They’re exiles, now. Too many enemies in the city. Enemies of The Friends of Orthos abound, and they’ve barely scratched the surface.
Their journeys through the city have set them on a new course.
This sums up around 7-10 sessions of gameplay. I lost count somewhere along the way.
The Friends were heading to Solemnity at the behest of their companion Lobsang the new Earl of Melk and Lord of Lobsland.
Shortly after entering the city, Balthazar (who does not need sleep) took a midnight stroll to a statue overlooking a small bay in the Paran Ward. Sent to earth with a mission he had no knowledge of, the divine agent uttered a prayer for guidance. The marble deva regarded him with no emotion. But the air had changed. On his way back Balthazar encountered a blind old man sitting under a flickering street lamp. Sitting with the man, they had started a game of dragon chess. With a touch of his palm, the mans blindness was cured (tales of an angel in Solemnity would soon proliferate). Midway through their game, the man changed. His eyes flooded with white light.
“There are two forces, fundamental to all things in the universe. What are their names?”
The conversation between Balthazar and his deity was brief and brutal. The divine entity was unable to provide direct guidance, but bombarded him with questions. “Who or what is in the Volcano?” “The Baron, Voghtairi, whom does he serve?”
The conversation brought few answers and many new questions. In his dreams, Balthazar would see a smoking Volcano.
The Wizard Talari Alar had come from far overseas, escaping a past entanglement with elves, looking forward to new lands. He’d been through Korianis before, but not Orthos. Not Solemnity. He overheard The Friends detailing the battle of Senago. Suitably impressed, he made his introductions. His admiration for Lobsang the Earl of Melk made he and The Friends fast companions.
They met The Thief Siriel on the streets of the Mineria Ward, amongst packed dirt streets of plodding miners. A small altercation with some street thugs turned nasty when one of them invoked the name of his patron deity, “Long live my lord of Thunder” and ripped out his own heart. Holding it aloft, a bolt of lightning struck him, turning him into a rabid beastman. The fight was brutal yet shortlived, the tiefling thief joining them midway through.
“We’d best get out of here before the guards show up.” They’d listened to her warning.
She secured them a meeting with Gnossa, one of the middling lords of Ruxis Nasus, the largest thieves guild after the sundering of the old cabal.
She had a short temper. Made them kill an old man just for speaking with her. Balthazar was the one that did it. His deity watched. She offered them a job - find a team who’s mission had gone sour, an old antiques shop in the heart of the Doson Ward.
The shop was derelict. Smashed window, burn marks, toppled shelves. Icoriol noted long scratch marks in the wood. A secret compartment under the floor contained a book lined with secret meeting times in various locations. The next meeting was that night.
They were watched as the entered the shop. A lone shifty ruffian peering nervously in their direction. They cornered him and made him talk. A different gang, The Roughhousers, had been hit with a similar attack in their home base - an abandoned mine in the Mineria Ward.
The Friends decided to head to the meeting first.
Four robed men met in an alleyway, speaking in a harsh bestial language. Through the use of divine magic, Balthazar was able to understand their tongue. “-new sacrifices, including the boy. It is getting hungry, it will be with us soon.”
At the meetings close the four split into two pairs and head separate ways. Talari and Icoriol follow a pair east to the docks. Balthazar and Siriel follow a pair west to the Mineria Ward. An unfortunately timed lantern lighting reveals Balthazar and Siriel. The robed men sprint away down the streets, lost. Talari and Icoriol have more luck, tracking their pair to an old warehouse in a derelict part of the ward. Using Talaris familiar, they scout inside. An old stone staircase hidden beneath a ruined floor leads to a great stone dungeon. The familiar doesn’t get any further than the dungeons guard - a monstrously large ape.
The next day, after scouting, a back entrance into the warehouse is found in a run down house. Using sorcery, Talari slips inside and scouts some of the rooms. He finds a monstrous altar surrounded by blood and human remains, as well as a clay tablet:
BEAST OF GNARR GREATEST OF THE HELL KNIGHTS LEGION YOUR HEADS DANCE UNDER A RAIN OF BLOOD COME TO US, O BEAST. BLESS US WITH OUR LORDS FURY
With little time left in his spell, Talari leaves the dungeon.
A while later, while The Friends are talking to Clements priest about the dungeon, Siriel slips away and creeps inside. She finds a room with a hulking chained beast-man, more rabid and ferocious than any they’ve seen so far. After a brief encounter with some robed men, she gives them the slip and sneaks into their chamber, stealing some gold and a magic scroll. Unbeknownst to her - and it will stay unknown for a long time - behind the very next door is the prisoners she seeks. Siriel leaves the dungeon with her new wealth.
The priest knows only rumors of the men who are transforming themselves into beasts - The Beast-Kin of Gnarr. Thought by many to be a rumor, it appears they are kidnapping people for some vile aim.
At the end of the meeting, as the group rests at a small table between two trees, Clement dies.
At his funeral they meet his son, Bon Apperteif, a demi-orc. They are also found by Leonidas, a warrior dwarf seeking great combat. Together they decide to double down on their efforts against the Beast-Kin and find the kidnapped thieves. Balthazar has observed a pattern in the meetings, and knows where the next one is going to be.
They stake it out, and hear many things - “They have been moved, after the intrusion. He is getting angry, he has been the only one to master his transformation. If we are to succeed we must sacrifice more. But not yet the boy. He is-”
However, the meeting is interrupted…
Throughout his stay in the city, Balthazar has been plagued with a presence.
It finds him at night when he is watching alone. It peers at him from the shadows of every alleyway he passes. It licks it’s lips and waits for him in the darkest corners of the world.
It is the Hound of Ill Omen, though Balthazar does not know it. Summoned by a nefarious actor and aimed in his direction. Until now it has been a presence, a shadow behind a window, watching from a distance.
During the meeting with the beast-kin, it attacks. Pinning Balthazar to the ground and trying to take a bite out of his neck, it is fended off with the help of Leonidas. In the fight amongst the beastmen and the dog, the meeting house burns to the ground. Kidnapping a beast-kin, they flee to one of Siriels safehouses.
After a round of questioning (and a divine explosion that removes the beast-kin from existance) The Friends learn of a second stronghold for the beast-kin - the roughhousers old cave, an old mine turned beast fortress. They go there the following day.
Posing first as robed beast-kin to get inside, they slaughter the gate guards. The Friends find more rabid transformed beast-men, slaughter some that are distracted by a feast, and battle an accidentally summoned congealed mass of corpse meat in a collapsing structure.
Talari does some scouting and finds the kidnapped Roughhousers. Something has been taking them and eating them. There were more, but some, including a young boy, were moved recently. Scouting further, Talari is almost sniffed out by the largest hulking beastman he has seen thus far. He returns to his companions and The Friends confront the beast.
It fights ferociously with a three headed flail, but succumbs quickly. The rest of the caves have nothing to show except a book with a single Ajira-ni name: Johta.
A visit to the Ajira-ni Powder Guild does not help identifying Johta. The Friends have given the Beast-kin some setbacks, but still have yet to find their missing thieves. They return to the warehouse.
After a quick showdown with some resting beast-kin, The Friends finally open the door to the chamber where the prisoners are being kept. After a quick encounter with a giant snake made entirely of bones (it seemed unbothered by their presence) they escaped to the surface with two thieves and the boy: Mecine, son of Lobsang.
He is returned to his maid in The Ruby Promenade. Gnossa is notified of the missions completion. In her eyes, this makes The Friends even with her. Siriel advises they withhold from dealing with her further.
Ends tied up to The Friends’ satisfaction, one this is abundantly clear.
The queen has to know about the beast-kin.
It’s not easy to secure an audience with the queen of orthos. One requires recent, local recommendation from a member of the queens Lawful Council, which in turn require one to be acquianted with one of the major lords of the city: the head of a faction.
The Friends so far have run into a few:
It is this Royal Academy that Icoriol and Rolf visited only a few days after entering Solemnity. They met with Lord Clayton-Reids-Slade, proprietor of Reids Tower of Magicians. He informed them of a job - to acquire a book containing a key to translate decoded directions to one of the legendary Teeth of the Dragon (famed swords). The book was in the possession of a Lord Hevlod, an eccentric and recently extremely reclusive nobleman. At that time they had shelved the job in favor of dealing with beast-kin. Now that the beast-kin had been handled, The Friends took the job. Their hope: to get into Lord Slades good graces and secure a meeting with the queen.
Lord Hevlods manor was locked down tight. Guards patrolling the walls of the estate, and posted at all corners of his manor house. Stealth (and invisibility spells) secured entrance for Talari and Siriel. The wizard stayed outside while the Thief snuck in through a window and began sneaking about the house.
The Manor was dark, quiet, dust-eaten, untouched for months. White sheets and cobwebs hung over stacked furniture. Lord Hevlods love for portraiture (noted previously by Lord Slade as his most notable of many quirks) was apparent by the dour paintings lining the walls. The smiling paintings of Hevlods children turned sinister by knowledge of the families tragic history: Lord Hevlod, happily married, had lost his wife to illness. To the outrage of his children, he remarried and sire three more children. His behaivour declined. His visits outside his home become less and less frequent. Until one day his Manor house burned to the ground, claiming the lives of his children and his second wife. He hadn’t gone outside after that. Undeterred, Siriel continued exploring the manor.
Outside, Talari was acting a ghost, spooking the guards (already on edge due to the ghastly history of the manor and the rumors it created). He scared them enough to cause a momentary retreat into the servants barracks, during which time the rest of The Friends scaled the walls and made it inside Hevlod Manor.
The Friends explored the house, Siriel upstairs, The Friends downstairs. Siriel, to this point stumbling across mostly boring rooms (though luckily avoiding an encounter with some black puddings) found a hidden room covered in soot. The eight-pointed star of chaos burnt into the ground, the walls marked with carvings of the Hevlod manor surrounded in flames. Most disturbing of all, a portrait of a small smiling girl with horns - a tiefling like herself. Siriel knows little about her childhood, the portrait sent her head spinning with questions.
Taking a ruby state from the secret room, Siriel made her way to the master bedchamber. Hovering above the bed was a ghastly spirit of shadow - a long-dead wraith. It wailed and screamed at the interloper. Siriel ran, the spirit gave chase.
Downstairs, The Friends were fighting strange sludge-beings from the manors accursed kitchen. Siriel found them, barging through a back door raving about a vicious undead. The sludges were quickly felled, the wraith not so.
Flames licked the walls (Siriels ruby statue had in fact been cursed to explode) while the wraith slashed and tore the life essence away from the fighting friends. One by one they made their way out of the window as Hevlod Manor once again caught aflame as the carvings in the secret room had predicted.
They were so close to making it out alive. Almost all made it out of the manor (the wraith, for whatever reason, refused to follow them). All but Bon Aperteif, who succumbed to his wounds and died on the lawn of Hevlod Manor, slain by a wraith.
Abandoning their mission, they fled the burning Hevlod Manor.
The Friends were listless for a few days, having failed their mission. They knew not where to go next. Their only direction now was waiting for Solemnities yearly Parade of Fortunes, where they may be able to secure, or steal, audience with an important noble who would be on display.
But in the middle of the week of waiting, Siriel returned to the ruins of Hevlod Manor. Posing as a laborer with her halfling guildmate Dodger, she infiltrated the ruined basement of the manor, finding 6 buttons, each marked with the first initial of one of Hevlods children. Only one problem, the house had burned down, and information on Hevlod was scarce. Siriel and Dodger left the manor grounds to do some talking. In the dead of night, they snuck back inside and were able to figure out the correct sequence through the process of elimination.
Meanwhile, Balthazar searched for the shrine of Saint Elenon, the seeker. Following a phrase from his deity, he followed a trail of people that knew people until arriving at the overgrown shrine. Saint Elenon is a saint of chaos - not tolerated in Solemnity. Balthazar himself was created firmly on the side of law, something he has decided to uphold. The master of the shrine, Enoch the Hunter, told Balthazar of the tale of hound of ill omen: When an evil lord had hidden from Saint Elenon for too long, she had shaped the very shadows into a hound capable of hunting indefinitely. The hound can only be stopped in two ways: the jewel housing it’s energy is destroyed, or it’s summoner is slain. When the dog appeared, Balthazar quickly banished it with his deities daylight spell. But the hound was learning to resist his spells. Balthazar was running out of time.
Back underneath Hevlod manor, a secret stone door opened, revealing a dead Lord Hevlod, the book clutched in his hands, as well as two hunched demonic dogs. From their mouths shot gouts of magma, enough to burn poor Dodger alive. Siriel escaped to the walls with the book and picked off the hounds with her bow, aiding the guards of the grounds. She fled before they had chance to arrest her.
The book secured, Lord Slade was overjoyed. He began his translation work at once, and promised to get a meeting with one Ludo Discognia, a new member of The Lawful Council and the leader of The Guild of Astrologers.
On the same day Siriel watched her guild leader burn alive to demonic hound magma, Baron Tayan-Rodo-Voghtairi had come to Solemnity. He brought with him the head of Mog Torithorag, the beast king, leader of the northern beastmen and primary enemy of Orthos.
The Friends were suspicious, but kept their distance. Voghtairi appeared again in the parade as a guest, having beguiled the queen. But it was not Voghtairi the party needed to worry about.
Balthazar, standing at the front of a crowd watching the procession pass by, momentarily locked eyes with a purple-robed man with fiery orange hair and brilliantly over-bright green eyes. Ludo Discognia recognized Balthazar, but Balthazar did not know why.
When The Friends met at the Shark Head Inn, a newcomer found them. The ranger Moth had heard of The Friends impressive feats in Senago and against the beast-kin, and wished to join. Connections to the cities powerful were just what The Friends needed. In the midst of their meeting, a message was delivered to Balthazar. Ludo Discognia had requested dinner the next night.
Balthazar came alone to the astrologers tower in the quiet and gothic district of Solemnas Cliff. Or so he believd, for Talari once again turned invisible and slipped into the tower, determined to gain access to the towers library.
Balthazar and Ludo talked. Balthazar wanted answers, Ludo was being purposefully vague. He knew Balthazar from a long time ago, he said. Balthazar had done something to him. Something Ludo could never forget. Something he needed to repay. At a point in their conversation, Balthazar noticed the black dog sitting patiently behind Ludo Discognia - it’s master.
Ludo offered Balthazar a choice. Perform a service for him and die later, or die now. Valiantly, Balthazar declined. When he stood to fight, he found he had to fight to say awake. Poisoned.
Reading peacefully downstairs, Talari head the sounds of conflict above. Thinking fast, he sent his familiar to retrieve the rest of The Friends and went upstairs to help. He burst into the dining hall to see a horrific sight - Balthazar facing against not one demon but two, for Ludo’s face had changed to that of a tiger possessed with fury - a demonic Rakshasa.
Talari’s spells could help not against Ludo. “I have spent time studying in hell, and I have learned a fraction of all the names in existence. Your spells will not work on me.”
Fighting for his life, Balthazar waited desperately for the rest of The Friends. The hound had, for the first time, successfully resisted his spell and remained despite the intense light. When The Friends arrived, they quickly realised the only way to damage Ludo was with their assortment of magical weapons. In the chaos, Ludo uttered a spell, sending Rolf to Perdition, the central layer of hell.
The fight raged on, Balthazar affected heavily by his poison. Eventually he succumbed to his wounds and fell unconscious, but The Friends were able defeat the dog at the same time. This left Balthazar at the mercy of the rakshasa who’s anger had only grown over the fight. But when it had a chance to finish him, it stopped. Roaring with fury, it turned its anger on Moth. To his horror, Moth’s weapon carved lines of golden light across the demons skin, causing him sever pain. With the anger of 200 years, Ludo was forced to flee.
Balthazar recovered quickly, a reminder to The Friends that he is not as human as he appears. Now more than ever. New knowledge seemed to have crossed his face. When Balthazar had been struck by Ludo Discognia, something in his memories had come loose. He saw a battlefield with hundreds of armed men in Nildazi. A horrid dragon lairing in a volcano. A princess demanded as tribute for a failed rebellion. Himself and … others? Only he could not make them out, descending into the depths of a horrid molten temple. Desperation. A blast of divine energy. A job left unfinished. Blackness.
Memories swirled within Balthazar as they fled the astrologers tower.
In the days that followed, it was clear the friends were not match for Ludos connections, infernal or otherwise. That night, they returned to the inn to find it burned to the ground. They rescued what they could of their gold and sought refuge in Siriels safehouse. By the morning they were wanted men.
It was clear they couldn’t stay in the city.
During the fight with Ludo, Talari and Icoriol had suffered some horrific wounds. Infested sorcerous wounds that refused to heal. Following rumors of a paladin of the saint of decadance, Sir Godric, they secured a meeting. In the end, it took payment in the form of their legendary sword of the squire of the dragon knight to cure Talari. They convinced Sir Godric to ride with them to Fort Duvno, where they had gotten the sword, in hopes some of his questions might be answered and Icoriol might be cured.
Before they left, Talari sent his familiar to the second highest tower of Castle Solemnity to spy on the baron Voghtairi. He found him and Lord Alamander, leader of the black rose knights, in quiet discussions. He eavesdropped through his falcons ears.
“-will be making a trip there soon. I need another lest that beast ignore me again.”
“You ought not call it a beast in my presence, Baron. They’ve more majesty than any of us will ever know.”
“Bah. It will bow to me in time. There are things older even that it.”
A sorcerer himself, Voghtairi was starting to become wise to Talari’s familiar trick. When he spotted a falcon in the window, he rose to deal with it, but the Falcon departed before he had the chance.
Advised by her contact in the safehouse, Siriel went to Black Beach to check in with her gang. A crisis of leadership, no one knew who should be in charge. To make things worse, it seems Dodger had dirt on a guard captain. With him out of the picture, the guard had been around making threats. There might not be a guild for Siriel to come back to. Bit rough for her first time leaving the city in her life. But she couldn’t stay. Visions of the smiling girl with the horns swam behind her eyes. She couldn’t remember a childhood like that. She couldn’t remember a childhood at all. Why couldn’t she remember? The timeline matched. Could it be that the first time she had seen her father he had been a desiccated corpse surrounded by hounds that spelled the doom of her guild?
Solemnity had provided abundant questions, and very few answers. Wanted men with no where to go, a growing connection between demonic forces, the dragon in the volcano, and the sorcerer baron were compelling The Friends to set off on a journey likely to alter the fate of all of Orthos.