Out into the rolling hills, The Friends of Orthos stride towards Ord Cabare.
On the morning after their first day of travel, the light of dawn peaks over the hills to the east illuminates a garguantan orbous figure waddling it’s way towards the camp. It has thick slimy tendrils and three frogs eyes on long stalks. Talari’s protective orb enchantment ends with the light of the dawn sun, but The Friends have not yet had enough time to don their armor. They prepare for combat.
The tendrils of the frog behemoth batter the friends. It swallows both Icorioals arcane machine and Monkey whole. A lightning spell from Talari slows it’s movements, but before it can be slain, it slams a tentacle hard into Balthazar, completely splitting his vessels ribcage open. The wound renders him unable to contain his divine soul completely. The resultant flash of white light burns Siriel and Icoriol, who are nearby, but also the behemoth frog. It’s eyes burst into white fire as the frog, usually resistant to flame, burns to death in divine fury. When the light clears, Balthazar is back to normal, though with a scar across his chest.
This is a rule Balthazars player has been waiting to use for a while, part of his eladrin-based Warlock subclass we cooked up. It also gives him the divine voice, a rip off of Rise Up Comus’ Truespeaker. The froghemoth encounter was a result of The Friends’ fiddling with the idol of Trogoth in the temple. When they moved it, I rolled a d30 for the number of days before a divine servant of trogoth appeared and got 4! The Friends contemplated banishing it but ended up fighting it, reasonably arguing that it would most likely just come back. An interesting decision, since they ended up getting beat up real bad for it.
When the behemoth frog burned, it burned into a fine white ash. Icoriol collects some of this as reagents for his tinkering. The Friends push on into the forest.
Keeping the path is easy enough at first, but the next day a fog rolls in. They attempt to use Talari’s familiar, the owl Corum, to continue on their way, but fail to exit the forest after half a days travel, instead ending up further within. Now on the horizon the owl sees one of the great stone towers mentioned by the bugbear magician. Wanting to avoid druids, The Friends use the towers as landmarks to navigate out of the forest.
This was the first time I used rules for getting lost. I’ve avoided them so far because the party is always near terrain that can be identified from a distance, on a road, or has Talari’s familiar to guide them. I thought they would be annoying but they were actually quite simple. Though, the fact you can see terrain in adjacent hexes combined with how much the map varies means I’m not sure when it’s viable the party will get lost. Surely they’ll know they’re lost when they stumble into a hex they weren’t planning on being in? I will need to ponder.
The trip takes several days, but occurs largely without incident.
One night, as The Friends are resting, they see a bedraggled figure stagger out of the forests edge they camp nearby, triggering Icoriols protective alarm spell. Weary of undead (for past encounters), The Friends wake quickly and observe. The sillhouette, grasping a sword, takes a few steps forward, then falls flat on his face. After some debate, The Friends decide to go check what it is.
It turns out to be a wounded cleric of Baron Sarath, the saint of gold and grace, his symbol recognized by Balthazar. He is covered in giant mosquito-like wounds. Balthazars restoration spell reduces the wounds and turns the shaky unconscioussness into a restful sleep. In the morning they decide to take the cleric with them as they head into the forest northwards.
The cleric here is actually the result of a random encounter. I rolled stirges, but I accidentally forgot about the encounter until later than it was meant to be. I also noticed on my keyed hex map that there was a wounded cleric nearby. Since The Friends had gone a while without a win, I thought it was logical that the cleric could have been attacked by the stirges rather than the party, and he stumbled out of his hex to get rescued.
The cleric wakes as The Friends stop to let Talari uses mage sight to look through his familiar and get a lay of the land. His name is Eric Nomoya, a cleric of the 3rd church of Saint Sarath in Ord Cabare. This is welcome news to The Friends! At the same time, Corum spots a path just outside the forest to the north. Some discussion with the cleric confirms this indeed is a path to Ord Cabare, but to be weary of monsters, for the barony Cortier, in who’s land they now tread, is facing dark times. Beasts and werewolves abound.
The Friends trod carefully but hastily. They long for a good nights sleep in a real bed. Before a bridge heading north they find a low cave with blood and bones nearby. Nearby tattered cloth is in the colors of the barons men. The cleric advises caution, but Corum enters and Talari sees no inhabitants with mage-sight. He does, however, see some treasures. The Friends run in and quickly retrieve a ceremonial sword, some bejewelled metal eggs, and some scintillating green scales. Icoriol notes giant snake scales and goats fur on a pile of leathers and cloth, arranged purposefully into a pile. The Friends deduce this to be a chimera’s lair. They flee before it returns.
Late in the foggy evening, The Friends of Orthos at last arrive in the town of Ord Cabare. It’s quiet. Only the sound of low winds and the distant creeking of a water wheel reverberate over the landscape. Dull blues, purples and oranges color the roofs of the town, with small patches of matching blue and orange flowers, though all colors seem drowned, not just by the fog and the dark, but an oppresive tension. The same tension that keeps the streets empty and doors locked.
Eric tells The Friends of the kidnappings in town, and that people stay inside earlier and earlier. He also tells them of The Mottled Flower Inn, a place they can rest. He departs to his church, but tells them they are welcome any time.
At long last, The Friends of Orthos can rest.
The rest of the session was downtime. They’ve been sitting on tons of XP and level ups for a while now (you need to finish a long rest in town to level up in this game) so they get to work doing that. Downtime takes a little longer than I’d like, but it was more successful than usual I think because the rules were printed out. Some fun results came from it too, the downtime system is working pretty nicely.
Icoriol spends some time appraising his reagents and finds them to be quite powerful. He spends the rest of his week shopping, repairing items, and crafting a set of thieves tools for Siriel, who lost hers crossing a river.
Talari spends a week researching The Red Realm, using all the meager resources he can find in Ord Cabare. They do not have much, being on the edge of the world for so long, but The Church lets him see their ancient records. The trouble with researching The Red Realm is it is so elusive through history that it defies standard description. Often it is a part of history, but in those parts not directly mentioned. As such, historical records must be gathered and compared to one another. He learns of an ancient battle fought between Baron Sarath and Saint Jaime, The Executioner, chaotic saint of the hopelessness that follows certain defeat. It mentions an ancient power Saint Jaime had that may cause madness (an effect known to correlate with the presence of the red realm) and provides further evidence (following several other documents) that this power was contained within a magic ring.
This was a tricky one. Talari rolled 29 on his research check, entitling him to three pieces of lore, but there is just no way a small town like this could have something concrete on a subject as esoteric and unknown as The Red Realm. I think this is fitting. I don’t want him to come away with nothing, but only so much is reasonable for the world.
Monkey and Siriel drink heartily, spending their riches carousing. They learn much about Cortier. The baron is extremely reclusive, not even the mayor of Ord Cabare can meet him. His appointed reeves are brutes, and most people seem resigned to their fate. Monkey makes friends with a mercenary and a strange figure he can’t quite remember, though he does have a note that reads “friend, if ever you need of my services, light the blue candle and place it on your windowsill.” Siriel, too, makes a friend, a goodwife who talks a lot and tells her of many things. The duo drink to excess, and both find themselves at the end of the week with little memory of its evenings. Siriel in particular awakens one morning clutching a solid golden ring of immense value (500 gp!). She finds out later that this is the golden halo from atop the statue of Baron Sarath in the church.
Downtime is a very fun part of the game for me, lots of synthesis-type generation rather than pulling shit out of whole cloth. My job now is to make the events with Siriel impactful for next session. What she did whilst drunk is a fun pot of boiling water to be thrown into, and I don’t think she’s going to be willing to part with it. The rumor table was very important for this downtime activity, giving meaningful info to people that spent the week listening for it.
At the end of the week, The Friends rest in the mottle flower. Outside, a fierce wind blows. Entering silently, Rykus Kilran comes to meet The Friends, as previously discussed. The Baron of Cortier awaits.
I wonder how much they’ll end up doing in Cortier. They have some rumors, but they’ve been on the road to the baron for so long they may go straight for it. Meanwhile, Orthos continues to move in their absence. I’ve been rolling faction events as we go, and it’s going to be interesting when they get back and see what’s been going on while they’ve been lost in the wilderness.