Cambridge Pixies Session

## *Events at Karstern - face-to-face session at Dafydd's housewarming 8/12/23*

After we drove off the second wave of blink dogs, a Babelf appears from the woods behind us and collects the 4 corpses that we hadn't beheaded. He pins one to a tree with a vine around its neck, chants for a while & the thorns grow out of the vine to pierce the body.
He then draws us a map to show us that we should not go due south where there are more blink dogs, but should go around the plains to the East and then skirt the line of hills to reach the lake. We take the hint and set off toward Karstern, the ruined castle marked on our map segment.

### The village of Karstern

As we approach the village, we see fires making smoke from some of the houses. A blizzard is coming and we would like a night at the inn in the middle of the village. Commmune with Nature says that there are maybe 15 in the village, a mix of humans, dwarves and halflings. Also the mines should hold silver.
The village consists of a single street with houses on both sides, curving around the hillside from the ruined castle at the northern end, past the pub in the middle, then the minehead, and a few houses beyond. Maybe a dozen buildings on either side of the street.
We notice that all the buildings have been roughly boarded up on the outside, doors and windows, which is odd.

The castle has basically been taken apart, possibly stripped for usable stone blocks. We walk down the street, seeing that people are still living inside the boarded-up houses. As we reach the pub, a dwarf opens a trap-door in the street to ask if we're from Azure Haven. When we reply that's where we're headed, he seems very disappointed, but invites us inside. His name is Coyn, and his aura reads CG.
In the pub's cellar is enough food & drink for a busy pub with maybe 60 people in town. Also, there are tunnels from the cellar, heading up & down the street and also across the street.

The inn upstairs is kept by a halfling couple (Nepets & Sibrin). There are some dwarf miners, and a half-orc clearing tables (the first we have ever seen). We take a couple of rooms for the night.
The doors are also barred on the inside, because of the bluish (not Jewish) ogres in the hills. The mines are mostly worked out, and the locals were expecting to be evacuated to Azure Haven, but the wagon train hasn't returned on schedule.
The outer boarding-up is glyphed as an extra layer of defence, so the miners dug tunnels along both sides of the street to connect the cellars of the houses and also the mine entrance. The mine has provided silver and a little gods-blood (mithril). There is a priest of Sarn in the village (a halfling named Liravago) for fire spells, and the pub has enough food to last until the thaw in March.
Azure Haven has a population of around 500 and runs most of the trade across the lake to the island as well as overland to Stormhaven.

Other people in the inn include:

* Amejj (human male) was the storekeeper
* Nitram, who introduces himself as the smith
* Erah & Enah (human twins)
* Saynaib (halfling) the local thief
* Coyn is on his own, since his family left for Azure Haven on the last wagon train out
* Razi is the half-orc bouncer
* Kir (female dwarf) is normally at the mine head
* Jolbur (halfling) used to be the mine agent has a good head for numbers
* 3 or 4 miners with more difficult names that I didn't catch.

There hasn't been a certain attack by the ogres yet, but they have been seen nearby and a couple of people have disappeared. No hard evidence to link that to the ogres, but people are scared.

Not sure whether this is the start of the winter snowfall and will last until spring, or just a shower that might lift in 2 weeks and give us a chance to leave before the winter closes in fully.

Joshua senses that Coyn is feeling very low, so buys him a drink [This was a bad thing!]. Caradoc checks the tunnels and finds no security in place. We settle down for the night.

In the morning, there is a scream outside in the street, which cuts off suddenly. The locals come to check on us, and our watch wake the secondary watchers then join the locals to investigate.
Coyn is missing. It looks like he left through the pub's cellar hatch and took 2 bottles of brandy. Francis goes outside with 2 miners and the find Coyn's frozen body. Bazin is brought to use Speak with Dead. What killed Coyn?
"I went out because I thought that SHE was out there. Then the blue creatures pointed at me and I died".
(we guess that "SHE" was Coyn's wife, perhaps an illusion to lure him out)

Liravago asks what we know of these legendary creatures (ogre magi) and agrees to cast some more fire glyphs around the pub (after he spends 6 hours to learn them).

Umar goes with the miners to seal the mine entrance. They pile up stone blocks, then use stone shape to do a thorough job. On the way back, they find a pile of snow in the tunnel. Something has come in. Caradoc investigates and finds one the thoughts of an invisible creature, with Saynaib tied up (and his hands cut off). The creatures thoughts are of prey, and it seems that Saynaib is just the bait for a trap. Caradoc heads back to the inn, reckoning this a distraction.

### Ogre attack

Back at the pub, the party uses Enemy Detection - they're on the roof.
A scream from the cellar is cut off as Saynaib dies.
We prepare for combat: Resist Cold all round. Garaf and the lizard look up a chimney. Someone is shoveling snow down all 3 chimneys. Both the glyphs on the top of chimneys go off.
The main door to the pub blows and half-kills Bazin in the blast. Two metal constructs appear in the gap. Hamish throws a web on them. (these things are AC -2 and reduce damage to 1 on the die roll from piecing but add plusses. Slash does half damage, blunt full damage.)
One construct ignores the web and claps its hands to blast out a cone of concussion damage across the room.
An ogre mage comes down one chimney, near Brokev & Garaf.
Bazin starts chanting. Hamish & Dougal move in to attack the webbed one as it breaks free. Francis & Umar put the other one down. Brokev finish his ogre mage. It turns gaseous, but he still gets in the coup de grace. Twoo comes very, very close to death but is revived by Wun.
Caradoc uses ESP on the thing in the basement. It's looking for something.
The surviving construct steps out of the door. Garaf blocks the doorway with a wall of ice on the outside.

With the main room under control, around 2/3 of the party heads down into the cellar (either to find out what's down there or to secure it against becoming an attack in our rear). Joshua's TrueSight shows an (invisible) 8' tall floating head. It looks like a giant, but with tusks, and its aura is NE. It looks at us and zips off down the tunnel across the street.
It comes back, right up to the foot of the stairs, looking angry, then backs off.
Twoo fires some arrows into it at Joshasu's prompting (anothe BAD thing!), and it goes away at 36" movement, with eyes of flame and thoughts of active hostility.
We wait for it to come back, when the whole room is filled with cold, leaving nowhere to dodge out of the effect (on a monk save). The party spreads out, leaving the stairs and checking the tunnels for enemies.
Upstairs, Bazin notices a heated discussion between the inkeepers and a miner, but he's still chanting, so can't hear the details or tell anyone.

Five rounds later, something hits the wall of ice hard. The group in the cellar starts to head back up to the main room, apart from Caradoc and Umar, who keep watch for the flying head.
The wall of ice takes a third bash.

The flying head charges back to the celler, bashes against an invisible barrier at the base of the stairs & retreats.
Later, the head repeats this action and this time Umar asks it what it's looking for. It thinks of an ariel, but doesn't answer. It's not thinking of Twoo, or Swanfeather, or any other ariel that Caradoc recognises.
"How can we help", Umar asks. The head thinks of the inn full of dead people. It goes away down the tunnel.
Another bash on the wall of ice. They are coming regularly every 3 rounds.
The head comes back, with the levitated corpse and separate head from an ogre mage in front of it. It is imagining the ogre mage crushing a female ariel. Umar takes the ogre mage head with the idea that a cleric may be able to speak with it, and throws it up the stairs into the lounge bar with a shout of "Heads up"!
Upstairs, snow is coming down all the chimneys and the wall of ice will soon be down. Umar & Caradoc return to the main room of the pub.
Caradoc starts questioning the villagers about an ariel, perhaps hidden in the pub, perhaps dead? Bazin keeps chanting, but tries to nudge the landlord and gesture that he should go over and talk to Caradoc. Eventually Caradoc takes an interest in this strange charade and goes over to talk to the group near Bazin next.

The wall of ice is burst through and there are thumps from the pub's first floor.
Something gaseous is coming through the front door. Hamish, Dougal and Garaf all throw lightning bolts into the doorway. The ogre mage takes solid form & Umar puts it down. Francis beheads it, just as two more ogre magi come through the door and another comes down the stairs from the first floor.
The mages throw magic missiles at the one on the stairs, while Francis & Umar fight the two at the door. F&U are also poisoned (causing bleeding) along with the damage they take.

The remaining metal construct comes in the door. Francis & Umar take down the two ogre magi, and two villagers step up to keep them that way.
The ogre mage on the stairs uses cone of cold. The construct claps for a blast of concussion damage, but this time both hobbits dodge out of the way (save for no damage).

Sibrin calls out that Coyn had the gods-blood and she doesn't know where it is now.

Umar takes down the construct. The ogre mage on the stairs goes down too. There are more still upstairs.
[The ogre magi upstairs appear to give up and leave - at least we don't hear from the again!]

### The maguffin

We use a dose of salve of divination to allow a detect magic to include runic items. It shows up one miner's pickaxe and also something hidden inside the bar counter. It turns out to be a rectangular plate of silver about 8"x6" with an image of an ariel etched into mithril plating on the surface. Twoo, Joshua and Dougal all inspect it and agree that this is something important that the party should keep and study, not hand to the floating head in the cellar. Dougal takes rubbings of the image while Joshua starts a Legend Lore to learn more about it.

Eventually Umar & Caradoc wrest it from them. Umar takes it down to the cellar and leaves it for the giant head, which takes it and flies off, thinking about putting it back where it belongs.
Five minutes later there is a loud bang from the sealed mine entrance and the compulsion is broken. We all forgot the details of the image on the maguffin, and even Dougal's rubbing seems blurry. Joshua, Twoo and Dougal realise they have been under a greed/desire to possess glamour from the maguffin, which has now gone.
Sibrin the landlady is in an emotional mess, as she realises what she has done for the sake of possessing the maguffin.

Twenty minutes later the giant head is back at the base of the stairs, but this time smaller and with an attached body and wings. He still can't come up the stairs - but has to ask us permission to comer up. Once we have granted this permission, he come up to say hello - and it is becomes apperent that he is some kind of super-Vampire.

He says that he has been allowed to answer 3 questions for us. We can have until sunset to decide what we want to ask.The creature has features of all the elder races: the build of a giant, the tusks of an orc, the wings of an ariel, scales of a lizrdman, the grace of an elf. If we could remember the image on the maguffin, it could have been him.

We choose not to ask for explanations of the curious events in Karstern, but instead to ask for pointers in our quest(s).

* *Where is Hentron?* With Sister Sorlor, moving where she goes.
* *Where is the intended recipient of our slice of apple pie?* With Sister Sorlor, moving where she goes.
* *Who is the other player that Saratak mentioned?* They are leeches on the gods, not nihilists like the Wild, but trying to create a new world order with them on top. They disrupt the plans of the other players because that furthers their cause. The originator of this faction was Tocsin. Members of this faction could appear to be totally legitimate, true believers of other factions (eg High Priest of Univeral) and we wouldn't know. There is a way of detecting them, but he doesn't know what that is.

After the main questions, we casually ask his name, since it seems disrepectful to refer to him as Mister-flying-giant-head. We should not know his name, but can call him **"Of the One"**. He and his brother Tocsin used to be Judges.

He also told us that the Blue Tower was where Wyldwood wanted us to go - it is in a 'bit of a mess'. So we might as well head there when we can.

### Aftermath

We patch up the pub and set the staff to prepare some dinner, make a place to sleep. We sleep for eight hours and regain spells.

In the morning the weather is worse. We use a Dig spell to bury the fallen. Strip teeth off the ogre magi.
We scavenge floorboards from the other houses for firewood. The villagers reckon there is enough firewood to last 2-3 weeks, not the months of winter. Everyone is surprised to see that the furniture has gone from most of the other houses (except the ones that were still inhabited). That would have been enough firewood to keep the village from freezing to death.
There are drag marks where the furniture has been moved into the cellars and through the tunnel system to the SW corner of the village and beyond. A little way further, the tunnel is walled up.

We wonder whether this could be the answer to the other three people who went missing (the disappearances that were blamed on the ogres)?

Behind the wall, something is banging stones together. We stone-shape an opening through the wall and see some kind of ghoul or other undead building up the wall thicker. Wun turns it, and it crumbles to dust. Its ragged clothes could have been from a villager.
Beyond the wall, furniture has been broken up and stacked against the walls. The tunnel goes on, turning East toward the hills.

20' on there is a privy to one side of the tunnel and a larder on the other (in a blatant breach of food hygiene regulations).

Beyond this, the tunnel joins a much older construction, which has caved in beyond the next junction. To one side of the junction is a sleeping chamber with 3 beds, and to the other is a chamber with desks, where 2 villagers have hanged themselves. The bodies are about 3 days dead, which would coincide with when the compulsion of the maguffin wore off. In the desks we find paperwork including calculations about volumes of firewood. Also a sketch of a Wyldwood column, but with the maratasen turned away. Many papers have been burned.

Bazin speaks with one of the dead.

* *How did you find these old chambers?* From the mines, the tunnel leads here
* *What papers did you burn?* Things I never should have read; I killed my old friend with them.

Garaf casts a Knock. In the study a panel opens, and a secret door in the tunnel. Behind the panel is a scroll, and a (spell) book with all the pages torn out. The secret door is on the side toward the mines. We agreed not to go into the mines, so we close it.

The villagers explain that Nitram and the other 2 found the mithril down the mine, somewhere beyond a huge cave they nicknamed "the cathedral".

We reckon the scroll is some 7th-level necromantic spell, and agree to burn it (despite Garaf's outrage that it could be valuable) and pour holy water on the ashes. We also found 2 potions in the study chamber, which turn out to each hold 4 doses of extra-healing (3d8+3 per dose).

The other hanged villager tells us that he's very sorry **and that the mithril thing didn't come from near here**. He warns us not to read the scrolls. We have determined that the three villagers who originally found the maguffin, but 'lost' it to the others, determined to freeze the rest of the village in order to recover the maguffin, whilst hiding in the chambers that they had found whilst exploring around the 'Cathedral'.

A Divination spell from Joshua about exploring beyond the collapsed tunnel section (but *not* going towards the mines) said that the enemies were 'strong-ish', the treasure was 'good' (ie at least one magic item), and the chance of pissing off a powerful supernatural being was 'low'.