Rise of the Runelords, Part I: Burnt Offerings [IC]

[meemaas]

Norton takes a slight bow, a gesture of respect towards the allies who cannot see him.

Spoiler

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"I will not allow your sacrifice to be in vain. I will complete our quest and avenge your deaths by any means necessary. May the Gods reward you for your valor."

With this, he turns and starts back after the other fleeing allies, ready to quit this place and put some effort into preparing for the fight against the Barghest.

[lostsole31]

R4T25: Norton takes a slight bow, a gesture of respect towards the allies who cannot see him.

Spoiler: Norton >>> Collective

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"I will not allow your sacrifice to be in vain. I will complete our quest and avenge your deaths by any means necessary. May the Gods reward you for your valor."

With this, he turns and starts back after the other fleeing allies, ready to quit this place and put some effort into preparing for the fight against the Barghest. Of course, he gets well ahead of the other two, but then he realizes he has to pull back for Opal and Draegra, or else he would plumb the darkness himself (unless he takes out a light source for himself).

R4T21: Dazzled, the malfeshnikor throws his power against the paladin again, hoping to finally hurt him. He rakes the man across the belly for 20 (15 of which is mitigated, and to which Leanyi takes 6) Malfeshnikor sees this, but it too into his rage to really tactically employ this information. A crit on Toros in the head does 21, finally wounding him directly and fully.

R4T19: Leanyi now attempts a left-hand strike, but the barghest's physiology confounds her, and her attack goes wide.

R4T15: Opal, just to verify, you are continuing to bag ass, correct?

Draegra on deck, Toros in the hole ...

[digiman619]

With what teammates she could get out behind her, Opal continues to head to the exit.

[lostsole31]

R4T15-8: With what teammates she could get out behind her, Opal continues to head to the exit, now just on the stairs, and Draegra right behind her.

R4T3: Toros puts hands of healing on himself for 13. He realizes the best thing to is not attack with rage and power, but defense in mind, and hits for 12 + 2 fire.

End Round 4, Begin Round 5 ...

R5T25: Norton, you are immediately behind Draegra, who is behind Opal. You could blast past them, but light is an issue. Do you simply maintain pace and follow behind on the way out so you have someone lighting your passage?

Greater Barghest on deck, Leanyi in the hole ...

[meemaas]

Norton will keep pace with Opal, following her as she leads the way, already regretting the loss of Jules, his light source of choice.

[lostsole31]

It's only a couple rounds before the three-that-lived notice there is no more collective, almost as if there was a brief static click in their minds. They continue out, up into the old goblin fort, and then to the rope bridge. Draegra, the "civilian" is sent across first ... then Opal ... followed by Norton who was guarding from the rear.

Now that you are on the mainland, what do you do?

[digiman619]

Once they were back on the mainland and he had time to come down from the adrenaline, she sits down and cries. That thing killed Keghart in a matter of seconds; staying there was a death sentence. Like, maybe if they knew it was coming and had faced it in an open field, they might have had a chance, but even that probably wouldn't have been sufficient. And with her teammates trapped in the room, they were out of the range of her healing, so even if she stayed, they were goners.

She wiped her face to clear the tears and her hair. Well, her mission was a failure. Whatever divine favor Toros might have head, it's moot now. This entire mission had gone to hell. More than anything though, she felt tired. Once she got in contact with her superiors (who were surely not going to be happy to hear her report), she was going to request a furlough; she needed some time off before she'd be ready to thrust herself into combat again.

She offered a quick prayer to Sarenrae, asking for her forgiveness and for her intercession with Pharasma on her (almost certainly now dead) teammates' behalf. After that, she got up and turned to her surviving teammates. "Let's get back to Sandpoint. I've got to contact my superiors in Magnimar and await reassignment."

[lostsole31]

The bedraggled trio gets back to Sandpoint. Since delivery pigeon is not much of a thing, will Opal be leaving the next day for Magnimar?

Do the two PCs commiserate together in the evening, or just go to your separate rooms and shut out the pain of the day?

[meemaas]

Before she leaves, Norton will make sure Opal knows to tell him before she leaves, so he can see her off. Then, Norton will head to the tavern to drink away some of the afternoon, while thinking over what he knows and what happened, making plans on how he can deal with the Barghest, and how he can recruit new allies to help him finish their quest. Eventually he will head to bed on his own though, after drinking a fair amount.

[digiman619]

Opal will agree to Norton's request to see her off, appreciating the gesture. In the morning, she'd check to see if there were any caravans or carriages heading to Magnimar, and barring that, a horse she can buy. While she drank a bit, she knew that this was the relatively easy part of her trip back. While the actual debriefing wouldn't be fun, the worst would be the journey itself. It was two day's travel to Magnimar by horseback, longer if she had to take a carriage (or worse, walk), and that left dozens of hours with nothing to do but replay recent events in her mind.

She sighed and took another drink. Soon enough, this would all be behind her, but that time can't come soon enough.

[lostsole31]

It so happens there was a merchant group that wouldn't mind a hero like Opal helping them, if she doesn't mind the pay of a caravan guard officer, the best they can afford, though they wish they could help more. (They're itinerants, not fat-cat guild merchants.)

A hung over Norton, fighting the bleariness of the sun, sees Opal and the caravan disappear south on the Lost Coast Road. [Bye, Opal!]

A cathedral bell tolls. And then another, and then another, until the Sandpoint Cathedral bells toll at full pitch. Norton never heard anything like this, as it isn't being timed or musical or anything, but he does see townsfolk heading to the cathedral in droves.

Does Norton investigate?

[meemaas]

Yes, Norton will investigate this.

[lostsole31]

Father Zantus is there just as the Mayor is riding in. Sitting on a bench with some blankets around them and being served hot food and drink by some acolytes ....

.... are Toros Valdemar of Magnimar ....

... and Great-Aunt Leanyi, of parts unkown.

Both very much alive, though very exhausted-looking.

[lostsole31]

Toros and Leanyi will recount for the town assembled the fight against Malfeshnekor, even bringing forth the beast's head, that Toros for the world would not leave behind. Also, their harrowing ordeal just in trying to get out of the place with just the two of them .... and how they had to do a lot of extra work breaking down ropes and chains left below to basically have a long "drag" of his brother's body across the bridge since any two of them could have taken down the rope bridge at any point.

That evening, Norton will likely have had a drink with the conflicted Toros and the much-more resilient Leanyi. Toros leans heavily into his cups.

The next day, after getting Father Zantus to cats *gentle repose* on Keghart's body, Toros departs to Magnimar, escorted by Great-Aunt Leanyi. For their part, they believe their mission - and any sign of troubles at this time in the area - are done. The goblins, Nualia's warmongering and scheme of vengeance, and even an ancient fiend that seems to have been imprisoned - have been dealt with. There is no reason for them to stay so they leave.

---

Of course, Draegra is focused on getting back down to Thistletop to face what dangers may be, escorted by Norton and Shalelu. They didn't want just the two of them. While Shalelu said she was done (at the time), the real bad blood was between herself and the "two paladins" (really one, but Opal was playing like a paladin at the time to her) who tried to guilt her into doing more than she signed on to do out of some conscience-guilt riding attempt.

With the threat to Thistletop gone, and other goblin tribes having gone quiescent ... and definitely with Toros and Opal no longer there to wag annoying moral fingers ... Shalelu joins the two just for kicks.

Death pervades the area, for things are unsettled, as the trio fights 4 ghouls on the way there, but it is an otherwise easy fight to handle.

Draegra will take the discarded rope and chain and spend half the day making sure the bridge is reinforced so as not to ever cause problems again.

It's right below and back to what turned out to be a "prison" for the barghest. Each of the racks in the northern corners contains 15 eternal candles (30 candles in all), minor magic candles that burn eternally without heat, similar to a continual flame spell but shedding only shadowy light in a 5-foot radius. Each eternal candle is worth 25 gp.

A single silver coffer sits on its side on one of the shelves in the western alcove. The coffer itself is worth 100 gp, but the real treasure sits inside, buried in a bed of fine white sand—a ring of force shield. When activated, the shield-like pane of force generated manifests as a seven-pointed star—the Sihedron rune.

A secret door is found in the room to the west where the shadows were fought. It leads to a collapsed treasury where the trio fights a giant hermit crab.

In the pool, the remains of what must have once been an incredible treasury lie in the sloshing waters. Shattered urns, crumbled stone chests, rusted bits of once-beautiful armor and weapons, and other long-ruined treasures from an ancient past lie below. Most impressive of them all is a large, coral-encrusted helmet sized for a giant; the helm measures nearly 5 feet across, and its full-face guard bears an expression of twisted rage and fangs. The helm itself appears to be made of gold, but it turns out to be brass (weighing 300 pounds), but still worth 3000 gp itself.

Despite Norton's best help, Draegra cannot figure for the life of him the meaning of a carving on the wall to the east - that of a towering mountain, its peak carved in the shape of a stern face just above a great palace. Below, the side of the mountain's valley cradles an immense city of spires. He does make multiple rubbings and copious notes.

The pool is connected to the sea via a 10-foot-wide underwater tunnel. The tunnel is 20 feet long in all, and the powerful riptide within makes navigating it possible for only Shalelu to Swim, leaving Norton and Draegra behind to wait for her. It emerges at the base of the island, about 30 feet underwater, an entrance hidden by coral growth and seaweed.

Above, partially buried in the pool, however, is a great treasury. It takes some time to gather it all up and count it: 1,750 sp; 315 gp; (20) precious stones worth 10 gp each; and what seems to be a music box which actually makes a horrific racket (clamor box). Still, the most valuable thing is the brass giant helm (3000 gp estimate).

---

The party may need to do some work going back and forth, especially in hiring out a wagon and a chest for the coins and that helmet, but pretty much seals up Thistletop. Draegra will also need to return a few times to make notes on the many other places therein, but again ... Thistletop's mysteries have been exhausted.

Well, all for that strange wall carving that Draegra still can't figure.
They will have to deal with a dire bat one one of their trips.

[lostsole31]

congratulations on finishing book one (sort of)!

Rise of the runelords will continue in book 2 .... the skinsaw murders!