Post by Reno on Dec 5, 2010 3:32:05 GMT -5
Draghania Campaign II
Session 1: Saturday, December 04, 2010
In a tavern in the city of Martira Bay, Darkon, Duncan Mathonwy gives a great performance with his mandolin, and the patrons of the tavern shower him with gold.
After the performance, Duncan signs autographs for a few patrons, and happens to overhear a conversation coming from the kitchen. The cook and a waiter are talking about a resistance in some place he’s never heard of. Thinking that to be a strange subject for them to be speaking of, Duncan sneaks into the kitchen to eavesdrop. He finds out that this resistance, whoever and wherever they are, are recruiting people to help them, and are alleged to be paying well.
Meanwhile, Camulden Jackson, a young man recently knighted, spies a group of strange-looking wagons parked on the road in Martira Bay. He tries to sneak up, but is noticed. The caravan leader, a man named Tihomir, explains that they are a trading caravan setting off for the distant land of Draghania, which was revealed by the Mists about a year ago to the south of the land of Sithicus. This caravan will need guards, and Camulden is eager to join up. He runs off to tell his frind Varion.
Varion is working at his smithy. Camulden sneaks in and surprises the man, and asks him to look over his armor (which was forged by Varion with some assistance by the young Camulden). Varion examines the plate mail and determines that there is nothing wrong with it. Camulden also tells him about the caravan that he’s signing on with. Varion thinks this is a terrible idea for the young paladin, and decides to go along with Camulden to make sure he’s safe.
Camulden then goes home to tell his family about his decision. His mother doesn’t want him to go, but his dad accepts the decision. Camulden’s father goes to see Varion, and asks the man to keep his son safe. Camulden’s father gives Varion a map of the land and some money. Varion asks Camulden’s father to watch the shop while he’s gone, and he agrees.
Meanwhile, Duncan leaves the tavern and finds the caravan outside. He speaks to Tihomir, and learns of the caravan’s purpose. Although he is making good money in Martira Bay, Duncan is eager to leave Darkon in the near future because he has an odd feeling about the country. He signs on to the caravan as a traveling minstrel and guard.
Around the same time, another man named Gebeleizis happens by. He learns that the caravan is bound for Draghania, and hears about some strange happenings there. Apparently there is a forest that has been expanding far more rapidly than is natural. Gebeleizis decides to head home and talk the issue over with his grandfather.
Gebeleizis’s grandfather agrees with him that he should head south to Draghania to check the area out, and gives him a magical spear with which to protect himself. So Gebeleizis returns to the caravan and signs on as a guard.
The caravan is leaving the following morning, so Varion, Camulden, and Gebeleizis each return home, and Duncan returns to the inn where he is staying, and they get some sleep before reporting to the wagons at dawn.
That morning, Camuldon arrives with horses for himself and Varion, provided by his wealthy parents. Camuldon, Varion, Duncan, and Gebeleizis meet each other, and the expedition sets off.
We leave Martira Bay, and start heading on the road south. Our journey is to take us through Falkovnia to Valachan, from there to Sithicus, and from Sithicus into Draghania. The caravan wants to avoid Verbreak because there are lots of wolves there.
We travel until dark, and then camp near the road. We organize a watch for the night, with Varion taking the first watch. At some point during his watch, a birdlike creature flies high overhead and continues on its way. Varion doesn’t find the event notable enough to mention when he wakes Gebel for the next watch. His watch passes uneventfully, and then Duncan awakens for the last watch.
After patrolling the camp a few times, Duncan finds something digging through the garbage pile beneath one of the wagons. Thinking it to be somebody’s bags, he investigates and finds that a brown bear is stealing food scraps.
Falling back on the druidic training of his youth, Duncan attempts to speak with the bear and ask it to leave, but the bear doesn’t respond well. At first it tries to ignore him, but when he keeps trying to talk it slashes him with its claws. Realizing the foolishness of trying to battle the bear, but still trying to solve the problem without disturbing anybody, Duncan backs off and summons a dire rat. He directs the rat to bite the bear and then run away, but the bear catches up to the rat and eats it.
This commotion awakens several others in the encampment, including Varion, Camuldon, and Gebel. They attack the bear, and so Duncan decides to join in that fight. We slaughter the bear, and Duncan decides not to let it go to waste. He skins the bear, takes its pelt, and then takes as much meat from the bear’s carcass as he can get. While everyone else goes back to sleep, Duncan cooks the bear meat, distributing it to the others when everyone wakes up, and preserving the rest with salt obtained from one of the traders.
After some breakfast we set off on the road again. After a few hours of travel, mists start to rise around us, and visibility gets so bad that we can’t see each other when we get more than a few feet apart. Suddenly, we hear a woman’s scream from the rear of the caravan, and start running toward the source.
As suspected, by the time we reach the place where the scream came from, we are too late. A woman that is known to the caravan as “Aunt Jemima” has been murdered as if by some beast.
Duncan sees a shape receding in the mist, and he and Gebel head after it. Although it’s vaguely human-shaped, it has a monstrous face. The mist horror viciously claws Duncan, wounding him severely. The bard runs back toward the way he came, calling to Gebel to run as well. However, Gebel chooses instead to attack, jabbing it with his spear. The spear passes harmlessly through the mist horror.
Duncan’s shout catches the attention of Varion and Camulden, who are still examining the body. Camulden spots Duncan running off, and instead of following heads toward the area Duncan was running from. He finds the mist creature and joins in the battle, calling to Varion to join as well.
Once he’s far enough away that he’s not in imminent danger of death, Duncan pulls out his mandolin from his haversack and begins singing an inspiring song, using his bardic magic to help his allies in combat. Camulden blesses his sword and strikes the mist horror. When Varion sees the creature he realizes that his rifle will be useless, so he draws his giant maul and swings it. The maul bursts into flame, thanks to a crystal attached to the pommel, and strikes the mist horror, seemingly destroying it.
As the mist horror disappears, so too do the Mists recede. We discover that the caravan is missing, except for another guard by the name of Spoz. A few of our horses are still here, but the others have disappeared along with the caravan.
We also figure out that the land appears to be different. Duncan realizes that the foliage and trees are of a different type than that we had been passing through. We also seem to be much deeper in the forest than we had been when the Mists rose up.
Realizing that we are lost, each of us tries to figure out what direction to head. We figure out the direction we think is south, but Duncan pulls a magnetic compass out of his bag, it claims that south is the opposite direction. We decide not to trust the compass, which begins spinning when Duncan taps it, and set off in the direction we believe is south.
In the distance, we hear the sound of wolves howling. Varion, who is wearing a wolf pelt, decides to remove it. He asks Duncan for the bear pelt, and puts it on like a cloak.
After some time, we emerge from the trees and find ourselves near a road. A few hundred feet beyond, there is a river that is running almost parallel to the road. We have seen no wolves as yet, and decide to stop by the river. As it’s getting on in the day, we set up camp.
Duncan pulls out fishing gear, and heads over to the river. When he gets closer, Duncan spots a small stone bridge. He looks underneath to make sure nothing is hiding down there, and then starts fishing off the bridge. Varion announces that he is taking Camulden hunting, and the two of them depart. Gebel builds a fire and helps Duncan cook the fish that he catches. Spoz waits around with us.
Varion and Camulden eventually track down a rabbit. Varion shoots it, which wounds and disables the rabbit. He has Camulden shoot it to kill the rabbit, then they bring it back to camp, where Varion shows the young man how to skin and gut the rabbit. We then cook it on the fire and eat it.
Duncan finds a fallen road sign near the bridge, which points down the smaller road. The sign is written in a language that none of us can identify, which is strange. We decide to follow the smaller road toward whatever destination the sign names.
The road takes us to a fairly small town. Duncan is the first to spot that the town is deserted. Indeed, as we get closer we find that everyone in the town is dead. A few bodies are impaled on stakes, but it appears that these killings are not too recent. Duncan wonders aloud if we are in Falkovnia, because its ruler Vlad Drakov is reputed to execute people by impalement. However, the wildlife here does not seem to match up with what Falkovnia normally has, and it also doesn’t make sense for Drakov to do this to one of his own villages.
We split up and explore the town. Varion searches for cooking equipment, since we don’t have any, and finds a set that is in decent shape but filthy. Duncan looks for the largest building, which seems to have been the mayor’s manor or something equivalent. He looks for any sort of documents, but it seems they were all stolen or burned by whoever destroyed this town. He does manage to locate a pair of old books, but they are written in the same language as the road sign, and are thus unreadable. Duncan takes them anyway.
We meet up again and discuss our findings, then decide there is nothing else we can do here. From the grisly scenes of slaughter, we infer that it was no random event, but a planned military action that destroyed this town. Although it does not appear to have been very recent, we decide that we don’t want to stick around so we retrace our steps out of town.
We make it back to the river and from there to the larger road. We follow that road south, and eventually make camp for the night. Since this road is now passing through forest, and trees are pressing in on either side, we decide to camp on the road itself. Varion remarks that we have seen no live people whatsoever in this land yet.
Our watches pass mostly uneventfully. In the earliest hours of the morning during Duncan’s watch, Camulden wakes up. He sees a hideous face with a pair of glowing red eyes looking out at him from among the trees. The creature seems perplexed at his lack of reaction to it, and when Camulden turns to call out to the others, it vanishes. Duncan tells Camulden that he was having a bad dream, and to go back to sleep. The young paladin accepts this explanation and goes back to sleep.
When the sun comes up, we break camp and continue to follow the road. At some point, a tiger comes out of the trees and pounces on Gebel. Gebel manages to push it off, and everybody draws weapons and attacks. The tiger is quickly trapped between us, and Varion brains it with his hammer.
Varion makes Camulden skin the tiger, then Varion eats some of the meat. Everyone else declines to partake of it. We press on after that, and towards the end of the day we reach a city. This one is much larger than the ruined town we found earlier, and best of all is populated with living people.
We approach the gates to the city, and Duncan attempts to speak to the guards there. Although he tries every language he knows (Darkonese, Balok, Mordentish, Forfarian, and even Druidic), the guards do not seem to understand him. One of the guards tries to speak to us, but none of us are familiar with the language he uses. Camulden tries to communicate with the various languages he knows, but soon the guard motions for us to wait and walks away.
After a few minutes he returns with an elf, whom Camulden addresses in Elven. The elf informs him that we are in the land of Draghania, at the capital city Sofia. The local language that is being spoken is Draghanian, and that explains why we could not understand the guard.
As the elf converses with Camulden, Duncan observes his body language. He decides that the elf is not attempting to deceive anyone, and also realizes that the conversation will be going on for awhile. So Duncan produces a chessboard and invites Varion to play. Varion does not know the game, so instead Duncan pulls out a deck of cards. The two of them play a game.
Gebeleizis, who also speaks Elven, follows the conversation between Camulden and the elf. The elf provides a brief history of the land, explaining how it was ruled up until recently by a man named Constantine. Constantine was a military dictator, and he was responsible for the destruction of the town we saw earlier, which is called Sliven. Apparently Constantine was killed a few months ago by a band of foreign heroes, some of whom joined up with the local resistance.
Constantine left no clear successor, so his lieutenants have been battling each other since his death in an attempt to seize power. However, the military is still very much in charge of the land despite having no clear leadership at the moment.
Leading us into the city and away from the gate, the elf explains to Camulden and Gebel that the resistance is always on the lookout for new members. Although they are hard to find, they apparently maintain some sort of safe house in some mountains to the southwest.
The elf also mentions tales of a strange creature, that has been said to be responsible for some disappearances of late. Many have gone looking for this creature, but most who encounter it are not seen again. Those who have seen it and lived to tell the tale are generally driven insane by the experience. They rave about a creature that apparently has a hideous face and glowing red eyes. Camulden recognizes the description as probably matching that of the creature which he saw that morning, and which he believes was in a dream. He relates this to the elf, who is surprised that Camulden claims to have seen the creature and lived.
XP Awarded: 1,063 + petition
Session 1: Saturday, December 04, 2010
In a tavern in the city of Martira Bay, Darkon, Duncan Mathonwy gives a great performance with his mandolin, and the patrons of the tavern shower him with gold.
After the performance, Duncan signs autographs for a few patrons, and happens to overhear a conversation coming from the kitchen. The cook and a waiter are talking about a resistance in some place he’s never heard of. Thinking that to be a strange subject for them to be speaking of, Duncan sneaks into the kitchen to eavesdrop. He finds out that this resistance, whoever and wherever they are, are recruiting people to help them, and are alleged to be paying well.
Meanwhile, Camulden Jackson, a young man recently knighted, spies a group of strange-looking wagons parked on the road in Martira Bay. He tries to sneak up, but is noticed. The caravan leader, a man named Tihomir, explains that they are a trading caravan setting off for the distant land of Draghania, which was revealed by the Mists about a year ago to the south of the land of Sithicus. This caravan will need guards, and Camulden is eager to join up. He runs off to tell his frind Varion.
Varion is working at his smithy. Camulden sneaks in and surprises the man, and asks him to look over his armor (which was forged by Varion with some assistance by the young Camulden). Varion examines the plate mail and determines that there is nothing wrong with it. Camulden also tells him about the caravan that he’s signing on with. Varion thinks this is a terrible idea for the young paladin, and decides to go along with Camulden to make sure he’s safe.
Camulden then goes home to tell his family about his decision. His mother doesn’t want him to go, but his dad accepts the decision. Camulden’s father goes to see Varion, and asks the man to keep his son safe. Camulden’s father gives Varion a map of the land and some money. Varion asks Camulden’s father to watch the shop while he’s gone, and he agrees.
Meanwhile, Duncan leaves the tavern and finds the caravan outside. He speaks to Tihomir, and learns of the caravan’s purpose. Although he is making good money in Martira Bay, Duncan is eager to leave Darkon in the near future because he has an odd feeling about the country. He signs on to the caravan as a traveling minstrel and guard.
Around the same time, another man named Gebeleizis happens by. He learns that the caravan is bound for Draghania, and hears about some strange happenings there. Apparently there is a forest that has been expanding far more rapidly than is natural. Gebeleizis decides to head home and talk the issue over with his grandfather.
Gebeleizis’s grandfather agrees with him that he should head south to Draghania to check the area out, and gives him a magical spear with which to protect himself. So Gebeleizis returns to the caravan and signs on as a guard.
The caravan is leaving the following morning, so Varion, Camulden, and Gebeleizis each return home, and Duncan returns to the inn where he is staying, and they get some sleep before reporting to the wagons at dawn.
That morning, Camuldon arrives with horses for himself and Varion, provided by his wealthy parents. Camuldon, Varion, Duncan, and Gebeleizis meet each other, and the expedition sets off.
We leave Martira Bay, and start heading on the road south. Our journey is to take us through Falkovnia to Valachan, from there to Sithicus, and from Sithicus into Draghania. The caravan wants to avoid Verbreak because there are lots of wolves there.
We travel until dark, and then camp near the road. We organize a watch for the night, with Varion taking the first watch. At some point during his watch, a birdlike creature flies high overhead and continues on its way. Varion doesn’t find the event notable enough to mention when he wakes Gebel for the next watch. His watch passes uneventfully, and then Duncan awakens for the last watch.
After patrolling the camp a few times, Duncan finds something digging through the garbage pile beneath one of the wagons. Thinking it to be somebody’s bags, he investigates and finds that a brown bear is stealing food scraps.
Falling back on the druidic training of his youth, Duncan attempts to speak with the bear and ask it to leave, but the bear doesn’t respond well. At first it tries to ignore him, but when he keeps trying to talk it slashes him with its claws. Realizing the foolishness of trying to battle the bear, but still trying to solve the problem without disturbing anybody, Duncan backs off and summons a dire rat. He directs the rat to bite the bear and then run away, but the bear catches up to the rat and eats it.
This commotion awakens several others in the encampment, including Varion, Camuldon, and Gebel. They attack the bear, and so Duncan decides to join in that fight. We slaughter the bear, and Duncan decides not to let it go to waste. He skins the bear, takes its pelt, and then takes as much meat from the bear’s carcass as he can get. While everyone else goes back to sleep, Duncan cooks the bear meat, distributing it to the others when everyone wakes up, and preserving the rest with salt obtained from one of the traders.
After some breakfast we set off on the road again. After a few hours of travel, mists start to rise around us, and visibility gets so bad that we can’t see each other when we get more than a few feet apart. Suddenly, we hear a woman’s scream from the rear of the caravan, and start running toward the source.
As suspected, by the time we reach the place where the scream came from, we are too late. A woman that is known to the caravan as “Aunt Jemima” has been murdered as if by some beast.
Duncan sees a shape receding in the mist, and he and Gebel head after it. Although it’s vaguely human-shaped, it has a monstrous face. The mist horror viciously claws Duncan, wounding him severely. The bard runs back toward the way he came, calling to Gebel to run as well. However, Gebel chooses instead to attack, jabbing it with his spear. The spear passes harmlessly through the mist horror.
Duncan’s shout catches the attention of Varion and Camulden, who are still examining the body. Camulden spots Duncan running off, and instead of following heads toward the area Duncan was running from. He finds the mist creature and joins in the battle, calling to Varion to join as well.
Once he’s far enough away that he’s not in imminent danger of death, Duncan pulls out his mandolin from his haversack and begins singing an inspiring song, using his bardic magic to help his allies in combat. Camulden blesses his sword and strikes the mist horror. When Varion sees the creature he realizes that his rifle will be useless, so he draws his giant maul and swings it. The maul bursts into flame, thanks to a crystal attached to the pommel, and strikes the mist horror, seemingly destroying it.
As the mist horror disappears, so too do the Mists recede. We discover that the caravan is missing, except for another guard by the name of Spoz. A few of our horses are still here, but the others have disappeared along with the caravan.
We also figure out that the land appears to be different. Duncan realizes that the foliage and trees are of a different type than that we had been passing through. We also seem to be much deeper in the forest than we had been when the Mists rose up.
Realizing that we are lost, each of us tries to figure out what direction to head. We figure out the direction we think is south, but Duncan pulls a magnetic compass out of his bag, it claims that south is the opposite direction. We decide not to trust the compass, which begins spinning when Duncan taps it, and set off in the direction we believe is south.
In the distance, we hear the sound of wolves howling. Varion, who is wearing a wolf pelt, decides to remove it. He asks Duncan for the bear pelt, and puts it on like a cloak.
After some time, we emerge from the trees and find ourselves near a road. A few hundred feet beyond, there is a river that is running almost parallel to the road. We have seen no wolves as yet, and decide to stop by the river. As it’s getting on in the day, we set up camp.
Duncan pulls out fishing gear, and heads over to the river. When he gets closer, Duncan spots a small stone bridge. He looks underneath to make sure nothing is hiding down there, and then starts fishing off the bridge. Varion announces that he is taking Camulden hunting, and the two of them depart. Gebel builds a fire and helps Duncan cook the fish that he catches. Spoz waits around with us.
Varion and Camulden eventually track down a rabbit. Varion shoots it, which wounds and disables the rabbit. He has Camulden shoot it to kill the rabbit, then they bring it back to camp, where Varion shows the young man how to skin and gut the rabbit. We then cook it on the fire and eat it.
Duncan finds a fallen road sign near the bridge, which points down the smaller road. The sign is written in a language that none of us can identify, which is strange. We decide to follow the smaller road toward whatever destination the sign names.
The road takes us to a fairly small town. Duncan is the first to spot that the town is deserted. Indeed, as we get closer we find that everyone in the town is dead. A few bodies are impaled on stakes, but it appears that these killings are not too recent. Duncan wonders aloud if we are in Falkovnia, because its ruler Vlad Drakov is reputed to execute people by impalement. However, the wildlife here does not seem to match up with what Falkovnia normally has, and it also doesn’t make sense for Drakov to do this to one of his own villages.
We split up and explore the town. Varion searches for cooking equipment, since we don’t have any, and finds a set that is in decent shape but filthy. Duncan looks for the largest building, which seems to have been the mayor’s manor or something equivalent. He looks for any sort of documents, but it seems they were all stolen or burned by whoever destroyed this town. He does manage to locate a pair of old books, but they are written in the same language as the road sign, and are thus unreadable. Duncan takes them anyway.
We meet up again and discuss our findings, then decide there is nothing else we can do here. From the grisly scenes of slaughter, we infer that it was no random event, but a planned military action that destroyed this town. Although it does not appear to have been very recent, we decide that we don’t want to stick around so we retrace our steps out of town.
We make it back to the river and from there to the larger road. We follow that road south, and eventually make camp for the night. Since this road is now passing through forest, and trees are pressing in on either side, we decide to camp on the road itself. Varion remarks that we have seen no live people whatsoever in this land yet.
Our watches pass mostly uneventfully. In the earliest hours of the morning during Duncan’s watch, Camulden wakes up. He sees a hideous face with a pair of glowing red eyes looking out at him from among the trees. The creature seems perplexed at his lack of reaction to it, and when Camulden turns to call out to the others, it vanishes. Duncan tells Camulden that he was having a bad dream, and to go back to sleep. The young paladin accepts this explanation and goes back to sleep.
When the sun comes up, we break camp and continue to follow the road. At some point, a tiger comes out of the trees and pounces on Gebel. Gebel manages to push it off, and everybody draws weapons and attacks. The tiger is quickly trapped between us, and Varion brains it with his hammer.
Varion makes Camulden skin the tiger, then Varion eats some of the meat. Everyone else declines to partake of it. We press on after that, and towards the end of the day we reach a city. This one is much larger than the ruined town we found earlier, and best of all is populated with living people.
We approach the gates to the city, and Duncan attempts to speak to the guards there. Although he tries every language he knows (Darkonese, Balok, Mordentish, Forfarian, and even Druidic), the guards do not seem to understand him. One of the guards tries to speak to us, but none of us are familiar with the language he uses. Camulden tries to communicate with the various languages he knows, but soon the guard motions for us to wait and walks away.
After a few minutes he returns with an elf, whom Camulden addresses in Elven. The elf informs him that we are in the land of Draghania, at the capital city Sofia. The local language that is being spoken is Draghanian, and that explains why we could not understand the guard.
As the elf converses with Camulden, Duncan observes his body language. He decides that the elf is not attempting to deceive anyone, and also realizes that the conversation will be going on for awhile. So Duncan produces a chessboard and invites Varion to play. Varion does not know the game, so instead Duncan pulls out a deck of cards. The two of them play a game.
Gebeleizis, who also speaks Elven, follows the conversation between Camulden and the elf. The elf provides a brief history of the land, explaining how it was ruled up until recently by a man named Constantine. Constantine was a military dictator, and he was responsible for the destruction of the town we saw earlier, which is called Sliven. Apparently Constantine was killed a few months ago by a band of foreign heroes, some of whom joined up with the local resistance.
Constantine left no clear successor, so his lieutenants have been battling each other since his death in an attempt to seize power. However, the military is still very much in charge of the land despite having no clear leadership at the moment.
Leading us into the city and away from the gate, the elf explains to Camulden and Gebel that the resistance is always on the lookout for new members. Although they are hard to find, they apparently maintain some sort of safe house in some mountains to the southwest.
The elf also mentions tales of a strange creature, that has been said to be responsible for some disappearances of late. Many have gone looking for this creature, but most who encounter it are not seen again. Those who have seen it and lived to tell the tale are generally driven insane by the experience. They rave about a creature that apparently has a hideous face and glowing red eyes. Camulden recognizes the description as probably matching that of the creature which he saw that morning, and which he believes was in a dream. He relates this to the elf, who is surprised that Camulden claims to have seen the creature and lived.
XP Awarded: 1,063 + petition