Wilderlands: Session 11

 

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.

This session was run on July 11, 2022.

 

 

6 Sweetrain 4433

 

The party decided to rest for the night and recover from their battle with the demon horse in the stable. There were still a few hours of daylight remaining, so Stranger and Vargr decided to go hunting. They managed to get enough food to feed everyone but Coszari and did not see anything out of the ordinary in the area of the manor.

 

During the first watch, Stranger noticed that Cozsari slept with her eyes open. He found the giantess’s glare to be somewhat disturbing.

 

7 Sweetrain 4433

 

During the third, early morning, watch, Duycken and Vargr felt a suddenly growing sense of dread. Duycken was able to shake it off, but Vargr was overcome by fear and ran behind the stable to hide. Duycken could hear great wings beating overhead but could not find the source in the sky. He ran to tell Uggmar that he thought the dragon that had passed over their camp the night they escaped from Custalcon’s mines was overhead. He was surprised to find that the others were not as excited by the thought of running it down as he was. Stranger did note that it sounded like the dragon flew away to the north.

 

 

Once the sun was fully up, they decided to explore the crypt in the graveyard. Creng had found a hole under the tree that seemed to lead to a tunnel earlier. When they examined the crypt, they noticed that its doorway had been bricked up. Vargr suspected that this was done at the time the bodies were interred in the crypt.

 

 

As he is the only party member with dark vision, Uggmar dropped into the hole and began navigating the tight tunnel towards the crypt. Once under the crypt, he found a crude hole in the floor allowing him to access the interior. He pulled himself up into the small room. There was a single slab with the skeleton of a young girl on it. She was wearing the remains of a blue dress and clutching a doll. The doll had a necklace with a sapphire in it that Uggmar thought looked almost identical to the one he had seen on the young girl’s skeleton in the flooded room. The slab had an inscription reading, “Elena Braden 4181-4191.” Uggmar also noticed a wooden door on the western wall of the room. He took the doll before anyone else entered the chamber. 

 

 

After Duycken, Vargr, and Stranger joined Ugmmar in the crypt, they decided to enter the next room. Gwythian waited outside to guard the entrance to the hole. As they entered the next room, they could see the skeleton of a teenage boy on a slab holding a large mace. The inscription on the slab read, “Jan Braden 4179-4191.” When Duycken stepped into the room, the skeleton rose from its slab and attacked.

 

 

Vargr tried to turn the skeleton but failed. Duycken followed this up with his Quack of Doom, stunning the skeleton. Stranger entered the room and struck a heavy blow with his magical two-handed sword, “The Father of Swords.” Duycken was able to kill what remained of Jan with his mace before the stun wore off. After some examination, they determined that the Jan’s mace was a large mace +1. Duycken took it as an upgrade to his weapon. They prepared to enter the next room in the crypt.

 

 

Like the other rooms, there was a single stone slab, this time with the remains of a woman wearing a blue dress. The inscription read, “Maria Braden 4151-4191.” As Duycken entered the room, a spectral form resembling the woman appeared and let out a wail. Uggmar, Vargr, and Duycken were terrified by the wail and started running away.

 

 

Stranger, who found the sound annoying, but not debilitating entered the crypt and swung “The Father of Swords” at the undead but missed. Meanwhile, Uggmar managed to make it to the hole in the floor first and scrambled through the tunnel to run across the courtyard. Gwythian, noticing his companion’s strange retreat, decided that the others might need help inside and entered the crypt through the tunnel. The temporarily blocked Duycken from exiting through the hole in the floor.

 

 

Stranger decided that it was foolish to fight the spectral undead alone and exited the room, pulling the door shut behind him. He then started to make his way out through the tunnel.

 

 

The closed door proved to not be an impediment to the incorporeal Maria and she moved through it to use her chill touch on Duycken. Duycken was able to shake of his fright and attack back with his new magic mace. Varger managed to slip past Gwythian and try to flee through the tunnel but found himself blocked by Stranger. Duycken risked an attack from the spectral form and backed away so that Gwythian could attack. Maria attempted to command Gwythian to attack Duycken, but he was able to shake off the suggestion.

 

 

As Stranger emerged from the hole into the graveyard, Uggmar managed to shake off his own fear and called for Argus, Creng, and Cozsari to help him defend the hole. Vargr kept running away.

 

 

 

Maria hit Gwythian with her chill Grave Touch and Duycken managed to land a blow with his mace. Stranger told Cozsari to smash the wall of the crypt with her club. She hit the wall, cracking it but did not break through. Vargr kept running away. Stranger ran to her side and used his ring of the ram to finish breaking a hole in the wall. Light streamed in and the spectral form of Maria disappeared. They found a necklace with a symbol of Set and a ring on Maria’s skeleton. Duycken smashed the necklace since “it was a symbol of evil.” Gwythian was able to determine that the ring was magical. Later they would figure out that it was a ring of mind shielding.

 

 

After dealing with the crypt, they decided to explore the rooms upstairs that they had not been to yet. In the first room, they found a nicely appointed bed and doll parts strewn across the floor. When they entered, they saw a ghostly image of a ten-year-old girl jump off the bed and hang herself. A girlish voice called out, “Where is she? Where is Mirabelle?” They stayed in the room and the image repeated itself after a minute. Ugmmar tried placing the doll he found in the crypt in the bed. The next time the apparition hung herself the girlish voice said, “No! Mirabelle is mine! Giver her to me!” Vargr took the doll and placed it on Elena’s slab in the crypt. He returned to the room to find that had not satisfied the ghostly voice, so he retrieved the doll and they moved on to the next room.

 

 

This room contained a bed and a fine suit of chainmail sized for a teenage boy. When they entered the room an apparition of a teenage boy sitting on the edge of the bed appeared. The boy slit his own throat and as he slumped to the floor, a girlish voice yelled, “What you did to me, I will do to you!” They took the chainmail and moved on to the next room.

 

The next room contained a large bed and a collapsed dresser. As they entered the room they saw the ghostly image of a man, lying in bed, sit up and stab the woman sleeping next to him. The girlish voice called out, “What you did to my family, I will make you do to yours.” They searched the room and found some jewelry and a dagger with dried blood on the bed. Uggmar to the knife only to discover that it was cursed. They quickly explored the remaining two rooms. These were servant’s quarters and ghost-free. They did find a nice carpet that did not attack them. 

 

 

 

They decided to head back to Byrny to sell some of the treasure, get Uggmar’s curse removed, and hire some men to take on the White Worm goblin tribe. They left Vargr at the manor with Cozsari and Creng. They assumed that Cozsari might raise some eyebrows in civilized areas and were afraid of whatmight happen if Creng met any house goblins. As Uggmar left the gates with the doll in his possession, they were surprised by a series of cracking sounds as the manor house and the stable collapsed. *

 

When they got back to town, the got Uggmar’s curse removed at the Temple of Odin. Uggmar and Stranger had both found notes in their backpack shortly after their encounter with Sir Mar and Petunia in Session 5. The note read:

 

Opportunity awaits! Come to Tulip's Roadhouse and present this voucher at the bar for a free Rooftopper!

 

They both decided to go by Tulip’s Roadhouse to see what this was all about. Initially, the rest of the party joined them for drinks, but Petunia indicated that Tulip wanted to talk to the two of them after the others left. She led them to a back room where Tulip was doing some inventory work. She welcomed them and opened a secret staircase in the back of the room. They followed her and Petunia down the stairs to find themselves in a hidden cellar. Sebastian, the Badder gate guard, and a large human man were sitting at a table. Sebastian spotted Stranger and called out, “I knew that Hoop bastard was a thief when he came through the gate.”

 

Tulip offered them all a seat and explained that this was the Byrny Thieves’ Guild. She quickly explained the rules that thieves are expected to obey in Byrny:

 

1)    Any job performed in the town, or on the property of one of the local lords, must be approved by Tulip ahead of time.

2)    Travelling merchants are fair game as long as they are not in the town.

3)    The guild gets a 10% cut of any job done in town or in the area.

4)    Sebastian spreads bribes around to the guards to ensure that they will not take an interest in any approved job.

5)    Tulip can provide work-for-hire if they want. Locals do need some sneaky work from time to time.

6)    Tulip can serve as a fence and charges 25%. She has a way to move the goods to the City State, so there is no chance of the goods popping back up near their previous owners.

 

They agreed to these rules and were welcomed to the guild.

 

*The doll actually belonged to the girl whose skeletal remains they found wearing a sapphire necklace in the flooded main room. Lord Braden promised to help her family flee the gnolls. But murdered them and gave her doll to his daughter. She haunted them and brought about the current state. Had they given the doll back to the girl, without taking either necklace, the manor would have been restored.

 

I plan to post the complete maps I made of the manor on Friday and the final installment of the Lords of the Byrny Area series on Monday.