Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #6

First session.
Last session.

The latest session was a bit undermanned with both Angelo's and Thrallmar's players not being able to attend the game, but we did what we could with the players we got.

Roster for the session thus only included:
Blue, a lvl.1 magic-user, and his charmed follower Dylan.
Claude, a lvl.1 fighter.

The party picked up from where we last left off, having recovered some goods from a corpse impaled upon a tree branch several metres up in the air.

Since this encounter was mostly handled last session, the party decided to now change course towards the perceived middle point of the hex map.
Going forwards, the greens of the spruces that were now blocking most of the light from shining all the way down to the ground level were starting to thin out, and soon they started seeing thin and delicate white strands running between and along the brances. Spider webs.

Spider Territory

By the looks of it the webs continued and got more dense deeper into the area, and occasionally these beautifully aquamarine pinecone-sized spiders could be seen scurrying around the webbings and the ground.
Blue and Claude did the only logical thing that someone who's wandered into spider-inhabited area would and tried to hunt down these spiders to increase the rations available for the group in the case the spiders would prove edible. After taking some time to gather up and kill some spiders the two decided to head back the way they had come as they didn't want to push any further towards the spider territory.

This backtracking however did not quite go as planned. The further back they tried to go the denser and denser the forest got up to the point that the trees were practically huddled together close enough that advancing any further would have required chopping them down.

Weighing their options, Blue suggested trying to latch their grappling hook up on one of the large pine trees in order to climb up and get a better look at the surrounding terrain.
Claude climbing up helped the two map out the rough shapes of some of the nearby terrain features, including the spider's nest that was much larger than they had initially anticipated. They also noted down a rough location of a clear patch in the forest north west of their location and some sort of rise in the terrain towards east. There was seemingly no end to the forest when looking eastwards.

After Claude got down from his vantage point the party decided to rather head north towards where they would have ended up had they not changed their course since their path back was blocked.

Wolves?

What ended up interrupting their trek northward was happening upon four wolves laying on the ground, dead. Making this even more peculiar was the fact that the wolves seemed as if they were wearing deer skins. Either that or someone had adorned them with the skins after their death.

Stepping up to inspect the the corpses, a faint rustling could be heard somewhere further away, concealed by the trees and lack of light.
Checking the corpses they seemed to have died of puncture wounds not unlike bite marks or those inflicted by large nails or a dagger. Suspecting a spider attack the party wanted to take a better look at the wounds to look for traces of spider venom or corrosion, but nothing of such nature could be found. Inspecting the mouths of these wolves indicated that they had likely been fighting something with blood and small pieces of flesh lodged between their teeth, and looking around the surrounding terrain the amount of tracks and disturbed bushes supported this theory.

More rustling from the distant woods reminded the two that there was something else going on here than simply the wolves and Blue chose to cast Light where he had heard the sound.
What could be seen were the backs of a deer and some sort of naked human with the upper part of a crow running away from the sudden source of light on all fours.

Deciding to keep moving, the party headed deeper into the forest.

Other Happenings

The exploration went without too many setbacks for the last few hours of the day. Happening upon a field of strange oily moss growing around some tall pines from around which their bark had been peeled off and runes had been carved upon their pale, bare trunks.
Wanting a rubbing made of the runes of the trunks for studying them later, candle wax was employed to plug Claude's nose as he carefully walked into the mossy field, spores shooting up from the moss on every step.

After acquiring a rubbing of some of the runes they heard more noises coming again from somewhere beyond their vision. They tried calling out to whatever was making the noise but all they got back was few sharp barks.
Blue sacrificed one of his rations, tossing it somewhere between the woods where this barking had come from and a little later a less hostile set of barks could be heard.

Seeing as the sun was setting down, they decided to make camp for the night.

The Following Day

The night passed almost pleasantly without any incidents, and the party was back to exploring the woods.

Heading deeper still they party came upon a grove of pines blocking out the sun in it's entirety, leaving nothing but shades of grey to be perceived. Off in the distance a cliff-face running from north to south with a large vertical crack in it like the opening of a scabbard.
Approaching this crack revealed it to be a cave heading deeper into the rock face, and lighting a lantern revealed glittering pile of chunks of gold at the end into which Claude shot an arrow to make sure it wasn't any sort of illusion or trick of the light.

What ensued upon the arrow hitting the pile of gold was the party realising that it wasn't so much a pile of gold as chunks of gold wrapped almost like a cocoon over the lower half of a giant larva as the creature started to slowly writhe around and click it's jaws.
It however was no match for it's small and nimble adversaries as they pelted it with arrows and sling bullets, and just after the creature had gathered enough momentum to separate itself from the back wall of this small cavern against which it had been resting it collapsed dead with gross white puss driping from the many arrow wounds.

The next hour was spent trying to pull the body of this giant larva out of the cave where it had died as it was blocking the looting process being stuck there.
Apart from the chunks of gold used to built what had perhaps been a defensive layer around the creature's body, a gold vein could be seen glimmering at the back of the cave. The party stuffed their packs, sacks, pockets and whatever else they could move the gold in and prepared to head back to Talen.

The Way Back

Backtracking the way they had come to where the oily moss had been found and further back to to wolf bodies wearing deer skins, Angelo was asked to cast Detect Magic to determine wether the skins were magical or not, which they totally were so they too got stuffed into the packs to be taken back to the village.

Continuing to head back they happened upon a somewhat clear patch of the woods where most of the plantlife was dead and the trees themselved had died still standing. Black handprints dragged along the dead trees, looking almost as if they'd been burned there. This devastation continued in two ways, and judging from the handprints it was heading deeper into the forest from some outer part.
After a short discussion on how to proceed, it was decided that the party would follow along the way this trail seemed to have been coming from.

What they arrived upon was a large open and dead field with more dead but still standing trees. Far off in the distance the edge of a sudden drop into some sort of a valley could be seen.
The party decided to keep heading out of the forest rather than investigating further. On their way out they ran into some sort of a cave entrance much akin to a badger hole but only large enough for them to walk in, the area surrounding the entrance was picked clean of any fallen leaves or twigs and looked almost tended to.
Still of the mind to get out of the forest with their treasure and the daylight slowly running out on them they kept pushing on, ever closer to the village sitting by the edge of the forest.

As it was getting closer to night time they found themselves at another large opening, only this one was filled with stones of irregular shapes and the size of a small baby or a man's head in what was almost like an imitiation of human farmland, like someone was trying to farm rocks here.
With the sun now rapidly sinking beneath the horizon they set up camp next to the field.

Nightly Encounter

It was on Angelo's and Thrallmar's watch that Thrallmar noticed several low silhouettes silently creeping towards the camp over the rocky field, clearly trying to stay as close to the ground as they could. The dwarf did the one thing he does best and let out a shot at them, waking the rest of the camp in doing so.
What ensued was a frantic combat of teeth and claws against bows, steel and magic as these figures started charging the campsite.

Blue got off a Light spell on one of the assailants which gave everyone a good look of what they were about to fight as the light revealed four wolves running at them on their hind legs, two of them wearing patchwork skins of humans that ended up in large crow heads, one of them had a deer skin with it's antlers still there draped over it's back and the last one was wearing the pelt of another wolf over it's back like some sort of grotesque cloack.

The party got few hits in with their bows and sligs as the wolves charged forwards through the barren field with no cover to be found. 
As they got closer Blue set up a way for everyone to climb up a tree to safety with his grappling hook and was the first up there along with Thrallmar who had had no means of attacking as the wolves had advanced on the party since his one pistol shot had been spent.

In the ensuing melee Angelo got bitten badly and fell to the ground unconscious, Dylan died while trying to help Claude fend off several of the wolves which he was somehow managing with the help of Blue's Light spell blinding all but one of them.
Eventually the wolves got pushed back as the only one not blinded decided that it was too wounded to continue and let out a loud howl before running away on all fours, but not before absolutely trashing Claude's leg, forcing him to defy death. 

The other three blinded wolves still scrambling about trying to make their retreat, the party quickly packed the camp while avoiding them and decided to leg it out of there.

The Aftermath

After getting out of the deeper part of the forest it again opened up to a mixed woodland with trees growing considerably less dense. The group had no idea where the witch's house from where they had entered into this denser woods despite the children's warnings was in relation to yourselves.

With packs, pockets and hands filled with gold they struggled out of the forest despite Claude's mangled foot and having to help Angelo to hobble forwards.

In this sorry state, the journey back to Talen was one of wandering the forest somewhat aimlessly, having only the vague direction of the nearby village to go by. 

Towards the latter half of a third day spend limping back through the less dangerous parts of the forest, the party finally pushed their way out of the treeline and to the already familiar sight of the small and peaceful village of Talen.

Digital spell cards for LotFP

 So I got this great idea of making all the spells found in the base rulebook of Lamentations into cards because it is absolutely jarring having to copy+paste all the spells that are listed alphabetically rather than by level and class every. single. time. that you create a new character, especially with clerics who always know all the spells for their given level.

Now, the idea here was that since Roll20 allows the GM to make card decks as well as allowing players to draw whicever cards they want from the deck as well as to make the deck's contents infinite, it would speed setting up spells significantly if you could just fish the cards from the deck and have them easily available for referencing rather than having to scramble for them from your character sheets, expanding text boxes as you go to be able to read the full contents of the spell description.

Allright allright, a neat idea by itself. But. There was just one tiny little problem after having spent a day making the cards themselves. Roll20 limits the amount you can upload your own files in there, and doubly so for free users. 
The free user storage limit is 100mb, while the cards by themselves already size up to around and over 180mb. So that's a no go for me then as I only barely was able to squeeze up to level three spell decks for both Cleric and the MU.

For those out there who want to use the cards yourself, they're available here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fgbchg0D0MySxPgIHYG1kHs2Zfe4CgAL?usp=sharing

Example spells and cardback

Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #5

 We've come a long way and this is now my longest running game as well as my first proper OSR game save for Tower of the Stargazer and Death Frost Doom that I've ran for people, but those have been pre-written and rather contained modules, whereas the current game here I'm trying to do in as sandboxy way as I can.
Last session, first session.

Now, our current party line-up looks something like this as everyone was able to make it to the session:

Angelo, an amnesiac magic-user who last time stood witness to a trial of two of his companions.

Blue, a magic-user who was caught translating forbidden texts and has now six months left to procure a miracle or be executed.

Claude, a fighter who initially had joined the crew to investigate the disappearance of a hunter and their daughter from Talen but seems to now be growing curious about the forest itself.

Thrallmar, a dwarven cleric with a strict belief that the forest the group is currently exploring is cursed and with a wish to destroy it.

Camp by the swamp

We began the session with a small retelling of the last session by the players as I like to do with my games, partially to see what they've payed the most attention to but also to ease them back into the headspace of the fiction, at the end of which I asked for the decisions that had lead to the decision of camping next to the swamp for a second time after how well the first time went for them and we did clarify that the party likely did make some way away from the swamp before actually setting up their camp.

Having setlled down to camp the watches were divided out, but the dreams of just about everyone except for Blue were occupied my images and feelings of burning, of heat and of their skins boiling off. Thrallmar was further tormented by nightmares of his sides being hacked away with something sharp and cold and his skin being slowly peeled off from his legs.
During the second watch where Claude was the designated watchman, a rustling could be heard from within the tents of the sleeping party members as well as the little tent occupied by Thackerey as soon after their occupants started to slowly tumble out into the wilderness with most of them still in their smallclothes and all of them seemingly in a daze as they slowly and unsteadily headed towards the swamp in the distance.

Claude, being quick to realize that this was what had been happening last time as well, ran up to Thrallmar to wake up the sleepwalking dwarf and the two further spread out to start waking up the rest of the sleepwalkers.
Having evaded any possible harm from this situation, the party decided to try and get what little restless sleep they might be able to get before the morning rather than wander into the woods at night.

Throughout all this Blue slept like a baby, completely oblivious to anything that the others experienced during the night.

Hike to the witch's house

The following day after an early wake up, the party decided to continue heading deeper into the forest in their search of possible treasures in the deepest parts where even the children living here said that they don't go to.

The swamp they decided to walk around even though it might throw them slightly off course for a bit. Skirting around the edge of it for few hours they passed through the same area where a bunch of bones were hung in the air suspended from a mass of vines and with the threes having even grown around some of them to keep them suspended almost like someone had buried a bunch of animal bodies only for trees to have sprouted from beneath them and raising the entire animal graveyard several metres up in the air.
Other than being a peculiar sight and being able to observe the dimensions of this weird patch of land now that they were going through in in sunlight, nothing noteworthy happened as the group pushed forwards through the area.

Going further along the campsite the group had found atop a cliffside on their first outing into the forest had been cleaned up and put back together from it's absolutely trashed state, as well as deciding to check the dried out hollow tree they had picked up on last time to see if there are supplies stashed away in it again. And sure enough, there in the hollow of the tree under a deer pelt, a handful of arrows as well as dried vegetables was found. 
Claude decided to look around a bit for any possible tracks that might give hints as to who had left them here as the party had at first thought the earlier stash of supplies to have been prepared by the now-dead hunter. Nothing immediately obvious was found, but a bit more throrough search revealed some child-sized footprints in the bushes.

After this, the party spent a good while by the tree to discuss how they would handle going back to the witch's house where the children in the woods live or if they should just completely go past and around it since they now had Thackerey tagging along with them. Talking this kind of stuff out lout would of course have had them simply overheard by Thackerey himself, so Blue and Thrallmar took turns distracting the inquisitor as they were the two he had been specifically ordered to follow and watch over.
Eventually the choice they arrived at was to trust Thackerey to do nothing stupid and go meet the kids as Blue was interested in seeing what all trinkets and possible magic items the kids might still have at the house. There was also much interest in having another pair of eyes take a look at the red book that Angelo had not been able to read the last time they were there.

Back at the house and with the children

Approaching the old stone house and the little perimeter of tent and some cooking pots laid out in the open, the area was silent and without signs of life just like last time. Being a bit more confident in their approach since they now knew what to expect here the party decided to try calling out to the kids, explaining in a loud voice that they're not here to bother them but rather to head deeper into the forest.
This caused bit of rustling from the tent set up in front of the house and a moment later the leather flap posing as the door of the tent was tossed aside and a kid clad in furs and wearing a deer skull with no antlers over their head poked their skull-mask out of the tent.
"You can't go deeper into the forest, things get weird there. Weird and dangerous, so you can't go."

Following this was a short exchange between the party and the kid about why it's dangerous out there that they didn't really learn much other than that Jaceb, the leader of the kids, had told them not to go deeper into the forest than where the house was situated and that when they had initially went there things started to get weird.
Trying to call for Jacob whom the group had surmised to be hiding in some nearby bushes away from the clearing where the house stood due to occasional rustling they had been hearing, Thrallmar tried to lure the kid out by offering him food as well as asking for a permission to go through the contents of the alledged witch's house that the kids were occupying. This offer was met with bear growls from somewhere beyond the treeline and were interpreted as being a "no".

Seeing as it was a bit past 3pm, a conversation about where to set up the camp was had as that choice would have to be made when the sun would start to slowly set within the next three or so hours.
On one hand, camping here with the children the group might stay safe from whatever's out there in the deeper parts of the forest, but ot the other hand the current running theory is that the kids turn into animals at night and thus the possibility of getting attacked and how should they deal with that was also weighing on the decision making.

Eventually it was decided (with the new hex crawl map in front of them) that they would push deeper into the forest some ways away from the camp the children had made.

Into the forest crawl

After deciding to head deeper into the forest came the question of "okay, we've got a whole hexmap to explore. Where we going?"
Pondering a moment about the possible ways to approach this, it was decided that they now want to push deeper into the forest, heading north west from their current position.

Roughly three hours of a hike later as the mixed forest slowly shifted to consist mostly of just pines and spruces and with a faint fog starting to cover the ground the party arrived at a clearing where a ton of trees had fallen down and were laying there haphazardly leaning over each other and slowly rotting away. From somewhere underneath the trees a small squeaking sound could be heard.

Being wary of just about everything since the kids had warned them about the deeper part of the woods, a decision was made that rather than personally investigate the sound they threw a rope with grappling hook onto the pile of trees in order to reel some of the off from where they lay and hopefully reveal what was making the noise.

The grappling hook landed among the rotting wood with a *thud* and practically fell the rotten wood apart under it's impact and as it got dragged across them and revealed a squirming pile of what appeared to be squirrels. The poor animals were covered in filth and bird droppings and were missing spots of their fur almost as if they'd been coverred in tar that had been then attmpted to be plucked off of them. Their tails were mixed together in a tangled mess, and as each squirrel tried to go their separate way they couldn't really get anywhere from where they were.

Some discussion was had as to what to do with the squirrels. Suggestions ranged from letting them out of their misery to doing just that and making further rations out of them. 
Further investigation of the surroundings for any tracks revealed a bunch of criss-crossing prints likely belonging to some sort of rodents or small birds hopping around the place. A Detect Magic spell from Angelo however revealed something else entirely. While his original intent was to see if there's anything magical about or a spell on the squirrels, what he ended up discovering was that while the squirrels didn't detect magical in any way the entirety of the forest floor was teeming with thin inter-crossing lines almost like a haphazardly laid out spider's web shooting absolutely everywhere he looked.

Altar by the hill

Choosing to continue further in the light of the slowly setting sun the party pushed onwards through the forest for roughly three more hours before happening by another clearing in the woods. This one was a small hill with no trees growing on it save for one fat and lone birch growing at the very top of the hill, sheltering a stone slab by it's roots.

There very understandably was a lot of distrust among the group for finding random altars in the woods which is why it was approached with healthy doze of caution. Thrallmar prayed for Detect Evil, and as he opened his eyes from prayer what he saw was not anything evil looming by the altar site, but rather a delicate web of miniscule traces running all across the landscape much in the same manner that Angelo had seen at the previous location. The worrying part was that they seemed to make sense in some bizarre way, there was a pattern to be seen here! A method the the madness accroding to which the lines were intercrossing and zigzagging across the entirety of the hill and extending into the forest as far as Thrallmar's eyes could see.

While the dwarf decided to walk around the hill, mayhaps muttering to himself as he tried to make sense of these lines, Blue, Claude and Dylan walked up the hill to get a better look at the stone slab laying at the feet of the lone birch. Judging by the size of it the slab was very obviously some form of an altar, and further cementing this assumption was the handiwork that had been put into it. Running along and around the edge of the altar was a stone relief.
Inspecting the relief, it depicted a human standing upright, followed by successive depictions of a human slowly hunching over before turning into a wolf that then in turn would start to lay down and- and then it disappeared behind a corner as it looped around the entire altar.
Thinking that reading the whole relief might have some ill effects, Blue instructed Dylan to stay there at the front of it while he and Claude followed the rest of the relief around the altar. A wolf slowly laying down against the ground and turning into a snake with the snake then slowly leaning backwards and standing up, growing limbs and turning into the human depicted at the start(?) of the relief and the artwork looping in on itself.

As the others were finishing inspecting the altar, Thrallmar had wracked his brain and finally managed to make larger sense of the shapes these lines were making. They were symbols, runes, pictures and words, and what this particular word said was "Bury".

Deciding to make camp some way into the treeline so that if the group gets attacked they can flee into the open hill instead of getting lost in the woods, a camp is set up and watches are assigned as pairs rather than single person at a time in favor of being more prepared for whatever the night might bring but much to everyone's relief the night passes without an incident and as the sun starts to lazily creep up in the horizon everyone is likewise getting up and ready to be on the move yet again.

Deep forest - Day two

Deciding to keep to the same course that they had already been following, the party chose to keep heading north west and deeper into the woods.

After a few hours hike the terrain started to lead downwards into a small valley within the forest, but as they went down they also started to hear a buzzing sound from somewhere in front of them. Bees.
Looking for flammables that would not burn on a pure flame and thus produce a lot of smoke was not at all difficult in what was mainly a spruce forest, and Blue also had packed some lard with him which when combined with a bundle of spruce branches burned a foul flame that dispersed thick smoke as it burned. Several bundles of this kind were procured and the party kept on moving forwards with the people holding the smoking bundles surrounding the rest of the group to form a small wall of thick black smoke that would hopefully keep any bees away.

Continuing their descent down to the bottom of the valley they started to see the bees themselves zigzagging between a small patch of birch trees that were practically sweating out honey, the golden liquid pouring out of cracks in the trees suggesting that the beehives had been built inside their trunks.

While most of the party harvested any honey they could gather up withoutdisturbing the hives too badly,  Angelo decided to try to see if he could make sense of the lines he had seen when he used Detect Magic in the forest much like how Thrallmar had by the hillside.
Sure enough, after casting his spell Angelo could again see these delicate strands of blue shimmers dancing across the landscape and now armed with the knowledge that these lines have made sense before in the form of a word he set out to find out what they contained. 
Some fifteen minutes of walking all over the valley to get better looks and not have his view obstructed by trees from whatever angle he happened to be approaching his deciphering process from he too managed to get the lines to click in his head. The word he found was "Anoint".

Having now gathered four containers worth of honey and a new word from whatever this web covering the forest floor was, they decided to keep heading the way they had been going for the past day already, further north east.

Climbing back up from the small valley, the sound of bees slowly vanishing behind them and again going through the somewhat thick forest of spruces and occasional pine, maybe rarely coming across a birch or two huddled together, it took another three hours untill anything remarkable happened or was sighted.
What stopped tha party on their tracks for a moment however was the discovery of a corpse hung several metres up a nearby pines, impaled through it's chest and suspended by the very same tree branch that had pierced through it. The branch was nearly two metres in length and nearly four metres up in the air. The corpse itself seemed to be starting to decompose, it's gear it tatters, but hang haphazardly from one of it's shoulders was a backpack that seemed to have gone through a lot.

Grabbing a bow and arrow and fastening a rope onto the arrow, it took the group a few tries to get the backpack down. What they found inside was a glass jar of lamp oil, a ceramic jar containing pickled onions and carrots, as well as a tiny thumb-sized clay vial with no corck or end-cap. The tiny vial seemingly had nothing inside it but still somehow kept slowly dripping out a blackened red substance smelling of rot and salt.
Thrallmar had an idea of first wrapping the vial in some leaves and whatnot but the liquid quickly started to seep through, and thus he decided to put the vial within one of his empty lantern oil jars.

The forest crawl hexmap with the current progress on it, the brown mark is the witch's house

And that is where we left off for the night after dishing out some xp for things like hexes explored, uses found for the hexes, peculiar sights found, things learned about the world, spells cast and various other bonuses.

Lamentation in Coulurs of Pentagrams - Session #4

 This game is now tied for the longest one I've ran with Tower of the Stargazer of all things which somehow also took four sessions to bring to a closure if memory serves me right.

Session one can be found here, and last session here.

This session we got to witness how when one rises, another one falls as Blue's player was finally able to join us again but Claude's player in turn could not make it.
Such are the obligations of real life, getting in the way of our hobbies.

Characters:
Angelo, an amnesiac magic-user.
Beau "Blue" Smith, a heretic magic-user that was once caught translating forbidden texts.
Thrallmar Righthand, a disgraced dwarven cleric with his beard shaved off.

Where we last left off the party had returned back to Talen, bringing back the news about the hunter's passing as well as managing to re-unite the missing girl with her mother. For this they were given ownership over the hunting shack of the now dead hunter.
Thrallmar also had negotiated himself a place as defendant of Blue for the trial he was due for having gone over the time limit he was given for retuning from the forest after which inquisitor Thackerey had said he would consider Blue as having ran away.

Journey to Falm

At dusk on the fourth day after the return to Talen, a wagon accompanied by two riders pulled into the middle of the village. 
A priest in a gray robe with golden stripe running along it's entire length, as are the holy colours of the church of Varchic, stepped down from the driver's seat of the wagon and onto the little wooden platform at the village center and loudly proclaimed that he and his fellow knights of the church had arrived at the request of the holy inquisition of the church of Varchic to apprehend and take with them a heretic by the name of Beau Smith to be trialled against his sins in front of the church and that anyone not cooperating in handing the man over would be considered an accomplice of this foul heretic.

Blue stepped forwards willingly, surrendering himself to the priest and the two knights accompanying him along with Thrallmar who, as Thackerey had to explain to the priest, had agreed to share the burden of Blue's heresy in the event that the dwarf would be unable to defend Blue from prosecution.

What followed was a bumpy two days of travel in a small wagon with hands tightly tied behind their backs for Blue and Thrallmar, with Angelo following behind on foot out of curiosity.
The journey was largely uneventful. The party escorting Blue to his trial made camp shortly outside Talen to pass the night, picked up camp at sunrise and headed towards Falm. Another night was spent camping outside roughly midway through the journey and towards evening of the second day of proper travel the silhouette of Falm could be seen against the mountain range of Foundation onto which it was partially built. (Think something like Minas Tirith from LotR, now make it wider and separated into upper and lower part by another inner wall and you get Falm.)

Arriving there, the two knights of horseback passed a few words to the guard stationed at the gate before having the wagon pull in to the city. Inside the buildings were mostly constructed of stone, and shortly after rolling in to the city Thrallmar's hands were untied as he was let out of the wagon and told that there'd be someone sent for him tomorrow to come and get him for the trial. Blue on the other hand was driven all the way to beyond the second wall to upper Falm where the architechture was largely dominated by church buildings and noble houses, and stuffed into a prison cell to wait for his trial.

A simplified map of Falm and it's districts. Church and nobles reside in upper Falm while commoners and markets are in lower Falm

Before, during and after the trial

Seeing as it was not quite night time yet, Thrallmar took a stroll around the city to see if there was any work he could involve himself in to earn a coin or two only to find out that a beardless dwarf -sign of being disgraced among their kin- is not that well welcomed among people. No fair folk wanted to associate with him and people would carry away valuables as he approached as dwarves who have lost their honour have a tendency to turn all prescious metals and gems into common pebbles and rust should they die.

The following day someone had indeed been sent for Thrallmar, as a town crier could be heard announcing the coming trial of a heretic that would be held later that day as well as calling out for a dwarf going by the name of Thrallmar Righthand.
As Thrallmar approach the man he also noticed two church knights accopanying the crier, who promptly stepped forward to escort him  through the streets of lower Falm towards the upper city and further through there up a winding mountain path to a large open field that had been cut into the rocky mountainside. The field was surrounded by shabby long wooden benches and there in the middle of the field on a slightly raised wooden platform was Blue, tied down to a kneeling position and secured tightly to the platform with thick ropes. Further towards the end of the field stood another platform and considerably higher elevation, and upon it stood two thrones.
Thrallmar was likewise fastened onto the platform from where his hands had been again tied behind his back, although he was allowed to remain standing.

Slowly people started to trickle in and take seats around the field. At some point Angelo had also arrived at the city, met up briefly with Thrallmar, and was spectating the event from the sidelines.
Some hours later several official looking figures hurried to the higher platform, followed by a priest clad in rather impressive robes as well as what would appear to be a nobleman of some sort. The current High Priest as well as Lord of Falm, the twin rules who govern the city.

A sharp round of gunfire into the air by church knights stationed near the platform that Blue and Thrallmar were tied to silenced the rumbling chatter of the crowd and the priest started to speak on his throne. His voice barely reached the interrogation platform, let alone the crowds gathered at the field, but as soon as he finished speaking a man standing next to the priest's throne repeated his words in a clear and resounding voice that carried throughout the open field, announching the trial of the heretic Beau Smith as having begun.

The trial itself had it's ups and downs. The sins and heretical actions of Blue were brought to light for everyone present (translation of forbidden texts, formulas deemed too complex and something that a sane man should not possess). Blue was given an opporturnity to defend himself, with a cried of his own announcing his words to the two men acting as his judges and was helped by Thrallmar embellishing the truth of what transpired in the forest, claiming that Blue being late from his given return time being his own fault rather than Blue's and the reason he had shaved his beard off as a sign of disgrace and loss of his own honour for he knew he had caused harm to come upon Blue for delaying his return.
The lord and the high priest exchanged several private discussion that were not shared by the criers for those attending the trial, and with the high priest buying the story Thrallmar was spinning the trial finally concluded in the lord standing up from his throne to loudly proclaim with his own voice that Blue would still be allowed to keep his head, he would be given only six months rather than the initial year he had had to procure a miracle that would both benefit the church and Falm as well, and that he should start with the investigation into the local swamp from where locals where telling all sorts of unsettling rumours.

Afterwards Blue and Thrallmar where picked up by the knights that had stood watch by their interrogation platform and lead to "backstage" of the platform that the high priest and lord had been seated where they were given only the rudimentary information about the swamp, where to find it, and pretty much told to gather whatever men they feel they require and left to their own devices with a familiar looking inquisitor looking over them.

Preparations for the next adventure

With the recent trial, it was more difficult to find people in town who did not know who Blue and Thrallmar were than it was to find those that did and thus naturally people were also aware of where they and people they associate with would end up heading soon.
Trying to ask around the city for any possible mercenaries, hirelings or even porters was not easy and those that were willing were asking for forward payment in order to have something to leave behind for their families in case of those who still had them or simply in order to atleast gain something if they'd need to turn tail and run from where they were headed or if their employers met an untimely death.

Some plans were thrown around about gathering more gullible religious people and make them believe that whatever they find in the swamp is holy and miraculous. Perhaps they could pass whatever was rumoured to poke out of the thick fog enshouring the swamp and towards the sky as a finger bone of the god giant Varchic who was said to sleep under this very mountain range?
These plans were also put on hold due to their current situation with funding and everyone asking for forwards payment.

The group decided that since they were told to start with the swamp by the lord and high priest of Flam, they would first need some starting funds to gather up an expedition to the swamp.
And in order to gather funds, it was decided that they would head back to Talen and poke around the forest some more. After all, Jacob and the kids had found the bear skin from further in the forest according to Jacob who also claimed that they don't go deeper into the forest than the witch's house since things get weird and dangerous there. Who knows what all treasures could be found there?

With that decision the party headed back towards Talen with Thackerey once again breathing on their necks. Thrallmar spent the few days the party used for travelling by practicing his knowledge of herbs that he had started learning about back at Talen.

At Talen they re-supplied and picked up another hireling. A cattle herder by the name of Dylan who Blue managed to trick into coming along with them for no pay at all with the use of Charm Person.

Back to the woods

And so they set out, with Dylan, Thackerey and Thackerey's retinue with them. Now that they were not tracking anything but rather following markings that they had left themselves the party had much better idea of what to look for to find the path they had taken the last time.
The group reached the dried out river bank, made their way past now barely even noticeable campsite that nature had had time to start reclaiming, past the clearing with an un-inspected gravel path leading somewhere towards the south and to the burned remains of the log cabin they had spent their first night in the woods in. From there they continued further forwards, arriving once again at the twice cursed swamp.

As Blue's player had not been with us when the party had first encountered the swamp he wanted to investigate it based on what he had heard about it. The party tied all their ropes together to form a long and continuous piece that they would give to Dylan, who Blue coaxed into wading through the swampland and to the dark and gnarled mass of tree that looked almost as if it was trying to strangle itself. Upon reaching there, Dylan was to tie the rope around the trunk of the tree which would allow others to pass safely over by allowing them to pull themselves towards the tree as they moved through the fetid soup that was the swampland.

It was determined that someone of more magical nature should be sent over to investigate, leading to the decision to send over Thrallmar.
When he reached the little patch of stable land that the lone tree stood on he closed his eyes and cast a small prayer to detect evil. Upon opening his eyes Thralmar needed a double-take to make sure he had indeed opened them as what he saw in front of himself was nothing but dark with faint fleshy tones like one might see when pushing their eyes tightly closed. Turning around to his friends and realising that he did see them just fine the loudly proclaimed to them what he had proclaimed on the night they last made camp by the swamp: "Ayup, that's a devil tree!"
Angelo likewise decided to cast Detect Magic but failed to see anything magical about the tree.

Having determined that the tree must in some way or shape be evil he did what any logical priestly type would and carefully examined the tree, tapping it to find if it might be hollow as well as rummaging his backpack for a hand axe he was carrying with him, with which he hacked few splinters of the wood for further examination. Seeing as the dent he had made into the wood started to slowly seep this thick viscous and dirt brown liquid he also chose to grab some of it in a vial.

What came next was getting back which was easier said than done. The further Thrallmar fought his way through the swamp from the tree the harder it was getting to move, untill finally somewhere around the halfway point towards the shore where his companions were standing he could no more advance even an inch. After some throwing around of ideas it was decided that he should try and go back to the tree.
Turning around was a fight in and of itself but the closer he got to the tree the easier it got to move and soon Thrallmar was back on solid ground with now slightly worried looking Dylan.

Another return trip was attempted but this time with Thrallmar leaving the liquid and the tree splinters he had in his pack by the tree, for they had hypothesised that mayhaps the tree was preventing him from leaving since he was carrying part of it with him.
This attempt soon came to a smiliar halt as the first one though, with thee dwarf stuck halways from the tree and only able to go back to where he had come from.

After a short outburst from Thrallmar after finding out that his backpack had ripped open as he was wading through the swamp and that his lamp was now lost somewhere among the brown muck he swore to bring the tree down and started to furiously make a dent into it's trunk with his hand axe, an activity that was only eventually stopped by the fact that the tree was as thick as three dwarves and the sun was now rapidly starting to set in the horizon.
One last effort was made to retrieve the men stuck by the tree before nightfall, this time by tying the rope that had been tied around the tree around Thrallmar instead, having Dylan and Angelo (who had come to the tree in order to cast his Detect Magic earlier) in front of him holding onto the rope and having everyone on the shore pulling with all their might as the trio fought their way forwards. It was not an easy task, but as the setting skie dyed the forest shades of orange two men and a dwarf that were covered in mud, dirt, dead moss and god knows what else were now safely back from their excursion to the middle of the swamp. A quick check on their packs revealed that Angelo had likewise torn his backpack while travelling the swamp and lost a waterskin and a pickaxe, while Thrallmar had somehow managed to pick up a stray antler into his pack.

Setting up camp was not a trivial task either so close to the swampland, as it was not easy to find stable enough ground to pitch tents and no natural sources of water were nearby, requiring the party to dip into their supplies in order to not suffer from exhaustion after all they had gone through the day.