Crown of Souls

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Crown of Souls
GM: Martin
Season: Summer 791 wk

Party

• Thoric - played by Greg G (Party Leader)
• Carol - played by Derek T (Scribe)
• Rothgar - played by Scott W
• Shemin-ah - played by Rosemary M
• Jack Flash - played by Helen C
• Chalis - played by ?
• Hum - played by Jono
• Rafael - played by Tahua (?)

Employer

Duke of Carzala

Mission

People have been disappearing on the track between Whitehill and the main road (between Arnsferry and Slippery Rock). It wouldn’t seem suspicious normally except that a half a dozen mounted cavalry have also gone missing.Guild adventurers have been hired to investigate the reasons for these happenings, and if able to, put a stop to them.

Pay

Pay rate set a 200 sp per week.

Original Scribe Notes

Media:Snsu9102.zip

Scribe Notes

1 April 1990

Party travel south to Arnsferry, uneventful traveling, party get to know each other.

2 April 1990

Weather cold. Party travel south from Arnsferry intending to stay at Slippery Rock. Mist closes in around party:

Note about mists, the mists was very thick and decreased visibility quite quickly to about 5-10 feet.

It became apparent later that the mists were the source of plane travel between our home plane and ’Katarkas’, and also between the plane ’Katarkas’ and ’Gundorak’.

After walking south-west for most of the day we passed the turn off to Whitehill (The stone marker was in place at this time).

At some stage after this Sheminar, who is an air mage, attempted to control the mists and backfired, she was dazed and confused and wandered away from the party into the bush.

The party continued to travel and after a distance that should have carried then well past Slippery rock, the road began to disappear. While the party discussed this they noticed Sheminar was no longer around.

After the mist cleared we walked northward up the road looking for any sign of Sheminar. As we were traveling we noticed that the season had changed to autumn (leaves were yellow/bronze) and that the moon had changed phase to 3/4 waxing. We "D.A’d" a plant and found plane of origin to be Katarkas.

We continued up the road and were lucky enough to find Sheminar’s tracks leading west into the woods, we followed and soon found her, dazed and amnesiaced in the woods.

Sheminar said she had met a nice woodcutter called Luke, Luke had given her a cloak and some soup because she was wet and cold, She did not remember who she was, or who the party was. It began to get dark, and the party decided to visit Luke’s hut.

We heard noises in the woods and howling to the south. Rafael decided to go and investigate the noises. While he was gone we talked to Sheminar. The silence was broken by a roar and crash of trees being torn apart. Rafael’s speed in returning to the party was only surpassed by the speed of Chalis climbing the nearest tree. Hum changed into a boar and charged to help Rafael (boars do that). In the ensuing combat Rafael managed to flee what turned out to be a ’Greater Werewolf’ and leave Hum to die at its wicked claws.

The party was attacked by another were but managed to kill it, Carol distracted it while Thoric hit it repeatedly with her silvered battleaxe. Rothgar, after self immolating and watching, moved out of his fire to attack the second were but was killed.

Carol and Thoric killed the second were as it was attempting to climb Sheminar’s tree.

After the fight Sheminar identified one of the weres as Luke (both had returned to human form after dying). Rothgar ’recovered’ with the aid of a trollskin, we carried Hums dead body to Luke’s hut and stayed the night.

It was during this fight that Chalis showed his true colours, initially climbing a tree and afterwards being to scared to come down again. Upon hearing of Hums death Chalis suggests eating his body (it is still in boar form).

Chalis continues to suggest eating Hums body, Carol manages to restraining herself from killing Chalis.

During dinner Sheminar told us that Luke was going to take her to see ’the Doctor’, she also mentioned a town to the north called Harmony.

Night passed without more events.

3 April 1990

Party awakes, eats, and Purifies. Jack performs a Ritual of Speaking to the Dead on a were:

Was the information regarding "The Doctor" correct?

The doctor is good but not in the way. Lord of the mind,
healer and mage, understands all teachings are sage.

Are all or mostof the people in this area were creatures like or similar to yourselves?

Masters in all that they survey as the true lords power will hold sway.

Is there a head were?

Katarkas’s curse master and lord.

Walk to cart and horses and travel north along the road to Harmony.

Harmony is about the size as Arnsferry but has a large stone wall around the outside. We arrive at gates of Harmony, after talking to guards we discover the pledge to get into town:

Oh Harmony, Oh
Harmony A city grand and
truly free Oh Harmony,
Oh Harmony ’tis thee I
always long to see To
Harmony, To Harmony I
pledge eternal loyalty.

The lyrics suck but its a good way to please the locals and it saves a few silvers getting in the front gate.

We stayed in the ’Metal Unicorn’ Inn where the barman was called Sven. Sven and the other older people around town talked common badly. The children seemed to have a better grasp of the language leading me to suspect that there was a recent interaction with a different culture. Some party members manage to get Hum raised from the dead, but the healer said he could do nothing for Rothgar’s infected condition and that the weres curse would change him. The physician seemed distressed by our presence, and advised us not to mention the werewolves so we left quickly.

4 April 1990

The party split into three groups:

GROUP A (Jack, Sheminar and Rothgar)

This group terrorised the local school looking for maps.

GROUP B (Rafael, Chalis and Carol)

This group went to see the mayor and convinced him that we were a scout group for an invading army.

GROUP C (Hum and Thoric)

This group did the least damage, they silver coated some weapons and built Hum a wooden trotter and hand for his missing one.

Upon returning Carol and Sheminar were both concerned about the groups social and geographical blunders and suggested that they leave quickly. This is an obvious case of female intuition and sensitivity getting the feeling of the local people. Jack was also concerned, but he is just a kid so what would he know.

A group of town guards came and took Rafael and Chalis for questioning. Carol thought it was unfair to go to jail for someone else’s stupidity and hid. The rest of the party denied all knowledge of Rothgar and Chalis.

Sven’s son, Betrie, had on Rafael’s request had been gathering information for the party. He had found a local Lady called Akriel who was looking for Adventurers and arranged a meeting.

We met Akriel at the golden harp who said something to the extent of:

Hi, I’m Akriel, daughter of lord Akron. I am in love with a good man by the name of Doctor Dominiani and I wish to marry him.
BUT my father, Lord Akron, who is also a good man, wishes me to marry my cousin Anton. While I also love my cousin Anton, there have been a number of marriages inside the family and this has caused some illness’s. My father is suffering from this illness.
My father is also studying how the mists work, but his illness has prevented him from completing his work.
If he could complete his work he could probably get your group back home.
What I want you to do is get a magical artifact called the Crown of Souls from a valley to the east of here called the Valley of Bones. With this magical artifact the Doctor can heal my father and the combination of gratitude and the restoration of his healthy mind should be enough to convince my father to let me marry the Doctor.

After some haggling over prices and directions to the Valley of Bones we asked Lady Akriel to arrange the release of our fellow party members and provisions for the trip. We also arranged to meet her at the Old Karatakian Inn at Skald.

Sound convincing to you...?

Crown of souls sounds more like some necro control device than a healing artifact.

Anyway, far from home with very little prospect of getting home any other way, we decided that this was as good a way of getting home as any. We managed to find out that the crown of souls hadn’t been seen for years and was last seen in the valley where bones walked.

So, we sat down for a hot dinner, some of the party went down stairs for a drink, and Rothgar the elf turned into a stinking great big savage wolf, leapt through a second story window and fled down the street. We decided if we should follow or not, but after a few moments, and many screams from the locals, decided it would be better for all involved if we caught Rothgar and calmed him down a wee bit.

The party followed Rothgar through town, at wasn’t hard we just followed the blood and dead bodies. We finally cornered attacked and were savaged by Rothgar the Werewolf, wow this bastard sure can party when you get his hair up. The town guard thought it a bit strange when we wandered past with his body, but the wall of ice we left behind was enough to catch their attention while we left.

5 April 1990

After an unrestful night in which the party took turns knocking Rothgar out with the silver mattock, we had a pleasant breakfast and collected our gear. We headed east, toward the Valley of bones...

Exciting isn’t it?

The day was a nice clear autumn day, when we camped Sheminar summoned an Owl that told us about the valley and skeletons of people and horses that patrolled it.

6 April 1990

A large bear disturbed the party in the early hours of the morning, we fed it some meat so it went away. After some time Chalis was convinced to come down from his tree. One thing that attracted our attention while traveling the last few miles to the valley was the vast quantities of wolvesbane growing in the area, we picked some, just in case... We continued walking towards the valley and came across several posts with manacles attached to them, the posts were used in part of a skeleton making process. A crow sat in a nearby tree as if waiting for breakfast. Sheminar started talking to it, after a few minutes she began to look sick and told Jack to shoot it. The conversation went something like this: S What are you doing here? C Waiting. S What for? C Breakfast. S Oh, is there usually breakfast here? C Sometimes. S How often? C Oh, once, twice a week. S What do you have for breakfast? C Pink ones, like you. Say, you’re not breakfast are you? S No, we aren’t breakfast. C Thats a shame ’cause I’d like to eat you, you look all soft and pink. If you were chained up, would you struggle? I like it when they struggle. You have to kind of nip in and pluck the eyes out. Gosh you have nice eyes. The crow preceded to describe how much it liked eating people, what were the best bits, how many days they took to die and its preference of "soft" females over "hard" males. It was about this time Jack shot it and it exploded in a puff of feathers. Several Speak with birds, and several crows later we came to the conclusion that some necro was manufacturing skeletons by the cart load. When we had finished discussing lunch with the crows we noticed that Raf had wandered off by himself again. Will he never learn? We waited for him to return but nothing eventuated so we headed around the top of the valley. The valley was lined with skeletons, they were propped up on sticks and, we suspected, warded. After walking around the valley top we encountered a skeleton guard atop a skeleton lizard. Rothgar web of flamed them. On the body we found Raf’s sword. Feeling shocked at the loss of our dear companion, we plotted the demise of our new enemy. Binding the elements to do our bidding we leveled every skeleton in the valley, every tree, half a pyramid and a small prison. About this time things started to get interesting, Thoric and Jack rescued a prisoner from the cage, and a bad guy flew out of the canyon casting "falling star" spells at the party, Rothgar was chained to a post turning into a wolf, Thoric was yelling at the bad guy saying we come in peace. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, and realizing we hadn’t been invited anyway, we decided to leave. Carol distracted Rothgar while Thoric knocked him out (we were getting very good at this by now). We carried him after the rest of the party into the woods, the guy trying to kill us had gone home. We set up camp, piled the wolvesbane high around us, and Hum cast a Runes of warding spell over our campsite. Some time late at night we were attacked from above by falling stars, Hums wards deflected most of the stars, but a few got through. Raf turned up as a night gaunt and attacked Thoric (bad choice Raf) and got smashed up by a big silvered mattock. The flyboy eventually landed and came in on foot, trashing half the party. In a move of seeming genius/good luck Chalis mind controlled a night gaunt and stabbed the wight in the back with it, killing the wight and thus destroying the night gaunt under his control. Lucky huh? At this stage I, being the party’s second scribe, was dead so I’m not sure about the exact sequence of events. I am informed they go something like this: Party picks up dead bodies (Thoric, Hum and Carol) and headed to the Old Kartakian Inn in Skald. They attempted to find Lady Akriel but failed. Then, carrying the dead bodies, they traveled to Doctor Dominiani’s Manor house. Doctor Dominiani was not in until Sundown (Oh gosh a Vampire) and upon arrival resurrected Thoric, a bottle of wine was drunk by all, Carol was resurrected, dinner was eaten and we were locked in our rooms. Upon looking through our equipment we discovered that everything made of silver, all our garlic, mirrors, wooden stakes, and our limited edition "How to kill a Vampire" book were all gone. (Oh gosh this guy is laying it on a bit thick). We tried to break the lovely stained glass windows with a mattock but they were actually illusions and made of solid iron. Having nothing else to do, we drank and slept. It should be noted that Carol drank that young whipper- snapper Jack under the table. The next morning we went down for breakfast, Jack stayed in bed. To cut an already long story short, Jack got bopped on the head, and had his brain fluid sucked by the vampire, we decided it was about time to fight back in the morning. The butler got in the way (he had a weapon called a "blunder bust", whatever that is, that made a lot of noise but had little other effect. He had trouble using it when Carol tore his head off. Chalis displayed an unusual amount of cowardice, sitting outside on his horse, ready to leave at a the "drop of a party member". Sheminar got her brain fluid sucked by the doctor. We couldn’t find Hum, and figured his body would be "off" by now. Deciding that this was the last place we wanted to be when the sun went down we fled across the border to Katarkas, camped the night and rushed to the Old Katarkian Inn.

7 April 1990

When we arrived Lady Akriel was nowhere to be found, the group in the Inn were an evil looking bunch and turned out to be Lucas’s werewolf mob. After a pleasant bath and meal we were finally fresh enough to be truly pissed off at Akriel setting us up. We asked to talk to Lucas and told him the whole story, apparently Akriel is his daughter, and he new nothing of what was happening. The Crown of Souls allows its wearer to control large armies of undead, Doctor Dominiani WAS a trusted ally. But most importantly, Lucas could control the mists and send us home. We gratefully accepted his offer, and his blessing against vampires. He stood to leave and we found ourselves standing at the crossroad between the main road and the track to Whitehill. All in all we had been gone for two days from Alusia. But they paid us for a full two weeks anyway. We reported into Whitehill, and mentioned that the road was now open again. After staying a few days to rest we headed back to Seagate to report our findings. Lucas (the lord of Katarkas) has given his word that his plane will not touch ours again, and thus people should stop disappearing on the road to Whitehill. [signed] Carol. Party Scribe (by default).