We got another short session done in the late morning/early afternoon of Tuesday April 24. We picked up where we left as our characters started to investigate what seems to be the abandoned town of Varnhold (check out the previous recap if you haven’t already). This time it was all classic RPG exploring where we slowly made our way through the town searching the buildings for clues and getting attacked by the various monsters that had moved in since the humans disappeared. One thing we have had trouble with in previous sessions are swarms. We lack the typical blaster-spellcaster to quickly weed out the tiny pests so we tend to get overrun (and the high AC of our front-people are useless – much to the delight of our DM).
As we just played about 1.5 day the chronicle will be fairly short and again break off about midway into the diary entry (luckily we’ve scheduled another short session on Thursday so that recap will pick up where this entry ends).
15th of Abadious
... After killing the pig we decided to head for the town centre (if there were people left in Varnhold it seemed likely they gather around a temple or a similar prominent building). Sadly there weren’t any bridge over the river so we decided to try and wade across the shallow part – a bad idea! Halfway over Jonah and the other quicker people in our group were ambushed by a lobster-like creature with thick armored shell. A pair of tiny eyes gleamed above its mouth full of writhing tentacles as it tried to grab and crush Jonah. I retreated to the shore we came from and tried to put the monster to sleep with my magic – I failed horribly! As the others struggled with the monster I spotted Shoshana frantically making her way to the other side – surely to be able to unleash her arrows at the beast, but as she reached the dirt road leading down to the riverbed I heard a short shriek as she fell down what I guessed had to be a trap. The combined efforts of Jonah, Aiden & Kato dealt with the lobster and it sank into the river and was swept away downstreams. I tried by best to swim over (it’s situations like these I feel I’m only 3 feet high!) as the rest tried to fish Shoshana up from the pit trap. She had fallen some 20 feet down and landed on some vicious looking spikes but she had mostly healed herself when she was pulled from the pit.
It was a massive pit that had been dug out by the river, someone certainly didn’t want people exploring what had happened here in Varnhold and had booby-trapped the place. We needed to keep a close lookout for further traps or ambushes. We headed to the inn and noticed that the word “NOMEN” was scratched into the wooded front-door. Inside we saw a peculiar sight. A man, his head smashed in from behind was seemingly frozen and alive as he still stood hunched over a table full over various papers. Aiden and Shoshana was clueless but I quickly realized he had been the victim of foul magic, in a form of statis – still not dead before the magic would dissipate. Sepia Snake Sigil the spell is called, usually hidden somewhere in a book or similiar written account. The smashed in head was probably inflicted later by someone just checking to see if the body will move. Going through the papers we deduced the man was Ervil Pendrod, a well-known Iobarian scholar. Many of the books and scrolls were about the Rashalka centaurs, and it seemed Pendrod was collection a new ethnography on these creatures when he was killed. Nomen it seemed was the name of a local tribe of Rashalka centaurs, an offshoot of the main line.
We also found several drawings of a jade bracelet, and more importantly a letter to Pendrod from the mayor of Varnhold. The letter, dated some 2 months ago told the story that a villager by the name of Vilas had found a jade bracelet near the river and inviting the scholar to come to Varnhold to investigate. I started to think these Nomen centaurs had sacked the town and enslaved the Varnholdians.
Continuing our search we quickly located the local Erastil tempel. It was empty but Aiden managed to uncover some magical scrolls and kept them for safekeeping. Approaching the local blacksmith we were attacked by hundreds of murderous crows. They swooped down on us, pecking at our soft spots – they even managed to blind both the big dog and Jonah as they engulfed us. These swarms have proved troublesome in the past but this time I was ready and I drew my lightning bolt wand and unleashed its power. Aiden also torched several crows with his magic and they quickly dispersed and flew off. Summer was very displeased as my lightning bolt had hit her as well, but she needs to understand that my efforts greatly outweigh any minor problems she may have (OK, I’ll try no to hit her the next time). Shoshana examined the wounds of Jonah and Kato, telling us that her ordinary magic couldn’t cure their blindness – she needed to pray for new spells from Erastil. As the sun was already low on the horizon we decided to return to the inn and rest for the day.
Back at the inn when we were eating supper I found a marked passage in one of the books that described a stony isle known as Vordakai’s Island and it’s terrifying guardian. Why would anyone mark such an ominous passage? Was it in anyway connected to what has happened here in Varnhold?
16th of Abadious
Refreshed I awoke the next day and soon Shoshana had prepared her new incantations and had cured the slashed eyeballs of our friends. Yesterday we had spotted a stronghold situation on a small to the south-west of the town centre. We decided that we should first check out the other buildings before heading up the hill. Jonah was adamant we shouldn’t be ambushed from behind so we had to be thorough…
In one of the houses we searched we found a diary written in a foreign language with weird symbols. On the front cover a large rune was written with charcoal. With the help of her magic Shoshana managed to decipher the text. It was the diary of the villager Vilas, written in Skald (it uses the dwarvish alphabet). In it he describes various encounters with barbarian centaurs. The last entry was a fairly standard scouting report from the Varnhold pass. She also noticed one of the pages were partly torn out, we could only make out “found bracelet by the river”.
We were also attacked by a group of twigjacks. These evil tiny critters proved a dangerous match as they blasted us with barrage after barrage of painful wood splinters. I staggered off and drank some potions to stay alive, but we finally managed to overman the small twig-people. I did use one of the fireball-beads left on my necklace – it proved useful.
Guess what hid inside a large barn we searched? A swarm of rats that flooded out the door and swarmed all over us. This time I tried to be more careful with my lightning bolts and probably overdid it somewhat, but it at least kept us alive and not to badly hurt. Having satisfied our overly cautious Count that the houses on the other side of the river also were empty we finally made our way up the hill towards the stronghold.
Tabletop Cave 