Talari Alar, blizzard still raging around him, plunges head first into icy waters. The rushing wind makes the waters churn around him. He struggles to the surface to get his bearings, but it’s the dead of night. Far in the distance, he spots some pin points of light, perhaps a few miles out. His body aches from the combat, but he struggles towards the shore.
Meanwhile, the rest of The Friends have made it to the courtyard of Castle Cortier. The gate is down and the stairs up to the gate house have crumbled. Balthazar uses the last of his teleports to reach the inside. With the combined might of the conscious friends, they are able to lift the gate enough to get everyone outside. They rush down to the village at the foot of the cliff. There they meet Talari, his blizzard concluded, panting heavily. Rejoined, The Friends head for the boat on which they arrived.
The village is silent and dark. Behind them, a swarm of small flying creatures - similar to bats, but rounder - emerges from Castle Cortier, flocking under the bright waxing moon. The dock is guarded by the two silent servants that rowed them across. They draw daggers from under their robes and mean to prevent The Friends’ passage. A quick spell and arrow from the party knocks the men back, but does not kill them. Instead, their faces contort into horrid snarls, fangs elongating from their teeth. Jagged feet similar to a birds tear out of the mens necks, their ears unfurl and stretch into great bat wings. The newfound feet press hard into the mens shoulders and tear the heads clean off. At the same time, the wings flap furiously and the heads begin to cackle and scream. The horrid flying monsters swoop in to attack but are quickly dispatched by The Friends. They rush onto the boat and hurriedly make their way towards Ord Cabare.
Lake Odol is vast and foggy. The wind has picked up, turning the lake into a choppy mess of water like black ink. Exhaustion has caught up to The Friends, and their rowing has slowed now that they Castle Cortier is far in the distance. High upon it’s cliff, it looks down on them. The Friends keep their wits about them, peering through the mist for signs of danger on the open water.
An almost imperceptible shift in the air is caught by Siriel and Icoriol. Turning to look, they see a pale woman sitting lightly on the edge of the boat. Her gown is immaculate and glows in the moonlight. Her gaze is cast over the water, an soft solemn expression on her face. Icoriol calls to her,
“Excuse me, miss?”
She turns slowly to face them, her skin reflecting the moonlight same as her dress, pale and opalescent. She parts her lips, but before she can do anything, she is pushed with extreme force off the boat and into the black waters where she sinks. Shocked, The Friends turn to see Monkey, a finger upon his forward, having just activated his psionic push. After mild protests The Friends come to an agreement that it was probably a ghost of some kind and become content with his decision.
The boat arrives in Ord Cabare in extremely early hours of the morning. The Friends, worried for that flock of round-shapes they saw exiting Castle Cortier, flee to the church of Baron Sarath, where their ally Eric Nomoya stays. They knock on the great oaken doors and eventually get inside with the aid of a night-watching temple hand. After rousing The High Sun, eldest of the priests in the church, they explain the situation. A dire look comes to The High Sun, but also a look of vindication. He has been frustrated with the seemingly meaningless tragedies occuring around Cortier. Now, at least, he has a direction for his zealous anger.
The Friends press upon the priest the importance of attacking before Cortier can recuperate. They fear his retaliation.
“We have men willing to fight all around Cortier, but it will take time to gather them, for they are spread thin across all settlements, and the roads plagued with monsters. We would not risk sending messengers now, they may leave in the morning.”
He provides The Friends with a rough map of the surrounding region, and the towns that lie to the west of Lake Odol where his soldiers are stationed. After Rolfs body is interred, rites performed so the body may not rise in undeath, and the door of the church barred from the inside, The Friends are left to rest.
In the middle of the night, Siriel lies awake thinking. In her pack she feels the weight of the golden halo that once adorned the statue of Baron Sarath standing in the church which now acts as her sanctuary. A dilemma rolls around in her head. The golden ring is worth an astounding amount of money, but the vampire Cortier poses a true threat to her livelihood. She contemplates breaking free of The Friends, a group she is with because she got caught up in their schemes - not any reason of her own. It would be easy enough, though it is true the wilderness between her and Orthos is dangerous. To stay, then. But that presented it’s own problem. The theft of the ring lowered spirits in the church. Might it lower them enough to ruin their chances in the battle? Surely battle hardened warriors can see past it. But Siriel knows the power the minds resolve can have in a fight. But if she does return the ring, would that be enough? Why should she give up her own wealth, so easily gained, to bolster the beliefs of some church-goers she doesn’t know. She’s never done that before. She clutches the gold ring in her hands, and thinks.
In the morning, the sun peaks through the stained glass windows behind the statue of the baron. An early-risen cleric wandering through the hall holding a silver tray stops and stares in disbelief at the statue in the main hall. He drops the tray, waking everyone in the hall with its clattering, and runs back to the rooms where the priests sleep crying “it’s a miracle!”
The clerics gather in the hall right as the sun catches on the edge of the now-replaced golden halo that crowns Baron Sarath. They cry out in religious zeal! The High Sun proclaims this a miracle of the saint, proof the gods are on their side in the coming conflict. The church brims with hope.
Through the use of a newly acquired magic spell, Talari Alar is able to conjure a steed made of spirits. Lighter than air, the steed is able to carry him across roads at tremendous speeds. He alone journeys west to the small town of Clain to tell the rest of the soldiers of Baron Sarath to return to Ord Cabare. There is a catch - he must cast his spell continuously on his journey, opening him up to the possibility of corruption.
Such corruption finds him mid-way through his journey. Upon casting his phantom steed spell, he feels a loosening in his arm. It can now spin fully around its joint, accompanied with an odd clicking noise.
Corruptions are proving to be interesting. It requires a decent amount of generative work on the fly for me, though I’m aided with Ben Miltons excellent magical tables from Maze Rats. This roll was “mechanical” which was hard, because I find mechanical constructions and magic to be completely at odds with one another, but Talari has been spending a lot of time around the Artificer, and I imagine magic has some sort of observational capacity and sense of irony. On the player side, Talari’s player has expressed dislike to the idea that a wizard should be worried about casting their spells. While I respect this tone of the game, it’s also 100% objectively wrong, and the fact that the wizard worries about casting their spells means the design is working as intended. Most of the corruptions so far have actually been power ups though. Having an easier table of effects could make them smoother in play but it’s a trade off between free-form (while I think magic should make good use of) and easy.
Talari makes it to Clain with little incident and talks with the commander there. He brings with him an official seal of The High Sun, so the commander there believes him and though he is annoyed at having to abandon his werewolf hunt, he relents and returns to Ord Cabare. Talari wishes them luck on the grueling journey home.
I had already established that Cortier is a dangerous place. To simulate this fact, I did a bit of rolling for the unit of soldiers walking home, just some quick stuff. I think I rolled an encounter check for them each day and rolled 2d10 minus 5 to see how many perished in the encounter (I’m writing this about a month after the session so I don’t fully remember). In the end there were not a significant amount of casualties, but even rolling worked to make Cortier more believably dangerous.
Talari passes a few more villages, calling for arms on his way home. He finds more church-soldiers and sends them to Ord Cabare. On his journey home he passes a tall tower sticking out of the forest. He does not investigate, but remembers it’s location for later.
I rolled encounters for Talari as he travelled (he was so fast I think I only rolled 2 or 3). One became an encounter, but I was using the Orthos encounter tables and rolled a named dragon that lairs in the forest. No way that dragon would be all the way out here, and since the game was moving along anyhow, I figured this would be a lucky freebie and Talari wouldn’t get stopped along the road.
Back in Ord Cabare, The Friends do some preparation of their own. Icoiriol spends some time research vampires in the annals of the church, looking for weaknesses. Balthazar helps the priests create holy water.
When Talari rejoins The Friends. They discuss their plan to attack Castle Cortier. They are bloodied and need rest, but they fear counter attack from the castles forces. It is decided, due to the delay in gathering of distant soldiers, that The Friends will rest.
A long rest being a week feels so natural to me now. To rest or not was a real considered decision, and an important one. Good stuff.
After a week of uneasy rest in Ord Cabare, The Friends gather the soldiers. Balthazar gives a rousing speech and reveals his divinity through glowing eyes. This gives the soldiers a zealous burst of energy, and they set off eagerly into the wilderness, along the northern road towards the castle.
When they arrive, the sun is just barely peaking over the west horizon. The landscape and the pale walls of distant Castle Corter bathe in orange. Advance scouts report rough ground on the appraoch to the castle - several mounds that were not present previously have appeared all across the road leading to the castle. The men proceed with caution.
The Friends lead the army on horses. Their plan: to launch an attack, then penetrate the castle and kill Cortier while the battle rages on. They walk the army openly across the road, attempting no secret of their arrival. The army enters the rough ground and slows somewhat, the light sinking into a murky twilight. Just as the first stars are appearing, the army is caught in a trap.
The ground bursts as rotten hands claw their way out of shallow graves. A hoard of undead zombies, at least doubling the amount of living men, suddenly surrounds the army entirely. The sound of galloping wafts menacingly around the castle, followed by a unit of skeletal horses with rotten riders.
Led by their divine avater, the morale of the men holds as they leap into melee. The Friends fight their way through the hoard and around to the front gate they entered previously. Dismounting their horses, they walk right through the front gate and into the castle.
The castle is a ruin from the fire they lit during their last visit. They creep over the rubble, the sounds of muffled combat raging outside, and begin sneaking through the castles chambers. They come across an old kitchen, a strange pool of black water, a gruesome store room, and long twisting corridors to uninhabited bed chambers.
Outside, the combat is raging. I’ve been rolling some battle turns using my own little rip off of ACKs’ war system. Basically you total up some numbers and roll a bunch of d6’s, causing casualties that must be removed from the enemy side before calculating a new total and rolling again. The system lacks depth for small battles like this, as does it lack any meaningful chance of a vastly smaller force winning in any way. In addition, the allied army was very unlucky in their rolls and immediately shrank a lot while dealing few casualties. This worked out though, because it meant the only way to save them was to find Cortier quickly and beat him.
The Friends explore the castle until they are deep in its interior, crawling through passages in the inner depths of its third floor. Siriel scouts, reporting back on dangerous things she finds. As they are exploring, The Friends are found by two roaming wardens of the castle. They are hulking figures with navy blue leathering skin. The flesh of their heads is bloated to the point they have no identifiable neck. Their arms are twisted and folded inwards to produce naught but stumps. Vaccuous eyes see the intruders and cavernous mouths let out moaning roars.
The Friends are persued through the castle maze by the monsters, eventually finding solace up a trap door that leads to the top most tower of the main castle: the Baron Cortier’s private study. The study is verticle, with several platforms attached to the wall. Each platform supports shelves and boxes filled with books and parchments, old clay tablets, aged manuscripts. On the top most platform there is a wooden desk sitting below a large open window. The full moon peaks through the window like a giant eye, observing the interloping Friends.
The monsters try to bash their way through the trapdoor, but Talari and Balthazar barricade it with boxes and their own bodies. At the same time, Monkey, Icoriol and Siriel explore the room for histories. The Friends are still looking for Baron Voghtairi’s true name, and think it may be concealed in the chamber - if they could just find the right book!
Monkey finds a locked drawer in Cortiers desk which is picked open by Siriel, but contains just a few parchments and quills. Icoriol observes the drawer is taller on the outside than inside. A false bottom! He takes the drawer out and flips it, scattering the contents.
It is only because of Icoriols previously cast See Invisibility spell that he realises what he has done. The smell of ozone permeates the room for the humans in the chamber. (Humans can smell magic like Ozone, usually it’s very faint) On the underside of the false bottom of the drawer, invisible runes illuminate a glyph designed for the safeguarding of great and powerful treasure. Icoriol realises that in less than a second the entire room is going to be englufed in a fireball. To save his friends (and the paper histories) he throws his body over the top.
The explosion rocks the friends, singing each and every one of them. In an instant they go from healthy and ready to fight to on the edge of consciousness. Icoriol has suffered the worst, absorbing the brunt of the explosion, though luckily he has a fire absorbtion spell that can be cast at a moments notice. On the ground, he finds what was concealed in the false bottom - a thick book, older than old, clad in purple-stained vellum. He tries to read the writing on the front when the light of the full moon is blocked out.
Perched in the window, indescribable fury on his face, crouches Baron Cortier.
We ended the session here, and then due to illnesses and people being away we didnt play for another three weeks! This was just short enough that the conversation about how the hell The Friends were going to get out of this one didn’t fall off. The players were terrified, suddenly they were on low health, being attacked from above and below (those bashing monsters haven’t gone away!) That said, they’re at full gas as far as their abilities go, and I know that Cortier doesn’t actually have much health. It also gave me enough time to prepare the fight realyl well, usually I just kinda wing it and its a bit shit.
A thrilling fight to be concluded next game! Will the heroes beat the baron Cortier? Will the army of the church be able to overcome the undead legion? And what’s Cortier’s hidden mysterious book? Stay tuned!