Saturday, September 18, 2021

Session 13 (9/17/21)

 The Amazons

The party was approached by Jaspar the unicorn. The migration of the Forest Giants in Ivy's Woods were disrupted for some reason, and his prophecy tells him that if the migration isn't repaired then the forest will be in grave danger. 

The party sought out Clawdia, chief of the Forest Giants. These giants were bigger than normal forest giants, 20-25 feet tall, and all female, many with a taste for humanoid flesh. She revealed that her tribe makes occasional migrations to breed with the males of the mountain giant clan- gargantuan giants 45 feet tall who have an insatiable taste for humanoids. The males children are sent back, while the females live here, safe from being dominated by the spores in Ivy's Forest. 

However, monsters have taken over the pass- medium sized spiders. The Amazons are terrified by the spiders and have been afraid to take the voyage. This puts them at risk, as if the social contact is not met, the Mountain Giants will come burn the woods to claim the women. 

The party went to fight the spiders. In the tunnels they met a Lampad named Terra who informed them that the spiders are aggressive because some humans went to a shrine nearby and defiled it.

The party headed to the shrine, which was a shrine of a long forgotten spider goddess. There they found that some Ragathiel paladins were turned into spiders when they destroyed the holy books in the shrine- and the spiders that were here became aggressive and went out into the nearby mountains.

The party considered finishing the job and destroying the altar, which would destroy the dark goddess' influence on the world, but were afraid of getting similarly cursed, so they reached out to Umbraella Arachnix, who came to the shrine and learned that the goddess was Lolth from another dimension. She freed the goddes and became her chosen. 

Umbraella pulled back the spiders to the shrine, solving the Giants problems, but refused to spare the Paladins, as they had done her goddess damage and must be punished. She also hinted that she might turn nearby mountain giants into gargantuan driders under her command.

She blessed the party with a succubus profane gift. However, Vesper and her cohort were weakened- this was a great evil they had done, and it violated their Good flaw. 

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Session 12 (9/10/21)

 The Survivors (Continued)

After the incident with Shaking Spear, Pending decided to try to speak to Captain Grimes and Sparhaw and the Orc Prisoner. They saw they were being spied on, and the Orc handed Pending a silver shoe buckle he had found as evidence.  Pending informed Grimes that they had helped Shaking Spear avoid pursuit by guards and that she was killed by a reaper monster. 

While he was meeting with Sparhawk, Vesper was brought in for questioning by Grimes, who was able to figure out that Vesper helped Shaking Spear escape, but was unable to prove it. She said "I can't arrest you for abetting a criminal, but I can tell you to stop your meddling or I'll arrest you for interfering in an investigation."

Vesper told Grimes about the Reapers and Pending told Sparhawk. Both of them said they would concur with their experts to see if such a thing was possible.

Vesper decided to quit the mission because she didn't want to get in trouble. They met with Sylvia Moongazer of the mage's guild, who wanted help moving a powerful sorcerer across country while under magical protections so he could defect from a horrible war and get sheltered by a mage's guild. They met with Baru Coin to identify that the defector was a Pit Fiend, defecting from the Bloodwar. 

Before they could move the fiend, a Reaper came after Vesper, and they realized they had to go back to town and solve this crime. Nantar spoke with Sparhawk and they decided to go to the Mage's guild contact together to find out whether or not the reaper situation was viable. They were forced to fail the Defector mission and complete the Survivors. 

The mage's guild expert, George Tithonus, it turned out was the one summoning the reapers, and he attacked the party- and was almost able to defeat them, including summoning another reaper, when guards showed up, summoned by Sylvia (Vesper's familiar). 

Tithonus escaped, but they found a Greater Reaper bound in his basement, and found evidence that he was using the reaper to summon minor reapers to kill people in an agreement that he would provide victims, and in exchange, Death would avoid him and his family, giving the exceptionally long life. 

They were able to free Scarred Soul, the Orc Witch Doctor, and they freed the Greater Reaper, restoring balance between Life and Death. 

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Session 11 8/27/2021

 The Recruits

The party was hired by the fighter's guild to located Harold Dannan who had gone missing along with his daughter, and his farm/keep had become a bandit camp. The party believed Harold to be dead.

The party investigated the keep and saw that there was indeed a bandit camp here made up of his own guards and many unemployed fighters from the fighter's guild. A half black dragon was trying to recruit them to join his army. 

The party came in and disbursed the bandits, and located Harold Dannan in his basement. He had located a centaur in the woods and forced her to take him home, but upon coming home found a bandit camp in his house. The centaur and him were taken prisoner, and they discovered that the centaur was channeling a succubus, who they forced to grant profane bonuses to them.

The party negotiated with Harold to forget the past and left him in charge of his estate- and the centaur.


The Survivors

Vesper was approached by Sparhawk who demanded to know why she was spreading rumors about him. The conversation was cut short with Constable Nobbs let him know that they found a serial killer who was killing a bunch of kids. 

They went to the watch house where a crowd was gathered. The watch wasn't letting anyone unauthorized in, but the rumors is they found an orc in the sewer doing magical rituals on dead bodies. Pending began a political process to become a lawyer on behalf of the orc, and the party began to investigate.

They learned that the Orc (Scarring Soul) was in the sewer and escaped the guards only to be attacked on the streets by the Minotaur. The guards found him before the Minotaur could finish the job and arrested him. In the sewer he was working with an unhallowed altar with various runes. The guards there also mentioned that they had not accounted for all the missing bodies. A mage's guild expert was brought in to interrogate the orc and investigate his possessions. 

Foul Ron mentioned that the girl Julie was taken by a reaper ghost several nights ago, and that it burned her body away. That night, Shaking Spear attempted to break Scarring Soul out of prison, but was unable, and the party helped her escape the guards. She said that Scarring Soul came here a few weeks ago to investigate a disturbance. As they were talking, a Reaper came for Scarring Soul. When Pending tried to intervene, it summoned another reaper to fight him. While Pending and team fought off his reaper, the original killed Shaking Spear, burning her entire body away, then it vanished. 

... To be continued. 


Sunday, August 22, 2021

Session 10 8/20/21

 Djinni Unlamped

The party was approached by Albert Coin who had a special magical ring stolen from him. He was broke- he had no other money to offer them, but insisted the ring was important, and that "the priestess" said they could help him.

By pressing the issue they learned that the ring had an efreeti named Djinn bound to it, and it was stolen by a wizard who would be using its service to grant wishes. They also learned that Albert was in love with the efreeti and did not want the ring for making wishes.

The party used a familiar's feather to scry on the wizard and identify that he was far away in Osirius. They teleported there and battled the wizard, who had used 2 of his daily wishes already. They captured the ring and had Djinn take them back to Coin. He wanted to free Djinn but cold not- the ring required an Efreeti and only by killing him could he escape servitude- but Coin wished to take his place as the bound efreeti. After his wish was granted he proposed  to Djinn using the ring, and they went off to the realm of fire together.


Before they left, Albert and Djinn granted their last daily wishes to the party (5 total) in thanks for helping them find true love. 

Sunday, August 1, 2021

Session 9 7/30/21

 The Shelter-

Penny Escher from the artificer's guild reached out to Pending, upset that he has stolen their plans for the mousetrap and costing them a several million GP contract. They demanded that his team go explore an ancient ruin with their researcher to discover lost secrets of the ancient world as payment.

The party agreed and met up with Wan Delver, a goblin gunslinger and grandson of Ivan Dogeater, thus a quarter elven. They came to an underground bunker where they found some damaged power supplies. Wan was able to repair it which restored energy to the facility, where an AI named Atropos was there to seal them in the compound. 

They explored the ruin and found it to be a high-tech living facility for ancient humans to live while the world was covered in radiation. Inside they discovered XI, a massage-robot, and Prometheus, an advanced prototype. They defeated the security and were able to disable Atropos and recover the data from the memory banks for the artificer's guild. 

Wan was very interested in Nantar, another adventuring goblin- insisting that there are too few of them, and that they need to stick together against the descrimination they find amongst "civilized" society. 


Saturday, July 24, 2021

Session 8 7/23/21

The Syrum

The party was hired by the alchemist guild. An experimental mutagen was stolen. It increased the physical body of a person by granting them racial hit dice, but degraded their mental stats. The thieves Ruby and Flynn were hired by the Gnecromancer Xylophone Shadowbender. He was hiring laid off fighter's guild members to experiment on- enhancing them, then killing them and turning them into powerful zombies. 

The party tracked him down and defeated him, freeing many of the captured people and recovering the syrum. Once it was completed they were able to get a sampling of it.

The Damsel

Julietta summoned the party, having had dreams of true love kept apart. Katherine Dannan's father was keeping her locked in a tower so she could marry a Chelaxian Noble, which would be very lucrative for his tobacco and alchemy reagent farming. However, Julietta saw that Jaspar would be Katherine's true love.

The party broke into the keep and rescued Katherine to find that she was a seven year old half elf girl, and not interested at all in romance. They took her to Ivy's Forest to meet Jaspar but were pursued by her father and his guards, who set fire to the forest. The party met Jaspar, who was a unicorn, and had him get Arcus Woodsplitter, who was able to control the weather and put out the fire, and awaken Ivy's Tree so that it could move away from the fire. 

Jaspar revealed that Katherine was a chosen of Valaren and they would form an eternal bond as protectors of the forest- and that not all love was romantic or sexual. Jaspar blessed the party with the powers of the forest protectors.


Sunday, July 4, 2021

Session 7 7/2/2021

 The Missing Dog


Urist Lighbender, Royal Magician to Rogar Hornbreaker has come to the party via the Mage's Guild contact. Rogar's favorite hunting dog, a dog with the advanced template, bred and enhanced by the alchemists guild, was stolen. Divinations indicate that it was stolen by the orc tribe outside the village. He worries if he tells Rogar, then the dwarves will march on the tribe and completely wipe them out. Seeking to avoid the bloodshed, he wants to see if the party can recover the dog.

The party went to Arkus, who wasn't aware of the dog, but some young ones were still out on their Mor-Zog Gog and haven't returned. Arkus led the party to Lynn's Lake, where the naiad Lynn would let them use the pool for scrying. They discovered that the boy Runs with Rivers was inside Ivy's Forest- an area dangerous to men, which is patrolled by the Qatgirl a dangerous lichenthrope.

The party tracked Runs with Rivers through the woods, to find he had taken Trapper as his animal companion during druid training, and that he was tracking Shaking Spear, a young orcish girl who he had dreams was captured by the Qatgirl. They party faced and defeated the Qatgirl and saved Shaking Spear.

The party negotiated with the Orcs to give away a direwolf pup to be trained as a hunting beast by Rogar and was able to negotiate trade with Rogar for Trapper, and thus avoided war and let the boy keep his dog.

Making a Man

Adam and Steve from the Fighter's Guild asked the party for help. A recruit, Eric, had been wounded during a patrol a month ago, and since then he's been very wary about engaging in combat, often letting his partners go forward and fight on his behalf. This has caused people to stop trusting him, and is jeopardizing his position in the guild. They wanted the party to capture a monster and sic it on Eric, forcing him to fight it and get his courage back. 

After the party tried to come up with several plans which did not involve the mission, such as pretending to be bandits, Vesper attempted to hypnotize him in public, which failed and caused him to start reporting her for spell-assault. Pending came to speak with him, and during conversation realized that there was something more to his fear. They discovered that when he was wounded he contracted lycanthropy and he was afraid to enter combat for fear the wolf would come out. They reported his disease to the fighters guild for them to take care of.