Campaign Diary - Heart of Darkness: The Daughters of Rojukan

[Heart of Darkness]

For the past year I have been running a new campaign with a mostly new group, and writing a diary of how each session went, and after reading some fascinating APs on this forum and others I think its time that I shared mine with you all.

The system is a simplified version of my own Heart of Darkness system (link in signature). It is a character driven Gothic fantasy adventure game, the setting is like a cross between The Dark Tower and Princess Mononoke and the game system is like a cross between Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Exalted, but the write ups are written in a system agnostic manner so that anyone who is familiar with fantasy RPG tropes should have no trouble following along.


As many of you may know, I have had a long history of gaming horror stories that I have shared with these forums, and this game is no exception. Though it is by far the most drama-free group I have ever been in, there has still been more than a couple incidents, and I will close each story with an OOC note about what happened during and after the session as well as my creative inspirations going into it.


I hope you enjoy!

[Heart of Darkness]

The city of Merida is the shining jewel of the Eastern Sea. A vast trade metropolis built across the delta of the great river. Its advantageous position, allowing for easy access to both inland trade along the river as well as oceangoing vessels, made it one of the richest kingdoms in the world and a haven for prosperous merchants and talented craftsmen.

Centuries ago, several devastating earthquakes followed by an outbreak of the Red Death left the city in ruins. The townsfolk clustered onto the densely populated islands near the harbor while the outskirts were left empty and fallow. The portions of the city which were built upon the mainland have been overtaken by wilderness and exist as shadows amongst the greenery, hazy reminders of the past.

And then unto Meridia came Rojukan. Warrior, way-finder, hero; fifty years ago he came from beyond the Endless Sea. In his time, he defeated monsters and wizards, drove pirates and smugglers from the shores, and fought back the armies of savages who would pillage the city and make its riches their own. With each life he saved through the strength of his arms ten more would be inspired to follow in his image. He was free with his money, and every treasure hoard that he pulled from the ancient ruins quickly found its way into the city’s economy, bringing back the trade that had long been absent from the region. He disappeared into the wilderness twenty years ago, and has not been seen since, but his contribution to Meridia endures, and Rojukan’s legend will never die.

Meridia is currently undergoing something of a Renaissance. After the appearance Rojukan, the people have been emboldened to recapture their former glory. The city has become crowded, and its inhabitants are eager to reoccupy the ruins and even form colonies further inland. Furthermore, stories of lost treasure have inspired adventurous young treasure hunters to mount expeditions across the river, and no few enterprising individuals have taken to outfitting such doomed expeditions.

The ruins are not empty, they are home to all manner of outlaws, wild beasts, and inhuman natives who are not eager to relinquish their homes and hunting grounds. And at the same time the warlike Duke Redborne has decided that the city of Meridia would make the perfect addition to his domain.


Setting


Armed Forces
The city has a town watch as well as a small standing army and navy. The army is currently deployed in several fortified outposts on the southern side of the river working to hold off the advance of Duke Redborne’s armies. Mercenaries and bodyguards are common in the city, and most wealthy families maintain their own household guards.
The Troubadour Society is an elite group of soldiers who coordinate the actions of the various security forces, sharing information and allowing them to work more efficiently than they could on their own. Membership in this society is by invitation only and those who make the cut are very proud of their membership, most displaying their panache openly.
There is also a secret police force that works directly for the lord of the city for the purposes of rooting out treason. Membership is confidential, and in reality, they are more spies than actual law enforcement. The secret police can be found in every walk of life and have no responsibilities save for keeping their ears to the ground in exchange for a monthly stipend.

Climate
Meridia has a warm Mediterranean climate. The weather is usually mild and the region is generally snow free year-round save for a few spots in the highlands. The environs around the city itself consist mostly of clear-water estuaries, mangrove swamps, and arboreal forests.

Crime
The legal system of Meridia is built around civil action. Those are convicted of crimes are forced to pay fines to those whom they have wronged or their families. Those who can’t or won’t pay their fines are forced into slavery to work off their debt. Those who are too violent or unstable to be of any use to a slaver and are quickly and quietly hanged.

Government
Meridia is a plutocracy. Positions within the cities’ government are bid on by members of the wealthy merchant families, the winner occupying the position for a period of time (usually ten years) and the proceeds going to fund public works.
The current lord of the city is Andover Starspool, a portly middle-aged man he is by far the wealthiest person in Meridia. His ancestor was a tailor of nearly divine skill who moved into the city when it was still a fractious state controlled by squabbling merchant houses and petty warlords. So great was his talent that each of the city's lords wanted to be his patron, and he skillfully played them against each other, allowing his contracts to be bought out for greater and greater sums until he was the richest man in town, and soon his former patrons would become his servants. He has long since passed from this world, as have his talents, but his estate endures.
Andover is primarily concerned with the running of his business operations and uses his position for the influence it grants him over the other houses and the opportunities that it provides. He leaves most of the actual civic affairs to his ministers.
His son, Lemuel Starspool, is a young man who is will one day succeed his father but is currently more concerned with living a life of luxury. The Starspool estate has recently been approached by Teresa Mackrakken in an effort to begin arranging a marriage between Lemuel and Lucia.

Magic
The wizard Corrigan Geomanthus has the final authority over all magic in Meridia. He does not permit any save for his apprentices to practice sorcery within city limits, and any renegade mages who defy him are driven out in magical duels. It is said that those who refuse to yield are taken to the lighthouse where their souls are removed from their bodies and turned into magical wind-chimes from which Corrigan draws his power.
Geomanthus dwells in the Great Lighthouse. A wonder of the ancient world, the lighthouse stands at the center of the harbor, impossibly tall, and throughout Meridia one can tell time by its shadow. It is said that the lighthouse is enchanted, and that its balconies are far higher than they have any right to be, offering an unparalleled view of the heavens and the far corners of the land.
Soulless children who are born within the city are taken by Corrigan’s elite guard and trained to assist in the hunting down of illegal magic. These soldiers are all well-trained, rarely speak, and personally loyal to Geomanthus. They wear stark black and white robes and heavy iron masks which disguise their own faces with those of beasts and demons.
Corrigan’s position is the only one in the city which is permanent. He has served the lords of the city for fifty years, but he does so at his own pleasure, for none have the courage to force the issue should the wizard ever shirk his duty and openly defy his orders.
Geomanthus is approximately seventy years old. He is tall and thin, with a round face, a silver beard that is long and straight, a bald head, and pale grey eyes. He typically dresses in pale blue robes and wields a slender staff.

Origins
Little is known about Meridia’s early history. It was once part of a larger empire, but the ancient king, Donnatrius the Vile, was overthrown by a coalition of common folk from many different towns who stormed his castle and ended his totalitarian rule before establishing an egalitarian society lacking a congenital aristocracy. Meridia’s golden ago soon followed, born of the economic freedom that resulted from the abolition of the old ways.
 
Religion
Meridia is the land of ten million gods. Though shrines and smalls chapels dot its streets, there are few temples and no great cathedral from which to start an official state religion. People worship each of the Olympians under dozens of different names, often combining faiths from multiple cultures into a single pantheon haphazardly.
Others venerate the primordials, the Norns, the twin goddesses of magic, or the Tao. There are cults and family shrines devoted to kami, demons, devils, celestials, angels, manitou, titans, djinn; even outsiders and their worshippers face no prejudice or censure. There are also many esoteric philosophies and those who worship ascended heroes or the spirits of their ancestors. This is in addition to the thousands of minor gods and spirits to whom people offer minor prayers to each day heedless of their origins or existence.
The city also has its fair share of atheists and philosophers, although these are in the minority as the people of Meridia tend to be a superstitious lot.

Slavery
Slavery is nominally legal in Meridia. It is not, however, chattel slavery, but more similar to indentured servitude. Those who cannot pay off their debts or who cannot care for themselves, such as orphans or the handicapped, are sold into slavery. Slaves are paid minimal wages and do have legal rights to own property, family, and to their own health and wellbeing, though the courts are unlikely to intervene in the case of excessive discipline imposed by a cruel master or upon an unruly slave.

Duke Redborne
Duke Redborne was once a small-time warlord who ruled a walled port city far to the south. Some say that he is a descendant of Donnatrius the Vile or one of his lackey’s, although such a claim might be pure humbug made to either besmirch his reputation or perhaps make his claim seem more legitimate. After a series of extremely lucky victories he was able to conquer several nearby lands and has since been steadily increasing his power and influence. Some say that he has made a pact with a dark power, but this cannot be verified.
Duke Redborne’s forces have taken all the lands south of the great river and have even made a few landings on the north bank. Currently he has his sights set on adding Meridia to his domain, and most believe that it is only a matter of time before the city falls.
The Daughters of Rojukan have been warned to never venture to the south side of the river, for having the grandchildren of the city’s general as his hostages would give the Duke incredible leverage over the defenders, perhaps enough to cause them to shirk their duty and allow his armies to pass into the city unmolested.

Player Characters:
Liam
Liam is a respected craftsman, a tinkerer and metal-worker. He works hard, and though he is not overly gifted in his craft he is more dependable and hardworking than almost anyone in town, and his works are a staple of nearly every house-guard and fighting force in Meridia. He is tough, both mentally and physically, made hard by long hours in the forge, and he is rather handsome when he takes a break from working long enough to groom himself.
Liam doesn’t care much for other people and finds objects much more interesting, he takes great pride in understanding the inner workings of everything he comes across. Recently he has come into possession of a rifle, a legitimate wonder of a lost age, and works tirelessly to figure how to use it, and hopes to one day learn to make his own.
Liam has recently begun courting Liquide, and though he has some reservations about a relationship with someone who is less than half is age he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.
Liam is loyal to a fault, and though he finds magic to be a lazy shortcut to one’s goals and thinks that the idea of traipsing around the wilderness looking for ancient treasures to be pure folly, he can’t bring himself to let any harm come to the girls. This he has chosen to outfit them with his best goods and accompany them into the wild, donning his sturdiest armor and pledging to keep them safe.
He often acts as the voice of reason, working hard to keep them grounded and not to bite off more than they can chew, and often finds himself in opposition to Lucia’s more reckless tendencies and almost suicidal overconfidence.

Attributes:
Agility: Ordinary
Charisma: Ordinary
Dexterity: Ordinary
Endurance: Great
Intelligence: Exceptional
Perception: Ordinary
Strength: Exceptional
Willpower: Great

Skills: Business, Fortitude, Metal Working, Stone Working, Technology
Traits: Honest, Loyal, Naïve, Strong Back
Equipment: Heavy Armor, Mason’s Tools, Maul, Pocket Watch, Rope, Shield, Shotgun, Smith’s Tools, Tinker’s Tools
 


Lina
Lina is the youngest child of Reynard and Teresa. She is the most intellectual of her sisters and also the most responsible. As she is younger and less beautiful than either of her sisters she is not expected to inherit or marry into a position of luxury, and thus her parents paid to keep her well educated, hiring expensive tutors who have trained her as both a scholar and a nurse.
She is short and boyish, with eyes the color of flame and hair the color of blood.
Unusual things have always happened around Lina, particularly involving heat and fire, and there were times when she thought herself capable of controlling the flames. This strange phenomenon would come to a head one night shortly after returning from the Smuggler’s Den, and would soon come to shape her own destiny as well as that of all who dwell in Meridia.

Attributes:
Agility: Ordinary
Charisma: Ordinary
Dexterity: Ordinary
Endurance: Ordinary
Intelligence: Incredible
Perception: Ordinary
Strength: Poor
Willpower: Incredible

Skills: Academics, Gaming, Medical, Pyromancy, Reason, Social
Traits: Born of Flame, Eerie, Empathic, Enlightened, Medium, Poltergeist
Equipment: Doctor’s Bag, Gaming Pieces, Grimoire, Library, Seer’s Crystals, Silk Clothing




Liquade
Liquide is the eldest of Reynard and Teresa’s three children. She is of average height and with the slender but toned build of a gymnast. She is an attractive girl with shoulder length turquoise hair and lavender eyes, signs of the supernatural bloodline that Rojukan brought with him from across the sea, hinting that his status as a demi-god might not be purely honorific.
She trained as a dancer in childhood and her mother and grandmother hoped she would be a great socialite, but instead she snuck away from the city at every opportunity, preferring to climb trees and explore ruins while wandering the wilderness over the endless games that masquerade as high society. She always dressed for comfort rather than to impress.
Her parents often fought with her, trying to get her to be a respectable member of society and focus more on ladylike pursuits, and her youth was a constant state of conflict with her parents as well as with her willful younger sisters.
Liquade’s relationship with her parents has eased somewhat in recent years, when it became apparent that she was barren and that Lucia was the true beauty of the family, her mother’s ambitions for a political marriage were transferred onto the middle daughter
Liquade was always friendly and had an almost supernatural ability to influence people, though she is often impatient with those who talk in circles or refuse to say what they mean.
She has recently begun dating Liam, fascinated by the isolated blacksmith and her ability to draw him out of his shell.

Attributes:
Agility: Exceptional
Charisma: Good
Dexterity: Exceptional
Endurance: Good
Intelligence: Great
Perception: Exceptional
Strength: Good
Willpower: Good

Skills: Acrobatics, Alertness, Animal Handling, Dancing, Marksmanship, Survival, Woodworking
Traits: Hypnotic Gaze, Limber, Sterile
Equipment: Bow, Fletcher’s Tools, Investigator’s Kit, Leather Armor, Rope, Spear, Sunglasses, Survival Tools
 


Lucia
Lucia is Reynard’s middle daughter. She is tall, muscular, and voluptuous; almost unanimously thought to be the most beautiful maiden in Meridia. She is also vain, stubborn, overconfident to a fault, and not nearly as charming or clever as she believes herself to be. Still, her tenacity and sheer willpower are often enough to carry her through when her other abilities fail.
Lucia’s mother and grandmother are working hard to arrange her marriage to Lemuel Starspool, but she has no mind for it, she loves no one but herself. She is determined to reignite her family legacy, to live up to her grandfather’s legend and one day eclipse it with her own.
She has been training in secret with Lone-Wolf Lancaster, and her skill with the blade almost rivals his own, and she is eager for a chance to put her skills to the test in the real world, and thus she eagerly jumped on the opportunity to protect Liquade as she explored the wild, although she isn’t doing it for any grand cause beyond her own glory. Her overwhelming pride and reckless overconfidence are sure to get her into trouble, but she is sure she can handle it.
Lucia has few friends, but she is extremely overprotective of those whom she does care for, and any who wrong them will be sure to feel her wrath.
Lucia suffers from terrible nightmares. She dreams of endless torments and degradations, and in her dreams, she doesn’t know why she is being punished or even who she is. The feelings of guilt and shame when she wakes are even worse.

Attributes:
Agility: Good
Charisma: Good
Dexterity: Good
Endurance: Good
Intelligence: Good
Perception: Good
Strength: Great
Willpower: Great

Skills: Alchemy, Athletics, Expression, Melee, Resolve, Throwing
Traits: Absent Minded, Beauty of Legends, Chi Mastery, Eerie, Fast Metabolism, Obstinate, Ward
Equipment: Alchemy Lab, Lighter, Longsword, Mail Armor, Shield, Throwing Knives



Friends and Family
Anya
Anya is a small and exotically beautiful girl. She is quiet and submissive, but also loyal to a fault and with a streak of inner steel. Her parents were travelers from a distant land who disappeared under mysterious circumstances when she was a very small child. As with many orphans she was to be sold at a slave auction when Lucia spotted her and insisted that Anya be hers, putting the entirety of her considerable will into coercing her parents into purchasing the girl. Anya has been Lucia’s maid-servant ever since, although in many ways she is treated more like a favored pet. Anya is skilled in domestics, cosmetology, and massage, and is a talented harpist.

Firiona
Firiona is the proprietor of the Ostentatious Otter, a small bar and restaurant located near the docks. She has been friends with the Daughters of Rojukan since childhood and the girls spend many evenings at her establishment. She is good natured and easy going, with a soothing voice and inquisitive nature. Firiona is pretty, but not beautiful, with an average build, straight auburn hair, and bright brown eyes.
Firiona’s parents own the tavern, although they are mostly retired at his point. Her only help is Tita, a large woman with dark skin, thick lips, and a fiery temper who dominates the kitchen like a bull in a pen. She is nominally the chef, but also serves as a bouncer should any of the clients overstep their bounds or get lost in their drink.

Gustave Tommerson
Gus Tommerson is another childhood friend of the companions. A jovial young man with cherubic features and boundless enthusiasm. When his merchant parents died and left him their sole heir to their fortune, he decided to purchase a massive warehouse on the docks and renovate it into a store. The Dockside Imports is amongst the largest businesses in town, with polished marble floors, two levels, and numerous statues, tapestries, decorative suits of armor, and works of art lining the walls.
He also employs Lola, a buxom blonde woman, to serve as his maid and keep the place in working order, paying her more than he can afford both because he doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty and enjoys watching the beautiful girl work.
Unfortunately, he purchases far more than he sells, and it is only a matter of time before this overly ambitious venture leaves Gustave penniless.

Isabella Lathien
The wife of Otto Mackrakken, she serves as the matriarch of the entire clan and head of its estate. Even when her husband isn’t away on one of his military sorties, she still commands the servants with an iron fist. She is proud and confident in her position and does not need to throw her weight around or leverage threats to see her will done. She is a talented seamstress in her own right and her wiry frame belies the powerful spirit within.
 
Lancaster
He is known as Lone-Wolf Lancaster to most, and when they are sure he is out of earshot most people fail to meet even this level of decency and simply call him Loony. Lancaster was once the most promising young recruit in a generation, a true prodigy at battle and a virtuoso with his sword.
Years ago, he was fast tracked through the military academy and given his own command, but in his first battle he let his pride get the better of him and decided to attack an entire enemy regiment single-handedly. He lost an eye for his trouble, and without him to lead them the men under his command lost their lives. He was drummed out of the service in disgrace.
Lancaster has spent the years since as a near penniless vagrant, taking work where he can as a bodyguard or enforcer to those few people who aren’t put off by his reputation. Recently he has begun training Lucia in secret, taking her family’s coin and honing her skill with the blade until it is nearly as great as his own. It has yet to be seen if she will put it to better use than he did.
Lancaster is a tall man with a flowing mustache and a single eye. He is lean and greying and tends to wear what remains of his armor and the broad hat that was once a symbol of his status as a Troubadour.

Otto Mackrakken
Otto Mackrakken is the general of Meridia’s armies, one of the few positions that is earned through merit rather money. Otto is a powerful man, with a large muscular belly and broad shoulders. He has severe features, with short gray hair and beard cut in a curt military style. He is wealthy and maintains a large estate, but he is rarely in Meridia, instead spending most of his time on the front. With the threat of Duke Redborne looming ever-present he is more or less a hazy memory in the minds of his grandchildren.
Otto tolerates his granddaughter’s adventures, but only so long as they keep the good of Meridia and their family line first and foremost in their minds. He thinks Lina’s older sisters have been bad influences on the sweet and bookish little girl.

Reynard
Reynard is the son of Rojukan. Nobody knows which of the Meridia’s prostitutes was his mother, for his father visited them all in his day. Indeed, he spent his childhood moving from bawdy house to bawdy house, living with whatever woman his father had last shacked up with before moving on to his next great adventure. Still, the boy was well cared for, Rojukan was generous with his wealth and his son wanted for nothing except perhaps a stable home.
When he was an adolescent, his father disappeared and the young man found himself in charge of a vast legacy. He was a celebrated bon vivant and a legendary ladies’ man, and though he lacked his father’s courage or muscular physique he exceeded the demi-god in both good looks and charm.
Just as his fortunes started to run low, he became enraptured by the young Teresa Mackrakken, daughter of the city’s general, and he made a game of seducing her, and eventually sneaking into her window at night. When she came down pregnant, the jig was up, and he attempted to slip away, but his soon to be parent’s in-law tracked him down and explained the facts to him, that his fortune was nearly gone and that his drinking and gambling debts would soon catch up with him, and he could either let Teresa make an honest man out of him or find himself on the block at the slave auction.
He eventually grew bored with married life and has been spending more and more time trying to find an excuse to be away from the palatial estate that is starting to feel ever more like a prison.

Teresa Mackrakken
Daughter to Otto and Isabella, wife of Reynard, and mother to Lina, Lucia, and Liquade. She was widely considered a great beauty, short and perky, with plump curves, lightly freckled skin, soulful green-brown eyes, long lashes, short dark hair, and full lips. She is just now starting to show her age, with the weight of her life starting to darken his spirits and the worry lines starting to find their way about the edges of her face.
Her daughters think her cruel and overbearing, but in truth she merely worries deeply. She wants them to be safe and provided for, but they want to seek out their fortune in the wider world, where she knows they will only find death and disappointment. Likewise, she is working hard to maintain some connection with a husband whom she fears no longer loves her as much as he once did, or she still does.
She is working hard to arrange a marriage between Lucia and Lemuel Starspool before the former gets herself killed or worse. She spends a great deal of time actively denying the strange things going on around her, instead focusing on more pragmatic affairs.

[Heart of Darkness]

Session One: The Smuggler’s Den

Lucia and Liquade have been planning this expedition for months, an adventure into the abandoned ruins on the far outskirts of Meridia which lie across the river. It took a long time to gather the necessary supplies, and even longer to convince Lina and Liam to accompany them, but now they are ready to set out.

They leave before dawn, quietly creeping out of the hilltop compound that is home to the Mackrakken family and its servants, and by mid-morning they have left the delta behind and have entered the overgrown forest that was once home to the residential district of Meridia before the coming of the Red Death.

They spend the afternoon snooping through the dilapidated remains of houses, hoping to find forgotten treasures, but come away with little besides aged pottery and tarnished flatware. As evening draws near, they happen upon an eccentric middle-aged man who introduces himself as Paul Bahane, who asks if they are heroes, to which Lucia replies strongly in the affirmative.

He is an aging man with deeply tanned skin marked by laugh lines, grayish hair, and a fine brown suit that looks to have last been ironed sometime before the coming of the Red Death. He claims to be from the west and to, in his youth, have been a man of influence and wealth so great that he could have bought all of Meridia if he so chose, but after getting involved in politics and matters of the heart he had his spirit broken, spent years living in darkness, and has now learned to take joy in the simple pleasures of life.

Paul claims that a couple of highwaymen took his money and his tobacco pouch, which can be identified by the Kokopelli etched on it, and the adventurers agree to get it back for him.

The quartet continue to explore the ruins, and eventually come across a pair of ruffians, leaning against an overgrown hillside smoking and laughing. When the Daughters of Rojukan approach them and question them, they are dismissive and claim to have never seen Mr. Bahane, although they do carry to tobacco pouch with the Kokopelli insignia upon, prompting a more aggressive interrogation. The pair become actively hostile when the girls drop their grandfather’s name, but when they move to attack their pipes explode, stunning them and allowing the adventurers to subdue them.

They then discover that the hillside behind them is actually a tarp made to camouflage a tunnel, which Lucia insists they explore. In the darkness they are attacked by a pair of orcish raiders, and though they are surprised these too fall. The group is dismayed to find orcs living this close to Meridia, and worse, Liam finds his own mark on their weapons, indicating that someone is supplying these creatures with Meridian steel.

Lucia and Liquade continue onward with bravado, and at the end of the tunnel the find a large underground chamber consisting of wooden planks built over the water which, presumably, connects to the river. Armed scoundrels of human, orcish, and lizard-folk heritage work to load and unload cargo from skiffs.

The Daughters of Rojukan immediately attack the presumed smugglers, and are able to hold their own against them until Master Sneed overhears the commotion and deigns to intervene. This renegade sorcerer is dressed in rich robes covered in arcane sigils, and is attended by a pair of starving children whom he holds in chains. He quickly conjures up a wall of magical fire, separating Lina from her sisters, and induces thoughts of paranoia in Liam’s mind, causing him to panic at what might happen to his beloved Liquade if they were caught here, and thus Liam signals a retreat, untethering one of the nearby boats and imploring Lucia and Liquade to jump in.

Just as the begins to carry the boat away, a cloaked figure lands in it with them, an elderly man who moves with preternatural quickness and wields a pair of poisoned daggers with masterful skill. He seeks to put an end to the interlopers before they can escape, but a lucky blow from Liam’s hammer knocks him out cold.

The trio returns to Meridia under cover of darkness. They drop off the unconscious assassin with the town guard, who pronounce him dead and identify him as Master Iuz, a famous killer for hire who had been working for the various criminal cartels of Meridia for decades.

They do not wait around to ask for a reward or even explain themselves, instead they make haste for the Great Lighthouse, home to the wizard Corrigan Geomanthus. At first his Quiet Guards, imposing figures bereft of souls and hidden behind stark black and white masks, refuse to let them pass, but they suddenly and unexpectedly relent, accompanying them up the steps for an audience with their master.

At first the old wizard is dismissive of their claims, but an impassioned speech by Liam convinces him to take action, and he opens up a magical gateway to the Smuggler’s Den. After a brief skirmish the Quiet Guard capture Master Sneed and kill off the remaining smugglers before returning to Merida and dealing with the renegade magic user, leaving the Daughters of Rojukan to continue as they see fit.

Lina is grateful for the rescue, although she is bitter about being put into the situation in the first place, and says that she was subjected to Master Sneed’s experiments, though she doesn’t know what exactly he did.

They explore the side rooms. The first is a squalid barracks, furnished with cots, crude tables and footlockers, and bedrolls strewn about the floor. Several unfinished games of chance and half drank bottles of alcohol can be found within, likely the remains of diversions that were abandoned when the smugglers found themselves under attack.

Another side room serves as a stable where livestock is kept. Currently it has a few horses, donkeys, reptilian striders, and a single camel, which Liquade insists on releasing into the wilderness.

Sneed’s office consists of an expensive writing desk which contains numerous encoded contracts dealing with both the underworld in Meridia as well as slavers and raiders who dwell in the wilderness, many of whom are not even human. He gets contraband and expensive goods into the city without a tariff and also moves common goods outside of the city to sell to those who would not be welcomed in its marketplace. He also has several servants, young children who have all been tortured and malnourished, and who Lina can sense have some sort of supernatural potential.

Sneed’s bedroom is opulently furnished despite the squalid conditions and contains a hidden coin safe. Behind a dressing screen one can find a small ladder leading down into a claustrophobic alchemy lab, well equipped but mostly devoid of reagents.

On the other side of the main room they find Master Iuz’s tea garden. It is by far the most picturesque portion of the Smuggler’s Den. It is built under a glass ceiling, now piled up with fallen leaves that give the room a golden orange glow, and contains a living bodhi tree and small babbling brook. An alcove contains what was once a bar and hibachi grill before the outer city fell to ruin, and the interior restaurant and kitchen have been turned into Iuz’s sleeping quarters. From the few documents they can find they see that Iuz had little to do with the daily operations of the smugglers den, mostly using it as a hideout and place to dispose of bodies.

The explorers are able to find a hidden alcove off the main chamber, which contains a rickety ladder leading down into darkness. Below is a long L-shaped corridor. A side door connects to a cluttered storeroom with piles upon piles of contraband. It is home to a colony of Grue, aggressive batlike creatures with a body shape like a winged monkey and an aversion to bright light. They enter through a ventilation shaft and rest here during the day, the smugglers know to only come in at night, and even then, not without several bright torches and backup lanterns lest they be swarmed. The Daughters of Rojukan are soon mobbed by the beasts, who smash their lanterns and swarm them in the dark, but are eventually driven back. The victorious quartet loot the store room for supplies, as well as a valuable crate of black lotus which they can sell in the opium dens of the city for a hefty sum.

At the far end of the basement corridor is a large septic pit crossed by several pontoon bridges. Fed by the river, this pit is where the smuggler’s dump their waste. The water is home to It, a large muck dwelling mass of eyes and tentacles that has come in from the sewers of Meridia. It is semi intelligent and on ambivalent terms with the smugglers, and they use It to dispose of the corpses of their enemies, as well as a few people whom their mob connections in the city need to make disappear. It is content to stay here so long as It is being fed but should the supply of bodies ever dry up it may need to squeeze its way back out into the canals to find food.
Already wounded, the Daughters of Rojukan choose not to fight the monster, and instead agree to continue feeding It.

The last tunnels heads back towards Meridia, but Lucia is the only one willing to explore it, her companions being hurt and exhausted and quite ready to go home. The group splits up, Lucia going alone while the others escort the captive children back into town. After several miles walking through the damp tunnel that appears to be built underneath the great river, Lucia emerges into the back room of the Apothecary of the Imaginary.

The apothecary is one of the few businesses in Meridia permitted to deal in alchemical wares, although it mostly sticks to simple tonics and panaceas as true elixirs are forbidden. The shop is run by Fennic, a slender and anxious middle-aged man, balding and beardless. He is very fastidious and likes to keep his shop clean and in order, and always fears that his business could fail or be taken advantage of by ruffians.

He is incensed when Lucia emerges from his storeroom, but Lucia immediately goes on the offensive, accusing him of working with Master Sneed to import reagents without having to pay a tariff and to give him access to a marketplace where he could sell brews that would be illegal within the city proper.

In exchange for her silence, Lucia demands unfettered access to the smuggler’s tunnels, and Fennic states that he had a similar arrangement with her father once upon a time, though he does not elaborate.

Lucia meets up with her sisters and returns home in the dark of the night; they sleep throughout most of the morning. The next afternoon they attempt to seek out Bahane, but find no sign of him, and eventually they come to the conclusion that it was a con, and that he was somehow in league with the smugglers and looking to lure victims to them.



Two nights later Liam is walking Liquade home after a night on the town, when they see flames emerging from Lina’s room. In a panic, she runs to her little sister, waking Lucia on the way. The three of them put the fire out, and find that Lina refuses to open her eyes; she awoke from a strange unremembered dream and found that anything she looked at burst into flames.

The four of them decide to go to Geomanthus for help. As they sneak out of the compound they pass Reynard as he is coming in, a jug in his hand, and they all mutually agree that Teresa will never find out about any of this.

The wizard agrees to see them, and introduces them to Kithicore. The creature is about the size of a small dog but incredibly light, and looks like a cross between a large lizard and a cat. It has diaphanous wings that float in the air and seem to be made as much of smoke as any solid tissue. Kithicore has scales so black they almost appear blue and shining silver eyes lacking any sort of pupil or iris.

Kithicore licks the flames from Lina’s eyes, and when she opens them her powers are subdued and under control, at least for the moment. Corrigan explains that the strange creature was hatched from an egg that he bought from a girl in the marketplace who claimed they belonged to a dragon. Only one of the clutch has hatched, and what came out was no dragon, at least not one that was anything like the old stories led people to expect. It appears to feed on magic, is able to breathe and fly no matter how thin the air, turns transparent in direct sunlight, and in times of stress can emit a flash of blinding light.

When the girls ask what is happening to Lina, he tells them that Master Sneed awakened something within her. During his interrogation, the rogue magus revealed that he was merely a scholar of the arcane with no true magic of his own, but that he knew how to channel the powers of others, and has been kidnapping or purchasing children with arcane potential and feeding off of them until their minds were broken and they were useless to him, at which point he would sell them to his depraved clients or feed them to It.

When Lucia asks where Sneed is now, Geomanthus dismissively says that he is hanging around somewhere, and the sister’s eyes dart to the various windchimes dangling from the ceiling of the wizard’s study.

Geomanthus goes on to tell them that there was a dormant power within Lina’s soul, an inborn mastery of fire, and that legally he cannot allow her to remain within Meridia. When they ask if there is any way around this, he tells them that only his apprentices are allowed to operate within the city, and that he is not keen on taking the time to train the girl.

Her sisters beg him to make an exception for her, and Geomanthus agrees on one condition. He takes them to the top of his lighthouse, which seems even taller from within, and shows them a dark spot on the mountains that can barely be seen on the horizon. He tells them that his magic cannot penetrate this place, and he needs a group of young adventurers to explore it for him and retrieve the artifact that he knows lies within.

Corrigan tells them that he will take the three of them on as apprentices if they will serve as his agents in the wilderness, seeking out magical secrets for him until the day when their woodcraft is sufficient to reach The Pit and recover whatever forgotten magic lingers within, and bids them to bring Kithicore along.

Liquade asks what he mans by all three of them, and is told that it was not just Lina who had a gift for magic, that she also had the potential to use sorcery to cloud the minds of men, and Corrigan can to teach her to use her powers to their fullest potential.

Likewise, though Lucia has little in the way of spiritual power, she has an overabundance of chi, which he can teach her to harness for martial pursuits as well as teaching her how to transform her own bodily fluids into potent alchemy.

Corrigan lectures Lina on the nature of magic, tells her that it is the language of the spirits that allows them to keep our eternal world ever-vibrant, and of the Goddess who stole the spirit’s fire and gave it to mankind, allowing them to make their own destiny. He states that in mortal hands magic could actually change the nature of reality, but if reality was bent too far it might break completely.

He then describes the nature of harmony and discord, embodied by the twin goddesses Silanthous and Eris, and Lina pledged herself to the worship of Silanthous.

In the coming weeks, Lucia spends a great deal of time in Fennic’s shop, much to his frustration, and begins to pick up some of the secrets of his trade.

The group decides to take over the Smuggler’s Den as their base of operations, Liquaid calling dibs on the tea garden while Lucia claims Sneed’s chambers and the attached alchemy lab, leaving Lina to convert the barracks into a library of her own making.

A fortnight later they are planning their next expedition at the Ostentatious Otter, and are able to pick up the following rumors from the other patrons:

“The city lords had to know about what was taking place in the smuggler's tunnels. No way Geomanthus couldn't detect it. Probably their way of keeping rogue magic users off the streets. I only wonder who all was taking a cut?”

“Once, these lands were all the domain of a dark and terrible power. It was vanquished long ago, but such evil never truly dies, and we should all pray that we don't live to see the day when it rises again.”

“There once was a village in the forest. Sturdy walls and stout people, they held out against all the wild beasts and savage raiders. Then came the plague, and they found that swords were of no use against foes too tiny to strike. So, the people fell, and then the scavengers came in. And then, years later, when the village was found empty and abandoned and devoid of a name, squatters came. The only problem was, the scavengers had never left.”


Commentary:
I left my previous, highly abusive, gaming group in early 2017, and then spend most of my free time reading OSR blogs and lets reads of RPG manuals and wishing I could game. I originally came up with this campaign on the drive back from Fear the Con in June 2017. It was originally supposed to be a sort of sandbox campaign, and I had no idea if or when I would ever run it. Then, almost a full year later, I found myself interviewing for a job in CO, and one of my old gaming friends who lived in the state told me he had a new group and wanted me to run a game for them immediately and, having nothing else to draw from, I went with this.

Eventually the sandbox elements would be dropped as they were more trouble than they were worth and it became a more standard campaign, albeit one where I was experimenting with a lot of new ideas and using rules that were streamlined for simplicity.

The original pitch to the players was simply that the campaign took place in the ruins around a city resembling a cross between medieval Venice and ancient Phoenicia and that they would all be members (by blood, marriage, or bonds of service) of one of the city's noble houses and this is what they gave me to work with.

I was mostly improving the first session, but it went rather well if I do say so myself, well enough for the players to keep coming back every other week for a full year at least!

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Two: Plague Wood Village
There once was a village in the forest. Sturdy walls and stout people, they held out against all the wild beasts and savage raiders. Then came the plague, and they found that swords were of no use against foes too tiny to strike. So, the people fell, and then the scavengers came in. And then, years later, when the village was found empty and abandoned and devoid of a name, squatters came in. The only problem was, the scavengers had never left.

The group arrives in the village at mid-morning on a drizzly gray day. The streets are not paved and are mostly mud, though some old wagon ruts are so deep that they still show through. Feral animals are abundant here, likely the descendants of domesticated livestock, as is a vast murder of crows. Lucia attempts to feed the crows and finds that, unlike most beasts, they do not fear her.
In the center of town is an old slate well standing by a massive firepit. Upon closer inspection, the pit is full of a deep layer of wet ash and numerous charred bones, most of them human, lying just underneath the neatly corded wood. The wood is old enough to have swelled and desiccated over several seasons, but not old enough to have rotted away.
The group decides to visit the public buildings before the domiciles. Their first stop is the town mercantile. A large circular sign lies in the mud outside of what one can only presume was once the general store. It is picked clean, and even the tile floor has been pried up. It is now empty save for a few wooden support beams and the remains of a family of rabbits, likely torn apart by feral dogs.
The only notable find is a bottle of aged brandy hidden in the eaves, brewed by a distillery no one had ever heard of. Based on its location it was probably stashed by the shop-keep’s apprentice.

An old mill, the walls creaking and cracked. Flour slowly falls from split bags on the upper floors and the wind makes odd sounds. The wheel is still, the stream that turns it having been blocked up by beavers two summers ago. The imprint of a large foot, clawed and with webbed toes, can be found in one pile of flour.

A family of raccoons have transformed the tailor’s shop into a gaudy nest, a swamp of mismatched cloth and shiny objects from all over town. There might be something good inside, but it would take forever to get anything useful out of it. The group investigates the outside, pocketing a few shiny objects, but the only thing of value are some high-quality sewing tools.

The schoolhouse was still mostly intact. Brightly colored mold covers the books and scrolls, leaving them illegible. A few tiny shoes and coats can still be found in the closet, and the old lessons are now permanently stained onto the chalkboard. Beneath the floor boards lie the bodies of a woman and three children, dead of suffocation in the dark.

All that remains of the blacksmith’s shop is a few scorched beams and a muddy sump that resembles a peat bog.

An old chapel. This small church has been the victim of deliberate sabotage, the stained-glass windows have been knocked out by rocks, the pews overturned, the fonts of holy water filled with filth, and the wooden statue of the Goddess has been covered with obscene graffiti.

A very faded sign seems to proclaim the tavern to have once been called The Enchantress’ Cauldron. It is in disarray; it has obviously been looted long ago. The furniture is missing or smashed, the cellar has long since been emptied out. Someone used the kitchen very recently. They don’t appear to have been making food.

The butcher’s shop is so old and dirty that one can’t tell where the bloodstains stop and the rust begins. There are only bones, and even these have long since been cracked open to get at the marrow. A thorough investigation reveals they have been broken open by tools but gnawed on by inhuman teeth. Some of the pig’s eye sockets feel as if they are watching. A bag of coins was hidden in a false shelf bottom.

The town hall has collapsed. The bell has fallen from the tower and crushed the stairs beneath it. It might be valuable, but is too heavy to be moved. A ladder found in the alley behind the hall allows access to what remains of the roof, and from here a patch of smoke can be seen rising from the forest.

A row of old peasant hovels hasn’t done will without maintenance, and their daub and wattle walls are more absent than not. There are signs of a struggle as well as a few leather casings that look to have once been used to launch some sort of crude alchemical bomb.

A tall house with a sharply pointed roof, likely belonging to someone who enjoyed the finer things in life if the rotted curtains and tapestries are any indication. Judging by the old discarded trail rations and cut tinder it seems that someone recently camped here and moved on. A bit of graffiti that reads “Who’s afraid of the Big Black Wolf?” is carved into one wall.

A small cozy cottage on the edge of town. Judging by the layout it looks like it was once the home of the local midwife, probably the closest thing they had to a real doctor. There are many jars of dried herbs, but they have been taken over by blight and it would require a madman or a miracle worker to get useful medicine out of them. Still, people seem to have given this place a wide berth and the furniture is still mostly intact.
One cupboard is full of strange mist that quickly dissipates when exposed to open air.

A large two-story home. A broken shutter constantly thumps, filling the house with eerie knocks and bangs, and a brief glimpse of a half seen figure out of the corner of her eye almost spooks Liquade into firing an arrow at her companions.

A ranch house, the far wall buried in a veritable ocean of leaves. It is relatively dry inside and warmed by rotting compost. Each step drives a small stampede of centipedes and silverfish squirming out of the carpet. The owls in the barn watch intently and seem to have some sort of rivalry with the crows that inhabit the rest of the town. An old leather wallet engraved with the image of a pristine mountain lake is discovered under an old work bench.

A leaning house, where the shadows slowly drift across the floor like dancers. While searching the house a Chon-Chon, or flying head, lunges out of a closet and attaches itself to Liquade’s throat. Her companions are able to tear it off and stomp it to death, but not before it inflicts several severe bite wounds. On the floor of the closet is an old wedding ring still attached to a fleshy hand.

Having searched the village and found nothing but a few valuables missed by the scavengers, the Daughters of Rojukan decide to investigate the smoke in the forest. The find a recently raided caravan. Most of the foodstuffs as well as the bodies of the defenders have been taken, but many of the easier to transport valuables, including coins, are left behind at the site. Liquide tracks the attackers deep into a nearby swamp and finds two men and a woman, Kord, Dinaheir, and Glint, naked and bound to old stumps. They are wearing lots of jewelry and their skins have been daubed with muddy runes.

The party frees them and demands the jewelry as payment for their rescue, which the hostages are happy to give. They suggest that they wash the mud off, and when Kord moves to a nearby pool to do so, something large disturbs the water, and a massive toad-dragon emerges. The creature is mostly amphibian, but larger than an elephant, with a whip-like tail, fearsome claws and teeth, and even stubby wings.

Lucia pushes Kord back and moves to protect him, only to find herself wrapped in the creature’s barbed tongue. The venomous coating does little but numb her skin, and she fights fiercely to avoid being eaten, but cannot get a clean strike to cut herself free.

Liquide and Liam fire several times at the beast but fail to penetrate its thick hide. Liam moves forward, risking falling and drowning in the quagmire, and drives his hammer down on the beast’s head, smashing its sinus and spraying the humans with blood, venom, and mucus. Having gotten the creature’s attention he slowly backs onto land, fighting defensively, so that Liquade and Lucia can flank the creature while Lina brings down balefire onto its slimy hide. Lucia exhausts herself trying to kill the beast, but in the end, it is Liam’s hammer that finally brings it down.

The group is able to find a large amount of gaudy jewelry in the swamp, and they are sure that there is much more than they can’t get it beneath the muck, and Liquide is able to skin the unburnt portions of the amphibians hide to make a staggeringly effective filter.

The survivors of the caravan are dressed in the group’s spare clothes while they explain that strange creatures came out of the mist and attacked their caravan. The living beings were taken to be sacrificed in the swamp, while the dead were carried along a different path. Liquide builds a blind for the prisoners to hide behind while they track down the rest of the attackers.

They come to a village deep in the swamps inhabited by what Lina recognizes as Fauth, a semi-mythical race of amphibious humanoids with long heads, thick tails, and an affinity for fog. The group immediately attacks, hoping to press the element of surprise, and are met by only three warriors, large males with horns emerging from their slimy scalps.

As the two groups clash the other fauth grab clubs and knives and move to encircle the invaders, and Lina conjures a half ring of fire around them. Liam is knocked to the ground, and Lucia attempts to ward off the encroaching villagers with wide careless swings of her great-sword, but as she slips in the muck her backstroke clips Liquide’s sternum, sender the elder sister down bleeding out in the mud.

Liquide is still able to cloud the mind of one of the warriors, and with its help Lucia and Liam are able to slay the other two, while Lina animates burning swamp gas into a pair of blazing balls that move about and burn the rest of the attacking fauth to death.

As Lina tends to Liquide’s wounds, Liam and Lucia move throughout the village, taking what treasures the remaining mothers and children possess. The village matriarch, an ancient crone with matted gray hair, emerges and speaks with them in broken Terran. The group tells them to leave, they will be returning with soldiers from Meridia soon. The matriarch tells them that her village is broken, they will not survive a trip through the wilderness, and by the time the children are ready to take up arms against the humans they will likely be long dead. In exchange for keeping the village secret, she shares a secret of her own, of a hidden complex beneath the house in the village with the pointed roof. She claims that her people found it some time ago, but the human raiders who dwelt within killed several fauth and forced the rest to retreat.

The humans leave the fauth in the swamp and return to the village. They find the secret entrance, but decide not to breach it yet, instead placing a heavy stone table atop it to seal the entrance and return to Meridia with the prisoners.

After healing up, the Daughters of Rojukan returns to open the secret passage. The area below is dark and covered with heavy dust and grime. The walls are crème colored masonry and though the place is obviously old and deserted it is not completely abandoned.

A pool of silver liquid lies in front of the group, with narrow boards over it. Kithicore, who has been bored with the whole affair up until this point, begins to act intoxicated in its presence. As the group crosses, they see that the stone around the pool has started to actually fuse into black glass which climbs up the walls.

The group moves through a shattered glass door into a large chamber with a faint glimmer of holy energy in the air and then on to a group of corridors to the left. They find a desiccated corpse and when they draw close the group begins to feel ill and bleed from their faces. Lucia tosses her lantern on the corpse and the group backs off.

As they search the corridors, they find several syringes and alchemical devices as well as pools of long dried blood. They also find a safe that Liam is not able to open, adorned with an insignia they cannot identify. While working through the area the group sees and hears someone else lurking at the edge of the lantern light.

In one room they find another corpse lying on a ripped mattress, and the bleeding and feeling of sickness returns. Unlike the first corpse, this one rises to its feet, an apparent zombie, and lurches forward. Liam and Lucia start to fight it, but then notice that it is somehow healing its wounds almost as fast as they can be inflicted, and the group falls back to the main chamber.

Liam moves across the large corridor and discovers a great silver orrery, a hanging map of the solar system, and he recognizes over a dozen celestial bodies unknown to Meridia, but when he moves closer to inspect its workings he begins to bleed again and decides to move back.

Lina and Liam want to leave, Liquide and Lucia want to continue. Lina cannot be moved, although she can be persuaded to part with her lantern while she hangs back in the main chamber, summoning a conflagration to light her surroundings and block off the corpse haunted side corridors. Lucia moves ahead, with Liam and Liquide following a good distance behind.

The next large chamber has numerous rat’s nests made from smashed furniture and shredded paper. Among the detritus are several odd finds, smashed vials, odd powers, a three eyed doll, some stones with strange fey runes carved on them, and a small living tree somehow growing in the dark which Liquide is fairly certain is not native to the region. One side door is barricaded shut, the other leads into a library.
The low shelves are empty, and though the paper is missing some of the covers are still lying on the floor, some titles are “Shards of Nephiroth, Fractured Mirrors, Treatise on Chaos, Aspects of a Chaotic Mind, Artifacts of the Necrotic, The Broken Arrow, Properties of Unliving Tissue, Precipices of Astral Existence, The Eighth Dimension, The Sixteenth School of Magic, Observations upon Eighty Herbs, The Five Chakras”
Lucia will later take them to Corrigan Geomanthus who will proclaim that of those that he is familiar with, only one is actually of any worth, the others are all the products of hokey religions and mystery cults.

The main hallway continues on a bit before being blocked off by a thin stone wall which Liam identifies as being supernatural, it was grown out of the floor and not the product of natural stone or human craftsmanship. A narrow hole has been chiseled out of its middle.

Beyond lies an alchemical lab and a surgical theater, both very old and in bad shape. There are dead bodies here, three human and four fauth. Two fauth were bitten to death, one bled to death, and the fourth has no visible wounds.

The main hall ends here. The leftmost corridor is covered in spider webs, which Liquide hesitantly inspects and identifies as those of the torpor spider, giant arachnids which are known for going into suspended animation and attacking people who violate their lair centuries after it was sealed. They find two such spiders, and when they approach, they burst, revealing themselves to be empty exoskeletons filled with hundreds of tiny hatchlings.

Liquade retreats, while Lucia does her best to stomp and cleave the hatchlings, being bitten several times before Liam clears the rest using the flaming enchantment which Lina placed on his mace to allow him to see in the dark. Beyond they find several egg sacks, some hatched and some unhatched, and surmise that the hatchlings were disturbed by some of the fauth and then, having no source of food, fed upon their own sleeping parents.

The still intact eggs are carefully wrapped up for transport to the markets of Meridia. A single zombie is in these corridors, trapped in webs, and the explorers fill it with arrows, throwing knives, and shotgun pellets. Only when it is thoroughly dead and dismembered do they approach and find its treasure, a great jade book written in an unfamiliar script with a golden flower emblem on the front.

The right corridor contains a well, which likely is connected to the one in the town above as some sunlight filters down through the ceiling. There are several jars of tar and mercury, as well as some containing old chemicals and hunks of jade and amber. An old industrial incinerator is built into the wall and inside are a few scraps of parchment on which two letters can be made out.

Session Two: Plague Wood Village
There once was a village in the forest. Sturdy walls and stout people, they held out against all the wild beasts and savage raiders. Then came the plague, and they found that swords were of no use against foes too tiny to strike. So, the people fell, and then the scavengers came in. And then, years later, when the village was found empty and abandoned and devoid of a name, squatters came in. The only problem was, the scavengers had never left.

The group arrives in the village at mid-morning on a drizzly gray day. The streets are not paved and are mostly mud, though some old wagon ruts are so deep that they still show through. Feral animals are abundant here, likely the descendants of domesticated livestock, as is a vast murder of crows. Lucia attempts to feed the crows and finds that, unlike most beasts, they do not fear her.
In the center of town is an old slate well standing by a massive firepit. Upon closer inspection, the pit is full of a deep layer of wet ash and numerous charred bones, most of them human, lying just underneath the neatly corded wood. The wood is old enough to have swelled and desiccated over several seasons, but not old enough to have rotted away.
The group decides to visit the public buildings before the domiciles. Their first stop is the town mercantile. A large circular sign lies in the mud outside of what one can only presume was once the general store. It is picked clean, and even the tile floor has been pried up. It is now empty save for a few wooden support beams and the remains of a family of rabbits, likely torn apart by feral dogs.
The only notable find is a bottle of aged brandy hidden in the eaves, brewed by a distillery no one had ever heard of. Based on its location it was probably stashed by the shop-keep’s apprentice.

An old mill, the walls creaking and cracked. Flour slowly falls from split bags on the upper floors and the wind makes odd sounds. The wheel is still, the stream that turns it having been blocked up by beavers two summers ago. The imprint of a large foot, clawed and with webbed toes, can be found in one pile of flour.

A family of raccoons have transformed the tailor’s shop into a gaudy nest, a swamp of mismatched cloth and shiny objects from all over town. There might be something good inside, but it would take forever to get anything useful out of it. The group investigates the outside, pocketing a few shiny objects, but the only thing of value are some high-quality sewing tools.

The schoolhouse was still mostly intact. Brightly colored mold covers the books and scrolls, leaving them illegible. A few tiny shoes and coats can still be found in the closet, and the old lessons are now permanently stained onto the chalkboard. Beneath the floor boards lie the bodies of a woman and three children, dead of suffocation in the dark.

All that remains of the blacksmith’s shop is a few scorched beams and a muddy sump that resembles a peat bog.

An old chapel. This small church has been the victim of deliberate sabotage, the stained-glass windows have been knocked out by rocks, the pews overturned, the fonts of holy water filled with filth, and the wooden statue of the Goddess has been covered with obscene graffiti.

A very faded sign seems to proclaim the tavern to have once been called The Enchantress’ Cauldron. It is in disarray; it has obviously been looted long ago. The furniture is missing or smashed, the cellar has long since been emptied out. Someone used the kitchen very recently. They don’t appear to have been making food.

The butcher’s shop is so old and dirty that one can’t tell where the bloodstains stop and the rust begins. There are only bones, and even these have long since been cracked open to get at the marrow. A thorough investigation reveals they have been broken open by tools but gnawed on by inhuman teeth. Some of the pig’s eye sockets feel as if they are watching. A bag of coins was hidden in a false shelf bottom.

The town hall has collapsed. The bell has fallen from the tower and crushed the stairs beneath it. It might be valuable, but is too heavy to be moved. A ladder found in the alley behind the hall allows access to what remains of the roof, and from here a patch of smoke can be seen rising from the forest.

A row of old peasant hovels hasn’t done will without maintenance, and their daub and wattle walls are more absent than not. There are signs of a struggle as well as a few leather casings that look to have once been used to launch some sort of crude alchemical bomb.

A tall house with a sharply pointed roof, likely belonging to someone who enjoyed the finer things in life if the rotted curtains and tapestries are any indication. Judging by the old discarded trail rations and cut tinder it seems that someone recently camped here and moved on. A bit of graffiti that reads “Who’s afraid of the Big Black Wolf?” is carved into one wall.

A small cozy cottage on the edge of town. Judging by the layout it looks like it was once the home of the local midwife, probably the closest thing they had to a real doctor. There are many jars of dried herbs, but they have been taken over by blight and it would require a madman or a miracle worker to get useful medicine out of them. Still, people seem to have given this place a wide berth and the furniture is still mostly intact.
One cupboard is full of strange mist that quickly dissipates when exposed to open air.

A large two-story home. A broken shutter constantly thumps, filling the house with eerie knocks and bangs, and a brief glimpse of a half seen figure out of the corner of her eye almost spooks Liquade into firing an arrow at her companions.

A ranch house, the far wall buried in a veritable ocean of leaves. It is relatively dry inside and warmed by rotting compost. Each step drives a small stampede of centipedes and silverfish squirming out of the carpet. The owls in the barn watch intently and seem to have some sort of rivalry with the crows that inhabit the rest of the town. An old leather wallet engraved with the image of a pristine mountain lake is discovered under an old work bench.

A leaning house, where the shadows slowly drift across the floor like dancers. While searching the house a Chon-Chon, or flying head, lunges out of a closet and attaches itself to Liquade’s throat. Her companions are able to tear it off and stomp it to death, but not before it inflicts several severe bite wounds. On the floor of the closet is an old wedding ring still attached to a fleshy hand.

Having searched the village and found nothing but a few valuables missed by the scavengers, the Daughters of Rojukan decide to investigate the smoke in the forest. The find a recently raided caravan. Most of the foodstuffs as well as the bodies of the defenders have been taken, but many of the easier to transport valuables, including coins, are left behind at the site. Liquide tracks the attackers deep into a nearby swamp and finds two men and a woman, Kord, Dinaheir, and Glint, naked and bound to old stumps. They are wearing lots of jewelry and their skins have been daubed with muddy runes.

The party frees them and demands the jewelry as payment for their rescue, which the hostages are happy to give. They suggest that they wash the mud off, and when Kord moves to a nearby pool to do so, something large disturbs the water, and a massive toad-dragon emerges. The creature is mostly amphibian, but larger than an elephant, with a whip-like tail, fearsome claws and teeth, and even stubby wings.

Lucia pushes Kord back and moves to protect him, only to find herself wrapped in the creature’s barbed tongue. The venomous coating does little but numb her skin, and she fights fiercely to avoid being eaten, but cannot get a clean strike to cut herself free.

Liquide and Liam fire several times at the beast but fail to penetrate its thick hide. Liam moves forward, risking falling and drowning in the quagmire, and drives his hammer down on the beast’s head, smashing its sinus and spraying the humans with blood, venom, and mucus. Having gotten the creature’s attention he slowly backs onto land, fighting defensively, so that Liquade and Lucia can flank the creature while Lina brings down balefire onto its slimy hide. Lucia exhausts herself trying to kill the beast, but in the end, it is Liam’s hammer that finally brings it down.

The group is able to find a large amount of gaudy jewelry in the swamp, and they are sure that there is much more than they can’t get it beneath the muck, and Liquide is able to skin the unburnt portions of the amphibians hide to make a staggeringly effective filter.

The survivors of the caravan are dressed in the group’s spare clothes while they explain that strange creatures came out of the mist and attacked their caravan. The living beings were taken to be sacrificed in the swamp, while the dead were carried along a different path. Liquide builds a blind for the prisoners to hide behind while they track down the rest of the attackers.

They come to a village deep in the swamps inhabited by what Lina recognizes as Fauth, a semi-mythical race of amphibious humanoids with long heads, thick tails, and an affinity for fog. The group immediately attacks, hoping to press the element of surprise, and are met by only three warriors, large males with horns emerging from their slimy scalps.

As the two groups clash the other fauth grab clubs and knives and move to encircle the invaders, and Lina conjures a half ring of fire around them. Liam is knocked to the ground, and Lucia attempts to ward off the encroaching villagers with wide careless swings of her great-sword, but as she slips in the muck her backstroke clips Liquide’s sternum, sender the elder sister down bleeding out in the mud.

Liquide is still able to cloud the mind of one of the warriors, and with its help Lucia and Liam are able to slay the other two, while Lina animates burning swamp gas into a pair of blazing balls that move about and burn the rest of the attacking fauth to death.

As Lina tends to Liquide’s wounds, Liam and Lucia move throughout the village, taking what treasures the remaining mothers and children possess. The village matriarch, an ancient crone with matted gray hair, emerges and speaks with them in broken Terran. The group tells them to leave, they will be returning with soldiers from Meridia soon. The matriarch tells them that her village is broken, they will not survive a trip through the wilderness, and by the time the children are ready to take up arms against the humans they will likely be long dead. In exchange for keeping the village secret, she shares a secret of her own, of a hidden complex beneath the house in the village with the pointed roof. She claims that her people found it some time ago, but the human raiders who dwelt within killed several fauth and forced the rest to retreat.

The humans leave the fauth in the swamp and return to the village. They find the secret entrance, but decide not to breach it yet, instead placing a heavy stone table atop it to seal the entrance and return to Meridia with the prisoners.

After healing up, the Daughters of Rojukan returns to open the secret passage. The area below is dark and covered with heavy dust and grime. The walls are crème colored masonry and though the place is obviously old and deserted it is not completely abandoned.

A pool of silver liquid lies in front of the group, with narrow boards over it. Kithicore, who has been bored with the whole affair up until this point, begins to act intoxicated in its presence. As the group crosses, they see that the stone around the pool has started to actually fuse into black glass which climbs up the walls.

The group moves through a shattered glass door into a large chamber with a faint glimmer of holy energy in the air and then on to a group of corridors to the left. They find a desiccated corpse and when they draw close the group begins to feel ill and bleed from their faces. Lucia tosses her lantern on the corpse and the group backs off.

As they search the corridors, they find several syringes and alchemical devices as well as pools of long dried blood. They also find a safe that Liam is not able to open, adorned with an insignia they cannot identify. While working through the area the group sees and hears someone else lurking at the edge of the lantern light.

In one room they find another corpse lying on a ripped mattress, and the bleeding and feeling of sickness returns. Unlike the first corpse, this one rises to its feet, an apparent zombie, and lurches forward. Liam and Lucia start to fight it, but then notice that it is somehow healing its wounds almost as fast as they can be inflicted, and the group falls back to the main chamber.

Liam moves across the large corridor and discovers a great silver orrery, a hanging map of the solar system, and he recognizes over a dozen celestial bodies unknown to Meridia, but when he moves closer to inspect its workings he begins to bleed again and decides to move back.

Lina and Liam want to leave, Liquide and Lucia want to continue. Lina cannot be moved, although she can be persuaded to part with her lantern while she hangs back in the main chamber, summoning a conflagration to light her surroundings and block off the corpse haunted side corridors. Lucia moves ahead, with Liam and Liquide following a good distance behind.

The next large chamber has numerous rat’s nests made from smashed furniture and shredded paper. Among the detritus are several odd finds, smashed vials, odd powers, a three eyed doll, some stones with strange fey runes carved on them, and a small living tree somehow growing in the dark which Liquide is fairly certain is not native to the region. One side door is barricaded shut, the other leads into a library.
The low shelves are empty, and though the paper is missing some of the covers are still lying on the floor, some titles are “Shards of Nephiroth, Fractured Mirrors, Treatise on Chaos, Aspects of a Chaotic Mind, Artifacts of the Necrotic, The Broken Arrow, Properties of Unliving Tissue, Precipices of Astral Existence, The Eighth Dimension, The Sixteenth School of Magic, Observations upon Eighty Herbs, The Five Chakras”
Lucia will later take them to Corrigan Geomanthus who will proclaim that of those that he is familiar with, only one is actually of any worth, the others are all the products of hokey religions and mystery cults.

The main hallway continues on a bit before being blocked off by a thin stone wall which Liam identifies as being supernatural, it was grown out of the floor and not the product of natural stone or human craftsmanship. A narrow hole has been chiseled out of its middle.

Beyond lies an alchemical lab and a surgical theater, both very old and in bad shape. There are dead bodies here, three human and four fauth. Two fauth were bitten to death, one bled to death, and the fourth has no visible wounds.

The main hall ends here. The leftmost corridor is covered in spider webs, which Liquide hesitantly inspects and identifies as those of the torpor spider, giant arachnids which are known for going into suspended animation and attacking people who violate their lair centuries after it was sealed. They find two such spiders, and when they approach, they burst, revealing themselves to be empty exoskeletons filled with hundreds of tiny hatchlings.

Liquade retreats, while Lucia does her best to stomp and cleave the hatchlings, being bitten several times before Liam clears the rest using the flaming enchantment which Lina placed on his mace to allow him to see in the dark. Beyond they find several egg sacks, some hatched and some unhatched, and surmise that the hatchlings were disturbed by some of the fauth and then, having no source of food, fed upon their own sleeping parents.

The still intact eggs are carefully wrapped up for transport to the markets of Meridia. A single zombie is in these corridors, trapped in webs, and the explorers fill it with arrows, throwing knives, and shotgun pellets. Only when it is thoroughly dead and dismembered do they approach and find its treasure, a great jade book written in an unfamiliar script with a golden flower emblem on the front.

The right corridor contains a well, which likely is connected to the one in the town above as some sunlight filters down through the ceiling. There are several jars of tar and mercury, as well as some containing old chemicals and hunks of jade and amber. An old industrial incinerator is built into the wall and inside are a few scraps of parchment on which two letters can be made out.


My beloved Athaya,
It’s gone bad. Really bad. At this point I am having doubts about the whole affair. I want out, I want nothing more than to come home to you, but I just can’t. If I give up now that means everything I have done, all of the work, all of the lives, it will all be for nothing.
Of course, if I had known what that thing would have asked of me in exchange for the book, I never would have gone down this path in the first place.
Meridia is ablaze with the Red Death. I have to persevere. I might be their only hope for a vaccine. If I succeed, I will have saved thousands, maybe millions. If I fail, well, the consequences should be contained.
Succeed or fail, there isn’t much time left. If I triumph, we should be married in the Fall. If I don’t, well, just know that I loved you more than anything.
Yours in life,
Doctor Ignibard Oliss


Most esteemed Professor Oliss,
At first, I was reluctant to come all the way out here, but the Duke was rather insistent about the whole affair, and now I find myself rather pleased that I did. I grew up in a place like this, a small isolated town in the forest surrounded on all sides by adventure and the unknown. Of course, the most wonderful thing about the world today is that every town is a small isolated town in the forest surrounded on all sides by adventure and the unknown.
You don’t really care about that? Do you? Well, down to business then. I was able to acquire the book for you, as well as the samples, and the necrotic cube. You will also notice an orb in with the others, one you didn’t ask for, and one you need not concern yourself with. Just understand that if you decide to back out on our deal it will be watching you, I will be watching you, and what happens then, well, I wouldn’t want to give away the surprise.
Much Love,
Abyad Alsadr
Court-Magus to the house of Perceval



After examining the area, the group moves back to the central hallway and unbarricade the door. Inside they find another series of corridors and side rooms, but once Lucia gets to the first junction, she finds herself surrounded by at least half a dozen undead. She quickly falls back and Liquide and Liam waste no time in making for the exit.

The creatures stop momentarily at the edge of the main corridor, displaying that they have enough intelligence to remember the holy power that once permeated the area and to see that it no longer functions. This does give Liam enough time to cross the narrow bridge without slipping, and the group then pulls up the boards and takes a sample of the silver liquid.

Lina attempts her strongest spell yet, an attempt to flood the complex with lava and purge the infection, but something goes wrong as she casts magic across the silver pool and the area begins to chill, so cold that the blood on her companion’s faces freezes solid. A moment later, great ice crystals erupt from the walls. The group barely makes it up the rime slicked stairs before the area behind them is frozen solid, and a blizzard buries the entirety of the Plague-Wood Village under thick drifts of snow.

By the time they return to Meridia, a sample of the silver liquid has transformed its glass bottle into wood. Geomanthus can detect no magic in it, and Fennic claims it matches the chemical properties of no known element.

Zarathustra identifies the jade book as a medical text written in cipher, the script is that of the lizard folk and the language is that of the ancient naga. It will take someone with a great deal more knowledge of medicine than Lina, or indeed anyone else in Meridia, possesses to make sense of it.

The Daughters of Rojukan also travel to the Sacellum, a small shop which lies a bit off the beaten path, far from the main market, but is the closest thing Meridia has to a public library, as well as a trading house where books, both common and rare, are bought and sold.

The lone librarian is Zarathustra, a scrawny and clean-shaven man in his late teens with a pony tail and wire framed spectacles. He is a chain smoker and always sweaty and feverish, but he has a great deal of knowledge about the goings on both within Meridia and the world at large.

When Lucia shows the jade tome to him, he is able to identify the language as that of the lizard-folk and the script as that of the naga, but it is written in some sort of cipher which he is far too overworked to translate as he is solely responsible for copying over rotten tomes or those written in dead languages into something more useful. Eventually Lucia is able to convince him to do so in exchange for several literate slaves who can help him in his more mundane endeavors. What he comes back with is a medical text that is far beyond his or Lina’s understanding.


Rumors:


Duke Redborne is winning the war. Don't let the propaganda fool you. All the lands south of the river are his. It is only a matter of time before his forces take the city, and then the old guard will find themselves at the end of a rope. Make sure you know where your loyalties lie when that day comes.

So, there is a story going around that some kids were out raising hell on the moors a fortnight ago when they saw a beautiful woman floating beneath the waters of a pond, staring serenely up at them. They ran home scared, but now some of the lads are out there thinking that just maybe it might be the Lady of the Lake handing out magical swords just like in the old stories. Fools. You want to put a stop to it?

Totenfanger. No, don’t make me spell it. No, don’t correct my pronunciation either. I am trying to warn you. Maybe your parents already told you about it when you were kids, but I don’t think you believed. Granny Clank-Trap made it, but she can’t control it. Great big guy, all dead on the outside, but he still has work to do. If he catches you, clack-smack, right in his trap. And once he has you in his cage, he takes you off to do god knows what. I don’t want to find out, and neither do you!


Commentary:

Our first real session. It went pretty well, although the divided attitude towards risk in the party, with Liquade and Lucia's players being overly reckless and Lina and Liam's players being overly cautious, first started to rear its head here, and would continue to create some OOC conflict throughout the campaign.

Some readers will not that the second half of the adventure contains portions of the Complex of the Zombies micro-adventure by Justin Alexander. This is the only actual module in the entire campaign, although there are a few elements inspired by OSR blogs and "Let's read the monster manual" threads; this is because I was intrigued by the adventure that claimed to be able to make zombies scary in a heroic adventure RPG, and a friend had bet me that it didn't. In truth it actually worked a bit too well; the moment the zombies started healing the players noped the heck out of there rather than pressing on.

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Three: Totenfanger
Totenfanger. No, don’t make me spell it. No, don’t correct my pronunciation either. I am trying to warn you. Maybe your parents already told you about it when you were kids, but I don’t think you believed. Granny Clank-Trap made it, but she can’t control it. Great big guy, all dead on the outside, but he still has work to do. If he catches you, clack-smack, right in his trap. And once he has you in his cage, he takes you off to do god knows what. I don’t want to find out, and neither do you!

The group is not quite sure where they want to go for their next expedition, Lucia wishes to pursue the rumors of the Lady of the Lake being seen in the moors, while Liam wants to pursue the Totenfanger as it might be constructed from some lost technology that he can study and perhaps reverse engineer. As they are debating, Lina shows up with a strange boy.

He is in his early teens, with broad black pupils and a malformed jaw. Lina tells the party that this is her new slave. Apparently he lost to her in a high stacks gambling match, and when she called his bluff she found out that he was practically penniless, and would be coming with her until he had paid off the two bags of gold that he owed her.

The boy speaks in a thickly accented voice, made all the stranger by his deformed jaw, which he normally covers up with a black bandana. He introduces himself as Anabul, and states that he has grown up on orphan on the streets of Meridia all his life, always one step ahead of the rat-man. He knows how to get by on the streets, how to remain unseen, and how to steal to survive, but recently he has been pursued by strange figures in black robes, and he could never tell if they were men or ghosts.

At this point he goes on to explain that he can see ghosts, as well as see in the dark, due to his eyes, and that he can hear the ghosts too. He shows them his only real possession, a seashell necklace, and claims that sometimes he can hear his mother’s voice speaking to him from within, though Lina doubts this claim.

Lina purchases Anabul gear for his journey; traveling clothes, a new cloak and boots, a pair of daggers, a crossbow, and a magnificent suit of leather armor, all of which she assures him will be added to his debt.


The group decides to find someone who can tell them more about the Totenfanger, and manage to track down an old militiaman, the only survivor of his patrol. He explains that the monster was allegedly built by the old witch of the wilds, Granny Clanktrap, and it is from this monster that she takes her title. It was used to kidnap people and bring them to her, but eventually she lost control of it and it now simply devours the souls of those who stand in its path. Now it wanders the wilderness in regular mechanical patterns, and he can show them how to find it, though he doesn’t think they will accomplish anything more than getting themselves killed.

The Daughters of Rojukan set out into the wilderness with Anabul in tow, and Liam is able to construct a crude pit trap in what he believes to be the Totenfanger’s path. A few hours later they spot the monster, a decaying hulk nearly two stories tall, wearing a coat made from the still living skins of its victims, their tiny hands and jaws always grasping for the warmth of life. It holds a long chain in one hand, a crude bear-trap dragging on the end making a furrow in the mud.

Upon seeing the Daughters of Rojukan, the monster charges straight towards them, soon becoming mired up to its waist in Liam’s pit. Lucia immediately charges the Totenfanger, but its chain-trap moves with a mind of its own and ensnares her, and then a moment later its coat draws open to reveal a large metal cage where its ribs should be. The bars snap shut, trapping Lucia inside with the constant moaning and wailing of the tiny faces sewn into the inside of its rotting coat.

Liquade fires arrow after arrow into the creature, Liam engages it with his hammer, and Lina uses her magic to set it alight. Anabul, meanwhile, climbs onto its back and disables the mechanisms of the trap, freeing Lucia. Though she is sapped of all energy, she fights on with her sword until she literally passes out from exhaustion.

Liam is next into the trap, and Anabul works to free him despite Liquade’s arrows whizzing past his head. Lina decides to change tactics and summons a third circle fire elemental named Kindlesnap and contracts the spirit to fan the flames that now engulf the rotting giant.

Liam is eventually freed, but by then he is already drained. The effects of his life force upon the giant are profound, what was once a desiccated cadaver could now pass for something not more than a few hours deceased. It grabs Liquade next, but fortunately the giant succumbs to the fire before it can finish her off. Its pieces are still alive though, and there is talk about returning the creature’s head, still staring and mouthing unintelligible words, back to Meridia as a trophy, but instead they decide to simply toss the pieces into the smoldering pit and leave them under Kindlesnap’s care.



Once Liam and Lucia regain consciousness, the group decides to head out into the wetlands. The first few days of their search are uneventful, but eventually they are able to find a woman living alone in a shack in the swamp, and when they question her about lying in a pond, she claims that she does sometimes commune with the water in such a manner.

She introduces herself as Hyacinth, Witch of the Moors, and invites the travelers to come into her hut and share in her bland stew. She is a tall woman in her late twenties, with dour features, round cheeks, and lanky chestnut hair. Her demeanor is gloomy and pessimistic, and when the group asks her why she is so melancholy, she tells them of her dreary existence living alone in a hovel in the swamp.

Lucia asks why she stays out here, and Hyacinth tells them that witches are banned from entering Meridia, and that this place’s energy suits her. Lina can indeed feel an unusual magical aura about this place, though she can’t quite identify it.

Anabul hears the voice of his mother telling him to be on his best behavior, for the witch could be a powerful ally, and Anabul agrees, being overly polite to the woman’s face, but this does not stop him from rummaging through her cupboards and taking note of the strange alchemical specimens it contains when she is not looking.

The Daughters of Rojukan ask what sort of services the witch provides, and she tells them that she has powers over water and the ability to sculpt flesh. Liquade’s mind starts to fill with images of all the exotic pets she can create, while pragmatic Lucia instead asks to share recipes for alchemical transmutations.

They make no purchases today, but do promise to return in the future, and Lina leaves her with a gift; an enchanted log that will burn all winter long without being consumed.


Rumors:

The Synovial Current was asking about you. That’s all I know.

Corrigan is up to something. Ever hear of a wizard who wasn't? He could take the city if he wanted it, but he is content to pretend to be Starspool's puppet. I wonder who he really is?

Don't let the name fool you. Dragon Mountain hasn't seen a real wyrm in a thousand years. But it is home to many strange creatures, from the tiny kobolds that gnaw at its root to the giant eagles that roost at its peak. Still, I wonder how it got the name?


Commentary:

This week we see the introduction of a new player, providing a much needed fifth member to the group fulfill the empty “thief” archetype. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be with us for very long do to OOC conflicts with the person who is hosting our game.

He had a very unusual manner of playing his character, always talking and always acting impulsively. On one hand, this kept the game moving and got rid of the periods of indecision that so often plague my groups, on the other hand he frustrated the other players (sometimes including myself) by getting them into trouble without a plan or interrupting someone else’s serious moments.

As the game dragged on, I became more conflicted about whether this was a good or a bad thing; whether he was getting the party into trouble to help move the story along or out of a sense trolling the other players, and whether he actually cared about keeping the game moving or he just got bored easily and always wanted to be in the spotlight, but it never got to the point where it would actually be an issue before he had to leave the group.

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Four: Dragon Mountain
Don't let the name fool you. Dragon Mountain hasn't seen a real wyrm in a thousand years. But it is home to many strange creatures, from the tiny kobolds that gnaw at its root to the giant eagles that roost at its peak. Still, I wonder how it got the name?

The first day of the expedition is uneventful. The group makes camp for the night in the foothills of Dragon Mountain, and Lucia falls into a terrible dream, a single moment of sudden betrayal, the pain and shock not fading, repeated endlessly for hours. She awakes to another shock, a low rumble in the earth that precedes a rock slide. She is able to shout out a warning, and the group is able to avoid being buried alive, suffering only minor injuries, the most severe of which requires one of Anabul’s legs be put in a splint while he recovers.

The next morning is taken up by a long hike up the mountain. Along the trail, a traveler wearing the hat of a troubadour is encountered, one who claims to be the last survivor of an expedition to the mountain. Anabul gets a bad feeling towards the man and rebuffs him rudely, at which point he tries to intimidate the party by accusing them of being spies for Duke Redborne, but the group is unimpressed and sends the apparent conman on his way.

As they continue their ascent, the travelers spy a group of large eagles chasing a much larger creature, which Liquide identifies as a wyvern, away from the mountain. They seem exceptionally large, but it is impossible to accurately gauge size at this distance without a frame of reference. It is surmised that the wyvern might be where the mountain got its name.

After a period of searching, they find the entrance to a tunnel into the mountain, a great brass seal, engraved and shaped like a large coin more than two meters in diameter. It is on an ancient track which appears to have been recently forced open and several rocks wedged into the gap to keep it from closing. Liam is able to tinker with the door’s mechanisms to keep it permanently open and Anabul squeezes through the narrow gap.

Anabul moves through several tunnels and finds several groups of small humanoids. The small, scaly, green creatures are armed with spears and distracted by their bickering. Anabul returns to the group and explains what he saw, but nobody in the group is familiar with kobolds and decides that they must be goblins.

The group moves in, with Anabul scouting ahead and, eager to prove himself, he attempts to dispatch the kobolds in the dark. Unfortunately, their night vision is every bit as good as his own, and a moment later he is retreating to the main group and falls at their feet, curled up in pain with several tiny spears stuck in his back. A moment later, the group is surrounded and gets rather beaten up by the screeching horde, with even Liam suffering a few wounds before Lina can divide their numbers with a wall of fire.

The kobolds on this side of the wall are dispatched while those on the far side slink away to consult with their shamans. The group mends their wounds and, once the fire dies out, they discover and do their best to seal up several small side passages which are impassible to a grown human.

Eventually, they find what was once a great antechamber. A pair of stylized jade statues resembling spirit dragons stand at the end of what were once twin reflecting pools, now filled with sand and silt. As Lina enters, the room dormant geothermal vents spring to life, filling the room with warm steam that gives the dragon statues the appearance of exhaling smoke. Several kobolds snipers use the mist to conceal their approach before ambushing the humans, sending a volley of crossbow bolts their way before retreating into their warrens.

The group decides not to pursue them, instead traveling upwards. They leave the tunnels and travel along a windswept overlook with a great view of the surrounding lands, as well as the coming storm. At one point, Liam steps on what seems to be a deliberate trap and is sent tumbling down the mountainside, although his armor absorbs most of the damage when he lands on a ledge some ten meters below, and the group is eventually able to lower a rope for him to climb back up despite his heavy armor.

Further up, the path forks and the group takes the lower path that curves around the mountain after seeing what appear to be the footprints of human children alongside those of large clawed creatures. They find a village under a ledge stone overhand, guarded by a half dozen Dragas, hulking creatures that resemble a cross between a two-meter humanoid and a terrible winged dragon. Their leader, a large albino warrior, approaches the party menacingly.

The group attempts diplomacy and finds that the creatures speak Terran. They explain that they are here on a mission of curiosity and request that the Dragas allow them to take shelter in their village for the duration of the storm. The Dragas give them use of a lean-to, but explain that they have no food to spare. Anabul offers them gifts, but Lina chastises him for such wasteful generosity.

They notice several human children amongst the Dragas, who do not seem to be enslaved or abused. Later in the night a young girl named Kerisdale tells them that she was sent to satisfy their curiosity. They ask where her parents are and she tells them that they were killed by raiders. The party assumed that the Dragas killed her parents and abducted her, but she explains that she has lived here all her life, and that her parents were killed centuries ago by human bandits far from here.

When questioned about how it could have been centuries, she reveals that she is one of the Terro, an ageless race of eternal children, and that she is nearly sixteen centuries old. The Dragas are worshippers of Hyperion who have lived here for time immemorial. The Terro once dwelt in a large city by the river, but were wiped out by a manargus swarm eons ago, and came to the mountain as refugees, though due to their long life spans they would eventually become the archivists and caretakers of the dragas. The dragas are dwindling in number, each generation smaller than the last, and they know that their decline will never be reversed, and the old city, a great fortress monastery, has been abandoned for this humble village.

When asked about the ancient times, she tells them that the leader of the Dragas ascended to sainthood, leaving the mortal world behind to become a member of the tribunal, but when the mortal world needed him he would bind himself to the king of the Terro, a great holy warrior, and thus would the alliance between the two people be forged. The king was lost when he attempted to use his mastery over time to retroactively save his people, but instead prevented his own existence, and thus became one with the Abyss, Hajah the unborn.

When asked about the mountain, she says that an aerie of ethon, or giant eagles, is located near the peak and numerous kobold warrens are found beneath the mountain. The dragas periodically cull the kobold population, but cannot enter the tunnels to wipe them out for good. A large serpentine monster has recently come to inhabit the area near the old city, and in the last few decades both the dragas and the ethon have suffered many losses from the beast, particularly when it raids their nests and devours their eggs. Neither side can risk engaging the beast, the losses would be to great, and the dragas are too proud to ask the eagles for an alliance.

The group weathers the storm in the Dragas village, sharing what little food they can spare with Kerisdale and in the morning ask the draconic warriors for help slaying the egg-stealer, making sure to appeal to their ego. The dragas are suspicious at first, wondering why those who come to the mountain seeking knowledge now wish to kill a monster, but Lucia is able to dispel their fears as well as assure them that they need ranged support rather than close combat troops.

The group moves to the old city with the dragas flying overheard. The dragas call out that the monster is coming for them a split second before it comes barreling down the slope at them, turning sideways at the last moment and skidding to a stop on the muddy trail, bowling everyone but Lina down the mountain slope. The rest come to a stop in the mud below.

The egg stealer is a yowie, a great twelve-legged serpent that is distantly related to true dragons. As it moves to swallow Lina, the lone girl panics and caster her strongest spell yet, coating her body in living fire. The yowie is momentarily confused, giving Lina’s companions time to get to their feet and climb up the mud-slicked rocks.

Lucia is the first to reach the monster, but as she moves to stab it the yowie it unleashes a powerful jolt of electricity, scorching Lucia and knocking her into unconsciousness. Before it can devour her, Anabul swiftly moves between them and jams his daggers to the hilt on the soft inside of the creature’s mouth, wounding it badly. It loses nerve and backs away, giving Liam time to draw his shotgun and Liquide her bow, while the dragas move around to encircle it and pelt it with javelins. The beast attempts to summon electricity, shocking those who near it, but it is no use, and the massive creature is soon brought down under a hail of projectiles and quietly expires from blood loss.

The dragas are invited to butcher the beast’s body, and while the companions seek to bring its head to the ethon they find it is far too large to carry, and instead settle for its eyes. Liquide takes the teeth to make arrow heads with.

Within the old city, they find some treasures, most too large or dilapidated to make transport back to Meridia economical, but they are allowed to take what they can carry, the dragas have no use for treasure. They find numerous old runes, and though Kerisdale can translate a few of the symbols she can only give the literal meaning, explaining that ancient draconic is a symbolic language and the context of the writing has been lost; Liquide takes rubbings in case she ever finds a sage who can translate them.

The most unusual find is a three-meter sword of such a quality that Liam cannot even comprehend how it might have been crafted. Lina gets a feeling of dread about it; the blade appears to be under a terrible curse. They decide it is not worth the risk and let it lie.

The group takes the eyes to the eerie and offers them to the ethon. The ethon are grateful that their nests are safe, but are extremely wary, particularly of Lucia. When she speaks, they tell her not to approach, and wonder how she is alive, to their eyes she is nothing but a rotting sack of meat that is somehow still walking around. They tell Liquade that they would honor the ancient pacts and carry her in times of emergency, but will not permit her companions to touch them.

The group asks for knowledge of magical sites and monsters in the area, and the eagles give them brief descriptions, though it is tough getting much concrete information, the eagles do not speak much Terran, have a somewhat alien mindset, and see the world from a bird’s eye view. They lack knowledge of human architecture and fail to understand how to describe most structures. The group also gleans that the eagles believe themselves to be messengers for the gods of Olympus and believe all of their actions to be dictated by a sacred duty written on their hearts by the Sky Father.

The ethon are glad to see their haunted visitors off, and one of them quickly flies north once they are gone. The group then decides to return to Meridia and sell their treasures, the journey back is uneventful.

Back in Meridia, Lucia asks Corrigan about her psychological scarring, and he explains that her soul is nothing but a ragged shred, sustained only by her abundant Chi. The magus theorizes that any attempt to teach her true sorcery would plunge her immediately into Quiet. He has no idea what might have caused such a malady.


The World’s Edge
This is the finest sword ever created. Fashioned by a coalition of legendary wonderworkers during the Mesozoic Wars. It was tempered in the heart of Limbo and quenched in the Abyss itself. It was wielded by Hyperion’s champion for eons before eventually falling into the hands of the enemy. Legend holds that when the Tribunal attempted to reclaim, it they were prevented from doing so by Silanthous, Goddess of Magic, who lay a terrible curse on the blade that amplifies their own feelings of guilt to maddening levels. It has rested in the ancient mausoleum at Dragon Mountain ever since.

This is a +6 quality blade that is so large it extends the bearer’s reach by one meter. It appears to be made out of some form of platinum. Until the curse is broken, it inflicts a point of psychic damage each time it is swung, and even touching the blade or carrying it in one’s pack brings about maddening visions of the atrocities its bearer has committed and the apocalyptic ramifications that could result.

Rumors:

Most people think humans rule the world. That's not quite how it is. We actually share this land with many other species, all who claim to be its masters. Why don't we see them? Well, humans like to stick to places that favor humans, and they do the same for their species, so even though our empires lie on top of each other, more often than not we pass like ships in the night.

They say that only one person ever sailed all the way to the head of the river, a hero even greater than your grandfather. But that was long, long, ago.

Those who remember the old mill just call it the Bolt Hole now. No one knows how it happened. Maybe the rats were always there, breeding in the walls. Maybe they dug into a basement. Or maybe someone let them in. Either way, it's all rats now. Not even worth the trouble of trying to salvage something that they ain't torn up to make their nests.

Commentary:
This session went pretty well. I felt kind of bad beating Anabul up with the kobolds, he didn't quite understand the rules and how difficult it was to kill them all without being seen in this system. I appreciated that they actually talked to enemies and made allies in this session, they would come in very handy in the future... but of course two sessions later it would all go horribly horribly wrong.

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Five: The Bolt Hole
Those who remember the old mill just call it the Bolt Hole now. No one knows how it happened. Maybe the rats were always there, breeding in the walls. Maybe they dug into a basement. Or maybe someone let them in. Either way, it's all rats now. Not even worth the trouble of trying to salvage something that they ain't torn up to make their nests.

The Daughters of Rojukan are returning home after an evening drinking and gambling when they notice they are being followed by a group of footpads. While crossing a narrow footbridge bridge, three men appear on the far side and demand a toll. As both groups posture, the men who were following the heroes move in from behind to box them in. Anabul tries to talk to them in street jargon, and is told that if they want to live, they just have to pay up, but Lucia grows tired of the negotiations and charges into combat.

Lina cuts off one group with a wall of fire and Liquide clouds the minds of the thugs on the far side, forcing them to kill each other. A few moments later, the only survivor is a single thief who is confused and panicked about having just murdered his friends. The heroes let him live. On the bodies they find a bag of coins which are coated in a mysterious slime.

A week later the group leaves the city on an expedition to the Bolt Hole. After a few hours they stop for a meal. Anabul is going to get water, when a gigantic amoeba attempts to engulf him. He runs back to the group and Lina conjures a ball lightning and orders it to drive the amoeba away while the group moves on.

The next morning, they find a small girl, about four years old with strawberry blonde hair. She informs the group that her parents abandoned her for letting the dog out when there was a bandersnatch nearby. She lives in a small town nearby, but is unable to give any specifics. Her dress and hands are stained with berry juice which Liquade identifies as having soporific properties. She says that her name is also Lucia. The group decides to bring her back to Meridia under the care of their servants.

During their second journey to the mill, they are accosted by a pack of ghouls, gaunt humanoids with grey skin, yellow eyes, and shark-like teeth. The travelers are told that they are passing through the domain of the swamp king, and if they want safe passage one of their number must be given over as tribute. When this is refused, the ghouls say that each traveler may instead donate one limb, an offer which is, of course, also refused. The ghouls tell them that they will be watched and depart.

The next morning, they awaken to find a muscular man with the head of a dog sitting with them near the embers of their camp fire. Anabul notices him first and offers him tea, which he politely laps up, while trying to awaken the rest of the group. Once the rest of the party has awakened the visitor announces that he is Kai of the Black-Paw gnolls. He has been sent to count coup, and in order to join the elite warrior society known as the Sons of Sharish he must find and defeat a human champion, and wonders if there is any among them who might be a worthy opponent. Lucia immediately accepts.

Kai draws a circle and announces that the spirits will officiate. If either fighter leaves the circle, or an outsider enters, the match is over. Lucia is outclassed and appears to be losing the battle, but she refuses to yield, and eventually she lands a lucky blow that cleaves through the gnoll’s bone breastplate and opens his ribcage, killing him almost instantly.

The rest of the group was too focused upon the fight to see that they have become surrounded by ghouls who take the opportunity to attack. Lucia is too exhausted from her duel to be of much use, and the group sustains heavy injuries before driving the ghouls off. They decide to put the expedition on hold for the time being and return once again to Meridia.

Once the group has healed up and resupplied, they again make their way for the old textile mill. This time Liquade guides them through the wilderness without incident.

As they approach the old mill what appears to be a pack of wild dogs emerge from the porch and lopes toward them. As they draw closer, the dogs reveal themselves to actually be huge rats. The Daughters of Rojukan are able to dispatch them without injury, mostly thanks to Liquide and Anabul’s archery and a column of fire conjured by Lina.

Liquide analyzes the bodies and discovers that they are the same species as ordinarily rats, merely bred for exceptional size, speed, and ferocity. They are wearing spikes collars with simple names carved into them. Their lair under the porch shows no signs of an owner or food, but lots of offal and numerous bones, a few of which might be human.

The main floor of the mill is empty. Motes of dust float in the dreary light that manages to penetrate the dirty windows. The work floor has room for numerous workers and much textile machinery lies about the area in disuse. Rats are everywhere, along with their nests and droppings. It appears that this place has been abandoned for a decade at the very least. Footsteps and scratching can be heard from above.

They find numerous offices and apartments upstairs, all in disrepair. Footsteps can still be heard, but their source cannot be found. Eventually, a very old man is found wandering about, his work clothes tattered, his beard wild, and his eyes unfocused with madness or dementia. He ignores the group and when Lucia attempts to grab him, he begins to shake and appears to be having a seizure, but when Lina moves forward to help him, he vomits forth a tide of young rats upon her. Horrified, Lucia attacks him and Liquade begins to stomp on the rats. A moment later they are joined by three more men, all in similar condition, and a fight breaks out.

After killing the men, they find that much of their bodies’ interiors have been eaten away and now serve as nests for rats. The men appeared to be alive, not undead, and nobody is quite sure how or why they came to be in this condition.
The top floor contains what appears to be the foreman’s office, with a massive desk that has only mostly gone over to rot. A portrait of a man can be seen on one wall, a gruesome figure with a sharp suit, cloak, and can, sagging pudgy cheeks, greasy black curls, small beady eyes, and a pronounced unibrow. A safe is found behind the picture, and while Anabul is busy cracking the combination all eyes are upon him, none notice the gruesome rat-king sliding out of a secret door behind them.

The rat-king is nearly the size of a grizzly bear, although far more limber, rat-like save for the great curling horns atop its brow and the vast bat’s wings that extend from its shoulders. When Anabul turns to show the group the bulging bag of coins that he found in the safe, he meets its gaze and before he can cry out its grabs his head with one massive paw coated in coarse hair, and yanks him back into the darkness.

The rest of the group reacts slowly, and what follows is a brief but vicious scrabble in the dark. It could go either way until Lina sets the rat-king alight with hellfire and it quickly makes its way back into the darkness, seeking the safety tunnels which are hidden in the walls.

Having scoured the top floors, but group is unwilling to enter the secret passages that the rat-king fled down as it will force them into a single file and without room the fight. The group returns to the mill floor and begins exploring the store rooms, which have become like a labyrinth of tunnels between the rat’s nests built out of the mountains of unused cloth that was once the mill’s inventory.

Eventually, when they are deep into the stacks and all but lost, the rats close in upon them, their red eyes and saliva moistened teeth glittering in the dark. As if motivated by an unheard signal they descend as a mass. The swarm engulfs Liam first, but is unable to pierce his armor. Liquade is injured in the initial onslaught when a few particularly large and tenacious rodents crawl into her boots. Lucia and Anabul do their best to avoid the mass and kill the individual rats that encompass it, but they do little to the swarm as a whole. Eventually, Liam falls and the rats begin to crawl into his armor at which point Lina once again saves the day, unleashing a brief inferno that kills many of the smaller creatures and dissipating the swarm.
In one corner of the supply house, the stairs to the basement are found. Anabul goes ahead, down the rickety staircase and finds a group of rat-like humanoids that wear clothes, wield steel weapons, and speak to one another in a broken from of Terran. Rather than parlay or engage, Lina decides to attempt to exterminate them, conjuring a spreading pool of lava that slowly fills the concrete lined basement. Liam moves to block the rat-folk’s exit by talking a defensive position at the top of the stairs, but they never come, instead fleeing deeper below.

When the group begins to feel uncomfortably warm, they decide to move further up, only to find the mill above them blazing with fire, presumably one which started spontaneously as a result of all the invocation energy which Lina was channeling into the place. The group feels that all hope is lost, but Lina is able to cast a jaunt spell which allows them to use the fire as a doorway and exit the mill. From a safe distance, they watch the streams of rats flee the building as it burns to its foundations.

The next morning, they sift through the ruins and find a number of previously hidden entrances to the sub-basement. After journeying down into the tunnels, they are attacked by a trio of gruagach, gigantic flabby mole rats devoid of hair or eyes and with extremely long claws. Liquide uses her supernatural charms as well as her command of animals to force them to devour one another as her companions pierce them with their weapons.

In one side room the group finds a number of vivisected humans, only recently dead. The manacles used to imprison them are far larger and sturdier than necessary.

In another side room, they find a shrine with a somewhat valuable brass idol. It is guarded by a pair of humanoid rats, significantly larger and more feral than the others, who attack without hesitation, seemingly in a rabid frenzy. They are nearly impervious to harm, but are brought down after many blows, their bodies appearing to shrink upon death. Anabul’s mother warns him to get his wounds properly washed out when he returns to Meridia.

The group then decides to go deeper down, into what appear to be natural caverns that have been connected to the sub-basement. Eventually, the ground becomes crunchy with large black coffin beetles, and Lina decides to stay behind. The rest of the party goes on without her, Anya, clinging to Lucia’s back, as they come to the edge of a subterranean lake, likely fed by the river above. A rickety old boat can be seen on the far shore, and all around it beetles shift like a living carpet, ranging in size from those that could fit on a pin-head to that of a medium size dog.

Something is seen moving in the darkness, and a long serpentine head darts out from a previously unseen island in the middle of the lake and quickly devours one of the large beetles. There is a brief flash of huge size and a thick bony carapace, and the group decides to backtrack.

Meanwhile, Lina has been in hiding from the rat-king, which has emerged from the mole rat nest and is following the group’s trail, making clicking batlike noises to see in the dark. When the rest of the group returns, there is another brief skirmish and the rat king again attempts to flee, but Liquide is able to slow its movement long enough for Liam to bring his maul upon the creature’s horned head, stunning it while Lucia and Anabul finish it off for good.
The group them decides to enter the nest of the gruagach. At the end, they find the hideous rat-queen, a massively bloated creature larger than a prize bull, totally blind and legless, its gravid body covered in bloated teats and writhing blind young, biting and clawing at each other in the dark.

Liquade fires an arrow at the creature and it shrieks in pain, drawing more mole rats from the numerous side tunnels. Lina envelops the massive creature in a storm of fire, but it is slow in dying, being far beyond the point where it can feel pain. Massive mole rats swarm the party and though they do their best to fight them off the group goes down one by one.


Eventually the mother creature succumbs to the flames and with her death the remaining young scatter. Liam and Anya are the only one’s left standing, and Liam is badly wounded. They are able to drag their companions to a secure location and staunch the bleeding before Liam passes out from blood loss.


The next morning the injured companions are able to sift no few valuable trinkets from the ashes of the mill and the gore piles of the gruagach nest before limping their way back to Meridia.


Rumors:
There was once a town by a river. Long gone now. But the sewers and catacombs beneath, well they were quite a marvel of engineering, staying dry on such sodden ground, and all manner of things have taken up residence in them. A tribe of cannibalistic trolls being the least terrible among them.

They say he was once the sheriff of a small berg not far from here. He did horrible things, said he was protecting the good common folk from the wrong kind of people, if you know what I mean, but that was no excuse for what he done. They tarred and feathered him when they found out, his horse to, but they didn’t stop there. They burned him alive, and then buried him in the ground. But the ground wouldn’t take him and spit him right back out. Petrichor I think they called him, blood of the earth, and if he is still out there, I wouldn’t want to cross his path in the dark of the night.

Most people think humans rule the world. That's not quite how it is. We actually share this land with many other species, all who claim to be its masters. Why don't we see them? Well, humans like to stick to places that favor humans, and they do the same for their species, so even though our empires lie on top of each other, more often than not we pass like ships in the night.

Commentary:
Pretty straightforward session. The main dungeon obviously took more than a little inspiration from Stephen King's Night Shift.

My only concern was that the party was starting to abuse rest mechanics, repeatedly returning to town over the course of the session. This would continue to get more extreme until I would eventually abandon the sandbox format entirely, but at this point it was still just a mild concern.

The poop really hits the fan next session though!

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Six: River Crossing Sewers
There was once a town by a river. Long gone now. But the sewers and catacombs beneath, well they were quite a marvel of engineering, staying dry on such sodden ground, and all manner of things have taken up residence in them. A tribe of cannibalistic trolls being the least terrible among them.


On the way to River Crossing, Lina is approached by a group of sprites in the dark. Impressed that she could see them, they take her to an ancient cyclopean ruin where several other children are dressed in their bedclothes. The fairies instruct these children, all of whom have supernatural talents, to play a game of magic where they would attempt to counter one another’s spells in a strategic fashion. Despite her single-minded magic, Lina does quite well at the game and earns several periapts as a reward before being returned to her group in the morning.
The next day the group hears barking in the swamp and follows it to an old billabong where they see a family of Bunyips being attacked by an especially large beast of Shadow Fang, a great two-headed turtle monster. A single young bunyip remains, but it is tenaciously defending the bodies of its kin.

The Daughters of Rojukan approach and, as they discuss what to do, the turtle turns on them with surprising speed. It is unable to pierce Liam’s armor, but it attempts to rend him to pieces and is only saved when the beast’s heads appear to quarrel with one another and drop him. The creature’s shell is too thick for the group’s weapons to pierce until Lina enchants them, at which point the monster is driven back into the water.

Liquade is able to soothe the last bunyip and coax it into travelling with her. She names it Puma.

The town of River Crossing is old and dilapidated, but a single tavern stands mostly intact. The group decides to use it as a base camp, but find it already occupied by a cockatrice and two hens. The small chimera are quickly defeated, but not before Lina is bitten and paralyzed. The group makes camp here and waits for the venom to wear off. In the cellar they find several casks of vinegar and a few bottles of finely aged wine.

When they are ready to explore the sewers, they find an entrance on the side of a canal, guarded by four trolls standing under a bridge. Lucia attempts to parley with them while Lina remains in hiding. She attempts to convince the trolls to leave, threatening them with military retribution. One troll casually climbs onto the bridge and, in a move that is both condescending and tactical, places his hand upon Lucia’s head to keep her sitting, and explains that they would love a military incursion into the sewers. The humans would be blind, lost, and paralyzed the poisonous creatures that live below. When asked if the trolls eat humans, they say that they do, but not until after the Grand Maw gets a cut.

Lucia then tells them they should relocate to Dragon Mountain, where there is much more food and fewer humans. The trolls agree to take them to their leader, a bone-witch named Mytilidae. They drag the four humans into the sewers and through the dark and the wet, keeping a quick pace so that no one can get their bearings. Several times they slip in the mud and water or feel slimy tentacles grasping at them, but the trolls do not stop until they get to the central chamber.

The Daughters of Rojukan explain their plan to Mytilidae, who tosses the bones and says that the spirits proclaim that the trolls can only prosper on the mountain with the human’s help, but to beware of treachery. The trolls ask if they will agree to help the trolls secure the mountain and take a blood oath before Yuggoth not to spill any troll blood while on the mountain. When it is agreed, the trolls drag them to the edge of a great pit into which many streams of foul water flow and stop them at the edge. Anabul, who has some ability to see down, identifies it as a cistern.

The humans and trolls mix blood and drip it into the pit. The trolls then gather their belongings and prepare to leave, tossing golden dinnerware into the pit as an offering to Yuggoth and as a token of their thanks. Liam tosses his pocket watch in. Anabul asks his mother what this Yuggoth is and is told that it is the daughter of his mother’s daughter’s daughter yet to be born, and that he should not concern himself with it.

On the trail to Dragon Mountain Anya is distracted by something shiny off the trail and returns with a penny.

That night they smell wood smoke and Liquade is able to track it to a small cave with sixteen young armed men inside. They invite the companions in, but when they see the trolls they try and act nonchalant and ask the travelers to move on. The young men say they are leaving Meridia to seek their fortune in other lands, but Anabul is able to deduce that they are outlaws. He talks to them in his cant and finds out that Meridia is no longer safe, that with the threat of Duke Redborne taxes are higher than ever but security is at an all time low with so many conscripts being sent across the river, and thus they have decided it is safer to live outside of the law. The group gives them a head start, allowing them to flee into the night before sending the trolls after them, while the humans devour the rations that were left behind.

At Dragon Mountain, the kobold warrens fall easily, most simply fleeing rather than let themselves be eaten by trolls. The trolls complain that the kobolds are insufficient food, but split what meager loot they find. Most of the kobold warrens are inaccessible to humans, let alone trolls, the tunnels being either fully collapsed or simply too small. They do find one interesting room, an alchemical laboratory that seems to be sized for giants. It is very old, but Lucia is able to find a few useful reagents. There are a number of bronze and glass cylinders which contain leather blue spheres. Most are rotted near to dust, but one is burst open from the inside. Three are still intact. Lucia opens one and finds an embryonic creature inside that resembles a tiny dragon, it dies within moments. The other two are packaged to be sent to Geomanthus to see if he can hatch them.

The group attempts to convince the trolls to stay on the lower levels in the kobold warrens, but the trolls declare that there is not enough room or food for them here. Things grow tense, but when the Dragas force the issue by sending a raiding party down the mountain and attacking the trolls, the humans decide to defend their new-found allies and together they are able to slay the dragas easily. The trolls plunder the dragas’ village and finish off the non-combatants, dragas and terro alike. Only Lucia and Anabul are willing to take part in the gruesome feast that follows, although the entire party is willing to take a share of the gold.

Mytilidae is very pleased with the results, and proclaims that Kerisdale’s bones are the most powerful tools that she has ever owned. The two warbands exchange oaths of friendship and mutual protection and the trolls extend a standing offer to accompany them on raids of the surrounding lands. They decide to leave the great eagles in peace.

While the trolls are looting and fortifying the old city, the Bone Witch declares the great sword to be the worst juju and off limits. Lina attempts to goad Lucia into picking it up, and while they squabble, Anabul decides to grab the sword himself. His knees buckle and his eyes roll all the way back in his head, exposing the whites for the first time as his mind is filled with visions of the ultimate horror dripping down upon the earth from behind the quiet sky and slowly and painfully devouring him and all of his kind.

Lucia quickly grabs the sword from him and places it back on the bier. She is not harmed, but instead receives a vision of a great demonic creature with shifting features composed of endless teeth and burning red eyes, its flesh made from her own dried blood. It is overpowering the silhouette of a man who pleads with her “Don’t come back for me! Save yourself! I promise I will find a way to come back to you, just go and don’t look back!” even as the monstrous beast swallows his appendages whole.



Rumors:
They say that upriver one can find the ruins of a city far grander than Meridia ever was, even during its heyday. But what man could have built such edifices? Must have been the Titans.

There are many levels of reality. The spirit world is next door, sure, but I mean more tangible realms. There is a vast subterranean realm below us, an entire under world, and we never think of the vast armies marching just a few meters beneath our feet. And don't get me started about the Cloud Fathers who dwell in the sky above.

So, I hear that Master Iuz’ body turned up missing. I figure it will only be a matter of time before that old caitiff is out selling his services again.


Commentary:
This is where things start to go bad. Really bad.

To start with, the players were a bit mad at one another as Lina's player felt that the others abandoned her during the cockatrice fight, being too eager to kill them that they forgot to defend the softer characters in the back row, leading to her being envenomed.

Next, Lucia wanted to negotiate with the trolls, but didn't really have anything to offer them and got frustrated when threats alone weren't enough. At that point the players just kind of babbled hoping to hit on something, and then when the trolls responded they assumed that I, as the DM, was trying to guide them in the direction that I wanted them to go rather than speaking for a clan of cannibalistic sewer dwelling monsters.

End result of the session was bad blood between the players (and towards me for "leading them down this path"), a bunch of dead civilians, and trading one ally for another with no real treasure to show for it except for a few bottles of wine, a behir egg, and a shiny penny.

Things will go further down hill next time as out heroes suffer their first true loss.

[Heart of Darkness]

Chapter Seven: Petrichor
They say he was once the sheriff of a small berg not far from here. He did horrible things, said he was protecting the good common folk from the wrong kind of people, if you know what I mean, but that was no excuse for what he done. They tarred and feathered him when they found out, his horse to, but they didn’t stop there. They burned him alive, and then buried him in the ground. But the ground wouldn’t take him and spit him right back out. Petrichor I think they called him, blood of the earth, and if he is still out there, I wouldn’t want to cross his path in the dark of the night.

One evening, as the Daughters of Rojukan makes their way back to Meridia following their conquest of Dragon Mountain, they sit around the campfire telling stories when the night becomes deathly quiet and uncomfortably warm, before growing dark as if a shadow passed over the moon.

Oil starts to flow up from the ground and pool around the group’s campfire before exploding, and the skeletal figure of a man coated in burning oil bursts forth, mounted atop an equally ghastly horse. In a bubbling voice he shouts “I heard you were asking about me, so I thought I would put an end to y’all before you could bushwhack me!”

As the group moves to defend themselves, the apparition puts bullets into Liquade and Lucia’s chests, damaging Lucia’s armor and puncturing Liquade’s lung. When Anabul and Liam attempt to close in, they find that he burns too hot to approach, even with Lina’s magic protecting them. The group is scattered, but manages to escape with their lives.

On his way back to Meridia, Anabul is captured by slavers outside of the city. Though his companions are able to find him and buy him back at auction, it costs an exorbitant amount, someone wants the young urchin badly and is willing to pay far more than he is worth to get him. Anabul is now deeply indebted to the Daughters of Rojukan and legally the property of their house.

Once they manage to regroup in Meridia, the Daughters of Rojukan do their best to rest up, but Liquade’s wound never really heals, and Lina is afraid that she might be crippled for life. They are, however, able to track down a map to a mysterious place called the House of Miracles.

The group is eventually able to find the location, an abandoned barn standing in a fallow cornfield in the middle of nowhere. A sullen teenage girl sits by the entrance reading, and when Lucia asks her if this is the House of Miracles, she points to the backroom without looking up.

The next room is empty except for rusted farming implements and a large bloodstained wooden table. A moment later they are introduced to Daniel, a young boy of about eleven years old. The group is distrustful of him at first, especially when he refuses to give a direct answer to who he is or how he came to be operating out of an old cornfield in the middle of the wilderness, but he is eventually able to convince them of his healing skill by explaining medical practices to Lina that are far in advance of anything found in Meridia.

After he operates on Liquade’s wound, the group asks if he is able to cure their various old injuries such as Anabul’s deformed jaw or Liquade’s sterility, and he says yes, but it will take time, and the travelers never take him up on it save for a few vaccinations.

When asked about the more mystical aspects of healing, he tells them that they will have to talk to his teacher and points them to the girl at front, whom they had taken to be a mere receptionist.

She will give answers if asked a direct question, albeit in a caustic and petulant tone. She tells Lucia that her soul has been devoured and then healed over too many times to count, and repairing it would require enough soma to feed an entire pantheon of deities.

She is also able to identify the book found under Plague Wood Village as a medical textbook explaining how to use enchantments to supplement mundane healing techniques, and surmises that they stumbled upon the remains of an experiment in creating zombies with a working immune system that could produce antibodies against diseases which killed their host too rapidly for them to develop any natural resistance.

The Daughters of Rojukan soon set their minds to revenge, and Liquade does her best to track down Petrichor despite still not being fully recovered.

They find his haunt and, during the daylight, Liam supervises them in building fortifications around it while Lina performs a complex ritual to completely protect the group from heat and flame. When he appears, Petrichor is able to turn their ambush around on them, flowing over their barricades and engulfing Liquide and Lina.

The rest of the group eventually manages to drive him into a corner, at which point he melts into tar and sinks into the ground, but they are ready for it. Puma it able to sense his movements through the earth, and when the revenant emerges, the group surrounds it and cuts it down.

As he bubbles away, Petrichor screams out threats of vengeance, claiming that he will never die and never forget, and will come for them when they are too old and feeble to fight back.

Anabul is able to track down his old, charred, bones, and then pisses on them. The group then transports the sodden remains to a nearby mission where they can be buried on consecrated ground.

While there, the Daughters of Rojukan have a chance encounter with their cousin Kells Mackrakken, whom they have not seen in many years. He is currently working as an irregular in the army, and was returning to Meridia from the front carrying scouting reports about units that have managed to slip across the river and make incursions into Meridian lands. He claims that the war is going poorly, and soon Meridia will need to start hiring mercenaries, but their coffers will only last so long.

Kells has some leave coming, and offers to share an adventure with his cousins. He is a man of athletic build in his early 20s with a goatee and faux-hawk, and is skilled in both combat and wilderness scouting.

He guides Liquade back to Meridia, where she can spend the winter recovering, and Liam insists on accompanying them, leaving Lina, Lucia, and Anabul on their own to plan their next expedition.

Rumors:

When my momma got sick, I was desperate to help her, I would have done anything to help. I did some things I'm not proud of, and in exchange I was told where I could find a cure. But it was a long journey, and though my spirit was willing I just couldn't make it all the way, I had to turn back. But now that she's dead and gone you can have my old map to the House of Miracles, it seems a shame to let it go to waste after all I did to get it.

You ever heard of Ehud-Chulak? A small fishing village on the shores of a frozen lake. The people there are skin-changers, selkies, kin to the seals. They are jovial enough when times are good, even willing to trade and take in a traveler. But when times are bed, well, you ever hear the story about the Walrus and the Carpenter?

When you are out there wandering, I would steer clear of the cemeteries. Many old boneyards dot this land, and the dead rarely rest easy anymore. I wonder why? Perhaps a bad star?

Commentary:

Oh boy, this was a bad one. This was the groups first, and to this point only, actual loss. Now, I am not playing with permanent death in this game, and HP represent morale rather than meat, so when the entire is defeated I have them broken and scattered, and meet back in town after rolling on a mishap table to represent bad fortune that occurs while injured and alone in the wilderness. Lina's player was furious, both at losing to a random encounter, and to getting a worse result on the table than everyone else, especially after they drew a rumor that was more or less able to negate Liquade's injury.

As a result I decided to remove random encounters from the game as they really didn't serve any purpose, and I would greatly tone down the severity and the randomness of the mishap table; but the damage had already been done.

[Heart of Darkness]

Session Eight: Ehud Chulak
You ever heard of Ehud-Chulak? A small fishing village on the shores of a frozen lake. The people there are skin-changers, selkies, kin to the seals. They are jovial enough when times are good, even willing to trade and take in a traveler. But when times are bad, well, you ever hear the story about the Walrus and the Carpenter?

Liquide is still recovering from surgery after being shot in the chest with Petrichor, and Liam insists on staying behind in Meridia to watch over her. The rest of the group decides to head for the selkie village at Ehud Chulak, although they are unsure if they are going as explorers, traders, raiders, or heroes.

As they pass through the farthest reaches of what was once Meridia, the group stumbles into an enchanted grove where it is always spring. They find a lone nymph within, she incredibly beautiful; tall and full figured, with long blue-black hair and shining violet eyes. She introduces herself as Nightsong, and tells them that she spends her time dancing, singing, playing with animals, and exploring the grove. She is garbed in diaphanous silk which she claims was spun from starlight, a gift from her friend, and when the travelers light a fire she is grateful for the opportunity to bake cookies.

The next day the group nears Ehud Chulak, and finds the land growing unseasonably cold, the plains blanketed in snow and the smaller rivers frozen solid. A pack of three huge white wolves begin to stalk the group, and Lina moves to hide while Lucia tries to start a fire to drive them off. The wolves make a break for the group, and Anabul fires off several crossbow bolts, wounding the wolves, before they are upon him, tripping him and savaging one of his arms. The white wolves can sniff out Lina, but Lucia comes to her aid and is able to drive the trio of wolves off.

As they move up the mountain pass toward the lakeside town, the cold and wind pick up, and soon they notice the road guarded by a quartet of selkie holding large harpoons. They are short and burly, with the tusks and whiskers or walruses, and covered in scars. They attempt to shoo the humans off, and say they have no interest in either trading or eating the humans at this time.

Eventually they convince the wardens to let them prove themselves, and the they are pointed to a crevasse between two hills in which a Lambton wurm is reputed to dwell, and told that if they kill it, they can enter the village. The trio heads to the hills and finds a pile of bones and frozen gore, and eventually the wurm clambers down upon them. Lucia battles it, neither side making progress, before Lina sets it alight with balefire.

They return to the selkie and are told that they are indeed too tough to tangle with, and are welcome to enter the village, although they lament the waste of good meat by burning the wurm to ash.

The village is built around a large lake, mostly frozen over, and is composed of lean buildings with the appearance of having been cobbled together from driftwood.

The selkies are mostly of walrus stock, although a few resemble leopard seals or even river otters. The group is disappointed that their jovial reputation is not in evidence, and everyone in the village is tense and on edge, glancing around nervously and appearing unwilling to be seen talking to strangers. One female mentions that it isn’t wise to talk badly about their new allies after what happened to the River Speaker, but when pressed for more information she claims that she needs to get home to her pups and scurries off.

The innkeeper is indeed jovial, a little too jovial, and is eager to sell the group all manner of exotic food and drink, but quickly changes the subject to trivialities whenever the group tries to talk about local politics.

Leaving the tavern, they see one particularly tall house with a group of exceptionally tough looks selkie standing guard in front of it. Lucia decides to distract the guards, offering them a vat of greasy whale milk which she acquired in the tavern, which they quickly spike. Then the guards attempt to impress her with their bravado, soon taking her to the docks so that they can show off their athletic prowess for the beautiful stranger.

Anabul moves in behind her and the padlock which secures the door, opening it almost instantly despite his wounded arm. Inside, he finds Clubber, the River Speaker, shaman of the city and priest of the salmon god Chinook, who is currently under house arrest.

He is escorted to an empty fishing shack outside of town and explains that the village was recently approached by ambassadors of the Sidhe, a military coalition of the fey looking to expand into the region. They were told that they would be forever protected from the winter in exchange for their allegiance.

The Daughters of Rojukan ask about the tales of the selkie eating people, and Clubber exasperatedly says that a few merchants were snowed in here over a decade ago, and were among those who drew the short lots to be eaten, and that the story has been blown way out of proportion and they want to live it down, although Anabul suspects there might be a bit more to it than that.

He continues to explain that the village chieftain has agreed to join the Sidhe, and that the next day village people are to be gathered on the overlook and take a formal oath after placating them with a great feast. They cannot let that happen.

The river speaker moves to the edge of the lake and begins a chant that resembles throat singing to invoke Chinook, while the trio of humans moves to the chieftain’s longhouse.

Inside they find the ambassador; a towering firbolg, spindly and crooked as if recovering from a stroke, with a long white beard and eyes like ice. He is guarded by four Valkyrie, warrior nymphs with glittering mail, long spears, winged helms, and flowing golden braids. When the group challenges the ambassador, he looks at Lina, sneers, and declares her “Disgusting,” and then smashes an ornate snow globe.

A moment later the temperature plummets, and a cold wind blows the longhouse down around them, sending the selkie chieftain rolling down into a snow bank. In the spirit world, an absolutely massive face towers above the overlook, a cruel old man with a beard made of icicles, his breath a deathly chill.

Lina declares it a nice parlor trick and snaps her fingers, casting a mass adaptation spell to protect her companions, and then Lucia and Anabul spring into battle. The firbolg attempts to use magic to sap the life directly from the mortals, their resolve weakened by the presence of Ymir, a dark entity whom Chinook cannot completely repel.

Anabul and Lucia fight against the Valkyrie but, already wounded from their struggles with wurms and wolves, are subdued, leaving Lina to fight on her own. She conjures numerous ball lightnings as well as Kindlesnap, who grumbles that he can do little against a titan. When the Valkyrie are distracted Lucia and Anabel quaff healing potions and spring to defeat them, while Lina and the firbolg engage in a battle of sorcery, ice vs. fire, which causes both of them to collapse simultaneously. Ymir soon disappears without his tie to the mortal world.

After the battle, Clubber purifies the area with burning sage brush, and then the sound of a disembodied sleigh can be heard. An enormous man with a bushy beard steps down and congratulates the group. He claims to be the spirit of the solstice, barred from this region by the power of Old Man Winter. Lina recalls the name Father Christmas from one of her old books, and the spirit claims that he hasn’t been called that in a very long time, but if the Daughters of Rojukan will once again spread his traditions, he will be willing to honor the old pacts and provide them with gifts.

He has a professionally printed primer on Evocation magic for Lina, very hard to come by in this day and age. For Lucia nectar of the Fire Flower which can enhance any potion she brews. For Anabul a cloak of elven silk to hide him. He also says that he has a hammer from his own workshop for them to bring to Liam and a set of survival gear a prospector once left at his home for Liquade, as well as his wishes for a speedy recovery. Lucia reminds him that he hadn’t bring anything for Anya, to which Father Christmas grumbles and hands her his own fur lined boots.

He then turns his sack inside out and presents a glorious feast for the entire village, the inhabitants of which are eager to renew trade with Meridia, as well as a leather case filled with potent tonics in a rainbow of colors for the adventurers.

Father Christmas explains that summoning a Titan was beyond the power of the old firbolg, and that he must have used a runic item created for him by the Snow Queen of Permafrost, ruler of the Sidhe. He explains that they are distant from Meridia and have little power here, but are working hard to turn the world away from the old ways and spirits such as himself. He then departs on his sleigh.

The Daughters of Rojukan spend a few days in Ehud Chulak, and then depart.

The group once again stops by the sacred grove on their way back to Meridia, and Lina asks Night Song to come with them. The nymph is very reluctant at first, for her friend always told her to stay away from the lands of men, and that he will be returning soon and she doesn’t want to be gone when he does, but Lina is persistent and eventually she gives him.

On the journey back to town, Anabul attempts to make clumsy small talk with Night Song, and his mother warns him not to get to close, for she believes the nymph to be his cousin.

Rumors:

Oh yes, the old Silver Deep Mine. Spent a time working there in my youth before my back gave out. Mines gone now. I mean, the mine is still there, but no one works it. Got too hard to defend them roads, and all sorts of nasty crawling things moved in. Spiders big as your dog, goblins, gnomes, and worse. Of course, there's also plenty of silver.

There is a place of power. An old place. A place where the witches of the wild used to meet for their secret Sabbats. It is wild now, Granny Clank Trap won't let anyone touch it, but its power just lies fallow. Soon it will burst. Do you dare seek out the Hag's meet?

The world is bigger than you know. Kingdoms line the seacoast for thousands of miles in every direction, many of them far larger and grander than Meridia, and home to many strange cultures and creatures. Beyond the sea lies the endless ocean and the million islands. And that is just the sea, to say nothing of all the lands of the Earth that can be accessed from the river.

Commentary:

An attempt at a Christmas adventure, but half the group ended up being sick over the holidays and we had to play without them, which made the adventure a little more challenging than the remaining players wanted.

Had a couple of issues at the get-go, first Lina's player wanted to take out a loan to buy a new spell book before the adventure, which would have, in hindsight, been very bad, but it was hard trying to convince her not to do it without spoiling the ending or looking like I am trying to railroad her. Further, the party didn't really know how to deal with a "neutral" dungeon that wasn't actively friendly or hostile; when I first created this campaign it wasn't for any particular group, and an evil party might have had more fun simply putting the town to the torch.

The biggest issue was Nightsong. Lina was adamant that she come along with the party, and pulled off the rolls to convince her, but I wasn't quite sure how to handle having a permanent follower from a mechanical perspective, and I didn't like the fact that she made a lot of the other player's charisma based skills redundant. In the end Anabul would end up leaving the group, and I just kept things as they were, balanced for a five person party and giving Anabul's share of the rewards to Nightsong, but there were a few awkward sessions where I wasn't sure how to rebalance on the fly with both of them in the party.

Another interesting controversy occurred once Anabul left and I had a full on character sheet made for Nightsong. I described her as having an inhumanly beautiful figure, which Lina's player took to mean incredibly slender and delicate, but the artist took to mean extremely curvy, which Lina's player found "creepy" and "disgusting". Its really weird how descriptions can often mean completely opposite things in the player's minds.