April 9th
GM: EvilTables
Players: oldhawkeye, Nervous Manatee, roguewithwhimsy
Characters: Abel (Fighter 1), Roald (Fighter 1), Jorcal (Cleric 1)
Region: Northern Strata
Written by: Jorcal
On to the Halfling Village
Abel fights to prepare for the end times, Roald for purity.
I believe in beauty infused in human soul as the source of my cleric powers.
We land at the halfling village, surrender weapons. Greeted in the name of the Unseen Hand.
Halflings and dwarves work on construction with granite. We speak to Foster the dwarf. Dwarves are not really religious but are building a temple. Stuff in the southwest mountains. An abandoned city in the west. It belonged to some creature.
We check out the trade post in town. One halfling is concerned about the granite blocks and says there are cracks.
Dwarf says Eldritch came into the money and is strange being a human leading halflings.
The shopkeep at the trading post says there are strange caves near the fort. A holy site, with crabs.
There are sleds with reindeer. We head to the church.
A choir with words that don’t make sense. A damnation of pigeons? Young halflings say “hold fast to the path.” An old man with a cowboy hat looks at us at the door. Brother Tom. Happy to have visitors, he says. He says that Eldritch wants scrolls especially. He says that rarer relics are farther north. Twenty miles out, we’d need some way to navigate the snow. Eldritch found a book in the east, and he is translating it. The book is an ancient record of people who were destroyed here? It knows the secret of the next destruction, he says. He says that Abel is right to feel that the end is coming: it is the void spirit. He mentions that there is a sacred rock. Hold to the rock to be saved from the destruction willed by the dead gods.
Sleigh is 200, sled is 50
We hire a guide for 10gp, plus 1gp a day. A blond halfling with a cowboy hat. Jerem. “I’ve grown up with reindeer my whole life.”
Lance, an old halfling, helps us for one half of one share.
We buy rations, charcoal and paper for mapmaking. Jerem carries torches and a short sword. We buy some more platemail. Slings and a week’s worth of firewood.
The Western Wilderness
We depart. Strange-coloured lichen. Jacob’s Ladder is one such lichen. It can keep away nasty creatures. We take some and wrap it up tight because it smells.
We reach a campsite.
We hear a high-pitched whining sound in the northwest. The wind is doing something strange? Lance says: aliens.
We do watches during the night. I saw baboons fleeing north during the night. Roald and I got frostbite.
Roald sees something green in the snow. It’s a green star. Lance talks about dancing and the lights.
We find a backpack that sounds like coins and red beetles the size of a hand. Jerem says they ate them back in the day. Some beetles escape into the snow. There is 40gp and three strange-looking silver coins. A cylindrical, broken, telescope item.
We see smoke from a white building or two. There are people: Jerem thinks Nomads. We encounter them and they shoot a bow at us. There are eight. Furs and blond hair. Lan speaks to us. Says the city is to the south of where we are. They seek a purple butterfly in the city. We join forces. It is a warmer night.
We hear a low hum. Lan says it is the earth speaking to us. The nomads ride the reindeer. The halflings are impressed.
Valley of the Abandoned City
They lead us through the southern hills along a path. The city has square edges and is almost metallic.
We make a camp and prepare to enter the city. We come from the north. A couple hundred buildings. Boulders to the west. Ten feet tall. To the east, are mosses and lichens: orange and purple. Snow hares in the north hills thumping loudly. That’s apparently a signal of danger.
We hunt them. I kill one before they run away.
We camp. There is a smell like rotten wine in the south or south east. Presumably the lichen field. It smells different than Jacob’s Ladder. Those are bog plants, according to the halflings. Aggressive creatures live there? Plant folks. Good for weaving. We head to the boulders.
They are meshed ice and rock. Something big has been frozen there. A creature—five feet tall. Membrainous wings.
To the city proper: mounds around the edge of the city, each 10 feet tall. They are burial mounds: Lam says they should have burned bodies. Jerem says they worshipped strange gods 100s of years ago.
The butterfly comes out at night.
The buildings in the city have triangle-shaped openings instead of traditional doors. There is strange writing and the floor is solid metallic stone. We write down the symbols.
We spend about an hour going through 30 buildings. Empty except for writing. But inside one is a dead seal. It is stiff to the touch. Strangely, it is smiling. We take its head. The locals expect seals on the coast. Have we just become the Smiling Seals?
In the centre of town, a 30-foot carving of a woolly elephant head. It is smiling too. An old god? Mammoths have been in the strata a long time. We can climb through the mouth.
There is a bronze (?) necklace. It would be for a huge being; it is large. The passageway goes downwards into the ground. We delve as Jerem holds a torch.
Stone grinding in the distance to the east. Engravings of plants. Some images of waves and the sea. Two stone boxes. Coffins? A well-preserved person, 7 feet, white skin with greenish tint. Wide smile and purple clothing. The person looks like a fine-looking mace, with one large triangle at the top. We pick it up, drop it, it sparks, I pick it up.
We open the other coffin. A feminine corpse tries to grab. It hits, we fight. Lance gets a hit in. Roald spears it and finishes it.
Roald and I both roll a one on our d6 for complications…
Rumors: (mentioned above)
Gold & XP:
Treasure:
- necklace: bronze 100g
- green star: 50gp
- old coins in backpack 8gp
- 40gp in backpack
- Telescope: 20gp
311 experience
Special or Magic Items:
Triangle mace
Written by: roguewithwhimsy