Alusian Innocents Abroad, The Evil Within

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GM: Mark Simpson
Time: Winter 808 WK
Day: Wednesdays
Level: Innocents

Seagate Gatherings

• Melco – Human Shadow Celestial (with a variety of interesting skills). Great with an Axe.
• Rumpelstilzchen – a young Halfling of the College of Ensorcelments and Enchantments
• The Lady Hope De Winter - a petite white clad courtier (calls herself a seer)
• Daizy Pâquerette - a cowgirl, le fait d'aimer de s'amuser et appeler les noms de gens (yeeha)
• Skafloc valGalen - a woodlands elf, fresh (really fresh) from the forests
• Koffi – Gnome Binder (and his mate Bill the Clay Golem).
• Zanak – A pirate, with some abilities to influence the mind

In quieter moments Skafloc and Daizy can be seen scribling notes documenting the events of the day

Dear Diary

1st of Frost – Mission Briefing

It was a strange group that gathered to meet their new employer – a Pirate (with hat and cutlass) and a cow girl (with lasso and hang-over), a bewildered looking elf, a cute kid with a big axe and three really short adventures: a white clad human woman with a regal air about her, a gnome (playing with a animated string doll) and a hobbit (cleaning his nails with a knife). A big clay guy stands silently at the wall.

Mr Baymen of the city of Middenheim told us of an invasion of his city-state by chaos forces lead by somebody called Acaron - The Lord of the End of Times. The army was driven off about a week ago, but still not obliterated, so he wants to pay us standard guild rates to go and discreetly investigate and (if possible) drive off any remaining taints of chaos. He’ll provide a couple of items for planar travel and emergency communications, but he will be staying on Alusia – to deal with other business. We’ll meet Father Burnwell (unfortunate name) when we get there - for further orientation.

Why discreetly? Well magic is a closed shop on this plane, and there are some groups (like the Church Knights of the Order of Sigma and the Order Olric) that will burn you at the stake if they think you are in any way chaos related (even reading the wrong sort of books!).

We use advances on our fees to get supplies and greaters (some elf called Lucius Lord Protector gave the shy elf a really good free greater). The guild proves a standard healing potion each and we decide on our cover story (out-of-city Chaos Consultants, newly arrived to offer the City Guard our services). We elect the courtier Lady Hope as our leader.

Some of the adventures have a last drink, but we all eventually retire to bed (er to sleep).

2nd of Frost – Olde Worlde Middenheim

A Peaceful Forest Glade

We buff up and go through the portal - to arrive in an empty forest glade (no Father Burnwell?!). The elf heads quietly up the path - to meet a beastman chasing (and killing) a small child. Well, that gave us something to do! The Lady’s spectral hand squashes Mr Evil to the ground and the rest hammer him with a barrage of magic and strikes. The Lady talks with the dead guy (seems to have a talent that way?!), but there’s no common language. Alerted by distant shouts of fear, we head up the path to view a burning village with more rampaging beastmen. Lady Hope acquired another small child along the way, but has to sap the child to free herself for the investigation into the village (of course).

A Village on Fire

We Battle and kill the beastmen in the village of Grevenfield
We come across our contact, a priest called Bower, who is dead in the church. The villagers ask us if we are sent by Bower and we say we are. The alter boy speaks up and hands us a scared artifact of the church (of Sigma) and asks us to take it to Middenhelm. We discover that other beastmen had run off before we got there, chasing villagers, looting and rampaging. We decide to clear the bodies into a house, pack up the villages and head out of town before the beastmen come back. Lady Hope has a little girl, Leasel, in her care whose Aunty, Olivia, lives in Middenhelm.

The road to Middenhelm

we investigate the artifact of Sigma on the road. We discover it is a picture of Sigma and is not magical as far as we can tell. We stop for the night at an Inn nine miles from town. We check the villagers and find one has been chaos tainted. It is an old taint and doesn't seem to be spreading. We also find to our regret that we can't do anything to fix the taint. We decide not to share our knowledge of her taint with anyone.

3rd of Frost – The City of Middenheim: Darting Deaths & Investigations

We travel to Middenhelm uneventfully. we take the refugees into the city and check them in to the refugee camp. Lady Hope does some clever negotiations and gets the refugees to spread word of our rescue of their town. We find rooms in the Red Moon, cabaret and supper establishment. We talk to the bar keeper who tells us that rioting, looting and disease are rife in this city.

Disturbing Events

We decide to head to the church first. We hand over the artifact to Father Morton who appears very excited. We get 25sp each and a church medallion in the shape of a Hammer. As we head off again some town guards come to see us and ask us to come and speak to their commander, Captain Alric Sholtzman. While we are talking to the captain an aide comes in and whispers in his ear, then we are arrested. Apparently Father Morton has been murdered and we were the last ones to see him alive. After our story has been checked out and they realise that we were with the guards or talking to the captain when the murder happened and we couldn't have done it, we are set free and promptly hired to find the murdered.

The death of a Churchman

We had over to the church and discover that there is claw marks by the window and the priest was killed with a blow dart. The dart had mantacore poison on it. He was writing something at the time of death. We shade on a lower piece of paper and discover his writings. We head off to the guard and report our findings. We are shown 3 other darts from recent murders.

Trouble in the city.

Three people have been killed by the same method.
1) A Watchman outside the Theology College
2) A Doorkeeper outside the engineers guild
3) Unidentified person in the old(poor) quarter

All were killed recently with Scaven darts. The captain tells us that there were scaven in the undercity during recent battles in the city. It is thought the undercity is blocked up by collapsing tunnels and sealing entrances.The watchman has been buried, the door keeper is with the dwarves, and the unidentified person is with the temple of the Moor.

We talk to an alchemist who looks at the poison but doesn't tell us anything.

We go to visit the dwarves. They are beside the temple of a dwarven god, across the roadis shops and they are by the Southern gates. There are some enterences by side alleys.The dwarves are unhelpful and suspicious and wont tell us anything.

We go to visit the Theology college. They wont leave us alone with the body of the watchman and they didn't notice anything was missing. We think that they probably wouldn't be able to tell what might be missing.

Ambush Alley

As evening falls, we head back to the alley to see if we can gather some more information. Our Seer talks with the spirit of the murdered guy. It turns out he was some sort of vigilante – a protector of the city. He surprised a rat man heading down to the alley dead end – surprised him with a crossbow bolt to the body! That didn’t stop Mr Rodent though. It returned the favour with a deadly poisoned blow dart. Skafloc spotted blood stains – leading from the crossbow bolt impact point to a sewer grate at the alley dead end. So, some of that mystery is cleared up.

A Pirate in a Dress

Back at the inn, the pirate wears Lady Hope’s second dress into the common room (‘didn’t have a thing to wear’). This attracts the attention of a large, free spending guy (Robert) who seems to like Zanak in a dress – lots of free drinks for the cabin boy.

Later we head out, to the murder sites – to see if we can hook up with any drunken, loose mouthed dwarves – but to no avail. We decide to head back to Ambush Alley tomorrow.

4th of Frost – Under Worlde Middenheim: It Does Flow Downhill

We leave Lisel in the paid care of one of the wenches at the inn (Brunheilda) and head out. A ‘Warpstone antidote’ won’t be available for a week, so we head back to the alley and the trail of blood down the sewer grate. The trail leads along a dark narrow tunnel path bordering a river of thick flowing sewage. The trail goes downstream, to where the flow goes through a sturdy gate - making a brown waterfall onto the fertile soil below. Just inside the gate the trail goes down a steep dark (but dry) tunnel through the sewer wall.

Into the Dark

• Yes, we take all of the usual precautions (obscurement, invisibly, ropes) and head down the steep 30 foot slope
• Yes, we made noise getting down (Daizy tripped over her chaps) and alerted the waiting rat men
• Yes, the spell casters backfired A LOT (Skafloc caught himself in his own hands of earth)
• Yes, Melco charged to get some man-on-rat-with-axe action, but then fled in magic induced panic
• Yes, finally Daizy gets her counters down and we charge back in

We nearly loose all Hope

Stop! A crossbow bolt comes out of the dark and hits our white lady. Poisoned, she desperately tries to take a waters of healing, but the rapid acting poison drops her – stunned. Daizy comes to the rescue, but Lady H is really annoyed at the nasty hole in her dress. Luckily it is still clean with no blood or dirt.

Rumple sleeps the leader, but a golem pound him awake up again (oops). Finally Melco, Rumplestiltskin and the golems get to grips with the last rat-men and the rat-mage and cut them down. Now, to get down to some serious searching and information gathering (two Skaven are still alive – and of course our seer can talk with the others)

Stop the press! We found the frame of the missing religious icon. We’re definitely on the right track here.

Dead-end interrogations

We spend a lot of time trying to get the rat guys to give us some clues to track down the next link up in their chain – but to no avail. We discover that the person that hired them to do these assassinations was a human (male) in the city, but that’s about it. Very frustrating. We did gather the alarming fact that there was more of this ‘warpstone’ in tunnels beneath the sewer level, but that was about it.

On the trip back to the town guard, we had to protect our two prisoners from revolting citizens (‘lynch the skaven, lynch the skaven’) and belligerent guardsmen (‘just kill them now’), but Captain Sholtzman threw them safely into holding cells.

The good news is that there is a 1000sp reward to be collected for bringing in the murdering Skaven. The bad news is that Lady Hope seems to have been afflicted by some sort of itching – not lady-like at all (cooties?). Turns out to be Galloping Scumpox – which luckily is easily curable.

The Captain gives us some interesting news: some unknown people turned up to give the nameless man (killed in the old quarter) a better funeral. He too is worried by the existence of warpstone beneath the city. Nasty stuff.

A bit of R&R back at the inn is interrupted by a messenger at the door – we are called to an audience at a Temple of Olric.

Blood in the Forest and an Ancient Evil Artefact

Deep in a dark forest, a huge standing stone towers atop a hill littered with human skulls. The monolith glows with a fiery aura as blood oozes from the rock, glistening as it pours down to coat the piled skulls. A massive armoured figure stands impassive with shadowed eyes. It bears the markings of Korn – the Blood God, and around its neck a chain bears a brass skull with glowing aware eyes. The menacing skull looks at you and your brain pounds with the words ‘I shall be free’. You awake – screaming.

Father Renolf – a Priest of Olric introduces us to old Father Odo. The Father is blind with totally white eyes, but seems agile enough moving around. He’s been repeatedly having this vivid threatening dream. When he awakes, he has a sense of direction to where the evil lies. The brass skull from his dream has been identified as an ancient evil artefact, and the Church would like us to accompany Odo to this source of evil (in the Draken Woods that surround the city) and if possible to neutralise it.

No problem – we’ll leave tomorrow.

Geirhart Crow

Before heading off for a goods night’s sleep, we head off to look at the grave the now-named nameless man. The cash for the grave & grave stone was provided by some nameless followers of Sigma from the city. The head stone features crossed sword and hammer and a twinned tailed comet – apparently a common grave motif.

5th of Frost – Forest Travels

We meet up with the good Father and after taking some time to divine the nature of his dreaming affliction we head out. His blindness is natural, and he has some sort of quasi-magic linking/communicating magic. Not hugely powerful – but about as strong as a human could manage (if he was really good).

Off we head to the West/North West up a forest road. Darkness falls - and we camp. Odo tosses and turns.

6th of Frost – Forest Travels

Off we head to the West/North West through the forest. Darkness falls - and we camp. Odo tosses and turns even more.

7th of Frost – Gosh, A Monolith on a Hill

Around noon we spy a large clearing in the trees, and the glimpse of a stone tower. Rumple puts up his crystal ball and we spy out a 200 ft clearing with a stone column capped hill in the middle. A large figure is seated in front of the stone. There are also 3 blackened circles in the clearing.

Looks like the place.

A Forest Clearing - a Minotaur, a Mound and a Monolith

A Minotaur sits on the mound, but when he spots us, he blows a horn and charges. He is fought and defeated (thanks to Melco and his clay friends). No apparent allies arrive.

We check out the clearing – it contains circles of recently burnt bones (missing skulls) stones and lots of skulls on the mound. Looks like there has been some serious sacrificing going on here.

Around the back, there is a bone choked ramp down into the mound. Lady Hope uses her seer hand to shovel them out of the way.

Descent into the mound

The wary adventures exercise all due caution in descending the ramp (detect traps and detect aura), but get it by a triggered spear trap (ouch), but also find a secret door into an inner chamber, where we are attacked by a couple of spectral ‘blood’ beings. Although we have few weapons that can hit them, they are despatched with the assistance of holy water. In the process, we triggered a fountain of toxic blood, which one of the golems tried to smash – turning it into a sprinkler of toxic blood. Sigh. Koffi binds elements to close off the fountain - and the blood in the room gradually, mysteriously drains away

Hobbit Scouting

Rumple scouts the blood fountain room - and is guided (controlled?!) by voices to open another secret door. He advances into a throne room, but retreats before self-assembling piles of beastman bones. Yikes! More skeletons arrive – but the party advances and defeats the gathered bone men.

• To the left of the throne room is a trophy room (ancient banners and battered weapons).
• To the right is a crypt – a sarcophagus in the middle of a pool of blood (perhaps the place where the fountain of blood drained to)

The Crypt

Koffi sends a golem wading through the blood, carrying Rumple. The golem pushes the lid off the sarcophagus – revealing a dead armoured chaos champion with a brass skull on a chain around his neck (red plate mail & two handed sword)

Rumple (unexpectedly) grabs the skull and chain. The golem grabs the two handed sword and returns.

Divinations

Back out in the open (watching for beastmen centaurs spotted earlier) we divinate the skull: containment magic (not imprisoning), contains part of the soul of a demon, serious magic to destroy. We go back in and a golem gets the red plate mail (and cleans it) and one of the banners

Under Father Odo’s urgings, we plan to travel back to the city tomorrow. It is late so we camp out a little way into the forest from the Obelisk clearing.

8th of Frost – Forest Travels

In the early hours of the morning, it becomes apparent Rumple has not passed unscathed by his close contact with the skull. While sleeping, his will is tested (he fails) and he renews his efforts to be reunited with his ‘precious’ (that’s hobbits for you). The skull (in turn) seems quite able to move it self out of containment. The Lady Hope is forced to render Rumple unconscious

Koffi has a strange dream – an indistinct bleeding figure in a twisted chaotic landscape asks/demands that Koffi does, well, something

Rumple is divinated: apparently his sleeping will was taken, so the Lady Hope does something which makes it seem like the Hobbit is dead

A dawn the hobbit is ‘awoken’ and we start marching, but two hours into the march, a high pitch shriek/scream emerges from the skull (in Zanak’s backpack). It is not happy. We head back with the screaming skull looking for some stone to mould to mute the skull. Skafloc scouts out the way, but fails to notice lurking beastmen, so once the party pauses, the beastmen attack – followed soon after by some ½ horse beastmen.

Things got pretty desperate then. We fought on and may have been able to beat the beasties, but the arrival of three vigilantes of Sigma (friends of Gerhard Crow – RIP) meant we overcame without any party deaths. The vigilantes (lead by one Maffias Hoffer) had been following us from the city – ever since we were spotted checking out their dead mate’s grave.

Good fighters, but not very friendly – that’s for sure. We head back to the city as quickly as possible.

9th of Frost – Back to the City

We head back to the city as quickly as possible.

Back at the city, we turn over the skill to the church and after drinking water (chaos tainted), Father Odo turned a bit beastly too, so we were forced to put him down. It turned out that person or persons unknown had put some warpstone in the church well, which could have this affect on people.

We stayed right away for water and planned to keep a watch on three wells that night – just in case this ‘warpstone in the well’ lark was becoming fashionable. The vigilantes were watching other city wells.

10th of Frost – Wells & Warehouses; Olric & Sigma; The Sword and the Flail

A very busy day

• Well Watching did yield a warpstone wielding well waterer who spilled all his secrets to Lady Hope’s gentle persuasions
• The trail led back to a warehouse where the warpstone wielding well waterer’s coven gathered. We wiped them out without further clues
• On the way back, we were taken prisoner first by the Town Guards (as we were protectors of chaos!), then turned over to Plate Mail flunkies of the Order of Olric, who very rapidly stripped us of all weapons and magic and threw us into a cell …
• .. which we escaped from (gathering all our gear in the process).

It turns out Maffias Hoffer (remember him) had busted up another chaos coven and made it out (wounded) with some sort of nasty black book. As Hoffer was associated with Sigma, the Order of Olric was taking the opportunity to take a pot shot at Sigma (the head dude of Olric is not a nice person)

• Sigma doesn’t want to bust Hoffer out, because it would just cause a civil war which only chaos would benefit from, so we head to ‘The Sword and the Flail’ (where Hoffer had got the Black Book from) to look for evidence
• We bust up the remains of a coven and rescue one Johan Ofler (witness for the defence) who witnessed Hoffer’s valiant single handed attack on the coven

11th of Frost – The Time of Trials

We were asked to take the skull to a mage, but it turns out we have the head of Ofler (witness for the defence) instead (how did that happen?!) and by the time we get back the Trial, the High Priest of Olric is summoning Korn.

We are fighting our way past the Teutonic guards when the temple of Olric reacts directly the high priest’s blasphemy – by a blast of sacred flame which incinerates the high priest, Korn and the all the guards (including any and all items they may have been wearing or carrying). Inconsiderate temple that!

Well that wraps things up really. We spend the next couple of days heading back to our portal place and spend the next evening in our favourite Seagate watering hole.

Administration

Standard Operating Procedures

Marching order

• Melco - axe wielding human
• Rumplestiltskin - small but fierce
• The Lady Hope - with her trusty sap
• Daizy - lasso at the ready
• Skafloc - sometimes scouting ahead unseen
• Koffi - and his golem friends
• Zanak - The Pirate and his scimitar

Watches

• Zanak & Skafloc
• Melco & Kofee
• Rumple, Daizy and Lady Hope

Note: 30 min overlap at change of watch, so only one watcher changing at a time

Buffs

Treasure

Seagate Guild

• 7 x 10HP healing potions (1 each)

Father Morton

• 25 sp each
• Hammer Medallion (each)

Skaven Treasure

• Blowpipe and darts
• Crossbow and bolts
• 30sp loot
• 1000sp reward

Temple of Olric

• 4 x Holy Water grenados

The Skull Crypt

• A two handed sword
• Red plate male
• A skull!

Quotable Quotes

• Lady Hope: How may quarters does this city have anyway?

Possible Adventure Nominations

Smartest

Bravest

Stupidest

Best Death