Episode 4: Howls in the Dark
General Summary
The session started off with a grueling trek up the mountain. After the heroes got their reward for saving the countryside from gremishka, they made the journey to the mining village of Smoothmouth, where they met Havgir, a human tradeswoman who runs the Goat's Coat, the equipment surplus store of the town. She has all the gear. While the party didn't have the money to directly pay for the equipment to make it up the mountain, Havgir offered an exchange, she'll give them the coats and tack they need if they go into the woods to kill the redcap that has been terrorizing the locals. Redcaps are wicked fey creatures that sustain themselves by bathing their red leather hats in the blood of their victims; should their caps ever dry, they would disappear as if they never existed.
The redcap barely lasted two rounds before having its head caved in with bullets.
Havgir gave the party the promised gear, and everyone set off into the mountainside. It was a rough trek for a few days, the road proved more difficult than planned, which added two days onto their travel. On the way, the party ran into a white dragon wyrmling. It attacked the horse from above, attempting to steal their mode of transportation as a meal for now and maybe capture the party as a meal for later, but Charles told it to fuck off, the wyrmling called him a peasant for speaking in the common tongue, Valan shot it with his gun, Tyra protected the horse, and Valeria dropped another dragon on top of it, which promptly scared it off.
After a brief run in with a yeti and a beleaguered exchange with Fucking Todd the Gate Guy, everyone made it safely to Sirenwall, the citadel of the Tenebric Vanguard. After a brief drinking game, the second in command Synod had a conversation with the party about where the Vagabond might have gone. He said that Idris had stopped by about five days back to drop off a package in his room that was not to be opened until the Autumnal Equinox; the Vanguard's birthday. He also said that he was going to Ignix to catch a ship, but he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that, so keep that between guild members. By Synod's best guess, the Vagabond was doing what he does best; finding somewhere quiet to lay low for a few years until this either blows over or blows up until no one is concerned about who started it anymore.
So naturally, the next logical progression was to break into his bedroom and steal all his stuff. The Vagabond had a dragon's hoard of wealth stored up in his bedroom, magic items adorned his walls and closet in addition to an old portrait of himself, the Speaker, and Leonidas. Most importantly, there was a discreet bag of holding which contained 2.5 million in platinum pieces. Out of character, a moral deliberation was held and conspiring happened. In the end everyone took at least two or three or six magic items from his stash in addition to discrete bags that appeared to be more discrete bags of holding, and of course some of the platinum off the top. A skimmers fee. Just a bit.
After spending a warm night in a good bed after a month on the road, the players headed east with clear heads on all their shoulders. Just kidding, they caroused, some of them ended up in jail, and hit the road with massive hangovers in tow.
The road east was incredibly quick. It passed through the temperate forest along the northern coast of the Fulminarian Empire, so on the road with a cart through Valeria's favored terrain on a path which Valan had recently travelled, what would normally have been another 25 day journey was cut down to 10. But what an eventful ten days they were.
On the fourth night, the party experienced a terrifying braying that came from the woods around them. A very frightened Callisto, Tyra, and Charles wanted to run away, but nonetheless Charles and Valeria send their draconic companions to investigate what was going on. Upon locating the source of the sound, they found a dark hound hunched over a fresh kill. As they approached, it lifted its head and brayed again, swiveling an unnaturally long neck around to look at those who were approaching, revealing a furry humanoid face attached to the canine body. A terrifying picture complete with glowing red eyes and blood soaked maw, which lifted up its legs and, hovering, chased the other creatures off of its kill. Come morning, the creature was gone and so was the stag.
The next day, more whooping and hollering could be heard from the woods, sewing more fear among the party, especially Callisto. A satyr jumped out of the woods after seeing that most of the party wasn't scared and introduced itself to the party. He said his name is Pan, the god of Panic and the Wilds. He then gave a very complicated explanation on how maybe he isn't so much of a god but more a force of nature, like Gravity or Logos. Just sort of their since before the beginning. Or maybe he was created when the first mortals experienced panic or thought and he was created as a physical manifestation of the feeling. He wasn't sure; he drinks a lot. He explained to them that the creature they saw last night was a Yeth Hound, a creature of ill omen that follow him around, and gifted the party a set of pipes of haunting before scurrying back off into the woods.
If you've read this far, send me a Venmo of like $0.01 with something funny and D&D related in the comment section. Maybe like a goofy riddle or joke or something. I'll Venmo it back to you with a response and I'll make it worth your while with some I N S P I R A T I O N B A B B YYYYYYY for you to have going into next session. It's technically not a microtransaction since I'm sending it back to you, but of all the coupon codes I've used so far this comes the closest to it.
A few days later in the journey, looking for a place to spend the night, the party found a strange set of ruins unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was positioned a little ways off the side of the road, covered in moss and vines, you would miss it if you hadn't been looking for a place to stop in this exact little stretch of woods. The ruins were strange, like a synthesis of dwarven and elvish architecture with elements of human mixed in as well. Above the door in, there is a strange symbol that looked like three vertical slashes on a shield. And a bear. There was also a bear. Which Charles scared off with the pipes of haunting.
Going inside, the group passed through a maze of corridors, finding what looked to be a ruined war room and a secret safe room hidden behind a bookshelf. In the room beyond, there is a dead body of a House Bouclier soldier, about 40 years passed on, in a room with heavy sealed stone doors on one side and a mural on the other. The mural showed an individual standing at the top of a tower, arms outstretched above them, with a gem floating above their head. Coursing from the gem is a torrential waterfall of darkness which pours upward through sixteen concentric rings, each with a separate motif dictated inside their circle, and finally into the sky above. Valeria found that the gem in the center of the beam was a button which opened the doors at the back of the room.
On the other side of the doors was a grisly scene. A group of Bouclier soldiers as well as an ambassador of House Porte, the ambassador house of the Theocracy, were found dead here, killed by arrows and weapons of the Theocracy in an apparent betrayal. Valeria recognized this as the missing emissaries, a group that was to travel to Ignix shortly after the peace was struck, but never arrived. Rumor has it that the Matriarch didn't want them to go, but they insisted on going with or without her blessing, and so they went without it.
In the center of the room, there is a midnight blue banner with three rising silver stars emblazoned on it. Upon closer inspection, this banner must have been several millennia old, but held intact by some sort of magic. Beneath it, a soldier wielding a cross pike is found. It is the ancient weapon Argentia, a silvered set of dual glaives which are made from the body of Arctiax himself and given to his most trusted warrior; a set of weapons that has been missing since the peace was struck. As Valeria took the set of weapons, the body of the warrior who held them collapsed into dust. On the breeze, Valeria thought she could hear a voice whisper "wield it with wisdom," but it could have just been the wind.
So that'll be a fun thing to revisit.
Just before arriving in the capital city of Ignix, the party comes across another gruesome sight. A recent fight had taken place on the road, leaving a man with his brains splayed across the road for the ravens, another with his intestines pulled across the road by scavenging animals, and a woman with a hole in her throat on the side of the road. At a cursory medicine check, they appeared to have been killed with a firearm and could not have been dead more than two days; they all still have their eyes, and if were any more than a recent fight crows and other carrion would have long since devoured the jelly orbs.
From a little ways off the road, a voice called to the party, drawing their attention to a bandits blind, where a man lay dying. He introduced himself as Dyvin and told the party that he and his friends had accosted a man on this road not two days prior and he had riddled them with holes. Dyvin was the only survivor at the time, but the bullet in his gut lodged in his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down and giving him little hope beyond wishing to bleed out beneath the night sky. Fortunately for him, Tyra and Charles managed to stabilize him, preventing him from bleeding out. Unfortunately for him, he is still paralyzed.
We left off as the cart laden with adventurers and also Dyvin rolled into the port city of Ignix, capital of the Fulminarian Empire.
The redcap barely lasted two rounds before having its head caved in with bullets.
Havgir gave the party the promised gear, and everyone set off into the mountainside. It was a rough trek for a few days, the road proved more difficult than planned, which added two days onto their travel. On the way, the party ran into a white dragon wyrmling. It attacked the horse from above, attempting to steal their mode of transportation as a meal for now and maybe capture the party as a meal for later, but Charles told it to fuck off, the wyrmling called him a peasant for speaking in the common tongue, Valan shot it with his gun, Tyra protected the horse, and Valeria dropped another dragon on top of it, which promptly scared it off.
After a brief run in with a yeti and a beleaguered exchange with Fucking Todd the Gate Guy, everyone made it safely to Sirenwall, the citadel of the Tenebric Vanguard. After a brief drinking game, the second in command Synod had a conversation with the party about where the Vagabond might have gone. He said that Idris had stopped by about five days back to drop off a package in his room that was not to be opened until the Autumnal Equinox; the Vanguard's birthday. He also said that he was going to Ignix to catch a ship, but he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that, so keep that between guild members. By Synod's best guess, the Vagabond was doing what he does best; finding somewhere quiet to lay low for a few years until this either blows over or blows up until no one is concerned about who started it anymore.
So naturally, the next logical progression was to break into his bedroom and steal all his stuff. The Vagabond had a dragon's hoard of wealth stored up in his bedroom, magic items adorned his walls and closet in addition to an old portrait of himself, the Speaker, and Leonidas. Most importantly, there was a discreet bag of holding which contained 2.5 million in platinum pieces. Out of character, a moral deliberation was held and conspiring happened. In the end everyone took at least two or three or six magic items from his stash in addition to discrete bags that appeared to be more discrete bags of holding, and of course some of the platinum off the top. A skimmers fee. Just a bit.
After spending a warm night in a good bed after a month on the road, the players headed east with clear heads on all their shoulders. Just kidding, they caroused, some of them ended up in jail, and hit the road with massive hangovers in tow.
The road east was incredibly quick. It passed through the temperate forest along the northern coast of the Fulminarian Empire, so on the road with a cart through Valeria's favored terrain on a path which Valan had recently travelled, what would normally have been another 25 day journey was cut down to 10. But what an eventful ten days they were.
On the fourth night, the party experienced a terrifying braying that came from the woods around them. A very frightened Callisto, Tyra, and Charles wanted to run away, but nonetheless Charles and Valeria send their draconic companions to investigate what was going on. Upon locating the source of the sound, they found a dark hound hunched over a fresh kill. As they approached, it lifted its head and brayed again, swiveling an unnaturally long neck around to look at those who were approaching, revealing a furry humanoid face attached to the canine body. A terrifying picture complete with glowing red eyes and blood soaked maw, which lifted up its legs and, hovering, chased the other creatures off of its kill. Come morning, the creature was gone and so was the stag.
The next day, more whooping and hollering could be heard from the woods, sewing more fear among the party, especially Callisto. A satyr jumped out of the woods after seeing that most of the party wasn't scared and introduced itself to the party. He said his name is Pan, the god of Panic and the Wilds. He then gave a very complicated explanation on how maybe he isn't so much of a god but more a force of nature, like Gravity or Logos. Just sort of their since before the beginning. Or maybe he was created when the first mortals experienced panic or thought and he was created as a physical manifestation of the feeling. He wasn't sure; he drinks a lot. He explained to them that the creature they saw last night was a Yeth Hound, a creature of ill omen that follow him around, and gifted the party a set of pipes of haunting before scurrying back off into the woods.
If you've read this far, send me a Venmo of like $0.01 with something funny and D&D related in the comment section. Maybe like a goofy riddle or joke or something. I'll Venmo it back to you with a response and I'll make it worth your while with some I N S P I R A T I O N B A B B YYYYYYY for you to have going into next session. It's technically not a microtransaction since I'm sending it back to you, but of all the coupon codes I've used so far this comes the closest to it.
A few days later in the journey, looking for a place to spend the night, the party found a strange set of ruins unlike anything they had ever seen before. It was positioned a little ways off the side of the road, covered in moss and vines, you would miss it if you hadn't been looking for a place to stop in this exact little stretch of woods. The ruins were strange, like a synthesis of dwarven and elvish architecture with elements of human mixed in as well. Above the door in, there is a strange symbol that looked like three vertical slashes on a shield. And a bear. There was also a bear. Which Charles scared off with the pipes of haunting.
Going inside, the group passed through a maze of corridors, finding what looked to be a ruined war room and a secret safe room hidden behind a bookshelf. In the room beyond, there is a dead body of a House Bouclier soldier, about 40 years passed on, in a room with heavy sealed stone doors on one side and a mural on the other. The mural showed an individual standing at the top of a tower, arms outstretched above them, with a gem floating above their head. Coursing from the gem is a torrential waterfall of darkness which pours upward through sixteen concentric rings, each with a separate motif dictated inside their circle, and finally into the sky above. Valeria found that the gem in the center of the beam was a button which opened the doors at the back of the room.
On the other side of the doors was a grisly scene. A group of Bouclier soldiers as well as an ambassador of House Porte, the ambassador house of the Theocracy, were found dead here, killed by arrows and weapons of the Theocracy in an apparent betrayal. Valeria recognized this as the missing emissaries, a group that was to travel to Ignix shortly after the peace was struck, but never arrived. Rumor has it that the Matriarch didn't want them to go, but they insisted on going with or without her blessing, and so they went without it.
In the center of the room, there is a midnight blue banner with three rising silver stars emblazoned on it. Upon closer inspection, this banner must have been several millennia old, but held intact by some sort of magic. Beneath it, a soldier wielding a cross pike is found. It is the ancient weapon Argentia, a silvered set of dual glaives which are made from the body of Arctiax himself and given to his most trusted warrior; a set of weapons that has been missing since the peace was struck. As Valeria took the set of weapons, the body of the warrior who held them collapsed into dust. On the breeze, Valeria thought she could hear a voice whisper "wield it with wisdom," but it could have just been the wind.
So that'll be a fun thing to revisit.
Just before arriving in the capital city of Ignix, the party comes across another gruesome sight. A recent fight had taken place on the road, leaving a man with his brains splayed across the road for the ravens, another with his intestines pulled across the road by scavenging animals, and a woman with a hole in her throat on the side of the road. At a cursory medicine check, they appeared to have been killed with a firearm and could not have been dead more than two days; they all still have their eyes, and if were any more than a recent fight crows and other carrion would have long since devoured the jelly orbs.
From a little ways off the road, a voice called to the party, drawing their attention to a bandits blind, where a man lay dying. He introduced himself as Dyvin and told the party that he and his friends had accosted a man on this road not two days prior and he had riddled them with holes. Dyvin was the only survivor at the time, but the bullet in his gut lodged in his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down and giving him little hope beyond wishing to bleed out beneath the night sky. Fortunately for him, Tyra and Charles managed to stabilize him, preventing him from bleeding out. Unfortunately for him, he is still paralyzed.
We left off as the cart laden with adventurers and also Dyvin rolled into the port city of Ignix, capital of the Fulminarian Empire.
Rewards Granted
Pipes of Haunting
Argentia
Argentia
Character(s) interacted with
Synod, second in command in the Tenebric Vanguard.
Pan, force of nature.
Dyvin, who was dyin', but now he's not.
Pan, force of nature.
Dyvin, who was dyin', but now he's not.
Notes
A banner showing three rising stars in a world where there are no stars. Weird and wacky indeed.
Report Date
05 Jun 2021
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