucia: “I’m just wondering, who said I was a trouble maker? I don’t even know anyone here.”

Guard: “You want us to expose that person to retaliation? We’ve heard this one before. We’re not fools.”

Lucia’s path takes her close to Opal’s cart.  Lucia wants to reach out and move the tarp to see what’s underneath, but decides that drawing her sword to do that would be foolish.  Setting the cart of fire is also a bad idea. Gleador wanders close as well.  At this distance, Lucia & Gleador recognize the short person sitting on the cart as the pickpocket that they caught in the Brace of Pigs bar, way back in Session 2.  Gleador yells, “Lucia, look! It’s the thieves from the Fairmeadow Fair! The ones we were deputized to stop!”  The guards are very motivated to prevent thievery, so they demand an explanation.  “What thieves, where? What’s all this now?”  Gleador says that they caught the short one picking pockets, and that Opal attacked them at night.

Gleador: “Lucia, don’t you recognize them?”

Lucia: “I do! I bet they were the ones who said we were troublemakers, because we did make a lot of trouble for them.”

The guards aren’t sure who to trust.  One stays with Gleador and Lucia, and the other approaches the Halfling to search him.  The Halfling cooperates.  His cloak does have lots of little pockets, but they are empty.  He says, “I’ve only got the one coin purse.” The guard by our heroes calls out, “Check under the tarp. Maybe that’s where they’re hiding things.” The second guard thinks that’s reasonable.

GM note: I thought that Opal and her gang were stuck, but then I remembered that I had planned for this a few sessions back, but it never came up.  Now I get to spring my amazing plan!

Several things happen very quickly.  Opal yells, “Plan Z!” and shoves the guard away from the cart.  Her Human and Halfling companions draw swords and cut the harness holding the pony to the cart.  Gleador jams his shillelagh between the spokes of the cart’s wheel to prevent it from moving.  The Human runs towards the edge of the dock. The Halfling takes a potion from his belt and drinks it.  Opal tries to shove Gleador away the cart.  Lucia intercepts and shoves Opal up against the cart. The sound of Opal’s body impacting the cart and her head being thrown back into the cargo under the tarp indicates that both the cart & the cargo are metallic.  Gleador runs after the human. The human leaps into the river. Gleador takes a flying leap after her. As soon as he is concealed under the water, he transforms into a chimera with dolphin tail, alligator body, and dolphin echolocation.  The Halfling moves some levers on his seat. The cart jerks forward, but the shillelagh prevents the wheel from turning.  He backs up the cart to try to break the shillelagh.  Lucia is holding Opal against the back of the cart and binding her, so when the cart suddenly backs up, they are both knocked down. Lucia gets up first and holds Opal at swordpoint.

Under the water, the Human swims under the barge and pulls out a potion to drink it.  The potion is in a leather pouch, so even though she’s underwater, she can drink it by squeezing the pouch like a Capri Sun.  Gleador lunges to make her drop the potion. He tries to bite her legs, but she’s doing the breaststroke kick, so she pulls her legs away from each other and Gleador’s alligator maw closes right between them.  She’s very surprised.

The two Dwarf guards move to separate Lucia and Opal. The Halfling is still trying to break the shillelagh and move the cart.  Lucia uses “I am the Law!” to command the guards to go after the Halfling while she secures Opal.  The guards don’t like having their authority challenged, so they attack Lucia. Lucia defends, but badly. The guards don’t land any blows, but they maneuver Lucia away from the cart.  Opal sees her chance, pulls the shillelagh out of the wheel, and jumps on as the cart speeds away without anything pulling it.  It crashes through the line of people waiting to board the barge, heading straight for the edge of the dock.

Underwater directly below the barge, Gleador & the Human are facing off, when the cart hits the water above and behind them. Gleador slams the Human against the underside of the barge, taking a sword blow in return. The air is knocked out of her lungs, bubbling all around them. She gasps in a bunch of water and does not panic or begin to drown. Gleador realizes that she drank a potion of water breathing.  The cart sinks to the bottom of the river and starts driving downstream, kicking up a plume of mud behind it.

Lucia is in the middle of a panicked crowd on the dock with two guards trying to subdue her.  She berates them for letting the real criminals get away and tries to fight her way to the edge of the dock to see what happened to the cart.  When she turns away, one guard hooks her leg and knocks her down.  More guards are on their way, but have to push through the crowd of people trying to escape the brawl.  People on the barges are yelling about stuff happening in the water.

Underwater, Gleador tries to break the Human’s arm with a tail swipe.  He’s hit on the way in, but she drops the sword and goes limp.  As she slowly sinks towards the river bed, the cart tries to get under her and catch her.

Lucia’s on the ground with two guards standing over her. They won’t be distracted by the cart. Other people will be dispatched to handle it. They are going to make sure that everyone who has disrupted the docks is captured, and that means her.  More guards approach and try to get a sitrep. There are at least four people and a cart in the water.  What’s pulling the cart? That horse right there was pulling the cart. That’s a pony, not a horse.  Also, how can it be pulling the cart if it’s here and the cart is underwater? The guards standing near Lucia are distracted, giving her an opening. She can bolt into the crowd, but if she pauses to pick up her sword, the guards will have enough time to stop her. Is freedom worth the loss of her sword?

GM note:  We spent a long time trying to answer that question. How much does a sword cost? How difficult is it to find a supplier? What are the chances I could circle back and pick the sword up? In the future, I need to keep the game moving.

Lucia disappears into the crowd, leaving her sword behind. She goes to the edge of the dock.  She can’t see anything underwater. All the actors are under the barge, and the cart has churned up a lot of mud.

Gleador can see, because he’s under the barge with the incapacitated Human and the Halfling driving the cart to intercept her.  Gleador grabs her and drags her away.  The Halfling pulls out a handheld harpoon gun and fires at Gleador.  Gleador uses the Alligator Death Roll ability to evade the dart. He returns to Elf form and pushes the Human to the surface.

Since sound travels so well underwater, Gleador hears Opal say, “Shelley’s weak! Drive on!”  The cart starts moving downriver, abandoning their incapacitated buddy.  Gleador pops up and hands Shelley off the the onlookers at the edge of the dock. “Help her! She’s injured!” He dives back underwater to pursue the cart.  He uses the plume of mud kicked up by the cart to cover his next transformation.

The dock workers have hooks, poles, and ropes to pull Shelley out of the water.  Lucia’s Quest requires Hospitality. She must help anyone in need, and right now, that’s Shelley.  Lucia would really like to pursue the cart, but doesn’t want to lose the quest, so she uses Lay on Hands on Shelley.  She fails. The crowd around Shelley sees Shelley react in fear as an armor-clad person pushes through the crowd and grabs her broken arm.  Shelley screams and passes out.  Lucia wonders if she has fulfilled her quest’s requirements.  Does she have to succeed in helping those in need, or is trying good enough? The dock workers, shocked by Lucia’s apparently cruelty, push her back to the edge of the dock with their tools and call for the guards.  Lucia tries to push through the crowd with her shield, but is knocked into the river.  Her plate armor drags her down.

Gleador changes his transformation when he sees Lucia fall into the river.  He combines a water dragon (water jet breath weapon) dolphin (echolocation) and flying dragon wings.  Gleador swims to Lucia and she grabs on.  Gleador swims just under the surface, so Lucia’s head is above the surface.  As they zoom downriver after the fleeing cart, they look behind them.  A giant from another barge jumps into the river and starts poking around in the muddy water with his barge pole, trying to find anyone else who went overboard.

The cart rushes downriver on the river bed, kicking up a big plume of mud.  Gleador is gaining, his long water-dragon body just below the river’s surface.  Lucia looks like a poor water-skier being dragged behind a boat.  She’s out of the water to her waist, cutting a big wake in the river’s surface.  As they approach, Opal fires the harpoon gun. Gleador fires a water jet, which swats the dart away, knocks Opal and the Halfling off the cart, and rips the tarp off the cart.  The cart’s mysterious cargo is revealed: a metal statue of a dwarf, just like the one that came to life and ruined the auction back in Session 4!  The cart keeps going at full speed, without a pony to pull it or a driver to guide it.

The Halfling swims towards shore, but Opal reloads the harpoon gun and plans to grapple herself back to the runaway cart.  Gleador carries Lucia to the shore. She’s ready to bash this Halfling with her shield.  Gleador pauses to see if she’s going to be alright.  The Halfling gets to shore, and sees a fully-armored Paladin and a water dragon waiting for him.  There’s no way he’s winning this. He surrenders.  Lucia takes his sword and dagger.  She can use the Halfling-sized sword as a dagger. She ties him up.

Gleador pursues the cart.  Opal has grappled back to the cart and is firing darts backwards as the cart drives itself.  Gleador pulls alongside and blasts a water jet at the top of the cart. The cart flips out from under Opal, who is then yanked after it by her line. The statue is flung clear and lands headfirst in the mud at a weird angle.  The cart lands upside-down on top of Opal, wheels still spinning. Gleador shoves the cart onto its side.  It starts skidding in a circle as the wheels kick up mud.  Opal uses the controls to stop the wheels.  Once again, Gleador has appeared as a weird monster, so once again, Opal panics and lashes out with her sword. Gleador tries to wrestle the sword away from her, but gets stabbed for his trouble.  She swims for the statue. Gleador wraps his long body around Opal and constricts her until she stops struggling.  He carries her to shore, within shouting distance of Opal, who has secured the Halfling.

They are out of sight of Sugar’s Crossing now, but a few Naga troops have been mobilized and are quickly swimming towards them.  Four snake-like heads skim above the water’s surface. Lucia calls out, “We caught them! The cart is down there!”  Two Naga heads turn towards the shore, and the other two heads disappear under the water.  A moment later, the two Naga reappear, confirming that the cart is there, and no one else is underwater.

The Naga demand an explanation. Lucia and Gleador explain that these people are thieves and muggers that they encountered in Fairmeadow. They name-drop Pepe. They also warn the Naga not to touch the statue that’s underwater, since a statue just like it what wrecked the auction at the Fairmeadow Fair.  Especially do not touch any switches on the statue.  We don’t know what they do. The Naga will check on their story, but it seems legit, so they will take Opal and the Halfling back to town in custody. Gleador and Lucia are allowed to accompany the Naga under their own power.

Three Naga come ashore to slither along with their prisoners.  One Naga swims ahead to fetch someone to recover the cart and statue from the riverbed.  The Naga say that if they were on duty instead of the Dwarfs when all this happened, no one would have gotten past the docks.  They are proud of their amphibious capabilities. It took a while for the Dwarfs at the dock to call for the Naga troops, which is why they had such a big head start. Our heroes explain that the statue is very dangerous and unpredictable and leaving it unattended may be foolish. One of the three Naga says, “I’m not scared of your statue.  I’ll stay behind and watch it.”  The leader warns him not to touch any switches or controls on either the statue or the cart, even though the self-driving cart might be cool.

The party (Gleador, Lucia, Opal, Halfling, Naga commander, one Naga tail-soldier) returns to the Sugar’s Crossing dock.  There are lots of Dwarf guards around, but not the two that gave Lucia trouble.  The commander of the Dwarf security force is there, identifiable by his fancy hat.  There’s also a fancy magical Halfling named Lightfoot who has been brought in to confirm our heroes’ story.  Lightfoot is using an enchanted tea set to communicate with Pepe remotely.  It’s Halfling tradition to get together and share stories over tea. Halflings think it’s weird that Humans throw out the tea and look at the junk left in the bottom of the cup.  That’s silly.  Pour the tea, let it sit, and look into the reflection.  If your friend is also making tea at the same time, you see your friend in the reflection.  It’s quite a sight seeing this fancy Halfling sitting on the floor whispering into a teacup surrounded by grumpy Dwarfs.

Pepe confirms our heroes’ story except for one thing. Opal doesn’t have a statue like the one that wrecked Fairmeadow. It’s the same statue.  It was stolen from Fairmeadow’s town hall a few days ago.  The Dwarf commander says that Gleador and Lucia are OK. They were telling the truth.  The people they were fighting were dangerous known criminals.  Just one thing, though.  It was really mean of Lucia to break Shelley’s arm when she was already injured and half-drowned.  Excessive force, to be sure.  Our heroes weapons are returned.  A Giant sets out to retrieve the cart and statue on a raft that looks small only because its pilot is so large. When he reaches the wreck, the Giant jumps in, sinks to the bottom and picks the statue and cart up over his head to put them on the raft. He’s really strong.

Shelley is with a healer. Opal and the Halfling (named Billy) are in custody.  The poor pony that was pulling the cart has been taken to a stable.

The Giant (his name is Ommm. Exactly three Ms. Omm is his cousin.) returns with the cart and statue on his raft.  The Dwarf-sized statue barely passes Ommm’s knees.  It looks very non-threatening.  Opal yells, “That’s mine! You have no right.  It’s my birthright, my property! It was lost. I was taking it back.”

Gleador: How can you prove it’s yours?

Opal: My family name is stamped under the statue’s left arm.

Lucia’s senses can pierce lies and she does not detect any lies.

Gleador: Describe your sense of property ownership.

It’s got my name on it. We didn’t sell them. It has to be stolen.  Them?  How many are there?  She is not sure. This is the first functional one that she’s found.  She has parts of maybe five.  They are miners.

How do you control them?  “It’s easy,” she says, gesturing towards the statue. Everyone rushes to stop her from touching anything.  Set it to collect.  It collects metal. Then you set it to return and it returns.  But how do you get to the switch to change it to return mode?  (The statue tossed our heroes around when they tried to turn the switch)  Just wait until the pack is full, and then it will stop. Our heroes are shocked that it’s that easy.

Lucia detects that Opal and Billy are evil. Shelley isn’t here, so her status is unknown.

The Oolites built the statue shortly before the Oolite family lost their fortune.  Opal was not around to see what happened, but something went bad around the time the Oolites opened a new mine with the robots. The exact disaster is a family secret that the old generation won’t talk about. Opal isn’t content to accept the loss of the family’s old status.  She wants to regain it by using these mining robots, but she doesn’t know where to mine, exactly.

GM notes: Players are willing to spend forever asking all sorts of questions, and why not? Their enemy is captured. I need a way to make them ask the important questions and then move on.

The Dwarf captain tells them to wrap it up, so they can get the docks back to working order. Lucia re-iterates how dangerous the statue is. Ommm is not impressed and figures he could just throw it in the river if it went crazy.  Gleador wishes Ommm was around when they fought the statue in Fairmeadow.

Lucia wonders what the pickpocket was for. Opal explains that the opening bid for the statue was 500 gold.  Oolites aren’t rich anymore, so they had to steal the money to bid on the statue.  How did Shelley get involved?  She was a historian that Opal consulted and she was impressed by Opal’s goal to recover her family’s artifacts.  She’s a softy. The guards take Opal, Billy, the cart, and the statue to the fort.  The commander anticipates arguing with Pepe about which town was more damaged and who gets to try them first.  As she’s dragged away, Opal yells, ‘I’m not responsible for what people who don’t know how to operate the statue did! If I had been able to buy it, none of this would have happened! It’s your fault!”  Gleador yells after her, “Who owned it before the auction?” The commander says, “Didn’t you check the auction records?”  Our heroes remember that it was sold by Hama, an agent who did not reveal who she was selling the statue for.

The crowd breaks up, and our heroes are free to pursue whatever they want.  Gleador is hurt, but he can heal overnight. Is the statue involved with the coins? They were trying to figure out the Saarland coin mystery and didn’t make any progress.  The coins were found in the statue’s backpack, but our heroes theorize that the coins may have been in another item at auction, not in the statue originally. They decide to track down Hama, and learn that she’s staying with Lady Evelynn.  Lady Evelynn is scary, and they don’t want to go back into her lair.  They will go to Saarland instead.  They will head out in the morning.  They visit the tourist part of the dock and spend another night in the apartment building

← Session 14 | Campaign Summary | Session 16 →

← Session 13 | Campaign Summary | Session 15 →

Last time, our heroes teleported into the mansion of a spooky noblewoman on the outskirts of Sugar’s Crossing. They avoided her ire (possibly re-directing it to the mayor of Templeton) and entered the city of Sugar’s Crossing.

Sugar’s Crossing is so named because it straddles a major river, and the beets from the surrounding fields are refined in the three great mills on that river.  The owner of the mills are always vying for power in the city. Lady Evelynn owns one mill. The others are owned by the Miller and le Grind familes. The bridge over the river is fortified against attack, and the fort for the garrison is right next to it.  Instead of a city hall, there’s a forum: an open area where people give speeches and hold debates to influence policy.  The storyteller’s theater is on the west edge of town, near the main road.

The theater has two big plays each day that are free to the public. These are basic, staple stories of the history of Sugar’s Crossing. There are rotating exhibitions that one can pay to see. One can also hire experts to expound on any subject one is interested in.  Lucia attends the morning’s free show. It covers the founding of Sugar’s Crossing, and the rivalry of the two old mills that face each other across the river: Miller & le Grind.  A pair of star-crossed lovers are torn apart by the family strife, and must meet in secret under the bridge.  They decide to abandon their family and flee the strife. Each builds a canoe. They meet in the middle of the river and lash their boats together to form a catamaran, which is more stable than their separate boats.  They set off down the river, never to return.  The play ends when an actor dressed as Lady Evelynn bursts in, throwing the stage into chaos.

While Lucia is watching this history lesson, Gleador looks for someone to gossip with. He finds a chatty, clever halfling named Pan who runs a food stall.  Pan sells ground & spiced meats & starches wrapped in leaves, kinda like Indian samosas. Gleador asks for the latest gossip. There’s always competition and backstabbing between the mills as they vie to control town policy.  The harvest party barge came through a few days ago. You just missed it.  It sets off from upriver when harvest begins and slowly winds down the river, stopping in each town for a celebration and to buy & sell crops.  Gleador asks if Pan heard about all the trouble at the Fairmeadow Fair, especially the living statue that disrupted the auction. The food stall has a split counter: one at halfling-height, the other at human height. Pan climbs up to the human counter to lean in conspiratorially and whisper in Gleador’s ear.  Pan says the auction is sometimes used to launder contraband. It’s a bit of an open secret. No contraband was noticed this time.

Gleador and Lucia meet up after their morning expeditions and go back to the theater to hire a specialist.  They ask for an expert on the story of Saarland. They are in luck! One of the storytellers who lives at the theater is a refugee from Saarland.  They go into a back room and meet Soren, an Elf woman.  Gleador coughs significantly at Lucia, trying to send a message. Lucia understands and prays to know what here is evil. Soren is not evil, but she does ask what the performative coughing was about.  Gleador explains that they had to be sure she wasn’t evil. Soren isn’t sure how coughing helps them determine that.  Gleador says that evil people get mad, not inquisitive like Soren.

They start explaining why they are interested in Saarland. When they mention a robot smashing up the auction in Fairmeadow, Soren has to stop them. She’s unfamiliar with the word “robot.” They explain that the living statue was holding coins like this, and they produce the coin from Saarland.  Soren is emotional. Here is a relic of her lost home.  She wants the coin. As a survivor of Saarland, she has a claim to it. Our heroes resist, since they promised to give it back to Pepe. Soren says she won’t tell them the story of Saarland unless they give her the coin.  Gleador tries to convince her that by telling them about Saarland, she’d make them bearers of the lost city’s culture, inspiring them to get justice! Soren isn’t quite convinced.  She wants more assurance. She notices that Lucia is a Paladin, and asks her to swear a quest.  Lucia swears to find who stole the coins.

Soren tells the story of Saarland. It was an Elven city in the woods to the north. It was surrounded by a living wall of close-set conifers and brambles 150 feet high.  One night, the wall on one side of the city suddenly caught fire. The residents organized to fight the fire, but were ambushed by masked invaders. At the same time, on the other side of town, looters appeared and struck the bank, storehouses, and even took valuable tools from artisans’ workshops. The sudden, coordinated attack threw the city into chaos.  The fire spread across the entire wall.  Some raiders were killed once the residents re-organized to the new threat, but their bodies burst into flame. There were no prisoners to question, and not much evidence to look through.  It took three days to contain the fires, and two more days to account for the missing, injured, and slain. Soren only slept once in that time.   The attacks were so precise, people were sure the raiders had inside help. But who?  Some people were missing, but did they flee for their lives during the attack, or leave with the raiders? The unrecognizable corpses of fallen raiders might be Elves from the city, or humans, Orcs, plenty of possibilities.  Some said that the raiders fire-based attacks proved they were demons. The looting convinced others that these were bandits, although the force was larger and better organized than usual bandits. Still others feared this was the vanguard of an invasion.  The community was shattered, and the survivors fled and scattered.  Soren has never returned.  The roads that led to Saarland have not been maintained, so after 10 years the forest has surely overgrown them.  Soren suggests that the sentries that patrol the outskirts of Sugar’s Crossing could find the old paths.  Gleador & Lucia thank Soren for all the information and promise to solve the mystery.

The evening show is about to start, and Lucia wants resolution for that cliff-hanger from the last show.  This show, about Lady Evelynn’s arrival 20 years ago, is a glitzy musical, as opposed to the more dramatic, serious play from this morning.  Lady Evelynn’s outfit is covered in rhinestones. There’s a back-projection system to represent her giant shadow.  The three mill owners circle each other, first one direction, than another.  Lady Evelynn’s arrival does not inspire le Grind & Miller to team up against her. The two-way duel is now a three-way rivalry.

After that show, Gleador and Lucia seek lodging.  In Halfling towns like Sugar’s crossing, family home, apartment complex, and hotel all blend into each other.  Homes are large to accommodate extended families. Some homes have rooms set aside for guests, and some homes charge for those rooms. Gleador and Lucia find some extra-large rooms that fit them.  Gleador has a debility from a previous adventure, so they decide to stay another day to let him rest.  With Lucia’s help, he recovers on the morning of the third day in Sugar’s Crossing.  When she’s not healing Gleador, Lucia attends the special exhibitions at the theater.  She learns a lot of things that may be helpful in future adventures.

GM note:  I made a custom move for listening to stories. Lucia got Hold that she can spend to boost the result of a Spout Lore roll in the future. Spend the Hold and tell us what play or recitation told you this information.

GM note: I was sure they’d at least go look at the river and spot some old foes hiring a boat, but they never left the theater.  I could have forced them into seeing what I wanted them to see by putting the theater on the opposite shore, but I didn’t think of it.

GM note: Well, now they are chasing down a legend. This is far from where I thought the secret coins quest was going to go. Lucia swore a quest, so it’s definitely taking priority over learning about the Oolite robot, and after they went through such trouble to get information about the robot!

← Session 13 | Campaign Summary | Session 15 →

← Session 12 | Campaign Summary | Session 14 →

Last time, our heroes arranged to meet the mayor of Templeton in a magically-protected area, despite the best efforts of the mayor’s special forces. (Why does she even have special forces?!)  They disrupted the mayor’s attempt to teleport in, and all three of them ended up somewhere unknown.

They rush up towards the edge of hyperspace, breaking through the surface into water. They rush up through water, breaking the surface into darkness. Their eyes adjust and they realize they are in an indoor swimming pool. One wall and part of the ceiling are covered in thick curtains, so whatever daylight might be outside does not reach in here.

While our heroes and the mayor are trying to figure out what’s going on, the double doors at one end of the room swing open. Light streams in, backlighting a figure in the doorway and throwing a huge shadow on the far wall.  It’s a female figure, about human size, wearing the kind of robe that might cover a swimsuit.  The last section of each finger is as long as the rest of the finger. Our heroes can’t tell from this distance if they are an extravagent manicure, or claws.  She says, “You’re not on the guest list. How did you get into my house?”

The mayor, a female Dwarf wearing a fancy dress is having trouble staying afloat, as in Lucia, the plate-clad Paladin. The lady of the house notices their distress and says, “Let me give you a hand.”   The shadow on the back wall peels itself off of the wall, becoming three-dimensional and solid, but still see-through. Its giant hands reach into the pool, cutting dark voids through the water, and waiting, palm up, next to the struggling figures. It would be undignified to snatch them up without their permission. Lucia and the mayor climb aboard and are lifted out of the pool. The shadow’s hands come down on the tile floor surrounding the pool and sink into the surface, so Lucia and the mayor’s feet are gently lowered to the floor as the shadow becomes two-dimensional again.  Gleador swims to the edge and pulls himself out. The mysterious woman again demands to know how they got in.  Gleador starts recounting the story of last session, an exciting tale of assassins and chases! The mayor interrupts. She’s the mayor, and these two are dangerous criminals. The mysterious woman shuts her down. “First of all, don’t interrupt.  As I must often point out, my estate is outside city limits, so I answer to no mayor.  Finally, I don’t recognize you.  The two ruling class women exchange formal introductions.  The mayor of Templeton is named Eroc. Their mysterious host is Lady Evelynn.

GM’s note: Phew, it was a pain not referring to them by name! Narration got much easier from her on.

As Gleador continues, Eroc also continues her protests. These ruffians attacked her and are in league with dangerous forces. They should be locked in a dungeon!  Evelynn bristles. “How dare you suggest that I have an dungeon here?  What have you heard?”  Since Gleador has amused her with his story, Evelynn offers the three of them traditional hospitality: one night’s stay. They are also free to leave immediately if they wish.  She is hosting a party tonight, but they simply can’t attend, not in those clothes.  Eroc’s dress may have been acceptable, were it not soaked, but that filthy adventuring gear is right out.  All three accept the offer of a night’s rest, and Evelynn summons a butler to show them to their rooms. Jayce is a very proper butler, a male human with dark hair going grey at the temples. His square jaw is clean-shaven, and his posture is perfect. As he leads them past Lady Evelynn towards the rooms, Eroc scoffs that she is given the same treatment as her kidnappers. Evelynn grabs Eroc’s mouth between a thumb and forefinger (those long gold fingertips are definitely claws, not decorations), pulls her face close, and hisses, “I have offered you hospitality. Do not disrespect me!” Eroc is thoroughly cowed and scurries after Jayce and our heroes. Evelynn stays in the pool room.

Jayce leads the three of them through the unnecessarily large and twisting halls of the mansion. Each section of hall is separated from the next by large double doors. Jayce pauses at a few doors, listening through them for sounds of the party, then selecting a new route. He offers Gleador and Lucia adjoining rooms, but thinks it best if Eroc’s room was a ways off. Each room has a four-poster bed, big windows, typical mansion stuff.  There’s a door to the hall, but also a door from one room to the other. There’s a lock on each side, but Gleador and Lucia want access to each other, so they open both sides. Jayce returns and offers to have their clothes cleaned and dried. He looks them over with a practiced eye and selects nightclothes of the proper sizes from a wardrobe in one of the rooms. (a shin-length shirt and a soft pointy hat with a puff at the tip, like Geppetto wears in Disney’s Pinocchio.)  He waits discreetly in the hall for them to change, then takes their dirty clothes.  Lucia keeps her armor with her, of course. Before leaving, Jayce asks them to stay in their rooms, and says that breakfast and their clean clothes will be brought up in the morning.

Of course, Gleador isn’t going to stay put.  He selects a chimera form for spying on the party downstairs.  A gnat for flight and stealth. Sand for toughness. A coral with contact poison to discourage people from trying to mess with him. If a party guest notices and swats him, his tough body will resist the impact, and they will swiftly develop an itchy rash. He flies down to see what he can see. The ceilings are high and there’s a dull roar of conversation, so no one notices the buzz of his wings. There’s a main hall where guests enter from outside, an adjoining hall with drinks and hors d’oeuvres, and a third hall for dancing. Side chambers are available for people who want to converse more privately.

Everybody who’s anybody in the town of Sugar’s Crossing is here. Sugar’s Crossing is a mill town on the river a few days travel west of Fairmeadow. The human population of Sugar’s Crossing is small. Party guests are elves, dwarves, and halflings mostly. There are some Naga (kinda like snake mermaids) from down south. The port city on the same river as Sugar’s Crossing is in the territory of a Naga ruler called the Sea Viper. There’s also a Dryad from the forests to the north. She’s roughly humanoid, but made of wood and leaves. She’s bound to a tree, and that tree is in a corner of the room, in a pot with wheels and a handle so she can transport it.  The owners of two of the major mills are here. The naga are indeed emissaries of the Sea Viper. Gleador recognizes the Valerie Balfour as the owner of the shipping company whose ledger he read back in Templeton.  Gleador also spots Hama, the agent who brought the living metal statue to auction at Fairmeadow. The last important person he notices is Mayor Eroc! She slipped into a side chamber and is trying to attract the attention of some dwarven soldiers.  Sugar’s Crossing is a bigger, more important town than Fairmeadow. Pepe and his deputies can keep Fairmeadow safe, but Sugar’s Crossing has a garrison of soldiers to protect river traffic, the mills, and other important infrastructure.  The region is a loose federation of independent city-states, and they provide security to Sugar’s Crossing on a rotating basis.  Right now, there’s a dwarven garrison, and Eroc probably has some contacts with them.

Gleador doesn’t want soldiers waiting for them at the edge of town, but he’s always got a plan. He flies back to his room, returns to elven form, and rings for Jayce. There’s a small bell mounted on the desk in his room. When he strikes it, he realizes there’s no clapper inside, but he hears a faint tone far away outside the room. Jayve appears shortly, and asks how he can be of service.  Gleador says he feels bad about the enmity between him and Eroc, and wants to reconcile. Could Jayce please bring Eroc here so Gleador can make peace? Jayce thinks it’s a mark of civilization and right living to seek reconciliation and promises to bring Eroc forthwith. He returns, taken aback, to report that Eroc is not in her room. Gleador feigns worry. Jayce says not to worry, stay here, he’ll have her found.  Gleador and Lucia wait for what seems like a long time before there’s another knock at the door. Jayce isn’t there.  This is a servant they haven’t seen before: a petite female Tiefling. She wears a waterproof leather jacket and cap. The bill of the cap is narrow where it joins the cap to accommodate the two vertical horns that extend from her brows to just past the crown of her head. Her skin is red and curved tusks jut outward from her bottom lip. In contrast to Jayce’s perfect posture and diction, she slouches against the doorframe. (She probably works outside most of the time, away from polite company) “Hey, uhh, we found Eroc. She’s fine. Everything’s fine, but y’all need to stay in your rooms. Can’t chat tonight.  Maybe in the morning?” Our heroes thank her for the information and start to inquire further, but she’s already turning away saying, “Yeah, yeah” with a half-wave.

Gleador has scouted the party and brought trouble to his adversary for doing the same, both without implicating himself. That’s a good night’s work, and with no other pressing business, our heroes rest for the night. Gleador levels up and gains the ability to transform into pure elements. He can be a buffalo made of fire, or augment his already formidable stealth capabilities by turning into wind.

GM’s note: Gleador is insufferable to NPCs, which means he’s delightful to a GM, and this new power will only make that stronger. I look forward to scrambling to deal with the new level of shenanigans he’ll try in the future. Also, there’s a Druid power to imitate other humanoids, the shocking and unheard-of power that makes Andro so dangerous. Gleador didn’t take that power, thoughtfully preserving my NPCs raison d’etre.

In the morning Jayce brings a cart with trays of food on top and clean clothes underneath. He took the liberty of preparing traditional human and elven breakfast food.  Lucia gets delicious bacon and eggs. Gleador isn’t as pleased. He is served river fish, not sea fish like he would get back on the Sapphire Islands. There’s also the breakfast salad of lempins, leafy vegetables which are quite hearty, but less tasty than oatmeal. Jayce did add tasty berries, but Gleador is still telling himself “It’s the thought that counts”  When breakfast is over and our heroes are dressed again, they ask Jayce if they can greet Lady Evelynn as they leave.  Jayce says he’ll inquire and returns shortly to say that Lady Evelynn will see them off. He leads them to the front door, past Eroc’s room. The door is open, and a servant is already cleaning it. Jayce says she didn’t stay for breakfast.  Lucia suspects she never got back to her room after being discovered last night.

Lady Evelynn greets them at the front door wearing a fabulous dress in rose and purple with gold accessories. She wears small round rose-colored glasses that clip to her nose and have no earpieces. She accepts our heroes’ thanks for her hospitality.  Gleador prods Lucia and Lucia asks if Evelynn heard about the metal statue that disturbed the auction at Fairmeadow Fair. Evelynn’s lots were called before the statue was activated, so she got paid. Lucia starts awkwardly explaining the strange coins found in the statue’s possessions, and how they are trying to understand the mystery. Lucia produces the large rectangular coin they’ve been carrying, but Lady Evelynn has stopped listening. She sees the coin and says, “Oh no, there’s no charge. It’s my pleasure to host travelers.” Lucia insists. She wants to know about Saarland, the source of these coins. Evelynn instructs Jayce to point them towards the storytellers in town, and ushers them out the door.

As they walk the considerable distance from the front door to the gates of the estate, Jayce explains that Sugar’s Crossing is home to halfling storytellers, a combination of oral historian and actor. They have a multi-storey round building in town (it resembles Shakespeare’s Globe Theater from our world). They walk past a topiary garden. All the bushes are shaped like predators: wolves, eagles, and stranger beasts not native to this area. Lucia asks “What are those?” and Jayce helpfully explains that they are bushes that are grown in special metal frames and trimmed twice a week to maintain specific shapes.  With that, they reach the edge of Lady Evelynn’s property. The road before them leads to Sugar’s Crossing.

GM’s note: Most of the characters in this session were inspired by League of Legends characters! Lady Evelynn is K/DA Evelynn. Jayce is Debonair Jayce, and the tiefling is K/DA Akali.

← Session 12 | Campaign Summary | Session 14 →

← Session 11 | Campaign Summary | Session 13 →

Last time, our “heroes” laid hands on the Under-Dean Stanton & his assistant Simmons, were banned from the Fortinbras College of Mines, sent six members of the City Watch to the hospital, and delivered an ultimatum to the mayor. They are no longer welcome in town.

The mayor wants Gleador and Lucia brought to City Hall, but that’s in the center of the volcano’s caldera and it’s the deepest building in town. Our heroes don’t expect to escape from there. Their counter-offer, delivered by a City Watch-man dragging his wounded co-worker, is for the mayor to meet them at a rest stop two days walk west of Templeton. The rest stop has powerful magic, and those lit by its fire cannot harm each other. They mayor has three days to get there, and our heroes are watching the road out of Templeton to see if he goes or not.

That morning, the first traffic on the road towards the rest stop are two large carts, drawn by four horses each. The carts are covered by canvas supported by wooden frames, like covered wagons or WWII troop trucks. The canvas is extra-long, covering the sides of the wagon, but the horses are being driven fast, and the wind blows the canvas aside, revealing the name “Mister Bill’s Tack Shop”. That’s the building that Gleador saw burning yesterday. They pursue. Gleador transforms into a chimera of horse and eagle. It also breathes fire.

GM: What animal do you know from that Sapphire Islands that breathes fire?

Gleador’s player: The Giant Salamanders, of course!

GM: I can’t argue with that.

Lucia rides Gleador (on the ground for now) and they swiftly approach the heavy carts. They see the driver of the rear cart look back and shout instructions. Someone in the back of the cart reaches out through the canvas cover and dumps the contents of a bag onto the road: gold coins! Our heroes marvel at this strategy. What is its purpose? They stop and examine the coins. They appear to be normal Templeton gold pieces. Lucia suspects they may be counterfeit, since Flint was creating alloy with the same density as gold for some unknown purpose. The coins don’t appear to be magical, poisonous, or trapped, so our heroes grab a handful. As they are stopped, they look back towards Templeton and see another party approaching. Four figures, taller than Dwarves, wearing black cloaks. Three ride horses, but the leader rides a great wolf. The leader points at our heroes and the group of four accelerates.  Gleador takes to the sky, out-pacing both the riders and the two carts. The carts see the riders approaching and stop. Gleador lands in front of them. One cart has a single driver. The other has a driver and someone riding shotgun. Lucia prays to reveal what is evil and gets five pings: the three visible people and one in the back of each cart. Gleador asks, “Are they after us or after you?” The people on the carts appear confused. A person pops her head out of the back of one cart to see what’s going on. It’s Shaela, one of the dwarves getting alloy from Flint, and probably the one who locked our heroes and Flint in that deathtrap a few sessions ago.

Lucia is really curious what Shaela knows about Flint’s whereabouts, but the three black-cloaked figures on horses are approaching. They have pulled white, skull-themed masks over their faces. The leader and the wolf are not in sight. Lucia prays to see if the riders are evil. They gets a ping from each rider, but not from the horses. She also gets two pings in thin air between her and the carts. The leader and her wolf appear from invisibility poised to strike! The wolf leaps at Lucia (who is still atop Gleador’s fire-breathing Hippogriff)  Lucia braces her shield with her sword beneath it and strikes a heavy blow, aided by the wolf’s momentum. It collapses on Gleador’s shoulders and slides to the ground, but the rider leaped off as the wolf attacked. She is six feet above Lucia, holding a spear that’s attached to her gear with some sort of cable. Gleador unleashes a gout of flame. She drops the spear and throws her cloak around her, twisting in the air and dropping in an ungainly heap to the side, instead of directly in Lucia. Both the wolf and rider are back on their feet quickly. They back away, giving our heroes a respectful distance. The rider gives a hand signal, and the three other riders advance with their spears trying to encircle our heroes.

Gleador takes to the air. The three skull-faced horse-riders winds cranks at their hips to build air pressure, then fire their pneumatic spears at our heroes! Gleador swoops away and circles the group (two carts, four mounted assassins) within shouting distance. Lucia asks what exactly is going on! The wolf-rider, an Orc woman named Beth, yells back that they are a threat to the city, and they mayor has sent her and her team to make sure they are brought back. Gleador doesn’t have to deal with this, he’s a flying horse, so he takes off at full speed for the rest stop. Beth orders her riders to pursue them, and stays to tend to her injured wolf.

Gleador is faster than a horse, and horses must either respect the path of the road or push through unfavorable terrain. They know that the riders know that they are headed for the rest stop, but the hippogriff will reach it by nightfall, and the horses will take hours to catch up.

Gleador and Lucia reach the rest stop at nightfall and Gleador shifts back without regard for the ten or so parties already stopped for the night.  People are cooking dinner together over the large central fire pit. As is tradition, people have brought firewood to stoke and maintain the fire.Gleador looks for animals to use as scouts and allies. Lots of animals gather here, since humans bring food and aren’t allowed to attack them. Gleador sees a pika snatch an unattended hunk of cheese. The cheese’s owner yells and grabs a rock to throw, then puts the rock back down. This is the magic of the rest stop’s fire of community. Those lit by the fire may have means and will for violence, but they cannot act. Even animals are protected. Gleador asks the pika if it and its friends could scout beyond the firelight and warn them when the riders approach. That’s no good. The rest stop may be safe, but just outside, predators gather, waiting for animals to wander from the safety of the light. Indeed, the trees are obviously full of waiting hawks.

Gleador asks around, wondering if anyone has heard of black-cloaked skull-faced riders. People think that’s a great campfire story, and he soon has a circle of eager listeners wanting to hear his spooky tale.  He describes Beth and her group, saying they are bogey-men that wander the roads, and the only way to escape if they pursue you is to thumb your nose and say, “neener neener neener!” They can’t stand being mocked. A young lad, eager to seem brave and smart, scoffs at Gleador’s description of the terrible black wolf that bears the leader of the band. “Everyone knows the Black Beast is more like a giant cat. Not a wolf at all!”

GM note: The Black Beast is a legend started in Fairmeadow only a few days ago, based on the exploits of Gleador himself!

Blogger note: I need a better way to link callbacks. if you, dear reader, don’t remember the Black Beast, how can I easily remind you with the power of hyperlinks & the Internet?

After successfully entertaining the crowd, Gleador looks around for interesting people. He sees a group of people wearing robes that were once white, but are stained with long use over the road. They carry their gear in handcarts, and have no pack animals. Gleador strikes up a conversation with Talion, a young-ish Orc man. Talion explains that they are religious pilgrims returning from a famous shrine, far to the west, past Sugar’s Crossing. The expedition was started by an old human woman named Vanni. The journey is like a river, people join the group as it travels, expanding it. In that sense, Vanni is like the source of the river. Now they are returning, and people leave the group as it passes their hometowns. By the time Vanni returns, she will have been on the road for four months. Our heroes enquire about the shrine, and what rituals the group performed while there.  Gleador has heard that the shrine grants petitioner foresight. Talion expands: Vanni was the reason for the expedition, so she alone went inside and received the foresight, but all had a part in the ritual, and the foresight echoed and rippled outward, granting each participant some small gift.  After his experience at the shrine, Talion recognizes one face in each town he visits. He has no other insight into the people he recognizes, but he’s meditating on the visions and the interactions he has with the people the shrine has shown him. He records it all in a worn leather-bound journal. Tonight, Talion is expecting an Orc woman, but he has checked the camp and hasn’t seen her.  Gleador and Lucia are pretty sure he means Beth, the leader of the strike team pursuing them. She was wearing a cloak and mask, but from her height, build, and the skin they could see on her hands, neck, and shoulders, they are reasonably confident she’s an Orc.

GM note: I told Gleador’s player that Gleador knew the shrine the pilgrim’s went to. He said that the shrine granted foresight, and I thought, “You power-gamer! I’m not giving you an NPC that knows how to get you out of trouble!” Thus, the shrine grants foresight once, for a specific request, not an ongoing power to see the future.

Gleador encourages Lucia to talk to Vanni. Lucia isn’t sure what to say, but goes anyways.  Vanni is quite old, so the pilgrims give her special treatment out of respect both for her leadership of the expedition and her frail physical condition. Vanni recognizes a fellow truth-seeker in Lucia.  She tells Lucia about the trip to the shrine, which leaves the main roads and goes through a forest. That’s why they must use handcarts. Larger vehicles and beasts of burden cannot pass. Lucia asks why Vanni would make such a journey, what was so important to foresee? Vanni looks sad and doesn’t answer directly. Lucia says, “I guess it wasn’t a blessing.”

Vanni: All truth is a blessing. That’s very hard to see, but if you can accept that, it’s enlightenment.

Vanni excuses herself. It’s late, and she is old and tired. Lucia and Gleador also prepare to sleep. Lucia walks the border of the rest stop and casts Sanctuary, so she will be alerted if anyone entered with hostile intent. Our heroes are worried about the strike team somehow out-smarting the magic ward against violence. Gleador says they need to have a serious talk about possible mortal actions.  He suspects the wolf may be a Druid, or at least someone Druid-adjacent, and the combination of evil and power that he sensed has him considering taking a life for the first time.  (They destroyed some zombies when cleaning up the freezer room, but they had been dead for a long time, and had terminal diseases, so it doesn’t count, right?) They go to sleep back-to-back, weapons at hand.

Around 4AM, Lucia hears a ping from her Sanctuary spell, then three more. She sneakily opens an eye and see the four members of the strike team entering the rest stop. Their mounts remain outside. Their cloaks, masks, and armor are laid over the mounts. The strike team approaches unarmed, hands visible. Without the cloaks, their black armor is visible: mostly leather, with partial chainmail. The chain links are coated with a substance that turns them black and prevents them from jangling. Beth approaches to within a few paces and crouches down to address them. She wasn’t able to apprehend them before they reached the rest stop, and she can’t lay hands on them while they are protected within the rest stop’s ward, but she can prevent them from leaving while she waits for further instructions. Beth pulls out some paper and a pencil. It’s not very sharp. Beth reaches for a knife that’s no longer at her side. She glances back at her gear on the wolf, stares at the blunt pencil, and with a sigh, starts writing a message. When she’s done, she fold the paper into an origami bird and throws it into the air, it flies off towards Templeton to magically deliver a message.  “Now we wait”, says Beth.

Gleador is not content to wait, and uses his situational invulnerability to ask an unending series of impertinent questions.

“Who do you work for?” Beth says, “The mayor calls on us to solve special problems that the City Watch and normal channels are not equipped to handle. You are a special problem.”

“Are you like the mayor’s little body party?” Resh, one of the three human riders, chimes in, “You could say it’s a body party once we get involved!”

“Are you going to bring the wolf in? Is he OK out there beyond the fire light? He wasn’t doing so well earlier.” Beth narrows her eyes and hisses, “Don’t you ever talk about my wolf!”

Shortly before dawn, some people start to stir, make breakfast, stoke the fire. One of them is Talion. He spots Beth and arranges to get as close to her as he can while cooking breakfast. Beth notices him stealing glances and goes up to him. “What do you want?” Talion stammers, “Well, I, uh, I saw you in a dream.” Resh calls out, “She’s heard that one before!” Talion is embarrassed. “No, it’s not like that. There’s this shrine, see?”  Beth leans in, “So you saw my face in a vision? Are you sure it was mine? Take a real good look.” She leans uncomfortably close, staring Talion dead in the eye. She suddenly barks a war cry, twisting her face into a terrifying snarl. Talion stumbles back, startled. The riders laugh and jeer and he retreats.

Beth sights a response from Templeton. A larger messenger bird flies towards the rest stop and is snatched out of the air by a hawk! Remember, many predators wait just outside the fire’s protective light. Beth yells, “Aleph!” and points at the hawk. Her wolf turns and runs after the hawk, which flies back into a tree with its prey. Beth also run out of the camp, intercepts Aleph, pulls her knife from her gear and flings it into the hawk’s tree. The hawk falls out dead, still clutching the messenger bird. Beth picks up the hawk by the knife sticking out of it, extracts the messenger bird from its claws, then offers the knife to Aleph, who pulls the hawk off and eats it.  Beth walks back towards her companions. As she crosses the threshhold of the rest stop, she pauses and looks down at the knife in her hand. She takes a step back, throws the knife into the ground, then continues forward. She unfolds the messenger bird, It’s a cloth square about 2 feet on a side, with writing on one side, and magic symbols on the other.  Lucia recognizes the magic symbols as a teleportation spell. Beth reads the message, then hands the cloth to her blonde companion. “Yod, you’re better at this stuff.”

Yod prepares to cast the spell. Gleador is very curious and crowds her, asking what she has, what it’s for, what she’s going to do. Yod raises a hand, then lowers it. She scoots away. Gleador follows. She lays the cloth flat on the ground, then strategically scoots around so that Gleador is crowding her right arm instead of her left. then she grabs a corner of the cloth with her left hand and lifts the cloth with a flourish, yelling a magic word. There’s a puff of pink, glittery smoke, and when it clears, there’s a male Dwarf standing there. He wears a top hat, handlebar mustache, white gloves, tailcoat, and vest. “Ah, wonderful! Good to see you again, Yod! Beth. And these must be our, umm, persons of interest. Good to meet you in person. I’ve heard so much about you. My name is Dory. I must say you’ve put us in a bit of a spot. Allow me to consult with my colleagues.” Dory surveys the scene and huddles with the four riders.

Dory decides that the mayor will come to see Lucia and Gleador, but all these spectators are no good. He goes around the various camps, some of whom are beginning to stir, and offers them 5 gold pieces if they clear out in the next fifteen minutes. Most people are very willing to do so, and hustle to get themselves together.  The pilgrims have no interest in earthly riches, and have several venerable members who mustn’t hustle. Dory maintains his effusive and jovial attitude, but is clearly annoyed. Talion gets between Dory and the group, demanding that he show respect. Beth steps in between Dory and Talion, hand on hips. She’s really good at threatening and belittling people. Talion’s hands keep balling into fists and then suddenly relaxing. Dory, who is 22 inches shorter than his champion, his head out into the space between Beth’s side & her elbow to get a few verbal barbs in himself. Beth has had enough says she’ll wait for Talion outside. She leaves the rest stop and waits at the entrace, which the pilgrims need to pass when they leave.

Dory finds he can’t rush Vanni and the other pilgrims because it would actually be unhealthy for Vanni to move too quickly, so he leaves them alone. Our heroes go to consult with the pilgrims. It seems that Talion will be attacked as soon as he leaves. Talion thinks he has a good chance, and he’s full of righteous anger. He’d probably make a good Paladin, but he is not a Paladin yet. Our heroes tell him that Beth is very dangerous, even without her wolf and weapons. Our heroes will also be attacked as soon as they leave. They are willing to draw the strike team’s attention in order to let the pilgrims flee unharmed. The pilgrims are impressed by our heroes’ self-sacrificing offer. One of the pilgrims steps forward with a tunic painted with some strange symbols. He says that his vision showed him this pattern, and he thinks that Lucia and Gleador should have it. They recognize it as the same teleportation spell that Yod used to bring Dory here.  Racking their brains for arcane lore, they also remember that while being teleported, a person is in neither place. This means that our heroes can disrupt the mayor’s teleportation spell, because the mayor will not be in the rest stop, and thus not protected yet.

Dory gets ready to summon the mayor. He’s annoyed that the summoning cloth has holes in it (from the unfortunate hawk’s talons) and repairs them with a few flicks of his magic wand. Gleador and Lucia crowd close around him. Yod explains that they do this sort of thing and whipsers in Dory’s ear. Dory does the same little dance around the cloth to get one arm free, then snatches the cloth up. At almost the right time, Lucia puts her toe on a corner of the cloth and adds an extra syllable to the magic word Dory yells. The teleportation spell is disrupted, but not in the way she hoped! Both ends of the portal open at once. Dory, Lucia, and Gleador feel the space around them bend down into the space where the cloth used to be and they are pulled down with it! Once past the ground, they find themselves in a large, translucent, glowing tunnel. All around them, similar tunnels or threads stretch for infinite distances in all directions. Looking up, the underside of the ground is not visible, only more threads. They are pulled forward by a current and miles away at the other end, they see a figure racing towards them, no doubt the mayor.  Gleador tries to snatch the teleportation cloth away from Dory, but he resists and the cloth tears. When it does, the thread they are in also tears, splitting and spiraling into at least three different channel headed who knows where. Lucia tries to grab Dory, but he’s aiming for a thread that goes deeper into whatever space this is, below reality. That’s scary, so Lucia lets him go. She and Gleador are above the original thread. The mayor is still racing along and will pass them by if they just float along this thread. They can fight the current, try to push through the wall of the thread and risk what’s in-between the In-Between, or use the teleportation spell on the tunic that the pilgrim gave them. Gleador turns into a dolphin with a frog’s tongue. Lucia grabs his fin and with a mighty thrust he swims against the current to rejoin the original thread. Now our heroes are on a collision course with the mayor. How wil lthe opposing currents interact? The tunnel is wide enough that the three could pass without colliding, or bounce off  each other and continue. Gleador wants to secure the mayor, so he reaches out, arms getting longer and bulkier as he transforms into a gorilla. The gorilla seizes the mayor, who is a Dwarven woman. She’s wearing a formal, refined, but still decorated and beautiful dress. Gleador’s hand crushes one of her puff sleeves and he feels some of the embroidery rip. The three of them are holding on to each other and will all end up in the same place, but where should they go? The rest stop with the mayor’s magician and personal strike team seems bad. Going the other way probably leads to Templeton City Hall, one of the most secure buildings in the city. Lucia pulls out the teleportation tunic and aims for the swamp near Fairmeadow, home to their friends Samantha and Ferdinand. She completely botches the spell. The tunic unravels and weaves itself into the side of the tunnel, creating a branch that sucks the three of them up and up and up. They feel the transition back to real space, and there’s water. They rise and rise. They break the surface. Darkness. To be continued.

GM note: There is little that gives me more freedom than an uncontrolled teleportation spell at the very end of the session! I have a month to figure out where to put them.

← Session 11 | Campaign Summary | Session 13 →

← Session 10 | Campaign Summary | Session 12 →

Last time, our heroes attracted a lot of attention, so much attention that their hostel was staked out by two separate parties. They opted to camp outside of town for the night.

Lucia suggests just leaving, but Gleador wants to look around and see what’s happening in the city of Templeton.  He remembers observations he had in the previous days to see how he could safely scout around. Local wildlife that he could shapeshift into include soaring birds drawn the the updrafts around the volcano, and stray dogs, mostly terrier breeds as opposed to the hound mutts in Fairmeadow. The City Watch and Campus Security are different organizations, and there was enough bureaucratic confusion yesterday that he imagined there may be chain-of-command problems, and multiple organizations working without talking to each other.

Gleador uses his new chimera power to turn into a falcon with bat ears and flies into the city. He circles the hostel and sees a City Watchman staking the place out.  He wheels towards the collage to see what’s up, and notices thick clouds of smoke from the city north of campus. A large building and two small dwelling are engulfed in flames, and several nearby buildings are threatened. City Watch are keeping crowds of onlookers and displaced residents away from the buildings. The level of panic indicates that there’s probably no one trapped inside. A City Watchman with impressive robes arrives, forms a cloud in his hands and spreads it over the tenement house next to the burning building. Rain soaks the tenement house, preventing it from igniting.  Gleador flies near Dead Stanton’s office to listen in. Stanton is complaining to Simmons about the meeting that just ended with Professor Mag

GM note: Say your NPC names outloud before the session. I wrote “Prof. Mamag” in my notes, but saying “Mamag” is just goofy.

Stanton gestures with the records of Mag’s research and equipment. “There’s nothing in here like those adventurers describe, and nothing that would get the Mayor’s office involved. The Mayor himself asked me to drop the investigation! What is going on here?” Gleador makes a mental note to get those records, then returns to camp and reports to Lucia.

Lucia & Gleador decide to go to the Dean’s office, question him, and maybe acquire Mag’s records. They make sure to only enter college campus, not the rest of the city. Apparently the City Watch and the Mayor are looking for them. As they walk along, they are hailed by Selene. She met Gleador at the rest stop along the road from Fairmeadow. She asks how they have been and they say they’ve almost been killed and there are conspiracies against them. She’s shocked. They ask about the college keeping prisoners, which is another shock to her. She does mention that she rents a room in a giant house of 20 students, and one of them was arrested yesterday. City Watch all over. Our heroes correctly guess that it was Rott, who tried to kill them. Selene is shocked to hear that about her housemate. They weren’t close, but he would sometimes make breakfast for the house. He could have poisoned them at any time!  They press her for his friends and habits. She didn’t keep track of his friends, since there are so many people in the house, but in the past year he’s been quite generous, buying rounds of drinks and so on. Not easy to do on a grad student’s allowance. Our heroes ask again about Oolite. Selene doesn’t know about it, but the school library is the place to find out, and she’s happy to escort them there.  Finally! All they really wanted was to look up this mysterious word!

Selene escorts Gleador & Lucia into the library. She tells the door guard, “They’re with me. I’ll make sure they don’t break anything.” Gleador is not sure she will be able to keep that promise.  They go to the librarian, a male Elf with blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail. He’s standing at his desk, but the desk needs to be accessible to Dwarfs, so his area is recessed a few feet in to the ground. After hearing their query, he takes off his glasses and whispers a few Elvish words to them and the word “Oolite”. He puts his glasses on and looks around the room. His glasses start to glow when he looks at certain books.  This library is set up like the one in Beauty and the Beast. Very high shelves with catwalks and tight spiral staircases to access higher shelves. There are also dumbwaiters, probably to carry loads of books. The librarian (his name is Lindolan) emerges from behind his desk, rising to 6’3″ as he takes the ramp up to the normal floor. He’s missing his legs below the knees and is “standing” on a little automatic cart that looks a bit like a Segway. He rolls to a dumbwaiter, rises to the catwalks, and uses a wand to pull books off the shelves into his arms.  Back at his desk, he flips through them and explains.

Oolite is a family name. It was a respectable business with a mine off to the south (he marks it on our heroes’ map) that supplied metals. The mine’s output suddenly increased, then dropped to zero, and the family faded away in disgrace.  Lindolan suspects that they neglected safety protocols to increase output and there was some sort of accident. Gleador ask about robots or living statues.  Lindolan suggests the fiction section. There are books about sculptors so skilled their creations came to life, a copy of Pygmalion, lots of fanciful stories.  Gleador pulls out the strange coin. Lindolan gasps. He recognizes it immediately.  It’s a coin from Saarland, which until 30 years ago was a great city of the Elves north of here, in the forest. It was prosperous and peaceful, until, in a single night, it was sacked and burned. The survivors scattered, leaving an abandoned ruin, and anyone who has its wealth must be a robber.  Gleador assures Lindolan that this is evidence, and they have it on loan from the sheriff in Fairmeadow. Lindolan wishes the coin could be returned to one of Saarland’s survivors, but does not insist.

One last question. Has Lindolan heard anything or read any stories about gelatinous people? A dwarf appears and leans on the desk. “Gelatinous people? I’ve never heard of such a ridiculous thing!” It’s Flint! Flint, the metallurgy student apparently mixed up is some scheme that got our heroes trapped in the laboratories. Flint who they last saw running down the hall away from them. They thought he’s be caught and killed by his former accomplices, but here he is. Flint would love to talk to them about gelatinous people, perhaps at the study table just over there? Our heroes excuse themselves from the librarian and Selene. Gleador would love to chat with Flint, but following Flint into places hasn’t worked out well for them, so he suggested they chat outside. Flint agrees and they go out and sit on a bench.

Flint says, “I’m very grateful that you released me, but you have something that belongs to me, and I want it back.” Our heroes don’t remember taking everything from Flint. Flint apologizes for the confusion, and reveals that he is Andro, the “gelatinous person” they were talking about! Lucia immediately checks his alignment: not Evil.

GM note: The revelation could have been cooler. Here’s what I should have done. “Flint is wearing a hood.  He grabs his head and twists it 180-degrees, revealing Andro’s face on the back of Flint’s head” Instead Andro mushed some facial features with his hands to show that he could change his appearance. Boring!

Our heroes have a million question for Andro, but he really wants that amulet they took from him. He’ll let them keep the 200 gold as a reward for freeing him. He’s split between leaving town to ensure he’s never caught again, or staying and punishing the people who captured him.  Our heroes are tempted to help him, since they like rooting out evil. Gleador figures they have about a day before they become unwelcome in town. Andro says that he prefers a slow, methodical, safe approach to revenge.  Perhaps their styles clash to much to co-operate.  They have some evidence that they want to get from the Dean. Andro should not come with them looking like Andro or like Flint, since people are looking for both of them.  If Andro will meet with them later, they will return the amulet.  Andro agrees and points out a statue in the distance.  “Meet me there.”  He leaves.

Gleador and Lucia head for the Dean’s office. Simmon’s shows them in quickly, since the Dean is dealing with the ruckus they started.  Dean Stanton says that the Mayor wants our heroes to meet with him at City Hall right away.  They ask why the Mayor is involved. Stanton’s not sure. Our heroes say they released a prisoner, the Mayor doesn’t want Stanton to look into it, but Professor Mag’s records (still on the desk) don’t say anything about a prisoner, or anything shocking. Mag had several rooms reinforced for keeping dangerous specimens, like the giant amphibious mole from the Sapphire Islands, or that weird jellyfish wit hte mind-affecting spores. Nothing about keeping people. Gleador wants to tour Mag’s other rooms to make sure that there are no other prisoners. Stanton refuses. The last time our heroes were in the labs they destroyed a lot of property, and no one else knows anything about this alleged prisoner.  Gleador threatens to spread rumors about the college’s secret prison. Stanton is sure the college’s reputation can withstand two strangers with no evidence.  He asks them to leave, since he’s very busy cleaning up their mess. As they go, Lucia tries to grab the book of Mag’s records. She fails and Stanton yells for help. Our heroes try to flee, but Simmons blocks the door and summons Campus Security.  Simmons is 4’4″ facing a 5’0″ knight in full armor and a 6’+ Elf, but he tangles up their feet and Stanton jumps on Gleador’s back. They stall long enough for 3 Campus Security guards to arrive. One bops Lucia with a Somnaboffer. The padded club doesn’t hurt at all, but the impact releases sleeping gas. Lucia coughs and jerks back. Simmons is kneeling behind her and she topples over! Gleador slams the door on the three guards and locks himself, his ally, and the two academics in the office. (A half-turn on a small gear extends a toothed bar to lock the door. Very find craftsmanship. The action feels very nice)

Our heroes remind Simmons and Stanton that they are locked in a room with two very dangerous people and their security is outside. Give us the book and give us safe passage off campus and we won’t harm you. Stanton agrees. He unlocks the door and orders the guards to escort the adventurers out.  Lucia and Gleador set off quickly, forcing the shorter dwarves to hustle to keep up. They arrange to pass the statue where Andro told them to meet. No one is there, but there’s some graffiti near the base.  Gleador is scandalized by this vandalism of art and suggests that the guards should be cleaning this statue and tracking the perpetrators instead of escorting him.  The guards are unconvinced, despite his appeals to Art, but our heroes stall enough to read the graffiti, which gives another landmark and a time: sunset. The guards deposit them at the northern border of campus. That’s near the fire that Gleador saw this morning. Our heroes investigate.

As they approach, they see that the large building’s roof is gone, but the stone support pillars are still intact. The two smaller buildings are gone. The tenement house is singed on one side and soaked, but intact. There are City Watch patrolling. Our heroes approach, even though City Watch staked out their hostel and work for the Mayor, who is suspiciously interested in meeting them. Two guards notice them and demand that they come to City Hall immediately.  Gleador stalls and asks impertinent questions, but the guards are insistent and draw their hammers. Gleador continues not complying, so he gets hit! Four more guards approach. Gleador is shocked — shocked! — that City Watch would hit someone peacefully making conversation. He and Lucia are making significant eye contact, wondering if they should fight, leave, or comply. City Watch swing at Gleador again, and our heroes fight back! Gleador’s doing OK, but they’re wearing him down. Lucia’s armor makes her almost impervious, and she rapidly drops four of them. Our heroes are fighting to disable, not kill.  The remaining guard flees, and our heroes are left with a crowd of terrified onlookers.

Our heroes have gone loud on campus and in the city. That guard is sure to bring more. they must flee. But first, Gleador grabs a bystander and quizzes him about the fire. “What burned, and why?” This was Mister Bill’s Tack Shop. It sold horse & carriage equipment. The small dwellings adjacent were where Mister Bill and his workers lived. Fortunately, they weren’t around, so no one was injured.  Gleador and Lucia are satisfied and leave. The poor Dwarf lets out a panicky gasp and staggers away.

Lucia picks minor streets to avoid patrols and doesn’t lead them down any dead ends.  Gleador keeps an eye out for City Watch. A pair of guards look down a cross-street just as our heroes pass a block down, and the chase is on. Lucia dives into an alley, but it’s a dead end. Gleador sees a clear route and starts down it, hoping to split the pursuers. Knowing the terrain, they opt for the easier prey and both go down the alley. Gleador reverses course to block their escape. Once in the alley, the guards find they are out-matched. Lucia drops one and injures the other. They demand answers. He’ll talk if he can do so from the mouth of the alley, so he can flee as soon as he’s done.  They ask why the mayor is after them. The guard had orders to bring them in alive if possible, as they were involved in important security and defense matters. Gleador asks, “Do you have to bring in a lot of people ‘alive, if possible'” He answers “No, no. I mean, alive is assumed!” Gleador asks if Templeton’s laws are equitable. “We don’t pick on Elves, if that’s what you mean.” They let him go with a message for the Mayor: “If you want to talk to us, meet us at the rest stop on the road to Fairmeadow in three days”  That rest stop is enchanted. None make cause harm while lit by the campfire’s glow.

Lucia & Gleador leave town (they were only a few blocks from the border!) and go to the campsite from last night.They scheme to watch the road and see if the Mayor actually goes towards the rendezvous. near sunset, Gleador turns into a falcon-bat again and goes to the new spot specified by Andro’s graffiti. But Andro could look like literally anyone! Gleador sees four students loitering near the statue. A pulse of echolocation reveals a female Dwarf with a mohawk & mohawk beard that is significantly denser than the other dwarves. Gleador perches in a tree and squawks. Several students glance up, but the mohawked one keeps staring and tentatively waves.  Gleador swoops down to one of the paths leading away from the statue and drops a note. The mohawked student retrieves it, nods to the falcon, and heads out.

Gleador flies back, reasonably sure that contact has been made. A while later, the mohawked dwarf arrives. :Lucia wants to be sure and asks what the swarf expects to get from them. The dwarf says she is owed an amulet, which was taken from right there. She drives her finger into her leg up to the knuckle, then removes it, leaving no wound. That’s Andro all right. Gleador, of course, has many questions. How do we get ot Saarland? Follow the road to Saarland, obviously. How old are you? I don’t know years, but the first thing I remember was the Sea Viper spreading his kingdom onto land in the south.  How did they capture you? I’m tough and i’m slippery, but I have limits. Lucia says that’s the sort of vague answer she expects from someone so slippery. Andro is glad to be free, and hopes that our heroes can help her, but she really wants her amulet back. Our heroes tell her about the rendezvous with the Mayor. She doesn’t know about the rest stop, but she knows the road to Fairmeadow. She is disappointed that the rest stop is literally a safe haven. They give her the amulet, and the records about Mag. Andro picks out names of other professors and says this will be very useful. Andro leaves, and our heroes once again camp outside Templeton, which is much more dangerous than it was 24 hours ago.

← Session 10 | Campaign Summary | Session 12 →

← Session 9 | Campaign Summary | Session 11 →

Last time, our heroes were trapped in a horrible dungeon: the science labs of a Dwarven college! They escaped and went straight to the dean, reporting the crimes inflected on them, but also admitting to damaging lots of university property and releasing a prisoner.  Is honesty the best policy, or should they have kept running when they escaped the dungeon?

Dean Stanton leaps into action, giving his sub-ordinate, Over-Dean Sessions, a list of tasks (Dwarves aspire to depth, not height, so Dean outranks Over-Dean):

• Get Chief Laertes of Campus Security to track down the suspects who assaulted our heroes
• Send janitors to fix the damaged doors and restore the freezer that our heroes de-activated.
• Get a list of everything stored in the science lab building. Our heroes reported a Dwarf prisoner, which doesn’t sound right.

Our heroes wait in the Dean’s antechamber. Gleador finds some university letterhead and writes a letter of recommendation for Angus, the page at the public library.  Chief Laertes arrives.  He’s a serious looking Dwarf with his hair, beard, and mustache in neat braids.  He’s wearing a large ceremonial helmet as a symbol of authority. It can still stop a sword, but if it’s stopping swords often, the wearer is doing something wrong.  Laertes takes a statement from Lucia & Gleador. They don’t remember the names of their assailants, but have good descriptions and know that they share a class with Flint.  Flint isn’t with them.  He fled, probably leaving town.  Laertes sends deputies to get the class roster so they can identify and arrest the two suspects.  He tells our heroes not to leave town, since they are part of an ongoing investigation.  He asks if they have a place to stay in town. Gleador asks if Laertes can host them.  Laertes says that would be either the barracks or jail.  Oh, never mind, says Gleador.

A janitor runs in out of breath, reporting that there are people in the freezer room! Two janitors had cleared the door to the freezer room, dissolving the anti-tamper glue with a chemical they keep for just that purpose. They went inside to re-activate the freezing units, but there were people lurking inside to grab them!  The janitors ran out of the room and pushed a chest in front of the door to keep the grabby strangers at bay! Gleador’s player has an epiphany: there were coffins in that frozen room! The corpses have thawed out! Gleador and the janitor head back to the freezer room.  Lucia takes Sessions to get another freezing unit.

Sessions leads Lucia to an outbuilding where various supplies are stored. On the way, Lucia spots a campus security guard and tells him to get some backup and head to the freezer room.  Sessions is an authority figure the guard recognizes, so he agrees and runs off to gather his comrades.

Gleador and the janitor run down to the science building. It has wide halls lined with cabinets and chests.  The second janitor has a large chest in front of a broken door. The top half of the door is pushed outward, and the janitor is swatting at the opening with his broom. As Gleador approaches, he sees an arm reaching out of the opening: it’s clothed in a fancy shirt and jacket, and the hand bears ornate rings, but the skin is grey and pulled tight over the bones. Peeking into the dark room through the damaged door, Gleador sees three figures.  He finds an evening class in the same building and triesto recruit some students to help him build more barricades.  Most students react to the news of dangerous intruders with fear, but a few punk Dwarves welcome the chance to smash up university property and get in fights.  While everyone else flees the building, Gleador and his four punks construct a killbox right outside the door of the freezer room.  The walls lean in, so they are hard to climb from the inside and easy to collapse from the outside. “You’ll remember this night for the rest of you lives!” says Gleador, although he’s not sure how long that will be.

Simmons and Lucia reach the supply shed and locate a freezing machine that will blow super-chilled air, and the volatile canisters of fuel the machine requires.  Lucia decides to transport the canisters on a cart, to avoid the risk of dropping and breaching them.  She reaches the killbox outside the freezer room around the time that the zombies break the freezer room door.  There are two men in tuxedos and one woman in a nice dress, the sort of clothes people are buried in.  Yeah, these are definitely the bodies in the coffins. Lucia scans for evil: 2 of the punk students, and the female zombie are evil.One of the punks says that a zombie looks like Armstrong, the famous artist, but another says that he’s been dead for 20 years.  Gleador orders the punks to build another layer of defenses, so there are two walls on each side of the zombies.

Lucia asks Sessions why the college is storing zombies.  A clerk arrives with the manifest for the freezer room.  She would have brought the manifest earlier, but went to the Dean’s Office first, and had to be redirected here.  Sessions scans the manifest and says that the zombies are listed as “tissue samples” for Professor Jenkins’ long-term research on terminal diseases.  Sessions is upset by this falsification of records and threatens strong corrective measures:perhaps loss of funding, or delay of tenure! Sessions sends the clerk to summon Professor Jenkins immediately.

There are five tissue samples on the manifest, but only three zombies milling about in the kill box.  Gleador remembers moving from room to room through the vents. Maybe the zombies have done the same.  He takes a Janitor (Wally) and heads for the smelter room on the lower floor.  He wants the punks to come along too, but they are bored.  They’re not actually fighting zombies or collapsing the killbox.  They wander off.  Gleador and Wally have to go outside and circle around the building to reach the smelter room, since the kill box blocks the hallway.  The door to the smelter room hangs open, since everyone fled the room during the last session.  Wally closes and locks the doors, and they return to the killbox.

Meanwhile, Lucia and Sessions set up the freezer machine in between the inner and outer walls of the killbox and start blowing freezing air on the inner wall and the zombies.  Lucia bemoans the slow response time of the campus security.  Gleador & the janitor return and report that the smelter is secure. They wonder what to do next.  The furniture in the inner wall of the killbox starts creaking and cracking as the freezer machine freezes it.  The zombies are moving more slowly.  Armstrong is scratching designs in the frost with his finger. Gleador says that if the furniture collapses on people who have terminal diseases and have been dead for 20 years, it’s no big deal.  Definitely not murder.

Jenkins arrives about the same time as four campus security deputies.  Jenkins arrives and Lucia grills him.  Why are there zombies?  Jenkins is horrified that they have been thawed. These people volunteered to be frozen until their diseases were cured.  Decades of work are at risk!  Lucia asks if he’s cured any diseases in the last 20 years.  Well, there’s a vaccine for one.  Our heroes look closer at the zombies and see sores, and other marks of infectious disease on them.  Jenkins assures them that the diseases are not airborne, but they should avoid contact with the zombies.  Just then, a freezing cabinet freezes enough to shatter the glass doors on the front, throwing glass shards at the zombies. The inner wall of the killbox is threatening to collapse.  Lucia tries to loop a rope around the top cabinet to secure it, but it breaks and the whole wall collapses.  The female zombie (identified as “Hawkins” by Jenkins) is buried by the debris, but the other two zombies are now free to enter the outer killbox, where our heroes are standing!

Lucia falls back past the outer wall.  Gleador sees his exit route, but realizes that the zombies can now access and perhaps disable the freezing machine.  He tries to re-direct them by telling Armstrong that there’s good art back in the freezer room.  Armstrong seems to recognize his name and heads straight for Gleador.  Gleador slips out.

Campus security detects danger to college personnel and property and move in to subdue  the zombies.  First they have to dis-assemble the outer wall of the killbox.  Lucia tells them to stand down, that they could be infected by the zombies, but they don’t recognize her authority.  Gleador tries again to distract Zombie Armstrong by getting paper and charcoal from his adventuring pack and throwing it towards the freezer room.  Armstrong doesn’t notice.  Reassuring himself again that these zombies are already dead, so it’s definitely not murder, Gleador prevents the imminent fight between campus security and zombies infected with incurable diseases by collapsing the killbox on the zombies!  The collapsing wall of re-purposed furniture also smashes the freezing machine and its volatile fuel canisters.  Super-cooled gas blasts outward.  Gleador chooses to push the deputies out of the way instead of saving himself, and takes some cold damage.  The two remaining zombies are under a pile of smashed furniture, which is covered by a thick layer of solid frost.

Two zombies are still unaccounted for.  Lucia rises to her full 5’0″, eight inches taller then Jenkins, grabs him by the shoulders, and orders him to go into the freezer room and see where they are.  Terrified, Jenkins flees.  Gleador runs him down and grabs him.  The deputies object to these outsiders threatening college personnel and order Gleador to unhand Jenkins.  Gleador reminds them that he just saved them, and suggests that they escort him into the room.  They agree and the five of them climb over the remains of the killbox and enter the freezer room.

Our heroes watch the door and listen.  After a short pause, there’s a commotion and the four deputies run out in a panic. They report that they went to close the coffins and a zombie reached out of a coffin to grab at them. They beat it with their somnaboffers, to no effect!  Our heroes are unfamiliar with somnaboffers.  The deputies are holding them.  They look like clubs wrapped in foam. There’s a mist coming out of the foam. Deputies use them because they put people to sleep instead of injuring them, but they don’t work on zombies!  Where’s Jenkins?  The deputies do a headcount and come up one short.  Oh no!  Our heroes hear a machine turn on inside the freezer room.  Did Jenkins do that?  They rush inside.  There are three open, empty coffins, one closed coffin, and one open coffin with arms flailing over the rim.  Apparently this zombie doesn’t have the strength to get out of the coffin.  Gleador reaches out with his club and flips the lid closed.  That’s all the zombies secured.  Jenkins is hiding behind one of the freezer machines installed in the room. He planned to wait for the zombie to be frozen, then escape.  Our heroes turn on the other freezer machine.  The situation is secure.  Gleador and Lucia leave the deputies to clean up and head back towards their hostel to rest for the night.

On the way back, they are stopped by one of the college-age Dwarves who shares their ten-person room in the hostel. Her name is Dolly.  She has two long braids in her blonde hair, and another long braid in her beard. She doesn’t attend the Fortinbras School of Mines.  She knew a guy and already has a job at a mine.  She spent a day at the Fairmeadow Fair, and is visiting a friend in Templeton before continuing back to her mine in the east.  She reports that people were looking for our heroes at the hostel.  One guy looked like he’d been in an accident and was really tall, like Lucia’s height. He was asking for people of our heroes’ description.  The other person was a suit, probably with the city.  He went straight to the hotel staff and asked for Gleador and Lucia by name.  Dolly thinks that the hostel is being watched.  Our heroes thank her for the warning and decide to sleep outside of town.  They pick a spot near the road to Fairmeadow, since they have some familiarity with that terrain. They find a hollow in the hills and Lucia casts Sanctuary around the campsite.

← Session 9 | Campaign Summary | Session 11 →

← Session 8 | Campaign Summary | Session 10 →

Last time, our heroes traveled to Templeton, site of the Fortinbras School of Mines, hoping to learn about the strange living statue that gave them so much trouble back in Fairmeadow.  They met Flint, a friend of a friend who might be mixed up in some shady dealings, and he offered to show them around campus the next day.  Maybe he can get them into the school library.

After leaving Flint, Gleador and Lucia decide to watch the sunset.  Templeton is built into a cinder cone volcano, so they head up the spiral streets to the crater rim.  The rim is lined with tall towers, most of them private buildings.  The tower that powers the school’s sundial does have an public observation deck.The deck is a crescent surrounding the central tower. The huge crystal at the tip of the tower focuses a powerful beam of sunlight down onto the sundial at the base of the volcano. The gap in the crescent prevents anyone from accidentally walking into that beam.  The deck is surrounded by high walls of strong glass, with decorative metal filigree to make it visible.  Many people are up there to watch the sunset, sitting on benches or standing against the glass.  Shortly before the sunlight fades from the crystal at the tower’s tip, an attendant comes out and slides open panels in the posts supporting the glass wall.  Inside are continual flames, magic light sources.

Gleador and Lucia head back to the hostel they are staying at.  Supper is included in the price of the room. The other lodgers in the 10-person room have a few friends over for a lively gathering, but quickly make excuses to take the guests elsewhere.  Lucia look like an authority figure and they don’t want to cross her.

The next morning, they have some time before they meet Flint in the afternoon, so they look for a public library.  Much of the volcano’s caldera is public buildings, surrounding city hall at the very center.  There is a public library: four stories of floor-to-ceiling windows following the slant of the caldera.  Inside there are many patrons, and pages wearing neat vests.  Gleador looks for the most enthusiastic page. That’s Angus, a young dwarf who loves books and hopes to get into the Fortinbras School of Mines when he’s old enough.  Gleador asks to see Angus’s favorite section, a section that most people might skip over.  Hidden gems, if you will.  Angus takes him to the literal hidden gem section: a half-shelf about precious minerals behind three big stacks of books about geology and mining.

Gleador asks if Angus knows what “OOLITE” is. Angus recommends asking the reference librarian.  Angus guides Gleador and Lucia up to the top of the four-storey building.  The reference section not only contains stacks with weighty tomes and ledger, but cabinet with wide, low drawers for oversize parchments and maps.  The reference librarian sits at a large circular desk with aisles arranged radially around it.  The whole floor points to this elf woman.  Her red hair is pulled back in a large bun wrapped in braids. If she let her hair down, it would be extremely long. She’s been growing it out for decades.  Hearing Gleador’s request, she takes a slip of paper, writes “OOLITE” on it in impeccable Dwarven letters, then burns the slip in the flame of a large blue candle on the desk in front of her.  (There are several such candles arranged on the desk, each a different color.)  The flame separates from the candle, takes a vaguely humanoid shape, and flies out into the stacks.  “Please wait for the indexing sprite to return,” says the librarian.  Lucia is curious about the different candles. The librarian explains that all the candles contain indexing sprites, and the different colors of candles help her keep track of different queries running at the same time.  Another sprite returns to the desk. The librarian excuses herself and fetches two waiting patrons to follow that sprite to their books.

The sprite for Gleador’s query returns, but the librarian is still assisting other patrons.  Gleador asks the sprite if other people have been asking about OOLITE. The sprite gesticulates, but does not speak.  Lucia realizes that it communicates through writing, so she swipes a slip of paper from the librarian’s desk, writes her question down, and burns it on the blue candle. The sprite zooms away, and Gleador follows it.  The sprite leads him to an old book and surrounds it with cool, non-destructive flames. Gleador brings it back to Lucia and they open it on a table.  It’s a ledger, but it’s written in Dwarven, which neither of them can read. Gleador wants to know what book the sprite found for the librarian’s original query, so he writes “OOLITE” on a third slip of paper and burns it. He can copy the letters for this particular word, even though he can’t read the language.  The sprite leads him to another ledger, this one written in Elven.  It records some deliveries of metal from the OOLITE company to an Elven furniture and woodworking company. The metal was used for fasteners and fittings. It’s an old ledger. Deliveries from OOLITE stop about 120 years ago.

Gleador heads downstairs to find Angus again. Dwarven is Angus’ native language, so surely he can translate the Dwarven ledger.  Angus says that translation will take him away from his page duties for quite some time, so Gleador will have to make it worth his while.  Gleador says he knows a guy at the college, and can put in a good word for Angus’s eventual application.  Angus wants to meet this contact now, before he translates the ledger. Gleador balks because his contact is Flint, a second-year student with no impact on admission, so he returns upstairs with the ledger untranslated. They try to return the books where they found them, but the shelves magically repel the books.  They return to the reference desk, which has a big shelf labelled “Return books here” and talk to the librarian, who has finished with the other patrons.

“We tried to reshelve these books…,” they begin.

“Did you see the shelf labelled ‘Return books here’?”, says the reference librarian, clearly annoyed.

Undeterred, they ask about the Dwarven ledger.  Of course the reference librarian can read it. It contains shipping manifests for the Balfour Trading Company from 160-140 years ago, and often mentions shipments of metals from OOLITE. The Balfour company survives to this day. There’s a warehouse here in Templeton, near the highway.  The party places the two ledgers on the “Return books here” shelf, and the books magically float back to their proper place. They are impressed by the system the reference librarian has going.  With obvious pride, the reference librarian says she’s had a long time to perfect and improve it.  Before they leave, Lucia says a quick prayer to ask what here is evil.  Some books and all of the indexing sprites are evil, but not the librarian or Angus.  Interesting.

Now it’s time to head back to the college and meet Flint for a tour.  He arranged to meet them at his lab in one of the more industrial college buildings.  They could arrive early if they hustle, but they arrive on time and find Flint waiting at the outside door of the building. The doors and hallways of this buildings are bigger than usual to allow equipment to be moved in and out. The roof is about 2 feet above ground level, with the rest of the building built into the ground.  There are skylights on the roof. Instead of a storm door. there’s a wide ramp going down to a pair of vertical doors that open inward.  Although the halls are wide, they are lined with lockers and cabinets full of tools, specimens, and so on.  Flint leads them to the door of his metallurgy lab.  He unlocks the door with a big old-fashioned metal key, holds the door open and says, “After you!”  Lucia and Gleador know a trap when they see one.  They make eye contact.  Gleador steps in and Lucia does not.  Flint waits a moment, then shrugs and steps in. Lucia steps in after him.  There’s a cabinet in the center of the room, work benches at either end, and a dumbwaiter in the far wall.

It was still a trap!  The door slams behind them and they hear something heavy dragging outside, probably one of those cabinets blocking the door.  Flint panics and runs back to the door. It opens outwards, so the cabinet prevents it from opening, even though it’s unlocked! Flint kicks the door several times. The door fractures, and sticky expanding gel starts oozing and growing from the cracks. Flint recoils, avoiding the glue goo. One of the shady dwarves from yesterday appears at the skylight, opens it, and throws in a canister which starts spewing a thick, dark gas.  The party tells Flint that he’s stuck with them, and he must help them or die!  This has obviously escalated past what he signed up for, and he’s panicked.  The gas is spreading. The dumbwaiter is only big enough for one person at a time, so they reject that method of escape.  The movement of the gas reveals an air vent that they didn’t notice before.  “Into the vents!” orders Lucia. She pries the grate off the vent and she and Flint go in. Gleador grabs tongs from the workbench and tries to throw the gas canister into the glue goo to seal it shut. He fumbles and bounces the canister off a wall and back into himself. He receives a minor burn from the hot canister and a lungful of gas, which reduces his constitution. He flees into the vent.

In the vent, they are temporarily safe from the gas. They demand that Flint explain what he’s gotten them into.  He reveals that the two dwarves that were lurking about yesterday are paying his tuition in exchange for a special alloy.  It’s brittle, an unpleasant color, and has the exact same density as gold.  He doesn’t ask what they use it for. He doesn’t want to now. He didn’t want to get involved, lest something like this happen.  There’s a T intersection several yards away. Flint’s in front, so the party crowds him forward to look. He’s pushed to the right, and yelps because he’s now next to a significant drop-off into a smelting room.  There’s a fall, sharp implements, and fire.  That might be worse than the gas. There’s also a shaft that leads down to a lower storey.

They decide to go left. The grate to the left is covered in frost. Lucia has metal gauntlets, so she can touch the grate without freezing her flesh to it.  It’s cold storage. Shelves and crates fill the room. The floor is covered with ice, but Lucia slides out confidently, grabbing a crate to make a turn and end up at the door.  The crate she grabbed was a coffin!  Unimpressed, Lucia examines the door.  It has the same lock as Flint’s room, so it probably has the same gel inside. There’s a small magical heat source right under the lock keeping it thawed. The lock is wet with melted frost, and the frost refreezes in icicles underneath it.  Flint faceplants on the ice.  Gleador digs some lockpicks out of his adventuring gear and sets to work on the lock. He’s making progress and here’s a sharp ‘click’ but then glue goo comes pouring out of the keyhole onto his tools and hands!  He quickly yanks his hands away from the lock and apart, shaking the glue goo off. His hands are free, but encrusted with dried goo, impairing fine manipulation.  There are two machines keeping the room cold by constantly emitting cold air.  Each has four canisters attached, supplying it.  Lucia considers ripping one of the machines out, but the canisters aren’t that secure, so she stops to avoid dropping and breaking them.  They turn the machines off.  Now they won’t freeze to death if they stay here.  Maybe someone will notice the machines aren’t working and will come check on them.  Flint reads the warning labels (it’s all written in Dwarven) and says that if the canisters break, they’ll flash freeze whatever is nearby.  They consider re-directing cold air to the door to freeze and shatter it, but can’t find a suitable tube.  Throwing a canister at the door might work, but Gleador has had awful luck today and doesn’t want to risk it.  They look to the skylights to consider how they might reach and open them.  They see that same dwarf looking down at them!  “There they are,” yells the dwarf.  “Rott, no! I’m in here,” yells Flint.  Rott opens the skylight and grabs another gas canister from his satchel.  Lucia lassos him, but only gets his arm. They struggle and she only manages to pull the canister he was holding right to her!  She quickly holds her breath and retreats to the vent.  Flint runs for the vent right through the cloud of gas and collapses at Lucia’s feet. She says, “We have to go down!” and pushes him down the shaft to the lower level. He’s unconscious, so he goes over the edge with no resistance and is injured on landing.  Gleador holds his breath and dives into the vent.

On the lower floor, vents lead left and right. To the right is the smelter, but now they are at ground level, so they can enter it safely. The furnace is in the middle of one wall. There are no skylights.  The chimney is open to the outside, but there’s an 800-degree furnace under it, so climbing it is extremely dangerous.  There’s a waterwheel on the far wall. It powers some mechanical equipment that feeds ore into the furnace, pours molten ore into forms, then places the cooled ingots into a hopper. The pipes that carry water into and out of the room are a foot across: too small to fit through. This room has the same locked door as the other rooms.

Gleador goes back into the vent and checks the room to the left.  He emerges under a table with chairs.  The far side of the room has metal floor, walls, and ceiling, as opposed to the stone of the other rooms, and the near side of this room.  There’s a heavier, scarier, more secure door on this room. There’s also a person sitting on the plain metal side of the room.  A bald male Dwarf. “Hello, friend,” says the Dwarf, “I didn’t expect to see anyone come in that way.”  Gleador calls Lucia over, and she drags in the unconscious Flint.  The bald dwarf is quite surprised by this motley crew’s unusual entrance.  Gleador gives Flint an anti-toxin to counter the effects of the gas, and Flint wakes up.  Lucia heals him. They greet the strange dwarf, who is a full five feet tall, as tall as Lucia, and totally bald.  His name is Andro.  As Gleador steps forward, Andro holds out a hand to stop him. “Watch out for the wall of force.  Here, where the floor turns from stone to metal. If you try to cross this line, magical electricity will stop you.”  They ask Andro how he came to be in this situation. He doesn’t remember how long he’s been imprisoned, but he indicates his bald head and says it can’t have been too long.  There’s no bed, chair, dishes, or anything on his side of the cell.  He says that sometimes people come in, sit at the table, and take notes, but not very often.  The party is unlikely to be discovered and released any time soon.  There’s a control panel on the wall by the door. Flint says the writing indicates it controls the Wall of Force, but it’s magical as well as mechanical. He tries to work the controls, but when he reaches out to demonstrate that the wall of force is gone, it zaps him!  Lucia exhorts him to try again, promising that if he gets them out, she’ll keep him safe from his former associates, but he’s had enough and hides under the table.

Lucia: It’s a good thing he didn’t stick with law enforcement!

Lucia tries the control panel and realizes that the crystal in the center is a status indicator.  Moving these controls changes the color, and this color must mean the wall is down.  She’s right!  Andro is free! Well, Andro is as trapped as the rest of them.  Gleador asks if he’s good with locks, and Andro says he can give it a try.  Gleador leads him away from the high-security door in the cell, through the vent, to the door in the smelter.

Andro approaches the door of the smelter, which is next to the water wheel.  He says, “I’m really sorry, friends,” and dives into the drain pipe. His head fits, but his torso won’t. His shoulders bend back at impossible angles. His whole body starts stretching, lengthening, disappearing down the drain.  Gleador grabs at his legs, which are now soft and floppy. Gleador’s fingers dig long grooves in Andro’s flesh as they struggle to find purchase. Gleador’s hands to find something solid, which he pulls out of Andro’s leg as Andro finally disappears down the drain.  It’s a small wooden box with a sliding lid.  Gleador hands it to Lucia, turns into an electric eel, and pursues Andro down the drain. He’s able to catch up easily, but does not electrocute him, instead following him until the drain exits the building into a culvert leading to a stream.  Andro drags himself to shore and starts reforming into proper dwarven shape. It’s not perfect. One of his shoulders is higher than the other, and one side of his face sags. He looks like he’s survived some industrial accident, which isn’t too rare here in a town of miners and engineers. He might be remarkable, but his strange non-humanoid status is no longer evident.  Gleador transforms back into an Elf while Andro is pulling himself together. Andro is surprised that Gleador was able to escape and follow him so easily. They are both full of surprises.  Gleador says that Andro had better return and break the others out, or Gleador will make a scene and turn him in to the authorities.  Andro doesn’t want to go back to the cell, so he agrees.  “Do we head back up the drain?”

No, Gleador leads Andro into the science building like normal people, and they find the smelter door.  It’s locked. Andro reads the sign. “No admittance from 9:00 to 6:00 during automatic smelting. See Mr. Haverly in Room 213 if you have any questions.”  Gleador yells through the door to Lucia. Gleador asks Andro to pick the lock, but Andro reveals he only said he was good at that so he could get close to a door and escape.  They are so close, but they can’t figure out what to do.  Lucia opens Andro’s box and finds 200 gold pieces and a magical amulet.  That reminds Gleador about the strange coin they found on the living statue.  He shows Andro the large rectangular coin and asks if he recognizes it. Andro thinks this is a very odd thing to be asking right now, but instantly recognizes the coin as being from Saarland.  Gleador has never heard of Saarland, which Andro thinks is odd, since it’s such an important city.  (Gleador isn’t ignorant. Saarland is not an important city that anyone talks about. Why does Andro think it’s well-known?) Gleador talks through the current situation, trying to think of what to do next. He says that Andro could just leave, and Andro thinks that’s a great idea and starts walking off. Gleador says, “We have your stuff!” but Andro would rather have his freedom.  He turns back, points at his eyes, points at Gleador, then continues walking away.  Gleador lets him go.

Gleador heads up to find Mr. Haverly’s room and get the key to the smelter. Mr. Haverly’s office is in a row of faculty offices on an upper floor.  The door is locked and there’s a sign that Gleador can’t read that says “Back in 15 minutes”. Gleador wants to wait around, but a school official thinks he’s a loitering student and starts scolding him. “Show me your student ID, young man! I’ll write you up.”  Gleador tells him to look him up in the directory and leaves.  In an nearby hallway, he waits until no one is in sight, then turns into a newt and crawls out the window.  He crawls along the outside of the building to Mr. Haverly’s office. The window is open! He goes inside and finds the key: an old-fashioned metal key like the one Flint used. It’s as long as his newt form and much too heavy to carry.  Footsteps and the sound of conversation approach the door. Gleador crawls back out the window and watches.  Mr. Haverly enters, accompanied by a student. He’s an older dwarf, with a neat white beard and small round glasses.  Gleador can’t understand Dwarven either,but he figures out that they are discussing classwork. Unsure what else to do, Gleador waits for an opening.

Back in the smelter, Lucia grills Flint about the his involvement with the shady dwarves. There are two of them. The one who threw the gas canisters from the roof is named Rott. He’s got a buzz cut and a similarly short beard. He’s demonstrative and impulsive. The other one, who probably trapped them in the first room, is a female Dwarf with long straight shiny black hair and beard. She looks like a shampoo ad. Her clothes are not flashy, but have high-quality fabrics and are tailored for her.  Flint has provided them with about 20kg of alloy so far. The alloy is brittle, ugly, and the same density as gold.  He made a delivery last week, and another is due in five days. The materials for the alloy are not expensive, but the procedure is precise, which is why they need Flint’s expertise. Since the materials are cheap, no one has noticed that Flint’s been stealing from the school’s supply. Lucia wonders why Flint’s buyers don’t just provide the materials, if they aren’t expensive.

Everyone has been waiting around for some time.  It’s time for Mr. Haverly to collect the day’s ingots.  Flint and Lucia notice the automated machinery stop.  In the office, Mr. Haverly wraps up his conversation with the student, takes his key, and heads out. Gleador follows along on the wall as a newt. Mr. Haverly goes downstairs and meets two TAs with handcarts who will carry the heavy ingots.  Gleador considers startling Mr. Haverly by flicking him with his long newty tongue, but that will cause Gleador to turn back into a Elf, and he wants to stay hidden.  Lucia and Flint hear people approach the door and hide in the vent. Mr. Haverly opens the door and all three enter the smelting room to begin loading ingots.  Gleador stays out in the hall and transforms back into an Elf.  Lucia waits for a chance to dash out unobserved, but makes a noise. Mr. Haverly looks into the vent and sees someone in full armor, crouched and ready to pounce! He screams, and he and his TAs run for the door.  Gleador blocks their path out and spins a tall tale about a security audit. They don’t buy it. One of the TAs rushes him with his handcart. Gleador falls into it and is carried down the hall. Mr. Haverly and the other TA run the other direction. Lucia tries to drag Flint out, but he starts to flee as soon as they exit the room. Gleador extricates himself from the handcart but does not prevent the TA from fleeing. They are all free!  Lucia thinks Flint will be tracked down and killed by his former co-workers, but if he’s determined to run away from her, she’ll leave him to his fate.

Gleador and Lucia huddle. Should they report this to the authorities? They are sure they are innocent victims in all this, and want to be more honest than they were in Fairmeadow, so they head upstairs to the faculty area. Gleador sasses the official that he clashed with earlier, which gets him an express trip to the dean’s office, just as he planned. The Dean interrupts the official’s rants about disrespectful youngsters. “Simmons, did you notice notice the fully-armored Paladin accompanying him?  What’s your story, young lady?” The party starts by saying that they came from Fairmeadow to visit a friend, which is pretty boring. Then they get to the part about “trapped in a room with poison gas” and the Dean says, “You should have led with that!” They give the Dean Rott’s name and a good description of the other dwarf and what class she’s in, so the school definitely has enough information to find her. They also say that the freezer room is defrosting, several doors are jammed with glue goo, and that they released a prisoner. The Dean looks very concerned. He sends some people to check the damage to the rooms they describe and asks the party to wait until they report back.  “Like, here on campus?” “In my office, please.”  Gleador makes sure there’s a window as an escape route, and they sit down to wait.

GM notes: This was the first time I locked the party in a dungeon. I imagined multiple scenarios in which they effortlessly avoided or escaped the dungeon, leaving me with a whole evening and nothing prepared.  Instead, they enjoyed exploring the facility and puzzling over its strange contents.  You’ll notice the maps above don’t fill the whole page.  There were a few rooms they did not find or explore.  Andro is actually a character I’ve blogged about before.  I don’t have a game to play him in, so I put him in this game as an optional NPC.

These poor adventurers just wanted someone to get them into the college library, and now they are involved in more plots and trouble than they know!

← Session 8 | Campaign Summary | Session 10 →