On the 7th day of Ostar, guild members Findal, Grimmson, and Helmond asked for and received the Guildmaster's leave to quit the guild. All accounts have been verified and closed.
On this day guild members Tamira, Leowe, Madian, Piper, and Grak (see PC profiles here), with the bearer Karl in employment, returned to the underground complex via barrow #20, the skeletons guarding the way below having been cleared by guild members Brodir, Renard, Torvik, and Ornulf.
Turning south to the large chamber wherein the broken stele was found, they vanquished the skeletal warriors there, and broke through the door on the southern wall to enter into the chamber, wherein was found a sarcophagus of white marble. Entombed within (according to the inscription upon the door and cover of the sarcophagus, as translated by guild member Madian) were the remains of one Druentes, a "paladin of Yasoda, Giver of Gifts". The party recovered from within the sarcophagus a blue-steel mace of dwarven craft.
Turning then north and then east, the party then broke into and entered in turn two chambers opposite each other, finding within each a single sarcophagus, each of which held a single undead, which they defeated, although guild member Piper was seized by the second and fell down as though dead, and had to be revived.
The hour being late, the party returned to the guild. Grave goods recovered were assessed to be 53 Gros in value, of which 20 Gros was disbursed to the members according to the contract. The steel mace was assessed to be 84 Gros in value, and sold to guild member Tamira for 56 Gros, according to the terms of the contract.
Addendum: Guild staff Tosot was reported to be absent at his post this morning, and upon searching of his quarters found to have absconded with his possessions. Inventory of the stores and purse did not reveal any shortfall. There being no loss and no evidence of wrongdoing, Guildmaster Hassel-Hoffa resolved to not pursue the matter.
Prepping and Running the Game
Dave, one of the earliest members of our group, managed to join the session, bringing the number of players in the campaign to eight, and the number of PCs to a total of 14.
I opened the session by having the remaining members of the Fearsome Four bid the PCs farewell as they decided to seek their fortunes elsewhere, declaring the barrows to be an 'evil place'. The PCs asked where they were headed, but unfortunately I had not expected this and could not come up with an answer immediately - this was a lost opportunity as I could have planted a seed for future adventures.
I then introduced a new party to the guild, consisting of four warriors from Isheim, the Terrinoth analogue of the Norse realm. The Weiks (Terrinoth for Vikings, I imagine) first asked if Piper and Grak were Gio Gerbo and his servant Strigoi (see here), as they have heard about the two on their journey here - I had checked my calendar and realised that they would have passed Nornholt not long after the A Team's adventures there, and would have heard about them.
I then had the newcomers ask the PCs for tips and advice, partly to help Dave get up to speed on what the situation was. In return for their advice, the Weiks volunteered to clear the way into the underground complex for the party, which was my way of demonstrating that the northmen were competent, and to save us another skeleton fight... because I knew there would be more to come.
The party managed to defeat the skeletons set to guard the stele chamber easily. One of the skeletal archers there rolled a '1' on his attack roll, and I declared that the bowstring snapped, which I hoped reiterated the fact that bows and arrows required a supply chain to function.
While they were breaking into the next chamber, I had another party of skeletons attack them. This served the function of the wandering monster in old school dungeons, and hopefully gave the players the sense that even though they are now stronger, they cannot afford to be complacent. This lesson had to be taught again not long afterwards, however, as Piper's player had him pop his head too far into a sarcophagus, where he was seized by a mummy and reduced to zero hit points - fortunately for all of us he was revived with the loss of a point of Constitution, and did not die permanently like Laethen did, which would have been quite a blow for the player.
The party now have two magical items, which will give them a bit more bite against the enemies. Tamira had to take a huge loan from Brother Othar, but I guess that is the advantage of being a cleric of the church of Kellos.
The other event that took place was Tosot's abscondment. I decided that whomever was diverting supplies to the cultists would be feeling the heat by now, and would choose to flee at the first opportunity. The timing would be in the morning, soon after the adventurers and guild rangers have left for the barrows. I decided that he would leave with only his possessions, and not steal any of the guild's money or goods, which would give them a reason to pursue him. The players also asked to know which direction he headed towards, perhaps considering hunting him down; here I told them they had no way of knowing, as he had left when there were few people around to see him leave, even though in my mind I had an idea of which way he went. It would of course be possible for some of the PCs to try to track him down, but to do so would require not just splitting the party, but splitting the campaign - something which I was not prepared to do when already juggling seven players and 14 characters!
While the actual delving was not too different, the plot did move along a little, and very soon the cultists will feel the squeeze even more as I plan to have their informant within the guild abscond next, and their meagre store of bows and arrows will soon be exhausted. Depending on how much pressure the PCs apply on the cultists, I may decide to have the cultists' rivals approach them and propose an alliance to eliminate them altogether. That will shift the whole campaign to a higher gear, and move the focus from looting to thwarting a villain.
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Now some thoughts on the religion of the people who built the barrows.
On reading more on the Weiks after the game, I realised that the new additions to the guild can be used for exposition, as the people of Isheim have their own mythology about Nordros. The PCs/players have been asking me about Nordros, but I have decided that knowledge of Nordros among the people of Terrinoth is scant, with the church possibly suppressing the knowledge. In the Terrinoth sourcebook it is stated that the people of Terrinoth depict Nordros as Weiqar's (equally) evil twin brother, thereby casting Weiqar as the greater evil, and Kellos, their chief deity, as the champion and saviour of mankind. The Weik, however, see Nordros in a more primal, more elemental role, as the god of ice and death.
I tend to view Nordros as a god of the Indo-European-equivalent people from whom the Weik and Terrinoth people are descended from, and that he initially represented their storm god and was depicted with lightning bolts, as the Indo-European storm god was. When these people migrated to the current-day Terrinoth region, they brought along with them their diseases, which the indigenous people had no immunity to; the spread of diseases to the original occupants of the land made it easier for the ancestors of the people who built the barrowmaze to conquer them and become the dominant culture of the region. The role diseases played in this was recognised, and Nordros was given the aspect of the god of disease, and also death, who prospered his worshippers by striking down their enemies. and the javelins which he was depicted with turned from lightning bolts to contagion. This accounted for the rise of the death cult among these people. Their obsession with death led to the construction of numerous burial mounds, as well as the giant underground burial complex. Presumably the death cult eventually turned to human sacrifice, and the ruling and priestly class were eventually overthrown and the culture faded. When the ancestors of the Weiks migrated further north, the death aspect of Nordros became associated with ice and cold, and he became an evil god.
The god Yasoda, however, was something I made up for what would have been the next arc for the A Team. I see him as a sun god, perhaps of the indigenous people of the land. The people recognised the association between the sun and plant growth, and he is identified with both nature (and the bounties of the forests) and agriculture, and thus called the 'giver of gifts'. Perhaps the cult of Yasoda survived the initial conquest and continued among the conquered people, and eventually spread to the elites, who eventually overthrew the death cults.
Under this mythology, Kellos, in the form that he is being worshipped by the people of Terrinoth, is perhaps a manifestation of Yasoda, or at least inherits his aspect as the sun god and the protector/provider of the people.
