Dramatis Personae

Previously . . .

Last time the PCs were hunkering down for a snowstorm in a cave. There is a spirit somewhere in the cave, sensed by Ryeleah, and the PCs are a bit on edge because of it. There are wolf pups. Ryeleah also found a hidden map on the airship.

 

Still Lost and Cold

Fyadhiel, Gaffer, Galen Fallowhide, Ryeleah Lopek, and Waraxe Mandrake
??? (First Month), 12th, 981 F.R., 6th Hour of the Sun (12:00 pm)
The Hinterlands, Abolethe (“The Span”)

Ryeleah tries to Materialize the spirit. A giant wolf appears in the den, glowing blue. It looks angry. It charges us to take care of the wolf pups and nurture them, and when they are full grown they can make their own choice. The PCs killed all of her other children . . . The players decry “self defense.” The wolf spirit’s name is Meheegani. Ryeleah knows that she is one of the daughters of Morag, a divine wolf being that sits at the right hand of Ilios – The God of Death. The PCs get a choice: get cursed for their actions or raise the pups until they can fend for themselves. They chose the latter.

Meheegani stops draining Ryeleah’s fatigue via her magic. Instead, the minor goddess/totem/spirit lays an odd-looking knife at the feet of Galen and Fyadheil. She talks to the pups in the language of the wolves who let out whines, as something passes between them. Then the spirit disappears in a long, mournful howl, and the blizzard kicks up bad outside. The knives that Fyadhiel and Galen got appear to be made out of ivory or bone. They feel odd, almost as if they are alive. Fyadhiel recognizes that it exists in the spirit world and the real world at the same time.

the PCs try to survive through the night. Gaffer and Ryeleah take 1 LFP because of the cold. The PCs make a whole bunch of rolls, one for each 30 minutes; 16 rolls over 8 hours. Lots of them take LFP. Waraxe takes +1 LFP, Gaffer takes no more, thanks to some arctic clothing he’s able to hack together out of furs and magical gremian farts, Ryeleah takes another +9 LFP (10 total) . . . except doesn’t get that far, and runs and jumps into the hot springs, getting back 3 LFP (net 7). (I didn’t get Galen’s count.) Max takes 11 LFP, but gets back 4 from dunking in the water (net 7). Gaffer makes a makeshift suit for Max.

Fyadhiel, fancy-pants elf, goes hunting after the blizzard. He comes across a grizzly. Shoots it, field dresses it, brings back lots of meat and fur. It takes him 3 hours to butcher the 1,500 lb bear, and garners 70% of it as meat. Aside: the PCs scavenged a bunch of stuff from the airship. One of them is an enchanted skillet that Galens covets

Meanwhile. The PCs are looking at the map that Ryeleah found. It is a current map of the area, very detailed cartograph of the Span. There are some notes inked on, and some sections highlighted in charcoal. There’s a spot up in the Hinterlands (to the North), where they start meeting the mountains. It’s circled, and says “Taskar.” Ryeleah knows that it’s the name of a city that’s supposed to be lost about 4,000 years ago right at the fall of the Empire of Nythus in the West – right after the Everstorm was created. Eventually, the people in Nythus tried to enslave the Note of Fie (a primordial being of flame). They succeeded for about a day; brought it closer to the earth and tapped its energies. This unbalanced the elements, and the Note of Water was forced to incarnate further on Aersalus, creating the Everstorm. In return, the Note of Fire (now freed) cursed the Nythusians creating the Tahwah-Sa – the Consuming Sands.

People were fleeing, but some stayed in ruins of the giant city of Haldervarn, and learned the secrets of the giants who were masters of necromancy and diabolry. Eventually they formed a powerful thamaturgic city-state; they had a large chunk of Nythusian magical teachings. Most of the city had been destroyed, but for a single tower and a lot of land below the ground. About 1,000 years before the Godsfall the Taskari tried to do something, and a massive earthquake sheared it off of the side of the continent, and it got lost; nobody knows exactly where it is. It’s supposedly a fable, people have been hunting for it forever because of the wealth of magic and treasure there. The spot marked Taskar is not too terribly far from the PCS (about 300 miles) on the map. (PC Complaints: “Wait, that’s not too terribly far?”) There are a couple of hamlets on the map; the closest one is about 200 miles away, and is probably the fire source that Ryeleah detected before.

Galen tries to tend to the captain in a coma. Bad pressure in his head. Galen is going to try to drill a hole in the head. This relieves the pressure; captain comes to for a few moments, passes out. The yeoman, Bruges, is very happy to see him moving. The captain can’t be moved for at least 10 days if the PCs want him to live. (A week is 10 days in Aersalus.) Gaffer makes a bunch of sets of arctic clothing for everybody so they can survive the cold without being a complete disaster. Everybody also gets a wolfskin cloak. Gaffer upgrades our camp. Patching holes in the bridge to the hot springs, puts in a pump. This starts to make it mighty comfortable.

Homeward Bound

Fyadhiel, Gaffer, Galen Fallowhide, Ryeleah Lopek, and Waraxe Mandrake
??? (First Month), 22nd, 981 F.R., 11th Hour of the Sun (5:00 pm)
Camaronok, Dancorra Bay, Abolethe (“The Span”)

The PCs wait for the blizzard to fully pass and then start to hike toward civilization gathering food on the way. There are 11 people moving (including the other survivors), Moon-Moon, and the seven wolf pups. This insanely long hike takes 22 days. By the time they get to the village, the yeoman is fully healed up, thanks to the ministration of Gaelen. No encounter on the way.

The settlement, Camaronok, is tiny. Barely qualifies as a village; maybe 300 people tops. Open glade, bunch of farms, logging camp. They do have an inn – The Blue Lamp with a bar that has some very good local spirits. The PCs drink – a lot. Ryeleah tells stories. Kadu (the owner inkeeper/bartender) is a good listener. The inn is made of stone. Beds aren’t second story, but rather underground. Kadu is a dwarf, the local blacksmith is a dwarf, there is a small population of dwarves here. Gaffer maintains some knives, does such a good job that he and Kadu become friends, who gives him some gear to repair. Also tells us that there are some orcs that have been more active than recently.

Galen does some healing; one person he’s healing has a huge laceration on his back, hip to shoulder. The guy was on a orc scouting party, and the other two died. Gaffer finds somebody else who was there at the last raid. He can give us directions to where the orcs were; he’s worried they’ve set up a base camp around here somewhere. Normally they stay in the hills, but they’re really close by now.

Slipslidin Away

Fyadhiel and Ryeleah Lopek
??? (First Month), 22nd, 981 F.R., 2nd Hour of the Moon (8:00 pm)
Outside of Camaronok, Dancorra Bay, Abolethe (“The Span”)

Fyadhiel scouts; Ryeleah goes with him, both of them Invisible. The orcs have a couple of shamans, and are set up in an old mine. Abandoned mine. Forest nearby. Orcs are heavily disciplined; rotating guards, patterns do not match. Some semblance of military discipline. Weapons are well-maintained. They have several worgs. Ryeleah can sense that they seem to be pretty excited, as if celebrating a recent raid. They’re eating . . . human. The cut of the mine is dwarven. They don’t see any entrance other than the primary one. There are ~20 guards who rotate (watching for hours). There are almost certainly more inside. They are acting as if they have a job to do. These orcs are very disciplined for orcs; most orcs are nutso. Ryeleah recognizes some of the tribal devices via a Hearldry skill roll; the orcs are of the Durgash, clan who are known for warg-breeding, using wargs as calvary, and are excellent tracker/hunters. If they’re not in their homeland, then they’re looking for someone or something.

Ryeleah spots a second back entrance that the orcs evidently don’t know about. (Air shaft carved out by dwarves, probably.) Fyadhiel climbs, looks down into air shaft. It’s a bit tight, but it leads right down into the mines. He climbs down in to look… and goes sliding down the shaft and ends up in a room.

Uh oh.

Aftermath

. . .

After Action Report (GM)

. . .

Footnotes

None.