Episode 0.5: If Looks Could Kill Report

General Summary

Spin-offs & Sidequests One-shot - “If Looks Could Kill” Weekend of 8/30/2019 and 8/20/2020 Post-Game Notes   PC’s Elodie Azucar, hexer (Rex) Gilbert Duden and his dog, Sprudel, rat-hunter (Donald) Dieter Desch, body-snatcher (Matt H.) Fritz Lander, apprentice artist (Sergio) Bombe Jager, trapper (Cameron   30 Vorgeheim, 2512 I.C.   Morning. Coaching inn just outside Messingen on the Ubersreik-Stimmigen road. PC’s had hired a pair of self-employed coach drivers, operating their own coach, to take them into Ubersreik, no questions asked.   News fills the taproom that, because of a high-profile murder in the Morganseite district of Ubersreik last night, just a few weeks after a riot in the Marktplatz, the city is under lockdown. May be very difficult to get a coach full of rogues through the gates.   A rowdy mercenary group arrives and the coach drivers abandon the PC’s in order to help this band on an excursion west towards the Grey Mountains.

• Elodie tries to magically sleight-of-hand-snatch a note held by the lead merc, but only succeeds in floating a random napkin from behind the bar.

A pair of Strigany at a nearby table overhear of the PC’s plight and offer to share some wine, and news of a job offer.

• Reiko, a boat captain, has been hired by a merchant from Ubersreik to transport building materials south along the Verfelfluss to a site along the Grausee, where he is constructing a textile mill. This merchant, Rutger Reuter, is always looking for hard-working folk and he pays well.
• PC’s agree; they finish the bottle and head down to the riverbank.

On the boat they meet Reuter, who is a bit of a fop, but seems nice enough.   Meet other gypsies, including an old near-blind woman names Vadoma who freaks out when they get closer to the Grausee. Area is haunted and cursed… “Beast of the Ortschlamm..” blah blah. Other gypsies recommend ignoring her.   Afternoon. Sailing upriver towards Grausee.

• Boat hits some hidden rocks and the old barge immediately starts taking on water. PC’s keep their footing, but old Vadoma is tossed into the icy river.
• Her thrashing in the river attracts the attention of a large stirpike downriver that makes a beeline for the old woman.
• Gilbert bravely jumps into the water to try and rescue her; Bombe tries fending off the giant fish with arrows.
• Bombe misses every shot, but Gilbert heroically retrieves Vadoma and is hauled back onto the sinking boat just in time to avoid the stirpike’s jaws.
• Boat beaches on the riverbank and PC’s help with the salvage effort, including the paychest containing the funds for the building enterprise.

  Late afternoon. Trudging through the mist towards the jobsite.

• A grateful Reiko tells the PC’s more about the operation: Rutger has partnered with another merchant family, the Stieglers, to build this mill. Johanna Stiegler is at the site, and the two partners seldom get along. They hired a dwarf engineer named Thurgrim to oversee the labor.
• Yes, there are stories of the area being haunted and, yes, it is always covered in brownish-gray mist. But most things are haunted, yes? We finish work and we move on.

Early evening. Jobsite between the river and the lake, not far from the town of Grausee and just east of the Ortschlamm swamp.

• PC’s arrive and meet Thurgrim, the dwarven foreman. Reuter tries to make a case for paying the PC’s extra for salvaging the supplies from the boat.
• Thurgrim leads PC’s to Johanna Stiegler’s trailer, where she apparently just had some gruff words with a shifty peasant. Peasant sulks away from campsite and heads north.
• Johanna is bleary-eyed and bitchy; just wants to sleep. Agrees that she’ll consider payment in the morning, but she’s not happy about Reuter’s spendthrift management.
• PC’s invited to eat and camp with the Strigany.
• All of them have fitful nights of sleep, plagued by nightmares.

  31 Vorgeheim   Morning. Ready to work.

• Only Bombe remembers his nightmare (and is fatigued as a result): something about being buried under an ominous moon that transforms from an eye to a flood…
• Thurgrim brings breakfast and a task: topple the seven ogham stones on the far side of the camp, Strigany won’t go near them, but if they’re excavated, he can convince them to haul them away.

  Through the Afternoon. Digging up and toppling the stones.

• Six smaller stones are roughly hewn of granite, and covered in lichen and bugs.
• Center stone is eight feet tall, roughly hexagonal, and made of basalt. No lichen clings to it, and nothing living comes within a foot of its base. One face, wider than the rest, once bore a series of pictographs, long since chiseled away.
• Fritz, the sculptor, recognizes that the vandalism happened within the last hundred years or so, but the stone is much older. Below the surface of the soil, the pictographs continue, undamaged.
• Elodie, the witch, gets major bad vibes from the center stone: wisps of Dhar, dark magic, cling like tentacles around its base. She wants nothing to do with digging it up.
• Dieter, the grave robber, doesn’t gaf and gets right in there, digging and excavating. He interprets the remaining scenes as the story of a tribe of giant cyclopean creatures, led by a witch, who enslaved smaller humanoids in the area and had command of a giant beast that is depicted being able to shoot lightning from its eyes. Dieter correctly intuits that this center obelisk is a grave marker for that witch, and he gets right to work locating the sarcophagus.
• When the center stone is toppled, a spell seems to be broken: mist clears up, spirits lighten.
• Elodie causes a distraction so the other workers don’t see them going above and beyond (while digging up the grave). She produces a small animal (crow) which she quickly enchants with a second spell and sends to the far end of the camp to buzz and annoy the Strigany.
• In the process she commits not one, but two, minor miscasts. The first sours all the milk in the area; the second more heinous miscast causes all alcohol in the area to go bitter and foul.
• PC’s locate the flooded sarcophagus and the skeletal remains of a giant creature with a triangular head. They recover six crudely crafted gold torcs from her body, which Dieter hides in his wheelbarrow when returning to the campsite.

Late afternoon. PC’s join Strigany by the campfire for food, song, and dance. After a while the gypsies don’t seem to mind the foul wine.

• Fritz is uncharacteristically charming, and a Strigany named Mutras thanks him for saving Vadoma by swapping boots with him. Fritz’s new boots are fine, worn leather with intricate stitching.
• Eel stew! Pretty, good, yes?
• Thurgrim is impressed with PC’s work, and promises to go find Reuter so they can unlock the paychest and give them their seven shilling apiece. He returns a short time later saying he can’t find the useless bastard anywhere.
• PC’s aid in the search and follow a trail of flattened grass and large three-toed footprints to the water’s edge. Reuter’s dead body is face up, his right arm torn away. His face, however, is serene.
• Strigany lose their shit screaming about the Beast being real. They all start packing up to leave camp.
• Thurgrim grabs the paychest key from Reuter’s neck just as Johanna shows up cursing and fuming. She offers a purse of ten gold crowns to whomever brings her the head of the creature that killed Reuter. Gypsies want no part of this adventure, but the PC’s are down.

Early evening. PC’s (and Sprudel!) take a rowboat across the Verferfluss to track the beast.

• Tracks lead through the dense thicket-y islands of the Ortschlamm swamp. Bombe notices that many of the tracks look deliberate and unnatural.
• Through a dense patch of dead birch trees PC’s come across three screaming foragers running away from a twenty-foot basilisk rampaging out of a tarn. The basilisk looks ancient, with gray skin, an emaciated frame, and missing teeth. Still. Basilisk.
• Gilbert and Sprudel freak out and join the three locals in looking for cover. Bombe tries to hop to higher ground, but slips in the muck, breaks his bow, and injures himself.
• Dieter starts waving his torc around, and the glittery metal succeeds in getting the beast’s attention. Here it comes.
• Elodie draws her dagger and rushes the monster, poking it in the rear and drawing first blood.
• Fritz pulls out his gypsy hammer and flanks the beast alongside Elodie and starts waling. Dieter does the same at the monster’s side.
• 
  Beast rolls back some extra eyelid folds and starts prepping the ol’ petrifying gaze. Fritz, thanks to an innate ubercoolness, is unfazed, but Elodie is stunned. Beast follows that up with a devastating tail whip that crushes Elodie, knocks her down, gives her a concussion, and causes her to pass out face-down in the swamp water. Uh oh.
• Dieter and Fritz land a series of punishing blows that cause the beast to break and make a run for it. Fritz and Bombe finish it off.
• Fritz pulls Elodie’s face out of the mud.
• In the aftermath, Dieter notices one of the foragers, Frederick, trying to hide something under some foliage. Upon investigating (despite Frederick’s protestations), Dieter finds an unusual cane doctored at the base to create giant three-toed footprints. Hol’up, yells Dieter. As Frederick confesses to Dieter, the other two, surrounded by Fritz, Bombe, and the newly courageous Gilbert, try to get away. Fritz tackles Hans to the mud, and Gilbert tackles Gurdt. On the far end of the tarn, Dieter sticks out his foot and trips Frederick.
• Confession time: they killed Reuter, on Johanna’s direction. That idiot was ruining the whooole operation.

Late evening, back at the camp. PC’s return with tied-up rascals to an abandoned camp.

• Reiko, Vadoma, and a younger gypsy (who was watching over Dieter’s belongings) remained.
• Thurgrim stole the paychest and escaped during the exodus. Could be headed to Ubersreik, or perhaps towards the Grey Mountains.
• Johanna is still here, over by her trailer…
• Vadoma offers some healing to Elodie.
• The PC’s interrogate Johanna.
• She had not been herself for days, consumed by the enchantments that were since dispelled when the obelisk was toppled.
• But Reuter was a clown! He was going to ruin the entire operation with his mismanagement and profligate spending.
• Surprisingly, she gives the PC’s the promised pouch of 10 gold crowns and admits defeat. But… before you decide to bring her and her lackeys to the authorities, here’s another idea:
• Come with me to Ubersreik and help me find Thurgrim. Recover that paychest for me and I’ll give you 10% of what’s inside.
• Sounds good!

Interlude:   33 Vorgeheim, 2512 IC   “I still don’t like the idea of letting those three idiots loose.” Bombe grumbles in the back of the trailer, to no one in particular. The party had traveled through the night, stopping only for food and water, and were due to arrive at Ubersreik’s southern gate shortly after dawn. Gilbert rides atop the coach alongside Johanna, a suspicious, growling Sprudel perched between. The other four begin to rouse within the wagon.   “Oh ya, I understand your reservations.” Fritz, somehow still in a good mood, provides the response that Bombe wasn’t looking for. “But if we bring in these men, the authorities they are having questions, these men tell story… Our new friend Johanna is locked away, ya? Or worse.”   “She’s not my friend.” Dieter, just waking up, seems to agree with Bombe. “I’m starting to think that she expected those three brigands to ambush and kill us when we followed them into the swamp.”   “Good luck with that.” Bombe perks up. “We took down a basilisk!”   “I like how you say ‘we,’ my friend. ‘We’ were very very grateful for the way you splashed and frolicked in the mud, ya?” Fritz pats Bombe’s boot. “Very distracting to the beastie!”   “Not without cost, though.” Dieter looks over at Elodie in front of the trailer, sleeping fitfully, her face swollen purple. “I know we need to find this dwarf’s whereabouts, but I need to find Elodie a proper doctor first. As soon as we enter the city.”   “Gilbert says the local rat-catcher’s guild is a good place to get information. Thinking of heading there first, and we can meet up after you’ve tended to Elodie.” Bombe turns to Fritz. “Whaddayasay Fritzy? Wanna come talk to some of Gilbert’s peoples?” “Oh, ya, that sounds like a promising place to look for a dwarf, ya. But, no, I think I will find the dirtiest, most dangerous tavern on the docks! I will go there and I will hire --” Fritz gives his compatriots a wink. “-- hire a true investigator! No offense to you or your very fine tracking skills my little friend.”   “No offense taken.” Bombe is offended. “I’m more of an… outdoors investigator.”   “Ya, well! This will be fun, ya!”   * * *

Rewards Granted

Loot: Possibly magic stealthy boots (Fritz) 10 GC   XP: 25 points for saving Vadoma’s life (Gilbert) 25 points for lifting the curse (Dieter, Fritz, and Elodie) 50 points for killing the Beast of the Ortschlamm (Dieter, Fritz, and Elodie) 25 points for dealing with Stiegler and her brigands (Dieter, Fritz, and Elodie) 35 points for the initial session (all) 35 points for the wrap-up session (Dieter, Fritz, and Elodie)   Elodie: 170 Dieter: 170 Fritz: 170 Gilbert: 60 Bombe: 35