Trouble in the Spine

Scribe Notes

Summary

Adventure: Trouble in the Spine
GM: ChrisC
Season: Summer 819 wk
Night: Someday
Level: Low - Medium

Party

• Haedric - our Conflict Resolution specialist played by Stephen
• Mavric - our Team Leader played by Lisa
• Aloysious - our Public Relations specialist played by Nick
• Raseri - our Security personnel played by Ciaran
• Mayhem - our other Security personnel played by Jim
• Celeste - our Hairy Great Haystack played by Dean
• Hemlock - a giant spider
• Borys - a Ratoskyr aka Ratling

Employer

Davos, The Baron of Bryshande

Mission

There's trouble and strange goings on in Diril Highlands, in the Dragonspine Mountains and things are going awry at this commercially valuable time of year. A party is needed to augment what few troops remain (the rest have been called up for service in the warmer south with the king) and keep the peace in the region and sort some things out.

Pay

Lands, Titles, Prestige et al.

Scribe Notes

This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. No matter what anyone else may say.

Day 0 (At the Guild meeting) - We meet a man named Gerald at the guild and he tells us we need to go sort some funky weather out in the Dragonspine Mountains, there is also mention of Giant bandits or perhaps it was Giants and Bandits or perhaps it was Bandit Giants? Anyway, we hear the mission and Gerald gives us some time to vote on Party leader and whatnot. Much discussion ensues. A man named Tarahell Alatáriël introduces himself and then tells us of his step-daughter. He says Celeste is a bit feral we assure him we can handle her and all will be fine.

Mavric is elected party leader (only because she has the most experience). Haedric is our MilSci and I am left as the scribe (Lucky you)

Celeste is introduced to us. She is huge, has pointy teeth and sniffs everyone (Except Mayhem). After some extensive discussion Mavric decides we need some party rules. Party Rules: 1. Speak Common 2. Don't kill each other (Mavric thought this needed to be stated clearly, for the benefit of Haedric) 3. Listen to Mavric 4. Listen to Headric in combat

We have passage on the good ship Molly under captain Francis, on the next morning tide. After collecting some supplies we take go drinking and Mavric takes us to see a play. (with much drinking, fighting and fornicating, to the delight of Celeste).

Day 1

The party boards the ship and cast off heading NNW. The ships navigator is a fool so I correct his mistakes and Magewind us to speed our passage along. The sea is a little rough for this party of land lubbers (myself excluded of course) so they get nice and drunk.

Day 2

We arrive early morning in the port town of Gerbestadt and depart our ship. Conveniently within minutes of us arriving a large and violent storm appears out of nowhere (The Sudden Wind-Storm)so I promptly summon a cloud and we make a quick departure. On the cloud Mavric entertains the party with a saucy tale, the party (excluding yours truly) drink and enjoy the ride. We fly NW towards Barlton in Western Aladar to meet with the Baron's wife to get her to sign some papers.

---

As we continue to fly we come upon a large storm in the area of Barretskyne we decide to avoid both of these issues, we backtrack a few miles, land and set camp to wait out the storm. During our descent, a large dark shape falls past us at great speed. We identify it as a dead Manticore. When we land we send our "advanced scout" (read as disposable) Mayhem to investigate. He reports back that it was killed by non-magical ice projectile or weapon of some kind. Mayhem loots spikes (8) from the Maticore tail.

The storm intensifies, lots of thunder and lightning, but completely natural as far as I could tell. We settle in for the night in an igloo courtesy of Haedric. During the night mayhem has a conversation with some rats (Hobbits, what can you do?) the party agreed that the chat was a little flirty. Mayhem brings the rat back to the igloo, it seems it is a dark celestial thing as the rat suddenly decides Raser is his new master.

Haedric wakes us in the very early morning, he has seen some humanoids skulking around our loot (Manticore body). Mayhem investigates, identifies them as Gnolls and we form a plan. Mayhem: "Lets give them a good killing!"

They are dispatched quickly. We loot the bodies and find:

• 10gs
• 60s
• 10c
• A ring with the seal of a noble house worth 97 gs
• A gold necklace with an enchantment -3 to percentile rolls

Mayhem's creepy spider eats many eyes.

Celeste and Haedric skin the Manticore. Celeste then disappears for a while. We head back to the igloo and interrupt Celeste and Gerald.

Amendment to party rules Rule 5. No coitus in common spaces.

We finish our rest and prepare to depart.

--- Day 3

We head out into the storm and as we travel it intensifies. I make a call and we land outside of a town called Corce to weather the storm. We find the Inn, eat and drink, Mayhem entertains himself in the usual way and Mavric performs with a local.

Amendment to party rules A new party rule is added; Rule 6: No pets eating other pets.

The bartender tells us that a child is missing in the storm. So like the brave Heroes we are, we set out to find him. Albert, the missing child, was last seen in his family's barn. The barn had collapsed so we searched the rubble and found him wounded but alive. Haedric does some sneaky healing and we return Albert to his family. Mayhem reads his shadow, then for some reason decides to buy Albert (Hobbits, what can you do?) and his father agrees to send him for tuition to Mayhem at Seagate next spring.

We return to the Inn for the night and are lauded as Heroes!

--- Day 4 - White Lotus Day

Deciding that the storm and mountain air currents make flying a little iffy we continue on foot. After a mile and a while we come across some very lifelike statues in amongst the trees and shrubbery. I wonder aloud if they might be the work of a medusa or basilisk, Mayhem reads shadows to confirm this. We then keep a very wary eye out and continue on the the asylum, The Noble Mew of Berghold Wehmeyer,

where the Baroness Lady Margarite Bryshante is currently residing.

As we investigate the statues further we find out that they were petrified at different times, the newest was only 7 weeks ago and the oldest was 24 years ago. Noting this we continue to the large manor, we approach and wait outside the portcullis. I see a bell so I ring it, a lot. Eventually someone comes to let us in. His Name is Neills. Among other thing Neills tells us that a man by the name of Blackstaff, also from seagate, dropped off a Lady Redwater aka Lady Simone Beauchamps, this seems somehow important.

The Manor is an extremely ominous place, it ticks many boxes in the creepy house bracket. I noted:

• Screams
• Shutters slamming
• A musty smell
• A storm outside
• Shaking floors
• Small bones lying around
• BIG SPIDERS

As I note these things, 3 doctors come to greet us. They tell us about the asylum and then when we ask about the Baroness say that she is not in a good state for visitors today and that we will have to wait until tomorrow. They take us to some empty rooms in the staff living area. As we are sweeping the room for anything suspicious I find a lock box under a loose stone. Unlocking and de-trapping I find some teeth, some finger bones and a ring. The ones who can, start looking into the things I have found. Celeste and I stand guard. We are all affected by an ESP which makes us very suspicious. While on watch I spot that one of the nurses has a large growth on her neck.

Some time later I see that someone has left a key on a bench in the common room, so I take it. We decide it's a plant, so someone meant for us to take it. I smell Ozone very strongly in the air, we decide to leave our room and find the Baroness immediately. The key I found unlocks all the doors leading to the women's wing of the asylum, very convenient. On our way to find the Baroness we free 4 women who were tied to chairs and gagged, left to be taken by some unknown monster that comes in the night. It is at about this point we smell smoke, the manor is on fire! With some alacrity we continue.

We find the Baroness, free her and start freeing other women imprisoned here. During all this Mayhem stumbles upon a large hole in the floor, which drops down 30 feet into a large room with some seriously creepy shit in it, altars and other such creepy paraphernalia. We suspect witches or summoners of some kind. The fire seems to be getting worse so we make good our escape. On the way out Haedric sneakily extinguishes the fire. We make it out with about 20 inmates.

We find a barn to shelter in. The barn has 2 wagons and a fully black coach, Mayhem and I are very suspicious of the coach. Mavric hypnotizes one of the women who was tied up, we discover that she has had dreams of creatures in the night and that every time she dreams, she is healed partially of her madness. The second woman who was tied up has a similar story of memory loss and then she feels better. Mavric then divines one of the women and finds out that she was once mad but she had been drained of her madness by a Vampire of thoughts.

Day 5

We awaken the Baroness and she seems a bit loopy and out of it. We discover that she was last visited by the vampire 6 days ago. We ask about getting our papers signed (the reason we came here in the first place) and she tells us that her seal and pen are back at the asylum. We do some general inquiring about the asylum and it seems that all the patients do actually want to be there because they are getting better. As far as we can tell there aren't any political prisoners so we decide to leave it alone.

We encourage Mayhem to open the carriage door, as he does he gets hit by a needle trap and is poisoned. He drinks a potion and is fine (no big deal). Then I (the only skilled party thief) disarm the trap and enter the carriage. I avoid another trap (with my awesome and amazing skillz) and open the large trunk that i find inside the carriage. The party is concerned this is a coffin so they strongly try to discourage me, but I pay those cowards no mind. Inside the trunk is a bunch of swords and daggers. (Ha! Never doubt me again cowardly party members!) Those who can divine the items I found and we find out that some of them are magical.

Celeste, who had been on watch lets us know that there is a search party coming towards us, so we call them over and return to the asylum with them and the patients we rescued from the fire.

At the asylum Mayhem reads a sense undead scroll to put our minds at ease. Thankfully it comes up negative and we all breathe a huge sigh of relief.

We decide to investigate the hole in the ground we discovered earlier. We look in and see a strange zodiac pattern, except it has one extra. We identify it as Ophiucheus. We decide to head down and investigate once no one is watching. Garrick the parrot decides to stay with the Baroness, in the nice air, rather than the dank dungeon like place below.

When we head down we feel that this place is incredibly magical. We are in large room with 13 pedestals and a large throne covered in gems. Mavric (being a typical dwarf) can't help herself and she touches one of the gems, she falls down and is unresponsive. We find out she has been translated (whatever that means??)

After a while she comes around and tells us she visited the heavens, before she can say anything else I think that sounds cool so I touch a gem.

I am shot up into the sky and i reach the heavens where I see a large banquet table, around this table sits many Elven gods. I discover we are in the lost temple of Varda an ancient Elven Goddess. She grants each of us a boon for finding her lost temple.

We set about exploring the temple, it's bloody huge! It would have at one time supported around 400 people easily. We spend a full day exploring and looting the temple (well picking up a weapon each from her armoury) which is well stocked. I find a magical sextant which will help me with my navigating, others find other stuff? We find a weeks worth of elvish bread each. Borys and Hemlock both get an upgrade (Oh boy that's a big spider) after they eat some golden apples they find in the temple.

After all the exploring and looting we exit the temple and as requested by Varda we crush a gem she gave us and the temple vanishes, only solid rock remains.

We all look 25% younger, which makes some of us look like spotty teenagers again (yuck), but we are still the same just more youthful.

Mayhem uses his shadow portals to take some of our collected stuff back to Seagate so we don't have to lug it around with us.

Eventually with papers signed we start to make our way by cloud closer to our final destination.

Day 7

Travel by Cloud 200m Northwards

Day 8

We finally make it to Kanstyn in the mid morning, where we are to meet someone who will tell us where to go. A lot of people seem to be leaving the area, probably because it's so bloody cold in these mountains (I miss the ocean). We notice some shady looking characters watching over the comings and goings, at the gate, from the shadows. Once in town we make our way to a pub (the golden kelpie). Mayhem recruits another whore. (Hobbits! What can you do?), Borys has begun walking upright and seems rather intimidating. Mavric meets some Dwarves at the pub and they tell her to visit Gustav's Gems.

We go and see the Margrave Alberto 'Bellator' of Kanstyn and he tells us that a patrol was sent up into the mountains 5 days ago and haven't reported back yet. He warns us of the dangers of the mountains; Wolves, Giants, Orcs, Goblins and DRAGONS!

Night Passes

Day 9

We clean ourselves up and head out of town on foot (like peasants) towards the pass up the mountains. Once out of town Haedric summons an Iceberg and we floated down towards the pass (against the current) until we reached the southern tower at the pass of the pass.

After some more travelling we make up and into the pass and on our way up we find 4 human corpses, 4 dead horses and 2 dead wolves. They've been dead about a day. 2 of the Humans were crushed by boulders, we assume giants. We soon find the tracks of 6 wolves and 1 giant, estimated to be about 12 feet tall. It seems to our trackers and Mil Sci that the patrol are being driven towards an ambush.

We follow the tracks and find them being attacked by a frost Giant and 6 wolves. We quickly dispatch the enemies (with some awesome lighting bolts).

Captain Jorgundson and what's left of his patrol are very thankful, we camp down with them in a cave to heal up and rest.

The giant had 2 rings (1 magical) and a necklace. He also had a sword of Dwarf smiting so Haedric breaks it apart. We take his scale armour, a collar from a wolf, 3 wolf skins, 200s and 3 ts.

Day 10

In the morning we notice Borys is now 3 feet tall! His GTN is now Ratling, a short lived sentient. (Holy ****)

We leave the cave and head further up the pass towards an outpost that Captain Jorgundson told us about.

As the Outpost comes into view we can see that there are multiple Human heads on spikes outside the gates. We can see that there are now goblins manning (Goblining??) the walls. So we start planning. We send the injured troops back to the cave along with Gerald and Garrick to keep them warm and away from the upcoming fight.

After a sufficient amount of planning we sneak up one of the walls, all of us walking unseen thanks to Mavric. We scale the wall kill the guard there and replace him with Borys. We make our way down into the main building and start slaughtering, Celeste goes down but we manage to kill all the baddies in the room and get Celeste back on her feet as we await the reinforcements we are sure are coming.

The reinforcements never arrive, so we plan our next steps. We leave boris to watch over the tied up goblins and we sweep the keep for more baddies, we don't find any. Frosty, 3 arms and the sneak (Headric, Raseri and Mayhem) head back to the cave to get the soldiers. Celeste goes down to see the wolves and tells them to behave.

Mavric spends a long time divining. She finds out that the crystal is part of a series of magical crystals that are keeping the winter here. We must follow the crystals to the source to stop the eternal winter.

We go down a very deep well that has been excavated further and find a giant crystal. It isn't magical but seems to be the power source for the winter witch coven who are somehow making the eternal winter.

Celeste thinks we should find some summer witches to help us against all these winter witches.

3 arms interrogates a goblin, the goblin says they are trying to bring about perpetual winter so that the "Ice Queen" can return. He then says that they are expecting reinforcements very soon so we set up some watches. He then starts to tell some very tall tales, so we put him out to pasture.

We send a raven back to Kanstyn with all the info we have gathered so far.

We find out the Goblin Ice Priest is pacted to an ice demon, so we have to be careful about how we dispose of him.

We spend 2 days at the outpost divining and getting skins from the ogres and the wolves for skinchange purposes.

A large troop of dwarven and human soldiers arrive to man the outpost.

Mil Sci

Daily Pattern

• Sleep/Camp
• Travel
• Meals
• Rituals

Mayhem:

Purification

Weaving Shadow Silk

shadow glove, shadow wing canopy, shadow line x 3

Hours of sleep for Ft recovery + Hot meal Ft recovery.

Marching Order

Main body front:
Main body rear:
Tail Guard:

Formations
Single file:
Open area:

Buffs

Buffs listed in the table don't need to be detailed, other buffs not on the table must be mentioned at the time they are cast.
Y means always on, N/- means never on, 'Sit.' means when the party has time for buffs before a fight.
Weapon Spells which weapon/s it is going on normally should be noted also.

General notes.
- -

Long Duration Buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Ft / Day	Al	Cl	Ha	Mv	My	Rsr	--
Name	##	Does Stuff	?? days	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Name	##	Does stuff	?? hrs	? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Name	##	Does stuff	?? hrs	? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Name	##	Does Stuff	?? weeks	? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Names	##	Does stuff	?? hrs	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Name	##	Does stuff	?? hrs	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--

Short Duration Buffs

Magic	Rk	Effects	Dur	Ft / Cast	Al	Cl	Ha	Mv	My	Rsr	--
Witchsight	12	See in darkness as on a cloudy day 150 ft, 75 ft inside, see Rank 12 or less Invisible, Blending or any Unseen	6.5 hours	1 Ft	--	--	--	--		--	--
Featherfall	##	Does Stuff	?? Mins	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	Sit	--	--
	##	Does stuff	?? mins	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Name	##	Does stuff	?? hrs	?? Ft	--	--	--	--	--	--	--

Loot

• Gold necklace, magical - subtracts three from percentile die result
• Gold ring, not magical - 97 gold shillings in value

Calendar

Summer
	Moonday		Duesday		W'ansday		Th'rsday		Frysday		Reapsday		Sunday
	Beltane
Meadow (1)
			1	Guild Meeting	2	Depart Guild by Boat	3	Arrive Gerbestadt. Depart by Cloud. Land E of Barretskyne.	4	Travel by Cloud towards Asylum.	5	White Lotus Get to the Asylum	6	Seagate Light Festival Return to the Asylum. Explore the Lost Temple.
	7	Explore the Lost Temple.	8	Explore the Lost Temple. Return to the Asylum. Depart late afternoon & tvl 80m by Cloud.	9	Travel by Cloud and tvl 270m	10		11		12		13
	14		15		16		17		18		19	The Castellan Borderers Ball	20
	21		22		23		24		25		26	Seagate Crafters Ball	27
	28		29		30
Heat (2)
							1		2		3		4	Seagate Guildmasters Ball
	5		6		7		8		9		10	Seagate Races	11	The Duke of Carzala's Summer Ball
	12		13		14	Midsummers  Eve  (Faerie Day)	15	Solstice	16		17	Seagate Summer Fair Day	18	Seagate Summer Fair Day
	19		20		21		22		23		24	The Castellan of Brastor's Summer Ball	25
	26		27		28		29		30
Breeze (3)
											1		2
	3	Day of Death	4		5		6		7		8		9
	10		11		12		13		14		15		16
	17		18		19		20		21		22		23
	24		25		26		27		28		29		30