[PF] Hold my Beer... a Pathfinder Campaign Journal

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-08, 01:58 PM (ISO 8601)

This is the campaign journal for my pathfinder game. There are three PCs, all 6th level Gestalt characters. I couldn't decide what to call this. My first thought was Collateral Damage, due to the trail of bodies and property damage the PCs seem to leave behind them wherever they go.

I decided on Hold my Beer instead, due to the player's occasional attempts to one up each other on anti-metagaming, i.e. doing incredibly stupid things in character not in the character's best interests based on out of character knowledge...

Spoiler: First Session: The misfits meet

Show

Morthius was alone in the forest, sitting in quiet meditation high in the branches of a large oak, happier than he had been in a long time. Out here by himself he didn’t have to put up with the distractions present in his normal day to day life at the monastery.

It wasn’t that he hated people, although he did find most them annoying. It was more that he didn’t really understand them. Always insisting on talking and interacting with others, never giving him any peace and quiet. He found it a source of amusement that his fellow monks considered him odd, when in reality he was the only sane person he knew.

He tried explaining his views on solitude and the unreasonable social expectations of his fellow monks to the only person he considered a friend in the Order of the Effervescent Waves. Father Gumpthe was the leader of their small chapterhouse, and he found Morthius just as odd as everyone else did, but he took pity on the boy and managed to pretend otherwise. Father Gumpthe just told him to pray for guidance, which seemed to be his go to suggestion for any problem that came up.

Morthius vaguely remembered that he was supposed to be traveling to South Pointe to deliver a message to the bishop, but the day was too beautiful and his surroundings too perfect to dwell on such trivial matters. He was pretty sure he was close to some new revelation, and that if he only sat here a few more hours or at worst a week or two it would come to him.

Unfortunately his solitude didn’t last. He heard someone approaching and looked down to see a young woman walk up to his oak. She shrugged off her heavy backpack and set it down beside her, and then sat down with her back against the tree.

Morthius didn’t know many women, but he didn’t think he had ever seen one as large, muscular, and athletic looking as this one was. It was hard to tell from the distance, but she might be even as tall as he was, but probably weighed at least twice as much.

For her part Janney didn’t notice Morthius at all. She was still more than a little hung over from the party at the inn the night before and not paying too much attention to her surroundings. She leaned against the tree and brought out some food and a some wine to wash it down and had a nice leisurely lunch.

Last night had been rough even by her standards. She vaguely remembered some sort of contest that involved drinking, wrestling and feats of strength. She was pretty sure she had won handily, which for some reason always seemed to cause problems for her. Men had such fragile egos. She knew if she ever lost she would react with more dignity, or at least she suspected she would, for she hadn’t yet had the chance to find out.

She looked down with a frown, disappointed that she was out of wine again already. She carefully put the wineskin back in her pack and leaned back and closed her eyes. In a few moments she was asleep.

Up above her Morthius was relieved that she wasn’t going to be a bother. He closed his eyes again and tried to center himself.

Meanwhile, less than a mile away a man named Perle was almost terminally bored. He was heading towards South Pointe, and hoped to reach it in a few days because the trip so far had been far too quiet.

He rounded the bend of the rough dirt track the locals called The Road, and saw a small farmhouse, with a barn and a few chickens. As he approached he heard shouting and a quick scream. He picked up his pace. Finally something interesting!

As he got closer he could see the cause of the ruckus. Five armed men were surrounding the farmer and his family. The farmer was down on the ground clutching his stomach, while his wife and two daughters were pleading with the men to leave them all alone. The men were all human, and looked like your typical bandit scum, but all had red armbands around their left arms, which implied that they might be organized scum.

For Perle this was just the thing he was looking for. He was a pleasant man who treated people fairly, didn’t steal, swear, gamble or drink heavily, and was well liked by most who met him. His one vice was that he truly enjoyed violent conflict but he thought of himself as far too virtuous to pick fights, so he was always thrilled when an opportunity like this arose.

He ducked down and crept forward. The men had shifted to their attention to the farmer’s family, and the women suddenly realized that things had changed and they were in real trouble.

Perle slipped a slim knife out from a forearm sheath, and stepped up behind one of the men who had lagged back to watch. He stabbed the man, skillfully reaching an unarmored spot just behind his left ear. The man collapsed without a sound and Perle grabbed him and gently lowered him to the ground.

No one had noticed him yet, so Perle moved in to take out the next man, who noticed and began to turn. Perle wasted no time, and calmly shoved his dagger into the man’s eye. He was so thrilled with how things were going that he missed the man’s clumsy attempt to retaliate as he was dying and had to let go of the dagger so he could avoid getting cut.

Not wanting to be unarmed in this situation, he pulled another dagger from under his cloak. The farmer’s family looked on in shock, while two of the remaining men turned to face him. The final man stepped back and blew a whistle, and Perle heard the sounds of more men approaching. In his excitement Perle had missed that there were a lot more men nearby, some in the barn and some inside the house.

He knew when it was time to fight and when it was time to flee. He spared a second to look at the man that had alerted the reinforcements and winked at him, and then turned and ran. The two men facing followed, but seeing as how he had killed two of their companions almost without effort, they made sure to run after him slowly until the rest of their band could catch up.

Within seconds he had pulled ahead and reached the trees. He kept going, not sure what he was going to do beyond continuing to enjoy this experience, and then suddenly came across an enormous pretty young woman wearing chain mail sleeping against a tree. He whistled to wake her up as he went by and then ducked behind a tree.

His pursuers caught up only seconds later, but by that point Janney was awake and had rolled to her feet. She froze, momentarily startled by the appearance of a skinny young man wearing nothing but a loincloth sitting on a branch about 40’ above her.

The seven men pursuing Perle moved to surround her and looked like they would just attack when a voice rang out from above.

“Will you people keep it down” Morthius was more than a little irritated. “I am trying to meditate up here”

Two of the men were armed with bows and they didn’t take kindly to Morthius’s attitude. The first arrows missed, but came close enough to cause him to flinch and slip off the branch. He bounced twice on the way down and landed hard in a nearby puddle with the wind knocked out of him, more angry than hurt.

There was a shocked pause where no one moved while everyone stared. A few of the men began to laugh as Morthius got to his feet covered in mud and dripping water from his shaved head. Morthius opened his mouth to say something but didn’t have time to speak as the archers shot him.

Janney reacted the fastest, and stepped forward. Her first punch knocked the nearest man’s head back and the second removed a few of his teeth, and he fell to the ground.

Morthius ignored the pain of the arrows sticking out of his left arm and held up an acorn he had picked up when he fell out of the tree. He concentrated for a moment and the acorn shot out of his hand, embedding itself in the forehead of one of the two men who had just shot him. The man screamed and fell to the ground clutching his face.

Perle was not going to waste the opportunity and leapt out from behind the tree. He tumbled past the downed archer and slashed at one of the men trying to attack Janney, forcing him to turn and face him.

Janney didn’t even notice. Everyone else except the archers was trying to attack her and she was a bit too busy trying to avoid getting hurt. She was only partially successful, and was soon bleeding from cuts on her left cheek and right arm, but had tripped one of her attackers, then kicked him in the face when he tried to get up.

The remaining archer froze when he saw Morthius turn his attention towards him. That pause proved deadly and he too fell to the ground, killed by an acorn traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of sound.

Within seconds it was over, with only one man managing to escape. Perle turned to Morthius and Janney. “Sorry about that. They attacked a nearby farmer and his family. I’m hoping its not too late to save them.” As he spoke he leaned over and slit the throats of one of the men who was down, but just wounded. He didn’t wait to see if they followed him.

Janney looked over at Morthius, who nodded politely. She glanced down at his arm where he still had an arrow protruding from his bicep.

He followed her glance, and noticed the arrow. “Oh, quite right, thank you... have this under control.” He concentrated for a moment and the arrow snapped in half. He grabbed it and pulled it out of his arm and tossed it to the ground, then took off at a trot after Perle.

She watched him for a moment, then shrugged and ran to catch up.

**Kapow** · 2019-10-08, 06:39 PM (ISO 8601)

Very funny write-up so far.
Please continue ;)

Any chance you could post the builds (classes)?

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-10, 07:45 AM (ISO 8601)

Glad you like it so far. It was a blast to DM for these guys. We decided to give the Pathfinder rules a shot for this game, but run it in a homebrew world that dates back to D&D 3.0 days so while the crunch is Pathfinder, a lot of the fluff comes from 3.0 and 3.5, including most of the deities.

I pitched the game to the players as a dark Superhero game, with over the top action, high powered villains, but lots of mooks for the characters to fight their way through. The plan was to make the game a combination of combat-fest and soap opera.

We are all getting old and have less time to game than we used to, so the game was a mix of in person, Skype and PBEM, which drove a number of side quests by individual characters and their cohorts (Leadership feat was encouraged).

Cast:
Janney of Wrennfield: Half Orc Brawler 6 // Archaeologist Bard 6
Description: A very tall (6'2") attractive 19 year old woman with curly dark brown hair and light brown eyes, She is extremely athletic and is a lot stronger than she looks. Her half orc heritage is not obvious at all.
Deity: Kord
Personality: She enjoys life, and can out drink and out fight everyone she has ever met. She is very easygoing, but also extremely competitive.
Build: Lots and lots and lots of feats, mostly related to unarmed combat, plus the trapfinding and skills from the Bard side.

Perle Somer'son: Aasimar Sanctified Slayer Inquisitor 6 // Flying Blade Swashbuckler 6
Description: 5;10", 180 lb man, wiry build, with short black hair and blue eyes.
Deity: It's complicated, will be revealed as story progresses.
Personality: He is a humble, generous, kind, pleasant man that makes friends easily. He can also be ruthless, bloodthirsty, and savage if innocents are threatened.
Build: Skill monkey, scout and face. Combining the precision damage from Swashbuckler with studied target, sneak attack and bane from Inquisitor makes for a capable melee and thrown weapon build.

Mortheus: Aether Kineticist 6 // Psion(Egoist) 6
Description: Even taller than Janney but weighing only 130 pounds, he looks like he is on the verge of starvation, mainly because he forgets to eat on a regular basis. He has brown hair typically cut close to his skull and brown eyes and is only 16 years old.
Deity: None, as he plans on eventually becoming one himself
Personality: He is almost entirely focused inward, and tends to not pay much attention to the outside world at all. He is extremely intelligent and perceptive when he puts in the effort to notice his surroundings, but is also extremely naïve and finds everyone else's actions and motivations incomprehensible.
Build: Kineticist brings decent ranged and melee damage, with Psion providing a lot of out of combat utility. Main party healer.

Continuing the story a little:

Spoiler: Morthius gains an admirer

Show

Berry would remember this day the rest of her life. It’s not every day that a girl meets the love of her life.

When she told the story to her grandchildren 30 years later she minimized the horrific parts, both for their benefit and for hers. She had blocked out the worst parts of that terrible, awful, wonderful day.

The day had started out as a typical day for a farmer’s daughter. Up before dawn to do chores with her older sister, a quick breakfast and then five more hours of work and a quick break for another meal.

She had just eaten and was about to get back to work when the troops arrived. In the story she skipped over the conflict, the casual violence, the sadism, petty cruelties and the pain, and picked up the story where he arrived.

She began the story after the troops had left with her older sister. Her mother lay leaning up against the house, barely conscious and moaning, pinned to the house by a spear thrust through her shoulder. She thought her father was dead, they had beat him until he stopped moving.

She tried to crawl to her mother, but they had partially disemboweled her and the pain was excruciating. None of this made it into the story she told later, only that she and her parents were wounded.

She was just about to give up and give into the awful pain when she heard the sounds of someone approaching. A face looked down at her. He looked like a boy about her own age. Someone had apparently taken his clothes and shaved most of his hair off leaving only small tufts and a shaved skull. Even though she was about to die she felt bad for him, someone must have really tormented the poor boy.

He looked down at her with a look of curiosity on his face and reached down. She gasped as he touched her wound, and then the pain disappeared and he gritted his teeth.

She realized that he had healed her. She had heard of magical healing, but not of the type he had used. He now had a gaping wound in his stomach, and she realized he had healed her by transferring her own wounds to himself. She couldn’t imagine the courage it must take to do that, and for him to do that for someone he didn’t even know shook her to her core.

He let go of her and staggered over towards her mother. She watched numbly as he reached down and grabbed the spear with one hand and her mother’s shoulder with the other. He said something softly to her and then began to pull out the spear. Her mother screamed, then relaxed as the wound healed.

Berry flinched as she saw an open wound suddenly appear on the man’s back, in the same spot where the spear had pinned her mother to the house.

Swaying slightly from the pain he turned to check on her father. As he bent down Berry started to cry soundlessly. She heard herself muttering “no, no, no” softly to herself as he placed a hand on her father’s battered face. The gruesome wounds faded and then appeared on the stranger’s face instead.

With that done, the stranger stood back up, swaying slightly, and closed his eyes. She watched in fascination as his wounds slowly closed.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-11, 11:22 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: A rescue, a chase, and things get a bit rough

Show

Perle reached the farm slightly ahead of the others, stopping at the family to see if any of them were still alive.

Morthius caught up a few seconds later. “I’ll take care of this” he mumbled, not looking at Perle as he assessed how serious the injuries were. Perle and Janney took off to search the rest of the property, leaving him to his task.

Morthius took a deep breath. He wanted to try his new healing abilities for months now, but unfortunately no one he knew had gotten hurt. This was something he had invented himself. He had briefly considered maiming himself a month ago, but couldn’t figure out how he would transfer wounds both too and from himself so he had abandoned the idea.

So now that he had a real chance he was eager to try it out on some serious injuries. He felt a little guilty that he had told Perle that he had this under control when this was really still experimental but was confident he could make it work.

He started with the young woman. Her injury looked awful, and it sickened him that anyone could do something like this to her. He felt himself start to get angry and immediately centered his mind. Emotions were terrible unproductive mental energy that just got in the way, and he had become skilled at walling them out. He healed her, and even though the pain almost dropped him to his knees, in his mind he rejoiced.

He quickly moved to the older woman and healed her, and then the man too. As he stood there waiting for the excruciating pain to fade he felt a sense of satisfaction that made it all worthwhile. The wound transfer had worked, and his theories were sound. He was one step further down the never ending path to enlightenment.

When he opened his eyes he noted that the entire family were hugging each other in relief that they were all alive, and in sorrow that the older daughter was gone. The girl was looking over her father’s shoulder at him in a manner that he had never seen before though. It was an odd look, and one that triggered new emotions on his part. He completely ignored them of course, though it took a lot of effort.

Janney returned, and her playful slap on his back almost knocked him the ground . “Nice job” she said. “My name’s Janney, by the way. The guy with the knives, his name is Perle.”

Morthius told her his name absently and watched from a distance as she went over to talk quietly with the family. He wanted to join her to see how effective his healing had been in more detail, but the look the daughter had given him earlier made him uneasy.

Perle came back a few minutes later, announcing he had found the trail. Within moments they had a plan to track the men with the armbands, who the farmer said told him they part of the “People’s Army”

He didn’t know why they had bothered his family. The men never said, but there were four men left that didn’t chase Perle. They tormented the family for a while to pass the time, and when they realized that the rest of the men were probably not coming back they fled with his older daughter. His younger daughter Berry commented that they seemed to be searching for something on the property but she had no idea what.

Berry wanted to come with them, a thought that almost caused Mortheus to feint, but fortunately Perle and Janney convinced the family that the three of them were better off handling this by themselves. She only agreed to stay behind when they promised they would all come back to the farm to let them know what happened, no matter how this turned out.

They spent the rest of the afternoon following the trail, which led further into the woods and away from the main road. As evening approached they realized that they were approaching a very large encampment in a clearing deep in the woods. They approached cautiously, and saw a number of cook fires, and at least forty men visible in the camp, all wearing armbands. They did not look very well organized. While there were a number of guards, they weren’t doing a very good job of paying attention, and were posted too close to the camp to provide early warning on intruders. Most of the army were human, though there were a few members of other races represented. There was no sign of the farmer’s daughter.

Hearing someone approach they fell back a bit and hid. They were shocked to see a hobgoblin war band approaching. There are a dozen of them, along with four goblins that look like scouts. The war band looked far more disciplined than the soldiers in the camp below. They were well armed and moved almost silently.

The situation looked tense as the war band reached the camp. It looked like a fight might break out until an enormous figure came out of one of the tents and barked orders at the soldiers, and they backed down. The huge man greeted the war band leader and escorted them into the camp.

The sight of the war band triggered a thought in Mortheus. Until now he had completely forgotten that he was supposed to be delivering a message to his Bishop. The letter was with his monk’s habit, hanging in an oak tree about 40 miles away where he had left it before this whole adventure started only a few hours ago. He didn’t know what was in the letter, but remembered Father Gumpthe being worked up about reports of goblin activity nearby, so now he wondered if the letter to the bishop had something to do with it.

He was about to whisper this news to Janney and Perle who were crouched nearby, when Perle suddenly stiffened, and in one smooth motion, turned and threw a dagger at a goblin warrior that was sneaking towards them from about 30’ away. The goblin fell to the ground dead, and Perle looked pleased, until another goblin 10’ further back raised a horn and blew on it to raise the alarm.

**Kapow** · 2019-10-11, 01:50 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Toxic Shaman

Glad you like it so far. It was a blast to DM for these guys. We decided to give the Pathfinder rules a shot for this game, but run it in a homebrew world that dates back to D&D 3.0 days so while the crunch is Pathfinder, a lot of the fluff comes from 3.0 and 3.5, including most of the deities.

I pitched the game to the players as a dark Superhero game, with over the top action, high powered villains, but lots of mooks for the characters to fight their way through. The plan was to make the game a combination of combat-fest and soap opera.

We are all getting old and have less time to game than we used to, so the game was a mix of in person, Skype and PBEM, which drove a number of side quests by individual characters and their cohorts (Leadership feat was encouraged).

Cast:
Janney of Wrennfield: Half Orc Brawler 6 // Archaeologist Bard 6
Description: A very tall (6'2") attractive 19 year old woman with curly dark brown hair and light brown eyes, She is extremely athletic and is a lot stronger than she looks. Her half orc heritage is not obvious at all.
Deity: Kord
Personality: She enjoys life, and can out drink and out fight everyone she has ever met. She is very easygoing, but also extremely competitive.
Build: Lots and lots and lots of feats, mostly related to unarmed combat, plus the trapfinding and skills from the Bard side.

Perle Somer'son: Aasimar Sanctified Slayer Inquisitor 6 // Flying Blade Swashbuckler 6
Description: 5;10", 180 lb man, wiry build, with short black hair and blue eyes.
Deity: It's complicated, will be revealed as story progresses.
Personality: He is a humble, generous, kind, pleasant man that makes friends easily. He can also be ruthless, bloodthirsty, and savage if innocents are threatened.
Build: Skill monkey, scout and face. Combining the precision damage from Swashbuckler with studied target, sneak attack and bane from Inquisitor makes for a capable melee and thrown weapon build.

Mortheus: Aether Kineticist 6 // Psion(Egoist) 6
Description: Even taller than Janney but weighing only 130 pounds, he looks like he is on the verge of starvation, mainly because he forgets to eat on a regular basis. He has brown hair typically cut close to his skull and brown eyes and is only 16 years old.
Deity: None, as he plans on eventually becoming one himself
Personality: He is almost entirely focused inward, and tends to not pay much attention to the outside world at all. He is extremely intelligent and perceptive when he puts in the effort to notice his surroundings, but is also extremely naïve and finds everyone else's actions and motivations incomprehensible.
Build: Kineticist brings decent ranged and melee damage, with Psion providing a lot of out of combat utility. Main party healer.

Continuing the story a little:

Spoiler: Morthius gains an admirer

Show

Berry would remember this day the rest of her life. It’s not every day that a girl meets the love of her life.

When she told the story to her grandchildren 30 years later she minimized the horrific parts, both for their benefit and for hers. She had blocked out the worst parts of that terrible, awful, wonderful day.

The day had started out as a typical day for a farmer’s daughter. Up before dawn to do chores with her older sister, a quick breakfast and then five more hours of work and a quick break for another meal.

She had just eaten and was about to get back to work when the troops arrived. In the story she skipped over the conflict, the casual violence, the sadism, petty cruelties and the pain, and picked up the story where he arrived.

She began the story after the troops had left with her older sister. Her mother lay leaning up against the house, barely conscious and moaning, pinned to the house by a spear thrust through her shoulder. She thought her father was dead, they had beat him until he stopped moving.

She tried to crawl to her mother, but they had partially disemboweled her and the pain was excruciating. None of this made it into the story she told later, only that she and her parents were wounded.

She was just about to give up and give into the awful pain when she heard the sounds of someone approaching. A face looked down at her. He looked like a boy about her own age. Someone had apparently taken his clothes and shaved most of his hair off leaving only small tufts and a shaved skull. Even though she was about to die she felt bad for him, someone must have really tormented the poor boy.

He looked down at her with a look of curiosity on his face and reached down. She gasped as he touched her wound, and then the pain disappeared and he gritted his teeth.

She realized that he had healed her. She had heard of magical healing, but not of the type he had used. He now had a gaping wound in his stomach, and she realized he had healed her by transferring her own wounds to himself. She couldn’t imagine the courage it must take to do that, and for him to do that for someone he didn’t even know shook her to her core.

He let go of her and staggered over towards her mother. She watched numbly as he reached down and grabbed the spear with one hand and her mother’s shoulder with the other. He said something softly to her and then began to pull out the spear. Her mother screamed, then relaxed as the wound healed.

Berry flinched as she saw an open wound suddenly appear on the man’s back, in the same spot where the spear had pinned her mother to the house.

Swaying slightly from the pain he turned to check on her father. As he bent down Berry started to cry soundlessly. She heard herself muttering “no, no, no” softly to herself as he placed a hand on her father’s battered face. The gruesome wounds faded and then appeared on the stranger’s face instead.

With that done, the stranger stood back up, swaying slightly, and closed his eyes. She watched in fascination as his wounds slowly closed.

Thanks for the info.
I assumed, that Morthius is (part) monk - but I at least I guessed the brawler right.

Nice touch with the POV of the farm girl.

Dark superheroes is a nice idea for pf-gestalt. And I can already see how this group could be real fun.

PS: at least part of my (unusual) commenting on this is to prompt you to continue this journal
In other words: I like it. Keep it coming

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-13, 12:06 PM (ISO 8601)

Glad you are liking it!

Spoiler: Where the players regret how they spent their skill points

Show

Janney was slow to react. She turned just in time to see the goblin’s form shimmer slightly then disappear just before Perle’s next dagger toss reached it. She blinked, not sure if it was some sort of invisibility effect or teleportation magic.

The skinny monk next to her seemed pleased with himself. “I thought that it might be best to silence him” he announced. “I removed him from our temporal stream momentarily. He will be back in another twenty seconds or so.”

She had no idea what that any of that meant, but thought that leaving *now* was probably a good idea. She noticed that Perle had the same thought and had already moved out as quickly and as quietly as he could away from the camp. She followed him, figuring (correctly) that he had a much better idea of where he was going than she did.

Seeing that the monk wasn’t following and was still looking at where the goblin used to be. She hissed “Come on Morty, let’s go”

The nickname seemed to offend him, but he got the message and followed. Behind her she heard sounds of activity in the camp. There was a good bit of shouting in both common and some language she didn’t understand, and she could hear that they were being pursued, and by a lot people.

They did not get far before they were seen by another goblin scout, who pulled out a horn and blew another long note. She kept running since ranged combat was not something she was remotely good at, and was pleased that Morty took a shot at him. He missed, but it made the goblin cautious and forced it to duck behind a tree, losing precious time. She hoped they could outrun the pursuit. She thought she could probably take out any one of her pursuers if it came down to it, but taking on sixty was probably a stretch.

She didn’t see any more goblins, but she heard another horn sound ahead of her, and sounds of pursuit behind her and to the right. Perle immediately turned left and she followed him. He was about 10 yards ahead at this point and visibility was not great so she was stumbling as she ran. Suddenly he stopped and she almost ran over him before she saw why, they had run into yet another war band, who were all facing them with a dozen long spear wielding hiobgoblins in front, with archers in back. They were trapped.

The hobgoblins disarmed them all, bound their wrists, hobbled their ankles and then herded them back to the camp.

The armband wearing soldiers were taunting them as they were brought it, making jokes about what would happen to them, but Janney was more worried about the hobgoblins. They were much more deadly in her mind, and seemed to be the ones in control.

When they reached the center of the camp she finally got a good look at the leader they saw earlier when the hobgoblins arrived. He was enormous, well over 6 -1/2 feet tall, and easily 300 pounds. He looked like he was at least partially human, but there was something else in his ancestry, maybe some goblinoid of some type. He was dressed in furs in spite of the heat, and was armed with an enormous long handle Axe, and had a short sword tucked into his belt.

The man was arguing with the leader of the first war band, and looked like he was struggling to hold onto his temper. She didn’t understand a word that was exchanged but it looked like the camp leader was getting chewed out. He eventually appeared to back down and turned to face the new captives.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in lightly accented Common, his rage and frustratuon apparent in his voice.

Janney just ignored him and let him prattle on for a bit. She could tell that Perle was not going to say anything, and Morty seemed bewildered by the whole conversation so it was up to her.

She waited a bit until he got more red-faced and then yawned, looking bored with the whole process. This put him over the edge, and he stepped forward and punched her full on in the face,

She looked back at him and laughed and spit out one her teeth. “Is that the best you can do?”

He was about to hit her again when a soldier came up. “It’s them” he said pointing. “They’s the ones that killed our patrol today. Took out eight of our boys. Get ‘em boss.”

The hobgoblin leader that had been watching this all impassively barked when he heard this. There was another angry conversation between him and the human camp leader. At the end of it he looked even angrier.

Janney decided to push her luck. “Are we about done yet, or do you want to hit me again?” She grinned at him. “You know you couldn’t take me in a fair fight.”

“None of your troops seem worth a damn” she managed before he punched her again. This time he didn’t stop immediately and hit her three times, but couldn’t knock her down.

She laughed at him again as blood streamed down her face. “it’s one thing you boys terrorizing farmers, but when it comes to people who can fight back you aren’t so hot.”

The man moved in to continue pummeling her, but at a word from the hobgoblin he stopped.

The war band chief spoke to her this time, in common. “What you speak of?”

She looked at him and replied to him in a much more respectful tone. “We caught a dozen of his scumbags torturing people on a farm. We took out most of them, then tracked the rest of them back here to get back a girl they took.”

The war leader nodded, and turned and began berating the camp leader again. His troops were not taking it well, and soon there were two groups facing each other. On one side there were about 60 human, dwarven, elven and halfling troops wearing armbands. On the other, about 35 hobgoblins, who did not seem too worried about facing almost twice their numbers.

The human leader said something, and a young man wearing an armband came back a few minutes later leading a young woman by the arm. Janney could see the family resemblance to Berry and her parents. The woman looked terrified, and was wearing a red armband.

“I am a member of the People’s army” she said.

“And your innocent family had to die for you to join?” Janney asked, not sure what the heck was going on.

The girl didn’t reply and looked sad, but not surprised to hear her family had been harmed.

Janney turned her head towards the camp leader. “Not a good day for you. One recruit joins, 8 soldiers dead.” She heard a chuckle at this from the war band leader.

The leader heard this too, and seemed simultaneously shaken and furious by his ally’s response.

He drew his short sword and took a step forward.

Janney laughed again and made sure her voice carried. “You need that sticker for me? I wouldn’t need weapons to take you out, even with my hands tied behind my back” She hoped that this wasn’t a fatal boast...

This was more than the leader could bear, and he dropped his sword and tried to reach out and grab her. This time she didn’t let him, and sidestepped the blow and headbutted him when he was overextended, then used her legs to trip him. As he went down she made sure to land on him with her knees, knocking the wind out of him.

She easily rolled to her feet and dodged his attempt to grapple her, then stepped in and kicked him in the face. He fell down again in a heap and didn’t get back up.

By this point the human troops were enraged. The hobgoblins reacted quickly, herding the three captives back from the conflict. With a word from the war leader his band attacked the camp soldiers. Many fought, but some tried to flee and were cut down by goblin archers that had been hiding in the woods nearby. Within seconds it was over, even though fully half the war band did not participate in the fight, but instead held Janney and her two friends at spear point to make sure they did not try to participate.

After the fight was over the war band leader didn’t seem overly bothered by the events of the evening, and walked away as his troops methodically searched the camp soldier’s bodies and left them where they lay.

When they were done the hobgoblins tied them to trees and forced the three captives to drink a foul smelling liquid, and within seconds they were unconscious.

A few hours later Janney woke up with a splitting headache and a sharp pain in her left hand to find she was laying on the ground next to Perle. Neither one of them were tied up anymore. She looked at her hand to find that the last joint in her pinkie finger was missing. Perle was still out, but she noticed he was maimed in the same way she was.

She slowly got to his feet and saw Morty sitting in a tree above them meditating. The hobgoblins were all gone. All that remained were in the clearing were 60 dead bodies piled high in the center.

Spoiler: OOC:

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While the three PCs are quite capable, they do have their weaknesses, and this game highlighted a number of them. Two of the PCs are woefully inept at Stealth and Perception, somewhat by design given the vision each player had for the character.

Combine that with the players missing some clues that might have caused them to back off before they were found, and some truly bad luck with dice rolls and you had a situation that could have easily turned into a TPK. Now they are wondering at why they are still alive, why they still have all their gear, and what their missing fingers mean....

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-15, 07:12 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Praying for help

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Perle knelt on a rug he found in the remains of one of the army’s tents, performing his morning prayers to regain his spells.

“Gihjantara, Holy Angel of the Valorous Knight, hear the prayer of your devoted servant. I have performed Your Will to the best of my abilities, and beg your forgiveness for my failures of yesterday.

I vow to redouble my efforts destroy the forces of evil, wherever I find them. Please grant me the strength to act as I know I must, and to do what is Necessary and Right, no matter the cost to my own Soul.”

- - - - - - -

The object of his prayer lived on a small demi-plane accessible only from Limbo. Gihjantara was not an Angel, not associated at all with Heironeous, and not beholden to any deity. He was a powerful outsider with a love of trickery, and had taken on a single worshiper a decade ago on a whim.

For a being with a lifespan that was effectively infinite, one human lifetime spent on an interesting project was not a burden, for that is what Perle was for him, a project with many goals.

Could a man be convinced he was serving a Deity by acting in a manner opposed to much of the teachings of the church? What would this do to a man on the fence, a man who had a fervent desire and need to do good but relished evil acts? It was an interesting intellectual exercise for a being that loved to predict and influence mortal behavior.

Gihjantara had other goals, for he prided himself on ensuring that whatever he did served multiple purposes. Perle was a great weapon that he hoped to use in the future. He had many rivals and enemies that he hoped that Perle could stymie. No one would suspect Gihjantara’s involvement when the man instigating the problems viewed himself as a Paladin.

He was reinforcing the wards of his home when he felt his Priest’s prayer reach him. Perle seemed distraught today, and was not the normal confident fervent self. Curious as to what had caused this anguish, he focused his will and pulled Perle’s memories and reviewed what he had been through.

He was intrigued. Something definitely was not adding up here, and he thought he might spend some effort to determine who or what had acted here. There was definitely another Player in this Game.

And Perle’s new companions, they were perfect. A drunk party girl who lived in the moment and a naive young Monk with no life experience. They already had followed Perle into trouble, and Gihjantara hoped that would continue,

The outsider concentrated and sent Perle feelings of understanding, forgiveness and confidence, refilled his spells and then cut off the connection, calling for his assistant to attend him.

- - - - - - -

Perle opened his eyes, trying to prevent himself from crying, his confidence restored. He got up with a new sense of resolve and walked back to where his new friends were waiting.

He had work to do...

**ShedShadow** · 2019-10-17, 09:02 AM (ISO 8601)

This story. I like it. ANOTHER!

(That was a reference. I just really like the stories and would be thrilled to read more of it. Your writing style is absolutely fantastic!)

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-18, 09:37 AM (ISO 8601)

Thanks, I had fun writing it up, and even more fun DMing it. :)

Warning: All talk, no action post ahead!:

Spoiler: Morthius is confused, and by speaking ensures everyone else is too:

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Morthious could hear the two below stirring. He kept his eyes closed, hoping they would leave him alone for a while until he had finished his morning meditation.

Yesterday was a really odd day, and he didn’t really understand a lot of what he had experienced. He had been meditating on it for hours and was still not sure of what to make of it all.

On the plus side he had been able to try out some experimental healing abilities, used his telekinesis to defend himself and had successfully pushed someone out of the normal time-stream temporarily.

On the other hand, he had gotten into multiple fights, been shot with arrows, was captured, tied up and lost the tip of one finger.

But on the whole he was pretty pleased. Meeting people who didn’t treat him like he was crazy was a new and welcome experience.

He was also excited that a new research opportunity had presented itself. He hadn’t considered learning how to regenerate limbs, and now he had three experimental subjects to test out that ability once he developed it!

But it irked him that he didn’t understand so much of what had happened. People just didn’t make sense.

When he heard Perle return he decided to join them and floated down to the ground. He was content to listen to them talk and didn’t join the conversation until Janney asked who had taken their fingers.

“The one that took our fingers looked different than the rest. He was wearing a wooden mask, and had feathers braided into his hair” he announced.

The other two looked at him in surprise.

“I was awake when it happened” he explained. “I didn’t let their poison affect me so I just pretended to be out. After he cut off our fingers he dabbed the stumps with some sort of paste that stopped the bleeding and stuck our fingers in a small fur pouch he was wearing around his neck.”

He didn’t really understand some of their follow-up questions but tried to answer anyway. He lost interest again until Perle mentioned the girl.

“Oh, I found her after the hobgoblins left and I untied us all. She left a couple of hours ago.”

For some reason this upset them so he tried to reassure them “She was wounded, but I healed her, she’s fine now.”

Janney seemed surprised. “How did she hide? That war band seemed pretty thorough when they checked all the bodies. How did you find her?”

“No idea how she hid from them. Now that you mention it she seemed surprised to see me. I saw her crawl out of a tent and came over to see if she was ok. She had a couple of bad wounds, but I healed them OK. She thanked me and left, saying that she was heading back home.”

They decided to immediately leave and head back to the farm. Perle and Janney went there directly while Mortheus detoured to retrieve his monk’s habit and the message he was supposed to deliver.

By the time he got there Perle and Janney were sitting in the farmer’s kitchen having some breakfast. They had already told the family what had happened, but the older daughter hadn’t shown up. The family was grateful for the update, but were worried as to why their daughter hadn’t returned,

“Don’t worry, her baby should be fine” Mortheus announced, causing everyone to stare at him, which made him very uncomfortable. He hadn’t intended to speak. He was really uncomfortably talking to multiple people at the same time, but the look of concern on Berry’s face had somehow made staying silent impossible.

“Um, at least I think it was a baby. When I healed her I detected a second consciousness. So either she was pregnant or possessed.” he added, feeling even worse as he realized that this hadn’t eased anyone’s concerns.

He was saved by the arrival of the missing daughter, who ran into the house and ran to her mother. There was lots of hugging and crying, giving Mortheus the distraction he needed to flee to the yard.

A few minutes later, Janney and Perle joined him. He told them he was leaving immediately to deliver the message to the Bishop, and Janney decided to join him as she was heading to South Pointe anyway. Perle declined to come, he was planning on going back to the army camp to try to track the hobgoblins.

Perle went back in to tell the family their plans. Berry came back with him, ran up to him and hugged him, thanking him for everything. He returned the hug awkwardly. She then hugged Janney and Perle too, and the three of them left.

Wrapping up the first session. The next few posts will cover some solo activity by the characters that takes place before they get back together again.

Spoiler: Epilogue

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They reached South Point the next day, and split up, agreeing to get back together later that afternoon.

After delivering his message Mortheus met Janney at an inn and had dinner with her. He told he he had to return to his order with a message from the Bishop.

Janney had different plans. She was going to stay in town. There was an annual festival in two weeks, and she was going to compete in some of the games.

Perle had no luck tracking the war bands at the army camp. It was if they had just disappeared.

He decided to stay in the area to keep searching, and he also wanted to stop by the farm again. The older daughter's story didn’t make sense at all. Something was up there. Did she leave with the soldiers, or was she taken against her will? How had she survived the massacre? Was she really pregnant and who was the father. He also hadn’t forgotten Berry’s comment that the soldiers appeared to be looking for something. What did that mean?

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-20, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)

I'm going to try to run each character's solo adventure in the same post but in separate Spoilers.

Spoiler: Janney makes new friends and gets a job:

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It was a raucous crowd in the White Goat Inn. The Harvest Festival was only two weeks away, and business was booming.

Janney was sitting at a table in the back playing cards with three other people. It was getting late and she was just about breaking even, which was impressive considering that she was the only one at the table that wasn’t trying to cheat.

She had two advantages that kept her in the game. She was extremely lucky and seemed to get slightly better cards than the rest did. It also didn’t hurt that everyone at the table had been drinking for hours, and she could handle it better than the rest could.

Her evening came to an abrupt end when the player to her right slipped up. Milothiopolus was a reasonably skilled wizard and had been using Mage Hand to palm cards all night, but he he had no head for wine, and in his stupor forgot what he was doing when one of the dancing girls on stage had a wardrobe malfunction.

He was staring at her when he noticed the table had gone silent, and looked down to realize one of his cards was hovering in the air above the table.

Janney was more amused than angry. She laughed and punched him playfully on the shoulder, as usual forgetting her own strength,

The impact knocked the slight wizard off of his chair. In drunken outrage he responded by starting to cast a spell.

Not wanting to wait for it to go off to see what it was, she flipped the table over on top of him, disrupting the spell.

This angered the other two players. Rathgar the dwarf picked up a chair and slammed it across her back, while Schlitner the gnome cast a Grease spell, which caused Janney, and a number of other bar patrons to slip and fall.

Within seconds the entire inn was fighting. The guard arrived and arrested everyone.

Janney was no stranger to spending time in local jails, having a penchant for getting charged with Drunk and Disorderly on a regular basis. So she thought she knew what to expect.

The next morning however, she discovered that this time was going to be different. The Inn’s owner was well connected politically, and was motivated to make life as uncomfortable as he could for the damage the fight’s instigators had caused to his place. So Janney was disappointed to find out that she couldn’t just pay a fine and damages to the inn, she was going to be forced to work in order to get released.

She, Milothiopolus, Rathgar and Schlitner found themselves sentenced to spending the next week on Sewer Cleanout duty. They were all issued shovels, and taken to a stairwell that led down into the most foul smelling tunnel system that any of them had ever seen.

Their job was to help shore up a tunnel that had collapsed recently, causing everything to back up. They were working under the direction of Ozborne, a very pale, very grimy looking elderly dwarf who knew enough engineering to direct them and seemed totally immune to the smell.

The work was rough. The hard labor, the smell, and the cold water and their hangovers made all of them miserable. Just when they thought it couldn’t get worse the earthquake hit.

There was a momentary rumbling sound and everything began to shake, and then the tunnel ceiling collapsed behind them, leaving all five of them trapped. Milo chanted for a moment, and a soft glow illuminated the small area they were stuck in. Ozborne, Schlitner and Rathgar were all hurt, but not seriously, while Milo and Janney were unharmed.

Ozborne looked stricken when he saw what had happened, which Janney (correctly) took for a sign they were screwed.

Milo bent over and looked at a crack in the tunnel floor. “Hey, look, there is something do….” he started to say as an aftershock hit the tunnel floor collapsed under them and they fell into a hole.

“Thank the gods for Feather Fall” Janney heard Milo mutter. She got to her feet slowly and looked around. She and Milo were along in a small narrow passage of worked stone that continued on perpendicular to the Sewage Tunnel. She head Ozborne groan behind her. There was no sign of the Rathgar and Schlitner.

Spoiler: Mortheus makes an impression:

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Mortheus returned to the Order of the Effervescent Waves with the Bishop’s message to Father Gumpthe. He times his return so that the other monks were at their evening meal, allowing him to put the letter on Gulpthe’s desk without running into anyone.

After delivering it he slipped back out of the monastery and walked into the woods a quarter miles to his favorite Maple. He hoped he could just sit in the tree for at least a few days before anyone found him.

The next evening his meditation was interrupted by the earthquake. The tree shook violently and he hung on until it stopped. He quickly grabbed his clothes and put them on while he floated back down and rushed back to the monastery to see if anyone was hurt.

Father Gumpthe saw him coming and sent him into the village to see if they needed help. Seeing how heavily damaged the monastery was Mortheus was not surprised when he reached the village to find that the church was the only undamaged structure left.

He found the local priest outside the Painted Crow, the village’s only inn, which had collapsed with multiple people inside.

He did not know Mother Therma very well, and hoped she would be too busy for small talk. She was a very personable, devoted priest of Pelor who had discovered her calling late in life, after her husband had died and her children grown. Whenever she spoke with him she assumed that he was as devoted to Pelor as he was, and he had no idea how to respond. He suspected that expressing his true beliefs would probably not be a good idea, as he believed devotion to the gods to be extremely foolish and eventually self-limiting.

He didn’t need to worry about a lecture today. She had her hands full and was too busy to preach. She had already almost exhausted her healing abilities on the injured villagers, and there were still many more trapped inside the inn.

The inn was a single story structure with a stone foundation and walls with a wooden framed roof. A few of the villagers were trying without success to move some of the collapsed timbers, which had taken down the inn’s front wall.

Mortheus stood there and studied the timbers for a full five minutes while people ran too and fro around him. A few people tried to get him to help with various tasks but gave up when he ignored them completely. Eventually he made a decision and gestured for the the villagers to move back.

He picked one heavy timber that did not seem to be currently load bearing and concentrated on it. With sweat pouring down his face from the strain he gradually was able to lift it with his mind and float it aside.

The wounded villagers looked on in shock, but one man was quick witted enough to realize that the timber had to go somewhere, and he gathered the people off to one side to give Mortheus room.

He dropped the timber and the ground shook slightly from the impact. Nearby a woman screamed.

Mortheus spent another minute planning his next move, and then decided on an even larger one. He found this one even harder to move, but eventually he was able to lift it.

He dropped it next to the first one, and then floated above the inn to take a closer look. There were three people inside. One of them was crushed under the wall and appeared dead, but the other two were crouched next to the fireplace. Both appeared to be in shock. He floated down, flipped over a surviving table and had the couple get on it with him.

He floated the table up, out and down to the ground outside. He didn't notice when a few of the villagers cheered.

As soon as it was down he laid a hand on the more seriously wounded of the two, and transferred her wounds to himself, then did the same with the other,. As Mother Therma looked on in shock he stumbled back into the inn to see if he could help the crushed man inside.

The aftershock hit just as he confirmed that the man was dead, and the rest of the roof fell down on top of him.

Spoiler: Perle decides revenge can be Good.

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Perle had no luck tracking the two hobgoblin war bands. He was an accomplished tracker and his inability to tell where they went impressed and concerned him.

He was persistent though and didn’t give up until he had thoroughly checked out the entire area.

After two days though he admitted defeat, which wound him up even more than he was before. After a few hours of prayer he decided to go back to the farm where the whole thing started.

He found it deserted, not just the family, the farm animals were gone too. Perle knew little about farming, but thought it unlikely that farmers would just leave, it took too much work to keep a farm running. With his new lead his mood improved.

He spent the afternoon searching the house and grounds. His first impression was that they had just packed up and left. But he eventually determined that someone had expertly butchered the chickens, pigs and cow, harvested some of the meat and then buried the remains.

Late that day he found a faint trail leading away from the farm. A number of people had passed through here in the last day, and at least a few of the prints were too small to be human. He thought he may have regained the trail of one of the war bands.

A few hours later he caught up with two goblins. He saw them before they detected him and backed off. He followed them for half an hour and noted they appeared to be trying to disguise the trail of the rest of the band.

He moved in quietly, killed them both and kept going, deciding speed was more important than stealth.

He suddenly felt the ground shake around him. As the tremors ended he heard the signs of someone speaking ahead.

He crept forward slowly and found three hobgoblins trying to push a tree that had collapsed on top of a fourth hobgoblin. Seeing no one else nearby he cast a prayer and moved in behind them. The first never had even had a chance to react. The other two turned and tried to fight but they had put their weapons to free their trapped friend and had nothing other than long knives to fight with. He had the satisfaction of seeing the fear in their eyes as he cut them down.

For the first time in days he felt some of the shame he felt from getting captured and maimed fade, washed away in the blood of those that had wronged him. He walked over to the trapped hobgoblin who had started shouting as soon as the fight began and casually stabbed it in the brain through one eye to shut it up. He cut off the little finger from each of their left hands and left them stacked next to one of the bodies along with the fingers he had taken from the two goblins earlier, then faded back into the woods to wait for more prey to arrive.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-22, 01:30 PM (ISO 8601)

Solo adventures continue:

Spoiler: Janney chooses Risk over Caution

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Milo tended to Ozborne while Janney searched the debris for Schlitner and Rathgar. Eventually she found the gnome. He had been crushed by a large chunk of stone and was not breathing.

She started lifting the rocks around him and tossing them to one side to get him loose so she could try to revive him. She heard Ozborne’s weak protests behind her and ignored him. She almost had him free when there was another rumble and she had to tumble backwards to avoid being crushed herself when her actions caused a further collapse, cutting off the passage they were in.

Now they had no choice which direction to go. Milo helped Ozborne to his feet and they began exploring the passage with Janney in front. They traveled about 50’ and reached the end of the passage.

There was an arch made of stone there, but no door, just an opening. The passage continued on to the other side. There was a symbol carved into the stone at the top of the arc, with smaller glowing runes that appeared to be made of mithril surrounding the symbol and continuing on down the sides of the arch. As the group got closer they could hear a soft hum, so low in frequency that it was almost inaudible.

Janney looked back at the other two. “Think it’s trapped?” she asked jokingly.

“It doesn’t look like it, probably just an illusion to scare you away” Milo responded in a deadpan voice, though his body language screamed fear. “You should just walk on through.”

She nodded. “You’re probably right” she replied with a weak grin. She was more than a little nervous, trapped underground with their path out collapsed behind them. She was glad she wasn’t hear alone, and that Milo seemed to have retained his sense of humor. She watched as he tried to dispel any magic on the arch and wall without success.

She looked closer, and realized that the rune was Orcish, but did not recognize it. She knew little of Orcish culture. Both her parents had Orc ancestry, but neither talked about it, and discouraged her from asking questions about her heritage. She was curious, but knew it was a painful subject for them so she never asked.

She was surprised then, when Milo spoke again. “Wow, I recognize that symbol. I don’t know why Erevan Ilesere would have a temple here...”

“You’re daft” Ozborne muttered, limping in to get a closer look. “This portal is consecrated to Dumathoin the Keeper.”

They all looked at each other. After some discussion, they all agreed that they each saw something different. Milo and Ozborne saw the symbol of their own deities, but Janney did not. She worshiped Kord, and knew nothing of what the Orc symbol meant.

They decided to rest for a bit. They pooled their resources and realized they only had a single canteen full of water and no food. Milo had used his only healing potion on Ozborne, so they had no healing either. Things were looking grim.

They argued whether it would be better to try to clear the rubble to see where the other end of this passageway went. Ozborne wanted to try to clear the passageway and use the portal as a last resort. Milo was concerned that they would just get crushed. Schlitner and Rathgar’s deaths weighed heavy on him, and his mild claustrophobia was making him desperate to escape, so he was willing to just risk the Portal.

In the end it came down to Janney, as she was the only one strong enough to try to dig them out. She looked over at Milo and saw the look in his eyes. He looked a bit like a trapped animal, though he was trying hard not to panic. She sighed and got to her feet. “I’m sorry Ozborne. I’m going through the portal.”

The dwarf nodded, and slowly got to his feet. Milo didn’t wait for the other two. He gritted his teeth and stepped through, and promptly disappeared.

Janney handed Ozborne the canteen, and he went next. She watched him disappear, then stepped through herself.

She found herself in a massive cave that had a strong animal smell. Ozborne and Milo were not there, she was not alone. An elderly Orc woman was standing nearby, talking to a younger female Orc. Both were dressed in some sort of ceremonial garb covered with Orcish symbols. Two enormous Dire Bears turned to face her, standing up on their back legs to tower over her.

A young Male Orc warrior was closer, and faster to react. He raised his Falchion, screamed a challenge and charged.

Spoiler: The villagers decide they do *not* like Mortheus.

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Mortheus looked around him in dismay. He was trapped under tons of stone and wood with no good way out. He wasn’t pinned, he had managed to dive into the fireplace, which was fortunately not lit.

He quickly realized that lifting the debris was going to be a problem, it was too heavy, and too precarious. Any mistake on his part would probably kill him.

He looked up to assess the chimney. It had partially collapsed but he saw a small amount of daylight above him. It was too narrow an opening for him, but he thought he could adapt. He concentrated for a moment, reshaping the bones in his shoulders and hips.

He started to climb but still couldn’t fit through as the opening was only about 6” wide. With a little more physical readjustment he managed to squeeze through and fall to the ground.

He looked up and noticed the villagers were all standing back looking at him with a mixture of shock, fear, awe and disgust as his body slowly readjusted itself back into its normal form.

He got up and glanced over at the church, noticing that one wall was bowing outward. He thought he might go over and see if he could fix it before the whole building collapsed.

Mother Therma saw how the villagers reacted and tried to reassure them. She felt weak, this day had taken more out of her than she had to give, but she tottered over to the monk with her holy symbol clutched in her hand.

“Praise Pelor for working his miracles through you!” she cried.

He spoke without thinking. “I did this, not Pelor!” As he uttered the word ‘Pelor” the church wall collapsed and the entire church fell in on itself.

“He did it, he’s the on that cursed us!” one old woman shrieked. “His dark powers caused this. Look what he done did!”

Another woman screamed. “Mother Therma is dead!.. He killed her!”

He turned around to see if he could help the elderly priest, who had slumped to the ground at the sight of her church's destruction, but two villagers got in between them. They looked terrified of Mortheus, but they were determined to defend their priest from him.

Seeing the looks of hate, fear and loathing he was getting he left before things got violent. He ran into the woods, confused by how things had turned out. He thought to himself that he should have known better than to think that he could interact with others...

He never noticed the tiny invisible figure watching from the roof of a nearby cottage. It had been there the entire time, and giggled as the church fell down. When the monk fled, it followed.

Spoiler: Perle is not done yet

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Perle didn’t have to wait long. He saw four more hobgoblins approach. He pulled a thin metamagic rod from his pack and held it in one hand. Right after they passed him he quietly cast a spell to increase his speed, then cast a second spell and cut his hand with his dagger.

The hobgoblins suddenly stopped as their left hands started bleeding. He tumbled forward and slashed at the trailing one in the leg, and as it turned to face him he stabbed upward, finding an opening in its leather armor. He tumbled backwards as the others turned in confusion. They reacted quickly and formed up facing him, their spears held out in front of him as they prepared to charge, confident in the reach advantage they had.

Perle kept backing up. He knew he was faster than they were, and he turned and ran, outdistancing their charge. He realized he had missed the presence of an additional foe when he felt the arrow pierce his side. It burned fiercely and he suspected it was poisoned.

He turned and saw the goblin archer lurking about 30’ away. It had another arrow nocked and was preparing to fire. He ran directly at it and tried to dodge the arrow. He wasn’t fast enough but his armor blunted much of the force.

He moved in and slashed twice, killing it. He was losing blood badly, but so were the hobgoblins chasing him. He hoped they would bleed out before he did.

Taking the time to kill the goblin allowed the three remaining hobgoblins to close in on him. He turned to run and saw they were almost on top of him, and he had a tree behind him that was preventing him from fleeing.

He turned and tumbled to the left, avoiding two of his three pursuers. The third one cut him badly with its spear, but then he was through them. He rolled back to his feet and turned, trying to get behind them. They tried to turn with him, but couldn’t move as quickly with their spears extended.

He made a snap decision and moved in close, stabbing the nearest one in the neck while continuing to move, forcing them to continue to spin to try to face him.

He dodged an attack and then flipped his dagger at one of the other two, burying it in it’s right eye. The one he had stabbed seconds earlier was still in the fight, barely, and the remaining hobgoblin just looked pissed.

Perle was feeling a bit faint from blood loss, but was not about to quit now. He used his superior speed to give him some space and drew his next to last dagger and threw it, taking out the more heavily wounded of the two.

The last hobgoblin glared at him and spit. It dropped its spear and drew a long knife and gestured for him to take his best shot.

Perle was happy to oblige and slowly moved in. The fight was quick and brutal. Afterward he took a few seconds to make sure all of his foes were dead, recovered his daggers and used a wand to heal himself somewhat, then kept on going. He hadn’t found Berry and her family yet, and there were still some of the war band left unaccounted for.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-25, 11:42 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Janney experiences the local culture

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Janney sidestepped the charging Orc at the last second, causing his swing to go wide. As he went by she timed her punch to hit him in the hand, and his sword went flying off into the corner. As he moved in to grapple her she slapped aside his outstretched hand and dumped him on his backside.

The elderly female uttered the Orcish word for Stop, and the warrior slowly got to his feet and backed off, looking a bit embarrassed.

The younger female turned her attention towards Janney.

“What are <unintelligible> doing in <unintelligible>?” Her tone was accusatory.

Janney’s grasp of the Orcish language was limited to obscenities, so she didn’t catch most it.

She replied in Common. “I’m sorry. I don’t speak your language well. I was trapped underground and found an arch with a symbol on it. It was the only way out, so I walked through it, and appeared here.”

The woman sneered at her words and one of the two bears rumbled in its deep chest. The old woman stepped forward to take a closer look at Janney, which seemed to surprise the younger woman.

As the woman stepped past the two Bears Janney realized she was blind. The woman sniffed at her, then started speaking rapidly in Orcish, far too fast for Janney to understand.

The younger woman translated. Her common was not very good, but it was far better than Janney’s Orcish.

“You have Orcish Blood” she said, not asking it as a question, but stating a face.

Janney nodded. “Both of my parents have some Orcish blood” she replied in common.

“You are currently in a temple of Luthic the Cave Mother. You are the first <unintelligible> that has ever <unintelligible> with your presence. By our laws you should be killed slowly for your <unintelligible> “

Seeing the older woman frown the younger one quickly added “But arriving here by how you did is a sign so you may yet live.”

The older woman pulled the other woman aside for a quick discussion, after which the younger woman and the warrior left, leaving Janney alone with her and the two Dire Bears.

She walked deeper into the cave, apparently not needing to see where she was going, and expecting Janney to follow. She led her into a small chamber that had furs on the floor and sat down, motioning for Janney to do the same. The larger of the two Bears came in with them and sat down on the floor next to the old woman.

“Tell us of your people” she asked after casting a spell that granted her the ability to speak and understand common. Her presence was such that Janney gave little thought about dissembling, and answered honestly.

“I know little about them” Janney admitted. “Both of my parents grew up in an orphanage. My father was dropped off there when he was only a few days old. My mother was about 4 when she was placed there. I know nothing of my grandparents.”

The young warrior returned with food and sat down next to the old woman as she continued to talk. The food was good, much better than she was used to and strongly spiced. They washed it down with some incredibly strong ale.

She found herself talking about her life since she left the orphanage, how she enjoyed traveling, her love of competition, wrestling and fighting.

The young warrior snorted at that and spoke for the first time, in rough common. “I bet you win much” which caused the older woman to glare at him.

He weathered her glare and then grinned at Janney. He introduced himself as Kilreeq, and said he was the older woman’s grandson and a guardian of the temple.

The old woman turned the conversation to religion and explained that this was cave was devoted to Luthic, Cave Mother, wife of Gruumsh, and she was the local high priestess

Janney was intrigued and wanted to learn more. After a few minutes of listening she was thoroughly confused, lost interest and didn’t give much thought to what she was being told. Her years in the orphanage school had not been totally wasted, for she was able to pretend to pay attention without listening...

The Ale kept flowing, and after another hour the old woman left. Killreeq stayed and the two kept drinking long into the night.

She woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly good considering how much Ale she had the night before. She had enjoyed the young Orc’s company. He was the first man she had ever met who was strong enough to handle losing a fight to her, and she liked it. She thought she might see if she could find him after she got something to eat. Maybe they could wrestle or spar.

She stretched, rolled over and found herself looking at him close up, sound asleep right next to her. With a sinking feeling she looked across the room and saw their clothes strewn everywhere. She closed her eyes for a moment. This was definitely the last thing she wanted. She knew Orcs were very fertile and the last thing she needed was a baby at this point at her life.

She slipped out from under the blanket, walked across the room and got dressed quietly, not wanting to wake him up. Despite her life of constant partying she hadn’t woken up next to a man before and found herself uncharacteristically unsure of what to say and do.
As she walked around the corner she found the old woman standing there. She gestured for Janney to follow and led her back to the main chamber she had arrived in the afternoon before to a table with two plain white robes folded on top of it.

The old woman grabbed one of the robes and began to put it on and gestured for Janney to do the same. Janney surreptitiously checked the items on the table out for magic and found none, so she put the robe on.

The woman then pointed to two necklaces of polished stones, neither of which radiated magic either.. After Janney chose one the woman put on the other one, and led her back towards where Kilreeq still slept.

As they walked away from the table Janney felt funny. She turned to say something to the woman and………..looked around to find them both standing on the side of a dirt road on a ridge looking down into a small valley. There was a small village off in the distance and a large manor house on a hill nearby overlooking it. She recognized where she was. She had passed through here only a few weeks earlier on her way to South Pointe. Berry’s family farm was only about 10 miles away, over the next ridge.

The old woman was standing next to her with a satisfied look on her face. She abruptly stiffened momentarily then collapsed to the ground. Janney crouched down to check on her. The woman was still alive but one side of her face was paralyzed. She looked back at Janney calmly for a few moments then died.

Janney heard a shuffling sound behind her and got up to see an enormous Dire Bear approaching. It was enormous, even larger than the two in the cavern. She backed away as it gently picked up the old woman in its jaws and carried her body into the woods. In seconds it was gone.

Spoiler: Mortheus wreaks havoc with the DM's plans.

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As he walked further into the woods Mortheus found himself uncharacteristically filled with troublesome emotions. He walled off the anger and felt his pulse rate drop back to normal. He had no idea how he had managed to rescue two people, heal them, and still become the villain in the villager’s eyes. It wasn’t his fault the church wall collapsed and the priest died.

He continued to walk and found he was still stewing about this, which irritated him. Recognizing that he was still slightly angry and now irritated infuriated him. Now he had three emotions running wild!

Realizing that his emotions were multiplying out of control he stopped walking and took a deep breath and walled them all off again.

Feeling a bit better, he was ready to continue. He took a step and while his leg was in the air his muscles froze and he lost his balance and fell over face first into the mud.

He regained control of himself and heard someone giggling behind him. He rolled over and saw a curious looking creature sitting on a branch about 10 yards away. It was only about 1’ tall, with pinkish-gray wrinkled skin, small wings and clawed feet, It was holding some object in its hand and cackling wildly.

Its voice was high pitched, like fingernails on a chalkboard. “You should have seen your face when I collapsed that church wall” it taunted him.

He started to get to his feet, not noticing that inside his head that the emotions were pressing heavily against the wall he had erected.

The creature gestured and his body froze again and he fell over again.

“Don’t bother, I have total control over you” it bragged, not releasing him. “You should be more careful who you let take your body pa...”

It didn’t get a chance to finish as Mortheus felt his mental wall burst and all his anger, hate, fear, jealousy, irritation and every other emotion he had been suppressing came tumbling out, focused in one wave that shot out, hitting the creature in the chest, blowing a hole right through it’s body, spraying tiny chunks of creature in every direction.

What was left of it fell to the ground, and the finger bone it had been holding bounced once and landed a few feet away.

Mortheus got to his feet, feeling much better. He reached out and the finger bone floated up into his hand. He looked at it and compared it to his maimed hand. He wondered for a moment what to do with it and how best to destroy it, then concentrated for a moment, pulverized it using his telekinesis. He popped the powdery remains into his mouth and swallowed, washing it down with some water.

He started walking again. About half an hour later he remembered the look Berry gave him a few weeks earlier. That look still scared him a little, but it was a good kind of fear. It made him warm inside, and the thought he might like to have someone look at him like that again. He had no idea what he had done to get that look but thought it might be nice to go find her and ask.

Metagame note:
I expected that Mortheus might try to use his kinetic blast to take it out. Both Kineticists and Psionics are extremely rare in this world and the creature was cocky, so I played it as not realizing that Mortheus would be able to retaliate even with his muscles frozen. I figured the creature could easily survive one hit, but the dice begged to differ.

I had an entire scenario planned where Mortheus would be tormented by this annoying little creature, who would lead him into all sorts of trouble and then teleport away, leaving him with the knowledge that he was vulnerable to whoever had his finger. One critical hit by an empowered kinetic blast later and my plan was blown into chunks smaller than the remains of the little guy he destroyed.

Spoiler: Perle runs out of people to kill and is sad

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Perle was running on adrenaline and had abandoned any thought of a tactical approach. He needed more healing badly, and was covered in blood, a good bit of it his own. Seeing a clearing ahead he forced himself to slow down. He had come to far to be careless now so he crept forward slowly, draining a few more charges on his healing wand to recover some of what he had lost.

The war band leader was about 20 yards away and had Berry’s arm clenched tightly in his grip. Her older sister stood a few yards further way talking to the war band’s Shaman.

The leader saw him first, and let go of Berry and drew his sword and took a few steps toward him, then charged.

Perle charged out to meet him, and they met with a clash of sword on dagger. The leader was an accomplished warrior but he couldn’t match Perle’s ferocity. For Perle the battle seemed to last forever, but in a matter of seconds it was over and he was still standing, albeit barely.

He stood there breathing heavily, staring at the broken body bleeding out on the ground at his feet. He heard someone approach and looked up to see Berry looking at him with some concern from about 20’ away. He started to shake but didn’t realize he was crying until she put her arms around him and patted his head while he sobbed into her shoulder.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-10-28, 04:57 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Getting the band back together

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Perle composed himself and stepped away from Berry, embarrassed by his breakdown.

“Alitha left with their shaman” Berry offered.

Perle was grateful that she didn’t want to talk about him bawling on her shoulder. “On foot?” he asked.

“No, some sort of magic” she replied, then added hesitantly. “This is going to sound strange, but I think Alitha cast the spell, not him.....I don’t know what is going on. She’s been acting really weird since she came back, slipping out of the house at night for hours at a time. I don’t know what she was trying to hide. Plus she convinced my parents to go see my Aunt in the village for a few days, and right after that, the hobgoblins showed up. She tried to pretend she was surprised, but I don’t think she was.”

Perle nodded, eager to apply his mind to this new information rather than to dwell on how he had broken down. “Let’s go, we can discuss this once we put some distance from this place. There may be more around.”

They traveled deeper into the woods away from the farm and camped out near a stream. Perle refused to build a fire, concerned that it would make it easier for them to be found. They ate some dried food Perle had in his pack, and Berry continued her explanation on what had happened:

The war band had showed up and forced the two girls to pack clothes, and herded them off into the woods. A few hobgoblins had stayed behind and caught up with them a few hours later.

They had just stopped for a rest break when the earthquake hit. The earthquake seemed to unnerve the shaman, and he started shouting orders. The hobgoblins seemed confused, but obeyed and broke up into smaller groups that went into the woods with weapons drawn.

This gave Perle a lot to think about. He was exhausted, and slept for a few hours, then stood watch all night while Berry slept.

The next morning they decided to check on Berry’s parents. By mid-morning they reached the village and walked into the Inn that Berry’s Aunt owned.

They were surprised to find Janney eating breakfast at the bar. While Perle and Janney caught up with each other Berry walked into the kitchen, looking for her Aunt and parents. She came running back out a minute later. Her parents had left a few hours earlier, heading for home.

Janney quickly paid the tab and they left. They reached the farm a couple of hours later to find Berry’s parents talking to Mortheus in the front yard.

Before they could say anything Alitha stepped out of the barn and rushed over to Berry. “Thank the Gods you survived!” She turned to Perle. “You were so heroic, taking on all of them to save us. I was just telling them about it.”

Berry looked confused . “How did you escape?” she asked. It came out as an accusation.

Alitha looked stunned, “The Shaman took me through a door to another place in the woods. We came out up in the air and fell to the ground and he lost his grip on me so I ran.” She seemed hurt at her sister’s tone.

Berry’s look softened and she stepped forward and hugged her sister. She stepped back, still holding hands with her.

Perle didn’t believe her story for a moment, and while they chatted he took the opportunity to look around to see if there was anyone else nearby he hadn’t noticed.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Morpheus’s eyes widen and then the skinny monk threw himself at Berry. It looked like he would tackle her, but instead of knocking her to the ground she disappeared.

Morheus rolled to his feet to face Alitha, who snarled at him and said something in a language none of them recognized. With a gesture she disappeared.

Janney listened carefully, then reached out and grabbed her as she tried to sneak by.

Perle immediately tumbled backward to put some space between himself and the others, not wanting to be close enough for them all to be taken out with one spell. He frantically looked around and saw the Hobgoblin Shaman appear just as it finished casting its spell at him and a wave of fear rolled over him.

He turned and fled.

Mortheus yelled for Berry’s parents to get inside the house as he saw Perle run away. He concentrated for a moment and dispelled the effect, then turned to face the Kyton that leaped out of the bard towards him. He concentrated briefly and the very air around him shrieked as he compressed it into a small volume, which shot out and blew a chunk out of its shoulder.

It grunted at the impact and tried to retaliate but its chains could not get past the young monks defenses. Mortheus’s second shot destroyed it.

Perle felt the fear suddenly abate and with a scream of rage rushed towards the Shaman. Suddenly he was in agony as the bones in his arms and legs splintered. He weakly flung his dagger at the Shaman, but missed.

Janney finished lamming Alitha’s head into the ground. The girl wassn’t moving anuy more so she got to her feet and closed in on the Shaman, catching him in the jaw with a quick jab. He staggered backwards and tried to cast another spell but the pain from the continuous blows to his face and body ruined his concentration and within seconds fell to the ground.

None of them noticed the invisible imp that was pouring a potion into Alitha’s mouth. She regained consciousness and decided that now would be a good time to be somewhere else.

As soon as they determined that Alitha had escaped and could find no other threats Mortheus concentrated for a moment, and Berry tumbled out of his chest. He caught her before she fell and sent her down gently. He cast another dispel to remove the Charm spell Alitha had cast on her before the fight had begun.

She shakily got to her feet and ran into the house with her parents.

Perle didn’t feel like moving for at least an hour. He used his healing wand to mend his bones, but he still felt weak. Janney searched the Shaman’s body and found a number of items that detected magic, including Perle’s severed finger from a few weeks earlier.

Later, Berry came outside and found Mortheus sitting on the front porch. He had tried to clean the Kyton blood from his habit but had given up and had thrown it away. She brought him a pair of her father’s trousers and a rope to use as a belt.

He thanked her shyly and sat next to her, having no idea what to say. She didn’t seem to mind the silence though and they sat there for a long time, neither one looking at the other.

“How did you know?” she asked him eventually.

“I could tell she was casting a spell” he explained. “I had no idea what it was, but didn’t want to find out.”

They sat there a bit longer, and then he asked “How did you know what I was doing when I jumped in? It would not have worked without your consent.”

She turned and looked him in the eye. “I didn’t, but I trust you.”

He returned her gaze and the look of pure joy on his face made her blush. They both went back to looking anywhere but at each other.

“What do you think happened to my sister?” she asked him after another long pause. “I think I’ve been afraid of her ever since she came back.”

“I’ve been thinking about it. When I kept you from her today it made her angry and she started speaking in a different voice.” he replied. “And when I healed her before I thought I felt a second mind . I think she might be possessed.”

“Do you think she is gone?” she asked. “Or could she be saved?”

“I don’t know, but I will try to find out” he promised.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-01, 10:41 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: More NPCs get introduced, and shockingly, some of them survive the experience

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They left the farm and took Berry with them to protect her in case her sister came back. They had no luck tracking Alitha and concluded she must have fled magically. With no other leads to follow, Janney suggested they look up a friend of hers whose wife might be able to track down Alitha magically.

It took them two days to get there. Lord Lar Gelthira was minor nobility, granted a title after defeating an incursion of demons six years earlier. His wife, Lady Berna Gelthira was 10 years older than her husband, and a cleric of Rao.

When they arrived at the small mountain estate Janney saw her friend out in the front yard, helping the gardener cut down a tree that had been damaged in the recent earthquake. He was a strong man of about 30 years of age in the prime of his life, with dark skin, black curly hair and dark brown eyes. When he saw the group walking down the long path leading to his home he stopped what he was doing and came to speak with them.

He greeted Janney warmly, and invited them to join him and his wife for lunch. Lady Berna looked older than her years and appeared frail, but greeted them just as warmly as her husband had. She was much shorter than Lar and was dressed in a thick robe and scarf despite the heat.

They spent a pleasant afternoon and explained why they were there. Lady Berna listened quietly, and when they were done she agreed that she would Commune with her deity. She left for 15 minutes and came back with the name “Crenshaw” which was a small town of about 800 people about 15 miles outside of South Pointe.

Lord Gelthira insisted that Berry stay with them while they dealt with Alitha. They readily agreed, their task would be much easier without her present, and she was far safer there.

For her part, Berry had been initially quite intimidated when they arrived, but had found both Lord and Lady quite down to earth, so she was agreeable to the plan as well.

The group left immediately and reached the outskirts of Crenshaw the next day. Janney waited in the woods while Perle disguised himself and walked into town. He was initially resistant to Mortheus going with him, but when the monk showed that he could shift his body into a different form he relented. Fortunately Lord Galthira’s butler had provided the monk with new clothes so he fit in better than he would have otherwise.

Mortheus reported back to Janney a few hours later after Perle spotted Alitha at a fortified manor house that overlooked the river that formed the edge of the village. She was sitting on a covered patio eating dinner with an elderly elf.

Mortheus and Janney had dinner at an Inn a few hundred yards away, and then relocated to the woods nearby. They watched the house from a distance and waited, while Perle remained closer in.

At around midnight Perle saw Alitha leave the manor, carrying a small bundle in her arms. She walked into the woods and he followed her quietly.

She reached a clearing only about 100 yards from where Janney and Mortheus were hiding. As she approached an elderly elf woman appeared out of the dark alongside an enormous cadaverous figure that looked vaguely insect-like. The elf woman was dressed in black robes that hung off her narrow frame and carried a staff.

The elf took the bundle and unwrapped it to take a closer look. She appeared pleased and nodded to the huge figure next to her.

As the Elf began to chant Perle heard the sound of a crying baby and realized what was in the bundle that Alitha had handed over, but by that time it was too late. With a puff of displaced air the elf teleported away. Alitha continued talking to the Bone Devil, looking extremely pleased with herself.

Perle was furious and started to move in quietly to get into position to attack. He had only taken a step when the Bone Devil stopped and looked around.

Nearby, Janney saw she was being watched by something with red glowing eyes. She had just enough time to get to her feet before she was attacked by what looked like an undead Tiger. It pounced on her and tried to grab her, but she was able to duck under it and break out of its grasp.

Mortheus flung a compressed burst of air at it as Janney fought back. It fell apart within seconds.

Meanwhile Perle had stopped, trying to avoid the Bone Devil’s Gaze. He heard Alitha start to cast a spell, and used his own Metamagic Rod to cast silently.

The Bone Devil swore, and teleported directly behind Janney, invisible. She heard it appear and turned to face it, but couldn’t avoid taking a sharp cut from its Glaive.

The Devil realize that it could not survive long as it shook from the impact of Mortheus’s Kinetic Blast and took two solid shots to the body from Janney. It teleported away to give itself some space and tried without success to summon another Bone Devil.

Perle made his move as soon as the devil disappeared. He tumbled in and tried to bury a dagger in Alitha’s chest, but his blade skidded off without doing much damage.

She cast a spell at him in return, screaming at him in some unknown language. He was able to shrug off the effect and attack her again, but just like the last time his attack mostly bounced off of her skin, which was now the consistency of stone.

100 yards away the Bone Devil played a cat and mouse game with Mortheus and Janney, only to find out that the two mice had sharp teeth. While able to wound them, he found that he couldn’t finish either one of them off. Janney was content to fight defensively while Mortheus shot it with Kinetic Blasts.

It wisely decided it was time to teleport back to Alitha just at the moment when Janney’s kick dislocated its knee. As it tried to teleport away Mortheus blew a hole through its head.

Alitha realized she was in trouble when her Stoneskin failed, and she could no longer concentrate well enough to cast while Perle was carving her up. He had promised Berry that they would try to take Alitha alive, but when he realized she had traded a baby for a Devil he instantly changed his mind.

One of Perle’s finest qualities was his thoroughness and attention to detail. He didn’t really understand how Mortheus’s healing gifts worked, but once Alitha fell he spent a few extra seconds with his dagger to ensure that she was far beyond Mortheus’s ability to bring back, unless he could raise the dead.

When he was done he concentrated to detect magic on her, and was appalled to see an active spell take effect on her corpse. He spun around frantically looking for the caster.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-02, 11:43 AM (ISO 8601)

As a DM I enjoy coming up with NPCs that drive my players nuts. This session introduces an NPC that is firmly in that category. :)

Spoiler: Interlude: Introducing my favorite NPC

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Sir Dreyfus Heydn knelt at the alter, deep in prayer. Granted great powers by his God, he took his responsibilities quite seriously, with a level of devout ferocity that awed his supporters and unnerved his enemies.

He was truly blessed in many ways. He was young, tall, strong and handsome, gifted with a strong presence that made men follow him and women swoon. He was a natural leader with phenomenal political instincts and was totally unencumbered with the burdens of intellect, wisdom, doubt and regret. After all, he was chosen by Trithereon and could do no wrong.

Once he had finished his evening prayers he got to his feet, his thoughts returning to the events of the evening. For the first time in his young life a young woman had resisted his charms. He was used to women flinging themselves at him shamelessly and had come to expect it. For Lady Lydria to ignore him at dinner was almost maddening.

Their host had seated the young mage across the table from him, but she had spent most of the evening in conversation with young Lord Saltus next to her. He found her indifference intoxicating, and wished he knew more about her.

His musings were interrupted by a Sending, from Lady Lydria of all people! His happiness at being contacted quickly turned to horror. She was outside the manor, and was under attack!

“To arms, to arms!” he shouted, racing for the front door as he grabbed his sword.

Spoiler: The Chase

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Perle’s inability to detect anyone nearby who could have cast a spell on Alithra’s corpse was starting to freak him out. He was almost relieved when he heard a commotion from the manor house.

Janney and Mortheus met up with him and they had a brief whispered discussion of what had just happened.

By this time there was a large force of armed men racing into the woods from the manor house. Perle convinced the other two to take off and let him handle this. He would catch up with them later. He found a good place to hide that had a good view of Alithra’s body and where Mortheus and Janney had fought the Bone Devil and waited.

A dozen men carrying torches approached and spread out. They quickly found the dead Bone Devil.

Nearby, one of them found Alithra’s body. “Sir Dreyfus!” he cried. “She’s here!” Their leader, a tall young warrior wearing Mithril armor raced over and wailed when he saw her. He he recovered quickly, instructing his men to wrap her body in a blanket and to bring it back to the manor house. Two men ran ahead to waken the Priest.

Perle made no attempt to stop them. He knew of Sir Dreyfus, for the knight was well known, his exploits spread far and wide by an army of infatuated bards. He had a good reputation among the common people and was known to be a religious man, devoted to a Deity that his own church had a good, but slightly strained relationship with.

Perle had no idea what a Holy Knight of Trithereon would be doing with a woman who traded babies for the services of Devils but was determined to try to find out. He raced ahead, reaching the manor before anyone else. He made himself invisible, pulled out a rope and his crossbow and shot one end to the roof, where it attached itself. As he grabbed the rope in one hand it retracted, pulling him quickly up. He landed almost silently and climbed into an open window on the third floor.

He managed to make his way downstairs, slipping past servants running to and fro and found himself in the manor’s large dining room. Seeing a large Sideboard along one wall, he climbed up to the top. It was an enormous gaudy piece of furniture, and was large enough that as long as he didn’t sit up he would be out of sight of anyone standing or sitting in the room.

He didn’t have long to wait. Sir Drefyus rushed into the room a few minutes later, intent on using it as his command center. He directed the majority of his men to patrol the area around the manor, and instructed two men to stand guard at the door where “the priest” was busy praying in preparation of raising “Lady Lydria”.

Perle resisted the urge to look and just listened. He was impressed with how cool and collected Drefyus was during this. He could tell that Dreyfus’s men revered him.

Once things calmed down another man came in. This man treated the knight a bit differently than the rest of his men did, with just as much respect, but more as equals than as master and servant.

They spoke softly for a moment, and as Perle strained to listen he noticed movement and glanced over to see a ginger cat staring back at him from a second Sideboard on the other side of the room. As soon as he noticed the cat the conversation below stopped.

After that things happened quickly. Perle heard the new arrival start to chant and broke the Smokestick he had been holding in half and tossed it into the room, where it put out an enormous amount of smoke. He rolled over the edge of the Sideboard just as a spell took effect, covering the spot he had just left with sticky webs that he barely avoided.

Sir Dreyfus was just getting to his feet, his sword in hand, looking incredulous that someone dared to try to spy on him. Perle pushed off the wall while in mid-air and flipped, landing on the table, then dived over a high backed chair, tumbled past the knight. He ran into a servant in the doorway, bowling the elderly man over, then ran down the hall, out to the back porch past two surprised guards, where he dived into the river. He slammed into a large rock in the middle of the river about 10 seconds later and grabbed onto it, pulling himself out of the water enough that he could get his crossbow and rope.

Back on the porch the guards watched in frustration as they watched him shoot a tree on the opposite bank and swing across to the ground and disappear into the night, chased by Dreyfus’s wizard, who flew after him with his cat familiar perched on one shoulder.

Perle tried to get away without hurting the wizard, as he still wasn’t sure what was going on. For his part the wizard was content to follow, close enough to keep an eye on him, but far enough away that Perle couldn’t find back.

After about 15 minutes Perle heard signs that he was being pursued and changed his strategy as he realized he wasn’t going to get away by himself. He hoped Mortheus and Janney were paying attention as he worked his way towards the clearing they had agreed to meet at.

He needn’t have worried. Mortheus was sitting high up in a tree with a nice clear view. He saw Perle approaching, then saw the wizard hovering above him, chanting. He couldn’t react in time to stop him from casting and saw a bolt of lightning shoot out from the man’s fingertips to impact against Perle.

Mortheus concentrated and shot a burst of air out that impacted against the wizard, propelling him backwards. The cat perched on his shoulder tumbled off and fell down the ground. The wizard recovered quickly and teleported straight up out of range.

Below he heard Janney engaging with the first of the pursuers on foot.

Seconds later the wizards flew cautiously back down, having cast a few buff spells. He could see that his companions on the ground were in trouble, as Janney was going through them like a hot knife through butter.

The wizard abruptly had more to worry about as he felt all of the spells protecting him get disrupted and he fell like a rock, landing in a heap only a few feet away from Perle, who was extremely frustrated, riding an adrenaline high, and still smarting from the lightning bolt.

Perle promptly gutted him like a fish.

Nearby, the three men left facing Janney realized that they were in way over their heads and that they were only still alive because Janney was trying not to kill them. When one man fled after her punch exploded his shield another quickly followed, leaving only one terrified man facing her.

She took a step back and stared at him as he stood there trembling. “I think you should grab your friend there and leave” she said conversationally, pointing to where the last remaining pursuer lay a few feet away.

He nodded, dropped his sword and helped his friend to his feet and limped away.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-05, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Splitting up for a bit

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Rumors were flying at the Inn in Crenshaw. There was talk of a murder, Demons in the hills and assassins. No one knew what was going on, but everyone was speculating.

Janney sat at a corner table taking it all in. She was in disguise, courtesy of a magical hat previously owned by the wizard they had killed. Two days had passed since the fight with Alitha and the Bone Devil. Her two companions were keeping watch on the manor house from the woods and Perle had insisted she come down to find out what the locals were saying about the whole thing.

The Inn was more crowded than usual due to the appearance of a traveling Bard. The old man was pretty good, and had a strong baritone singing voice.

After about 45 minutes he took a break and sat at a nearby table to have his own dinner. While he ate he discussed the latest activities with the locals. He was quite interested in the rumors, and responded with information of his own.

He told them that almost 60 peasants had been found massacred in the woods only 30 miles away. The bard expressed his sorrow at this, and then added that marauding bands of hobgoblins had been seen nearby.

After he ate he sang for a bit longer. As the evening went on the music gradually changed and got darker. He sang of loss, death, injustice and anger. By the end of the evening most of the inn’s patrons were fired up. They were angry that things were going on around them that made them feel afraid and powerless. By the time the bard left for the evening most agreed that ‘something must be done” but none of them had any ideas on what was needed.

Janney left, disturbed by what she had witnessed, but not sure why.

The next morning it was Perle’s turn. He used the hat, went into the village and started asking questions. He learned that a local peasant girl had turned up dead, drowned in the river. Her baby had not been found but it was assumed it drowned with her.

He managed to get a job helping deliver supplies from the local store to the manor house, which was owned by a wealthy retired merchant that also owned much of the town. While at the manor house he overheard discussions by two guards that Dreyfus had another two dozen men camped a few miles away, and more were expected to arrive at any time.

He also noticed a ginger cat sitting on the wall of the porch sunning itself and wondered if Dreyfus had recovered the body of his wizard and brought him back to life, as the cat looked exactly like his familiar.

That afternoon when he returned they argued about what to do next. Janney was all for returning to the Gelthira estate. Someone in a position of temporal power needed to be told what was going on, and while Gelthira wasn’t the local lord, he ran in the same circles and would be able to get the word out about mysterious armed men gathering nearby. They had watched another 4 knights and their associated men at arms show up at the manor house in the last two days, and now they had learned that two dozen more were camped nearby. She pointed out that these men were all keeping a low profile and wondered why, if things were aboveboard. The bard’s performance also worried her, as much for how people reacted as what he said, as she shared many of his concerns. But she had a strong intuition that the bard might be in league with Dreyfus somehow.
Perle wanted to stay, he was determined to find out what was going on here, and did not want to admit that they needed help. If they left, who knows what would happen. Sir Dreyfus was a follower of a Good god, and would not be doing something wrong.

Mortheus didn’t understand much of what was going on and hadn’t really paid attention much to what the other two had been saying. Everyone involved was acting in ways that were completely incomprehensible to him, including Janney and Perle. All he wanted to do was go back to talk to Berry for his own selfish reasons. She had occupied a lot of his thoughts since they left the estate, and he had vague notions of trying to seduce her, but had no idea how to go about it.

So when Janney brought up the idea of reporting back, he latched on to the idea, and added that they should not forget that Dreyfus had a Priest with the power to Raise the dead, so he had considerable magical might on his side as well. He also pointed out that he could fly there and get there faster than either of the two due to the faster movement and his ability to bypass obstacles in the air, so he should be the one to go.

In the end they agreed to split up again. Perle and Janney would stay to keep an eye on the manor and look for Alithra, while Mortheus returned to report in to Gelthira. Mortheus agreed to deliver a letter that Perle wrote.

Neither Perle or Janney had much confidence that Mortheus would be able to give an accurate account of what had happened, but so they viewed sending a letter as essential. Perle even took thread and sewed it into Mortheus’s clothes so he couldn’t lose it. If all went well the monk could deliver the message return a day later.

Early the next morning Mortheus took to the air from the woods after compressing his body into a smaller area to make it less visible from the ground. He rose to a height of about 1000’ and then headed off in what he thought was the right direction.

He thought it would take about 6 hours to get there, but after traveling for 7 hours and not seeing the estate below he realized he wasn’t really sure where he was. Seeing a field below with signs of activity on it he dropped down to take a closer look.

He saw a small group of armored men watching while 40 young men stood in ragged lines. These men were not armored, but each was carrying a long sharpened stick and they were moving somewhat in unison in a weird choreography where they would walk forward, then get close together and point their sticks in the same direction. He finally realized it was some sort of militia when the armored men saw him and started shooting arrows at him. He thought about retaliating but realized that keeping himself in the air took all of his mental energies and that the only way to fight would be to land.

He gained altitude quickly and fled. They tried to give chase but he quickly outpaced them. He eventually realized that he must have traveled too far south, and worked his way back north a bit, and just before dark he reached the estate.

He greeted the Lord and Lady of the house awkwardly while looking around for Berry. In an attempt to make small talk during dinner he mentioned running into the milita, and suddenly realized he had forgotten to turn over Perle’s letter. Lord Gelthira seemed disturbed by his news and the letter’s contents and immediately wrote his own letter and had a servant take it for delivery.

Meanwhile back at Crenshaw, Janney was really starting to get tired of roughing it in the woods, and was feeling a bit shaky after days of drinking nothing but water and eating dried rations. She wanted a bath, a hot meal and a few flagons of wine. She convinced Perle that it would be good to check out the inn again, and took the Hat of Disguise and walked into the village.

She got a bath at the inn and had a nice meal and some wine. After a while she met some fun villagers and continued drinking. For the first time in days she felt free. The party moved outside and she ended up wrestling a few drunk farm boys and competing in an impromptu drinking contest. She ended her evening passed out in a water trough.

Back in the woods Perle started to get nervous when Janney didn’t return. He thought about heading into town to find her, but changed his mind when he saw a covered carriage come out of the manor’s barn and pull up to the front door. Sir Dreyfus came out of the front door with Alitha on his arm. She was dressed in finery worth hundreds of gold pieces and carrying a jeweled rod in one hand. He helped her into the carriage and got in with her. An elderly man in priest’s robes followed and joined them. The carriage left, escorted by four knights on horseback. They weren’t carrying luggage so Perle thought they might be traveling locally.

He decided to follow, and cast a spell that would allow him to move faster. He raced through the woods parallel to the road they took, and managed to follow them. They traveled for about 45 minutes to another manor house in the hills. They pulled up to the house next to two other carriages, and Dreyfus, Alitha and the priest went inside.

Perle was exhausted and almost lost them multiple times, but managed to keep up. He moved in as close as he dared. There were a number of men patrolling the grounds, but he was able to avoid them and found a spot where he could watch what happened next.

He waited for three hours, and finally whatever event that was taking place broke up and people came back and got into their carriages. He watched as they left, and noticed that each carriage was unmarked, which somewhat unusual, as most nobles and wealthy merchants like to advertise their own wealth. None of the servants attending them were wearing livery either.

He decided not to follow the carriage back to the manor house, more curious about this place. A few minutes after the last carriage left he decided to go in for a closer look, as the patrols had ceased once people left. He had only gone a few yards when a sudden instinct caused him to freeze. He saw something dark take to the air. It was enormous, with a wingspan of at least 30’. It flew silently into the night.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-08, 10:40 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Interlude

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“Yandros! Get in here you dretch!”

The Outsider Gihjantara was not in a good mood. Other forces were interfering with his project and he didn’t like it.

Yandros appeared, his normal smirk absent from his face. He was infuriated by the insult, but was smart enough not to say anything to a being that could obliterate him with little more than a stray thought.

“I have news to report” Yandros began, trying to project calm. “Your puppet seems to have handled himself reasonably well to this point, but more than one new Player has entered the Game.”

“You were correct to wonder about that moppet. She is certainly no simple farm girl, and commands significant arcane power, though she does not appear to be accustomed to wielding it efficiently. I suspect some sort of Patron, but have no as of yet been able to determine who.” He looked up nervously after making this admission, but his master did not seem inclined to annihilate him for this failure, or at least not yet. He hurriedly continued.

“She seems much more accomplished in the social arena, and is currently manipulating a major mortal Avatar of a God for protection.”

Gihjantara snorted at this. “Deluding that fool and his Avatar is not much of an accomplishment. He values independence from his servants because he is barely smart enough to realize he is too stupid to direct them himself...”

Yandros wisely refrained from saying anything, knowing of his master’s past issues with the Deity in question. “True, but she also appears to be working with servants of other major Powers, none of whom are known for their gullibility.”
.
“You have yet to give me any news...” Gihjantara remarked.

“Your allies have also allied themselves with a major priest of the Mediator.” Yandros was beginning to have a hard time hiding his nervousness.

“still not hearing anything new...” his master added ominously.

“There also seems to be something going on with some of your priest’s allies. An orcish deity has involved herself with that young warrior woman. She carries Her Mark now, though she does not appear to realize it.”

“Is that it?” Gihjantara asked as Yandros stood trembling in front of him frantically trying to think of something else to report.

“The hobgoblins were working at the behest of a mortal wizard known as Rundmundl” he blurted out, hoping that his theory was correct.

“See, that wasn’t so hard” Gihjantara replied. “You have not completely displeased me. Find out more about this wizard.”

Yandos quickly fled before his master changed his mind.

Spoiler: Mornings can be rough

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Mortheus’s disappointment at not being able to spend much time with Berry was forgotten in the rush of a new experience. At Lord Gelthira’s insistence he had agreed to return to Crenshaw the next morning.

At dawn Lady Gelthira cast a spell that turned both their bodies into a misty form, and a wind sprung up behind them. Soon they were flying high above the earth at great speed. He was having so much fun he barely noticed when Lady Gelthira turned for home once Crenshaw was in sight. He waved at her with a huge smile on his face, instantly deciding that he needed to rethink his position on devotion to the Gods.

He remembered his instructions and reincorporated and landed a few hundred yards from the village. As he walked in he noticed there was some sort of commotion going on. Six heavily armored men were racing across the bridge connecting the manor house to the village, and a few villagers were watching with interest.

He rounded the corner and saw two nervous looking knights with their swords out, looking at a figure sprawled in a water trough a few feet away.

At that moment, Janney woke up. She had a splitting headache and was soaking wet, but some instinct caused her not to move. She opened her eyes slightly and saw a couple of villagers staring at her. She relaxed and started to get to her feet. Hearing the telltale sound of an armored man approaching she rolled away from the sound and spun around, finding herself facing two men wearing chain mail, one armed with long sword and shield, the other bearing a heavy flail.

She recognized one of them, they had fought before. She could hear more people approaching and decided that intimidation followed by getting out of town was the best approach. She really didn’t feel like killing these two if she could avoid it. She just wanted to get out of here and get something to eat and drink a few gallons of coffee with some whiskey added for flavor.

Unfortunately for both of them, the knight with the flail had different ideas on what activities were appropriate to engage in before breakfast. He was young, cocky and was eager to make a good impression on his fellow knights. The fact that he was heavily armed and facing an unarmed young woman that looked like she was about to puke bolstered his confidence. He had heard the tales his fellow knights told about she had toyed with them and decided they were just soft.

He rushed forward, prepared to deliver the mighty swing that would cave in her face. The blow did not connect solidly, but she was hurt and now angry in addition to being hungover, sick and soaking wet.

Her hands and feet a blur, she performed a complex series of graceful motions that ended up with him laying on the ground groaning with a shattered knee and a fractured eye socket.

When he struggled to get up she kicked him in the face, adding a dislocated jaw to his growing list of injuries. She sidestepped the long sword thrust at her face from the second knight and then punched him in the face, directing his movements so he tripped over his wounded companion. He sprawled to the ground and wisely decided to not get up.

Unfortunately for him Janney was not in a mood to play around and did not wait for him to react. His last moments of life were spent screaming in pain as he shattered his back much like she had shattered his shield in the earlier fight.

Mortheus watched all of this in dismay, but figured she could handle herself and decided that slowing down the onrushing reinforcements was probably his best bet.

He floated up to a nearby roof and used his telekinesis to pick up an enormous cart full of barrels that was parked next to the general store and threw it at the oncoming knights, intending on slowing them down. The heavily loaded wagon burst apart with barrels rolling in every direction. None of the knights were hurt but he certainly had their attention.

He saw Sir Dreyfus shout something, and all of sudden all 6 knights seemed to grow slightly larger, and they all had a look of religious ecstasy on their faces. As Dreyfus continued to shout, one of them flipped a 200 pound barrel out of the way with one hand and they all continued rushing towards him.

Mortheus had more immediate worries though. Perle’s theory that the wizard he had killed was no longer dead proved accurate when he heard chanting from nearby and was suddenly the air was filled with particles that blocked his sight. He took to the air and floated sideways in attempt to get out of it,

As soon as he appeared he felt his flight dispelled and he heard the sounds of the wizard cackling, which were cut short when Mortheus floated gently down to the adjacent building’s porch roof.

He looked around and saw the wizard looking at him in disbelief from the roof of another building 20 yards away.

“Always have a backup to magical flight” Mortheus pointed out helpfully as he gathered air into a small ball and propelled it into the wizard’s chest, knocking him backwards a few steps. The wizard’s cat managed to hang on from his perch on the wizard’s shoulder and hissed at him.

Mortheus could hear the knights below and felt the roof he was standing on shudder as they chopped at the posts holding it up. He felt another spell from the wizard take effect on him and managed to shake it off.

The wizard could not say the same about Mortheus’s blast, which blew a hole through his chest, killing him instantly.

By this time Janney had finished off the two knights, and seeing Mortheus set upon by knights and wizards, started to move in to help.

“Go” Mortheus shouted as he floated back up into the air as the porch roof he was standing on collapsed.

She took off with, quickly outdistancing the chasing knights.

Figuring he had some time as the knights had foolishly not brought missile weapons he floated over to the dead wizard, having learned from Perle that looting the bodies of your vanquished foes could be profitable.

He was feeling cocky and was shocked when a 12’ tall Sir Dreyfus reached up with his sword and caught him solidly. He frantically scrambled backwards as the Knight leaped up onto the roof next to him, his eyes still filled with religious fervor.

The roof strained under the weight as Dreyfus continued his assault on the wounded monk, blocking Mortheu’s kinetic blasts with his shield as he continued to sing hymns to Trithereon at the top of his lungs.

Realizing her friend was in trouble, Janney abruptly turned and engaged her pursuers. She had fought one of them before but he was much tougher now that he could hear Dreyfus’s shouted prayers as he fought. She was still able to take out the three knights, but by the time she was done she was heavily wounded herself.

Grimly she raced back as Mortheus jumped backwards off the roof to avoid getting cut in two by Sir Dreyfus. She could tell the monk was barely conscious and close to panic. As Dreyfus stepped off the roof to give chase she engaged the other two remaining knights nearby. They were both accomplished swordsmen and gave her all she could handle. She fought defensively, hoping to buy Mortheus some time, and slowly gave ground, drawing them away, hoping that when they got far enough away from Dreyfus the effect enhancing them would fade.

Unfortunately she was not able to prove out her theory. She heard more men approaching and realized that two of the three knights she had just taken out were running towards her, looking remarkably well considering the beatings she had just given them just moments earlier. Realizing she was not going to be able to handle all of them she disengaged from the two knights and fled.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-13, 02:04 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: A rescue, and Mortheus discovers telepathy

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Perle made his way back to Crenshaw, arriving around dawn. He slept for an hour, and was awakened by activity at the nearby manor house. When he saw Sir Dreyfus and five of his knights race into the village he knew this was a chance he couldn’t pass up. He made himself invisible and slipped into the house through an upper story window. He managed to make his way into a small sitting room where Alitha was sitting while a servant woman brushed her hair.

He waited, and as soon as the servant left he cast a Silence spell on a copper piece using his Metamagic Rod to silence the spell, then drove his dagger into the back of her neck. She tried to cast a spell but couldn’t manage due to the pain of his attack and she was soon unconscious. He stabilized her and quickly tied her up.

He happened to see the door latch turn and dived toward the door as it opened. He found himself facing an elderly cleric wearing robes emblazoned with the crescent symbol of Fharlanghn.

While quite powerful, the old man was not prepared for battle and was stymied by the ongoing Silence spell. Perle kept stabbing him as he stumbled backwards. He collapsed and Perle pulled him into the room and shut the door.

He quickly realized stabilizing the priest was not an option. He pulled a potion from his pouch and poured it down Alitha’s throat, and she immediately shrunk down to half her height. He stuffed her into his bag of holding, looted the cleric’s body, putting anything magical into the bag with Alitha.

After casting another invisibility spell he opened the door and found himself facing two guards with swords drawn. He flipped his dagger into the face of the first one, then stepped back and pulled a second dagger and engaged the second guard as he charged. Both guards fell quickly, and he could hear the sound of numerous booted feet running up the steps.

After slicing and dicing his way through two more guards he reached the roof and saw Dreyfus and three of his knights running across the bridge towards the house, howling in anger. He went to the back side of the house, climbed back down and ran into the woods.

He didn’t get far when the potion wore off on Alitha, and she spilled out of the bag onto the ground, still unconscious. He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and kept going, following the river downstream until he was out of sight of the house and village. There he rested for a moment to catch his breath, then used his crossbow to shoot a line across the river. He pulled himself across and then kept going until he couldn’t carry her any longer.

He tied her to a tree and sat nearby to keep an eye on her. He had no idea what to do next. The urge to stick a dagger into her eye and be done with her was almost overpowering. He could still hear the baby crying as she gave it to the ancient elf woman and the smug grin of the devil as it watched. Killing her would pain Berry and her family, but would also provide some closure and prevent her from doing any further harm.

He sat there a long time , and after a while, realized she was awake and staring back at him. He made a decision and got to his feet and drew his dagger. She watched him approach dispassionately, but seemed surprised when he used the knife to cut the scarf he had used to gag her instead of slitting her throat.

“Try to do anything other than answer my questions and I will kill you” he told her levelly.

She replied in a harsh language that he didn’t recognize, and he cast a spell that would allow him to understand it.

“What a poor deluded fool you are. I can see what you really are, how much you love it when you kill”

She laughed at him with an expression that made her look much older than a teenager. “You live for it, I can tell….I bet you are just dying to use that knife in your hand, but lack the courage….”

His grip on the dagger in his hand was the only sign that some of what she said had struck home.

“What a sad little man. You can’t admit what you are, how much you want to hurt me, but can’t since I am helpless. How pathetic.”

He tried to get her to talk, but she did nothing but rant and ridicule him. He cast a spell to detect magic on her and took her ring, a necklace and her cloak from her. She didn’t seem to mind and kept taunting him, speculating on everything from his sexuality or lack there of, to his childhood, family, probable lack of friends, powerlessness and lack of intellect. As time went on she started to get more and more angry as he managed to ignore her and continue his search.

He had just about given up, when he noticed something around her left leg. He reached towards it, and for the first time she reacted to the search, squirming frantically and screaming obscenities at him.

Perle had secured her tightly though and her struggles were in vain. He found a slender band of some greenish metal with silver tracery clamped around her calf. It had no clasp, but with a strong tug he was able to pull it down and slide it over her ankle and off her foot, though she fought him all the way.

As soon as it was removed she stopped struggling and became catatonic. Perle was so surprised by the change in her that he almost didn’t notice it as the band slipped over his wrist.

Fortunately he managed to prevent it from clamping down, and threw it on the ground, then wrapped it up in a spare shirt, tied it in a bundle and put it in his pack.

He checked on Alitha, who was laying there shivering. When he touched her shoulder she started to scream hysterically, and he backed off, not wanting to frighten her as he was pretty sure that he was meeting Berry’s sister for the first time.

He backed off and sat down again, not sure what to do next. A few minutes later he tensed up when he heard a voice inside his head.

*Where are you, Janney and I fought knights in Crenshaw...oh, sorry, forgot to mention I figured out how to do this today. Pretty neat, huh?*

It took Perle a few seconds to realize it was the Monk talking to him, not a manifestation of his own psychosis.

*I’m half a mile south of the village, east bank of river* he thought back, *Got Alitha with me, she was under magical influence, seems better now* he added.

Twenty minutes later Mortheus and Janney caught up with him. Their clothing was torn and Janney looked a bit under the weather but neither were wounded. By this point Alitha was unconscious again. Perle attempted to heal her with a wand, but while her wounds closed she did not wake up.

After discussing their options they decided to head back to the Gelthira estate. Mortheus absorbed Alitha into his chest to make travel easier, a process which was deeply disturbing to both Janney and Perle. Fortunately Alitha was not awake to object.

Before they left Mortheus tried out his new ability to send messages telepathically. With some effort he reached Berry.

* Hi, it is Mortheus!* he thought.

*Oh, you heard me last night?…..Oh my, that wasn’t intentional, I didn’t figure out how to do this until today……..Well anyway, we got your sister back, Perle thinks she is no longer possessed and we are on our way back. Bye *

As they started the journey back he turned to Janney. “I think I may have broadcast something to Berry last night” he said, looking a bit worried. “I am new to this telepathy thing, and may have inadvertently sent some of my subconscious thoughts to her while I was sleeping.”

Janney burst out laughing. “Let me guess, she was a bit embarrassed just now...”

The monk nodded his head excitedly. “Now that you mention it she was, I could feel her blush over the link. Why would she be embarrassed?” As Janney continued to laugh he remembered a particularly vivid dream involving Berry the night before and he colored, causing Janney to laugh even harder.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-16, 11:56 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Dreyfus dreams of revenge and glory

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Back at the manor house things were in complete chaos. Father Faleinders was dead, Lady Lydria abducted, and multiple house guards wounded.

To make matters worse four knights and Sir Dreyfus’s wizard Cohort Jankins were also killed in town. Despite his rage Sir Dreyfus had to admire the tactics of the scum that did it.

Having the woman pretend to be passed out in a water trough to draw he and his men away from the house was pure genius. His men had interviewed the locals, and she had been quite convincing. Two of his surviving knights insisted she was still intioxicared this morning as she fought them, and from the way she smelled she almost certainly must have vomited on herself at some point during the night. The length she went to stay in character for the deception was inspiring.

And for one man to take on the house, kill multiple guards, assassinate a ranking Prelate of Fharlanghn and abduct his lady love and escape in a matter of minutes was also quite impressive.

Oh, and there was also that odd looking ugly skinny monk, he he did kill Jankins, so he must be at least somewhat of a threat, but he obviously wasn’t as accomplished as the other two.

These were truly foes worthy of him. With Trithereon’s blessing he would find them, rescue Lady Lydria and punish them for their dastardly villainy. He would show them all what strength really meant.

But first he had to tend to his people. His greatest strength was the ability to project a presence that inspired confidence in those around him. He issued orders, and if some of them were of questionable value, no one objected, because they knew that now that he was there, everything would be all right.

As soon as things had calmed down enough that he had a few minutes by himself he used a device that Jankins had crafted for him to contact help. In half an hour that help had arrived in the form of a Cleric of his faith, a Sorcerer and an expert tracker.

It would cost a fortune to get Jankins and Father Faleinders brought back to life, but fortunately he didn’t have to worry about paying for it. He was Tritheron’s chosen after all, if he needed someone brought back from the dead, all he had to do is ask and it would happen. And if he needed someone found, he only had to ask, and it would happen.

He knew that in a matter of hours he would have his wizard and his priest back, and then they would hunt.

Spoiler: Tracking down the party

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By the time the dwarf tracker picked up the trail he estimated that his quarry had at least a 90 minute head start. His name was Springfield and he had been working for Bishop Millern for about a year now. He didn’t really care for the Sorcerer accompanying him on the chase, but orders were orders, and Laupner was at least useful. The skinny elf just wouldn’t stopping humming and her shrill voice was driving him nuts.

Two of Sir Dreyfus’s knights accompanied them. Springfield would rather have traveled without them, but he knew better than to question the commands of Trithereon’s Chosen. At least he got them to remove their heavier armor so they could travel faster.

It took a long time to catch up with his quarry. he didn't catch up until hour an before dawn. He found them camped out in dense woods about half a mile from the nearest road. The woman, Lady Lydria and the skinny monk appeared to be asleep while the remaining man stood watch. He slowly backed away and returned to his three companions who were waiting a few hundred feet away. After a whispered conversation Laupner studied their location well enough that she could return and then teleported back to Sir Dreyfus to bring back reinforcements.

Springfield pulled out two sets of armor from his bag of holding so the knights could prepare themselves, and then left them there to wait for Dreyfus and returned to keep an eye on the camp.

By the time he got back it was almost dawn and everyone was awake except Lady Lydria, and they appeared to be getting ready to leave.

He noticed movement nearby at about the same time as the people in the camp did, and watched as two human women walked into the camp. As the others moved to face them the skinny monk bent down to the sleeping Lady Lydria, and when he touched her, she disappeared.

Springfield decided to risk moving closer to find out whether these new arrivals were allies or foes of his quarry. Both of the heavily armored women carried flails and seemed relaxed, while the three people in the camp looked really tense. As he got closer he detected two more people watching the camp too. One of them was an enormous Bone devil standing next to a middle-aged athletic looking man wearing robes. None of them had detected his presence as far as he could tell.

Meanwhile, Laupner had returned with Sir Drefyus, his Wizard Jankins and Father Faleinders, the latter two recently resurrected and eager to get revenge on those that had killed them. The cleric had dressed for battle in chain mail, and while he still looked his age, he moved with the strength and agility of a much younger man.

They all made their way towards where Springfield was hiding. He was pleasantly surprised that they managed to get there without making much noise and suspected Laupner’s spell abilities were responsible as none of them were capable of moving silently on their own.

Dreyfus peered into the camp, and his eyes narrowed. “Dark Knights of Hextor” he sneered, either forgetting to keep his voice down or not caring if they heard him. “They are in league with them! Come, let us rescue Lady Lydria and slay these vile clerics and their servants!”

Spoiler: Perle realizes they are screwed

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Perle prayed as the other two got ready to travel again. Alitha still remained comatose, not reacting at all to any of them. He was a bit worried about her and hoped they would reach the estate today.

He got to his feet instantly when he heard someone approaching and was appalled when he recognized the symbol emblazoned on the armor of the women walking into the camp. Hextor was an arch-enemy of the faith, and from the way the two women approached them it was obvious they did not feel threatened at all.

“We’re here for the band” the older of the two said. Her voice and attitude were a pleasant alto and seemed odd coming from a heavily scarred woman dressed in a jet black chain mail and carrying a wicked looking flail in one hand.

“You can keep the girl, and the rest of the things you have, but that band is not your property.” She continued, starting to sound irritated. “Come now, I really don’t have time for this. Hand it over.”

As Perle reached for his dagger the other woman smiled. “Please, do that” she encouraged him and appeared disappointed when he hesitated.

From outside the clearing he heard another voice, this one male. “We’ve got company. Looks like Dreyfus.” The older woman sighed while the younger one seemed happy with the news.

It was the older one that spoke. “We will pick up this conversation in a few minutes. Choose your next move wisely...”

In the background he heard Dreyfus shout..

Spoiler: OOC: This encounter

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This next encounter was a lot of fun. The party had thoroughly antagonized Dreyfus, and did not really realize yet the ramifications of that. They knew he was personally powerful, but underestimated the resources he commanded.

They also suspected that there were many other people and groups involved with this, but didn't know who yet. Removing the band from Alitha's led triggered the entrance of another set of NPCs.

So now they are stuck between two groups of NPCs. They have correctly guessed that they will be extremely unlikely to survive a straight up fight against either group. They also correctly suspect that each NPC group had time to cast a number of buff spells before this encounter started and they did not, tilting the odds even further.

Their only real silver lining is that its pretty obvious that both groups of NPCs hate each other, so they hopefully can take advantage of that.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-18, 04:43 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Caught in the middle

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The resulting battle was chaotic. Dreyfus cast a spell and then charged, his two knights at his side, all of them filled with religious fervor from their leader’s oratory skill.

Behind them Laupner summoned a Dire Lion and then hasted everyone on her side, while Father Faleinders cast a spell that caused him to double in size and then he too charged.

Jankins was a bit more cautious and spent a few moments casting spells to improve his defenses and to create multiple shifting images that swirled around him. Once he was satisfied he moved forward tentatively.

On the other side the two women cast spells then moved to stand back to back, awaiting the charge with their flails raised. Their spell caster also applied haste to them and the Bone Devil.

Perle rolled backwards behind a nearby tree and cast a spell while Janney hasted the three of them. Mortheus also stepped behind a tree and applied some telekinetic armor.

As Dreyfus and his knights reached the two women the older one uttered a single awful word that caused everyone nearby except the two women to flinch. Janney, Perle, Mortheus and Dreyfus’s entire party were rocked as they all feel their strength weaken.

Dreyfus and his two knights were determined though, and engaged the two women in melee. A few seconds later the Dire Lion reached the fray and joined in.

The Bone Devil tried to attack Dreyfus, but was banished by Father Faleinders before it could attack.

Laupner summoned another Dire Lion, and it raced in to help, heading towards Janney.

While muttering under his breath about how idiotic it was to attack without discussing plans first, Springfield started to fire his bow at the spell caster supporting the two women. Two of the arrows hit and got his attention, which proved the old adage that getting a wizard to notice you in battle is usually a bad idea if you leave him alive to retaliate. With a single gesture the man cast a spell that caused tentacles to erupt from the ground and grapple him.

Seeing his new arch-enemy, Jankins cackled and cast a spell which caused a bolt of lightning to arc through both Mortheus and Janney, who were trying to unobtrusively get the heck out of the camp. His familiar hissed in approval.

The monk reacted almost without thought and blasted one of the images surrounding Jankins, who cackled again when the blast hit an image instead of him.

Perle was about to flee and assumed the other two would be smart enough to do the same. He watched in dismay when Morpheus entered the fight. He had his own problem though as Father Faleinders decided it was time to get his revenge and moved in to attack.

The two Hextor clerics were more than holding their own against Dreyfus, the two knights and the Dire Lion. They fought calmly, supporting each other and making it hard for those attacking them to get good flanking positions.

Laupner sent in another Lion to assist Dreyfus, but by the time it got there, the original Lion was dead, one knight was down, Dreyfus’s remaining knight was barely standing and Dreyfus was bleeding heavily from multiple wounds. Dreyfus used the distraction of the Lion’s arrival to heal the heavily wounded knight, bringing him back to full health.

Their wizard ally was also still in play, and his spell stripped Father Faleinders of his most powerful buff just as he attacked Perle. As the cleric returned to his normal size Perle tumbled backwards out of the way, shouting “Time to go!” to try to get Janney and Mortheus to flee.

Both Janney and Morpheus ignored him. Morpheus shrugged off another spell from Jankins and used his telekinesis again. He got lucky and picked the correct image, and threw Jankins at Father Faleinders. The wizard slammed into the cleric and fell to the ground, his cat familiar still clinging to his shoulder.

Before either the Cleric or wizard could react the whole area was covered in frost and ice, courtesy of the Hextor cleric’s wizard. Jankins died again and Father Faleinders was seriously wounded.

By this time the knight that was down was back in action and heroically moved in to help Dreyfus, who returned the favor by healing him back to full health. With the two women occupied Dreyfus followed that up with casting a third Heal, bringing himself back to full health.

Neither Hextor cleric looked like they were in serious trouble. They couldn’t match Dreyfus’s Heals, but they were much better at avoiding damage in the first place, and Dreyfus’s fast healing couldn’t keep pace at all with the massive damage the two women were dishing out.

Perle ignored the wounded cleric as yet another Dire Lion from Laupner attacked him. Janney, having finished off the Lion attacking her, moved in and in a blur of punches and kicks, dropped Father Faleinders, with some help from a kinetic blast from Mortheus. Having figured out that Dreyfus’s Oratory was healing his allies she grabbed Faleinders head when he fell and twisted, snapping his neck.

Nearby, Springfield was in serious trouble. He was grappled , helpless, and fading fast. His allies had forgotten about him and he couldn’t escape the tentacles by himself. To the dwarf's surprise Mortheus took pity on him and dispelled them. The monk nodded at him and then took off towards his friends.

Springfield cast a spell and fired four holy arrows at the Hextor wizard. Three hit and the wizard ducked behind a tree and dimension-doored to a new location.

So far the Dire Lions had been little more than distractions. This changed when one finally succeeded in grabbing the older Hextor Cleric’s arm. As she tried to shake it loose, both knights attacked, sensing she was vulnerable for the first time. She took three hits and appeared about to collapse.

A fireball rolled over everyone attacking the two women, somehow avoiding the clerics entirely. Dreyfus, his two knights and the lion were not so lucky. Dreyfus did not appear to be badly hurt, but the lion winked out of existence and one of the two knights fell to the ground unconscious.

Springfield fired four more arrows at the older woman as she finished off the remaining knight. Three of the four missed, but the last one hit, and she fell to the ground.

His satisfaction was short lived though, as he felt a spell wash over him, blinding him.

Perle looked around to see that most of the combatants were down or out of the fight. Those remaining were badly wounded and looked like they wouldn’t last long. The wounded Hextor wizard teleported nearby and Perle made a snap decision and tumbled towards him as the wizard blinded Springfield. His thrown dagger caught the wizard by surprise, and he fell to the ground.

Mortheus was in his normal state of confusion, having no idea who he should be fighting. So far he had only attacked those who had attacked him or his friends, and he just wanted to leave.

Janney caught his eye and nodded, then raced towards Dreyfus and the Hextor cleric. Thinking he understood the plan he slammed a kinetic blast into Dreyfus and belatedly realized Janney had a different idea when she attacked the Hextor Cleric.

“Not a bad idea” the woman remarked approvingly to Janney while she swung her flail, catching Dreyfus solidly in the face, knocking him to the ground. “But I think maybe a bit premature?”

Laupner groggily got to her feet. She had been invisible the entire fight, but had been caught in both the Cone of Cold and the Fireball, the latter having knocked her unconscious until Dreyfus’s healing Oratory could bring her back.

She looked on helplessly as Dreyfus fell,. Perle, Mortheus and Janney stood facing off against the remaining Hextor cleric, who did not seem at all worried at tangling with all three of them at once.

It wasn’t as easy though now that the woman was alone. Without her partner she was not able to block as many attacks, and she was soon bleeding heavily, though Janney looked bad and Perle looked even worse.

While they were distracted Laupner crept forward, still invisible and used her last Teleport to escape with Sir Dreyfus, who was about to bleed out.

“Last chance” the cleric told Janney as she dodged one of Mortheus’s blasts. “My name’s Marissa, by the way. You are fighting well and I admire your persistence, but this has to end. No need to die today….”

She rocked Janney with a solid blow to the head that knocked her to her knees.. Perle lay nearby, having fallen seconds earlier. Janney fell to the ground and tried to get up, but was having trouble doing so.

At the sound of a teleport nearby the woman spun around to see an enormous devil standing over her partner’s body. It reached down to grab it, then teleported out as quickly as it had arrived.

As soon as it left the woman stepped back, her shoulders slumped. Janney looked up at her through a haze of blood with a questioning look..

“No use continuing this” the cleric said woodenly. “Just go”

“What just happened?” Janney asked.

The woman didn’t say anything. They didn’t try to stop her as she walked into the woods. Seconds later they heard the sounds of another teleport as she and her wizard left the scene.

After healing Perle and Janney, Mortheus looked for the dwarf he had saved earlier while Perle looted the bodies for magic items.

Not finding the dwarf he returned to the camp and they left, wanting to get out of the area as quickly as possible.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-22, 01:20 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Another Interlude

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"So what do you have for me" Gihjantara asked, sounding almost pleasant.

Yandros was not fooled. His master was at his most dangerous when he seemed happy.

"I looked into Rundmundl my liege" he began. "I believe he gave that farm girl an Artifact that altered her personality and either created or enhanced any magical potential she might have. That is the source of her unusual power that I remarked on when last we spoke. Your priest was able to extract her from Dreyfus, and after doing so, detect and remove said Artifact from her."

"Less than a day later agents of Runmundl intercepted the priest and his companions to retrieve it. At almost the same time, Dreyfus and a number of his associates arrived on the scene and a battle ensued. Using a rather unique magical ability, the monk hid the farm girl throughout the battle, and all of them survived while most of the rest did not."

He waited a moment to see if Gihjantara had any questions to this point, and after a moment continued.

"Rundmundl's agents were clerics of the Champion of Evil, and the senior cleric, who died in that battle, had previously traded her soul to a prominent devil in his service for more power" His amused tone implied how stupid he thought of the idea of that type of bargain.

Seeing his master's eyes raise at this Yandros added "Yes, that one", carefully not saying the devil's name, knowing that Gihjantara would likely destroy him if he uttered the name of one of his biggest rivals and enemies in his home. Names had power, and he wasn't about to draw unwanted outside attention by uttering the name of anyone important.

"Your priest still carries the device. For some reason Rundmundl's remaining minion did not take it from them when she defeated them, She let them go. Dreyfus is also still alive, retrieved by one of his lackeys when he fell in battle."

"Dreyfus is likely going to be a problem for your priest. He has the backing of the entirety of his faith, and they are sparing nothing in their efforts to determine where he went. To make matters worse, your priest killed the same powerful cleric of the Dweller on the Horizon twice in one week. I have not had a chance to check, but it is likely that they too are looking for him."

Gihjantara snorted. "I am growing to like this priest. He's tweaking the noses of a number of powerful figures, and so far has been able to survive the experience....But I fear that may not last..."

"Oh yes master... I have the same fears. But I have taken care to act so that they cannot be found easily, at least not for a while. Only a temporary measure of course, but it will give them time until those looking for them get distracted by other things..."

Gihjantara rose up and loomed over his assistant. "Tell me now... what action you have taken when I tasked you to observe and do nothing more...."

Yandros cringed. "I thought you would be pleased, and there was no time to spare....I sent them to Waldspiegel"

Gihjantara got really red for a moment, and Yandros was sure he was about to be un-made, but eventually his master just nodded. "Fine idea, but don't ever act without my permission again...That should keep them out of action for a little while, and Gansell will be a fine test."

Although Yandros didn't actually need to breathe, he still sighed in relief. "I will leave you now, and continue to find out more about Rundmundl."

"No, I have a better idea. I want that artifact. You know the likely places that they will show up if they are able to return. Wait, and when they return, get the artifact."

Spoiler: Honey I shrunk the PCs

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It had been a rough couple of days, and they were thoroughly lost, tired and cold. Their problems began a few hours after they left the campsite. Perle heard the sound of a child screaming nearby, and all three of them rushed to investigate.

They ran for only a few moments, and were not able to find the child. When they eventually gave up, Perle could no longer tell where they are, and could not even follow their trail back. Their tracks had disappeared. Even the vegetation looked different. The trees and plants seemed to be just coming into bloom, like it was early spring, not late summer.

They paused to rest for a few minutes while Perle tended to Alitha. She was still totally unresponsive, but he was able to get her to drink water without choking.

By the time they were ready to travel again Perles suspected that something else was going on. Everything around them seemed to be slowly growing. The Oak they were resting under looked slightly larger than it did when they stopped to rest.

It had been a rough few days and he was short on sleep, so he didn't say anything. He picked the direction he thought most likely to lead back to civilization and they continued walking, but without finding any signs of inhabitation. No trails, buildings, farms, or any signs that anyone humanoid lived here, or had ever lived here.

Eventually they stopped again, and Morpheus levitiated up above the treeline to see if he could find any signs of habitation nearby. He ascended far above the treetops, and saw nothing but trees and gently rolling hills in every direction.

He floated back down, and on the way down a squirrel the size of a house cat chattered at him angrily when he got too close to the branch it was sitting on.

They discussed the situation, and all admitted it seemed like things were growing around them, or they were shrinking, they couldn't be sure which. They continued on for a few more hours, with Mortheus levitating above the treeline occaisionally looking for any sort of landmarks.

Eventually he saw a river ahead, and they headed torwards it, desperate to find a landmark. As they approached the banks they startled a dire badger, which immediately attacked Janney. After she killed it Perle butchered it and they started a small fire and cooked dinner. They were tired and decided to rest for the night.

That evening Mortheus tried to use his telepathy multiple times to contact Berry, but could not reach her.

The next morning they woke up to find things very different. Everything looked even larger. As they got ready to travel again Perle stumbled across the mate of the Dire Badger they had killed the day before. He was able to back away before it noticed him, which was forunate, as it appeared to about 8' tall at the shoulder and looked like it weighed a few tons.

They traveled much more cautiously the second day and followed the river downstream. About mid day, they rounded the bend, and suddenly a gargantuan croc lunged out of the water and grabbed Janney's torso in its huge jaws, and started to drag her back into the water.

As Janney struggled to fight back Mortheus and Perle attacked it from range. While heavily wounded it did not give up and dragged her in. As Perle jumped in after her, Mortheus noticed another croc approaching, and he tried to blast it, hoping to slow it down. His first blast missed, but his second impacted against its eye and it roared in pain.

Seconds later Perle came out of the water, dragging an unconcious Janney behind him with the second croc in close pursuit. Mortheus slammed it with another blast while Perle let go of Janney to fight it.

Between the two of them they killed it and fled into the woods because they could see a third croc approaching. They stopped long enough for Mortheus to heal his two wounded friends, then continued going, keeping a healthy distance from the river.

Near evening they reached a small clearing in the woods and saw an enormous figure sitting against a tree not far away. The figure looked ancient, had a long white beard and wore a red pointed cap and was tormenting some small forest creature with its knife. Before they could back off it saw them, and got to its feet with a gleeful expression, and raced towards them with its scythe in one hand.

Janney moved to intercept the 12’ tall Redcap and took its first kick right in the chin. It knocked her backwards and followed up by swinging its scythe, hitting her with a glancing blow.

She retaliated with a flurry of punches and kicks which seemed to do almost no damage to the enormous fey. Perle moved in to flank it and slashed it, but again it seemed not to affect the creature much at all. Mortheus tried to blast it but missed.

The Redcap continued its assault on Janney, ignoring Perle completely. Its kick knocked her off balance and she could not avoid its scythe. She crumpled to the ground and did not move.

Mortheus concentrated, and suceeded in displaying it from time. In a silvery flash it disappeared. “It’ll be back any second” he told Perle as he transfered as many of Janney’s wounds to himself as he could.

Perle and Janney both cast spells while Mortheus’s transferred more of Janney’s wounds as she got to her feet and shifted so she would be behind the fey when it returned.

The Redcap returned a few seconds later, and appeared startled that everyone had moved. Perle managed to do damage with his dagger, slicing a chunk of skin out of the back of its leg. Mortheus hit it with a blast while Janney pummeled it again, this time doing a little damage.

It tried to hit Perle this time but he dodged the kick and tumbled backwards to avoid the scythe. As the Redcap lunged after him Janney kicked it again.

The fight became a battle of attrition. While Janney and Perle could hit the fey they had a hard time doing much damage. Mortheus’s blasts did more damage, but he was having a hard time connecting with his attacks.

Mortheus tried twice more to shift the Redcap in time again, and succeeded on the second attempt. He healed both Perle and Janney while it was gone, but with all of the transefed damage he was barely able to stand himself.

It returned again 12 seconds later, and eventually they brought it down. Perle used the Redcap’s scythe to cut its head off to be sure its fast healing could not revive him.

As they stood there exhausted and bleeding, it started to rain, a cold hard rain that chilled them to the bone. They retreated under a tree and camped out for the night. Mortheus tried to contact Berry again, with no luck.

Perle had better success when Mortheus reached into his chest and pulled out Alitha. She was disoriented, but awake and ate ravenously, not having had anything but water for days.

None of them noticed the eyes watching them.

Spoiler: Fighting for Justice!

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After her master died for the third time Ademi decided to get revenge for his death herself. Jankins wasn’t much of a wizard, but he was all she had. She had a reputation to consider, and her master's performance was frankly embarrassing. She watched with loathing as they looted Jankin’s corpse for the third time, but stayed hidden.

When the annoying Monk and his two companions fled the scene she followed. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get her revenge, but knew that her master seemed incapable of getting it, so it was all in her paws.

She followed them when they raced towards the illusion of a child crying, disgusted that people that powerful were this gullible.

Over the next few days she continued to shadow them, and was pleasantly surprised when they started shrinking. After the fight with the Redcap she realized she was at least as large as that big female now. As they camped out for the night she settle in to wait, hoping they would shrink even further.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-11-30, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: A new PC joins the game

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Mortheus needed to get away. After his shift on watch was over, he wandered into the woods by himself. He knew he was still slowly shrinking and found the process fascinating and was eager to study it further.

After a few moments he heard the sound of someone playing music on a fiddle. Whoever doing it was pretty good, and he moved in to hear it better. The playing suddenly stopped, and he saw an enormous ginger cat sitting on the ground with a grig pinned under its giant paws. Reacting without thought he slammed a blast into the cat. As it arched its back and hissed at him he realized he was looking at Jankin’s familiar, which was now much larger than he was.

The cat turned and fled when it saw Janney and Perle appear behind him. The grig slowly got to it feet and picked up a battered beret and put it on its head. It looked like a cricket, but with the face of an elven woman.

“I thank you for that” she said sweetly. “I think I was about to be someone’s breakfast.”

She flew up and landed in a nearby tree. She seemed friendly, but was a bit cautious.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, seeming a bit shocked. “You don’t wear Gansell’s mark! Don’t you know that without his mark you will continue to shrink? One more night here and it will be irreversable.”

The trio told the grig their story, eager to find a way out of this. She informed them that this land was controlled by a being called Gansell. No one she knew of had ever actually met Gansell, but anyone from the outside that came in spoke of being there with her permission. Those few who did not have permission gradually shrunk until they just disappeared.

The grig took them to meet a nearby Pixie named Dungainen, who was just as shocked at their appearance as the grig was. Dunegainen’s suspicions were reasssured after the grig described her rescue from the cat, and agreed to lead them to Gansell’s home, which was only an hour away.

The home was a simple stone house by a stream. It looked enormous to them in their current size, but Janney observed that a normal sized halfling or gnome might find it comfortable.

When they walked around behind the house they saw a halfling man standing in front of a large stone nearby that looked like a grave marker. He was a good bit larger than they were, and was standing next to a cat with greyish-brown fur. The cat was larger than the halfling, and looked more like a lynx or mountain lion than a house cat, though with the variability of how things changed sizes in this place it was impossible to tell.

He turned to look at them as they approached. He was heavily tattooed, and his reddish brown curly hair was cut short. He was wearing wearing leather armor and using a bardiche taller than he was as a walking stick and had a knife in his belt. As they got closer they saw he was a good bit older than he looked from a distance. His hair was streaked with gray and his face wrinkled and dry from years in the sun.

He seemed friendly enough. His cat seemed to take its cue from his attitude and did not make any threatening moves, which was probably a good thing considering how much larger it was than they were.

“You come to see Gansell’s grave too?” he asked in slightly accented Common.

Perle’s shoulders slumped. “She’s dead?” he asked.

“Yes, I suspect so” he responded. “but before you ask, time is just as screwed up here as space so its hard to say how long its been since she passed.”

He pointed down to the unmarked headstone. “This looks like its been here for years, but I have reason to believe that she only died a few days ago when referenced to where I’m from.”

They traded information for a while, explained what they were doing here, and found out more about him.

His name was Birringle Two Mules. He was a shaman of his people, a large mixed race tribe of halflings and dwarves that lived in the mountain ranges to the far north, over 1000 miles away. The tribe’s chief shaman had a vision warning him about Gansell’s death, and had tasked Birringle with investigating.

Birringle explained that Waldspiegel was accessible from many places in the world, and that he used an entrance not far from his home. He seemed quite fatalistic about what it meant to come here, and correberated the Grig and Pixie’s contention that unless they could find Gansell soon, they would be unable to leave.

He was also able to tell them what he knew about Gansell, which was that she was accomplished in both Wizardry, and some sort of Shamanism that Perle suspected might be Druidical magic. She was mortal, but had some means of life extension, having lived at least a few hundred years before she either discovered or created Waldspiegel.

While he could not answer the party’s questions on how this place came to exist, he could tell them that once Gansell established herself here, it became a refuge for animals and fey. Humanoids of any sort and other creature types tended not to fare well here at all.

He also said that trying to track time here was meaningless. An hour here could correspond to a year outside or a few heartbeats. As far as he knew there were no natural laws that governed it that were understandable, and that it was just best to accept it.

When they told their story he seemed quite interested in Alitha, who had stood vacantly looking at nothing while they talked. With their permission he examined her, and announced he suspected that something had caused her mind to retreat into itself for protection. He said that it would likely solve itself over time. She was awake enough that she would follow instructions, but iniated nothing on her own.

Janney had becomed a bit cranky due to withdrawl symptoms. She hadnt had a drink in days and was feeling a bit shaky. Mortheus and Perle seemed to be really getting into the discussion, but she wanted to move on with her life.

“So now what. Gansell is dead, and we don’t know how to find our way out.” she snapped.

Birringle smiled, his blue eyes sparkling with warmth. “Oh, I didn’t say we had no options. Gansell left word on the stone, if you know how to read it.” He walked about 20 yards deeper into the woods until he reached a huge ancient tree. He chanted for a few seconds and the tree slowly moved out of the way, showing a crude stairwell going down into the earth.

“I’m going in” he said. “You’re welcome to join me if you like.”

Spoiler: Escher would have loved this place

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They all found the stairwell odd. They had only traveled down to the first landing when Mortheus turned around to look back up at the entrance. Being a bit obsessive cumpulsive, he had counted the steps behind him and was sure that there were 27. But when he looked back he saw there were steps leading back up for hundreds of yards, and that the entrace was barely visible.

He turned around to tell everyone and saw that they were all looking around at each other in surprise. Birringle and his cat were no longer larger than the rest of them. The cat looked like a normal sized mountain lion now, and Birringle seemed like just a really tall halfling.

They all felt exhausted, like they had traveled for hours. They rested for a while and continued on. They traveled a short distance and reached the next landing and were so tired they stopped again.

They continued on, but realized the steps had shifted, and they were now going up rather than down. They kept going, and although it didn’t seem like they had walked long at all, they had to stop and rest what seemed like every few minutes.

They all knew their sense of time was totally out of whack. That point was driven home when they realized that Mortheus’s normally shaved head and face were covered with what looked like a few weeks worth of growth. Since he had shaved the morning they entered the stairwell they knew they were totally unable to determine the passage of time.

Fortunately it appeared they had reached something interesting. The stairs ended at a locked door, which was covered in runes and powerful wards. Birringle looked at the runes surrounding it, chanted over it, and the magical aura it had faded.

They opened the door and found Gansell laying in the center of a circled scribed on a large stone. She looked ancient and frail, and wore a hooded cloak that blended in with the surroundings so well that she almost was invisible. She clutched a wooden staff shod in silver at one end and an emerald the size of Janney's fist fused at the other end.

There were numerous runes cut into the rock surface and they all could feel the ambient magic rolling outward as they approached.

An enormous wolf lay nearby and got to its feet and growled in a tone so low they felt it rather than heard it.

Birringle spoke briefly in Sylvan and the wolf stopped growling, but kept a close watch on them as they examined the woman's resting place from a distance. Birringle was able to decipher the runes.

"It says: Do not disturb me. If you were sent here you know where to look for answers…...I have no idea what it means" he added, seeing that the others looking at him expectantly as he translated for them. " I suggest we look around."

They split up and searched the area. There were two exits from the room, each one leading into a maze that seemed to change as they passed through it.

Eventually they found an exit which led outside to a small central ring of stones surrounded by two larger diameter rings, all of it located on a small hill.

Light from an enormous full moon illuminated the clearing clearly. To everyone’s eyes the moon seemed far too large, and there was some consternation when Perle pointed out two more much smaller moons only partially illuminated. Where ever they were, it did not look like their home world.

They searched outside for over an hour before Mortheus disturbed a tiny rodent and it fled. Birringle noticed and followed it.

"My Shaman dreamed of a wise mouse right before i left." he explained. "In the dream it knew secrets that larger creatures ignored"

After a short talk with the mouse Birringle walked into the high grass on the slope of the hill and came back with a small rolled up piece if parchment. He looked at it for a minute and announced that it was from Gansell.

In her letter she wrote that she could wait no longer and was about to start a ritual that would cause her to enter a state near death. This ritual would allow her to reincarnate without actually having to die first. This ritual was critical, because much of Waldspiegel and the bridge between it and both this world and her own were held together by her life force. If she died, even momentarily, Waldspiegel would become isolated from both their world and this world and neither would be accessible. Worse yet, Waldspiegel would collapse upon itself and anyone there would be annihilated.

The ritual would take her three months to complete, and during that time she would be helpless until she awoke again on the eve of the spring solstice.

She warned that while her power kept this location hidden from the denizens of this world, once the ritual began, she would no longer be able to power the wards and illusions she used to hide these standing stones and to prevent entry by those who stumbled across it. It would take time for the defenses to weaken, but she thought it likely that they would fall before she was able to renew them. This world had many that would destroy her if they could and until she completed the ritual she would be helpless.

She apologized to anyone who found the letter, for there was no turning back. There was no way home that she knew of without her help. If she was successful though she could return anyone who helped her back on their own world.

With her instructions they found her lab. There was enough supplies there that each of them could spend 4 weeks crafting. There were also a number of wands and scrolls stored, and two tokens which allowed the wielder to pass through the barrier she had erected around the area, and to see their way through the illusions.

Birringle went back inside to talk to the wolf for a bit. It told him it had only been one day since she had performed the ritual. The halfling got the impression that the wolf was a good bit smarter than he was, and had either been awakened, or was also her familiar.

The next morning Mortheus and Birringle decided to explore their surroundings. In daylight they could see that the hill they were on was the highest point on a roughly circular island about half a mile in diameter. The entire area was covered in a thick fog that eventually burned off in the morning sun to reveal a much larger island about 15 miles off in the distance.

The weather was cold and the seas rough. The island had no real beach, just jagged rocks that the waves crashed over endlessly. When they reached the coast Birringle looked back at the hill. He handed the monk his token and saw the hill disappear, replaced by a rocky mound that looked desolate.

He tried walking around and found that every direction he took led him right back to the water's edge.

Satisfied he got his token back.

Mortheus took to the air and explored the area and found that the nearby island was occupied by about 500 people living in small villages and farms.*

The mainland looked to be another 40 miles futher away and more densely populated.

There were a number of fishing boats on the water, but they all stayed between the mainland and the larger nearby island. From the way the waves crashed Mortheus realized that there were numerous rocks just under the surface near their island and that navigating a boat there would probably be difficult.

The next three weeks were quiet. They spent their time crafting items, exploring their surroundings and making a few traps to slow down attackers.

Their tokens allowed them direct passage through the underground maze, so they used that to their advantage. Their plan in case of attack was to slow them down above ground, and then retreat through the maze.

Eventually one day their solitude was broken. A fierce storm blew through overnight, and the next morning Perle went out to check on the rest of the island and found the remains of a ship crashed on the rocks. He saw a few figures huddled behind a large rock that broke the worst of the wind and carefully made his way closer.

The ship was in pieces and he could see dead slaves still manacled to the benches below deck, their oars shattered.

While he watched, one of the survivors pulled out a knife and began chanting. Two strong men held down a third man dressed like the oar slaves, and the woman with the knife slit his throat. As the man died there was a soft sickly glow that lasted for a few moments before fading as the light got sucked into a rod she was carrying . The woman got to her feet and seemed relieved. She chanted again and a small stone hut appeared. They left the dead slave and all went inside. Perle saw that there were three other dead slaves nearby with their throats slit.

Hr raced back to the hill as fast as he could. Birringle came back with him and they made their way down to the shoreline.

They settled in to wait to see what happened. No one came out of the shelter for over an hour, and eventually Perle got impatient. After a whispered conversation he sneaked down to the cabin, cast a few buff spells and waited for Birringle to try dispell the hut.

*As soon as it dropped Perle threw a dagger at the first person he saw, and seconds later Birringle made all the rocks in the area razor sharp. As the three inhabitants struggled to escape they were cut down quickly with spells and blades.

They searched the bodies, then dragged them over to the cliff, tossed them into the water, and then retreated back to the hill.

They didn’t notice the figure that swam ashore from the wreckage of the boat after they left. It looked around in some confusion, and eventually jumped back into the water, where it disappeared from view.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-02, 01:48 PM (ISO 8601)

Trying to catch up a bit, so I'll be posting every other day or so, time allowing.

Spoiler: Perle can't help himself, and doesn't live to regret it

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Another couple of weeks went by. By this time Gansell was no longer visible on the stone bier she was resting on, the magic surrounding her coalesced into a cocoon-like barrier.

Alitha slowly made progress, finally awakening to the point where she was able to communicate with others, though she seemed uninterested in talking much and remembered little about what she had been through. She spent most of her time reading books in Gansell’s library.

The rest had run out of materials to craft anything else and were getting bored. Every day two of them left the hill and explored the island. They could tell that while the illusion hiding the hill still held, the wards that disoriented anyone approaching the hill were diminishing. Birringle and Perle both found that they could now walk around the island without being immediately led back to the coast.

Janney found that she had trouble with the local food that Gansell had stored, and was getting sick on a regular basis. One morning Birringle brought back some fish to supplement their food supplies and the smell of it made her vomit. While she was not seriously sick she felt awful and was not pleasant to be around.

The rest of them had no problems with the food. Birringle’s mountain lion companion in particular perked up once Birringle started bringing back fresh fish each morning.

Early one morning almost six weeks after they arrived, Perle was standing watch when he saw a fishing boat heading towards the island. It stayed a few hundred yards offshore to avoid the rocks, and a number of figures stood on deck watching the island. Three of them stood huddled together and disappeared, reappearing on the island about 10 yards in from water’s edge. One was an elf, and she looked like some sort of arcane spell caster, unarmed and dressed in robes. The second was a large bald human male who wore a mithril chain shirt and carried a large multi-bladed polearm. The third was another elf, this one male. He wore no armor but carried a katana and moved more like a warrior than a wizard.

A slender human man flew over on his own. He wore no armor and carried a knife in one hand. When he reached the shore he opened up a large bag of holding and four more human men stepped out, all wearing chain mail. Two of them were armed with longbows, one carried a great sword and the final one wielded a scimitar and carried a light steel shield.

Perle backed off up the hill, alerted the others, and he and Birringle came back out to watch.

The female elf spell caster was standing next to the bald man with the pole arm on the cliff overlooking where the ship had crashed weeks earlier. The rest of the group was spread out in a semi-circle around them, keeping watch. The only one not present was the man who flew over. After a few minutes Birringle spotted him swimming in the ocean.

The group spent the next three hours searching the waters around the island before changing their focus to the island itself.

They started towards the center, and seemed to realize they were having problems. The four men that came out of the bag of holding kept turning around and heading towards the coast until one of the other four stopped them.

They huddled for a while and got a rope out and had each of the four men who were having problems finding their way hold on to it so that the man with the pole arm could lead them.

They moved slowly, and gradually began to work their way to the center with some missteps.

Leaving Perle behind to keep an eye on them Birringle raced back to the top of the hill to update the others.

There were a few moments of discussion on what to do. The group had done nothing threatening so far, and none of them felt comfortable just ambushing them. But on the other hand they were outnumbered and if they didn’t strike first they would lose the element of surprise.

They reluctantly decided to wait to see what happened, and to parley first. Biringle and Janney prepared to meet them, while Mortheus sent a quick message to Perle to let him know what was going on, then hid on top of one of the standing stones to back them up in case it got ugly.

The group of elves and humans gradually got closer, but the four men holding onto the rope were having a harder time holding onto it and kept wandering off. The elf with the katana and the flying man were also having problems and needed constant supervision. Only the bald man and the elven woman were able to keep going, and they were all stumbling due to the terrain not matching what their senses were telling them.

They finally decided to stop and began to discuss what to do next. Perle used a wand to cast a Tongues spell and was able to easily sneak in closer due to the others having severe problems detecting anything.

“There is something here we need to understand” the elven woman insisted.

“Obviously” the bald man snorted. “But I am not sure what we can do about it”

“I don’t think the Brotherhood did this, they would have had to kill hundreds of slaves to have an effect like this.” the woman with the katana added.

Perle didn’t recognize the language they were using. The bald man had a symbol of a gauntlet with a blue eye sewn into his cloak and on his vest. Perle didn’t recognize that either but thought it might be a holy symbol of some sort.

“I think we’re in over our head.” Baldy added. “None of us can see what’s really going on around us. If the Brotherhood is behind this we are sitting ducks. I think we need to regroup and come back with reinforcements.”

“I agree.” the elven woman said. “The boat will be back in a few hours when the tide is high enough again. We head back to Thundra, and in the morning I can teleport back to the temple. I should be able to return with a team within a day. You can keep watch on the island from Thundra while I am gone.”

She turned to the man who had flown in. “Send word to the temple, let them know where we are.”

As the man started to chant, Perle made his decision and dispelled the attempt.

While he frantically looked around to see who had disrupted the spell, Perle moved in and stabbed him repeatedly until he fell.

The man with the pole arm managed to see him and roared a challenge and charged, but stumbled over a rock he couldn’t see, allowing Perle to duck under his swing and stick a dagger into his armpit where the armor provided no protection.

Around him was pure chaos. As Perle took apart the bald man he could hear the elven spell caster chanting and the warriors shouting contradictory instructions to each other.

As Baldy fell, Perle found himself facing the woman with the katana. She attacked in a flurry of precise sword strikes, with one of them discharging a burst of electricity into him. He tumbled backwards, and found that once he got out of melee range she had problems seeing him, so he flicked a dagger into her shoulder, and as she frantically looked around for him he tumbled back in and stuck a second knife in her belly. She fell with a gurgle.

As the rest of them fled down the hill he followed them down and took them out one at a time until only the elf spellcaster was left. She cast a spell to turn to gaseous form and tried to fly up into the air out of his reach, but he was fast enough to catch her with his daggers once before she managed to change forms, and she couldn’t climb fast enough to escape him. It took him a while with his crossbow, but he eventually killed her standing on the edge of the cliff as she floated out over the ocean.

Those few seconds were enough for the other elf woman to find him and bury her katana up to the hilt in his back. He slumped over and fell to the ground. She stabbed him again a few more times to make sure he was dead and then bent over and grabbed his pack and shook it upside down so that everything spilled out. Seeing a bundle wrapped in cloth she opened it, and the metal band slipped over her wrist and clamped down without her noticing.

She found Perle’s token that allowed him to travel unimpeded around the island and pinned it to her cloak. She concentrated for a moment, began chanting, and as her wounds slowly began to disappear. She got to her feat and picked him up with one hand like he was a small child and tossed him into the water.

With a smile she turned and trotted up the hill, stepping over the bodies of her dead companions where they lay.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-09, 10:37 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Flirting with a TPK

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“Perle...what’s going on?” Mortheus sent telepathically after not hearing anything for a few minutes.

When he didn’t get a reply Birringle walked far enough back down the hill to check on him. Perle was nowhere in sight, but there were multiple bodies strewn on the slope, and a tall elven woman covered in blood and entrails was striding up the hill towards him. When she saw him she pointed her katana at him, grinned madly and charged up the hill.

He retreated back into the stone ring as his cat raced to his side. As he was casting a buff spell on his companion the elf peeked around a standing stone and dispelled most of the buffs on him. She laughed, then charged, a Huge Earth elemental lumbering in behind her. She took a blast from Mortheus on the way in but it didn’t slow her down.

Birringle and the elf met with a crash of weapons. The halfling’s blade was a blur and his cat companion slid around to flank the elf and attacked with tooth and claw.

Though bleeding from multiple small cuts, the elf didn’t seem too notice the damage and countered with a strong slash across Biringle’s arm that discharged a large amount of electricity into his body. This back and forth continued for a few seconds and ended up with Birringle laying on the ground with the cat continuing the fight alone.

Meanwhile Janney had kicked huge chunks out of the elemental but had not yet finished it off.

As the elf took another blast from Mortheus she used her katana to carve up the cat in much the same way she had taken down Birringle.

“You’re next doofus” she mocked the monk as the cat fell. In the chaos of the battle Mortheus didn’t notice that she was speaking in perfect Common.

The monk responded by slamming a blast into the wounded elemental, freeing up Janney to take on the elf. As Janney rushed in, he jumped down from the standing stone and took as many wounds from Birringle as he could to get him back in the fight.

Before the shaman could even got to his feet the elf dropped a flame strike centered on herself, killing the cat and Janney and wounding Mortheus. Birringle somehow managed to roll at the last second and dodge it entirely. He got to his feet and attacked again, enraged at the death of his cat.

The elf’s surprise that Birringle survived the flame strike was short lived. She took a deep cut from the halfling’s blade half a second before Mortheus’s blast knocked her to the ground. The halfling slit her throat and most of her neck with his bardiche, then raced to his cat to see if he could save her.

After Mortheus brought Janney back he knelt down next to Birringle, who had his dead cat cradled in his arms and was rocking back and forth, oblivious to everything going on around him. The monk touched the cat and revivified it, much to the halfling’s surprise.

Not sure if the fight was really over, Mortheus recovered Perle’s token from the dead elf so that he and Janney could search the island while Birringle healed his cat and checked on Gansell.

No one paid any attention to Alitha, who had spent the battle watching from the door to the maze. Once everyone was gone she walked over to the elf, crouched down, pulled the band from the dead elf’s wrist, tucked it away in her pocket, then went back to the library to continue reading.

OOC: This was approaching TPK territory. Birringle was the only one to make his save on the Flame Strike. Without it he would have been dead. Fortunately for him he had Evasion and made the save, then got a crit on his next attack. Without that save Mortheus would have been standing alone with single digit hit points in melee range of the elf.

The entire party was very glad Mortheus had selected Psychic Revivify when they reached 9th level. Mortheus's player is getting a bit bored with Kineticist, but is enjoying some of the odder psionic powers that he picked from the Egoist list.

Spoiler: Birringle realizes he's not alone

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Birringle had had been living life in a fog ever since his daughter Dona died, and it took the death of his cat Kady to realize that he still had someone he cared about.

It had been 35 years since is wife passed on, and all three of his children were gone now too. They had all lived full lives, but he felt their loss none the less. After Dora passed he left his people for a number of years, and by the time he got back he realized his grandchildren were getting old too, and now had grandchildren of their own. He didn’t know why he was not aging at the same rate as the rest of his tribe, only that he hated seeing everyone he loved get old and die around him.

When the tribe’s Shaman gave him this task he welcomed it, knowing and in some sense hoping he wouldn’t come back. It shamed him to realize this now, since Kady traveled with him without question and had no idea he was almost suicidal. He knew that he owed his new friend Mortheus a lot. Kady deserved better.

He wasn’t so sure about the others. Janney was an alcoholic going through withdrawal and was pretty unpleasant to be around, but he hoped she would snap out of it once she was sober a bit longer and got passed the cravings. If you wanted to get sober, being trapped on an island on a different world with no booze was one way to do it.

Perle definitely worried him. The man seemed to be wound a bit too tight, and had a chip on his shoulder. He suspected that Perle was a good person to have on your side in a fight, but the problem was, having him on your side pretty much ensured that there would always be a fight.

With a sigh he got to his feet and he and Kady walked in to check on Gansell. There was no change, and her companion wolf was still laying next to her. The wolf hadn’t left her side once since they had arrived weeks earlier.

He looked in on Alitha next, and found her sitting in Gansell’s small library, reading a book. She was definitely starting to recover, but while he could tell she understood what he was saying, she didn’t seem interested in talking to anyone, so he left her after making sure she was ok. Gansell’s collection of books was relatively benign and he and Mortheus had hidden the few books in the library that he thought might be dangerous, leaving nothing other than a few fairy tales and some books on herbalism, so this was a safe place that kept her out of trouble.

It took a couple of hours for Janney and the monk to return. They told him they recovered Perle’s pack near the water's edge, its contents scattered nearby. But they found no sign of their friend, or the Artifact he had been carrying in his pack.

A search of the water near where they found the pack turned up nothing other than the body of the elf wizard, which had washed up in the rocks. They eventually gave up and gathered the people Perle had killed and buried them all in a shallow depression on shore, covering the graves with large rocks to form a crude cairn.

While Mortheus filled in the halfling on all that they had done Janney disposed of the elf warrior after checking her body thoroughly to make sure she didn't have the artifact.

None of them were watching when the fishing boat came back. It waited a few hundred yards off shore for two hours, and eventually left.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-14, 12:55 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: A New Arrival

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The next month was quiet, but the party could tell that the wards were weakening as they could travel anywhere on the island without a token. The illusion still held though and the true nature of the hill top was still disguised.

Mortheus spent most of his time reading a book he found in Gansell’s library. It gave him a few ideas, and after a week’s meditation, he made a decision and acted, not bothering to inform his friends.

Janney found him one morning, sitting against one of the standing stones. His head was bowed and he was drooling on himself.

“You OK?” she asked with some concern.

“Just rearranged my mind a bit” he slowly replied after a very long pause. “I closed off a few pathways and opened up some new ones to change how it functions.” He looked up at her with eyes that were having problems focusing on her.

Janney took the explanation in stride, having heard him say stranger things. “Well, don’t break anything in there” she suggested, patting him on the shoulder.

He nodded. “That would not be good” he agreed.

Their seclusion didn’t last forever. Four days before the solstice that marked the end of the ritual they had another visitor. An hour before midnight a figure appeared on the island and began walking up the hill. The creature was small and wiry, about the size of a gnome, and appeared to blend into its surroundings. It wore no clothing other than a small backpack and had small butterfly wings folded on its back.

It eventually reached the standing stone circle and crept up behind Janney who was patrolling the area. It watched her for a while, then continued exploring. It found the entrance to the underground maze leading to Gansell, but decided not to enter, instead flying up to one of the larger stones where it lay down and waited.

The next morning Mortheus took over from Janney. He seemed fully recovered from his self inflicted ordeal a few days earlier and to the others seemed his normal incomprehensible self. He took a walk down the hill and when he removed his token he was able to see through the illusion disguising the hill pretty easily.

After a quick circuit around the island he hiked back up the hill, distracted with thoughts of Berry. He really couldn’t wait to get out of this place and go find her. He had no idea how he would explain the erotic thoughts he had unconsciously sent her way when he first learned how to communicate telepathically, but was desperate to try. Rewiring his mind had been a welcome distraction to the anxiety he felt about her, but now he found himself obsessing over her.

In his distraction he almost stumbled across the butterfly winged creature, which was sitting cross legged in the middle of the standing stone circle clutching some sort of white pennant. The creature looked like some sort of fey, with greenish-brown skin, and a skinny elongated face with emerald colored eyes and pointed ears.

Once it realized it had his attention it grinned and waved the pennant at him. It seemed almost cheerful and appeared completely unafraid.

Mortheus almost blasted it reflexively, but decided that it might want to parley. He shouted to call his friends, and soon the three of them surrounded it. The creature didn’t seem to mind until it saw Birringle’s cat, which appeared to make it nervous.

“Please don’t eat me” it said gravely in accented common to the mountain lion, ignoring the other three completely. It had a deep baritone voice that seemed odd coming from something so small. “I have information that could save them, if they are willing to listen.”

Spoiler: Rebirth

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Lucindra hummed a cheerful tune as she worked. The 6' tall emaciated crone seemed almost giddy as she cleaned her cave in anticipation of her sisters' arrival.

Yokkono was the first to arrive. The green hag was one of Lucindra's favorites, and the sea hag was pleased she had answered her call. While they waited for Andromeda to arrive Lucindra showed off some of her new acquisitions.

A third member of their coven arrived a few minutes later, teleporting into the cave's outer chamber. Andromeda was a short chubby half-elf witch with a sweet smile that masked her depraved nature so well that most of her victims never suspected until it was far too late.

Lucindra excitedly showed them what she had found and explained what she had in mind. They asked a few questions, but readily agreed with her plan and made the necessary preparations.

An hour later the ritual was complete and the focus of that ritual breathed again, albeit in a slightly different form.

Lucindra left the room so that her aura wouldn't upset their new toy, and left him in her sisters' capable hands.

After Yokkono shifted her form into something she suspected the man would find more pleasing she healed him while Andromeda cackled in the background. As he opened his eyes Yokkono charmed him, and asked in a soft deceptively innocent voice " What's your name?"

The man lay there, and as his confusion faded he looked up and smiled at his new friends. "I'm Somer'son...Perle Somer'son"

Spoiler: A Fanatic worries he's not doing enough

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Perle was relieved to be alive again. His afterlife had been neither pleasant, or particularly unpleasant, just boring. His concerns about whether the Good he did would outweigh the methods he used seemed to be unwarranted. His soul hadn't plunged into some horrific hell for everlasting torment.

On the other hand it hadn't ascended to the heavens either. He didn't know what to make of it. Nothing at all had happened. His new fear was that maybe he was so insignificant in the eyes of Heironeous that his God had just ignored his soul all together.

With what seemed to be an eternity to think before he was returned to life, he decided that if he had a second chance he would redouble his efforts. He knew he hadn't been fervent enough or acted decisively enough and prayed that if he would be given a second chance he would make a better effort and destroy all of his God's enemies.

So when he opened his eyes and found that he had new allies he rejoiced. He knew he was an excellent judge of character and quickly realized these women could help him advance His agenda.

Over the next few days he built his strength back up. He told them almost everything: Gamsell and her ritual, the Standing stones, his friends, the barrier, what it did and how it was fading, and when the ritual would be completed. The only thing he kept secret was his Work. He knew that his calling to be Heironeous's assassin had to remain a secret. It was a necessary subterfuge, and he regretted having to keep it secret when inside he longed to tell the world, but that was his burden to carry.

They immediately agreed to help, and the younger sister Yokkono suggested they watch the island from the outside, and not act until the barrier fell, which would be when his friends were in the most danger, Perle reluctantly agreed. He no longer had a token that would allow entrance anyway.

He used the time to practice his skills and to pray for guidance. He got no answers and never felt the presence of his god, though he still had access to his spells. He was sure he was being tested, and knew it was time to prove himself.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-18, 07:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Another PC joins the group

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Berringle’s mountain lion yawned and sat down, ignoring the fey completely. This seemed to reassure the creature and it put down its white flag.

“Now, where was I” it said in its deep voice. “Oh yes, yes….. information that could save you…..quite right madam”

While it spoke Birringle scanned the surroundings as it appeared that the creature was carrying on a conversation with someone else.

“I can do this…..Really! There is no call for that. It was just one instance…….Fine….you do it then”

The creature’s grin faded and it looked heartbroken. “My master would prefer to speak with you herself…Apparently I can’t be trusted to convey simple messages without oversight. …..<sigh>…. You make one mistake in 23 years and never hear the end of it…..OK, OK…..I’ll do that…...”

It stood up and bowed at all three of them and announced. “May I introduce the lady Tuuchi Bludge…….What?……..I know that isn’t your last name, but I like it so much better than Snefluegon. Bludge just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?…..”

Birringle heard the sound of someone clearing their throat and turned and saw her standing about 20 yards away. She was tall for a gnome, only half a head shorter than Birringle, and had large dark blue eyes, pale skin covered with pastel green freckles and snow white hair cut close to the scalp. Her mouth, nose and eyes all seemed a bit too large for her face and her ears were pointed but flopped down slightly at the tips.

Once she was sure she had their attention she walked towards them slowly. She looked old, with the stiff posture of someone who had problems with arthritis. She didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons other than a walking stick and was unarmored and dressed in dark green trousers, a sky blue blouse and a green cloak.

“My friend and I are here to help.” she began.

They all immediately noticed she spoke unaccented common and were not surprised when she told them she was from their world, but had spent the last few years here.

As she spoke she pulled out a pineapple from her pack and tossed it to her fey friend, who immediately perked up and started eating it.

She explained that she had planned to be here to help defend Gansell in her time of need, but got detained and by the time she arrived she couldn’t break through the barrier.

The party was initially a bit suspicious of her, but between her calm relaxed demeanor and her knowledge of their world and Waldspiegel convinced them that she was probably not an enemy.

The news she brought was a bit concerning. The team of Elves and humans Perle had fought a few weeks earlier were an ambitious adventuring group trying to make a name for themselves by taking on particularly vile death cult. They had tracked the cult to the area when they were last seen.

Tuuchi told them that the brother of one of the missing men was a wealthy business man and was recruiting a team to find out what happened, and to either rescue or avenge them. Word had made it back to him that the team was dropped off here by local fisherman and never returned. She strongly suspected that a high level team of adventurers were about to show up.

Mortheus asked if she had heard anything about what happened to Perle, and she told him she had no idea, she had only been in the area for a few hours.

Janney listened to it all but asked no questions, leaving that to Birringle and Mortheus. She was still feeling a bit under the weather. The local food was still giving her digestive system problems and she usually got a little sick each morning.

She was getting to the point where she didn’t care what happened, only that in four days it would either be over and they could go home or they would be stuck here and she would get off this damn island. At this point either choice was fine with her. All she wanted was a hot bath and to drink for a few weeks.

Spoiler: Interlude I

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A few hundred miles away, a wealthy merchant sat in the back room of one of the nicer inns he owned with five other people. He was a busy man and was not one who wasted time in idle chatter. This meeting was costing him a fortune, but the only thing he valued more than his time and his money was his reputation and his family.

“Tell me what you discovered about my brother” he asked, looking around the room at some of the best regarded mercenaries he had been able to hire.

“Your brother is dead” said a rough looking young human man. “as are the rest of his team. I have performed multiple divinations, and have found where his body is, and where their killers can be found. You have a choice to make now. We can retrieve your brother’s body first, or we can deal with his killers first. But know that his killers are nearby. If you retrieve the body first, they may escape.”

“Killer first” the merchant immediately replied in a cold voice. “I can always get him after you kill them all. When can it happen?”

“In a little over an hour actually” the mercenary replied with a grin. “Once we come to terms on the final fee, we’ll scry again, perform a few other preparatory spells and teleport in to finish this….Now about our fee….”

Spoiler: Interlude II

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Evil death cults typically operate secretly in out of the way places, far from prying eyes. This is because most sane people don’t feel comfortable with neighbors who perform human sacrifice as part of their religious practices.

But a few of your more sophisticated urban cultists feel they can have it both ways. They want to be able to harvest souls by day to further their obscene goals, while still being able to take a break occasionally to have a night on the town. Being unspeakably evil can be a downer and a nice meal and an evening at the theater can be just the thing to restore their mood.

The Brotherhood had many chapters, and this one was one of the more cosmopolitan and least successful. It’s members included a number of local artists, musicians and writers that were determined to make it all work and on occasion enjoyed making some of their rivals and critics disappear.

It was the trendiest private club in town, which was all that really mattered to most of them. They had the support of just enough of the local nobles to protect them, and they limited their killings in order to make it easy to keep their secret.

But since they were associated with a world wide cult, they had obligations, some of them a bit onerous. So when one of their murder-bards heard about a merchant looking into the activities of the death cult they made every effort to find out what was going on. One of the mercenaries was a bit indiscreet, and it wasn’t hard for them to find out everything he knew.

While the local cult chapter enjoyed bloodshed, they preferred their victims to be restrained and drugged, not fighting back. So they had passed the information up to another chapter who enjoyed that type of thing. Before the merchant finished negotiating with the mercenary team for a mission to avenge his brother, the death cult had already begun acting on plans of their own.

The cultists could care less about who had killed the original band of adventurers. They knew they hadn’t done it, because if they had the merchant wouldn’t have had the option of recovering the bodies. There were worse fates than dying after all.

When they were ready their team teleported in...

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-20, 02:52 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Running out of places to hide

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Tuuchi was a little nervous, but as usual was doing an excellent job of not showing it. She thought she might have been in tougher spots before, but couldn’t think of any offhand. Not that it mattered though. She was supremely confident that she would get through this somehow. She just had to survive long enough to figure out how.

She had first come to this world after learning of its existence from a journal she found. Written by one of Gansell’s apprentices, it described Gansell’s wards well enough that she was able to get here on her own, though it was exceedingly risky. Curiosity would be the death of her some day, if her love of trickery, deceit and theft didn’t kill her first.

It was those latter qualities that had gotten her into trouble here. It had taken those who were upset with her a very long time to figure out that she even existed, let alone what she had done. But now they knew at least a little. Fortunately not everything, but enough to make it worth their while to pay a large sum to have someone ensure that she would never have a chance to bother them ever again.

She was now in a race against time. There was nowhere on this world that was safe for her. Because they wanted to make sure no one knew what she had done, she suspected that they had hired a single assassin, not put out a public bounty on her. On the plus side that meant she only had one person to worry about. On the minus side, she had a decent idea on who they would hire, and the thought of facing him was not pleasant. She knew that she would not last long.

On the other hand, Gansell would not be happy to see her if and when this was all over. Tuuchi knew that while she had made her way past the wards without Gansell’s permission, she likely had not managed to do so without her knowledge.

No way to avoid it though. She at least had a chance to talk her way out of this with Gansell.

She turned her attention back to the group and laughed at something Birringle said. She really liked the halfling. They had both seen enough of the world to understand it, and share a common love and connection to the natural world.

She watched the huge woman return from getting sick again. She nodded her head sympathetically. She had a child of her own a long ago, and the early parts of her pregnancy had made her miserable too.

“I have some herbs for that” she told Janney helpfully. “I had the same problems when I was carrying my son Koobler. Don’t worry, in another month or so the morning sickness will probably fade.”

The Half Orc woman paled, then groaned in realized what the gnome was saying. She turned away and walked back the way she came, mumbling to herself.

Tuuchi turned toward the young human monk, who was trying to talk to Alitha. The young woman caught her interest. She could tell that the woman was hiding something, but she had no idea what. The monk reminded her of her husband, incredibly intelligent and yet a complete idiot when it came to anything important and practical. The realization hurt her a bit. She hadn’t thought of him for years. She hoped he wouldn’t die the same way, as an innocent bystander who happened to be too close to her when things caught up with her.

Spoiler: Scry and Fry

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Perle woke up each morning grateful that these women had decided to help him and his friends defend Gansell. Two more Sisters had arrived in the last few days, and he told all of them what kind of abilities his friends had, and their strengths and weaknesses and favorite tactics in order to help them design an overall defense.

So the night before they were to go he fell asleep thinking that things were going pretty well. He had an odd dream again, where a bunch of old hags were standing around him as he slept, laughing at him. He didn’t know what it meant and tried not to dwell upon it.

The next morning he woke up very tense. For the first time since his reincarnation he felt a little uneasy about his new allies. He realized that he had told them a good bit about himself and his friends, but knew very little about the abilities of any of the Sisters. He was used to being extremely paranoid, and was a bit unnerved about how much he had said. It wasn’t like him to be that talkative, and he started to wonder if he was being magically manipulated.

He was in a rough spot though. The Sister’s base of operation was a large underwater cave about a mile away from the island. The currents were treacherous, and he wasn’t a good enough swimmer to try it on his own. If the women were not being up front with him he was pretty screwed.

He decided that maybe a bit of eavesdropping was in order. He knew Yokkono and Andromeda were away from the base gathering supplies, so there were fewer people around to notice what he was doing. He snuck out of his room and quietly made his way around the cave complex. He listed in while the two new arrival Sisters discussed herb craft, and began to wonder whether he was just being paranoid.

He had just about convinced himself that he was imagining things when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He slowly looked around and realized there was some sort of magical sensor nearby, checking him out.

As soon as he noticed it the sensor disappeared and he drew one of his daggers and cast a quick spell to allow him to see invisible creatures. He was expecting an attack from the Sisters, and was shocked when five people teleported into the complex, all of them invisible.

With a roar an enormous pale young human man rushed at him with a great sword and became visible when he attempted to remove Perle’s head from his shoulders. As Perle tumbled backwards away from the man he could hear the sounds of chanting from three separate voices, and screeches of outrage from the Sisters as they turned to face the new arrivals.

Multiple spells went off, and he heard screaming and felt a wave of cold wash over him. Ignoring it he abruptly switched directions, ducked under the warrior’s sword and slashed him twice and tumbled past him. As the man turned to face him Perle saw an opening and punched his dagger through the unprotected area around his armpit, but took a heavy cut on one arm from the man’s sword.

Wanting to finish him fast Perle moved in close and slashed again, leaving the man laying on the ground.

As he turned around he took two crossbow bolts in the back. He turned and threw his dagger at the dwarf who shot him then charged. By the time he got there he had drawn another dagger. The dwarf tried to use her crossbow to parry his dagger, but he was faster, and seconds later she was down too.

But it wasn't just the newcomers who were hurting. Both of the Sisters was down. Perle was facing them alone though. Lucindra had arrived and joined the fight. This was the first time Perle had seen the Sea Hag in her native form, and he felt his knees go weak from her presence.

It didn’t slow him down though, and he took out one of the remaining attackers, who made the fatal mistake of trying to teleport back out instead of defending himself.

As Lucindra took on the last attacker, ripping him in half with his claws, Perle made a snap decision and drove his dagger right in the middle of her back. As the Sea Hag turned to face him he kept slashing, and she fell.

Breathing heavily, Perle looked around the room, then methodically went from body to body, making sure none of them had survived. He had a lot to do to get ready for when Yokkono and Andromeda returned.

Spoiler: Scry and Pry

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The Brotherhood’s strike team teleported in and quickly spread out, cautiously looking for threats, but the island appeared empty. They cautiously approached the spot where the bodies had been left, and with a lot of effort, pushed the stones that Mortheus had placed over them out of the way.
As soon as they had the bodies they teleported right back out, without anyone on the island ever noticing them.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-24, 11:02 AM (ISO 8601)

Don't have much time, but thought I would try to do a small update before the holidays.

Spoiler: Sometimes Luck beats Skill

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Nimory was a very patient man, even for an assassin. He knew his target was nearby and was content to wait her out, confident that he could remain unnoticed until she showed her face.

In all it took almost nine hours, but eventually it was her turn to stand watch. Unlike the others she did not do it alone. He suspected the young monk was there with her because her new allies didn't entirely trust her, which showed they weren't complete idiots. Nimory didn’t know what she had done and didn’t really care, but he had a pretty good idea from the fee and conditions on the job that she was pretty bad news.

He was pleasantly surprised to note they did not walk together. The monk climbed on top of one of the largest standing stones that commanded a good view of the valley below. His target started walking down the hill. If she didn't change directions she would pass within 100' of him.

To prepare himself he silently cast a spell designed to protect him from enchantments. He had done his homework on his target and wasn't about to let her at his mind on the off chance she survived long enough to try to retaliate, unlikely as that might be. He pulled out three gnome bane bolts and carefully applied a poison of his own design to them, and crept forward, confident in his ability to move without being detected. This was going to be the easiest 25,000 gold he had ever made.

Once he was in position he took a deep breath and aimed, waiting for her to get close enough that he could shoot her in a spot more likely to prove fatal. As she got closer he realized he would need to move a little to get a better shot, so he took two steps, not realizing that he had just disturbed a nest of stinging insects. He was stung once just as he fired the first bolt, causing him to miss.

He didn't know who was more astonished at seeing the bolt streak past her face. He had never missed a target before, and was even more distressed when multiple identical images of her appeared before he could fire again. His next two bolts missed, one of them disrupting an illusory gnome.

His target reacted relatively quickly, and started to cast a spell almost before his third arrow had left his repeating crossbow. As he began to fire again her face and hair took on a crystalline appearance and she rapidly sank down into the ground. To his shock she blew him a kiss as she went under.

As he frantically looked around for his target he could hear shouting from the top of the hill. He hadn't survived as long as he had by participating in straight up fights, so he cursed under his breath and teleported away.

OOC: My incredibly skilled assassin did not do so well. He rolled a 2 and a 3 on his first two attack rolls, and the perception-challenged Mortheus rolled a 19 on his roll to see that his new ally was being attacked.

I was pleasantly surprised at Tuuchi's tactics here. She was expecting that an assassin would be coming after her due to the target she put on her back in her back story. Her player told me later that the character fully expected that whoever showed up would be well protected from her best offense spells (enchantments), and decided to go a different route if she was attacked.

BTW, she is played by the Perle's player, who brought her in after he died, not realizing that I still had plans for the original character. I let the player play both for a little while before I forced a choice on which one would continue to be a PC.

Spoiler: Perle does what he does best

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After healing himself with a wand Perle searched the bodies and stripped off any magic items he could find, then headed back to the entrance to the underwater cave complex to wait for the two remaining Sisters to return.

Now that his mind was clear, he suspected that they were hags or witches, and he was furious that they had messed with his mind. As he waited, crouched down behind a boulder, he began thinking of what he was going to do when they returned. Revenge was foremost in his mind, even above survival. He was so lost in thought that he almost missed it when they returned.

By the time he noticed them Andromeda and Yokkono both had their heads above water and were looking around warily as they climbed up onto the rocks.

“Strange, I expected Lucindra to be waiting for us” Andromeda said as she dried herself off.

“She probably got distracted” Yokkono replied with a laugh. “You know how she gets when she is preparing a feast.”

Even though he was expecting it, Perle was shocked to see Yokkono in her natural form. She was hideous. He used his metamagic rod to cast two spells silently, then slowly moved towards them,

Yokkono was closer, and she never even saw him. He slashed her three times and as she fell, he turned towards the other witch.

Before he could get there he heard Andromeda say “Stop!” and as her spell washed over him he stumbled to a halt, his face wide with fear.

The witch laughed and walked closer with a sweet innocent looking smile. She pulled out a slender stiletto and reached towards his face. “I’ve been waiting to do this forev...”

Perle dropped the pretense that her spell had affected him and stabbed her twice, pulling his dagger upwards through her belly. “No more mind tricks” he snarled. She tried without success to cast another spell, and collapsed.

Perle lost it for a while. He started to laugh and found he couldn’t stop. His laughter gradually turned to tears, and by the time he stopped, he was curled up in a fetal position, rocking himself back and forth.

With his hands shaking he pushed himself up until he was sitting, then slowly got to his feet, and dragged all the bodies into one room where he wouldn’t have to look at them and then cleaned himself up a bit and found something to eat.

After he felt a bit better he started to try to identify his new magic items, hoping that he could find something that would allow him to get out of here.

He was about a third of the way through when he found a bracelet with a number of charms on it. He studied it for a few minutes, then tentatively pulled off a charm, which rapidly grew into an iron cage about 6’x6’x6’. Inside were two small children who appeared to be asleep. They looked like brother and sister. The sister looked a few years older, maybe 10 years old, while her younger brother looked like he was about 7.

He stared at them, wondering what he would do now. Things just got a lot more complicated...

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-26, 03:35 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Perle attempts to make some new friends

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It took Perle a couple of hours to identify most of the magic items. There were a few he didn’t understand, but he thought he knew enough that he could get out of here. He stuffed most of it into
a portable hole he found in Lucindra’s pocket.

The children were a bigger problem. They were still asleep, which he thought was probably for the best. In the end he touched the cage to the bracelet it came from. It didn’t do anything until he put on the bracelet, but once he did and touched it again, the cage instantly shrunk down with the children inside and became a charm again.

Hoping that his plan wasn’t completely insane, he put on his new Cape of the Mountbanke and unrolled his new Flying Carpet. He sat on the carpet and spoke the command word, and the carpet immediately moved forward at a rapid rate and slammed into a wall, knocking him off of it.

He tried again and after a few more mishaps he managed to hover a foot off the ground. Not wanting to think too hard about what he was about to do, he gripped the carpet tightly and took a deep breath and spoke to command word for the Cape, teleporting 400’ straight up.

He reappeared in the air, totally unbalanced, and he almost fell off the carpet and ended up dangling from it by one hand. With strong winds buffeting him he barely managed to pull himself back up, but eventually he was able to sit on it again.

He debated whether or not to return to the island with his friends, but decided to try to return the children to somewhere safe first. He had no idea where they lived, but hoped it was on the occupied island nearby. If not, at least he could find a church or something to drop them off at.

The wind was very strong and gusty and it was all that he could do to stay on the carpet and make gradual progress, but eventually he reached the shoreline. The only thing good he could say about the landing was that he survived it. He overshot his landing point and fell off the carpet again, but as he got to his feet he breathed a sigh of relief. Flying was not something he enjoyed at all.

The island was very rocky, and there were very few trees, so visibility was pretty good. He looked around, hoping he hadn’t been seen. He saw that there was a low stone wall a few hundred yards away that looked like something intended to keep livestock in. He made for it, and cautiously peered over it. A thin stream of smoke rose out of the chimney of the small cottage on the other side of the wall, so it appeared someone was home. He retreated back towards where he had landed and found a spot behind a couple of large boulders where he could detach the cage charm from his bracelet without being seen.

The kids were still asleep inside the cage, so he opened the latch, tepped inside, and immediately felt sleepy himself, so he quickly backed out, and instead walked around to the opposite side of the cage and reached in, pulliing the children around the perimeter of the cage towards the door.

Using this method he got them to the point where he could reach through the door and grab them without going into the cage. As they slowly woke up he reconnected the cage to his charm bracelet and sat down cross-legged about 10’ away to watch them.

The girl woke up first, and seemed startled. She looked around in some confusion, and when she saw Perle she grabbed her brother closer in her grip, waking him up.

He looked just as confused, but not as fearful of Perle, who sat there smiling at them.

Perle took a drink from his water skin and then tossed it near the boy. He picked it up and took a drink and then handed it to his sister. Perle repeated this with some bread and cheese he had found in the witch’s kitchen, and they ate ravenously.

By this time the boy was looking even less suspicious, but his older sister was still concerned. Perle tried talking to them in common, but neither of them appeared to understand what he was saying, and said nothing in return.

As it began to rain he slowly got to his feet and gestured for them to follow, and took off towards the farmhouse.

He looked back about a minute later and saw that they were following him from a distance. He walked up to the farmhouse and knocked on the door, then stepped back and waited.

Almost a minute later an old woman opened the door, looking out suspiciously. She appeared startled to see Perle, but did not look unfriendly. She motioned for him to come in and stepped back into the house.

As Perle walked inside he turned around to see if the children had followed. They had, and were looking at the house with a mixture of fear and longing. The rain was coming down harder, and they were soaked.

The girl came up to the steps, and when she caught sight of the old woman she screamed, and she and her brother fled the other way, just as the floor dropped out underneath Perle.

As he fell he reached out and slammed a dagger into the wall of the cottage and held on so that he wouldn’t slide into the pit trap the woman had just triggered. As he pulled himself up the woman stabbed him with one of her knitting needles, and he could see the poison dripping from its tip.

With a roar he got to his feet and flipped his dagger towards her face as he dodged a goat that had suddenly charged him from the other side of the cabin. It slammed into him, trying to knock him into the pit but he managed to slip the blow somewhat, and with one arm he grabbed the goat and shoved it past him. It fell with a bleat and landed hard.

As he got to his feet he felt weak from the poison, but he managed to shake it off and limp over to the woman, who was laying on the floor cackling at him. He felt her magic try to take hold without success, and he bent down to pick up the dagger sticking out of her side. She screamed as he pulled it out and slammed it into her eye and he could hear the goat scream at the same time in the pit.

He limped out of the cabin after the kids, who were looking at him fearfully from the wall. He nodded to them and apologized even though he knew they had no idea what he was saying, and then stepped through the gate, heading further inland. He stopped a minute later, sat down and pulled out the water skin and poured water into where the old woman had stabbed him, then used his healing wand. By the time he was done the two children had caught up with him, and were looking at him cautiously from about 10’ away.

He nodded to them and slowly got to his feet, then took the trail inland. He could hear them following behind him.

Spoiler: Tuuchi hits the big time, but doesn't have time to dwell on it.

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Tuuchi felt the breeze as the crossbow bolt passed right by her face, and felt her magical protections kicking in. She frantically cast a spell to change her form, and then burrowed down into the ground and then raced around the hill underground. She couldn’t stay in this form long, so she wanted to make as put as much distance as possible between her and the assassin.

She was a bit surprised when she burst into an underground chamber deep under the hill. It looked like a natural cave, not worked stone, and she stopped there just long enough to make out that there was what looked like a dust covered crypt surrounded by statues there, and then she kept going, heading back towards the surface, reaching it only seconds before her spell ended.

She lay there quietly as she caught her breath and listened. Her new allies were out there looking for her, so she got to her feet and headed back to the top.

They were all awake now, and she felt a good bit of relief when she saw them, and was heartened that they seemed happy to see her too.

“Did you see who did that?” she asked the young monk. “All I saw was a crossbow bolt go by my ear.”

Mortheus held up the three bolts he had retrieved. “I didn’t see him shoot, but I heard you cast the spell, and by the time I got there whoever shot these was gone.”

He went to hand her the bolts and added “Be careful, the tips are poisoned.”

She took them, and the feel of the bolts on her skin made her ill. They were magical, and they seemed to loathe her. She could feel them trying to turn so they could pierce her skin. She resisted the urge to drop them, and studied them further.

“I think I just got very lucky” she muttered. She had heard of an assassin who used bolts like these as his calling card. They were works of art, fashioned from over 50 types of wood carved and fitted together to make each bolt. They were almost breathtakingly beautiful and each one must have taken days to fashion.

She couldn’t decide if she was flattered or terrified and eventually decided that both sets of emotions were appropriate. It took an enormous amount of money to hire Winterview, which is who she suspected had just tried to kill her. She knew little about him, except that he was extremely good at his chosen profession, and that he used the bolts as a calling card.

While they were gathered around looking at the bolts Birringle happened to hear something and looked up just in time to see a black dragon become visible about 70’ away as it breathed a line of acid over the party.

He shouted and he and his cat somehow both managed to leap out of the way, but Mortheus, Janney and Tuuchi were all badly wounded.

Birringle saw that two small figures had been dropped by the dragon right as it breathed, and they were both floating gracefully to the ground, becoming human sized as they landed. They were both heavily armored with dull gray plate mail armor and matching helms making it had to tell what race they were.

As the dragon swooped over the party a slender figure riding on its back chanted and a ball of flames washed over them. Birringle and his cat again somehow managed to avoid everything, but the rest were badly singed.

Janney immediately moved in to face one of the two new arrivals, hoping that the dragon and its rider wouldn’t blast their own people. As she charged her opponent held up a holy symbol and cast a spell that caused Janney to freeze in place.

Birringle and his cat took on the other one. The cat led the charge, and as soon as it darted in range, it feinted in and then dashed back. Their opponent realized his mistake too late, and was overextended, which allowed Birringle’s attacks to wound him greatly. As he shifted to face the halfling, the cat moved in from the side and attacked as well. It was over quickly.

Tuuchi realized Janney was in trouble and stared at the enemy cleric, freezing him in place in exactly the same manner as he had frozen Janney.

Mortheus ignored his burning melted skin and gritted his teeth in concentration as the dragon swung around for another attack. He waited until just before it breathed again to try a new power, wrapping the vile beast in a cocoon of ectoplasm. Its wings trapped, the dragon lost control of its flight and hit thr ground hard. As it bounced, the rider fell out of the saddle, and they both landed in a hear next to one of the standing stones.

While Janney and her opponent tried to break free of the enchantment spells holding them in place Tuchi switched her attention to the dragon’s rider. As she glared at the spell caster she cast a spell of Confusion on her and the dragon. She couldn’t beat the dragon’s spell resistance, but she managed to tag the spell caster, who sat on the ground babbling like a baby.

Birringle moved in to take on the dragon. Unfortunately for them the dragon was not wounded at all, and the impact with the ground had destroyed the cocoon restraining it. The beast rose up and bashed Birringle with both wings, swatted him around with its claws, bit him on the shoulder and then slammed him around with its tail.

The little halfling fought on, but neither he or the cat could get through the creatures heavily armored body,

Mortheus was still pretty ticked off and hit the dragon with another cocoon, trapping it again. “Don’t attack it yet” he shouted as the dragon struggled in vain to escape. “You’ll just break the cocoon”

Birringle immediately shifted targets and attacked the confused spellcaster, who spent the last few second of her life babbling to herself while she wondered why she was in such great pain.

As the enemy cleric struggled, Tuuchi calmly walked over. She couldn’t reach up high enough to find an unarmored spot to attack, but she could dispel the enchantment on Janney, who was more than happy to finish him off.

As the dragon continued to struggle, they all cast spells of buffing and healing, and when the cocoon finally dissipated they slaughtered the dragon before it could take flight.

**Toxic Shaman** · 2019-12-30, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Today is not going to be a 15 minute adventuring day

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While Tuuchi examined the bodies Motheus and Birringle healed everyone back to health. They couldn't do anything about their clothes though, which were tattered, burnt rags by this point.

"So we have a cleric of Bane here" Tuuchi said. Seeing a bunch of blank looks she added "Nasty Deity, his clerics call him the Lord of Darkness, wants to take over the world, you know the type...The other warrior is some sort of human dragon hybrid" She looked a bit digusted. "You damn humans will mate with just about anything…."

Mortheus couldn’t decide whether to be depressed or offended, as he was the only human present, and his only prospect for mating was a world away.

Tuuchi held up a piece of parchment. "Found this on the dragon rider... I don't think Gansell was the original owner of this place, this has a sketch of what looks like this hill, with a bunch of people performing some sort of ritual here."

Mortheus leaned over her shoulder. "That looks pretty old. " He took the parchment and sniffed it. "At least a few hundred years I bet"

With nothing else to see Mortheus telekinetically dragged the dragon down the hill and tossed it in the ocean like it was a doll.

On the way back he made a troubling discovery. The cairn he had made for the people Perle had killed had been opened and the bodies were gone.

After disposing of the other bodies he climbed back up the hill and reported what he had found to the others.

"One more day, just one more day, that's all we need" Janney muttered on hearing the news. "Whoever took them just needs to stay away for...one..more...day!"

Birringle smiled. "You really think that's going to happen?"

"Course not" Janney replied. "They've probably been resurrected and rearmed, and will show up in a couple of hours"

"Maybe bring a few friends too" Mortheus added helpfully, wanting to join the banter. Unfortunately his grasp on humor was purely theoretical, so he wasn’t very good at it. “They got massacred last, so this time they will probably bring a lot more help. Now that we don't have any wards left we could be easily be scried to determine our capabilities, then ambushed!"

Janney glared at him for a moment, then laughed and slapped him on the back, almost knocking the slender monk over.

"Uh, guys...." Birringle said quietly. "Look down the hill, over there."

Janney looked at where she was pointing. A portal had opened, and a number of large undead were walking through. They were mostly skeletons, many of them made from Giants. There were already at least two dozen, with more arriving every few seconds.

Spoiler: Perle's social skills get dusted off

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The path was well marked, and led past a number of farms. After his last experience Perle was not about to stop at another cottage, he wanted to find a village or town, so passed all the houses by.

After about half a mile he looked back and saw that the children were having problems keeping up. The boy was just too young and his legs too short. He stopped and waited for them to catch up, then reached down and picked the boy up and set him on his shoulders. His sister gave Perle a look, a mix of fear and hope. He smiled back at her and turned and kept walking.

About twenty minutes later they came to the outskirts of a village, and heard the steady clang of hammer on anvil and rounded a bend and saw an older man working at a forge, with his young assistant manning the fire and bellows.

They stopped when they saw him, and Perle took the opportunity to lift the boy off his shoulders and set him back on the ground in case this got ugly.

Both children looked at the smith and his assistant with some trepidation, and there was no sign that they knew who these people were.

"Is there a church nearby?" Perle asked pleasantly. He didn't expect that anyone would understand him, but hoped his tone would alleviate their concerns.

The smith said something to his assistant who nodded, and ran further into the village.

The smith and Perle stood there awkwardly for a few minutes until the assistant returned with a middle-aged woman in tow.

The woman was dressed better than the locals, and had the look of a retired adventurer. She was armed with a rapier, but hadn’t drawn it yet.

She looked at Perle without comprehending him when he asked again, then sang a little tune while swaying side to side. He recognized it as spellcasting and made no effort to distrupt it. When she was done he repeated the question again.

She nodded and pointed to the smith, who on closer inspection seemed to be wearing a holy symbol on a chain around his neck.

"I rescued these children and am trying to get them home, but don't know where they are from" Perle added.

The woman said something in her own language to the girl, who looked fearful, but nodded.

The woman looked slightly less wary and looked back at Perle expectantly.

"I was captured by what I think was a coven of witches. At least two of them were hags, and they had me charmed. Once I escaped I found these two, asleep. Don't worry, the coven won't be bothering anyone anymore."

From the way she reacted he could tell the existence of the coven was not a complete surprise to her. She spoke to the smith/priest for a moment. He did not look happy.

"Look, I don't want any trouble. I've had a really bad day, and just want to get these two somewhere safe, and be on my way. Do you know where they are from?"

The woman talked to the children again, and the girl responded with nods again, not speaking. She looked afraid, but after a little coaxing the woman was able to get her to talk.

As they were talking the smith said something to his assistant and he left again, looking a bit nervous. The smith looked pissed.

Perle sighed, it looked like it was going to get ugly. His suspicions seemed to be confirmed when three locals came back with the smith's assistant, all armed with clubs and knives.

"You are making a big mistake" he said to the woman sadly. "Don't make me have to defend myself. It will not end well for you." He took a step to the side so that if they attacked him he wouldn't be putting the children in danger. Unfortunately the boy moved with him, staying behind his legs. His sister looked at her brother and said something but he ignored her and wrapped his arms around one of Perle's legs.

Perle reached behind him and gently peeled the boy from his leg and handed him to his sister, then moved away and waited to see what the villagers would do. He intentionally did not draw a weapon.

They all looked at him, and there was a stand-off for almost a minute. Finally the woman spoke to him.

"They are from Casey's Forde, on the mainland. Did you really kill the hags?"

"The sea hag and the green hag are both dead, as are three other witches who were in the coven. I'm not sure I got them all. I tried stopping at a cottage before I got here, and yet another witch tried to dump me in a pit trap and stabbed me with a poisoned knitting needle. I can't be sure, but I suspect from the way the children reacted they had met her before so she was likely involved."

He continued to describe the old woman and where she lived.

She nodded. "We knew there was a coven operating in the area but could never find them. They were a terrible menace. Do you know what they called themselves?"

"The hags told me their names were Yokkonno and Lucindra, though I didn’t see either of their true forms until this morning. The witches were Andromeda, Lee and Darothe"

He noticed that the townspeople reacted when he said Andromeda. The woman looked shocked.

"Andromeda was a healer!" she said. "A sweet woman. She stopped her once to visit her aunt, the woman you say attacked you a few miles away."

He nodded. “She liked to use magic to reinforce that charm. She had me under her spell for days. But you didn’t see the other side. When I escaped I found signs that these two weren’t the first two kids that were taken. They had a collection of bones stacked up in boxes in their lair. Clothing too. Hard to tell how many, but at least a dozen or more.”

“And you took the entire coven out by yourself?” the woman asked skeptically. “Where are they?”

“They lived in an underground cave offshore, that way” he said pointing. “You’ll find all five of the ones I mentioned, plus five more bodies. I have no idea who the latter five were, they teleported in and attacked”

The woman looked at him with disbelief.

He sighed. “I know, I have a hectic life.” He walked her through the entire fight, and how he ambushed the remaining coven members when they returned afterward. He left nothing out, except for his nervous breakdown after the first battle.

“Look, there is somewhere I have to be. Can you help me get these kids home?” he said at the end. “The sooner I am out of your lives, the better. Trouble seems to find me wherever I go, some of it of my own making, but some not. You seem like nice people, and the sooner I am gone the better off you all will be.”

The woman talked to the priest for a few minutes and then turned back to Perle. “Hethgar here is a priest of Gond. He will take care of the children, and send word to the mainland for their return. You and I will head back to that woman’s cottage and you can show me where their lair was.”

Perle agreed, and after saying goodbye to the children he led her back to the cottage where he was attacked. The witch’s body was still there, as was her dead familiar in the pit. After burying the woman, he led her back to the coast so he could point out where the cave was.

He had just pointed out the approximate location when the woman noticed the island.

“WTF is going on there...” she said.

Perle looked over and saw an enormous portal on the tip of Gansell’s island. Undead Giants were passing through it and spreading out. As they watched, an enormous Roc Zombie flew out and soared clumsily through the air and began circling the island. The illusion protecting the island was completely gone, and he could see the standing stones clearly.

“That is where I have to go” Perle told the woman, as he pulled the flying carpet out of his Portable Hole. “I have to stop whatever that is”

The woman looked at him like he was insane. A second Roc had appeared right before a fog had blown up to cover everything.

“Get back to the village, and make sure everyone keeps away from the island. It’s going to be dangerous for a little while.” he told her as he sat down on the carpet and spoke the command word.

The carpet took off and she watched him fly away, then turned and raced back towards the village.

Thread: [PF] Hold my Beer... a Pathfinder Campaign Journal

[PF] Hold my Beer... a Pathfinder Campaign Journal

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Re: [PF] Hold my Beer... a Pathfinder Campaign Journal

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