Terrinoth #10 - The Road to Damnation and The Golden Banner Part I

Campaign Diary

With heavy hearts, Entana, Gio and Strigoi bade farewell to Orglath and returned to Skydown to report to the baron.

(Click here for PC profiles)

When they had returned to Skydown, the baron listened to their tale with interest, and rewarded them for their work. But rather ominously, they learned that the head of Mondock had disappeared from the pike it was mounted on one night, and his two captured followers had killed themselves in their cells rather than to reveal what their plans were.

The party reunited at Market Town on the 27th day of Windhume, where together with the band of pilgrims led by Johannes and, they started on their journey to Dawnsmoor. Orglath had yet to regain his full strength, but felt strong enough to go on.

The autumn rains meant going was slower than expected, and on the third night of the journey, unable to reach the next village at where they had planned to stay that night, the band had to make camp in the open.

A few hours before dawn, the company was woken from their sleep by the sound of combat - someone had attacked the camp while Strigoi was on watch. Four orcs had come into the camp grounds, and one was in melee with Strigoi.

Entana, Gio, and Orglath quickly grabbed their weapons and engaged the other three orcs, while Johannes herded the pilgrims towards safety. But battle had hardly been joined before it was interrupted by a loud roar; out of the bushes a huge brown bear came charging towards the orcs in combat with Gio, and before he knew what had happened he had been mauled in the chest and had had his throat ripped out.

The other orcs and our heroes bolted from the camp grounds at the sight of the beast, who instead of chasing after them, stopped are scanned the camp grounds. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the bear transformed into an orc himself, and called the party's attention to a figure who was just now emerging from Johannes' tent.

The heroes turned and saw Talfen, one of the pilgrims, leaving the tent with a wooden box in his hands. Talfen took to his heels, but Gio used the favours of Fortuna to trip him - Talfen tumbled, and the content of the box fell out onto the ground. Without pausing to retrieve the item, Talfen picked himself up, and disappeared into the darkness.

Johannes ran forward and recovered the item - half of a horn. This, he later explained, was one half of the Horn of Kellos, a relic from the Second Darkness, when it was carried by Kellos' champion. It was cloven in half during the final battle, and the two halves had been revered as relics since then. One half of the horn was lost many centuries ago, and the other had been enshrined in the cathedral in Vynevale. Recently, a rich merchant in Dawnsmoor revealed that he had acquired the lost half, and offered to donate it to the church on the condition that the two reunited halves would be enshrined in the temple at Dawnsmoor instead. After ascertaining that the offered relic was in all likelihood genuine, the church tasked Johannes with delivering the Vynevale half to Dawnsmoor in secrecy. Entana asked for the name of the donor, and was not surprised to learn that it was his own father, Arwium Venier.

The party thanked the shape-shifting orc who had came to their aid. He told them that his name was A'bomb'we, and that he was a spiritspeaker among the Broken Plains Orcs. He had come to the west on a vision quest, and was camped nearby when he heard the commotion; once it became obvious that the orcs were the aggressors, he stepped in to help. At Johannes' invitation, he agreed to join the party.

Strigoi, on the other hand, declared that he would leave to pursue the orc who had attacked them, for it was Shaglot, his old comrade.

Fearful of another attack, the company broke camp and continued west in the pre-dawn darkness. Fortunately, the remainder of the journey was uneventful, and two days later the band arrived at Dawnsmoor.

The city of Dawnsmoor had no city wall, but the Temple Quarter, located on the south bank of the Flametail river and centred around Kellos' Landing, was protected by three layers of walls. The relic was handed over to the priests for safe-keeping. Here the party parted with Orglath, who had to remain to continue his healing. Entana decided to return to his family mansion in the High Quarter on the north bank with Gio and A'bomb'we as his guests.

At the gate of the mansion Entana was prevented from entering by a guard he did not recognise. A brief altercation ensued, with peace restored by the timely arrival of Bram, the head of the guards. Jeras the old butler then conducted the party to the sitting room to meet Arwium Venier.

Inside the Venier home Entana was warmly received by his father, who mistook Gio and A'bomb'we for his servants. When asked about the relic, the elder Venier explained that he had purchased it at great expense from some adventurers, and that he would be presenting it to the church at a lavish ceremony at the temple in a few days. He had also planned to have a dinner at his home the night before to show it to some of the city elites, and with his other sons away on business, he wanted Entana to attend. Entana informed his father that an attempt was made to seize the other half of the relic, and bade him to guard against a similar attempt on his half. Arwium replied that he had doubled the number of guards on his payroll, and that the relic was held in a safe place in the house.

As they did not share the elder Venier's confidence, Entana, Gio, and A'bomb'we decided to make their own plans against a move on the relic. Suspecting that the enemy would strike during the dinner, when the relic would be presented, Gio agreed to perform music during the meal so he too would be in the dining hall. A'bomb'we made friends with the servants, impressing them with his ability to make plants grow at accelerated speed. Entana meanwhile managed to coax his mother into revealing that her husband had a secret room in the basement.

Once they have found the door to the secret room, the party made their plan: Entana and Gio would be at the dining hall, while A'bomb'we would shape-shift into a giant spider and hide in a dark corner, after spinning webs over the door to alert him to any movement.

The day of the dinner came. In the basement kitchen the cook Geldrey served an early dinner to the guards and servants before they would all have to prepare for the feast. A'bomb'we, eating with the servants as was by now a custom, detected a strange taste in his stew and called for everyone to stop eating. The stew was laced with blackroot, a herb he was familiar with, and a soporific that would have made those who ate it become drowsy and then fall asleep. Geldry the cook was questioned, and quickly broke down: her grand-daughter had been kidnapped the night before, and someone had threatened to kill the little girl if she did not put the herb into the servants' meal on the day of the feast. Having tasted it herself to make sure it was not lethal, she obeyed the stranger.

Entana, the butler, and the head of the guards were called down, and a conference was held. Bram, head of the guards, wanted Entana to convince his father to call the dinner off. Entana, however, wanted to have all the staff play along and catch the attackers off guard instead. Jeras considered the proposal for a few moments, and decided that it was perhaps the best way to make sure that Geldrey's grand-daughter did not come to any harm.

The guards were given instructions to act sleepy and slack on their rounds, but to keep an eye out for any intruders. As the guests started to arrive, Entana took his seat by his father's side, Gio donned his newly tailored performing clothes, and A'bomb'we took the form of a wolf spider and hid near the door to the secret room.

The dinner passed without incident, and when dessert was served, Arwium gave the signal for Jeras to fetch the relic. The butler descended to the basement, unlocked the hidden door with a key, and opened a wall safe in the room behind with another key, and brought out a richly decorated box. As he returned to the dining hall, A'bomb'we, still in spider form, followed behind him upon the ceiling, hidden from the sight of the guests.

Arwium unlocked the box and with a flourish revealed the relic to the gathered guests. At that moment, a window to the dining hall broke with a loud crash and a masked figure clad in black landed inside the hall. A split second later the door to the dining room was thrown open, and another masked and black-clad figure entered.

Before anyone could react, the first figure had sprinted to Arwium's side, grabbed the box and turned to run back to the broken window. But before he could reach it, Gio played a magical tune on his flute, which caused the man to fall to the ground, laughing uncontrollably.

The other figure then crossed the room, leaping over the dining table, and seized the horn that had fallen onto the floor. A'bomb'we jumped into the room, and took the form of a giant spider, which caused most of the guests to scream or faint in terror.

In the ensuing melee the second black-clad man was killed, but the first one fled through the window with the relic. He tried to climb over the wall around the mansion, but A'bomb'we, in his spider form, cut him off. He turned and sprinted towards the gate, and was mere seconds from escaping when two of the guards, alerted by the din and fully awake, engaged him in combat. Outnumbered and surrounded, he was soon taken down and paralysed by the venomous bite from A'bomb'we.

The party pulled off the man's mask... it was Talfen, the "pilgrim". The bound Talfen and brought him into a storeroom in the basement, and once the venom had worn off they interrogated him, demanding to know where Geldrey's grand-daughter had been taken to. Talfen sneered - he threatened that if he did not return to where he was expected, the little girl would be killed.

Realising that time was of the essence and that Talfen would not talk, the party decided they would have to find the girl themselves. A'bomb'we took the form of a dire wolf, and picked up Talfen's scent on the streets outside the mansion. Gio climbed astride the back of the dire wolf, and the trio made set off in the darkness.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was based on two modules: The Road to Damnation by Megaton Games, and The Golden Banner by Sneak Attack Press.

The first part of the session was based on the main plot from The Road to Damnation - a fake pilgrim who is leading a band of bad guys to attack the pilgrims and steal a relic. This could have been omitted in the interest of time, but I decided to run it as an encounter as I wanted the players to feel that the villains are constantly plotting and acting to achieve their goals.

As the players of Orglath and Strigoi had to drop out of the campaign for a while, I recruited another player, who chose to play a Broken Plains orc shaman. As I expect the final arc of the campaign to involve the Uthuk Y'llan, I used the opportunity to weave it into the character's back story.

The Golden Banner supplied the plot for the second half of the session: the bad guys trying to seize a relic from a rich merchant. This plot line allowed me to tie a few threads together: Orglath's association with the Order of Kellos, Entana's strained relationship with his father, and the increasing boldness of the villains.

The structure of The Golden Banner was in a way flawed: the central plot of the scenario is that a rich merchant has received a tip-off that an attack was planned on his dinner party, and the meat of the adventure was supposed to be an investigation on whom the likely attacker was. However, players being players, they are likely to see this as being unnecessary legwork - if an attack is coming, they will just wait for it to come and fight it off. There was also no way the attack could be prevented or aborted in the scenario, regardless of how successful or bungled the investigations went. I found this unsatisfactory, so I decided that instead of a single event when the relic would be exposed, I would have two events: the private dinner at the Venier residence, and the public ceremony at the temple. This gave the villains and me some flexibility in terms of the timing of the attack. If the PCs were really good at preventing a planned attack on the dinner party, I could shift the attack to another time, either during the movement of the relic to the temple, or even at the presentation ceremony itself. I would also have to be open to the players failing in their mission and the villains succeeding in theirs, but the open-ended nature of this campaign meant that failure in one mission will just mean the hook to the next.

An open scenario is always risky, as players may become bored or frustrated when there is no clear direction to plan or work towards. In this case the players focused on the room where the relic would be hidden, which allowed me to play out how they determined the location of the room and let them spend some time on planning how to keep the relic safe, and made it clear to me that the attack would take place at the dinner as planned.

One thing I did not anticipate was the players doubting the authenticity of the relic. A fake relic would have made an interesting plot twist, but I could not come up with a way to use that to take the story in an interesting way.

The final fight turned out to be under-challenging again, but this time perhaps not due to the "weakness" of the bad guys (which on paper would outclass the party), but by some really good rolls on the part of A'bomb'we's player and some really poor saving throws on my part - we used my Gamescience dice so I can't even blame unfair dice.

In retrospect I had made a mistake in sending only two bad guys to seize the relic; having seen A'bomb'we's shape-shifting power, Talfen should have attacked with more men. Or perhaps he thought that A'bomb'we and Gio would have eaten the drugged stew and would not be in fighting form? I would have gone with that had they not discovered that the stew was drugged, and given them the "poisoned" condition for the fight, but even here I was betrayed by the dice, as A'bomb'we's player rolled a '20' when he tasted the stew!

Dealing with "wild shape" is always challenging for a GM. The ability to change into smaller or larger sizes, never mind the form, easily allows a PC to escape bonds, jail cells, and cages. However, now that my villains know about this, I feel justified in making specific plans in countering, if not negating it.