Terrinoth #42 - Laboratory of the Forsaken

Campaign Diary

A voice called out from the other side of the door.

"My lord, is everything all right? I heard a noise - had there been another accident?"

Assuming the dead count's voice, Therion replied that there had indeed been a mishap, and warned the man from entering.

"Very well. The carriage is ready," the man replied and left.

The party began to plot their exit, but before they could arrive at a plan, a ghostly female form appeared over the pool in the cavern.

The ghost declared herself to be Lady Mirabel, the count's late wife. Holzel, (for that was the count's name) she explained, would periodically marry a noble woman and then murder her. He would at the same time kidnap a male infant and, announcing that his wife had died in labour, present the infant as his child and heir. When the child came of age, he would in turn murder him, announce his own death, and assume the child's identity - by this means he had managed to hold his title and demesne over many centuries. Regular change of the servants and guards at the castle helped to keep the secret.

Holzel, the ghost continued, had for years been labouring on some alchemical experiment in his mansion in the forest, and had for centuries sacrificed his many wives and "children" to it - she herself was the latest victim, and now Kolthar, the teenage "son" of the count the party had seen, was to be sacrificed too. Her soul, she said, could not rest as part of her life essence had been trapped inside Holzel's experiment, and she could only manifest at the pool at the bottom of the castle well, which was once the place she went to for solace. She did not know what the exact nature of the experiment was, but she knew it must be evil, and she begged the heroes to travel to the mansion to save Kolthar and end the experiment.

Tom, Giso, and Whisper were willing to take on the mission, but Therion asked for a reward (click here for PC profiles); Lady Mirabel promised to reveal where Holzel kept his treasures if they would save the child and release her soul.

Just then the voice at the door returned, announcing once more that the carriage was ready to take the count to the mansion, but that the bodyguards Lazar was supposed to send had yet to arrive.

Assuming Holzel's voice again, Therion declared that they had arrived earlier and were indeed with him in the cavern. They stripped Holzel of his clothes and hid his body in a sarcophagus. Therion called up some minor enchantment to mend the clothes, and then donning them, he pulled the hood on the cloak over his head, and the party strode out.

A small party of guards were awaiting their arrival at the courtyard, but in the darkness and with his face partially hidden, no one realised that Therion was not in fact the count. Arriving at the carriage, Tom dismissed the guard sitting beside the driver, and the party entered the carriage. The driver drove the carriage to the waiting barge, which carried it to the north bank of the river.

For two hours the carriage passed through the forest, which gave our heroes time to rest and recover. As they neared the mansion, they began to notice signs of death: trees stood withered, and streams were fouled with the stench of dead fish.

When they at last arrived at the mansion, they saw that it was a two-storeyed wooden building, surrounded by a tall wall. Therion dismissed the driver, ordering him to return the next evening, and then the party entered the foyer.

Inside, they found the place sparsely furnished, but clean. While they wondered where to go next, they heard the sound of an organ coming from a room from across the foyer.

Standing at the doorway Therion saw a man dressed in the clothes of a noble seated at a pipe organ. The man began to speak with Therion, mistaking him for Holzel, and thanked him for inviting him to the final ritual, which will bring to fruition the plans they have been making for three hundred years, and which would allow them to challenge the power of Waiqar.

Before long, however, the man began to grow suspicious, and when he moved to throw back Therion's hood, the party attacked him with the bog oak weapons they have prepared, and quickly took him down. As the man's body laid on the floor, the party saw a few skeletal figures approach the room from the foyer - but these skeletons did not carry weapons, but brooms and mops!

Two of the skeletons picked up the dead body, and began to move back into the foyer, while a third began mopping the floor, cleaning up the mess that the fight had caused. The party followed the two skeletons into the kitchen, where several other skeletons were standing, as if they were waiting for their turns to go to work. The skeletons brought the body into the cellar, and then into chamber where several carcasses of animals were hung, and hooked it to one of the meat hooks, and then they returned to the kitchen.

There were no signs of any living person or creature in the mansion - who or what were the carcasses meant to feed?

Venturing deeper into the cellar, our heroes found a passage that led to a maze. Giso called upon Kellos to bless his shield with a glowing light, and the party entered the maze. The passages branched and turned, making it impossible for our heroes to keep their bearings, and after a while they found themselves ending back at the entrance to the maze. They decided to venture into the maze again, this time using a barrel of wine they found in the cellar to leave a trail on the floor, and Whipser marking the way they went with chalk, but once more they found themselves back at the entrance - the wine trail and chalk marks had strangely disappeared!

On their third venture into the maze, they at last found themselves in a part they had not seen earlier. Here, they notice two skeletal figures approaching them from two ends of the corridor, seemingly floating just a few inches off the ground, and their limbs motionless.

Giso and Tom decided to try to rush past one of the skeletons... and found themselves running into a wall of cold, transparent slime! Belatedly, our heroes realised that the skeletons were actually enveloped in some form of living slime, which no doubt had been cleaning up the wine trail and chalk marks they had made.

Giso and Tom felt their lives being suffocated out of them, and it was with great difficulty that they managed to extricate themselves. Hemmed in by on both ends, our heroes struggled to fight off their silent attackers: Whisper's sword and fists seemed impotent against the things, but at last Therion and Giso came upon the idea of using their powers to alternately freeze and then burn the things, which eventually destroyed them.

The party continued onward, deeper into the maze, and at last came before a door guarded by a strange humanoid figure, whose body seemed to be stitched together from several different bodies.

Therion strode forward, once more pretending to be Holzel, and the creature unlocked the door with a key, and handed him a flask of yellow liquid, "for his protection".

Therion dismissed the creature, and the party entered the room behind the door. It was a large hall with its roof supported by several tall pillars. At the far end was a round pool, inside which bubbled a viscous, yellow fluid. Standing by the pool was Lazar, and beside him was Kolthar, who appeared groggy and unsteady on his feet.

Lazar recognised our heroes at a glance, and immediately surmised that they must have defeated his master and taken his clothes and sword. Announcing that he would nevertheless help his master complete the ritual and complete his work, he began to drag Kolthar closer to the edge of the pool.

But before he could push the helpless boy in, Tom leapt forward and cast his throwing knife at Lazar. The blade spun in the air, burst into fire, and buried itself in Lazar's chest. The loyal servant's eyes widened in shock, and then he fell into the pool.

The bubbling of the yellow liquid increased. Therion hurled the flask of yellow liquid into the pool, but that did nothing to quell its stirring. Soon some of the viscous liquid began to extrude from the pool, like so many tentacles. The tentacles began to strike at Tom, burning his skin with acid where they landed. Whisper ran forward and pulled Kolthar to safety, hiding him behind a pillar.

The viscous fluid now formed into a large blob, and with the aid of its tentacles crawled out of the pool and began to move towards the party. Our heroes made for the door, but the creature outside had by now realised that he had been duped by Therion - he locked the door, trapping the party inside the hall.

The blob seemed proof against the heroes' weapons and spells, and for a while things looked grim. Then Therion threw Holzels rapier at the blob - it lodged inside it, but did not seem to do any harm... until Therion started playing his hurdy gurdy; the music caused the rapier to vibrate rapidly, and soon it began to glow with heat. Bubbles began to form inside the blob, and after a while the bubbles rose to the surface of the blob, and steam emerged.

The blob started to move back towards to pool, but our heroes would not allow it. They surrounded it, and set upon it with all their might; bits of the blob were hacked off, and as they fell to the floor they lost their firmness and dissolved into liquid, until at last the blob ceased its movement, lost its form, and became a puddle on the ground. Therion recovered the rapier, and returned it to its sheath.

Our heroes peered into the pool - the water was now still and black, and smelled foul. Therion used the enchantment from his ring to move the water out of the pool, hoping to see how deep it went; but as the water level began to fall, the ground began to shake. Soon the columns started shifting - and the roof slabs began to shift - the hall was collapsing!

Our heroes grabbed Kolthar and rushed to the door, and Giso began to hack at it with his hammer; but Whisper was quicker with her lockpicks, and unlocked the door in a flash, catching the guardian creature by surprise. Giso struck the creature down, and with his glowing shield lighting the way, lead the party through the maze back to the cellar, and from thence out of the mansion. Moments afterwards, the mansion collapsed.

Prepping and Running the Game

The B Team arc was supposed to have ended with the previous session in September, but a few days before that I learned about the module "Weekend at Strahd's", and thought it would make an interest "Halloween Special" finale instead. I ended the session on a cliffhanger, and hoped that the module, which was then yet unreleased, would give me enough material to run a comedic session where the PCs have to go around with the body of the dead count making it look like he was still alive.

Except the module didn't do that.

Still, I liked the idea of the PCs having to do the "Weekend at Bernie's" thing, so I looked for a reason to why they would have to do so. The obvious answer is that they are discovered, and need to hide the fact that they had killed the count. Then I needed to make sure they couldn't just walk out of the castle once they are out of the cavern, so I decided that the carriage was waiting and would be taking them somewhere else. But that still didn't prevent them from jumping out of the carriage, or just running off once they reached their destination...

The breakthrough came when I found the module Laboratory of the Forsaken by Fantasy Craft. The setting of a mansion was of course fitting, as was the idea of a laboratory where a mad scientist had been performing 'unholy' experiments, and the final key was the ghost of the wife of the mad scientist begging the PCs to help her soul rest.

Unfortunately, my players did not go whole hog with the Weekend thing, and only disguised one of themselves as the count. Still, that provided some role-playing opportunities.

The module also gave me a chance to use oozes, something which is an iconic part of D&D, but which I have struggled to fit into Terrinoth. This module allowed me to introduce oozes as a reasonable encounter, and also make them a 'limited edition' monster which have no reason to be found in other locales.

The combat with the two gelatinous cubes was played with slightly modified rules. I picked the maze map on my Big Book of Maps, and placed the PCs in a spot where their exits are blocked by the cubes. The cubes would move one space per turn, while the PCs could move two. This made combat almost like that game where you had to shift blocks of stones around while being pursued by a mummy.

The yellow ooze in the final fight was statted as a Black Pudding, but was given a yellow colour because that was the colour of the model we had. The vial of yellow liquid was supposed to allow one character to be immune to the digestive juices of the ooze, but Therion's player, to everyone's dismay, chose to hurl it into the ooze instead. Fortunately, he did manage to save the day by using the rapier and the Heat Metal spell to defeat the ooze.

All in all we had a fun session, but towards the end I realised that I had committed another error: by allowing them to save the count's heir, they now have a young and potentially impressionable noble who is in their debt. I have no doubt the players will leverage on this.

Once again, the B Team had acquired a strategic asset despite being, well, the B Team in our group. They now have a hidden keep in a swamp which commands a hidden causeway which can be used as a smuggling route, potentially a priory to 'inherit', and the favours of a young noble.

It may be many months before we return to B Team again, but I am keen to complete their involvement with Weiss, the other vampire drug-dealer in this saga. Stay tuned.

Terrinoth #41 - Blood & Gold, finale

Therion takes shelter in the pool, while the rest battle the Count

Campaign Diary

For the whole morning the party (click here for PC profiles) traveled westwards along the south bank of the Flametail River. A little after noon, a fog began to rise and cover the river. Our heroes pushed on, until at last they saw a dark shape loom a short distace ahead of them. A sudden gust of wind parted the fog long enough for them to see a small castle upon an island in the middle of the river: castle Pfalzenstein.

The party hid themselves and their mule cart among the vegetation by the river, and observed the castle from a distance. A pair of guards patrolled the ramparts of the castle, while another one stood watch at the top of the keep in the centre. As they watched, they saw a barge coming across the river to the bank they are on; on the barge was a familiar-looking carriage. With the aid of some men along the shore, the driver of the carriage drove the carriage onto the shore, and soon the carriage was moving past our heroes. Inside the carriage rode the steward, Lazar, and a young man with dark hair and dark eyes.

With the way to the castle watched constantly by guards, our heroes decided to steal their way into the castle late at night. Whisper stole a boat from a farmstead upstream, and with the aid of Therion's water magic, the party moved silently across the river to reach the little island.

Here, once more with the aid of Therion's magic, Tom scaled the wall of the castle unseen and opened the gate to let the others in. A quick reconnoiter of the compound showed that walls of the castle surrounded a small compound, in the middle of which stood the keep. The door to the keep was not found at the ground level, but was reached by a wooden bridge that spanned from the ramparts of the wall. Near the gate was a well.

Tom once more ascended the walls, and from there let down a rope, which the others then climbed up. Then Whisper crossed the bridge silently, and picked the lock to the door - the party entered the keep, and shut the door behind them.

Even now, within the keep, they did not let their guard down. They found themselves in a hall, which was dimly lit by the moonlight streaming in from the narrow windows. On one end of the hall was a spiral staircase. Our heroes debated where to go in whispers, and at last deferred to Giso's wisdom to head downwards.

The level below the hall turned out to be the servants' quarters, and our heroes took care to not wake them. Descending further, our heroes found themselves in the storage area, which was piled full of sacks of wheat, barrels of beer, and preserved meat. With the rest of the party unable to see in the dark, Whisper had to do most of the searching, Her keen eyes soon noticed that a path had been left that led to one corner of the room. Walking to the end of the path, she found an empty barrel placed against the corner of the room. She shifted the barrel aside, and found a loose flagstone beneath it. She lifted the flagstone, and found a flight of stairs descending into the ground below.

With their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, the party gingerly made their way down the stairs, in complete darkness. It was only when they were all underground and had replaced the flagstone above them that Giso dared to conjure up a light. The steps of the stairs were cut into living rock and were clean. They led some twenty foot into the ground, which Whisper surmised would take them to the level of the river.

At the bottom of the stairs a narrow corridor led to a heavy wooden door, which was unlocked. With their weapons drawn, our heroes pushed open the door, and stepped beyond it...

Our heroes found themselves in a large cavern, party-natural, part-shaped by hand. On one side of the cavern was a pool of water, which was illuminated from above by moonlight shining through the well in the courtyard above. Niches were carved into the walls of the cavern, and within them were sarcophagi.

Our heroes crept silently into the cavern, but were interrupted by a voice calling out to them:

"It took you long enough. But tell me, have you taken care of Weiss?"

They followed the source of the voice to the other side of the hall. Here, on a dais, was a long table, upon which was placed alchemical apparatus, books, and other paraphernalia. A man in a noble's clothes sat at the table. His skin was pale, and his eyes and hair dark. On his belt he wore an ornate rapier. He was the Count of Pfalzenstein.

Our heroes at first tried to feign ignorance, but the Count made it clear that he knew who they each was.

Our heroes demanded to know his purpose for poisoning the populace of Tamalir with Red Mist. The Count replied that the creation of Red Mist was but a 'hobby' to him - something to pass the boredom brought about by the gift of immortality; the ill effects of Red Mist, he explained, was but an unfortunate side-effect of his diversion. Alchemy, he elaborated, was a passion of his, and he had for years tried to find a way to keep vampire blood stable in sunlight, a task which he accomplished a while ago.

On a whim he decided to let his servant Lazar sell it as a drug to the rich and famous of Tamalir to see its effects and, after the novelty had worn off, had decided to end the business. However, the emergence of a rival drug-dealer, which also meant the presence of a rival vampire who had also found the secret to keeping vampire blood stable, piqued his interest again, and he set himself the aim of destroying this upstart. When Lazar's thugs failed to find and eliminate this rival, he turned to our heroes, who did the job, but not well enough. Soon afterwards, Weiss, his rival, would use his own tactic against him, and trick our heroes into breaking up his Red Mist business.

Now the Count made an offer to our heroes: help him hunt down and destroy Weiss, and he would end his Red Mist business altogether. After all, he asked, had they not come because they wished to see the drug trade ended?

Whisper asked the Count if this meant he would not think up other schemes that might harm the people of Tamalir, but the Count would not commit.

Frustrated by this, Giso bellowed out a warcry, and sent forth three scorching rays of light that struck the Count. Injured and enraged, the Count swept the contents of his tabletop towards the party, and as the glassware struck the floor and broke, a red mist began to form, and soon our heroes were caught in a cloud of noxious gas.

Holding their breaths, our heroes backed out of the cloud, even as the Count strode into the middle of it, seemingly unaffected by the gas. He did not draw his rapier, but from his hands he sent out tendrils of darkness, which when they struck our heroes drained strength from their limbs, and held them immobile. Therion began a song of encouragement to the party, and our heroes began darting into and out of the cloud, attacking the Count in turn as a pack of wolves would. But the Count had supernatural speed and strength, and when he struck our heroes with his bare hands he sent them hurtling through the air.

Still, Therion's clarion voice lifted their morale, and they continued their attack on the count, who summoned forth undead servants from the sarcophagi. Giso called upon the aid of Kellos to keep the undead servants at bay, and sent one of them fleeing back into its sarcophagus.

Soon the red mist dissipated, and the Count sought to hunt down Therion, who fled into the pool at the other end of the hall, which the undead servants would not follow.

With the threat of the mist gone, the other heroes closed in on the Count; Giso drew his attacks and fended off his blows with his shield; Tom attacked with his makeshift spear of bog-oak tip; Whisper attacked with a bog-oak stake as well as her fist. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Count in the end succumbed to an enchantment from Therion, and fell to the ground laughing manically. Then, in the moments before his death, he turned to Therion, lifted his rapier, and said: take this.

At the moment that the Count died, the undead servants too fell dead.

For a moment there was silence, but before our heroes could catch their breaths, they heard footsteps coming from the corridor which they had entered from...


Prepping and Running the Game

This was supposed to be the final session in the Blood & Gold arc for the B Team, but I ended the session on a cliff-hanger for a reason which I will reveal later.

This session was not based on any module, but was a natural continuation of the story so far. I knew I wanted them to fight the Count in his lair, which meant I needed to make him a lair. After the previous session, I also knew I needed to give the players more confidence that they are on the right track.

The lair which I chose for the Count was Pfalzgrafenstein Castle, and actual Rhine castle. Honestly: does this not look like it should be a vampire castle?

I managed to find plans of the castle from a site by a guy who made a Lego version of the castle. From there, it was a job of deciding what each of the rooms held. I made a list of the number of guards, servants, and retainers who would be found inside the castle, as well as on the river bank, and bought a random items table to fill the Count's study in the top floor of the keep (which the PCs did not visit).

As this was sort of a heist scenario, I had to be prepared for different approaches. I had the boatmen on the river bank who I thought would welcome the PCs and perhaps give them more information about the castle and the Count if they had decided to approach them.

The Count, I decided, had a 'system' for keeping his identity hidden over the centuries. He would marry a noblewoman, bring her to his castle, and then murder her, kidnap a baby who looked like him, and then announce that his wife had died in labour. The child would be raised as his heir, and then when he reached a certain age, would also be murdered, and the Count would then take his place and announce that the old count had passed away. To keep this ruse up, he would routinely change the guards and other servants in his castle.

Unfortunately, the players decided to take a stealthy approach, which meant that they managed to not interact with any NPC until the boss fight. Also, by choosing to go directly into the keep, and once inside to go down instead of up, they managed to avoid all the guards and the bodyguard, whose stats I had ready behind my screen.

We had a bit of fun roleplaying the stealthy approach though. To illustrated how dark the inside of the castle looked, I actually switched the lights inside my apartment off for a while. For most of the session, the players were actually whispering to each other as they discussed what to do.

The actual conversation with the Count was also done in-character, and I think for a while they were in fact tempted to work with the Count.

For the Count's stats I chose to base them off the Deathlock Mastermind instead of a Vampire. A Vampire as written would have been too powerful for the party, and was also to me a little too predictable. The Realms of Terrinoth book did not give vampires the classic Dracula powers, but gave them some ranged magical abilities, so that was what I wanted to do too. The Deathlock Mastermind had both a formidable melee attack, as well as a ranged magical attack which could keep attackers away from himself. I wanted also to do the movie vampire thing where their melee attacks were so powerful they would fling an opponent they struck backwards, so I ruled that he would throw an opponent back by a number of squares equal to the damage he inflicted, and that the opponent would be prone. In addition, I decided to give him Legendary Resistance and Legendary Actions. On top of all this, I decided that for his opening move, he would do the Breaking Bad thing of using a chemical attack, which would further weaken the PCs.

Despite all that, and the addition of three minions based on Deathlock stats, the fight was less deadly than I had hoped as the Count managed to roll below 8 for most of his attacks. At the same time, Therion's player managed to resist the temptation to attack, and instead stayed in a supportive role throughout the combat, which gave the others just enough temporary hit points to stay alive. The fight lasted for 6 or 7 rounds, but seemed longer because of the Legendary Actions and the presence of the minions. The PCs actually managed to force me to use my my Legendary Resistances, and won the fight the honest way.

Still, as a back-up in case I rolled really well or they rolled poorly, I had the three Justicars on stand-by, ready to rappel down the well, having decided to follow the PCs.

The battle mat is once again from Heroic Maps, specifically their Down The Well map set. I have been using my map books for the past few sessions, but the layout of the Down The Well set is just so evocative, I could not help using it as the arena for my boss fight.

When the fight ended I told the players they hear footsteps coming, and then paused the game there. We skipped ahead a bit give them the dropped loot and to roll for random loot, but I told them these would not be in their possession until we resolved the next session...

And the reason why I had to end the session this way is because of this:

I saw this announced a couple of days before I ran this session, and I thought it would be a hilarious way to end off the arc, similar to how we ended the A Team arc on a The Hangover parody. I have originally planned to not game on the Monday before Halloween (it being a long weekend and I try to avoid gaming on a long weekend so the players can spend time with their families), but now it seemed like the perfect date for the perfect scenario.

The module will only be released on 01 October, so I am taking a bit of a risk planning the next session based on a cover, but hopefully there is enough material for me to work something out.

Terrinoth #40 - Blood & Gold, continued

Ambushed by the Two-Blade Gang

Campaign Diary

After two weeks of travel, Giso, Therion, and Whisper arrived back at Tamalir in the company of three Justicars (battle priests of Kellos). Their first stop was at the Church of Kellos, where they reunited with Tom Kellosson, when Giso explained his sudden and long absence (click here for PC profiles).

Tom, in the meanwhile, informed them that the number of Red Mist victims which the church have collected from the streets had increased in the past month, something which they attributed to a sudden loss in the supply of the drug. Whisper questioned a victim at the hospital, who confirmed their suspicion, and also informed them that he had last obtained his supply from the Pasha, which was familiar to our heroes.

The party decided to pay another visit to the Pasha, and stopped by at Therion's shop, which was close to the brothel. To his dismay, he saw that the shop was closed. After some frantic knocking on the door, his assistant opened the door. She explained to her employer that on the day after Therion had left without notice, a sum of 200 Gros had been delivered to the shop by someone, and that same day a suspicious character had come to spy around the shop on the pretext of buying something. She also noticed that the shop seemed to be watched, and had decided to close the place until Therion returned.

The party continued to the Pasha, leaving the Justicars to keep an eye on the shop. A quick conversation with the madam of the place confirmed the fact that Red Mist did come back into circulation for a short while after the party's first errand for Lazar, but had quickly disappeared a little after their business with Weiss. The party surmised that there were in fact two, rival, parties selling the drug - Lazar's party selling the more expensive version or the drug, and Weiss' party selling the cheaper version - and that they had unknowingly been involved in disruption of both businesses.

As the madam was mum about the supplier of their Red Mist, the party left the brothel to plan their next move. They struck up a conversation with the bouncers outside, and learned from them that one of the characters that they had seen loitering around Therion's shop was a gnome nicknamed 'Ratbone', whom they believed to be with the Two-Blade Gang, a small-time gang that operated on the south, poorer side of Tamalir.

Therion came up with the idea of equipping everyone in the party with two daggers, prominently displayed on their belts, and Whisper, who lived on the south side, led them into the territory of the Two-Blade Gang. They were soon able to find Ratbane (not Ratbone!), but quickly lost him in the crowd. Instead, they spotted the assassin that had wounded Weiss at The Golden Lion!

As Tom had not encountered the assassin previously, the party decided to split up, with Tom following her, while Giso and Therion kept a distance behind him, while Whisper followed him from the rooftop.

But alas! Tom was lured into an alley, and ambushed by Ratbane and several members of the Two-Blade Gang. Fortunately, the others were not too far behind. As the other heroes joined in the melee, more and more gang members, each wielding two bladed weapons, entered the fray. For a while things looked grim, until Giso summoned up a flaming sphere that barreled through the ranks of the gangsters, setting their clothes on fire and forcing several of them to jump into a nearby canal. The assassin was killed by Tom, and Ratbane, now alone and outnumbered, tried to flee but was cornered.

Ratbane confessed to working for Lazar, guarding the stock of Red Mist which Lazar would periodically send to the storeroom there, by boat or through the sewers. However, apart from instructions to keep watch over Therion's shop, the gang had had no contact with their paymaster for several weeks. He then led them back to the sewer hideout, which they had evacuated since the storeroom was torched by Weiss, but which they were supposed to man in the event Lazar needed to contact them. Searching the storeroom, Therion came across a broken glass vial which held Red Mist, and remarked that the material seemed to be of higher quality compared to that used in Weiss' version - Tom recalled where he had seem a similar material: in the glass wine bottles in the Pasha!

A little enquiry revealed that the wine was imported from Trast, from the vineyards that lined the southern slope of the Flametail river valley. The wine would be shipped up the river in giant tuns, along with the glass bottles, and the bottling would take place in a bottling plant in Tamalir. The vineyards and the bottling plant belonged to the Count of Pfalzenstein, and it is believed that the family possessed certain alchemical tricks which they employed to make the wine last longer.

The Counts of Pfalzenstein, the party also learned, hailed from an ancient line, and previously were the Dukes of Tamalir. In the aftermath of the Second Darkness, the Duke was unable to pay for the support of Tamalir, and was forced by the Barons to relinquish the city, which was granted Free City status. In exchange, the House of Pfalzenstein was given a permanent seat on the city council, granted a monopoly on the import of wine (the family owned vineyards in Trast), and they kept their hereditary seat at Castle Pfalzenstein, a small castle on a small island in the Flametail river, about half a day's journey east. The current count of Pfalzenstein kept a townhouse in Tamalir, but the day-to-day business was attended to by his steward.

The party made their way to the townhouse, hoping to lean more about the supplier of the glass vials from the steward, but when they arrived Whisper saw a carriage outside the place - it resembled the one used by Lazar. Not long afterwards the steward exited the townhouse and entered the carriage. Our heroes' request for an interview was rebuffed, and the carriage drove towards the north gate of the city.

That evening, Whisper sneaked into the townhouse and rifled through the contents of the steward's office. The papers there showed that the glass vials were indeed imported along with the wine bottles, but the quantities were so small that, given the selling price of Red Mist, the profit derived therefrom was dwarfed by that of the selling of the wine. There were also invoices for certain alchemical components, which Tom recalled were also seen on the invoices they had recovered from the rival faction for Lazar.

With more evidence pointing to the count's involvement (or at least someone within his household) in the Red Mist trade, the party decided to pay him a visit at his castle. The next morning, they packed their gear (with Therion cutting up an expensive bog oak chair in his inventory to fashion stakes and arrowheads for use against vampires), sat themselves on Therion's mule cart, left instructions for the Justicars to come for them if they had not returned in a week, and made their way out of the city.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session is not based on any particular module, but evolved out of the background of the story so far.

I knew the arc would end with a confrontation between the party and one of the bosses behind the Red Mist trade - the players were quite clear that they wanted to go after Lazar's gang first, so I prepped with this in mind.

I needed to lay a trail of clues for them to follow, so I started to imagine how the count operated his business. It soon became clear to me that his business model did not make sense at all if profit was a motive, which led me into thinking why he had decided to start the whole operation to begin with. The answer, of course, is that 'some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.'.

I decided to link the Red Mist trade to the wine import, on account of the glass, which led to me deciding about the history of the House of Pfalzenstein. The fact that medieval wine was hard to keep fresh allowed me to bring in the element of alchemy, which we will later learn has something to do with the manufacture of Red Mist.

I placed clues in the form of the wine sold at the Pasha, an empty glass vial in the sewer hideout, and the Two-Blade Gang as a source for combat and clues. I had expected the players to visit the bottling plant, which was another possible combat encounter, but they decided to investigate the Two-Blade Gang first, and then skip to the steward's house.

To me the whole chain was pretty clear: glass vial links to glass bottle, glass bottle to wine, wine to bottling plant and vineyard, bottling plant and vineyard to a count residing in a castle outside the city... how much more obvious can it be?

Unfortunately for me, for once my players were reluctant to jump to a conclusion. They spent a bit of time discussing their investigation, with Therion's player proposing that they went to Trast to investigate the make of the glass vials. Fortunately, the other players were able to convince him that they should follow the trail downstream instead of upstream.

In retrospect I realise I could have planned things better, but it is always difficult to strike a balance between making the evidence so clear that the players would be able to go to the city watch or church and just asked them to handle the business, and making the connection so tenuous they are afraid to make the move.

I had actually set aside up to six sessions for this arc of the campaign, but as it turned out we will only play four sessions. This prevented me from developing some of the plot points into longer adventures or encounters - I was planning to have a session where the players would play the roles of the three Justicars, who are sent on a side-quest with Erkiss the kobold to obtain bog oak, and when this could not materialise, I had to improvise and decide that Therion would conceivably have something made of bog oak in his luxury store.

Terrinoth #39 - Unmerciful

When you're about to start writing the campaign diary

Campaign Diary

On the south bank of the Flametail River, our heroes: Therion Lakemane, Giso Meyer, Whisper Blackmane, and Risvir Tellir stood silent in the snow (click here for PC profiles), until at last Risvir spoke.

The situation, he declared, was more than he had signed up for, and he would for now leave Tamalir, and return to claim his share of the pay another day.

Unwilling to return to the city to face a criminal gang, the three remaining heroes decided to head for a monastery a few hours south of Tamalir, where they hoped to find shelter for the night as they planned their next move.

They did not get far before Whisper noticed a long-haired figure in tattered clothing standing in their path.

'Where is he?' she hissed.

The party replied that they had no idea where Weiss had gone. They then noticed that a male figure, who looked similarly disheveled, had meanwhile crept up behind them.

'Then they are of no use to us!' he said.

The two charged at our heroes, baring fangs in their mouths and claws on their fingers. The party fought back against the strange couple, and as he was struck by one of them, Therion realised that their strength was like that of the man who was chained to the ruined keep.

Despite their weariness from their earlier ordeal, our heroes fought a running battle against the two, until at last Therion froze the female with the magic from his family ring, and the male fled into the woods. Whisper chased after him, but soon lost him in the darkness. Refusing to give up, she continued deeper into the woods. Then suddenly, she noticed a figure silhouetted against the moonlight ahead. There was a blinding flash as a bolt of green light arced from the figure's raised hand... not towards Whisper, but to a nearby tree. There was a cry, which was followed by a dull 'thud' as the body of the male landed onto the snow.

The figure stepped into the moonlight with a cackle: it was Mama Peat. The hag chided our heroes for making a commotion on her turf, but gave them some smoked lamprey as provision when Therion asked for her aid. Then, as suddenly as she had appeared, she departed.

Our heroes inspected the body of the man. In his death, he looked like a normal person, his fangs and jagged claws gone. Hoping to use the body to prove that the city was under the threat of vampires, the trio dragged it in a makeshift litter to the monastery.

The sight of three strangers with a corpse in tow at their gate caused panic among the monks, until Giso was able to convince the abbot that he was a priest of Kellos. The abbot, caught up in the excitement, initially suggested beheading the body and then setting it on fire to prevent it from rising again, but when questioned, confessed that the suggestion was not based upon church teachings, but tales he heard as a child - after all, vampires were just creatures of legend, and no one had seen one in centuries! Once he had calmed down, the abbot realised that to the city watch, the body would appear as just a victim of violence left out in the cold, which would make the party prime suspects for murder! Moreover, tales of vampires in the city, whether true or not, would likely cause a panic and a mass exodus which, it being the middle of winter right now, would no doubt cause the loss of countless lives among those who could not find shelter in the cold. He bade the party to travel on to Vynelvale, the seat of the Order of Kellos, where they would perhaps learn more about how to deal with vampires; in the mean time, he and his monks would inform the city watch that the two bodies were found in the wilderness, perhaps victims of bandits.

The next morning our heroes started the long journey to Vynelvale. After three long weeks, they arrived at the great cathedral city, at the end of the annual Conclave, when all the Hierophants from the rest of Terrinoth would converge each year.

Giso led the party into the inner city of Vynelvale, which was closed to outsiders between the hours of sunset and sunrise. Here Giso sought out Johannes, his mentor, and told him what they had learned: a war between criminal gangs, over the profits of a drug called red mist, made perhaps from the blood of vampire, or vampires, had begun in Tamalir. The drug made its user quick and strong, but also make him become addicted, and eventually mad. Johannes cautioned the party against reckless action before they had sufficient proof, and advised them to seek out Brother Grimmel, the Chief Librarian, to see if some information regarding vampires could be found at the Order's library.

Brother Grimmel, a tall and haughty man, was skeptical of the heroes' tale of vampires, but nevertheless referred them to a young acolyte named Brother Berkin, who was in charge of the 'Occult' section of the library. Our heroes offered to help the young librarian search for books on vampires, but Brother Berkin declined their aid, and instead asked to be left alone to do his work, promising to have the information ready for them the next day. Therion and Giso decided to spend the rest of the day at a tavern Giso frequented when he was living in Vynelvale (where Therion's rendition of the latest songs from Lorimor was met with less than warm welcome by the patrons), while Whisper, suspicious of Brother Berkin, remained outside the library and observed Brother Berkin from a distance. As the day wore on she saw the young librarian bring several books to his desk by the window, and occasionally he would make notes on a piece of paper. Then, when the bell rang for dinner, he put away his things, and with a large tome tucked under one arm, returned to his dormitory before joining the other monks for evening meal.

That night, while Giso and Therion slept, Whisper felt a sense of unease which compelled her to stand watch by the window. Several hours past midnight, she saw a figure, dressed in the robes of a priest, make his solitary way across the dark courtyard below. Suddenly the figure stopped in his track, and began to flail his arms before him, as if fighting off an invisible assailant. Then just as suddenly, he fell to the ground, motionless. Whisper turned from the window to wake Giso and Therion, and when the three returned to the window they could see a second figure crouched over the first. In a moment, the crouched figure stood up, looked furtively around, and then disappeared into the shadows.

Our heroes rushed downstairs and out of their quarters, and called out to a pair of patrolling watchmen to follow them to the scene. Lying on the courtyard was a priest dressed in the robes of a Master - it was Master Maruis, the party later learned, the Master of the College of Science - and next to his body on the floor was his tongue, cut inexpertly out of his mouth.

Whisper tried to find tracks of the second figure, but no marks could be found on the flagstones. The gates to the inner city were all closed, and there were no signs of forced entry to any of the doors of the buildings nearby. Where could he have gone?

Soon a crowd of monks and priests had formed around the body. An order was given to bring the body to the Hospital, where our heroes were also summoned.

Inside the Hospital Master Marius' body was disrobed and examined. There was a distinct smell of spirits - the watchmen at the gate revealed that the rotund priest had returned very late indeed from a night of drinking in the outer city - but there were no signs of injury. There was little bleeding from the severed tongue, indicating that Master Marius had already expired before the tongue was removed. More disturbingly, a silver Gros was found inside his mouth. Our heroes were questioned, and then bade to tell no one of what they saw.

The next morning a funeral service was held for Master Marius, who, officially, had "died of a medical accident", but that did not stop the gossiping among the priests and monks.

Returning to the library that afternoon, the party found Brother Grimmel looking flustered. When he learned that the heroes had not heard about the rumours of his involvement in the night's affair, he heaved a sigh of relief, and invited them into his office.

When the previous Master of Science had died two years ago, Brother Grimmel explained, he had expected himself to be promoted to the position on account of his seniority. However, the younger Marius was promoted in his stead, which caused some unpleasantness. Now, he was worried, aspersions might be cast on him, and he was at last glad to have someone he could voice his concerns to. Marius, he added, had meanwhile proved to be an able administrator, and had managed to gain funding for the building of a new wing to the library, while he himself had gained great joy from his post as Chief Librarian. Perhaps, Brother Grimmel mused, Kellos had passed him over for the promotion to teach him contentment.

Leaving the old man to his reverie, our heroes left the office and sought out Brother Berkin at his desk. Immediately Whisper sensed that the young librarian was hiding something, and began to question him first about what he had learned about vampires, and then his whereabouts the night before. As she did so, Therion walked over to his desk, and placed his musical box upon it, where it began to play a soft tune. The young monk gave vague replies, tried to evade pointed questions, but the spell in the music played upon his mind, and he found it harder and harder to hide the truth. When at last Whisper asked if he knew how Master Marius had died, he barked,

"Yes! Because I was the one who killed him!"

Brother Berkin lunged for the quill knife on his desk, but Whisper was quicker; she moved between the monk and the desk, and threw a punch at his head - Brother Berkin fell to the ground, unconscious.

The commotion brought the other monks to the scene. Therion roused Brother Berkin, and whispered a spell in his ears as he did so, bidding him to tell the truth. But perhaps he did not need to, for when he came to, the young monk revealed everything to all who were present with a righteousness tone.

One day, two years ago, while collecting some books from Master Marius' office, he came across letters which revealed to him that the priest had acted as a go-between for the current Procurator of the Grand Hierophant's Household and the Hierophant of Riverwatch - the former had bribed the latter for his post, and for his troubles Marius was elevated to the position of Master of Science. Incensed by this, yet afraid of retaliation should he speak out, the young monk turned to the dark knowledge which he had come across in his work: by means of an Ynfernal ritual found in an ancient tome, he summoned up an invisible assassin, which he set upon Master Marius, who was famous for his late night jaunts. He then cut off the dead man's tongue, the offending part, with his quill knife, and stuffed a coin in his mouth as a symbol for his greed.

The ancient tome was recovered from Brother Berkin's room, along with his journal, in which he detailed his discovery and his plans for the assassination of Master Marius, as well as the Procurator and the Hierophant of Riverwatch.

For their part in solving the murder, our heroes were met by the Seneschal of the grand Hierophant's Household, who exacted a pledge to speak no words of the affair to anyone for the price of 500 Gros.

Our heroes returned once more to Johannes, and informed him of what they have learned regarding vampires. Therion at last decided to show the justicar a vial of red mist he had acquired, as well as the dagger which the assassin had stabbed Weiss with. Johannes placed the dagger under sunlight, whereupon the dried blood on the blade began to sizzle and smoke. He then placed the vial under the sunlight, but it was not changed.

Johannes returned the dagger to Therion, and then, gazing at the vial of red mist, advised the party to follow the trail of money - for if indeed red mist is made from the blood of a vampire, then surely the trail of silver will lead them to it.

Prepping and Running the Game

After a hiatus of eight months, we at last returned to B Team this week. When we ended the previous session, the players decided that they wanted to find out more about vampires and how to defeat them, so we decided that the next session would have them travel to Vynelvale to research at the Order's famous library.

This session was based on the module Unmerciful, by Adventurer's Inn, which also published Blood & Gold, upon which the current arc is based. Or rather it was supposed to be based on the module - a month off GMing had thrown my game off, and I had trouble with the pacing, but fortunately for me the game turned out fairly well.

I had the game start off from right where we left off, which meant the PCs had not had a chance to heal up. I wanted to test out a new house rule which came up in a chat group I belong to: I divided the PCs' hit points into two halves: Wind, and Wound.

Wind represented things like luck, stamina, and alertness, while Wound represented actual damage. When a PC takes damage, it is first deducted off Wind, and when Wind drops to zero, the damage is applied to Wound.

The difference between the two is that Wind is restored by spending Hit Dice, while Wound is restored by healing, whether via magic or potion, and by Natural Healing, which happens at the rate of the PC's level + CON modifier once per long rest.

The new system did not make a real difference this session, since there was only one real fight; but in a longer, continuous session, like say a dungeon crawl, it would generate more stress as recovery to full hit points will take more time.

I planned the session to have three parts: the fight with the vampire spawn (for which I used a Wight's stats), a narrative of their journey to Vynelvale, and the scenario proper.

I had planned for the first fight to be deadly, such that the PCs would lose the fight, and then Mama Peat's would arrive and drive the vampire spawn off. As it turned out the players were tougher than I had expected. This presented me with the problem of two vampire spawn corpses, which I had not expected to have to deal with. The encounter at the monastery was improvised, and I managed to get the party back on track for their journey to Vynelvale.

For the Vynvelvale part of the session I did a bit of reading on the organisation of the Catholic church in the medieval era. Despite the religion of Kellos being the most prominent one in Terrinoth, there is very little detail about the organisation and teachings of the religion in the sourcebook. I decided that the order probably began as a sort of a community of ascetics made up of Kellos' original followers, and a priesthood, which was started as described in the sourcebook. The former probably saw Kellos as more man than god, while the latter saw him more as a god than as a man. I imagine there were some conflict between the two traditions as to who truly represented Kellos, and that the priestly faction won, and subsumed the monastic faction.

I imagine that the church did not hold anything near to the order of land and power the Catholic church held in the Holy Roman Empire, but that it nonetheless held a manor here and there throughout the land, some under a monastery, and some under a church. I organised these under twenty Hierophants, one for each Barony and Free City, with the Hierophant of Vynelvale being the Grand Hierophant. The Grand Hierophant also had his own Household, much like the Papal Household.

All these were important, as I wanted the plot of Unmerciful to be translated to a "real world" structure.

The scenario was supposed to feature a serial-murder mystery, but I had not even introduced half of the cast of NPCs before the players became convinced that Brother Berkin was a bad guy - apparently they found his reluctance for their assistance suspicious, and thought he might have been in league with the vampires!

When Whisper started trailing Brother Berkin, I thought the game was up and she would find his journal in his quarters before the first murder. To make things worse there was only 40 minutes of game time left when we reached this point of the adventure, and I was considering abandoning the plot and ending the session with the PCs returning to Tamalir. Fortunately, I decided to push on.

The game was once more threatened with a premature end when Whisper decided, with no apparent reason, to keep watch at the window. Perhaps by now my players have realised that whenever there are monks in my game, there will be murder or arson, or both.

Now I could have decided that the murder would take place at a part of the compound that was not in view from the PCs' room, but it seemed like poor sport. I let Whisper witness the murder, which moved the plot ahead faster, and also revealed more about the nature of the assassin.

At the end of the autopsy, the game was back on tracks, and we had little time left. Once more my players surprised me by zooming straight to Brother Berkin. I did not realise that Therion had the spell Zone of Truth, which of course is the bane to all GMs running a murder mystery. In this case, the application of the spell allowed us to end the session on a short but intense roleplay, which I thought had a ring of the final scene from A Few Good Men.

The players may have expected a boss fight after the revelation, and were surprised when Brother Berkin went down with just one punch. I, however, liked that it showed how sometimes, the villain of the session can be a misguided level zero NPC.

The only pity is that I did not get to let the PCs fight the invisible assassin, which was supposed to be a Skulk, from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Unmerciful actually has a human assassin as the murderer, but I wanted something supernatural instead, and the Skulk's description inspired me, and I was able to weave its fluff into the plot of the module, as well as into the NPCs which was natural for the PCs to come across.

Terrinoth #19 - Blood of Malar

Fight at The Golden Lion

Campaign Diary

Therion Lakemane was closing up his store ('Lakemane's Luxries') for the day when he heard a knocking on his door. Looking through the glass of his door, Therion saw a bald, middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper moustache, dressed in the clothes of a merchant.

Therion opened the door, and the man introduced himself as Weiss, a shipping merchant, and asked if he could enter the shop and speak with Therion. He had found Therion through the blacksmith to whom Therion had sold the good-quality chains he recovered from the ruined keep in Blackwing Swamp a month ago. The chains, he said, were stolen off his barges, presumably by his rival, one Aris, and he had hoped to learn more about the circumstances of their recovery, so he could bring a formal complaint to the merchant's guild.

Therion played dumb and claimed that the chains were recovered by his employees, and that he himself did not know where they were found. Weiss then offered to buy Therion and his employees a round of drink the next evening at The Golden Lion tavern, as a means to thank them, and also to learn how the chains were recovered from them.

The next evening found Therion, Giso, Whisper, and Risvir at The Golden Lion. Tom, busy with tending to a new wave of red mist victims and the temple, was unable to join the party.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Therion related his encounter to the party. The name Weiss immediately stood out for Whisper, who recalled coming across it when the party investigated traffickers of the drug red mist, under the employment of one Lazar. The name Weiss was a common one in Terrinoth, and Therion had not managed to find any more information on his visitor, but our heroes decided to continue to play dumb in the hope of making Weiss reveal more about himself.

Weiss arrived at the appointed time and began to politely ask our heroes about the chains, but was met with feigned ignorance. Just then, Whisper noticed a carriage coming to a stop on the street outside the tavern - it resembled Lazar's carriage. Moments later four tough-looking men entered through the tavern's door, scanned the room, and then started to move towards the table where our heroes were seated.

Therion bade Weiss to move to a table further away from the front door, and signaled for the others to move to block the new arrivals. As our heroes sought to distract the men, they heard a cry, followed by a clatter, behind them. Turning around, they see that the serving girl had left a dagger in Weiss' back, and was drawing another dagger from inside the folds of her clothes. Whisper and Giso leapt into attack, driving the assassin away, while Therion and Risvir blinded the men with a combination of mind tricks and enchanted fog to cover the party's escape.

Leaving with the gravely wounded Weiss through the side door, the party soon realised that the snow on the ground would make it easy for their enemies to track them. Summoning what remaining strength he had, Weiss asked them to enter the sewers, and from there make their way to the outlet to the river, where he had a boat stowed for just such an eventuality. With no other option, the party entered the next manhole they found, and entered the sewers.

Now the old city of Tamalir was built upon the old city that was devastated during the Dragon Wars, and its old streets now served as the sewer channels of the new city. Risvir summoned up a magical platform formed of shadow, that floated a few feet off the ground. Onto this they placed the now-unconscious Weiss, whose wound would not stop bleeding despite the healing spells our heroes cast upon him. Desperate, they eventually took the risk and removed the dagger and cauterised the wound with a heated dagger. The bleeding slowed to an ooze. Therion examined the dagger - it had a triangular profile, and upon its blade were carved arcane runes. Was it a cursed blade?

With Weiss seemingly stabilised, the party followed the flow of the sewage towards the river, Therion opting to ride upon the floating disk so as to avoid soiling his shoes. For a while it seemed that they were alone in the sewers apart from some rats, but half an hour after they started their journey, they could hear footsteps echoing though the tunnels behind them.

Then they came upon a channel in the sewers which was too wide for them to cross easily. While they pondered over how to cross the span with the aid of the floater disk, a giant lamprey broke the surface of the foetid water and attacked them. Our heroes drove the beast off with steel and spells, but the din of battle had drawn the attention of their pursuers - there was need for haste now.

Whisper noticed a thieves' sign marked upon a wall - they were near the river now. As they continued south there was a change in the air, and light coming from ahead.

Whisper scouted ahead. Not far from where they were the sewer tunnels widened and opened into the river, and there two boats were moored. Here the ceilings were taller. Several ruined houses had new doors on them, and standing outside these, as if on guard, were a few armed persons... one of whom was the serving girl from The Golden Lion! The area was lit by a few torches set on brackets on the walls, and the moonlight reflected off the surface of the river.

With pursuers not far behind them, the party decided to launch an assault on the guards and seize one of the boats. Whisper led the attack, shooting off arrows from her bow and then rushing out from the tunnel... only to be ambushed by an attacker she had not seen hiding just around the corner. Giso moved forward to aid Whisper, but the other guards also moved forward, trapping the party at the mouth of the tunnel. Missiles and magical energies were exchanged. The party could not break through. Behind them the pursuers were getting closer. Risvir cast an enchantment upon his dagger, whereupon it became a spinning cloud of blades that blocked off the passage - but the spell would only last one minute...

In the sewers of Tamalir

One by one their enemies fell, and the serving girl from the tavern abandoned her comrades and fled in one of the boats. The party rushed forward to seize the remaining boat, with Risvir carrying Weiss on his back.

But as they were passing by one of the room, Weiss moved himself off Risvir's back, grabbed a torch from its bracket on the wall, opened one of the doors, and threw it in. Inside the room was crates and boxes, which quickly caught alight. Before the surprised eyes of the heroes, Weiss calmly walked to the remaining boat, and asked them to join him.

The party rowed out into the river, and was soon taken outside the city walls by its flow. Not long afterwards, Weiss pointed out a spot on the south bank where they could land. Our heroes accused Weiss of being less than honest in his dealings with them, and he wryly replied that they had been less than honest with him regarding the circumstances of the discovery of his chains. Now seemingly completely well, Weiss stepped off the boat, and disappeared into the nearby woods.

The next day a sum of 200 Gros was delivered to Lakemane's Luxuries, which Therion split equally with the others.

Prepping and Running the Game

This session was a natural follow-on to the last B Team game - my players came up with the idea of investigating the origins of the chains which they found on the beings at the ruined keep, and I reasoned that the person who had the chains made would likewise try to find those who took the chains via the same means. The sewer-crawl idea came from the module Blood of Malar, which involved the party escorting a merchant through the sewers while he was being hunted.

I will not yet reveal the true identities and purposes of Weiss and Lazar, but it is now obvious to the players and PCs that they have been employed/used by both sides in a conflict, and that the drug red mist was somehow in the middle of all this.

In the post-game talk they speculated that Weiss was perhaps an undead - maybe even a vampire - and that red mist was perhaps made from vampire blood. To prove this hypothesis, they wanted to find someone who knew more about undead and vampires, someone who could put their hypothesis to the test.

At the same time, they also asked to investigate Lazar, and to track down the serving girl-assassin who had twice eluded them.

This gives me fodder for at least three more sessions. The players are now so determined to get to the bottom of the mystery they are not asking about reward for what they are going to do next. On my part I have promised that the truth will be revealed in the future. But for now, I shall not spoil it for them or for my readers here.

This was again a light-prep session - light to the point that once I had the basic ideas and the maps chosen for the session, I had little else to do on game day.

The maps that you see in the photos above are from Loke Battle Mats. These are A3 sized spiral-bound books with gridded battle mats which can be laid open to form an A2 size playing area, or even an A1 size area with two books. There are around 60 different designs per book - I got two of their fantasy ones and a sci-fi one off kickstarter.

You can find a place to buy a copy by googling "giant book of battle mats".

The glossy surface of the maps are a bit too reflective for photography, but they are dry-erase, and durable. They are not as flexible as the Heroic Maps tiles which I buy and print myself, but they are a lot more convenient, especially if you are a traveling GM.

Terrinoth #16 - Moonspike Tower Part II

Dalkon holds Therion hostage

Campaign Diary

In the month of Hailag, at a time when most sensible folks would not venture into the wilderness on account of the cold, we find our party wading through the frigid waters of Blackwing Swamp.

Having learned about the long-forgotten causeway through the swamp, Therion Lakemane, entrepreneur and adventurer, had put together a crew to explore and claim the use of the causeway for himself. Joining him on the expedition were Whisper Blackmane and Risver Tellir, elven adventurers, and Tom Kelloson and Giso Meyer, priests of Kellos who had come along on the prospect of setting up a shrine long the route. They had need for haste, as soon snow would arrive and render all travel impossible.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Following the marks left by Whisper on their last foray into the swamp, the party arrived at the causeway just as the sun began to set. From here they planned to strike out northwards to the ruined keep where they battled goblins and a wyvern, and then to the northern end of the causeway, to see where it ended, before turning south again to find the other end.

Arriving at the ruined keep the next day, they found the wyvern still roosted at the top of the tower, warming its wings in the morning sun. The party waited until the wyvern had flown off to hunt before they entered the keep. There were no signs of the goblins - their carcasses had presumably fed the wyvern over the past weeks. Whisper laid a bear trap in the wyvern's bed of branches and anchored it to the floor below, and disguised the scent of the party using swamp mud. Our adventurers laid in wait inside the tower, hoping to take down the creature once it was caught.

Eventually the sound of flapping wings announced the wyvern's return. On the floor below, our heroes waited with bated breath. They heard a sniffing sound, followed by shriek as the wyvern took off into the air again - it had detected the trap! The party scrambled to the rooftop, eager to catch the creature before it can flee again. The wyvern defended its nest fiercely, but this time it faced more foes, and it was felled by an arrow as it tried to escape once more.

Therion had the wyvern skinned for its leather, hoping to recover part of the cost for the expedition by selling it off later. Exhausted from the fight, the party spent the night inside the relative comfort of the tower.

The next day they followed the course of the causeway northwards. As the afternoon wore on they found the ground now drier and the tree cover more sparse. Here, towards the edge of the swamp, the water gave way to boglands covered by moss and ferns. As the sun began to set, they saw the remnants of a tower by the side of the causeway, this one without a curtain wall, and in worse state of disrepair - only the first storey of the tower remained, and someone had laid a thatched roof over it, and smoke emerged from one corner of it. As the party observed the ruined tower from a distance, the form of an old woman emerged - it seemed that she had made a dwelling out of the tower.

Therion strode to the dwelling and introduced himself to the old woman, and asked permission for the party to be admitted to her home. The old woman introduced herself as Mama Peat ('on account of my using the peat for cooking and smoking lampreys, you see'), a 'wise woman' who had been living at the tower for years, living on smoked lampreys, moss and other plants, as well as other food and items which folks from the nearby villages would bring to exchange for potions which she would brew.

The party were given lamprey stew for dinner as Therion tried to interest Mama Peat in his business, but she replied that she had little use for money but had an interest in magical items, and asked if our heroes had any they were willing to trade for her help. Tom offered his throwing knife, but it was turned down. As the evening wore on Tom fell into a deep slumber. Talk continued to revolve around the subject of magic. Mama Peat began to tell our heroes of a tale of an evil witch who lived in the swamp and claimed the lives of babies born before the full moon... and revealed herself to be the sister of the witch whom our heroes have slain several weeks before! She demanded that the gem that Whisper plucked from the body of her sister to be returned to her, and in return she would leave their business with the causeway alone. Before Whisper could give a reply, Therion drew his rapier and attacked the witch, but instead of staying and fighting, she stepped into the fireplace and vanished in a blaze.

Our heroes searched the rest of the dwelling and found little else besides smoked lampreys and dried herbs and moss. They set watch and spent a fitful night in the dwelling.

The next day they found the northern end of the causeway a short distance away from the dwelling, and turned south to find the other end.

On the fifth day of their expedition dark clouds rolled in from the north. Late in the afternoon they came upon the remains of yet another tower by the causeway, this one so worn that only the foundations of the tower remained. As they approached the tower they saw that its floor had given way and now opened to a basement some ten feet below. They heard the jingling of chains, followed by voices crying for help.

Whisper crept close to the edge and saw that two men and a woman were imprisoned inside there, each chained by their ankles to an alcove in one of the four corners of the basement floor. Tom leapt onto the floor below and started to question them.

The three gave their names as Dalkon, Feck, and Tilsa, and claimed to be residents of Tamalir who woke up about a week ago to find themselves chained there. They had no knowledge of how they came to be there, nor who had brought them there or for what purpose, and they begged our heroes to free them from the chains.

Whisper cast a rope down and climbed down, followed by the others. As Giso examined the chains around Tilsa's ankles he noticed them to be of good quality steel, and that the manacles were not locked but forge-welded shut. Setting the chain against a rock, he set to work with his hammer, and after some effort broke one of them.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party grew more and more suspicious of the circumstances the prisoners were in: despite not having a source of food or water, the trio had remained alive for a week in the middle of winter, and indeed there were no signs of waste or excrement there. Whisper sensed magic on the three prisoners, but could not make out its nature.

Tension began to rise as our heroes pressed the prisoners for answers, and were met only with protestations of ignorance and increasingly desperate pleas to be freed. Eventually patience wore thin and Risver drew his knife and approached Dalkon, thinking to cut him and see if he bled. As he came within reach Dalkon struck out at him, throwing Risver several yards back. Enraged, Giso charged at Dalkon with his hammer. Therion stepped before Dalkon, shielding him from Giso's attack... and felt Dalkon's hand close around his neck in a vice-like grip.

Release him and the other two, he demanded, or he would kill Therion.

But the party was in no bargaining mood - they attacked Dalkon, even as he shielded himself with Therion. Unable to break himself free from the strangle, the bard passed out, only to be revived by Whisper chanting a healing word. Seeing this Dalkon cast Therion aside and seized Whisper by her neck instead. In the confusion that followed Whisper was struck by Giso and passed out, but her companions were able to wrest her from the grasp of Dalkon. As the three prisoners strained against their bonds to try to grab at our heroes, they one by one climbed out of the basement, and from the safety of their vantage point above called down holy fire against the now-defenceless trio.

When the prisoners were vanquished the party recovered the chains, noting the maker's mark upon them - they might solve this mystery yet!

Leaving the ruined tower behind, the party trekked on southwards, until they came to the end  of the causeway. Their journey had come to an end.

***

Having returned to Tamalir, Whisper recovered her gem from the vault of a merchant house where she had deposited it. Holding it in her hand, she called out silently to Mama Peat, but received no reply.

Then one night she awoke in her room at the Leaky Tap, and found the witch standing by her window. The witch repeated her offered to leave the dwelling in the swamp and not interfere with the party's business in exchange for the gem. Whisper in return told her that now that she has learned of the nature of the gem, she did not want it in her possession. She handed the gem to the witch, who stepped back into the shadow... and vanished once more.

Prepping and Running the Game

I apologise in advance if I blow my own trumpet too much in this post, but I feel the session was a good example of how an 'improv' style of GMing can work with experienced and engaged players.

This session was the first in the Terrinoth campaign that I did not base off a specific module, but rather the elements of the scenario came from loose threads left over from three previous session. There was very little to prep for in the specifics - I prepared the monster stats, a couple of terrain mats, and did some reading on peat, lampreys, and smoking lampreys with peat.

To begin with the whole reason for this expedition was based on an idea supplied by the players themselves. As the GM all I needed to do was to make up some reasonable challenges to provide more information on the causeway and its history (indirectly).

The first part of the session was to me the most straight-forward, so I was a little surprised when the players took a long time trying to decide how to tackle the wyvern. Eventually I decided to make it fly off to hunt for food so they could get close to it without being detected.

The second encounter was a follow-up to the session where they encountered and killed an evil hag. I had wanted to introduce the idea that the hag was once one of three hags in a coven, and when I needed to populate another location for this session, I decided to make use of this thread, I left the encounter very much unscripted, hoping to react to how the PCs acted instead. I had actually a model of a purple worm (painted in flesh colour) on my table to use as a giant lamprey ally for the hag if a fight broke out, but it didn't seem to fit the feel in the room at the moment, and I decided not to use it.

I had imagined that Whisper and the two priests of Kellos would want to attack the hag once they learned her true nature, and that Therion would rather strike a bargain with her, so I was rather surprised when it was the other way round.

The third encounter was my favourite. The mysterious nature of the prisoners and their reluctance to provide answers, and their physical prowess displayed later really puzzled the players. I will not spoil the story here, but this location is tied to the Blood & Gold scenario. One of the players even asked if his character knew if this was in anyway linked to the Cult of Nordros - as a GM it is always gratifying to have bits of lore you told the players thrown back at you in a later game.

I could feel the tension and the frustration (a good kind, I thought) at the table rise as the players and PCs started to disagree on what to do and then each went ahead and did what he or she felt was right - it was a little like the scene in The Avengers when they started to turn on each other. But as in the movie, once the enemy showed himself, the team acted together and defeated their foes.

When Therion's player placed his figure in front of Dalkon to shield him from Giso, I saw the perfect opportunity to raise the stakes and took it, actually physically moving to behind the player and passing my hand in front of his neck (which unfortunately meant I could not see the look on his face when that happened). The player was so traumatised by the event that after the game he told me that Therion's alignment had shifted from Neutral Good to True Neutral after this.

Despite the fight being fought on a fixed location on account of Dalkon being chained, it was actually one of the more tactical fights in the campaign as the PCs tried to rescue their comrades without hurting them, trying instead to pry them loose from Dalkon's grasp. I thought I did rather well too when I made Dalkon take the risk of letting go of a hostage and grabbing the healer instead.

Once the PCs were all out of reach of the prisoners, it was basically shooting fish in a barrel as they had ranged-attack cantrips. It was however fitting for the prisoners to not have any ranged attacks, so I allowed them their victory.

Once again the players were experienced enough to bounce off elements I had included in the scenario without much thought, in this case looking for a maker's mark on the chains, which I had described as well-made. This will allow them to trace the buyer of the chains (presumably the person who imprisoned the trio there), but in fact it will be the other way round: allowing the person to find those who have killed his prisoners!

All in all this was a very enjoyable session, and it has given me more confidence in running a less prepped game.

Terrinoth #15 - Retribution

The heroes fail to stem the tide of zombies...

Campaign Diary

Giso and Tom's recent adventures had earned the attention of Abbot Kostel, who decided that it would be best if the two priests did a spot of penance at St Olfryc's Priory until after the Winter Solstice mass. They would be accompanied on their journey to the priory by Whisper Blackmane, who had been employed as a guide.

(Click here for PC profiles)

Our reluctant priests headed north from Tamalir, with a mule carrying winter supplies in tow. St Olfryc's Priory, our priests knew, was founded as a hermitage several centuries ago, and was later expanded to a priory when a childless noble obtained permission from the Baron to bequeath the land to the church upon his death. For a period the priory was home to a sect of the church of Kellos known as the Order of the Cleansing Flames, whose members practised self-mortification by branding themselves. The practice gradually fell out of favour, and had stopped in the past few decades.

On the third day of the journey, as the party climbed the hill to reach the priory, a snowstorm began. The trio struggled on, but found their path ahead blocked by two large wolves. The wolves growled menacingly at the party, but would not attack. Faced with a long trip back to the nearest village or a long detour, the party chose to attack, and after a hard battle managed to kill the wolves and continue on their way.

The winter sun was close to setting when they finally arrived at the priory. They were welcomed into the compound, and introduced to the monks who lived there: Prior Ruan, his assistant Dean Leland, Brother Rosen who ran the scriptorium, Brother Enthel who did most of the cooking and cleaning, and the young novice Brother Malven.

The party reported their encounter with the wolves, and were told that the woods had been strangely quiet the past week. With the storm showing no signs of letting up, Whisper was invited to stay at the priory until the weather improved. Giso and Tom were assigned to work with Brother Rosen to copy scriptures during their penance, while Whisper volunteered to help around the place.

Th next morning when the monks left their dormitory for morning services, they found five dead ravens on the snow-covered garth in the middle of the priory. The birds were frozen solid, with no signs of injury on them, and there were no tracks leading to or from where they were laid.

At the scriptorium, Tom did his best to impress Brother Rosen with his calligraphy, while Giso, protesting his exile to the priory, deliberately did a mediocre job, and earned the disapproval of Dean Leland. Whisper meanwhile earned the attention of the dean when he found out that she was not a follower of Kellos, and found herself being proselytised to at each meal time.

Later that night, Giso and Tom were awakened from their slumber by a repetitive knocking sound. Tom dragged the reluctant Giso from the warmth of his bed, the two followed the noise to the door of the scriptorium, where they found a dead fox hung by its tail over the door - the winter wind slammed its frozen body against the wooden door periodically, creating the irregular knocking sound. Closer examination of the carcass showed a jagged wound on the chest of the animal, and that its heart had been ripped out. Again, there were no tracks leading to the door. Giso recalled from his reading that cultists of Nordros removed the hearts of the animals that they sacrificed to the evil god of Death and Winter. Tom and Giso alerted the other monks, but with no clue as to who the culprit was, there was nothing to do but to return to bed.

The mood at the refectory was subdued the next day. Dean Leland behaved coldly to Whisper, perhaps suspecting that she was responsible for the events. Brother Melvan suspected the villagers, whom he believed to be protesting their tithe to the priory.

Work continued at the scriptorium for our priests, while Whisper took a walk outside the priory walls during a lull in the storm, eventually chancing upon a nearby graveyard, where the deceased monks and worshipers were buried.

Thankfully, nothing strange happened that night.

On the third day, the priests were interrupted in the work at the scriptorium when Prior Ruan came to ask for help: someone had left the window to his chambers open, and the snow had blown in, wetting the floor and furniture. While the party helped the old man clean up, they noticed that he had brand marks over his forearms. Prior Ruan revealed that he had been an adherent of the Order of Cleansing Flames in his youth, and that he had been a zealot who forced self-mortification onto novices, which eventually resulted in his transfer out of the priory. It was only with the death of the previous prior of St Olfryc's that he had been reassigned to the priory. Age, he said, had mellowed him, and he now regretted his actions.

When they asked Prior Ruan about who had access to his chambers, the party also learned that the monastery had been missing some gold and silver candlesticks and goblets, and that the remainder had been kept under lock by the Prior.

At this point they all heard a loud sound followed by a scream coming from the nearby kitchen. Rushing there, they found that the lintel over the kitchen door had fallen, nearly missing Brother Enthel, who spilled the pot of pottage he was holding. Examination of the broken pieces of the lintel showed signs of sabotage, and our heroes volunteered to help investigate, which would also conveniently take them away from their duties in the scriptorium.

The next day our trio kept a close watch on the monks. Giso spied on Dean Leland from outside his office, Whisper feigned interest in the scriptures to spend time with Brother Rosen, and Tom watched Brothers Enthel and Malven from a discrete distance.

In the middle of the morning, Tom noticed Brother Enthel leaving the compound surreptitiously. While he trailed Brother Enthel, he noticed Brother Malven behaving around the tool shed in a suspicious manner. Making the decision to check on Brother Malven first, Tom crept next to the tool shed and saw the young novice rummaging in a corner. After Brother Malven left, Tom entered the tool shed to search it, and found the lost gold and silver items buried behind various tools in one corner. Leaving them in their place, Tom left to try to track Brother Enthel, but the falling snow had covered his tracks.

By now our heroes were on edge and suspected something bad was going to happen. They knew not what it was, but they resolved to keep a watch over the priory all through the night. Whisper stood watch in the scriptorium, while Tom and Giso guarded the two entrances to the priory: the door to the antechamber that led to the garth and the prior's chambers, and the door to the chapel respectively.

At around midnight the storm abated. Then Brother Enthel opened the door from the garth to the antechamber and walked in nonchalantly. Surprised but not suspecting anything sinister, Tom thanked him for the nice dinner he made earlier. Brother Enthel walked slowly over to the door and replied:" I'm glad you enjoyed it... because it was your last meal."

Then he lifted the bar across the door, opened it, and zombies spilled in.

Tom's cries alerted Whisper and Giso, who rushed to aid him. In the confusion Brother Enthel managed to slip past our heroes to enter the chapel and open the other door to the outside - more zombies entered.

While Whisper and Tom fought to contain the zombies in the antechamber and Giso faced off against several zombies alone in the chapel, Brother Enthel led a few zombies into the garth, heading towards the prior's chamber by a different route. The party despatched the zombies, sustaining grievous injuries while doing so, and chased after them.

Tom threw the throwing knife he had found in the wyvern's lair at Brother Enthel, imbuing it with the holy flames of Kellos as he did so... the knife missed its target and stuck in the door to the scriptorium, setting it alight. Tom called out to Brother Rosen, who had thus far been hiding in the dormitory with Brother Malven. Alerted to the fact that his beloved scriptures were in danger, the monk overcame his fear, rushed out, and began shoveling snow onto the burning door, eventually extinguishing the flames!

While Whisper and Giso held off the zombies in the garth, Tom entered the kitchen to find Brother Enthel strangling Prior Ruan - like the older man his forearms bore brand marks too. Tom struck at Brother Enthel's neck, killing him. Searching his body, they found more brand marks, and a tattoo of a skull, marking him as a worshiper of Nodros.

As the party gathered around him, Prior Ruan revealed that Brother Enthel suffered under his tutelage when he was a novice and was made to brand himself many times. When the two met met again on Prior Ruan's return, the older man had apologised and asked for forgiveness, which was given - but now it seemed that Brother Enthel had never forgiven his erstwhile mentor, and had plotted a terrible revenge.

In the aftermath of the chaos Tom took Brother Malven aside and questioned him about the stash in the tool shed. The young monk, already shaken by recent events, spilled the beans: he was a wanted thief who had joined the priory to escape from the law, and was plotting to return to civilisation now that he thought things had blown over. Tom flipped the young man a Gros, and ordered him to depart, which he quickly did.

With only three members left, Prior Ruan realised that the priory could not sustain itself any longer. Packing their scriptures and as much supplies as they and the mule could carry, the monks and our heroes left the priory, and made their way to the nearest village.

Prepping and Running the Game

As this was the Halloween game, I thought it would be a good time to run Retribution by Raging Swan Press, a mystery-horror scenario. This is probably the third or fourth time I have run a "stranded in a monastery in the middle of nowhere in a snowstorm with suspicious monks when murder and fire happens" scenario. It is not an innovative premise, but Retribution excelled in laying out how the GM can slowly rack up the tension in the game.

The original scenario has more content than the scenario I ran, with some details on the village near the monastery, and a whole dungeon section which I left out. It also has more combat encounters and a larger cast of villains and NPCs. The scenario as written would probably require more than the three hours we had, so in the interest of time and make it easier for me and the players to keep track of the NPCs I cut out most of the combat encounters, locales, and trimmed the list of NPCs down to five.

With a mystery scenario it is always difficult to strike a balance between giving the players enough clues to allow them to pinpoint a suspect, and not giving them so much information that the solve the mystery in the first hour. Retribution takes this into account, and has advice on what to do in case your players correctly identify the suspect early in the game.

In this case I think I did too good of a job making Brother Enthel low-key, such that the players suspected Brother Rosen, Dean Leland, and even a Prior Ruan with a split personality, but not Brother Enthel. The last one is an interesting idea which I may actually use for my next monastery mystery game.

For the layout of the priory I chose to use the beautiful 30" x 30" St Olfryc's Priory from Heroic Maps, specifically the winter-themed one, which was perfect for my purpose. I adjusted the plot to the map, which almost proved catastrophic at the critical moment in the game: there were only two main entrances into the priory which Brother Enthel could let the zombies in, and they were each guarded by a PC! If a PC attacked Brother Enthel before he could open the door, the game's climax would not happen.

The scenario had not predicted that the PCs would be guarding the route by which the zombies would attack, no did I expect them to stand guard all night. I literally stood hunched over the map with the figurines placed on them for a whole minute before I decided to let the dice fall where they may be and let Brother Enthel make his entrance. The seconds when I casually moved Brother Enthel's figure across the antechamber to the door and then uttered his line was the high point of the game for me.

I think the players were genuinely surprised by the suddenness of the zombie attack. Giso's player was so taken off guard that he did not think to turn undead until several turns into combat, when the PCs had all taken heavy damage.

The comic moment of the game happened when one of the players noted that the flaming throwing knife might set the scriptorium door on fire. I went with the suggestion and had Tom's player roll for fire damage. When they called to Rosen to help put out the fire, I decided that the natural thing for him to do would be to shovel the snow on the ground onto the burning door. I rolled to see how effective he was, and rolled high: he was a human hurricane, as one of the players put it!

I had not thought about how to end the game, but when one of the players made the remark that the priory would probably be too understaffed to continue, I went with it and had them abandon it for the season. This actually provides me with another site for a possible "holdings" campaign, so if either Giso or Tom's player do decide they want to "settle down", we have a site which they can feel a certain connection to.

Over all it was a fun session with plenty of opportunity for roleplaying. If you are looking for a horror-mystery scenario based in a monastery, I recommend you check Retribution out.