Red Laughter

Summary

Adventure: Red Laughter
GM: Jim A
Season: Autumn 824 wk
Night: Sunday Discord
Level: Medium

Party

Jedburgh - Mighty warrior
Kel - harmless coiffeur
Uzi Urksome - well trained beast

Employer: Cerise of Aeaea
Mission: Travel to the Land of Nod in Tanuel, investigate the Red Laughter
Pay: A non-lethal favour appropriate to the adventurer.

Prologue

"Ah, Dr. Wormwood. So good of you to come", the large man said. His voice was warm and, somehow, foreign.

"It was kind of you to invite me", she said, briskly, "Shall we make a start." She was a slight woman of average height with tired looking blond hair, and appeared to be in her early forties.

"Of course." He made a round, curiously elephantine, welcoming gesture and indicated a table attended by a pair of delicate chairs, one of which groaned as he settled upon it. There was a quality of marshmallow softness about him that she found disarming.

"So, it's my claim that there is an invisible hand at work", she said, drawing a slender glass vial from a small silver reticule."Here are my findings and the evidence that I used to form them." She passed the vial into the middle of the small table, the lenses of her spectacles glinting under the lights.

He stared at it as if it were poison and she were asking him to drink it.

"I will review this as soon as we finish here, of course." He paused. "How do you believe we should act on this?"

"Well, surely you could deploy some of your people to investigate? We don't know who is involved, we remain unaware of their goals, and I fear that our security, such as it is, is much compromised."

"I fear, dear lady, that I wouldn't know where to begin. My expertise lies in other areas. Perhaps you'd be interested in a copy of medieval poertry, carefully curated by my own fair hand?"

"I'm sure you'll be taking tea with someone who may be of use, if you were to be appropriately recompensed." She took out another vial. "Twenty years of vibrant, healthy youth."

"As always, Doctor, you make business a pleasure."

---

The young man entered the large, sunny chamber carrying an armload of scrolls. He bustled his way past other robed acolytes bent over inclined desks, and made his way to the senior who was reclining beneath fans wielded by muscular Nubian twins.

"I have the information you requested, Archimandrite," the young man said.

The older man rose to a sitting position in a curiously graceful way, like a whale rising to the surface.

"What information was that, dear boy?"

"That Wormwood matter. You wanted to find someone who might meet the terms of the agreement and yet not point back to us, no?"

"Indeed, dear boy. And you have found someone?"

"Cerise the Medianite, reverend father."

"...A challenging selection. Why her?"

"Well, she's a competent witch, with a highly trained dancer retinue. Admittedly, she is down to three. My guess is that she needs to recruit and train replacements, and for this, she will need money. These things are never cheap." In addition, she has publically expressed a certain contempt for the Order. Should we need to, we can always claim anything she reveals is a desperate attempt to blacken our reputation."

"I find myself intrigued to see how your strategy will evolve, my boy. In the meantime, let us make contact with the dear lady and inform of her of the news. Then retain the Medeanite, but keep each ignorant of the other," the large man said, as a frozen liqueur dissolved on his tongue.

Scribe Notes - Summary

Meet Cerise and commence travel, reaching House Kerboroth.
xxx
Reach Jiroth and fight the Nephalim
Surah -> Jesurea -> Carchemish -> Harrain -> Dioscura

Scribe Notes - Full

Cerise, accompanied by only three of her five bodyguards, has been engaged by Dr Wormwood to examine what is happening in the Land of Nod. As she is missing some guards and is requesting we complete some for her. She wont tell us any further about what we are looking for as she believes it will bias our actions, but does advise us to return and report back if our lives are in danger.

We are offered most of what loot we recover and a non-lethal favour from her. We discuss the route to reach the Land of Nod and the dangers. We discuss supplies for the journey and agree in 20,000sp in gems, some Amulets, Witchskins and restoratives. We decide to pose at traders so Kel spends a week making perfumes and we and purchase myrrh, ambergris, frankincense.

We head out of Seagate with Cerise and travel or a few hours before we stop and she casts a ritual to open a portal to the astral that we pass through. We commence a six week journey, travelling through the Astral and then the Abyss until we reach the boundary of House Kerberoth.

There is a large boundary wall and we pass through a gate, a rune portal what has been heavily modified, that is guarded by 9ft tall guards. Through the gates we observe more guards with enormous three headed hounds. Uzi briefly considers drinking from the glowing green pond the dogs drink from

Jiroth

The party spend two days in Jiroth arranging the sale of the griffon and communicating with a temple in Surah to seel the eggs. The city is famous for its singing bees and we discover that purifying with the singing bees provides a short term benefit to MA and MR. We charter a carriage to Surah.

Surah

The carriage provides a comfortable and uneventful two-day trip. It’s a fine city whose industry is warfare. Kel purchases some for more format wear. We sell the Griffin eggs to the war temple and, in exchange, they provide some martial training which takes a week.

While at the city we learn of a Nephilim, which is terrorising travellers. Using Kel precognitive abilities we track down the Nephilim as it is attacking a caravan. Its delivers fearsome blows and is very difficult to see, but Jedburgh and Uzi deliver a flurry of blows and manage to slay it. We are able to follow tis tracks back to its lair and find its horde. We spend three days in a caravan travelling to Jesurea.

Jesurea

We briefly pass through the city to reach the port outside the east gate. We discuss options and opt to fly instead of spending two weeks on a boat. The journey will be easy to navigate as it follows the river. As we trailed by a Jasonite for some miles as we depart the city, we confront him and he leaves us his card.

We fly around 500 miles in the first day, Jedburgh struggle with the cold of the weather as we fly. We stay overnight in a small town at the Green Anemone and arrange for a coat to be made for Jedburgh, which takes another day. The next day we fly to Carchemish, and have a rough landing in the mountainous terrain and a lasting injury is inflicted on Kel.

Carchemish

The gate guard recommends staying at the Vamilion Glove, an inn frequented by alchemists. Fortunately, there are a few alchemists there that we are able to buy two flesh pots from, and they are happy to buy the ambergris. We spend some hours discussing perfumes and learning about the city and hear of a gate to hell many miles to the east. The journey to Hurrian is difficult to navigate, and as we lack those skills we opt to join a caravan wagon and spend the next two weeks on camels.

Harrain

As we arrive at the city Jedburgh notices some strangeness to the land to the east of the city that extends to the horizon, it has the aspect of folding. We arrange to meet the city Priest the following day and spend time asking about perfumes, we learn the city is on the silk and black amber trade routes. Back amber is used to become a lich as it has a aspect of age to it, we acquire some for experimentation.
The following day we meet the city priest, Psametikh Khu and ask for a blessing from their sea god for our impending black sea journey. We also inform him of the strange terrain outside the city and we learn the legend of this, it was a mountain terrain that a powerful evil creature compressed an age ago.
We book passage on a boat and spend the next eight days travelling to Al-Marhirbah, a small town near Dioscura. Dioscura is an underwater city.

Aeaea

We follow the river to Aeaea, which only takes a few hours. You can only enter Aeaea of you are a witch or her retainer, so we send a message to Lady Cerise, who is in the city. She comes out to meet us and we update her on our progress, her network is reduced so we does not have coverage so she only has limited intelligence about the Land of Nod and the Keep of the Five Faces, which will soon approach.

Dantalian has trying to expand his base, he seems to be in competition with Sier.
As Sier can move people at the blink of an eye he is difficult to out manoeuvre
Dantalian advantage is its hard to hid your thoughts from him, he can read you throughs from his book about you.
The easiest way to avoid trouble is not to attach any attention.
Dantalian has limited domain in the Land of Nod.

We obtain some clothes from Cerise and fly most of the way to the Keep and walk the last ten miles. We feel a change in the air, the oppression of Hell. The guard are enormous, menacing, blue, have tails and legs that bend backwards. We are able to pass throught the gate, through the courtyard of the castle (which is a killing ground) and throught he far gate which leads to the Land of Nod.

The road from the Keep leads to the town of Hofutt. A phantasmal bird arrives a message from Cerise, asking us to meet at the Iron Pig. It’s a large three storied tavern, most of the clientele seem to be traders. We meet Lady Cerise, and her dancers, in private chamber.

Lady Cerise reveals our purpose, we are looking for evidence of activity of Red Laughter. Its is some kind of cruelty and violent spirit. It possesses people and forces them to do terrible things that involve pain and suffering on themselves or others. The infected don’t feel pain or fear and are usually unnaturally strong. Most of the time the victims kills themselves or are killed by others. The few that have no recollection of events. From records there is only one instance at any one time time. There is no relationship between one target and the next, the next target is always miles away 20-30 miles away from the previous. The most recent instance is about 120 miles from here in a monastery. The spirit seems to be able to manifest again if its killed.

We are tasked with locating and capturing the Red Laughter in its next victim. The spirit may be in the Astral and stepping into the physical world, the mapping of the astral to the real world is random and chaotic. There is something in Nod that is causing the Red Laughter to be present here. It we go into the astral the usual way so to use the alter of the god of the city.

We spend a week having orichalcum manacles manufactured, which will trap spirits, and learning the rites of the alters to Hofutt, Jiroth and Syrah.

We fly to a mountain monastery, the last sighting of the Red Laughter, where a monk went mad and started attacking people. The monks allow is to investigate and spend three days there investigating. We discover the monk was a nasty person and had a book under his bed that taught you general magics of the summon college. Divination shows his the body was under a ritual to protect from heat and cold, as well as possessed by 24h 7 days ago by something . Jedburgh learns some names ITN “Hugh Team”, GTN “Jed-burgh”.

Library of Leng

Without a trail to follow we decide to head to the Library of Leng to research. It is a 50m tall tower with enormous 5m tall doors. We enter and investigate, we cannot find anyone in any of its six floors. It’s a very magical building, looking up from each level it appears there is an open mezzanine each level to the top of the tower, but each level has a floor covering the entire level.

Kel casts ESP and discovers minds in the library, but we are unable to locate them, and a telepathy doesn’t elucidate us. Kel connects to one of the minds and finds herself talking to a very large spider, it would like to possess Kel, which she resists. Declaring itself as relic of Ungoliant, a being of evil, creates much concern. Having no other options she agrees to find a volunteer for it if she releases her, and provides some directions for the library. She unfortunately left with a word of binding. We learn the library contains relics of things that have left the universe.

Using the first boon of knowledge, Kel is able to locate may books on the Red Laughter. After a day of reading and making notes we pass this back to Cerise in a magical message. She is please with the news but terrified about the relic and decides to return back to Alusia. We use the other two boons to obtain treasure for ourselves and Kel is able to wish for the word of Binding to be extended for a year to a decade.

Astral

With out work done we fly back to Hofutt and travel to the astral via the temple. We travel for some hours until we are attacked by three deadly Wormskull, which we eventually defeat.

World Lores

Banishment
If banished you travel along the trail you used to get there, you leaving a trail and only reach the edge of the previous boundary territory. Banishment from the Land of Chaos will leave you in a random location, which could be very dangerous.

Skills

Anyone with the spy skill are treated with extreme hostility, and are often are interrogated and killed. Never admit to having this.
People will skills >4 are rare. R6 are the masters.

Telepathy
If you make telepathic contact with something thats mad, you can attract a mental illness.

People and Places

People

Lady Cerise – Our employee. A Medeanite. Normally accompanied by 5”dancers” (bodyguards), she is only accompanied by three.
Dr Wormwood – has hired Lady Cerise. A slight woman of average height with tired looking blond hair, and appeared to be in her early forties
Red Laughter -
- is in Gomorrah (a town in Land of Nod) and preys on mortals.
- As it feasts on people and it grows in strength. Its made of barb wire. It can possess people.
- Once its possessed someone, but it cant possess anyone in the same horizon.
- Marked people will have a mark on their body like a barb wire. People have to agree to its terms
- Its grows in strength be being around violence that causes fear or dread.
- It should not be able to manifest, but it has for some reason.
- If we had its ITN we could track it
- Looks like a stick figure made out of barb wire
- If its physical form is destroyed its gone
- If we kill a possessed human it goes into the astral
- Fighting
  - As its made from barb wire doesn’t take damage from poisons, necrosis etc
  - Physical attacks do 1 damage from cutting. Thrusting weapons do no damage.
  - Has fire bolt, fire mage intra-vision. Enhanced form of MR (it can see through obscurement’s - smoke)
  - Has a mind that can be attacked. It’s a telepath so has good resistance to mind
  - Dangerous in hand to hand. Only get ½ defence of shield. Barb wire attacks that rip into you
  - Has three-digit fatigue.
  - If it grabs you, you cant cast as its made of iron

Places

Land of Nod

The land is “ruled” by The Duke of Faces, has a Keep that you need to pass to access the land. Time is a dimension in Nod, there are magics that can impact this. I.e. Sphere of darkness will destroy space and the universe will become smaller.
Has two temporal boundaries - garden of Eden (source) and the flood (terminus).

Harrain - the town has only existed for 8 years, build since the flooding of Dioscura

Inhabitants
Almost entirely human, but also

Nephilim (produce of Gregorian (angels) and human). Nephilim are powerful, outcome ois chaotic - tend to he humanoid but can have varied appearances; as heros of old or giants or trolls. Are tall, 9ft+
Seirim (demon) - look a lot like saytrs. The will try to lure you into sacrificing themselves. Associated with the Seir. If sacrificed they disappear for a lifespan but they take your soul when your die. They tend to offer you a deal and they are the sacrifice.
Mazzakin (chthonic demon) - violent
Lilin (chthonic demon) - associated with harming woman and babies
Pishaka (chthonic demon)- spirits of wickedness

NOTE - chthonic demon - don't need to be summoned, they are on plane. They can be banished. Cant be SG or stunned.

Politics of Nod

Meadenites (lots in Nod) are at was with Jasonites.
Meadeanite - Bruja (very ugly - fright check)
The Duke of Faces rules northern Nod - he can't personally extend into the plane as he is from Hell.

Route to Nod
The route from Alusia

Astral
Abyss
House Kerberoth in Tanuel
Caravan to Jiroth
Long straight road (carriage can travel 50miles/day) to Surah
Surah
Jesurea to Carchemish is about 850 miles north
Carchemish to Hurrian is about 450 miles north east
Hurrian to Dioscura 900 miles north east across the Midnight Sea
Dioscura to Aeaea about 50 miles directly north
East to the Keep of five faces, 150 miles.

House Kerberoth
Ruled by Tirwh (powerful summoner) and Lady Suneth (chaosites).
Every months there is a bazar outside his castle, these people include;

Theophrastus - R10 Alchemist
Jiroth - trade with honey and candles. Their bees sing.

Inhabitants

300 chaosites, few of them are wizaeds
Three headed hounds - were product of experimentation but have become a normal magical creature - they can create degree of uncertainly to make stuff less and more likely. The feed from glowing green ponds, which is full of concentrated uncertainty

Items and Loot

Red Laughter - Treasure

Purchased for trading
6000sp in myrrh, ambergris, frankincense

Obtained from Cerise

Mouse skin changes x 11
Amulets;
- Kel - Enhanced Amulet of Chalcedony, Amulet of Amethyst, Amulet of Elder Flowers, Enhanced Amulet of Jade, Amulet of Luck, Amulet of Black Amber
- Uzi - Amulet of Luck, Amulet of Black Amber
- Jedburg- amethyst, Luck and normal Iron

Calendar

Autumn
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Lugnasad
Fruit (4)
			1	Guild Meeting Meet employer. Prep in Seagate	2	Prep in Seagate	3	Prep in Seagate	4	Prep in Seagate	5	Prep in Seagate	6	Prep in Seagate
	7	Prep in Seagate	8	Commence travel....	9		10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19		20
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30
Harvest (5)
							1		2		3		4
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14		15	Equinox	16		17	Seagate Autumn Fair	18	Seagate Autumn Fair
	19	Harvest Moon	20	Arrive at House Kerberoth	21	Depart for Jiroth	22	Arrive at Jiroth	23	Depart for Surah	24	Depart for Jesurea on boat	25	travel on boat
	26	travel on boat	27	travel on boat	28	travel on boat	29	travel on boat	30	travel on boat
Vintage(6)
											1	travel on boat	2	travel on boat
	3	travel on boat	4	travel on boat	5	travel on boat	6	travel on boat	7	Arrive at Jesurea on boat	8	Fly to Carchemish	9
	10	Depart for Harrain on camel	11	travel on camel	12	travel on camel	13	travel on camel	14	travel on camel	15	travel on camel	16	travel on camel
	17	Blood Moontravel on camel	18	travel on camel	19	travel on camel	20	travel on camel	21	travel on camel	22	travel on camel	23	Arrive at Harrain
	24	Travel to Al-Marhirbah on boat	25	Travel on boat	26	Travel on boat	27	Travel on boat	28	Travel on boat	29	Travel on boat	30	Travel on boat

Winter: Frost 824 (7)
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
		SamhainArrive at Al-Marhirbah on boat	1	Fly to Five Faces Keep and pass through	2	Stay in Hofutt	3	Stay in Hofutt	4	Stay in Hofutt	5	Stay in Hofutt	6	Stay in Hofutt
	7	Stay in Hofutt	8	Stay in Hofutt	9	Stay in Hofutt	10	Fly to Monastery and investigate	11	Investigate Monastery	12	Investigate Monastery	13	Fly to Library of Leng. Research
	14	Pass message to Cerise. Fly back to Hofutt and into astral	15		16		17		18		19		10
	21		22		23		24		25		26		27
	28		29		30		1		2		3		4
Winter: Snow 823 (8)
	5		6		7		8		9		10		11
	12		13		14		15	Solstice	16		17	The Duke of Carzala's Winter Ball	18	Yuletide
	19	Days of Chaos	20	DoC2	21	DoC3	22	DoC4	23	DoC5	24	DoC6	25	DoC7
	26	DoC8	27	DoC9	28	DoC10	29	DoC11	30	Twelfth Night	1		2
Winter: Ice 823 (9)
	3		4		5		6	First Plough	7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30