Dead, Then Not (Land Of One Thousand Towers Session 1)

New year, new campaign. 

I've played a lot of 5e and never felt any ease of decision making. The number of rules make me think in stricter terms. What follows is the start of a B/X hexcrawl I'm running with friends. 

Session 1 

Cast: 

Kishar the Hollow Agate, Magic-User 1 

Marko, Thief 1 

Guardsman Vanon, Fighter 1 

 Loot and kills: 

2 ruby eyes (62 gp/xp each) 

6 gold rings (1000 gp/xp each) 

1 werejackal (20 xp) 

It has been a few years since the overthrow of The Pearl of Many Hues (just The Sorcerer to most) and the fleeing of his experiments into the grasslands. The experiments, mutants (doubled ears, eyes, mouths, limbs sometimes), have set up a stockade settlement on top of a tor that rises up from the grasslands. They struggle. 

More recently a utopian band called The Illuminated Circle appeared from the western lands, set themselves up in a small tower on the tor, and began incorporating the community into a "city on the hill" where all are involved and all are responsible in a shining example to the world. They also struggle.

Things are difficult, the village is down to pemmican and the last of the tools the Circle can offer, everything is decaying. Kishar (one of the Sorcerer's apprentices who went with the revolt), Marko (mutant layabout thief), and Vanon (a soldier of the Circle) see how terrible things are and mutually resolve to improve it. 

In the tumbledown hovel bar where the mutants (a stoical lot who drink to cope) hang around the party hears about the following rumors: 

1. Those grasshopper men to the west, looks like they’re preparing for something. Someone should go scout it out— don’t get caught. 
2. The dead are as restless as the living, huh? But you can put them down again. Or drive them away with charms. 
3. A stranger came into the village not long ago; he claims to have fallen asleep in a mountain cave in the reign of the Golden Oligarchs, and to have only recently awoke 

Interested by the first, but more concerned about the village's food problems and how the solve it, the party checks out this wanderer. Marko speaks to him, and the guy goes by Orro, claims to have awoken in a cave from hundreds of years ago and recalls the world as it was: golden and full of treasure. He claims to be a walking treasure map and is excited to leave—he is less excited when Marko mentions companions.

Kishar thinks he is suspicious as fuck, and checks him out over the next days to see if he's stupid (to see how effective Charm Person is of course). He does try to get people alone often. 

The party discusses the morality of mind controlling someone to figure out if he's going to hurt them or not. 

"If he's got nothing to hide then he has nothing to be afraid of" quote Kishar. She briefs with the one captain of the Circle who appears on the ball, Annankim, and suspicions are raised. She is given the go-ahead, for the betterment of the community. 

The party heads out southwest according to Orro. They run into the orangutan-looking Shrinekeeper and his cairn shrine, who takes food for blessings. He's a very friendly ape overall. (Kishar now thinks it's weird how a man from the ancient world speaks modern language.) 

The grasslands raise up into hilly scrubland days into travel, and Orro suggests heading south or east. It sounds like he is trying to get the party lost. They instead camp the night without fire and with Orro some distance away. 

In the night Marko is dragged off by his ankles by a terrible were-jackal, eyes red rimmed like hot wires. There is a short combat in the light of an enchanted stone, and Marko's throat is torn out and he lays bleeding out. Vanon stabs the beast to death—it's Orro. Tried to bring the weak out into the wastes to kill and eat them. 

Kishar rips out the were-jackal's liver for a healing poultice, and his eyes to damn him to hell. It works. Marko lives another day. 

In the hills, the party decides not to head southwest (cursed according to the Shrinekeeper) and go west (something beautiful is there). They do find a large natural cave and hunt out of it. 

They also find scattered old bones with tooth marks, which end up being haunted by the spirit of some wrathful victim. The spirit demands blood from whoever killed it, and Kishar offers the eyes of the werejackal as placation. This ploy works, the cave is lifted of haunts, and the eyes are turned to rubies for the trouble. 

The party is pleased and schemes to turn the cave into a food stockpile or fallback point for the village. Very industrious and forward-thinking. 

They press on west to hopefully find a cure to Marko's bite. 

West is a crater lake with huge termite mounds in the center. The party discusses eating termites, and how they ate worse things under The Sorcerer. 

While getting water, a beautiful figure walks across the surface of the lake to come and talk to them. She is a little teasing, but does not seem to know much about the world beyond the presence of other spirits; according to her she came to be when the lake did. In exchage for a shrine built in her honor she will allow the village to collect water from her lake, but not a minute before. To begin the shrine she brings up a crown from beneath the lake; when the party refuses this kind of wealth she brings up rings instead (these rings have fingerbones in some of them). She does not appear to realize what this signifies, or why the party is suddenly very uncomfortable. 

Being very uncomfortable but assured with the influx of wealth, the party travels straight back to the village. Kishar debriefs about Orro, the wastelands, the Shrinekeeper. Marko lets go of wealth in exchange for a big favor from the Circle, Vanon celebrates a job well done.