Clifford has his office barged into as the party kicks down his door and doesn’t really knock. So pleasantries are skipped completely as he explains the task of expansion, resource allocation and the need to scout out new locations for work. The party is informed about a pair of fellow scouts that’ve been contracted to base, a dwarf named Fomuil Opalstone and a gnoll named Gyz. The party gets the choice of three locations sold to BASE as promising BASE CAMP locales, and the PCs choose to go north, sending the dwarf and gnoll more south. Traveling a few days on Clifford’s new ship, the Blythian Frontier, they’re treated to their own small cabins and a comfortable journey, before disembarking and heading up into the mountainous foothills. Their travels led by RABBIT go rather easily, discovering a satchel of frozen jerky, then a giant eagle nesting site, and then wandering their way into an ambush. After scaring off some, and beating off others of the bandits, they discover that the ‘gnome bandit’ wasn’t so much a bandit than a captive of the bandits forced to work with them, coping with booze. Given the chance, the gnome murders one of the unconscious bandits, before getting manacled for good. The party discovers that the leader survived the fight, and crawled into a bush nearby, before getting recaptured and questioned. The party chases after the less-stealthy of the two runners, eventually finding a campsite, where four ogres are roasting an elf over a fire, presumably the one they’re chasing… But after a rather quick series of bad inspection-deception-silliness, the party slaughters the ogres mercilessly, investigating the camp, and finding that the elven bandit hostage had lured the gnome’s wife away into an illicit affair, then sent her to Silverymoon, then telling the gnome that he’d kidnapped his wife and blackmailing him into helping with banditry. The mystery solved, the party treks onwards to their destination at last, encountering strange crow cawing in the woods before arriving to mysterious mushrooms growing amongst the trees, and finding a dozen dead orcs inside a tent, having foamed at the mouth after eating glowing mushrooms. Opting to leave this behind and fall back to report, the party reports back to the ship and eventually heads back to BASE, getting paid well for their efforts and getting to see later if either of the other scouts had better luck!
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Thunderholme
Clifford sends agents to explore the possibility of filling BASE's coffers from a long abandoned stronghold. BASE discovers exactly why it's still abandoned.
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1494
3 /12
The Frozen Peaks’ Bounty?
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1494
4 /12
There's Gold in Them There hills. Right? There's gotta be. Go find it.
Clifford issued a strange gnome developed, detector to the adventurers with the instruction to use it to find gold in them there hills! The 2ft. By 2ft, by 1 ft. box, weighing 12 lbs, is made of a strange cold scaled steel, and has a red gemstone on the top about the size of an ostrich egg and reminiscent of a fire opal. But no instructions were provided. After a little bit of looking and investigating, it was discovered that it has a coin slot? And it makes your brain tingle. So Imzel Identified the box to find out what it does. If you put metal in through the slot while focusing on a quantity of metal the gem will glow in the direction of the nearest metal of similar size. The box will function until contact with the user is lost. The metal will be spat out the bottom at this time. If new metal is inserted without spitting out the old metal, the previous will be lost. Placing a gold coin in the box the party headed into the mountains, being sure to purchase cold weather gear for themselves and their mounts. After a day and a half of travel they found themselves at a bridge crossing a river. While trying to cross the bridge the resident troll climbed up to be banished, but his allies kept fighting, killing Ashleighs horse Thunderhoof, and attempting to freeze hearts. After dealing with the allies, they obliterated the troll, and splashed acid on it. Continuing on, the party realized a severe storm was rapidly approaching, and took shelter in a nearby alcove, throwing up a wall of thorns, and avoiding whatever was in the storm. After an hour of waiting the storm came back and they got a chance to surprise the elemental being, his frostplants and ice elementals. But the frost plants counter surprised with being unable to be surprised. After killing a dryad, downing Carric, and destroying a steel defender, Dalgan signature moved the storm lord slaying him. The next day they continued following the gold signal, and found a cave with 6 golden stags, literal stags made of gold, but never entered the cave, deciding to leave the wondrous creatures to themselves. They took note of strange footprints nearby, and claw marks in the cliffs above the cave. The official report to B.A.S.E. claims that gold was not found, and determined to be out of reach. They decided Clifford would be too greedy and just kill the stags instead of allowing them to live. A message was sent to Zancho saying he may want to investigate the area though.
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1494
5 /12
The Tower
Tayva, Speckle, Lohra, and Ae'rl'tur were sent to investigate a tower that one of the goldsniffing teams had noticed in the distance. Along the way, they defeated a pack of undead in the woods, saving a pack of fleeing kobolds. Among the undead were a pair of ogres that Tayva swears she'd killed before. Between axe and holy water she's sure they'll stay dead this time. They arrived at the tower around nightfall. They heroically decided to assault the tower with a two pronged assault - Tayva and Speckle entering through the front door, and Lohra and Ae'rl'tur dealing with the skeletons on watch and entering through the roof. While Tayva and Speckle fought their way up through animated statues and cultists, Lohra and Ae'rl'tur easily handled the skeleton guards but eventually fell to the power of the necromancer who rushed to the roof to confront them. Fortunately Tayva arrived on the roof in time to kill the necromancer and she and Speckle were able to revive their fallen comrades. Speckle made a throrough search of the tower and discovered that the necromancer had taken over the tower in search of info on Aura, and being an educated gnome, knew this to be the name of an undead dragon that had plagued Thunderholme. The party returned with this intelligence, along with a floating disc worth of books for Clifford to sell or add to BASE's library.
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1494
6 /12
The Tower (or maybe it happened this way)
Esper, Khemt, Teef, Elliot, and Ela were sent to investigate a tower that one of the goldsniffing teams had noticed in the distance. Along the way, they defeated a pack of undead in the woods, saving a pack of fleeing kobolds. Thanks to a combination of stealth, tactics, and tentacles (well, one tentacle) they managed to emerge from the combat virtually untouched. They made their way to the tower and waited until it was fully dark to begin their assault. Scaling the side by magic and muscle, the party took out the skeleton guards in what would have been perfect silence, if not for the enraged yells of Teef. They made their way into the tower just in time to catch the necromancer alone in his study. Esper's quick thinking kept the necromancer's followers locked out of the room while the necromancer shrugged off spell after spell. A well timed counterspell by Ela saved the party from chain lightning and marked the turning point in the fight. After the necromancer's death, Teef ripped open the door and dispatched the cultists with two quick slashes of her claws. Spending the night, Esper found a piece of paper with the name Augloroasa beneath Ela's smudged bootprint. Near it on the desk were books on dwarven history, necromancy, and dragon lore. The next morning the party made their way back to the ship with the new information.