This is still running, I am behind on writing up coherent notes
Party:
The Plumage of Spring (Sorcerer 1) - Grey Woman
The Meek Sun (Thief 1) - Grey Woman
The Eyes of True Men (Fighting-man 1) - Grey Man
Slough (Halfling 1) - Mutant Man
The Last Walker (Fighting-man 1) [Retainer] - Ulfire Man
The Dreamer of Skies (Normal Man 0) [Retainer] - Gold Man
The Burrowing Excellence (Normal Man 0) [Retainer] - Gold Man
The bailiff met them with hands behind his back and facing their usual entry, but became agitated by the screaming coming from a spirit and not a dying comrade. The party brushed it off and asked why he waited for them, but he demanded to know what they had brought into the settlement. The screams had drawn many from their labors in the huts or sodden paddies, and so surrounded the party brought out the bone fragment, and showed the spirit could not touch them in its fury.
Still the mood was tense, and the bailiff asked them to place it in a canoe which was to be floated on the river so as to not disturb the settlement. The party assented and found that, when kept beyond some five feet, that spirit did not come screaming to protect its bone. Curious.
So they met the bailiff in their drinking pit nest and set Last Walker to rest with whiskey and water for his wounds, and heard of a new plight: brigands had fallen on the last shipment of hash headed north, and taken it and slain near all the couriers save for one. Not just any brigands he explained, but river-pirates, organized and striking from a great longship.
He left for a moment, and returned with a much-battered Grey man whom the party recognized from the lake so many weeks ago. The bailiff was asking, not as a friend but as the voice of the Judge, for aid. No time limit, no coercion. The party knew of the Judge’s loathing of thieves, and should thus know how this piracy would gall her. So he explained and sat back to await their answer.
The Eyes asked how many such souls crewed the ship, and the surviving courier said some nearly half hundred, every one shaking badly and screaming in mad battle-frenzy. The bold Eyes said he would crack all their heads, but cooler heads saw how badly they had been struck down the hill dungeon.
Slough asked for another day or so to measure their strength, which was granted.
Alone among themselves the party were a little split: The Eyes thought the dungeon ground them up and real combat, not grubbing in tunnels, was the right move; Plumage of Spring wanted her sword more than anything; Meek Sun, already primed to consider smuggling, thought the pirates should be taken down; Last Walker had no opinion and merely smiled when said he lived for nothing; Slough knew of the twin dangers to his settlement, but saw a dungeon not a day away and full of horror the greater danger.
Plus they had already found wealth in the dungeon, and knew there was more. Wealth would lead to strength, and with wealth, strength, and the promised two other artifacts the party could crush the pirates.
So it was decided. They spent the following two days in rest and schemes and avoiding the bailiff.
Slough spent time among his fellow mutants and turned aside their questions, losing himself in work.
Plumage drank and slept and dreamed of a moonlight-pale blade and screaming ghost with a broken skull who proclaimed the Old Ones would be slain.
Meek Sun met her smuggler contact in the darkest part of the night and, having nearby Last Walker read his mind to clear him of treachery, dealt in the more scuffed gems. Coin was made hand over fist until the smuggler held up his palms and said he carried no more. Being a canny dealer Meek Sun cut a few coins from her new stash and saw all were gold to the core, and the two thieves bid a farewell and retreated both into the swamps.
Last Walker reported how the smuggler noticed she dealt in new gems, not the one first offered, and such a deal might not happen again. He also said the smuggler’s thoughts turned towards the west, to an outpost filled with mutants who processed hash and lotus at a lakeside, and to smaller outposts not far off.
On the third day Walker’s psychic lookout warned them of the bailiff’s annoyance, and so they skipped town under cover of humid dark. On a borrowed raft they followed the waterways east and south down the tributary streams where the trees grew thick and sodden with rain. They sought the other outposts stolen from thought, and kept eyes open.
A likely tributary brought them to a thatched settlement under the shadow of a banyan. The subsistence gatherers met them openly but eyed the party’s weapons. All were metallic Gold people, some near two-dozen, living off the land and bounty of the tree.
The party asked if any where brave and avaricious enough to join, but were stopped and told business would be done after partaking of a certain fruit. A fruit that would kill one time out of twelve, said plainly. Take it or leave it.
Most hesitated and the Eyes snorted and grabbed the fruit and ate it peel, flesh, and seeds in one bite.
He then dropped to the ground and shook and screamed that he was killed—blades sprang out but were stopped by the Eyes laughing and saying he was playing them all the fool.
The Gold gatherers took it in good humor, the party did not. But business went on:
The party offered for a measure of coin a term of service involving dungeon work and fighting pirates.
The gatherers demanded one of theirs to stay as an assurance.
The party offered more cash and a promise to return any helpers living or dead.
The gatherers said dungeon work sounded like promised death and the group was small enough.
The party asked how the hell anyone made any money without delving into dungeons.
And it was learned that the many years had left barrows and mounds dotting the landscape—often full of worthless grave goods but some rumors told of wealth. The party checked their rations and decided to spend two days searching the swamps for these barrows. They hired a pair of the gatherers as guides and torch-carriers and headed southwest according to rumor.
The swamp covered their tracks well for Slough led the raft over the flooded ground with his walking-on-water ring, and they met no others. Their new gatherer companions asked why they desired wealth when the world provided enough in meat and companionship, and the Eyes talked of the sense of greatness in having new things.
So a day passed in search of treasure. A careful search of each mile, each tree trunk, each likely patch of earth exhausted the already impatient group. But work paid off and the swamps cleared out into open marsh and in that marsh was a telltale mound. The party fell upon it and found it was worked with stone slabs under the soil, each slab covered in meticulous carvings.
Plumage of Spring took time to decipher the works, and Meek Sun to listen at the slabs for movement within the mound, but neither’s work paid off. For out of the marsh came a half dozen Gold folk from the camp, to watch and cajole and see how the party fared in treasure hunting.
So it was. Impatience, a pry bar, and combined strength of the party’s fighting-men lifted a slab from its ancient mortar. Meek Sun did her work and slipped inside, to find the barrow full of stale air and darkness. Her torch would not light, and she worked by probing hands and held breath.
Once, twice, three times, four times, she surfaced for fresh air. The slab was propped up but only just, and none others could fit within the gap. Slough was to take her mirror and use the reflected light to cut a path, but even so the barrow’s gloom and cavernous aspect made for long work. Meek Sun found that the barrow’s inside was carved to depict an ancient people, and a mummy atop a slab at the far end had been draped with onyx cloth. Grave-goods too: a flint scraper, a carved bone disc, a carved bone idol of some squamous god—and a star ruby, glinting red.
The gatherers watched and would not help, and when Meek Sun returned showing only the mundane grave goods they said grave robbing was a murky and dull job—would the party not help them gather food instead? The party declined but would be seeing them soon, and the groups parted ways.
For some reason Plumage said to camp on that barrow so she could better study the engravings, and the party assented. Their two porters were sent to gather wood; once alone Meek Sun revealed her found treasure. A little profit.
Plumage of Spring slipped into the barrow and made charcoal rubbings of its many inscriptions, adding to her collection.
That night one of the bold porters on the marsh stood close to what was not a rotted log, but a crocodile! With hungry eyes it made to eat the porter, but he fled screaming and woke the rest to the danger. Rest already fitful in the insect-thick air, the party bitterly broke camp and rafted all the way back to the Gold camp. It was the small hours of the night when they arrived, and they blamed the cowardice of those porters (one was offended, for he said little) on the intrusion.
Upon being told another fruit had to be eaten before hospitality, the Eyes growled, ate another in a single bite, and stood glaring until the party were made up in a reed hut and slept the day away.
Loot 1x Star Ruby (800gp), bone icon of a squamous god (2gp), bone scraper (1gp), bone disc (2gp)
SESSION 9
The following day the party took stock and valued their time against potential profit. Plumage was torn between further study of her collection of wall rubbings, and recovering her sword. The rest had the same concerns about quick cash and the looming issue of pirates.
Talk turned from these issues to the Gold gatherers, why they did not go to the riverside settlement, and why they lurked in a swamp so passively. And a story was told as the gatherers passed around a bowl of must, and it was told in great detail for every one of them had been there.
It had been a dozen or so seasons ago, past the swamps into the grasslands beyond (Ux-Mar, it was called) and cattle raiding between two settlements had turned into a running war. The gatherers had been acting as fighting-men for the amazons on one side, having marched far from safety on the river, and had been on the run after a raid gone wrong.
The two battle-groups had been skirmishing in twos and threes, each striving to get control over the herd and flank each other. The Pursuers, few fighters but heavily armored for that, had raised the settlement in wrath and their force of foot, cavalry, and wrathful herders numbered half a hundred. The Rustlers were but a mere twenty, mixed cavalry and foot. On the grasslands of Ux-Mar, it was explained, the Purple amazons would capture and tame the rare scaly beast or chitinous horror, such was their bravery.
So the Pursuers had driven the Rustlers to a narrow place where a break in the earth had made rough hills and a soggy marshland basin both. The Rustlers drove their plunder past the hills and circled around. The call was made to turn and drive off the Pursuers in a decisive skirmish and be bothered no more.
Luck and strength was on the side of the Rustlers, and their cavalry swiftly crossed the field to engage with spear, club, and sling. The Gold gatherers, archers all, took point atop the hills and struck true with many arrows.
What was meant to be a skirmish ran into an hours-long battle. The Pursuers, angry in chase but unsure in combat, lost many herders to arrows and cavalry charges, the mass driving the Rustlers’ heavy foot into marshland with one last brave push but being cut down among the reed and ivy in the end.
The Rustler’s light cavalry, on two-legged scaly beasts with crests and long jaws, ran whooping around the battlefield, charging and charging again with neither fear nor exhaustion. The Pursuers heavy cavalry, flanked once but recovering fast, wheeled and met them and took captives, but were crushed into the dirt when luck turned against them.
Battle groups broke lines, regrouped, and studied each other in between bouts. The moans of the dying and the rush of wind over the grasslands were broken by battle cries and keening monsters. The Gold gatherers kept perch on their hill and watched the Pursuers be driven together between two Rustler flanks, and saw the Rustlers be cut down despite a last-moment rush of courage.
In the end, the Pursuers were all slain, and the Rustlers lost only two. The dying sunlight covered the Rustlers’ departure, and behind them they left a feast for monsters and carrion-eaters.
And what happened to the Rustlers? The great herd they had raided soon ate all their stocks and grasses to dust, and the leader who had led the settlement into famine was knifed and kicked into a ditch, and some of the herd slaughtered for food, and the settlement departed to the east in search of prosperous ground.
So the Gold mercenaries marched north again in search of the boat they had known to be docked on the rivers, and found it had gone. They searched as far as the swamps, and came to settle where they were, and became gatherers.
The party, much impressed, felt they too had gained some experience from the story, as it was so detailed. It was if they had been there themselves. Meek Sun asked if the ship as they used could be out on the rivers; the answer was yes, but it could very well be run aground or burned or sunk by now.
Now filled with ideas, the party asked if the whole of that settlement would be taken on as mercenaries, rather than retainers, if a ship were found and used to fight the pirates. This they found more amenable, especially when a ship was mentioned. Last Walker read one’s thoughts and saw ambition but not betrayal; a thought that the party might perish and leave a new ship to the settlement. The party had no intention to die.
So the deal was struck. The Eyes of True Men asked for a dozen of the dealing-fruit, claiming he had grown to enjoy the taste, and it was so.
Seeing themselves low on food the party sought to hunt prey instead of treasure. A day went by with no quarry, but on the second day their laying in wait gave way to something terrible.
Crouched in the high reeds the party and their retainers were following tracks, only to notice too late that the muck beneath their feet had frozen into a crust, and a slight cool breeze and stiffened into a frigid storm! The very air around them froze in their lungs, and their blood became as ice, and the sun reflected pale and unearthly above them. A terrible red-furred anthropoid leapt at its frozen quarry from its position in the sky, for it rode the winds as one rides a mount! Its terrible frigid aura left the party in poor shape, but the unerring blows of The Eyes of True Men and Slough stabbed it twice through the heart.
It died, and its conjured storm died, and Meek Sun and one retainer fell when the sun thawed them both. Once more Meek Sun escaped death with but the loss of her left ear to frostbite, but the retainer’s very brain froze in his skull.
The party hefted both carcasses and returned the Gold retainer to his comrades; Plumage of Spring spoke about how he had died in victory and fought well against the Spawn—the other retainer did not contradict this, but declined to follow the party any more. So the party left on its raft, heading northwest along the riverbank, eyes peeled for any ships run aground or sunken in the muck and finding nothing.
So they returned to the riverside settlement and their corner nest in the drinking pit, nursing cold burns and thinking of how to work with monster hide. Their treasure-canoe now carried a fragment of skull and a Spawn corpse; a grim hoard.
Kills 1 Spawn (10xp)
Book of The Dead
Boss - Abandoned in a temple
The Lurking Minion - Sacrificed for power
The Quiet Breath - Struck down by a ghoul
Rattlebones - Killed by a vengeful acolyte
The Burrowing Excellence - Frozen in place by a Spawn
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