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| The villagers receive their new lord |
When at last our heroes returned home to Dawnsmoor, Entana found a letter from the University at Greyhaven waiting for him: a village held by the University had need of a new vogt, and the council had decided to offer the place to Entana. Thus together Entana, Gio, Strigoi, and Percy took the long journey north back to Greyhaven again.
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At Greyhaven, Entana was met by the council and told about Fulhurst, the village that he would be made vogt of. Located six days' journey to the north, the small village laid at the edge of the Mistlands, and had many years ago pledged itself to the University, paying a tax of money, beeswax, and rare herbs for the University's protection. For many years also the University had been an absent landlord, placing no vogt over it. However, a recent audit had revealed that the reeve of the village had not been entirely honest in the accounts, and so it was decided that another villager would be made reeve, and that a vogt would be placed in Fulhurst. At the same time, the University had been troubled by rumours of strange sightings at the border with the Mistlands, and had decided that a wizard with experience in the field would make a good candidate for the vogt, and Entana's name was pulled out of the hat.
Entana accepted the appointment, and accompanied by the other members of the party and Graenson, son of the University's Bursar and now his steward, they set off to Fulhurst with their possessions and gifts.
It was a warm spring day when they arrived at Fulhurst, a village of some fifty people in thirteen households. The villagers were gathered around a chair set upon a rock in the village common. As the party approached, Elrir, the new reeve, called out:"Who is this that I see coming towards us?"
Enatana, having been coached by Graenson, gave the required reply:
"The lord of the land. I will act as a just judge, and defender of widows and orphans."
The villagers then invited Entana to sit upon the chair, and Graenson handed over the gifts he had brought from Greyhaven, and then they proceeded to the vogt's tower. During the ceremony, Percy felt that the villagers were troubled, and that it went beyond the apprehension of receiving a new lord.
The 'tower' was a strange, hexagonal stone building designed many years ago by a wizard. It had a wooden wall around it, and a guard tower at the gate, but was otherwise a single-storey building. While Annas the chamberlain showed Entana around the place, Percy ventured outside to see if she could learn what troubled the villagers, and found Elrir waiting with a distraught woman at the gate.
The woman, Elrir explained, was Erli, a widow whose son Hansel went missing after going fishing for crayfish at the swamp near the village the evening before. Percy quickly brought the news to Entana, who cut short his inspection of the tower and organised the villagers into a search party.
After a quick search, the villagers found the basket used by the Hansel, but there was no sign of the boy. Hearing of accounts of swamp lights from the other children, our heroes surmised that the child may have been led deeper into the swamp when he mistook the lights for the lanterns held by the other children, and decided to venture deeper into the swamp. They dismissed the villagers, donned their gear, and headed into the swamp.
As they ventured deeper into the swamp, rain clouds moved in, and soon the sky was dark, and a constant drizzle began to fall. They noticed a single swamp light ahead of them in the distant, glowing blue. As they followed it deeper and deeper into the swamp, they realised that it seemed to keep a constant distance from them, not letting them get too close to it, nor moving out of their sight.
After a while the party found that they had lost track of time, and their sense of direction, but at last they seemed to close on the light. Then suddenly Strigoi, at the head of the party, found himself sinking to his thigh in the soft ground. Another swamp light appeared, and together the two lights descended on Strigoi, striking him with arcs of electrical energy.
As the other heroes struggled to reach Strigoi, the ground before him began to swelling, and form began to rise out of the mud, and as it did so our heroes were assailed by the stench of decay. The form rose to man-height, and out of it three tendrils emerged, and they lashed at Strigoi. The orc tried to fend his attackers off as his companions came to his aid. When they had at last reached the form, they felt stirring in the ground behind them - out of the waterlogged ground rose three animated corpses, their skin stained a uniform brown after soaking for centuries in the stagnant swamp waters. The zombies attacked our heroes from behind them, and for a while it seemed the battle would end poorly for them. Then Strigoi pulled himself free from the mud, strode forward, and struck the form with a mighty blow, cutting a great gash in it. Out of this gash, the arm of a child emerged.
Once more the tendrils struck at Strigoi, and as they hit the orc felt its spines inject venom into him' but still he held firm. Percy called out a warning to the others, and Gio, having positioned himself to the form's rear (if such a thing had a rear), gutted the thing, and a boy rolled out.
As the form slumped back into an amorphous mass, the zombies too fell to the ground. Our heroes quickly scooped the boy up, and were glad to find that he was still alive. As Percy attended to Hansel and Strigoi, Gio and Entana searched the area. They found four more corpses buried in the ground, each with a leather cord wound tightly around its neck. They also found several bronze neck rings and silver bracelets, all tarnished, and a single untarnished bronze pipe.
When Hansel at last regained his strength and composure, he revealed that he had indeed got separated from the other children looking for crayfish, and had followed the lights until he became hopelessly lost, but could not remember what happened afterwards. By now the rain had stopped, and Percy regained her sense of direction, and led the party back to the village.
When they emerged from the swamp the party was greeted as heroes, and Strigoi generously decided to pay for a feast for the village, purchasing the food from the tower. Thus ended the party's first day in Fulhurst.
Prepping and Running the Game
As I mentioned in the previous posts, this was the last session of this arc of the campaign, and the transition to the "domain" game.
The scenario above was based somewhat on a Village Backdrop by Raging Swan Press. I was looking for a small village near the edge of civilisation, and the description of Fulhurst Moors as a village near peatlands where ancient human sacrifices were made in the bogs, as well as the presence of Will O Wisps appealed to me. However, Fulhurst itself looked more 'developed' than I liked, and as usual I turned to Lythia.com to find a village that came with a nice map, description of its inhabitants, and a small but unique manor house.
The description of the ceremony was based on an account of the installation of a new duke in medieval Germany. I liked the idea of the player actually saying the oath out aloud. As it turned out that stuck with the party.
The adventure itself was partly a filler, and party a chance for the PCs to show their prowess to the villagers. I had expected them to wait for dark, and raise the whole village in a hue and cry to follow the Will O Wisps into the swamp. This would mean that the final fight would have seen more zombies, and the players having to command the villagers. As it turned out they saw their quest as a more urgent one, and went out in broad daylight, which necessitated the use of clouds to make the appearance of the Will O Wisps more reasonable.
The "form" is based off the Corpse Flower from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, which I recently acquired. The description of the zombies was based on bog bodies, which I have always found fascinating. In my mind the Corpse Flower must have grown on the site, feeding off the necrotic energy of these human sacrifice, and it had later formed a symbiotic relationship with the Will O Wisps, who lured more victims to it.
The description of the loot they found was again based on an actual historical hoard.
The adventure itself took a little over an hour to play, and we spent the rest of the session playing out the "domain" part of the game, which I will describe in the next post.
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