Kursed Katana

Kursed Katana was a mini-campaign run by ArchGamemaster.

It involved a ragtag group of adventurers traveling to the Isle of Vakara on behalf of a monastery to seal away or destroy an ill-fated katana that was believed to have caused the deaths of its previous wielders - all 30+ of them.

## Characters

* Fiddlemore Whidix (Tropingenie )
* Natsume Ashblade (TacoCat )
* Turtillous Jimbus (Looweeja )
* Sam Norman (ArcaneBacon )

## Campaign

### Session 1

Vakara lies in the middle of a vast lake, and the group was rowed over to the island by a monk from the monastery. The island is quite large, rocky, and overgrown with twisted Chinese pines. Once on the island, the group followed the path to the well-kept cottage of the island's caretaker, a 787-year-old elf named Musei .

Musei elaborated on the nature of the katana, talking about its previous wielders, and Turtillous handed it over to his warlock patron, Whjuaon , to see if he would tell them some more about it. His patron noted that the blade had a creature of magic sealed inside it that was slowly working its way out, and Whjuaon and Turtillus had a conversation on what it would take for Whjuaon to separate the creature from the blade.

Everything was going swimmingly until the next day, when Fiddlemore repeatedly upset Turtillous's breakfast-cooking [1], to the point where the two went outside and had a brief wizard's duel. Turtillus went rather overkill and blasted Fiddlemore with lightning, turning him from wizard to dead wizard. While this was going on, Natsume and Sam walked off to actually do the quest.

Turtillus, rather distraught, asked his patron how he could fix this, and Whjuaon told him he needed a living heart to do so. Turtillous zapped poor Musei and ripped his heart out, which Whjuaon ate with much gusto. Fiddlemore then got up, discovered that Musei's image was following him around and could only be seen in mirrors, and the two set off after the others.

Natsume and Sam walked a ways down a dirt path, and headed into a mire via a rotting boardwalk. They were followed by Fiddlemore and Turtillous shortly after, who walked along the boardwalk until reaching a broken section, then decided to freeze the muck into ice to walk on..

As they went deeper into the mire, they began to hear strange lights and noises, and Natsume scouted ahead of Sam, crossing an area where the boardwalk had entirely fallen away. Natsume encountered someone with their arm ripped open who was splayed out on the boardwalk and looked like a peasant, but turned out to be a fresh, ravenous zombie!

Natsume fought them off and dove into the water, where a second zombie grabbed her and tried to pull her deeper. The group arrived just in time to pull Natsume out of the water - she had fought valiantly, but the animated corpse was stronger than her. They saved Natsume and managed to dispatch the zombie, but Natsume's leg had to be frozen off in the process, lest the zombie drag her back down.

### Session 2

The beginning was marked by the sudden vanishing of Turtillus [3] as the ice cracked beneath him. He calmly placed Natsume on the ice, and sunk slowly into the bubbling mud, making no attempt to move and maintaining direct eye contact even as the mud closed over his head.

The group made it to a small hillock rising out of the swamp, where the boardwalk terminated in a pagoda with benches and a low wall - quite a pleasant shelter. The hillock was covered in ferns, small flowers, and twisted pines covered in lichen.

Fiddlemore and Sam treated Natsume's wound with a small plant found on the island that had antiseptic properties, and had a very animated conversation about the correct way to prepare it, for although Fiddlemore was trained in finding and identifying herbs, neither of them had a medical background. It wasn't quite 'Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew', but it had to be 97% of the way there, for they considered the first two options at length, and were very near to giving serious consideration to the third. (There was also some talk about eating the berries of a yew tree on the island - fortunately, Fiddlemore was aware that they were poisonous.)

After successfully treating Natsume's wound, Fiddlemore surrounded the pagoda with an alarm spell, and the group caught up on some much needed rest. In the morning, a barrel rolled up against the island with someone in it asking to be let out. Sam interrogated the person within at length, and Fiddlemore decided he would use the wood and metal of the barrel to craft Natsume a pegleg of sorts..

When the barrel was opened, a gnome with fiery red hair and an odd mask with potion flasks worked into it tumbled out, and proclaimed himself to be Mortimus P. Tinkerton, survivor of an adventuring group in Varisia. He had sealed himself inside this barrel to go over a waterfall and escape a group of snake-men, and drifted into this swamp. He'd been in the barrel for some time, probably months, surviving by means of magic. [4]

Fiddlemore created a rather nice pegleg, using rope as a sort of pseudo-joint, while Sam interrogated the gnome at length. After the gnome ascertained that this adventuring group was indeed a bit crazy, he took his chances in the swamp, hurling chemicals into the water to make it boil as he went across the boardwalk.

Fiddlemore then cast Detect magic to point the group towards the Well of Power, a spell he would cast several times to orient the group. A glowing band of light pointed them across the swamp, and since the boardwalk had ended, the group carried on via ice bridge.

The group gained a new friend when they came to a skeleton hanging from a tree in the swamp, and met a snake named Ssmalkis, who once served as familiar to a wicked wizard, and was confined to this island by the monks of the monastery when his master was defeated. He spoke infernal, and decided to come along with the group to escape the island.

They made it to a forest full of flowers, and Natsume smelled these at length, until quite by accident, she inhaled the hair of an invisible pixie, who after complaining a good bit, turned Natsume into a butterfly!

Fiddlemore captured Natsume, who was trailing sparkly dust, and the group continued on. (Fiddlemore later claimed he thought the spell had swapped her with a butterfly, rather than transformed her.) Natsume figured out how to speak as a butterfly a little while later, and berated him for capturing her.

The group arrived at a grotto with ginko trees growing around it, and little stone roofs built over small tunnels in the stone. They conversed for a while with a guardian spirit inhabiting a small gnome statue, who confirmed he was the guardian to the well, and gave them a test.

Inside one of the stone holes was a large amount of gold. There was also a trap that cut off the arm of anyone reaching in. Should there be only one living being in the grotto, the trap would not function. Seeing as the ginko trees had moved and sealed the group in, this presented a problem, especially since when they poked a stick into the hole, the end was chopped off so fast that smoke wisped off.

Fiddlemore came up with a novel solution, and made an illusory hand dive into the hole and emerge full of gold. This much confused the guardian spirit, for, as he said, there was no actual gold in there, and dishonest groups tended to tear each other apart over the illusory gold in the hole. He decided to let them pass.

(Sam actually tossed a gold coin in the hole, though he later recovered it as gold dust and had it re-minted by the monks of the monastery.)

In the room with the well, colours wisped and flitted about, pouring from a sparkly magic well molded out of stone. The group tossed in the katana without incident, fished it out once it had been purified, and then had a lovely time dipping weapons into the well, resulting in a singing sword, arrows that did slightly more damage, a dagger that let you speak a language from one person you cut with it, some lost knives, and the Garfshield, a furry, purring shield bearing the likeness of a cartoon cat.

The group left the island, bumping into Mortimer again, went back to the monastery, got 200 gold, and headed into town, to enjoy the delights of the tavern known as the Swonky Pig, dance around, get into arguments over doughnuts, and meet a halfling named Lysander with an interest in magical theory, and a secret business proposition involving a major source of ambient magic.

## OOC

[1] Actually, Fiddlemore was the one cooking first, so arguably it was Turtillous interfering with Fiddlemore. He was making a traditional dish from his homeland, a bats wing and leek stew, but Turtillous was insistent that, just because he was a "professional chef," he was a better cook. Fiddlemore got a 6 to cook using Arcana, and his messing around was because Turtillous' cooking rolls went poorly as well. [2]

[2] On the other hand, the two of them were trying to cook using the same pot, and illusion isn't usually such a major ingredient in cookery. - Arch

[3] Sudden vacations for all.

[4] It was here we confirmed that Gnomes were, in fact, evolved Canadians, having been transformed after they fled from earth on their giant maple leaf spaceship during the Trumpocalypse.