[D&D] More Annals of the Black Company, in which cults abound
I am still gradually catching up my D&D game session logs toward present time. Things you should know that will make your life easier:
1) Several characters have changed in some slight or extensive way as we learned the system and found things we didn't like, or as we had new releases open up possibilities to the players. This is probably over now, but tragically, it'll be a little longer before I catch up to the point by which I mean "now".
1a) Tragically for the narrative flow, is what I mean.
2) I have not read the book yet, but some of the core concepts, including some names, are drawn from Glen Cook novels of the same name. Even if I had read them, I would not know to what extent to expect themes or events to map directly.
3) These annals are written by a plane-shifted kender that has leaking memories of multiple quantum timelines / lifetimes (like Sliders, only you don't go visit the other timelines, they just peek into your brain through the window now and then).
4) If you have previously read these in another format, be aware that they may be edited for clarity (okay, not really) and lyrical flow.
5) They are also frequently and retroactively annotated from a non-specific future point of view.
[SESSION NINETEEN]
Day 32 / Ches 12: What we found of the gnolls was... disheartening. The others helped me piece together why this was important, I had forgotten. The gnolls all had the same tribal markings; also, they were scarred with the same pattern as the creepy alien cult thingy. Okay, that doesn't make sense, let me try again. The creepy alien thing, from the Far Realms, about which I don't know much except that creepy alien things come from there sometimes and apparently there are people who want that to happen? There was this big glass jar that it came out of, and Mitchell found another jar in the wagon the cultists had, only not broken because nothing had come out of it yet. And embedded in the glass of the jar was this metal mesh that formed a pattern. And anyway, that pattern was scarred into the backs of some of the gnolls, and also trees all over the place at the shrine to Silvanus where we found them. But what's stranger than that was the shrine was defiled days ago, right? I mean, it was the Firewalkers... it occurs to me that Black Company is a far better name than Firewalkers for a mercenary chapter, and someone deserves proper credit for that. Anyway, they found the shrine days ago, and it was already messed up. But I checked, and the Far Realms patterns carved into the trees had only been done today, fresh sap and all. So the gnolls were almost certainly the ones who did it! I mean, the bad ones, not the ones we killed. I mean, the ones we killed might have been bad too, but they weren't creepy alien cultist gnolls, is what I'm saying. Because of how someone or other figured out that the scarred gnolls (their scars weren't very fresh) and the gnolls we killed had been fighting each other before we showed up.[1] I probably should have mentioned that part first, come to think of it. Or at least second.
So anyway, we fixed the altar thing[3] and burned all the gnolls in two separate piles, tainted and regular. And Shannon said Silvanus liked that, though she wasn't specific as to which part and anyway I guess that's the kind of things clerics tend to say after you've done something nice for the gods. While we were doing all that, Kestra found some tracks from earlier in the day before either group of gnolls arrived, that had seen the desecration (well, the older desecration, without the tree-carving part, since like I said, that was fresh) and then hurried on northward. Also, she was pretty sure they were Lily. But, I argued, maybe they are not Lily and are the only remaining witness to what happened here! (Besides the gnoll(?s) that got away, but I mean they only witnessed the fighting, not weird cultist gnolls causing further desecration at best, and probably something lots worse.) And Darzhur agreed it was just possible enough for us to follow with instead of continuing our otherwise assigned patrol, so we headed off north towards this pretty small forested region that through what is probably sheer coincidence is where people say the Beekeeper lives. More coincidentally still, there were a few bees following us as we continued on. Near dusk (when we were supposed to be back from patrol already!), we came to the edge of the forest, and Darzhur decided that we couldn't keep going in at night, without having reported anything, so we turned back. The bees kept following us, too, almost all the way back to town. They never once answered any of my fairly polite questions about where the Beekeeper was, or whether they'd seen anyone else, or why they wanted to follow us. Well, or maybe they did, as they were careful to stay a ways off from us, and I suppose bees aren't very loud, in the scheme of things.
When we got back, Croaker had no problems with our actions for the day, but could not allow us to head back out in search of Lily on the morrow, not even when we pointed out that we didn't actually know it was Lily, and following up leads on a Far Realms incursion could be pretty beneficial to Fallcrest as a whole. Although he seemed to agree, he didn't think that the people of Fallcrest who are paying us will be worried about incursions from the Far Realms until there's an army of them in sight of the city, instead of rumors of them twenty miles away. All I know is, one of those tiny things made me feel weirder than any dragon has done, and dragons are supposed to scare people! I guess I am right about not being a very good mercenary, but I'd much rather be paid to stop people from dying before they're in real trouble instead of after when the trouble is already right here. Though on the other hand, maybe they're all normal in the Far Realms and I'd be the scary thing floating around with my spooky mini-tentacles at the ends of my big ones. Wooo-ooo-oo! ...no, I'm pretty sure they're wrong somehow, wherever they are.
Day 33 / Ches 13: So instead of finding out whether the Beekeeper killed Lily because of weird scars carved into his back, we went on another patrol the next day, only this time without anything creepy or profane happening. But on the way, Mitchell had the idea that maybe Curuvar had also been carved up and that's why anybody in town ever used to like him even though he was completely crazy when we met him. At first we decided to hook me to a chain and let me jump off the platform and see if I could find his body, but Darzhur thought a better idea would be to check his place again for clues instead. I think he's really more worried about the signs that Curuvar was a worshiper of Takhisis than he is that Curuvar might have been under the control of the Far Realms, but then again, those are exactly the kinds of allies she would pick if she thought it would let her win, so I think we might be headed to the same place anyway. Which last night was a pretty swanky restaurant where we went to fish around for information about a death cult Er, that was supposed to say Takhisis cult, I guess my quill got ahead of my thoughts. Weird. Anyway, after a little confusion where they thought we were claiming there was a cult instead of just talking about the one that Tholo's nephew had been caught up in, which is why he went back to Waterdeep (Tholo, not his nephew; he was already there, you see, what with big cities being exactly the kinds of places where dwarf-capturing evil cults tend to flourish), pretty much everyone agreed that any cult of Tiamat (I keep forgetting that's what we call her here) would not be welcome in Fallcrest, and that we should definitely get rid of one if we find it. And since it's the swanky restaurant and these are the people who pay our salaries, maybe next time we have dinner we should get people opposed to Far Realms incursions. To save trouble down the line, you see.[4] Except, Kestra saw someone who perhaps didn't agree that we should get rid of cults of Takhisis. But we were not able to follow him in time to see who he was or where he went, except the bartender knew that he was a friend or employee of the Kamroth estate, which by what is probably not sheer coincidence is very near Curuvar's house and just down the street from the warehouse where we met Kithri.
Since we were going to check out Curuvar's place anyway (Croaker had even given me the key to it, which just goes to show that we really still don't know each other at all!), we decided to see if there was any creepy magic or carvings near the Kamroth estate too. Only you couldn't see the house from the road, so I went to the guardhouse to ask directions to Curuvar's, since we of course have never been there before and nobody has seen him or Kithri in a few days, and maybe we should ought to see where he's gotten to and if all is well, and also it gave me a chance to get closer to the house and look for creepy magic and carvings. Only I didn't see any and still couldn't see the house and I got the directions, so that really wasn't very useful. Nobody answered the door at Curuvar's, but we heard some kind of odd disturbance inside, as I'm sure Darzhur and Frak will also testify, so of course I had to pick the lock and get us in there to see if everything was okay.
It wasn't.
We found a priest of what I was later told was Tiamat's Claw, or Hand, or something like that, marked by a red dragon claw. Also, he had a bunch of dragonborn with him, and they all had special powers that they shouldn't ought to have had. Because, Takhisis cult, right? Also, they seemed to maybe know we were coming, or at the least weren't surprised that we arrived, specifically we, not just someone. But after a hard fight in which we stopped any of them from getting away and kept most of them alive for questioning, things went a little wrong. It's probably because I wasn't conscious at the time and so couldn't save us despite all of the planning and forethought I put into why we had a perfectly good rationale for being there and certainly had not taken over the house and even gotten our own keys made. But right, just after a hard fight with a lot of cultists who may or may not have been scarred up with patterns and sigils from the Far Realms, naturally the town guard showed up.
Oops.[5]
[1] If you're anything like me, you're wondering why, if we are opposed to creepy alien cultist gnolls and regular gnolls are too, why did we end up fighting the regular gnolls and me getting hit so hard on the head again and all of that?[2]
[2] I mean, I'm still wondering too. Right now. I have no idea why! I'd wish we were better at making friends, but we are now, so that's at least something, right?
[3] I dunno if I ever said, but the shrine had an altar, which was all knocked down as part of the desecrating.
[4] This is still an excellent idea, especially now that we're back in Fallcrest where we could follow through with it. (Things got busy for a little while, is all. You'll see.)
[5] And see, the worst part is, we never manage to keep everyone from getting away! This may have been the first time! And boy would things have gone a lot better if... but that's not the point. The point is, why do the gods have to go around punishing people when they finally did it right?
1) Several characters have changed in some slight or extensive way as we learned the system and found things we didn't like, or as we had new releases open up possibilities to the players. This is probably over now, but tragically, it'll be a little longer before I catch up to the point by which I mean "now".
1a) Tragically for the narrative flow, is what I mean.
2) I have not read the book yet, but some of the core concepts, including some names, are drawn from Glen Cook novels of the same name. Even if I had read them, I would not know to what extent to expect themes or events to map directly.
3) These annals are written by a plane-shifted kender that has leaking memories of multiple quantum timelines / lifetimes (like Sliders, only you don't go visit the other timelines, they just peek into your brain through the window now and then).
4) If you have previously read these in another format, be aware that they may be edited for clarity (okay, not really) and lyrical flow.
5) They are also frequently and retroactively annotated from a non-specific future point of view.
[SESSION NINETEEN]
Day 32 / Ches 12: What we found of the gnolls was... disheartening. The others helped me piece together why this was important, I had forgotten. The gnolls all had the same tribal markings; also, they were scarred with the same pattern as the creepy alien cult thingy. Okay, that doesn't make sense, let me try again. The creepy alien thing, from the Far Realms, about which I don't know much except that creepy alien things come from there sometimes and apparently there are people who want that to happen? There was this big glass jar that it came out of, and Mitchell found another jar in the wagon the cultists had, only not broken because nothing had come out of it yet. And embedded in the glass of the jar was this metal mesh that formed a pattern. And anyway, that pattern was scarred into the backs of some of the gnolls, and also trees all over the place at the shrine to Silvanus where we found them. But what's stranger than that was the shrine was defiled days ago, right? I mean, it was the Firewalkers... it occurs to me that Black Company is a far better name than Firewalkers for a mercenary chapter, and someone deserves proper credit for that. Anyway, they found the shrine days ago, and it was already messed up. But I checked, and the Far Realms patterns carved into the trees had only been done today, fresh sap and all. So the gnolls were almost certainly the ones who did it! I mean, the bad ones, not the ones we killed. I mean, the ones we killed might have been bad too, but they weren't creepy alien cultist gnolls, is what I'm saying. Because of how someone or other figured out that the scarred gnolls (their scars weren't very fresh) and the gnolls we killed had been fighting each other before we showed up.[1] I probably should have mentioned that part first, come to think of it. Or at least second.
So anyway, we fixed the altar thing[3] and burned all the gnolls in two separate piles, tainted and regular. And Shannon said Silvanus liked that, though she wasn't specific as to which part and anyway I guess that's the kind of things clerics tend to say after you've done something nice for the gods. While we were doing all that, Kestra found some tracks from earlier in the day before either group of gnolls arrived, that had seen the desecration (well, the older desecration, without the tree-carving part, since like I said, that was fresh) and then hurried on northward. Also, she was pretty sure they were Lily. But, I argued, maybe they are not Lily and are the only remaining witness to what happened here! (Besides the gnoll(?s) that got away, but I mean they only witnessed the fighting, not weird cultist gnolls causing further desecration at best, and probably something lots worse.) And Darzhur agreed it was just possible enough for us to follow with instead of continuing our otherwise assigned patrol, so we headed off north towards this pretty small forested region that through what is probably sheer coincidence is where people say the Beekeeper lives. More coincidentally still, there were a few bees following us as we continued on. Near dusk (when we were supposed to be back from patrol already!), we came to the edge of the forest, and Darzhur decided that we couldn't keep going in at night, without having reported anything, so we turned back. The bees kept following us, too, almost all the way back to town. They never once answered any of my fairly polite questions about where the Beekeeper was, or whether they'd seen anyone else, or why they wanted to follow us. Well, or maybe they did, as they were careful to stay a ways off from us, and I suppose bees aren't very loud, in the scheme of things.
When we got back, Croaker had no problems with our actions for the day, but could not allow us to head back out in search of Lily on the morrow, not even when we pointed out that we didn't actually know it was Lily, and following up leads on a Far Realms incursion could be pretty beneficial to Fallcrest as a whole. Although he seemed to agree, he didn't think that the people of Fallcrest who are paying us will be worried about incursions from the Far Realms until there's an army of them in sight of the city, instead of rumors of them twenty miles away. All I know is, one of those tiny things made me feel weirder than any dragon has done, and dragons are supposed to scare people! I guess I am right about not being a very good mercenary, but I'd much rather be paid to stop people from dying before they're in real trouble instead of after when the trouble is already right here. Though on the other hand, maybe they're all normal in the Far Realms and I'd be the scary thing floating around with my spooky mini-tentacles at the ends of my big ones. Wooo-ooo-oo! ...no, I'm pretty sure they're wrong somehow, wherever they are.
Day 33 / Ches 13: So instead of finding out whether the Beekeeper killed Lily because of weird scars carved into his back, we went on another patrol the next day, only this time without anything creepy or profane happening. But on the way, Mitchell had the idea that maybe Curuvar had also been carved up and that's why anybody in town ever used to like him even though he was completely crazy when we met him. At first we decided to hook me to a chain and let me jump off the platform and see if I could find his body, but Darzhur thought a better idea would be to check his place again for clues instead. I think he's really more worried about the signs that Curuvar was a worshiper of Takhisis than he is that Curuvar might have been under the control of the Far Realms, but then again, those are exactly the kinds of allies she would pick if she thought it would let her win, so I think we might be headed to the same place anyway. Which last night was a pretty swanky restaurant where we went to fish around for information about a death cult Er, that was supposed to say Takhisis cult, I guess my quill got ahead of my thoughts. Weird. Anyway, after a little confusion where they thought we were claiming there was a cult instead of just talking about the one that Tholo's nephew had been caught up in, which is why he went back to Waterdeep (Tholo, not his nephew; he was already there, you see, what with big cities being exactly the kinds of places where dwarf-capturing evil cults tend to flourish), pretty much everyone agreed that any cult of Tiamat (I keep forgetting that's what we call her here) would not be welcome in Fallcrest, and that we should definitely get rid of one if we find it. And since it's the swanky restaurant and these are the people who pay our salaries, maybe next time we have dinner we should get people opposed to Far Realms incursions. To save trouble down the line, you see.[4] Except, Kestra saw someone who perhaps didn't agree that we should get rid of cults of Takhisis. But we were not able to follow him in time to see who he was or where he went, except the bartender knew that he was a friend or employee of the Kamroth estate, which by what is probably not sheer coincidence is very near Curuvar's house and just down the street from the warehouse where we met Kithri.
Since we were going to check out Curuvar's place anyway (Croaker had even given me the key to it, which just goes to show that we really still don't know each other at all!), we decided to see if there was any creepy magic or carvings near the Kamroth estate too. Only you couldn't see the house from the road, so I went to the guardhouse to ask directions to Curuvar's, since we of course have never been there before and nobody has seen him or Kithri in a few days, and maybe we should ought to see where he's gotten to and if all is well, and also it gave me a chance to get closer to the house and look for creepy magic and carvings. Only I didn't see any and still couldn't see the house and I got the directions, so that really wasn't very useful. Nobody answered the door at Curuvar's, but we heard some kind of odd disturbance inside, as I'm sure Darzhur and Frak will also testify, so of course I had to pick the lock and get us in there to see if everything was okay.
It wasn't.
We found a priest of what I was later told was Tiamat's Claw, or Hand, or something like that, marked by a red dragon claw. Also, he had a bunch of dragonborn with him, and they all had special powers that they shouldn't ought to have had. Because, Takhisis cult, right? Also, they seemed to maybe know we were coming, or at the least weren't surprised that we arrived, specifically we, not just someone. But after a hard fight in which we stopped any of them from getting away and kept most of them alive for questioning, things went a little wrong. It's probably because I wasn't conscious at the time and so couldn't save us despite all of the planning and forethought I put into why we had a perfectly good rationale for being there and certainly had not taken over the house and even gotten our own keys made. But right, just after a hard fight with a lot of cultists who may or may not have been scarred up with patterns and sigils from the Far Realms, naturally the town guard showed up.
Oops.[5]
[1] If you're anything like me, you're wondering why, if we are opposed to creepy alien cultist gnolls and regular gnolls are too, why did we end up fighting the regular gnolls and me getting hit so hard on the head again and all of that?[2]
[2] I mean, I'm still wondering too. Right now. I have no idea why! I'd wish we were better at making friends, but we are now, so that's at least something, right?
[3] I dunno if I ever said, but the shrine had an altar, which was all knocked down as part of the desecrating.
[4] This is still an excellent idea, especially now that we're back in Fallcrest where we could follow through with it. (Things got busy for a little while, is all. You'll see.)
[5] And see, the worst part is, we never manage to keep everyone from getting away! This may have been the first time! And boy would things have gone a lot better if... but that's not the point. The point is, why do the gods have to go around punishing people when they finally did it right?