Sessions 1&2

Play report as follows:

Party:
Boss (Fighting-woman 1)
The Lurking Minion (Normal Man 0)
Rattlebones (Sorcerer 1)
The Quiet Breath (Normal Man 0)

Captured! Captured and driven for some nefarious purpose in the north, a group of unfortunates and their oppressors travel. Up through a pass in the craggy mountains they went in a short line with ropes around every set of wrists. There was little talk and much fear.

And upon that group in that lonely land terror struck. From a crag came a white icthyoid that sapped blood with its tentacles and resisted all weapons raised against it. The guard line shattered and there was much confusion; a few escaped and ran still bound into the dark.

Fleeing carnage and with minimal gear the party fled into the shattered mountains. A storm began and night fell. The Lurking Minion, a former guard for the slaver caravan, had a change of heart on hearing the others plead for life and agreed to untie them and was immediately savagely beaten.

All debts paid the party sought refuge from the storm and sounds of monsters and went up the exposed mountainsides to look for a likely cave to hide in. There was no wood and The Quiet Breath’s grog was decided too precious to burn. It appeared everyone was able to grab rations but him, but he refused trade for anything. More beatings were threatened until the Ulfire man suggests all food and booze to be shared in kind for the times were dire.

The party found a cave after this proclamation, protection from the howling wind and sheer curtains of rain. This cave went down in half-carved steps into a natural cavern flecked with strange inclusions. On Boss lighting her only torch the light reflects unearthly shades of ulfire, dolm, and jale among more prosaic quartzes and silvers. Rattlebones the sorcerer suspected these veins may make good weapons or tools, and set to trying to pry ore out of stone with her bare hands and dagger of knapped flint.

Suspicions were raised, and the party spread to check the cave walls with careful hands and insightful eyes. An hour wound on and Boss’ torch burned lower and lower, fear began to rise along with suspicion—would they die in the unknown dark?

But in the last minutes of light Rattlebones’ obsessive labors led the Purple amazon to a discovery: a door of stone of the east, seams nearly lost in the glimmering cavern! Much back-slapping and front-slapping commenced. And in the dying torchlight they clustered together with Boss and Quiet Breath leading the way. The stone door did grind open on ancient internal hinges thick with grit, and with pole and staff held out the party came to a strangely mundane door of beads—bone, clay, and wooden baubles on rotten leather ropes.

Listening at this door the party was not able to hear anything over the distant howl of wind and rain, and so pushed through with true confidence—directly into the fetid den of four huge beasts! Shaggy they were, with twisted heads and beaked mandibles and blunted hands tipped by claws. These beasts had evidently head an approach for all watched the party, who themselves were surprised and backed away into the clattering curtains.

The beasts appeared indifferent in the guttering light, and chuffed and snorted and came close in a casual way. And the party, terrified, thought to put a ration on the end of Boss’ 10’ pole and stick it through the beaded curtain as an offering. One beast took it and gnawed on the pole as well before leaving to a corner of the room.

The party re-entered the room and offered all their other rations as peace offerings; all except Quiet Breath, who would not part with his jar of grog to beasts. The remaining beast without food gained a look of deep hunger but did not attack.

Peace maintained at pole-point the party inched around the edge of this new room: rough carved and made regular with baked brick floors and an altar with pedestal. Melted wax forming a frozen dribble to cover the whole altar down to the floor. What bricks could be seen depicted beings in repetitive dance being granted sumptuous gifts from above; gifts that looked like shaggy pelts or robes and strange crowns. A dusty chest was also found, and in it five jale ones and wicks. Light would not abandon them! So too there were a pair of strange copper cylinders that fit in ones palm, and by running a thumb over an inbuilt mechanism could one bring a tiny flame from nowhere! Everyone then proceeded to burn their thumbs testing this device (and go into the caveman schtick heavily), agitating the shaggy beasts.

Being so circumspect, Quiet Breath took a jale candle and flame-lighter and stuck it atop the wax pile.

Nothing happened, but the party searching in the last torchlight reveals a loose brick near the altar, and beneath it, gravel—and beneath that, piles of dusty coins! Silver and some gold, the party gathered up what little could be carried in hand and in loincloth and underarm and retreated to “their” cave.

They had coin and candlelight, but no food. Between counting out each share (headed by Quiet Breath) they spoke of to do next. Boss desired to push forward and had the blade to back up that desire, the rest thought of other possible secret doors.

Boss then bullied and shamed the rest for cowardice; her perfectly average charisma did not help but the obsidian sword in hand did.

Back into the altar room and beyond, candles barely lighting the way. The group headed south out of the altar room and on more beaded doors, successfully hearing sound from another room: the shuffling as of many figures, and a light background murmuring. Surely these must be other people! But slavers maybe, possibly aligned with the group who captured everyone in the first place? Lurking Minion confirmed no one had told her of a cave holdfast.

The possible numbers inside rose everyone’s fears, but Boss demanded for Rattlebones call upon sorcerous power, for Quiet Breath to hurl his beloved grog, and for Lurking Minion to be deadly accurate with her bone-tipped arrows.

The party rushed in ambush! In the guttering candlelight they saw ten figures of indistinct outline.

Success and catastrophe in turn! Lurking Minion deftly shot a figure down, but Quiet Breath’s throw hit the floor and Boss’ blow only did moderate damage—worse, the sorcerous chanting brought up a frog-ish servitor writhing with humming maggots, and who bayed for blood at her demand for service!

In a second things turn! Swarmed at once by the figure, who in the dim light now are seen as filamentous horrors dominated by mycelial growth like cloaks, Boss and Quiet Breath were clubbed down.

Rattlebones turns and flees! Lurking Minion, while in a panic, did elect to drag Quiet Breath just to the edge of the altar room. The rush of horrors clubbed her down at the threshold, but seemed to pause at the small candle light. The shaggy beasts were agitated, chuffing and roaring, groaning and stamping the ground.

The sorcerer elected to be professionally unpleasant and tapped into her last option: sacrificing Lurking Minion on the threshold to summon another servitor from the cosmos. And in the deepest throes of horror she succeeded! Out of the cosmic smoke came an offal creature of a thousand mouths dripping poison. It serenely asked what her demands are and she elected to a term of service until the sunlight breaks and touches upon the land. It was done.

An advantage gained, the party gained the intuitive! Rattlebones dragged Quiet Breath out into safety and called for her second servitor to attack. Its poison potent against another fungal horror, while the rest could not gain purchase with their swinging fists.

What came to pass in the altar did not matter, for the sorcerer and her rescue got back into the first cave and slid its heavy stone door shut. Panting, shivering, the sorcerer was faced with a choice: sacrifice the unconscious Ulfire man at her mercy and gain a potential third servitor? Or slap him awake and have someone to talk to? She reasoned that if he lives he will end up a more potent sacrifice down the line, and so slapped him awake.

Quiet Breath ws badly broken but alive. He asked for grog through bloody lips. He got none.

There was the slow grind of stone on stone. Quickly, Rattlebones lit another of the jale candles in the room’s center and both rushed to the cave stairwell. They hope for surprise but don’t get it; once again the mycelial figures hesitate at the threshold. One of their number still has a humanoid outline: the carcass of Lurking Minion looks back at the two with unseeing eyes.

But again the horde stopped at the threshold. The candle, already melting fast, marked some kind of border.

The party discussed quickly if they could push their luck further; Quiet Breath was convinced that something else in this temple may act as a protective element. So they search the cave walls, and find another hidden door, this one to the west. They entered to find just as bizarre a room: dominated by a statue with finger outstretched to the door they just opened. Mosaics depict in greater detail figures being granted fibrous, filamentous ‘cloaks’ and broad crowns. Quiet Breath smacked his forehead.

A chest held vestments, suspicious to and unworn by the party. They gathered all for a plan to burn everything and smoke out the dungeon. But upon trying to leave the door was stuck shut. Panic rose again. In the last light they ran hands over every mosaic (finding an eye to be a gemstone), and ran feet through dust to discern some pattern. Down to their flame-lighters they hugged in the dark and shuffled towards the statue itself for a last guess.

It works, the statue shifted built with little effort and the door comes undone. The two survivors planned to make a sprint for it by whispering distances.

The door cracked, just wide enough. First Quiet Breath runs, then Rattlebones. Their jale candle had since gone out and the room had a handful of fungal blessed inside—mercifully none could get a hit in despite their readiness. Out into sheets of rain and thunder the two fled. And worse for them, they know not in the storm where they might find the ruins of their slave caravan.

Craggy paths took them into bare mountain scree that broke suddenly out onto the expanses of the south, the miles and miles obscured by roiling clouds. Exhausted, soaked, and hungry, the two found a crack in the stone to hole up and rest. Quiet Breath recovers quickly and is hale to warm up his sorcerer companion.

They sought to forage for edible mosses on the tumbled stones of the foothills the next day, but encountered something worse: a Spawn of the leviathans! A bone-colored quadruped with a head that was nothing but mouths swoopseddown to observe the party—Rattlebones lobbed a rock at it and screams for blood and meat. In an astonishing throw, the rock struck the Spawn and enraged it to dive-bomb. In another astonishing chance, Quiet Breath brought down his staff in a critical moment and shattered the thing while it only tore a chunk out of him in its death throes.

On that rocky place the two fell upon the monster carcass with Rattlebones’ flint dagger to sup upon its flesh. They found to their endless dismay that the creature’s regenerative properties had turned its own flesh to tumors, even the raw cuts twisted and became inedible lumps in the hand. There was much yelling and kicking of stones.

On that rocky place out of the roiling storm cloud came another wanderer: a Grey woman with a moonlight-pale longsword and an outstretched water skin. She was the Plumage of Spring, and she needed someone who could swing a sword.

And the party gladly took the water and drank greedily and upon drinking told the Grey woman neither could satisfy her terms, for Rattlebones relied on free hands to do her sorcerous work and Quiet Breath yet knew only the club, the staff, and the sling.

And they asked her where she had gotten such a blade and she spun a tale of plucking the blade from the hands of a cruel witch of the wastelands with cunning and guile. And they asked again and she was insulted and asked why they were out in the rocky foothills half starved and loaded with coin.

They spoke of the temple cave and the monsters within, and Plumage of Spring speculated its origins as a temple to one of the Old Ones. Quiet Breath scowled and spat at anything to do with those sorcerer-kings of antiquity, and declared he would destroy that den of Chaos and the other two exchanged glances for they were indifferent but sorcerous in turn. To drag out the treasures of that accursed hole and recover the bodies of their lost companions was the declaration—first to find rest and succor, and go back prepared. Plumage of Spring told rumors of a village of Grey men in the southern swamps, and of a citadel of Grey to the far west.

The party set out south, but so weakened by hunger decided to made to trek northwest and scavenge what was left of the slaver caravan. The trek was further suffering; fording a small river in the deep-cut grasslands caused the Ulfire man to abandon his last equipment to stay afloat and the Grey woman to slip into a hidden sinkhole. Quiet Breath dove to hauled her up, sword and all. Soaked and spluttering they crossed together and meet Rattlebones who did not help and did not deign sympathy. Much grumbling was had.

By the setting sun behind the clouds the party made their way upon a shattered scene: bloodstains, shattered wheels, and broken stone abounded. No sign of the terrible Spawn who had wrought such destruction.

Sifting through ruin brought two ration’s worth of food and bountiful supplies besides. Arms and armor, and iron tools, and torches to light the way. Wrapped in a tight curl blue leather pounded wafer-thin and scribed in scarlet dye was series of glyphs and rounded shapes—a map! Study was needed to understand the code, but Rattlebones in her sorcerous insight came to know it spoke of a bordering place where land slipped into mud slipped into water. Some kind of river or swamp, she proclaimed.

The party set up camp among the wreckage, burned harness and scrap bamboo and dry mountain lichen and cooked their rations in the coals. Quiet Breath called to forage the next day and share all food in kind, and split what they had recovered so far; a shame for that none of them could use the gleaming ceramic axe or the clattering bamboo mail of the slavers. No food could be found and Plumage of Spring began to suffer the hunger pangs her companions had just thrown off and there was much grumbling over arch plans and base realities.

But arrayed as they were with gear and coin and hunger, once again they aimed south out of those mountains, following the river as it wound from glacial melt into the lowlands, in search of a Grey village.

Profit 

256 sp, 10 gp, 2 copper lighters (10 gp), 3 fine robes (5 gp) 1 gem (500gp)

Kills 

2 mycelial nightmares (35 xp each), 1 Spawn 25 xp

Losses
50 sp, 2 gp, 1 copper lighter (10xp), Boss, The Lurking Minion