Slot: Thursday 15h00 - 17h00
Venue: One of the meeting rooms
DM: Adrianna
This game was set in the Forgotten Realms for the first three sessions of its existence, but I will be shifting it to an original setting after the hiatus (since I have acquired kewl new source material, and since it's what I wanted to do in the first place). The record below has been altered to reflect the new reality (cue Twilight Zone theme).
Non-secret bits of the setting background are up at CurrentAffairsSetting, to make life easier for everyone.
After travelling through the night, the players and their companions camped in the wilderness in the early hours of the morning. They were attacked by three crystal oozes, but managed to fend them off.
Back at the Happy Badger Inn, they met the two wizards Felar and Narivel, who gave them gill-moistening necklaces in exchange for their magic-shielding box. Narivel also scried on Arae's mother in exchange for an ancient elven spear, and was able to tell her that she was fighting in a large battle somewhere where there are trees with yellow flowers.
The players also learned that the Magical Academy of Cadarintal was offering a large bounty on various rare magical beasts that are found in Alabrintar Forest.
Later...
The party sat around for a while, reading the notice posted by the Academy and also rather worriedly examining the Wanted, Dead or Alive poster put up by the Halidru authorities. They hatched a vague plan to dump the horse on the farm of Llilia's un-liked brothers, attempting to hunt for rare magical beasts on the way.
The wildly celebrating Halorites managed to convert Milaena. Kya, thoroughly disgusted by the message of their pamphlets, decided that he was a firmer supporter of Law than he had previously realised.
Three "merchants" aspproached the table at one point and asked some inconvenient questions, but appeared to be placated by the forged paperwork.
Everyone had strange and meaningful dreams.
In the morning, Kya discovered that his goddess was upset with him.
Milaena discovered one of the "merchants" lurking about the stables.
During the trip, Kya and Llilia got the feeling they were all being followed, and when the party camped for the night Arae's shark reported that three nasty men were sleeping behind some rocks nearby.
Milaena's dagger thought that it would be really nice to kill them while they slept, and Milaena couldn't help but agree. She managed to do in one of the unfortunate bounty hunters before Arae caught up with her and a not entirely successful sneaky blow awoke the second one. After a brief scuffle, he also was dead. The third attacked Milaena, who was aided by a somewhat confused Arae. During a brief pause in hostilities he made a break for his hippocampus (cut loose by Milaena before her assault), but was shot in the back by Llilia as he fled.
Milaena is rather upset and confused by her actions, and the rest of the party is eying her with wariness and suspicion.
The adventurers captured three live blue-crested warblers for the Cadarintal bounty, and stopped by Habrail - once a quaint elven forest village, now the habitual haunt of surface pirates and various low-lifes. While Kya and Milaena remained outside with the Dodgy Horse, Arae and Llilia went in to try to get more concrete descriptions of the other sought-after beasts. They returned after a brief chat with an elven ranger and his imaginary friend.
Outside, they stood around arguing about the best way to transport their warblers, attracting the attention of a young local woman, Lyra. She offered not to tell anyone in town about their valuable cargo if they paid her to get them a cage. The party agreed, and arranged to have Arae wait for Lyra to return while everyone else went ahead.
Lyra returned with the cage, tailed by her unintelligent cousin and his mob of would-be-muggers. They took Arae captive, with Lyra's not particularly willing participation, and went off to catch up with the others - who were forewarned by Arae's shark.
The amateur robbers rapidly realised that they were outmatched, and ran away. The party concluded their arrangement with Lyra and went on their way.
At their forest campsite, they found two holes leading to underground ruins and decided to explore. After getting past the trap in one of the entrances with creative use of old bones, they were attacked by the ixixachitl who had made the ruins their home. They managed to kill all of them except the greater vampiric head of the nest, his one lackey and the nest's three juveniles, and passed out from their wounds and the severe energy drain.
They woke up some time later to find themselves up to their armpits in sticky goo, being unenthusiastically pecked at but not eaten by the baby rays to whom they had been thrown. The nest head seemed to have gone off to fetch new lackeys, leaving his only minion in charge of the nest. Arae, who had fallen unconscious early in the fight, had still not woken up and looked very ill.
The party freed themselves from their restraints (Kya, who had suffered a particularly bad spate of vampiric attacks, had to be helped) and easily slew the remaining lackey. They then went to look for their belongings, and found them in the central chamber of the ruins. Also in the chamber were the remains and effects of earlier unfortunate visitors, as well as a life-size statue of Calethrin and his daughters. Kya identified it as an important artefact which had gone missing from Alabrintar after the Great War.
Being near the statue allowed Kya to hear the voices of the dead to whom various remains in the building belonged. This led to some disturbing discoveries - a pile of elven bones was found to belong to members of a mysterious lost race of dark-skinned elves, and their bone mail armour was found to have been made from merfolk skeletons. Kya also found a bracelet made from very angry teeth, and a scroll written on merfolk skin.
The party left the ruins through the other entrance - to get past the blade barrier trap they employed the tactic used by the 'chitl and burrowed under the deep sand which filled the ruins. This went relatively smoothly except for Milaena's unpleasant encounter with an overly friendly buried skeleton.
The three 'chitl babies followed them out. Milaena has kept them as pets.
Outside, the adventurers found, with some dismay, that one of their horses had been eaten and the other two had fled. Fortunately, the live ones returned when called and the dead one became dinner.
The party travelled north through the night and most of the day and reached the clam farming village Cuirina. They didn't find the healer they were hoping for, but managed to get a good night's sleep.
The next day they travelled to Misery, where their life drain was mostly restored by the friendly selkie healer and their wounds were healed by the magical spring water.
After another restful night they continued on their journey south, taking a slightly different route. Shortly after they set up camp for the night, a strange elf burst out of the undergrowth.
He introduced himself as Cardain Amaroth - a notorious thief and adventurer from the forest. After recognising Lusifon and congratulating the travellers on their excellent heist, he revealed that he had stolen some artefacts from the magical armoury of Alabrintar and was pursued into the forest by the city guard. He was sure that he had successfully evaded them, and was headed for Habrail, where he could fence his loot.
During the night, the travellers could hear ixixachitl screeching in the distance.
The next morning, Cardain and the party parted ways. After travelling for a while, the party encountered a caravan of merfolk merchants being escorted by a company of very expensive koalinth mercenaries... and watched it walk into a sahuagin ambush. The koalinth were dealt a devastating blow right at the start, when their leader was blinded by an unseen caster.
The party attacked the sahuagin, who were accompanied by large fiendish sharks. At the end of the battle all the merchants were dead and so were most of the sahuagin and koalinth. Thanks to the efforts of the hidden priestess and a masked four-armed warrior, Llilia was cursed, Arae was frenzying, both of them were cloaked by magical darkness, Kya was unconscious and Milaena was Held. The sahuagin made off with a coral chest, the demoralised koalinth unwilling to pursue them.