Saturday 29 May 2021

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.


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