Summary of the week at The Old Priory

<< Previous
Next >>

## Awaiting an author

One player's incomplete notes from the session at the Old Priory
The party reaches the checkpoint at the dockside.  The High Priest of Dekatur was stomped by the Hasandra Hewn.  It's about 3am in Willston.  At 6am the all-clear is sounded and the Black-Eye district is clear of undead.

There was an assault on the wall from the North (skeletons).

We take a rest and recover 1hp each, along with 1st & 2nd level spells.  East Point has fallen.

We volunteer to patrol the farmland to the North of the city.  It proves uneventful, apart from a false alarm when someone sends up a fireball signal.  The weather is artificially stormy, as if in preparation for Call Lightning.  Starstorm castle has been taken by trolls.

Our 2nd day of patron is even less eventfyl, but at 2am we are sent back toward the docks.  Lightning strikes hit the city.  On the way we reach a bay where an assault by boat is expected.  We receive orders to hit them hard and then run for the city (basically just to slow them down).

Four boats land, and debark a mix of zombies and wraiths (cold, invisible & flying) as three guys dimension-door ashore ahead of them to hit spellcasters.  We take out a few of them and retreat as ordered, all the way back inside the city walls.  The undead start digging trenches & the city is under siege.

Day 130 / Jun 22 - no assault on the city is expected for a week or so, while the siege works are in progress.

We go to visit a follower of Sarn that we saved (Fred).  Nobody home.

Next we check our safehouses to see if we still have a Sarn problem.  We find 4 dead humans & a hobbit in leather armour, all beheaded, and a pile of broken crossbows.  The housekeeper in the safehouse turns out to be an intelligence officer and "handled the situation".  The elf is still hiding in the cellar.

Kahu is at the South Wall, near the Trade Gate.  Fred has disappeared, presumed dead.

Day 131 - Umar goes for berserker trainer.  Bez Drock comes with him, to see us.  Bez is no longer the manifest of Shanah, that's now "the dwarf" (Beldame).

Dougal will only be able to regenerate his hand when the cleric who took it off (i.e. Thirson) is dead and it starts bleeding again.  Or possibly the Universal high priest may be able to override the Sarn death magic if we could get him interested to help.

Rasten should bring the message soon.

Dougal goes to the Hall of Rogues.  They could take Thirson out for 3,000-4,000 gp.  Greyel (the admiral) tells us that they are already looking for the female Ariel who was Thirson's boss.

Back at the Trade Gate, Bez Drock & the Grizzly Bear (werebear) go up a rope trick with Quercuis to discuss what to do with the Wildwood symbol, the necklace of 100% spell success & the salve of divination.  They recommend we sellthe necklace to Perceval or Truth-Speaker.

Bez Drock hands Riff Raff his mace (another mace of disruption ha ha).

We sell to Perceval for 1 set of Elf light chain, 4 sets Elven chain, a pathfinder cloak, a +2 axe for Umar, 4 skill books for 1st/2nd level secondary skills, 8 potions of infravision and ... an IOU for Thirson's location

Our next mission is to go by boat to scout for some Orc spellcasters, do sabotage, hit & run for 1 hour in enemy territory.  On landing, we trip over 2 groups of 3 Orcs seach, between 2 centuries of skeletons.  The party sneaks up quietly.  Francis gets stuck in to one group of Orcs with some arrows.  The orcs react, the skeletons start advancing, Quercuis's familiar is attacked by a flying lizard, Dougal rushes to save Hamish & smacks an Orc, stunning it.

It looks like the Orc fighter-mages were part of a team controlling the skeletons, because the coordination weakened when we hit them.  After 17 minutes of action, the skeletons suddenly liven up like their controller is paying full attention.  They become physically hot and starting burning through the webs we cast on them.

We found 2 more orc controllers, who both had flying-lizard familiars that cast fireballs.  Hamish raced around the back of the skeletons at 36" to reach their controller, just as the party threw entangle on the controller.  Hamish was stuck 8 yards from the controller, who was then also hit with a stinking cloud.

Francis manages to turn a groub of skeletons in an entangle; they turn to run, but fail to leave the entangle area.

Twoo flew to the boats and fetched them to rescue us.  Umar dragged Hamish out of the entangle.  We finish the controller with a Call Lightning strike.  The boats took the party off after 22 minutes of action, in which we took out 169 skeletons, 6 orcs in uniform and 3 orc fighter-mage controllers.

On the way back to Willston we pass a trireme packed with the Hewn, heading in the direction of Ghoulagabba.

Back at the docks we are cured & debriefed & then detained overnight to prevent us leaking the information we learned.

Wun is sure that the White Nightshade helped with his attempts to turn the undead.

We gained a shortsword +1 (to Caradoc) and 2,808 xp.

Day 132 - a choice of guarding or helping to build the defences

Day 133 - Sarn followers in the sewers.

Rumours from Greyel: Thirson may be the priest-monk that faced off Umar outside the pub (see Willston at night).  He is the highest-ranked Sarn follower in the city.

We investigate the sewers, looking for where the Sarn followers have been.  We found patches where the sewer walls have been cleaned & then left for the moss to regrow.  We guessed where the Sarn hideout is, figured out the access mechanism to get in (although we tried to rig our own bridge out of 2 ten-foot poles and some planks that we ripped from one of the proper bridges.  We should get an award for the most inventive use of a ten-foot pole in a wastewater treatment facility). We did trigger the alarm glyph on purpose, using a silence rock, so it just screamed silently.

Inside the hideout we found 2 passages sloping up & a locked door leading to a cloakroom & washroom.  Then a berserker burst in through a hidden door in the passage & some others who were not pleased to see us.  Beyond the hidden doors was a Sarn temple with guards.  Some sort of animated plate armour full of fire (in Umar's size).  Fred's body is on the altar & starts smoking.  The temple guards start running away.  All the bodies of guards we had killed start smoking.  As the plate armour goes down, the stone catches fire.  Behind the party another suit of plate blocks the way we came in.

Hamish runs fast (34") to see if there's a way out beyond the bathroom.  Another suit of plate arrives.  Hamish finds an exit & calls the party to follow him.  They run through the burning temple, and escape into the basement where Dougal lost his hand.

Day 134 - a day off, while the emergency services deal with the destruction of an entire city block around the hidden Sarn temple.

We go home to the safe house & receive a letter from Saratak (see "A Letter Arrives").  Hamish joins the Hall of Rogues & trains in the Blackfist path of monk-ness.

We hear a rumour that Rasten is married to Sorlor.

We take a couple of days to re-learn spells before we are summoned to Elf HQ.

Day 136-ish - there are 4 more triremes in the docks in addition to the 2 we had already seen.

A group of our scouts is on the way back to the city. Our next mission is to dig in along their route & cause some damage to anyone who pursues them.  Basically we're going to act as speed bumps.

The scouts pass our position, warning of Shadows, Orcs & Zombies.  8 Shadows reach us, half are blasted with Call Lightning, the other half are turned.  Then come 15 orcs & 6 more shadows.  We begin to retire, taking out 4 shadows.  12 more shadows appear behind us.  One that didn't Turn affected Francis with Fear & he started running the wrong way (away from the city).  Perhaps he was merely furious and was taking the fight to the enemy?  Joshua & Dougal tackled Francis so Wun could cast Remove Fear, after which he lost his urge to charge into the approaching enemy.  We finished retiring to the walls, mission accomplished.

Our next mission is to scout ahead of an Elf landing on the south coast of Willston isthmus, to see whether Gartin village is clear for them to occupy.  We are given 10 days' elven rations and 2 fireball wands to use for signalling (1 for help, 2 for all clear).

We land at dawn in a bay 2 miles west of the village, with 4 days for us to assess the location.  Francis & Caradoc scout through the bracken on the moors to the trees at the NW of the map.  Lots of smoke is coming from the house at the central crossroads of the village.  The W road is not apparently in use, overgrown with bracken.  The N road has been churned by wagons & shows warg tracks.  The E road has tracks of 1 wark going & coming back.

At dusk Caradoc goes into town invisible, to check closer.  One house has 2 zombies motionless inside.  Could be guards (facing the front door) or just in storage.  2 empty houses, then a house with 1 zombie.  A similar pattern is repeated.  A bat is flying around, observing (on patrol).  One house has the front door barred on the outside.  Another has a strange, acrid smell - wargs?

Our estimate is 12 orcs, 1 big guy, 1-2 wargs, 70-80 zombies.  2 bats imply 2 controllers for the zombies.

Our plan is to slip in through the back alleys at noon & hit the houses around the central crossroads, where the orcs are sleeping.  We put 6 orcs down before the rest come out.  1 runs off on a warg up the N road, where  Francis & Joshua were waiting in ambush for him.  They take the orc down, but Joshua messes about with animal friendship on the warg & it gets away.  2 orcs actually surrendered and the rest are dead.  We send the "all clear" to call in the Elves & declare another job well done.

I missed the last night of the session, when something with hill giants took place.  Perhaps another player will write that up?

 << Previous
Next >>