Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #9

 I have been slacking off with writing these session reports so I was going to combine the last two sessions into a single report but after writing the details for just one of them this very quickly became too long to include the other session as well...

As always, here are link to Session #1 and Session #8.

Picking things back up again

Where we last left off the party had returned from the deeper part of the forest once again with bags filled with gold that they were now looking to turn into silver in order to be able to spend it more freely.

Before they could leave Talen however, a message had been left for them at the village inn asking the party to share whatever information they had about the current events of the dead priest in Talen as well as the forest to which Blue wrote a detailed letter in response and even included their current maps of the surrounding area.

After passing on their response to the message, the party headed to Falm where they left off Thrallmar (whose player was absent from the session) before departing on a long two week caravan journey to visit one of the rare few fishing towns in the realm ruled over by the children of Varchic in order to play through a oneshot I had offered to run beforehand since some of the players unfortunately couldn't join in for games except for the nights we had already dedicated for this sandbox. This is also why Inquisitor Thackerey stayed behind at Falm rather than accompanying Blue as he normally would.

On the journey there the party got their fortunes read to them by a fellow traveller within the caravan, promising both fortune and danger in the days to come.

Fihem - Tales of Mermaids

When they finally reached Fihem the night had already started to fall and nearly all of the local inns were full after the people from the caravan started to look for lodgings but also because sailors from a recently returned fishing vessel had taken up many of the rooms.
After being directed from one full inn to another and ever towards the docks of Fihem the group eventually happened upon a rundown looking establishment calling itself the Drunken Albatross. Pushing their way inside this place too was filled to the brim with people, but a strong voice called them to find a table and claimed that there were still two spare rooms left in the inn.

After pushing their way through the crowd and finding a somewhat unoccupied table the tavern owner found his way to the group and the matters of food, drink and lodgings were settled.
Before heading for a rest though the group couldn't help but overhear tales circulating among the patrons of the establishment, many of who were sailors.
There were claims of the men having seen mermaids when they were last out by the sea. Generally it seemed like two versions of the story existed, one painting the mermaids as beings of sublime beauty and another depicting them as these horrid fish-monsters. As the night grew late these rumours even proved to be the cause of a small quarrel among the men as an older looking sailor was thrown against the table the party had been sitting by with a loud rattling of mugs and platters.

Before the man could disappear out of the tavern after gathering himself up from the floor Blue stopped him and pressed for some answers about these mermaids, perhaps in hopes to learn more about these paranormal creatures the men claimed to have seen.

The Day After

The following morning the party was woken up by town guard banging at their door. The guardsmen inquired about where they had been last night and told them to not leave the town untill they were given a permission to do so before proceeding to go wake up the residents in the room next door with similiar questions and news.

Getting down from their room to the tavern floor the group inquired from the tavernkeeper for the reason the guards were going through people staying there and learned that a man had been found washed ashore early this morning, one of the sailors.
Not much later an older woman stormed in to the tavern looking very worried as she dashed to exhange words with the owner of the establishment and when approached by the party explained that she was looking for her daughter who last should have been with the sailor who turned up drowned. The girl had not come home today and the woman was worried.

Leading the party to a more secluded place by their suggestion, the woman showed them to a small apotechary that she attended. Moira's Herbs and Remedy was written by the front.
The woman explained the situation in more detail and the party agreed to help look for her missing daughter.

On The Case

Some highlights from the investigations include trying to bribe their way into the town council building first with silver and then with food, almost getting roughed up by guards in an alleyway for snooping around, learning that whoever were claiming the mermaids to have been horrible fish-monsters all either had someone close to their heart romantically or had been accompanied by women when they had been claiming so.

Eventually the investigations lead towards the old sailor they had talked with the night before, the same that had been caught in a fight about the mermaids and thrown around the tavern before limping out of there.
Asking around for his whereabouts  they learned that this sailor too had not been seen all day and got some diractions to the his fishing hut an hour or so walk away from the town itself. Just now a new problem presented itself, the party had been ordered not to leave the town during the murder investigations.

Into The Night

It was decided that the following night they would break out of their inn room through the tiny window, descent into the rooftops of the mess of houses that dominates the pier area and make for a way out of town to investigate this fisherman. Upon reaching an outer gate of the town however a new issue presented itself. There were guards standing watch on both sides of the gate leading out of the town.

After some amount of planning and arguing about the best way to get past, the party settled on spending one of the flasks of lamp oil to draw an obscure sign with it in the middle of a street few corners away from where the guards were situated, sprinkle a small mound of gunpowder right next to it and then light up the oil.
This of course went about as well as one would expect, a burning torch thrown into the oil soon made the whole drawn shape catch fire and ignite the pile of gunpowder whic in turn made enough of a racket to alert the guard who rushed to witness a burning occult symbol in the middle of a road while the party slipped past them towards the gate.

One guard had been left behind to stand watch by the gate, who Blue promptly cast Charm Person on and pretended to be an undercover inquisitor to get the man's attention and cooperation, and so they were off.

Fishing Hut

Upon reaching the hut what they found was a pier, and at the end of it a two-storey fishing hut extending downwards to the sea. The pier was full of barrels upon barrels of rotting fish and rusting fishing gear, and the hut at the end was devoid of any light. Only a faint murmur could be heard coming from a floor below.

Breaking into the hut the party found a modest dwelling drowned in drawings of fishes, women, as well as all sorts of morbid fusions of the two. From beneath a trapdoor in a corner of the room the same low murmur kept going on.

What transpired from this point onwards was the party sneakily descending down to the lower floor, finding a room lined with shelves of books, drawings and samples of fish either dried out or floating in jars, the floor was covered in piles of rotting fish and at the end of the room stood the old sailor hunch over some sort of table, as well as a curious looking centipede-like thing extending from a hook on the ceiling down to a hole in the floor leading straight to the sea with the creature assumedly continuing below the waves.
Upon getting closer they recognised some sort of person laying on the table over which the sailor was hunched and Blue decided to step up and call out to the man. The sailor was demanding to know who these intruders were but was fooled by Blue into thinking that the magic user had come here to witness the mad sailor's handiworks. As per Blue's request the sailor resumed his work, lifting a young woman off the table she had been laying on and placed here near the centipede-creature hanging from the ceiling and went to cut it down.

With a loud splash the creature wriggled into the sea, and but a moment later a large flabby claw-like thing extended from the sea, reaching for the girl's body.

Beyond that point everything was a blur of motion and yelling.

Claude dashed forwards in order to wrestle the body away from whatever horror was attempting to snatch it, the sailor ran to grab an old harpoon from a corner of the room to repel Claude with, magic was attempted to be flung around without much success, and as Claude managed to secure the body he started to make an escape towards the upper floor while something was thumping against the floorboards.
The sailor, now maddened with rage, kept on trying to impale those interrupting his work but to no success as the group fled up the trapdoor, piling furniture on top of it to keep the lunatic downstair at bay, and a moment or two later a loud crashing sound followed by screams and splashing of water could be heard coming from down there.

After getting out with the body the party returned to town to report on the situation to the guards, got reprimanded for breaking the orders to not leave the town as well as fined for their actions, learned that a lot of guardsmen did not get to sleep that night due to their burning-symbol-of-cult-like-activities-in-the-middle-of-the-road stunt and retired to get few hours of sleep before the morning.

Harvest Festival - Weird village festival funhouse

So if you know me and the type of games I tend to run, you'll know that I rarely run anything that's straight up classical adventure with clear cut enemies and treasures. 
I am not sure why, but when making up stuff myself I tend to lean towards creating situations where it won't be too obvious who the "bad guy" is, and violence will often times be something that has to be initiated from the player side unless they find themselves at the unfortunate end of a reaction roll or take certain types of approaches to things.

Now, because I know that one of my sandbox groups will in their next session take a long travel that we'll for the most part be skipping over both due to the part of the world they're travelling through being still largely not developed by their GM as well as to get to the next cool thing they'll be poking their noses into, I thought "hey, why not add a little event for the travel?" and came up with this small village that they'll be stopping by for rest during their journey that just so happens to be holding their annual harvest festival the night that the PCs are staying in the village.

I also thought that it's been ages since I've really posted anything here apart from the occasional session reports, so why not try to make this something that I could even share with people. Then the thought went further, "I've not tried making a zine or a pdf of any sort before, how hard could it be?", and now a full day later of working on it I've managed to push the village and it's weird festival into a presentable pdf form.

I thus present to you, Harvest Festival - A Weird Funhouse Festival to include into your games when you need something to give the backwater village(s) a bit more flavour. Inside you will find ten interesting or weird sights to see at the festival as well as it'se ritualistic highlight, with the whole village oozing with loose threads for a creative GM to spin maybe even whole adventures around.

Click the picture to open the module:

Click it - it's a cool module and it's free

Lamentation in Colours of Pentagrams - Session #8

In which the party returns to Talen proper and decides on what to do next.
Session #1 available here, and session #7 here.

The party, having healed, rested well and armed themselves to the teeth returned back to Talen only to be greeted with Millers and their rat problem before even properly getting into the village.
There Thrallmar found a small envelope from the rat-infested warehouse after taking a daring dive into it's depth and managing to make it back in one piece.

The Rats in the Warehouse

Picking back up from where we left, long conversation was had in hushed tones and implied look so as not to draw any suspicion towards the contents of the letter from Thackerey, who would surely condemn the entire party where they stood. 
Deciding to leave the letter be for now, the talks then moved back to how the group might deal with a warehouse full on vicious vermins. Burning or poisoning it was not really an option as that would more than likely destroy the grains and anything else stored inside, while traps might have proven too time consuming and slow. There were all sorts of wild plans being thrown around untill Blue remembered that Angelo (whose player unfortunately was not able to make it to this session) had recently researched the spell Speak With Animal during their stay in Falm.

Casting the spell made the little squeaks coming from inside the warehouse into something more intelligible. From the other side of the wall Angelo could hear dozens of conversations overlapping, like someone fast-forwarding several gangster flicks at the same time.
What he ended up learning was that these rats were following someone named Fat Jon, as well as the fact that the rats had some sort of "ambush squad" hiding up somewhere.

The eventual and very logical conclusion of a solution was to get furs from somewhere, sew a rat mask for Angelo who could speak with the rats with his magic and have him play the part of a king rat who has come to demand the rats leave the warehouse.
This plan didn't get very far though, as entering the village proper to find some furs the first thing our adventurers noticed was a large gathering of worried looking people huddled around the local well.

The Priest in the Well

Approaching these people, the group learned that the local priest, Father Markus, was found earlier this morning in the well and how the locals had been since struggling to get him out of there.
Blue thought to help these people out by casting magical light down the well so that they would be able to better see down there in their efforts to hoist the man up. This however did also reveal that Father Markus had been separated from his head either after or before stumbling down the well.

This discovery in turn lead to the group investigating the local church for any clues as to what might have happened. In the end not much was discovered: few chop marks on the large front door of the chapel, a small splatter of blood in the ground by the door, a half-finished altar arrangement, and after busting through the door to the priest's quarters at the back of the church some letters and books of theology.
Returning to the body that the villagers had managed to hoist out of the well they also found out that what- or whoever had liberated the poor priest's head from his shoulders had done so in just a few clean cuts. Hidden beneath his robes was also a set of keys to the priest's quarters as well as the front door of the church.

Returning to the church, no alternative entrances inside were to be found. Any potential tracks outside the church had also already been trampled by inquisitive villagers doing much the same detective work that our adventurers were doing. All they really found was an attempt at scattering around the bloodstain on the ground by the door as well as finding out where the keys they had found fit.

Deciding to head back to the forest to check out some of the sites that the local drunkard of an elf had marked down for them since the investigation with the priest was not going anywhere, the party set out once again. This time with their hired men and a donkey, themeslves too armed to the teeth.

The Party in the Forest

Within the deeper parts of the forest, choosing to travel away and past the witch's house they found a small valley. A sharp drop in land like someone had taken a gigantic shovel and began to dig a long but shallow gutter and then left it half-finished.
Following along this tree-less scar in the land with gravel and sand lining the bottom of it, they eventually ended up by a stone archway leading straight into earth where the valley ended. Stone paved path and few scones without their torches could be seen inside.

Blue chose to light the way with his magic, revealing much more of the stone walls of the paved corridor. A conversation or two later about the possible dangers and where this path might lead from here the party decided to brave the dark and press on forwards.

Inside they found the corridor to give way to a large open chamber with arched ceiling, stone pillars lining it's sides and large murals adorning the walls. At the back of the hall a starway, also similarily paved with stones, lead upwards.
Choosing to follow the obvious way rather than another smaller doorway leading to the side from the large chamber the party eventually arrived at a large round chamber lined with clay pottery. At the opposite side of the room from them was a small fountain bubbling with some honey-like liquid, and further behind it a moth-eaten heavy wallcloth that might have once been red or orange.

Despite Blue's warning for everyone to stay well away from the fountain, the first thing Thrallmar decided to do was dip his hand in it after testing and finding out that it wasn't radiating heat. Beautiful golden liquid enveloped his hand, but when he pulled it out of the fountain the poor dwarf quickly found out that he was unable to move the fingers that were coated in this strange liquid that had now solidified on his hand. This did however make him able to recognise the subtance, gold!

After pondering about his now gilded hand for a moment Thrallmar tried sticking it back in the fountain and this time quickly withdrew it while simultaneously wiping it clean with a rag. One swift execution of the plan later and our dwarven friend had regained the use of his arm.
Once Thrallmar's hand was freed Blue swiftly emptied his entire backpack, leaving Calude to load his gear onto the donkey they had brough along as the greedy mage went to dip his entire backpack in the golden fountain, using it as a makeshift bucket. Thrallmar joined in on this with two pouches he had been carrying and after those were filled the party decided to leave any further exploration of this place for another time in favour of getting out of the forest for resupply and selling off even more gold.

This however didn't go quite as planned, since in the large chamber shortly before the exit the party heard steps from behind them. Picking up pace, they could hear the footsteps doing the same. Blue threw a torch behind him as the group was now running towards the exit and what he could see behind them was two more of those damned wolves. One wearing several wolf-pelts as a mantle while the other had a skinned human draped over it's back, except that the human's head was instead that of a large raven or crow and the hands slotted over it's front paws were covered in sharp talons.

Racing for the exit, the party managed to not get caught as the wolves were now in pursuit and then promtply took formation before the archway they had exited this dungeon from.
Some well-placed stabs and slashes later, and thanks to Blue taking his time back at Falm to learn Magic Missile the party beat their crow-faced assailant as the other one limped away back into the darkness that it had come from.

Afterwards the party spent two more days treking out of the less dense parts of the forest and returned back to the by-now familiar sight of Talen.