The Company:
- Jürg (C4)
- Amaranth (C4)
- Julian & Frida (porters)
- Conz, Nathan, Milia & Bern (heavy footsoldiers)
Loot:
- Libram of Heinous Damnation
- Book of infernal names
- Astrological and alchemical papers
Casualties:
None.
Report:
Jürg goes shopping at Mordechai’s Curious & Antiques and chances upon a box of animated toy soldiers. He also buys a potion of speed.
The company purchase a rowboat and load it up on their wagon.
On the way to the castle, Jürg dips his toy soldiers in a jar of poisonous salve they once retrieved from the castle.
Upon arrival, they carry the rowboat to the lakeside west of the castle, and set out.
Seeing as how only two principals could join the expedition they have hired a sizable number of retainers.
They make their way across the lake, keeping the castle on their right hand, and see a lakefront garden, with what appears to be a chapel jutting out into the lake.
They land, tie up the boat, and carefully sneak along the chapel’s west wall, while keeping an eye on the windswept garden overgrown with weeds.
Shortly before reach the chapel’s south end, three goatrices jump from the scrubs and charge.
Jürg pulls out his box of soldiers and empties it out on the garden floor. Nine 8-inch high lead spearmen glistening with poisonous grease charge forward. The men-at-arms line up in front of their employers, and brace themselves for what is to come.
The goatrices fail to break through the line of toy soldiers. One even stumbles and falls. Only one toy soldier is smashed by goat hooves and horns.
The toy soldiers begin to stick in their deadly spears and several goatrices succumb to the poison. The heavy foot soldiers make a countercharge and inflict more damage on the monsters, in part aided by Amaranth’s divine blessings. Without suffering any significant injury, let alone petrification, the goatrices are slain.
The company continues to the chapel, when Jürg attempts to enter, he is prevented from doing so as if by an invisible force. Amaranth’s section of the expeditionary force begin to explore the chapel’s ground floor.
At the entrance, a font is fed by water from a lamb’s head statue with gemstone eyes. Shields painted green and blue hang from the walls. Frescoes depict a procession of maidens. At the far wall, a simple altar is covered by a bright white cloth with faint bloodstains. Stairs leads to the next floor.
Deciding to hold off on disturbing anything, Amaranth goes up the stairs. She inspects a room to the south and discovers its floor is covered by a mass of rats. She slams the door shut and goes up to the north door. This opens onto a study largely stripped of its furnishings. Papers litter a desk, a bookcase is filled with volumes, and a large black tome rests on a lectern.
Detect magic causes one book in the bookcase to light up. The black tome also strongly radiates magic. The cleric hastily grabs the volume from the bookcase, and large grubs crawl from it onto her hand and immediately begin to chew their way into her skin. Her retainers try to slap the worms from her hand but fail to remove them.
Panicking, Amaranth runs back down the stairs. Acting quickly, Jürg lights a torch and sticks it into the cleric’s hand, instantly killing the grubs. The cleric barely manages to retain her consciousness from the pain.
After a brief moment of respite, Amaranth returns to the study, and takes both the papers and the black tome. Meanwhile Jürg, still stuck outside the chapel, convinces his porter to take a dagger and pry the gemstones from the eyes of the lamb. His hireling does so reluctantly. When the second gemstone plops from its socket, the porter’s forehead erupts in steam and sizzling flesh. The poor fellow cries out in pain while clasping his face. In a flash, Jürg can see the man has been branded by some invisible force. The porter’s morale breaks, and he flees across the garden and into the castle.
Amaranth returns from upstairs to see what the ruckus is about. When she sees the dagger and gemstones lie on the floor next to the font, she decides to head to the altar to grab the cloth so that they can make their getaway. But before she reaches the far side of the chapel she hears a man clear his throat behind her. At the foot of the stairs stand the ghost of a judge wearing a golden pegasus brooch, taking in the scene with a frown on his face.
The judge, whose name turns out to be Roberto Malévol, is very suspicious of the company’s intentions. The fact that Jürg cannot enter the chapel is a dead giveaway in particular. Although he recognizes Amarnth as a cleric of law, the fact that she has no tongue disturbs him.
Deciding to not take their chances, the company carefully backs out of the chapel. The ghostly judge follows them all the way to the doorstep, and remains in the doorway, eyeing them intently.
The company decide to try and ignore the judge, and start combing the garden in search of the magic sword that is rumored to be buried there, named “Darkslayer”. While making their search they also spot the statue of a woman overlooking the lake from a balcony. Not far from the statue, a set of stairs lead down to the lakeside.
After quite some time of searching, Frida alerts them to the presence of a patch of blackened, barren earth. Not wasting any time, Jürg drops to his knees and begins to scrape at the earth with his axe. Some time later, he uncovers a large, vicious-looking zweihander. Jürg tries to scoop it up with a sack, careful not to touch it, but the sword compels him to pick it up anyway. Jürg gets up, raising the weapon, and the thing growls in a low voice “I… Am… Darkslayer!” The fighter, still under the influence of the sword, surveys his surroundings, and notices Amaranth standing not too far away. Darkslayer says “a cleric of law!” Kill her!” and although Jürg tries to resist, he once again fails, and can’t help but slash at Amaranth, wounding her badly.
The company panics. Amaranth runs for the chapel, her retainers in tow. Jürg’s remaining men-at-arms decide they’ve had enough and flee. Jürg raises up his sword again and with a mighty swing throws it at Amaranth’s back. Amazingly, the sword hits, and the cleric drops to the ground, bleeding heavily.
Jürg approaches the lifeless body of Amaranth, and the judge, who has been patiently observing the whole thing from the chapel doorway says “stop criminal, of to jail with you!” and tries to teleport Jürg somewhere, but fails. Jürg is just in time to revive Amaranth with a potion. The two run from the scene together, leaving behind a ghost and a sword, cursing them each for their own particular reasons.
Referee Commentary:
We nearly had to cancel this session due to low attendance. Luckily two players were foolhardy enough to try their luck in the castle anyway. Running for such a small party is always a lot of fun because there is more room for players to inject some color in their narration. I also don’t have to worry as much about ensuring everyone gets a decent amount of spotlight.
I don’t have much to say about what went down. The toy soldiers were a random item in stock at the magic item shop. Jürg’s player, true to form, then went on to ask me if he could dip them in the poison they’d once found. Of course he could, and so we had nine retainers with a save-or-die effect and one hit point each running around. This is the kind of shenanigans that classic D&D is all about for me, and so I did not begrudge them the lopsided victory over the goatrices.
Since our previous encounter involving a magic sword I had tweaked and streamlined the control rules. I’d also been in touch with Melan about how to interpret the EGO scores listed in the module. But still I found resolving control too fiddly. I think I am going to sit down and see if I can boil it down even more. If I do I will share the results at some point.
Despite all this, the scene was priceless. Before the session, when the players were exchanging ideas about goals for the expedition in our group chat, Jürg suggested going after Darkslayer. In response I posted the following:
A lawful cleric and a chaotic fighter team up to find a chaotic intelligent magic sword. Should be fine.
And “fine” it was, indeed!