Beyond the Westwall: Sessions 4 and 5 (7/3/13 & 7/10/13)

Note: the following recap of sessions 4 and 5 was composed by the master bard Sir Charles Bakerson, a legend in the Grand Kingdom.

Mightily the adventurers strove against the giants, foul and two-headed,
With metal forged sharp but with wits all the sharper!

Muscle and mind the heroes combined in equal measure, and using
Weapons both metal and mental they slew the murderous ettins outright!

The band followed the trail of the abominations they'd killed,
Tracing it back to a scene of bloody slaughter.

The ettins had made an abattoir of the woodsmen's encampment,
Turning the snow on the ground to crimson ice.

The party turned their eyes and minds to the west, from whence
The trail of the two-headed giants appeared to have come.

Their path took them into the depths of Lanisdown Forest, where
They sought for some sign of an origin, a lair.

The group came upon a party of Dunbury halflings, lead by
A doughty sheriff and seeking some sign of the ettins as well.

After holding palaver with the small-folk but gaining little knowledge,
The adventurers chose to press north to the mystery of White Watch.

In due time they came within sight of the Westwalls, and there
They had their first glimpse of the long-abandoned fortress.

The once pure white walls of that Bright Empire ruin were now
The color of charcoal from time's ravages and scars of ancient battle.

Approaching the mist-shrouded fortress, the party saw a vast field of mud,
Strangely unfrozen despite the harsh winter.

The elf Umitsu, clever to the last, devised a way to cross the morass,
Using a spell to conjure a disk of floating metal on which to sit.

During their efforts to ferry themselves to the forbidding walls, they
Were attacked from below as things formed of mud erupted upward!

Once again by their wits did the adventurers prevail, foiling
The plot of the mudmen to drown the band in the murky depths.

The band then crossed into White Watch through a breach in the walls,
And looked on with wariness as mountain mists writhed in the courtyard.

As the heroes began their searchings, out of the swirling whiteness
Came a host of undead, long-perished victims of a conflict of old.

As the band sought safety in White Watch's gatehouse towers, it was
Umitsu who once again struck off alone to explore.

The elf-woman made her way stealthily through the mist, nimbly avoiding
Contact with the walking dead until she came to the walls of a keep.

Meanwhile her comrades fought to hold back the outnumbering undead horde,
Barring the doors of the gatehouse towers before seeking a means of escape.

The party fought back against the gathering undead, striking some down
While the Jarith the cleric drove some off with the power of faith.

But there's was a skirmish fought in retreat, as the tide of abominations
Grew into a flood that threatened to crush life in skeletal hands.

And while they fled before the relentless unliving, it was Umitsu who
First detected a new threat from the sound of beating wings above.

As Umitsu hid as best she could in the shadow of the keep,
A hulking, winged beast landed nearby in the courtyard.

She heard it sniffing the mist-filled air, as if seeking the elf by scent,
And she caught a glimpse of a grey-skinned creature with leathery wings.

The rest of the party also heard the beating of wings and inhuman screeching
As they made their way from the gatehouse to the top of the fortress wall.

The adventurers were attacked from above by the winged beasts, which were
Terrible to behold, with ember eyes and horned heads and taloned hands.

The band was able to find shelter in another tower along the wall, and found the
Bodies of long-dead defenders within, while threatened by the flying things without.

And Umitsu, who avoided the winged creatures, found a door to the old keep, and
Stepping inside, saw a mummified warrior in armor, sitting upon a wooden throne.

As the elf watched, the dessicated corpse stirred with life, shifting in its seat as it
Opened its eyes, to reveal glowing points of light in deep sockets.

Shriveled hands, more bone than flesh, gripped tightly the hilt of an archaic sword,
As dry lips cracked and opened to speak in a voice harsh with untold centuries:

"You dare to enter this place? The living are not welcome in White Watch!" The elf
Fled, but not before glimpsing the corpse-warrior rising slowly from its throne!

Beyond the Westwall: Session 3 (6/26/13)

We had a more-than-packed house for session 3, as we were joined by a blast from the past! Our fellow gamer Wes has made his triumphant return to Wednesday night RPG action at All Things Fun! So, he took control of Gerard the fighter, bringing the current party total to five (including Pam's thief Vela, Bill's halfling Bogo, Josh's cleric Jarith, and Mark's elf Umitsu).

 

The party gathered again in the common room of the Wailing Banshee inn (including a shaken Umitsu, fresh from her psychic battle against...a tiny tentacled brain). Not long after they came together, a young boy ran in from the street, screaming about a "monster." The party investigated and saw a white figure shambling through the frozen mud of the street. Upon closer investigation, they saw that it wasn't a monster but rather a frost-covered young man. The group quickly ushered the young man into the Wailing Banshee, where they wrapped him in a blanket and gave him warm wine to drink.

The young man turned out to be Thomas, one of the three people who had been missing for nearly two weeks. As the party tried to communicate with him, Thomas slipped in and out of a catatonic stupor, and occasionally whispered the words "white watch." When he had moments of lucidity, the youth tried to relate the tale of where he had been for the previous days. All he could remember was going to sleep one night, and then waking up to find himself wandering in a snow-shrouded forest. Then, he remembered being "taken" by a strange force, after which he had only memories of darkness and terror until waking up just outside of town.

The group pondered what Thomas had told them, and surmised that he might have been lured by some sort of dark magic into the Lanisdown Forest, not far to the north of Westguard. The also considered paying a visit to Martha, the elderly woman who had also disappeared and then reappeared in town. Martha was reportedly still in a coma-like state.

Vela the thief considered asking Westguard's very small network of rogues for information. While the town is not large enough to support a true thieve's guild, there is a mysterious "crime lord" that has gathered a loose confederation of thieves and muscle, most of whom have "day jobs" in the small community. Vela is, thus far, not a member of this network. She made contact with someone, but when she was told that the price of information would be a "favor" that could be requested of her at any time, she decided to pass on the offer.

The group then decided to try and track down a sage, with the hope that they could learn more about where Thomas was held. They remembered once again the rumors of an ancient Bright Empire torture dungeon somewhere in the area, and wondered if there was a connection. However, the Lord Protector of Westguard, Tormund, is very hostile toward sages. He considers them troublesome sources of information that propagate rumors concerning ruins that contain lost treasure. Thus, many "adventurous fools" have met their demise when they've gone out into the countryside to seek riches. And, in general, Tormund believes that an educated population is prone to disobedience. So, as the leader of a frontier town surrounded by harsh wilderness, the last thing Tormund needs is dissidents questioning his method of rule.

Because of the Lord Protector's stance on sages, the handful in Westguard are secretive and hard to find. There is only one, a sage named Anton, who open advertises his services. Suffice to say that he is an object of harassment by Tormund's men. The group experienced this first-hand when they made their way to Anton's shop in the town's market square. As they knocked on the door to the sage's shop, they noticed two town guards watching them from across the square. Finally, Anton called through the barred door, telling the group to go away. Then, the guards confronted the party and told them to be on their way.

On their way back to the Wailing Banshee, the group heard an urgent whisper from a nearby alley. It was Anton, who had decided to follow them in secret and ask them what they wanted from him. The party discovered quickly that the sage was more than a bit pompous. When they told him of the sketchy details from Thomas, he mocked them. It was only when they mentioned the Bright Empire tomb and the mysterious cylinder they had found that Anton agreed to speak with them further at the inn...as long as they also agreed to buy him dinner.

While the rest of the group plied the arrogant sage with food and drink in an attempt to get information out of him, Vela and the fighter Gerard decided to sneak back to Anton's shop and break in, so that they could dig through whatever scrolls and tomes he might possess. Vela tried to unlock a window at the rear of the shop, but only succeeded to break the glass. The thief decided to go ahead with her mission and crawled through the window into Anton's bedchamber. But before she could do much searching, she heard a deep voice call out from beyond the bedroom door. She quickly crawled out of the window before someone entered the room. Vela and Gerard caught a glimpse of a huge figure enter the room and investigate briefly.

Gerard decided to go to the front door and knock, in order to distract whoever was inside the shop so that Vela could continue her investigations. This is how the fighter came face to face with Robar, Anton's brother. The sage's massive sibling towered over Gerard, and the two soon began a very confused conversation (Gerard has an Intelligence of 8, and player Wes decided he was a bit slow on the uptake most of the time).

In the meantime, Vela climbed back into the back bedroom and continued her search. All her efforts yielded was the fact that the majority of the books in Anton's bedroom discussed either the bizarre, decadent, and sometimes perverse exploits of ancient emperors or the properties of various fungi, especially mushrooms. She decided to chance sneaking into the main part of the shop, and was chagrined to discover that Anton did not have a very extensive collection of tomes. She signaled to Gerard that it was time to leave. The fighter gratefully broke off his repartee with the dim-witted Robar, and the pair made haste back to the inn.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group was having no real luck in dealing with Anton. In fact, the sage was about to leave the inn in a huff when the party mentioned that Thomas had muttered the words "white watch." Anton spun back to the group and began to relate the legend of a lost Bright Empire outpost called White Watch. It was supposed to be somewhere north of Lanisdown Forest, in the foothills of the Westwall. Anton himself had made the journey to that location, but had not been able to find the ruins of the outpost. After relating this information, the sage expressed doubt that the group could succeed in finding White Watch and left the inn. The party, of course, thought differently. They resolved to leave the next morning.

The following day, the party was traveling north through the forest. The Lanisdown Forest had long ago been "tamed," and is home to small outposts of loggers who supply timber to Westguard. However, the group came across a scene of carnage in the woods. The found bloodstains in the snow, and saw hastily abandoned saws and other tools. As they investigated, the party heard loud, inhuman shouts echoing through the still forest. Bogo the halfling used his wilderness stealth to investigate, and saw three ettins stomping through the forest toward his friends. He rushed back to warn them, and the party decided to set an ambush.

The party set up a crude trap involving rope and two long two-man saws, took positions along the road, and waited. Soon, they saw the ettins stride into view. Each of the two-headed giants was wearing the skin of a human tied around their necks, the boneless flesh flapping against their chests like grisly aprons. Lucky for the adventurers, the first ettin didn't notice their trap. The creature fell directly onto the saw blades, which tore into its belly. The second ettin stared in disbelief at its brother writhed in agony and blood spread out across the icy dirt road. The third ettin, however, was more wary than the others, and prepared to do battle.

At this point, we ran out of time for the night and had to end the session. The battle with the ettins continues in the next session...

Beyond the Westwall: Session 2 (6/5/13)

At the end of the first session, the party once again encountered a yellowish-green slime creature (or at least half of said creature) below the town of Westguard. They were running from a group of orcs, which had somehow dug their way to a secret entrance in a mysterious burial chamber that the group had discovered. Note that only two players were able to make it to session two: Mark (Umitsu the elf) and Josh (formerly Gerard the fighter, now a cleric named Jarith). I took control of Bill's halfling Bogo and Vela, Pam's thief, for the session.

The elf, Umitsu, was the only one of the party that lingered in the burial chamber, in order to see what the orcs were doing. The elf hid herself in a niche, burrowing under the skeleton therein, and waited. She watched as a rectangular block of stone, which had been the "false" back wall inside one of the tomb's niches, fell with a crash into the chamber. Out stumbled five orcs of the Blood Fist tribe, who proceeded to search the chamber. They quickly noticed the depression in the middle of the floor, which the party discovered had contained what looked like a scroll case sealed with a kind of combination lock. The orcs began arguing even more urgently among themselves when they realized someone else had been in the chamber before them.

Meanwhile, Jarith (Josh's new character), cleric of Phaeton, was making his way through the snowy streets of Westguard with two of his fellow holy men. They were going about to make sure that none of the townsfolk were suffering under ill effects brought about by the harsh winter conditions. Suddenly, one of the town guard came up to the clerics to ask for aid at the Wailing Banshee inn. They agreed and went to help.

Just before Jarith arrived at the ancient burial chamber, Umitsu decided to cast Sleep over the orcs, causing all but one of them to fall asleep. That made it very easy for the fighter Gerard (now under my control as an NPC) to kill the single still-conscious orc while Umitsu dispatched the sleeping humanoids with quick dagger thrusts. It was about this time that Jarith arrived on the scene (having dowsed the slime with dwarf spirits and set it aflame in order to gain access to the tunnel below the Wailing Banshee), and was aghast at the scene of slaughter in the tomb.

Unconcerned with the cleric's discomfiture, Umitsu crawled through the niche through which the orcs had entered the chamber. On the other side she found another burial chamber, very similar in design to the one she had just left. She noticed a jumbled pile of snow-covered masonry at the center of the chamber. Looking up, Umitsu saw where the chamber's ceiling had been broken open from above. Somehow, the orcs were drawn to an exact location above the burial chamber (and less than 200 feet outside the town's wall!) and proceeded to dig.

Then, Umitsu heard more guttural orc voices above, drifting down to her from the hole in the ceiling. She cast Floating Disk to plug the hole temporarily, much to the frustration and confusion of the orcs above.

Meanwhile, once he got over his initial shock, Jarith inspected the chamber while Umitsu looted the orc bodies and investigated the niche. Jarith saw an inscription on the chamber's mosaic that read "Phaeton shall return with the rising of the Great Sun, and will bring the Reunification." Curious to decipher what this might mean, the cleric returned to Westguard's temple of Phaeton to seek possible answers among the priesthood. A senior priest named Father Durnos received Jarith's news regarding the inscription with a sort of rushed introspection that was unlike the older priest. Indeed, Durnos seemed to drop the subject very quickly.
 

By that time, Umitsu had retired to her room in the Wailing Banshee, to see if she could puzzle out the combination for the mysterious cylinder/scroll case the group had found in the ancient Bright Empire burial chamber. She noticed almost immediately that the last dial to the right had one character that was different, a replacement for a symbol that was on the other six dials. She decided to start with that symbol and work from there, trying out combinations in a systematic, trial-and-error method (a prospect that could be very time-consuming indeed).

As the elf fiddled with the dials, she began to see dark shapes that seemed to lurk at the edges of her vision, and these shapes disappeared when she tried to look directly at them. Then, Umitsu began to hear wordless, sibilant whispering. Eventually, she fell under some sort of compulsion, and some force took control of her.

The room became colder and colder despite the fire in the room's wood-burning stove, and a window across from Umitsu frosted over. Then, as if written by an invisible finger, a sequence of symbols appeared on the glass. The elf, still under some powerful compulsion, used the sequence to open the cylinder. Inside she saw a small repulsive thing floating in some water-like solution, a thing that looked like a thumb-sized brain with several barbed tentacles radiating out from it. The force controlling her began to lift the cylinder to her mouth, as if to make her swallow the tiny brain-thing. With a last burst of willpower (i.e. Mark made his saving throw!), Umitsu was able to resist the force long enough to seal the cylinder once more and stow it away safely.

The session ended after that titanic psychic struggle. Hopefully, session three tomorrow night will find our group back together at the table-top, because I'm excited to keep the adventure rolling! 

Beyond the Westwall: Session 1 (5/29/13)

Well, I made my return to the GM's chair as of last Wednesday night (5/29/13), and it felt damn good! I'm running a new campaign using Labyrinth Lord (augmented by some house rules). As for the world which my players are exploring, I'm using a combination of Rob Conley's Points of Light and Blackmarsh settings.

Our story begins in the hamlet of Westguard, which lies to the west of the Grand Kingdom. Indeed, the hamlet is currently the only outpost of said kingdom in the frontier beyond the Westwall mountain range (and thus the name of the campaign). Scattered across the landscape are the ruins of a much older civilization called the Bright Empire, which fell centuries ago.

It is deep winter, and the region has been under a heavy pall of clouds for weeks. During that time, snow has fallen almost continuously. Thus, Westguard has struggled to keep its lanes free of mountainous snow drifts, and the locals find it difficult to move about the town without great difficulty.

The first session opened with our intrepid party of adventurers (seemingly) safe and warm in (where else?) the common room of an inn called The Wailing Banshee (very original, no?). The PCs include a female thief named Vela (Pam), a female elf named Umitsu (Mark), a male halfling named Bogo (Bill), and a male fighter named Gerard (Josh).

The thief proceeded to case the crowd in the common room and cut the purse from a drunken sailor as he caroused with his fellow seamen. Bogo distracted the sailors with some halfling drinking songs to make Vela's work easier. The elf amused herself by putting rats to sleep in the common room. Gerard was fixing for a good brawl.

Umitsu decided to ask the lascivious proprietor, Tanner, if he needed any help with his rat problem. After leering at the elf and getting slapped on the head for his trouble by his wife Cecilia, he agreed to pay the elf a small sum if she could clear out his cellar. Umitsu agreed, but when the proprietor continued to leer at her, she slapped him hard enough to knock him out. The wife, Cecilia (who, rumor has it, was the inspiration for the inn's name), applauded the elf's actions and bade Umitsu continue on her assignment to clear the rats in the cellar. Umitsu took Gerard with her, in order to keep him out of trouble if nothing else. This all occurred while the thief and halfling were robbing the sailors.

The halfling, Bogo, also took it upon himself to listen in on conversations. In this way, the group heard rumors of a dungeon built by the decadent Bright Empire centuries before. It's said that the dungeon was used by the ancient emperors to torture enemies of the state for entertainment, and is supposed to be filled with all manner of deadly traps...and perhaps riches. Bogo also learned of a recent rash of disappearances among the townsfolk. Four people have gone missing, with one elderly woman returning as suddenly as she had disappeared. The woman has been in a coma since her return, with no one able to wake her (not even the priests of the town's temple to Phaeton, the god worshipped in the Grand Kingdom).

In the cellar, Umitsu found a good many rats and put them to sleep...but then noticed that one back wall of the cellar was pulsing. Gerard lit a torch and, to their horror, they saw that a ten-foot-square section of the cellar wall was covered with some sort of yellow-green slime. When Gerard tried to take a closer look, a pseudopod lashed out from the wall and slapped against his armor.

It was then that Vela and Bogo went down into the cellar to check on their allies. Reunited, the group decided to do something about the wall-clinging slime. In short order, they managed to melt away sections of the slime with a torch, but not before the slime split into two halves: one of which slipped behind a rack of ale casks, and one of which sucked itself into a crack in the wall. Upon inspection, the group felt air flowing through said crack, and decided to break through the wall.

Before they could finish, however, two town guards came down into the cellar, looking to arrest Umitsu. They had been called by one of Tanner's daughters, who happens to be a barmaid at the Wailing Banshee. The party told the guards about the slime, and when one of the guards poked a sword between some ale casks, a pseudopod lashed out at him. The guards were spooked and ran off to obtain the help of a magic-user on the town's payroll.

The party broke through the cellar wall and found a tunnel, but no sign of the slime. They moved down the length of the tunnel and came to a circular chamber. In the walls of the chamber were carved niches, each of which held a human skeleton dressed in decaying rags that once might have been fine robes. The floor was covered with a mosaic depicting the face of Phaeton, surrounded by the faces of other ancient gods including Sarrath, who the ancients believed ruled over the underworld (Phaeton eventually became the primary human god, with the other gods become "angels" or, in Sarrath's case, the equivalent of the Christian Devil).

Closer inspection of the mosaic found that one of Phaeton's gemstone eyes was actually a sort of button. When pressed, the circular section of the floor depicting Phaeton's face dropped a few feet into the floor. This revealed a small hole in which rested a tiny ornate chest. Inside the chest was a strange cylinder similar to a scroll case. This case, however, seemed to be protected by a combination lock of sorts: along the length of the case were seven dials with seven symbols each (the symbols being letters from the language of the Bright Empire).

As the group was inspecting the strange cylinder, they heard a grinding of stone. To their shock, they saw one of the skeletons was rocking in its niche. This, they discovered, was due to the rear section of the niche being pushed inward. They could also hear guttural voices that, as Umitsu discerned, were speaking the language of goblins and orcs.

As the party began to leave hastily from the chamber, the elf watched as the stone at the rear of the niche fell into the burial chamber, revealing the forms of five orcs fighting over who would enter the chamber first. They spoke of an orc named Orog, presumably a chieftain of their tribe, and how something in the chamber had been "calling" to him and driving him mad. Orog had received visions of the chamber's location, and the orcs had somehow tunneled to it, despite the frozen ground.

As the majority of the party drew near the cellar, they noticed a disturbing sight: the yellow-green slime had stretched itself across the opening in the tunnel. It seemed they were now caught between the slime and some angry orcs...