Edon

Edon is the capital city, host to a number of ports, taverns, theaters, and temples, as well as the seat of the Empress Avita.  It's surrounded by a large alabaster wall punctuated by turrets that each have a different color focusing crystal in them, making the city a defensible fortress.

7-5-15 Recap

7/5 game

The heroes regrouped from their silver mine excursion in the dilapidated ghost town surrounding it.  Fladuk was mourned -- to a point -- and supplies were scavenged for.  The party rested in the mine with the doors shut, but soon detected Phase Spiders advancing on them.  The spiders were scared off, but everyone decided that perhaps they'd be safer sleeping outside of the cave.  Archibald and Fladuk's corpses were hidden or disposed of, though I can't recall how.

In the morning, the party headed Northeast to get away from the plateau.  In the distance, they noticed unseasonal snow clouds over the mountains.  Eventually, the adventurers arrived at a large field with three tall obelisks.  Around the bases of the towers were several badly decomposed bodies -- perhaps Archibald's party?  As they approached the obelisks, the day turned to night, and the stars in the sky were not those of the normal realm.  Each tower pointed to a specific star -- perhaps the three swirling stars of the cult?  Also, a ghost appeared.  These strange occurrences led the heroes to conclude that they had entered the strange nega/dark/dream/spirit realm that they had encountered in their initial mission to rescue Sebastian Cornfallow.

The ghost revealed himself to be Archibald's brother, Valentius.  The heroes explained Archibald's fate to Valentius, but took care to emphasize that he had died doing a noble deed -- aiding their escape -- and that Archibald's killer had met an unpleasant end.  Valentius told them something along the lines of, "You must stay the path; only a straight arrow can pierce the whatever," before vanishing in an awesome and spooky fashion.

The party continued on through the ghost world, eventually coming to a small deserted town in a dense forest (jungle?).  Suddenly, they were attached by a giant snake skeleton!  This animated creature, called a Bone Naga, was pretty gnarly but thoroughly outgunned, and we dispatched of it heroically.  Phobos snagged a bit of the bone powder it left behind.

Suddenly (I think?) the heroes found themselves back in an alley in Edon!!  They had been transported across space and dimension back to their world.  They were almost immediately set upon by a zombie, who was no match for their combat prowess.  Climbing onto the rooftops, they oriented themselves within the city, which was curiously empty.  Recalling a previous portent in one of Vincent's letters to Kao-Su that, "the infestation had taken hold in Edon," as well as the mysteriously dead horses in the fine stables, the party concluded that the town had probably been overrun by zombies.

They hopped across the rooftops, eventually arriving at the docks where there was a large crowd of people attempting to access boats to escape the city.  The city guard, called the Phalanx, were holding the crowds back.  Mr. Pug (I think?) read the name of a boat, and (Hubert or Phobos?) tried to convince the guard to let the pirate crew access "their" property.

I forget how we ended up jumping on the boat, but in the end, we were able to make our way off the island (much to the annoyance of the Phalanx guard, who I'm sure won't harbor any grudge) and are currently sailing back toward Bernard Beaucard's manor and the Ol' Kyle to get an explanation of WTF happened and let him know about our royal screwup (but also the information we gleaned)

6-28-15 Recap

The Most Dangerous Game: or The Inevitable Yet Totally Avoidable Death of Fladuk Redarm

We started where we had left off, with our heroes awakening in a large cage somewhere in the woods. Lord Vincent Beaucard and his men were standing nearby, looking like they were preparing for a hunt. He gave a small villain speech about how he knew who we were from the moment we met him and that we had been on his cousins ship. Despite some clever parlay from Phobos, Beaucard refused to divulge his entire evil plan "just because we're about to die."

Mr. Pug noticed that despite being stripped of armor, weapons, and gear, there was a rack in our cage with some junky old weapons and leather armor. Mr. Pug immediately grabbed a handaxe and threw it at Beaucard, who deftly caught it. Then Hubert cast a sleep spell... on the guy next to Beaucard... and Mr. Pug threw another axe... at Beaucard, which he caught. So Beaucard informed them that we would be hunted and he would give us a two or three minute head start. Then and his men howled and we were off.

We ran east, which was a direction found pretty much at random, until Lapu Lapu determined a river was nearby. We found the river and saw that it flowed from the north to the south, so we dove in a swam with the current down stream a ways, putting a nice bit of distance between us and our pursuers, hopefully also throwing them off our scent. Oh at some point during our initial burst of running away, Fladuk mentioned that Beaucard and his men were all werewolves, which kinda makes sense with all the howling.

After exiting the river, we continued east until we found a chasm with a rickety rope bridge spanning it. We all hurried accross it quickly and once we were safe on the other side, cut the ropes and let the bridge fall.  We took a moment to catch our breath and don our cheap leather armor, when we met a crazy old gnome named Archibald. We learned from him that we were now on an plateau which was also an island of sorts, mostly cut off from the surrounding area by the chasm. On the island was an old sealed up silver mine, which Beaucard was afraid of. Other than that Archibald wasn't very helpful and seemed content to be a crazy old hermit living in constant fear. We didn't like him.

We broke into the mine and started exploring it. Fladuk left to gather sticks for torches but also, it turns out, to murder Archinald so he wouldn't snitch on us. No one else in the party suggested he go do that. Certainly not. No oneelse thought it was a good idea to cover our bases and that the gnome seemed shifty and untrustworthy. And now, as events will reveal, there's no one left alive who can prove otherwise.

Eventually we discovered passage that opened up a bit to reveal a pit of lava with a floating, flaming skull, that seemed to be bound there. The skull warned us off and told us he was sworn to protect the cave and the silver within by one of Beaucards ancestors. We tried to reason with him and told him the person who made him swear the oath was dead and he was released but he said it didn't work that way. We asked him if he wanted to be released and he seemed open to the idea. However whole this was going on, Fladuk kept trying to attack the skull, with Mr. Pug going as far as physically holding him back from doing so. Eventually, Pug let him go because it seemed kind of futile. Fladuk did attack the skull, and while he did, everyone else ran into the room the flaming skull was guarding. It was full of silver weapons! Also, adamantine scale mail which Mr. Pug took.

Then we tried to run away but the flaming skull, sensing he was duped unleashed a fireball which reduced Fladuk, Lapu Lapu, and Hubert to less than zero hit points. Mr. Pug dragged Hubert and Lapu Lapu down a hallway to safety while Phobos was able to save himself. Fladuk was not so lucky however and the flaming skull completely incinerated his body. The rest of the party escaped the tunnels mostly intact, only of course to find Archibald corpse split in half waiting for them outside.