Five Go To The Cursed Fort And Upset Things Which Have Laid Quiet for Centuries

[Richard Jackson]

Hi folks, it's the long-overdue write-up of the adventure we set out on in (ahem) July.  But don't worry, the whole party made it back to the Valley, and we only needed the one resurrection spell along the way...

I'm posting this up in four parts (one for each session).  It was a group effort in writing this one up.  Thanks to the rest of the party for their contributions!

Party

• Kate - Pip Estrella, Tiefling Bard
• Rich - Dramble Tavartarr, Gnome Sorcerer
• Edy - Lady Cortina Fford-Halewood, Human
• Kelly - Halla Stoneward,  Dwarf Cleric
• Krissy - Aila Oakenheel, Elf Paladin

Mission

Pop by Riverglade and kill any troublesome kobolds. Explore further downriver and see where it leads us.

Part 1

The dwarves have now installed steps leading down from the waterfall, making the journey downwards less treacherous now.

It was midsummer and the grass on the plains was about chest high on medium creatures(1). We caught glimpses of herds of deer. We decided not to go by horse, as we were following the river and didn’t want to risk them when fighting kobolds.

Kanvar’s hut was empty when we arrived at the stone circle.  We camped overnight at the hut, apart from Aila, who stayed in a tree(2).  She saw another elf from her vantage point, Lara, who was tending to the herds and seemed miffed at the thought we might want to eat some of them.  Diplomatically, we had eel for dinner and definitely not venison.

We followed the river down to Riverglade the next day, heeding Dramble’s advice to avoid the stirges, although Pip felt he was over-egging the dangers.  We made a note to look for a nearby elf settlement on the way back(3).  Passing the elven settlement we already know about at Klippica, we noticed it seemed busier than usual.  Pip “entertained” the party with song along the journey, Dramble “improved” the song, and the rest of the party spent an unusual amount of time with their fingers in their ears... 

We got to Riverglade late in the evening(4).  There we met Tippletoe, but other than greetings we saved catching up until the morning.

The next day, Pip entertained the gnome children while the others caught up with the latest news.  There were still occasional kobold sightings near Mataka’s Rocks, but they don’t come to Riverglade since the previous Valley expedition took care of that problem.  Dimble was still recovering from his injuries, but doing better.  Breena showed us builder tech artefacts they’ve found.  They now have a full set of bolts except the black ones and therefore can operate the teleporter.  She mentioned a site East of here across the swamp with a ruined tower(5).  Breena said they were being careful . This teleporter only goes to the cold mountain and people don’t like that.

We crossed over to the bluff in the river, and then crossed over the other fork of the river before heading down the river on the east side to Harmenton.  It’s a fishing settlement for about 600 people.  The river is wide, deep and slow here as it meanders through the hills.  Most of the people here are scruffy humans: fishermen, farmers etc.  The town is surrounded by farms, mills and a fishing harbour full of boats.  Some buildings in the town are stone but most are wood.  The road is just dirt (not paved).  Most of the lower buildings are workshops: smiths, wheelwrights, fish market etc.  Up the hill is an inn (The 3 Keys - posh but has rooms) and there’s a tavern next to the fish market (The Fishmarket Tavern - no rooms).  It being a warm, summer evening next to a fish market, the air was somewhat fragrant.  We went to the tavern.

The punters looked wary as we entered, but Pip won them round by performing for the room, alongside locals who sang songs about falling over a waterfall and fighting goblins. Dramble bought a round in and astounded the crowd by using his mage hand to levitate the tray of drinks across the room.

Lady Cortina struck up a conversation with a young couple called Jack and Annie, who said they were “Red Foxes” - they had a tattoo on their arms based on the fox people design we’ve seen before.  They said that Harmenton is boring. They are part of an adventuring guild and want to get a group together to go to Woodsend (a fort on the border with Sesseran) but no-one wants to go.  They knew of an elf sailor whose dad was stationed there during the elven war and they think there might be treasure but Annie believes the fort there might be cursed.  Jack thinks if there is a curse, it just makes it more interesting. 

Annie fetched Old Harry’s son (Young Harry), to tell us about the curse.  Old Harry was on a boat and they rescued an elf whose boat had sunk.  7-800 years ago the elves got into a fight with the dwarves.  Forts were built and there were war machines.  One fort is near Woodsend and the resured elf’s dad/grandad had been stationed at the fort during the war and they’d got fancy wargear.  They think the fancy elf gear is still there.  The elves got into “nasty war magics” so most people give the area a wide berth.

A more immediate problem, however, was that Bert Barrowman’s cabbages had been conquered by about a dozen kobolds(6).  There’s a nest up by Mataka’s Rocks, from which they came.  This felt like a good opportunity to test the two Red Foxes’ adventuring mettle and, hey, we had ventured out to kill kobolds after all, so we decided to help.. We stayed the night in Bert’s barn (where Jack slept off quite a lot of ale) before going out into the cabbage field in the morning.

Thus began the “Kwest of the Konquering Kobolds: Bert Bowerman’s Brassica Battlefield Bonanza”...

Aila climbed a fence to get a vantage point.  Annie was immediately knocked down by a kobold using a sling.  In retaliation, Jack Leapt Tall Cabbages With A Single Bound, attacked and hit one on the far side of the field.  LCFH  (deliberately) set off a trip wire and fell down a hole into the tunnels where there were more kobolds.  Dramble, Halla and Pip joined LCFH in the tunnels to fight kobolds (seeing as how they have dark vision and she doesn’t).  Dramble shouted a warning and got a stone in his face for the trouble.  Halla used her Sacred Flame on a kobold most effectively, while Pip flailed about less effectively.  Dramble hurled a Chaos Bolt and made two kobold popsicles while Halla killed a kobold with an immense polo style swing / uppercut.

Up above Aila killed one kobold with an impressive long range & hard shot - pinning him onto a cabbage. She, Jack and Annie rained down Death From Above through a hole into the tunnels.  Jack killed a kobold.  Pip killed a kobold.  Aila joined us in the hole.  Dramble exploded a kobold.  Kobold kills for everyone!

Victorious, we rounded up all the things the kobolds had stolen from the town and returned to the Fishmarket Tavern with a grateful Bert Bowerman, as triumphant heroes.

To be continued in Part 2, when it all starts to go horribly wrong...

------------------------------------------------

(1) Or “annoyingly long” for the gnome and the dwarf, who couldn’t see over it.  

(2) That’s elves for you.

(3) Spoiler alert: We completely forgot to look for an elf settlement on the way back.

(4) After failing to find any stirges en-route.

(5) “Fox 2” on Kalista’s map, where the builder statues are buried with their fingertips above the ground.

(6) He really loves those cabbages.

[Richard Jackson]

Part 2

We returned the ‘loots’ from the kobolds to much gratitude and drinks in the Fishmarket Tavern.  We asked about the fort.  A hunter said he’d been that way but the entrance was hidden in the foothills of the border mountains.

Jack and Annie told us more about the Red Foxes - a group of young people.  The Guild was founded 150 years ago when they’d had a particularly rewarding haul out in the forests to the East when they found 3’ fox statues.  They found lots of old coins.  There’s an old elven trail/road from Woodsend but it just stops when it gets to the mountains.  It’s in dangerous woodland.  Lots of people tell us the woodland is dangerous but seem cagey as to what exactly is dangerous about it, offering nothing more than vague explanations of “wild animals”.

There was much drunken revelry in the pub that night.  We stayed overnight there (reports are inconsistent - and probably incoherent - about whether we made it to bed or not) and took the ferry the next morning over the river.  Ahead of us we could see the mountain range and headed toward Woodend.  There was some faffing about whether or not we should pay the ferryman.  There was more faffing when we realised no-one knew the way to Woodsend.  We’d assumed Jack and Annie knew, but who knows what they were thinking.  We gave in and decided to ask the ferryman for directions.  We tried to remember whether we’d paid him after he got us to the other side.

Eric (For ‘twas the ferryman’s name) said to walk south along the river (called Serin by the people of Harmenton) to rocks where there is a path, follow the path, and when it forks- take the right hand path.

At the rocks there are stubs of candles, written prayers tucked into crevices in the rocks and goblin writing.  We had breakfast while Pip cast a ritual to read what was written - prayers to Our Lady of the woods/stars (Sehinine).  Some are prayers to stop wolf attacks, for someone’s daughter etc.  The emblem of Sehinine is a tree hung with stars.

We found a dirt track that leads from the rocks southwards and, after about an hour, we found the fork.  The right path heads to the West around the hills- sticking close to the forest (but not into it).  The left track goes to the right of the hills following the river and away from the forest.  We found a snapped off post that was probably a sign post at some point.  We later find the board with 2 arrows: left & right.  The one on the right says Woodsend in common.  The one on the left says Garricka (a goblin town).  We followed the path to Woodsend.  The forest extends to the north to the mountains.  Woodsend is at the southern end of the woods.  We heard animals howling in the woods but they were a long way off so we couldn’t tell much about them other than they are bigger than a wolf.  We were sure that wasn’t ominous at all and everything would be fine...

Woodsend is a fairly small village, about half the size of Harmenton.  It’s a trading post, with a road leading to Garricka and Stano.  There are farms, people hunt.  There's an inn (The Oak Tree inn) for travellers to stay in.  There is a road to the West to Sesseran but it doesn’t look well used.  There are conspicuously no elves.  Goblins from Stano were saying that there have been elf ships sighted on the sea, which haven’t been seen for a while.  We stopped for a delicious lunch at the inn.(1)

A hunter sat inside the pub fettling/stringing a bow.  Lady Cortina went to speak with him while Aila struck up a conversation with other hunters outside.  Between them, they warned us once again of “dangerous animals” in the woods- not just wolves and bears - things that are far nastier.  Things that are neither one thing not the other - bears with the face of an owl.  We were told if we hear strange noises, give them a wide berth.  We could follow the road to Garricka and on to Stano and then on to the sea.  Stano is at the top of waterfalls, and there are paths down the river then through the swamps.  There’s an old elf fort in the mountains but people who go out there don’t always come back.  There’s a curse on the place.

Probing more about the cursed fort, we were told more about the six cities of Sesseran: after Heskeron died (centuries ago) the cities fell into a civil war over who should rule next.  City against city.   The fort belongs to Greenhaven and the elves built a harbour.  Dangerous animals in the woods on the way to the fort.  Some people have come back, others have died on the mountains and when their bodies were found their faces were blank and featureless - no noses etc.(2)  An old farmer - George (skinny, human, ~70 years old, balding) - is often here (might be outside) may not make much sense as he drinks too much.  Rumours of building living machinery in the fort - Heskeron meddling with ancient tech - left by the Gods/ancient civilization - old magic.

Aila spoke to George.  His 14-year-old daughter, Beth was taken when she went to explore a marker with Elven script out beyond the field that’s the start of the path that goes through the woods and into the mountains.  There's no entrance - just a bare rock wall.  Beth was poking about and disappeared.  George spent 2 days looking for her, dodging Owlbears chasing him.  He eventually found Beth - she was wandering but was near death.  He couldn’t ask what had happened because they took her face, it was gone - nothing there.

[This sounded familiar to those of us who had been on previous adventures.  When someone took over one of the builder statues, their face disappeared.  We theorised (quietly, amongst ourselves) that the same thing could have happened to Beth.  The person could cross their arms to get out of the statue, but Beth’s body has been dead and buried for 30 years.  Who could tell what had become of her?  Could she still be in the statue, after all this time?]

We went up to a farm near the start of the trail to the fort, after faithfully promising everyone at the inn we would stay away from the fort.  The farmer said his sheep don’t get bothered by the things in the woods, as they stay in the woods.  He allowed us to stay in the field next to the sheep and offered to look the other way as we left at first light, in exchange for a small donation to the Farmer Rob Drinking Fund.  Good old Farmer Rob.

The path up from the farm was almost completely overgrown and evidently not well-travelled in recent years.  We found the below stone elven marker (like a mile marker) with flowery script on it.  The script said: Wëodursenda - meaning: “The resting place of living servants”.  Clearly, over time “Wëodursenda” had become corrupted to “Woodsend”.  The other side of the stone was blank.  

Further along the path, we found a pair of marker stones with a familiar carved emblem of a ship flanked by two trees.  The road ended abruptly at a blank stone wall in a dell. There were fallen pillars with elven writing on them:

“Neither my brother or I point the way, between our falsehoods we show the truth;  the hidden path can only be walked unseen.”

Aila strode purposely forward between the pillars and up to the rock wall with her eyes closed, where she suddenly disappeared!  Just as she did so, two Owlbears appeared(3) - an adult and a juvenile.  Halla unleashed a flash of divine light at the larger creature.  Dramble hit it again with a firebolt before also vanishing between the pillars.

Through the optical illusion of a doorway formed by the rocks, Aila found a small antechamber with a door in front of her that had a builder hexagon in the middle of it.  When she told it to activate (in the Builder tongue), the hexagon glowed blue and appeared to need a bolt to open it.  After establishing that neither she nor Dramble were carrying the party’s supply of Builder bolts, they returned to the fight outside.

Annie charged up to attack the adult Owlbear and, before Halla could stop it, it tore at her with its beak and claws, killing her instantly(4).  Jack was inconsolable.  We managed to drive the Owlbear off and it screeched for its child to follow.  However, mad with vengeance, Jack killed the adult with a mighty shot, leaving Dramble no choice but to finish off the juvenile as well.

After the flight we persuaded Jack to stay with us so we could help him take Annie home for burial.  Aila touched the blue bolt to the hexagon and commanded it to open.  Which it did, but only a little before the mechanism jammed. Lady Cortina forced the door the rest of the way open.

We left Annie in the corner.  Off the main, long corridor were two more doors.  The place had clearly been abandoned in a hurry.  There were papers and scrolls within the first room to the right.  The labels on the shelves were cities and places.  The papers had details of operational maneuvers during the elven war.  They referred to an ongoing investigation into people in the fort on the suspicion that someone there was a spy.

There were also some names e.g. General Varisel.  There was a magical item on the desk - a small stone, about fist sized, with the likeness of an elven face on it.  It radiated evocation magic and might be a communication device.  Dramble worked out it was a sending stone - If someone else has the other stone and you’re holding this one, you can send messages to the other.  It turned out you also know if the other person is holding the other stone.  With a shudder, Dramble realised there was a second stone and someone was ‘on the line’(!)  He couldn’t tell where that someone was.  We took the stone.

There was a map of the nation of Sesseran on one of the walls of the communications room:

There was nothing magic in the second room (to the left of the main room).  It appeared to be a guard room.  We went in and found a recess in the wall, containing a key cupboard.  It had four long, metal, mortice lock keys.  We took them with us.  The head of the key was stamped with the ship logo.  The third room was a sick room with medical equipment.  And 2 potions of heroism plus 4 potions of greater healing.  Which obviously we pocketed.

Opposite the medical room was a locked door.  And we had a set of keys.

To be continued…

-----------------------------------------------------

(1) Venison, just to spite Lara

(2) No, we didn’t ask. Are you impressed by our restraint?

(3) We did not consider this to be a good swap.

(4) She was not okay.

[Richard Jackson]

Part 3

Behind a locked door, we found an armoury stocked with swords, crossbows and several sets of elven scale mail armour, intricately wrought with a leafy design.  Aila was very taken with the armour and swiped a set for herself(1).  Speaking of armour, we decided those wearing the most of it should lead the way up the ominous staired passageway ahead.

It led out to a large dining hall with six large tables and banners on the walls.  Inexplicably, even though we were deep underground, the space was illuminated by several tall windows.  These appeared to show the scene outside the mountain not as it is now, but as it was some time in the distant past.  The collapsed pillars were still standing, and banners with ship emblems were flying from them.  It was also broad daylight, whereas night had fallen as we entered the fort. 

The floor of the hall was strewn with the skeletons of elven warriors, lying in long-dried pools of blood where they died - although there were no obvious signs of a struggle; their weapons were still sheathed.  We removed their weapons anyway, as a precaution(2).   Aila sensed an evil presence looming in the rooms further beyond.  Dramble found the remnants of burnt papers in the fireplace.  Aila translated the fragments of elven script as “Ciramina”, “forces”, “ritual” and “experimentation”(3).

Tired of the party’s indecision as to whether to follow the left-hand door or the right-hand door that led beyond the dining hall, Dramble picked the left-hand one at random.  We emerged into a set of corridors, dimly lit by pinpricks of light in the ceilings.  We split up to search the various rooms, which appeared to have once been a set of living quarters for the elven soldiers stationed here - we found beds, storage rooms and baths.

Pip found the first skeleton, which abruptly sprang to life and attacked!  It was soon joined by hordes more(4).  We struggled to fight them off, until Lady Cortina proved herself to be an absolute demon ninja badass with her javelin attacks, scoring hit after hit after hit(5), even in these dimly lit conditions that her human eyes were ill-suited to.  Halla and Aila shot a few more, while Pip took on a few with his rapier and Dramble mainly set fire to things.

After the battle was won, we searched the remaining rooms and found the journal of a guard captain named Marieth in a skull, next to the tiniest stub of a burned-out candle.  It told of their unpleasant fate - Their General, Varisel, had gone missing, just as noxious black clouds had filled the fort(6), bringing the dead to life.  Marieth and other guards barricaded themselves in this room for defence.  The remaining entries told of their slow demise, starving to death while hearing banging on the door and hissing in the corridor outside.

Returning the way we came, we checked on Jack (who was still with Annie).  We also discovered two Builder-like constructs of horses, with holes for blue bolts at the base of their manes.  The design looked elven - it seems the elves here had been tinkering with Builder technology and turning it to their own ends(7).

We battered down a locked door (making quite a noise in the process), and followed the winding stairs beyond which led downwards.  Aila declared it felt “super evil down here”...

Hearing a noise, Lady Cortina ducked down a left hand fork in the corridor and came face-to-face with a Builder statue!  Fortunately it was inert, its features blank.  Retreating - sorry, tactically withdrawing for strategic positioning(8) - to the dining hall, we prepared to face off against the next horde of Sword-Fighting Skellingtons(TM), which were emerging from the other fork.

Once there, Dramble opted for ducking in and out of the adjoining kitchen, throwing firebolts from afar.  Lady Cortina chose the more direct approach, leaping across tables to attack.  Another group of skeletons appeared from the right-hand door at the far end of the dining hall (the way we hadn’t yet explored).  Despite being outnumbered, we were doing fine until an active Builder statue appeared.  Dramble zorched it with an icy blast from behind a table, whereupon it stomped through the table and pummelled him twice, into near-unconsciousness(9).  Pip finished the statue off by mocking it to death(10), while Aila killed the last of the remaining skeletons.

One potion of Greater Healing later, Dramble was back on his feet.  We set off to see what was down the remaining corridor, where the last group of skeletons had appeared from.  We heard a faint mechanical whirring and clanking in the distance.  Before investigating that, we passed other doors along the way.  Wanting to avoid being surrounded (again), we made sure to check each of them on our way past.

In one was a sumptuous room decked out with bookcases and a gaming table - likely part of the officers’ quarters.  Dramble found a secret door, behind which was a console room.  A mummified elf, faceless, lay slumped at the controls.  Its throat had been slit while it was piloting one of the statues.  From the uniform, it appeared to have been a high-ranking officer.  We concluded this was probably the “General Varisel” we had read about in Marieth’s journal.  Searching the rest of the suite of rooms, we found booze and gold!  Oh, and also books and papers, including letters to other generals.

After Aila had done some cursory translating, we pocketed a history of the royal families of Sesseran, a book on its military history, a journal/account of the fort, and a technical notebook of the elves’ experiments here.  All this would make useful reading for future research.  Flipping through the journal quickly, we found references to a race of giants (the Builders), whom the elves referred to as “the Asteri”(11).  We also found an account of the elves finding the fox temple and one of the guardians that lay beneath it.  The papers also mentioned a form of black dust with phenomenal magical power, recovered from various Builder sites.  There was a source of it on the other side of the nearby ravine.  Along with the various books and papers was a raven statuette, inscribed with the words, “Speak and I am your servant”.  We pocketed that too.

Leaving the suite and advancing towards the mechanical noises we had heard, we passed a decapitated elven sergeant - likely the general’s killer, judging by the bloody dagger on him.  The dagger bore a symbol of Ciramina, indicating where the assassin’s true loyalty lay.

Leaving him where he lay, we found the source of the noise - an enormous cavern filled with various huge arcane machinery... and a Blood Guardian.  Yikes.  This thing looked vicious, an unholy marriage of Builder technology and elven necromancy, studded with blue and black bolts.

We were figuring out how to tackle this monstrosity, when it blasted Dramble with an almost-lethal necrotic ray.  Ducking for cover, we spotted a second guardian.  One we could wear down (maybe) if we kept our distance and cover; two together were definitely out of our league.  A wight in elven military uniform also appeared, alongside a Builder statue with the face of an elf, Varisel the general whose body had died at the console, presumably).

We beat a hasty retreat(12).  Dramble vanished in a cloud of mist and reappeared in the corridor, Lady Cortina retreating with him.  Instead of retreating, Pip decided to try and make the closest guardian run from us but was unsuccessful.  Halla threw her hands up in despair, not wanting to abandon Pip on their own and instead of retreating, dropped a Bless on Pip and Cortina to give them some help in the next guardian assault.   Aila sowed confusion in the enemy ranks, calling out to Varisel that we were from Taurhopa and friendly.  This was enough to give Varisel pause, meaning he stopped his chase to discuss with the wight, while Pip, Aila and Halla made their escape.  The corridor was too wide for the guardians to follow us, but the general and the wight were in close pursuit.  

Back in the winding corridor above the cavern, Halla and Aila formed a vanguard to hold Varisel and the Wight back while the rest of the party retreated.  The Wight came first, wielding two longswords and a longbow across its back.  Stepping forward and holding forth her shield emblazoned with the symbol of Moradin,  Halla demanded it disengage but was met with a derisory laugh and a flash of longswords grievously injuring her.

Stepping into her place, Aila tried to hold the Wight back as Halla steps back but the Wight reached forward, stealing her very essence from her with a cold touch.   Realising neither could hold the Wight back in the tight corridor, Halla and Aila decided to retreat further.

While Aila and Halla tried to hold the corridor, Dramble and Pip ran into the console room, aiming to deactivate the statue.  Dramble in his haste forgot that it is a statue’s arms which need to be crossed, not its operator’s.  Pip had a better/bolder/crazier (delete as appropriate) plan, moved the general’s body out of the way, and sat at the console personally.  Being familiar with the results of this action, Dramble merely rolled his eyes in exasperation as Pip’s face disappeared.  

Back in the corridor, Lady Cortina took up a position at the stairs leading to the hall waiting for the foes to come into view.  Halla took advantage of the location of the door to the general’s personal chambers, retreated into there, closing the door behind her and peered through the key hole, locking it as Dramble appeared and threw her the keys, hoping that the foes would advance past the door allowing them to flank them after they’d passed.

Aila continued to retreat, but the Wight kept pace with her(13) and she took more and more injuries, trying to hold it back.   Halla watched through the keyhole and prepared to unleash Sacred Flame on the wight as it passed by, but the general had caught us up and she had to beat a hasty retreat from the door as a necrotic miasma, consisting of tendrils of black fog, emanated from the possessed statue.

Dramble, meanwhile, had got hold of the stock of 800-year-old elven distilled spirits, and started turning bottles into Molotov cocktails.

To be continued…

-----------------------------------------

(1) Despite it offering no mechanical advantages whatsoever over her existing armour.  But it’s so shiny!

(2) We’ve all seen that sequence from ‘Jason and the Argonauts’...

(3) We decided these were not good words.

(4) Curse you, Ray Harryhausen!

(5) Seriously, you should have seen those dice rolls. Even with disadvantage, every one was a near-critical hit.

(6) This sounded similar to the fate which destroyed the Builder city some of us saw.

(7) You’ll never catch us doing that.

(8) Bravely.

(9) Though, to be fair to our brave gnome hero, he’d given as good as he got with that cold attack.

(10) Viciously.

(11) as in “Children of…”

(12) Bravely.

(13) It’s a sore subject, as it shouldn’t have been able to move that fast.  We try not to talk about it.

[Richard Jackson]

Part 4

Sneaking out from behind the doorway, Halla dropped Sacred Flame on Varisel, while Dramble finished preparing three Molotov cocktails.  Handing one to Halla, one to his Handy Mage Hand, and keeping one for himself, they approached carefully down the corridor, hearing sounds of commotion in the dining hall ahead.

Pip’s head(1) had appeared on a Builder statue, which had smashed its way into the hall from wherever it had been in storage, and was now weighing in on our side.  Pip Smash!  Faced with such a formidable foe, Varisel quickly held up his hands in surrender and called for the Wight to do the same.   At Varisel’s command, the Wight collapsed into dust, merely just an ancient corpse now.

Being the only one who could understand him, Aila quickly negotiated with Varisel in elvish.  He was aware of his fate - knowing his body was dead and that he could not leave this place or the statue - and had taken his vengeance on his murderer.  He was totally unaware, though, of the passage of time and that the war was long over.  Astonished that it had been 800 years, he dejectedly trudged back to the machinery room to deactivate the guardians, telling us that there was still one life which may yet be saved.

There was a girl, he said - obviously Beth - bound to a console.  He had locked her away for her own safety.  We broke it to him that it had been 30 years, and the girl’s faceless body had been found and buried, but he assured us that time will not have touched her.  He told us of a hidden corridor “past the ritual circle”, where she was held.  The word “menteri” would cause it to open.

While the rest of us went off to investigate, Aila sat down with Varisel to see what knowledge she could coax from him.  He knew the Asteri walked the world tens of thousands of years earlier.  The experiments in the fort were built on the works of Heskaron(2), developing the powers of the mysterious black dust in the ravine.  They had constructed elven statues in the fashion of the Builder technology, and used the black dust to animate them, with disastrous results.

Varisel believed the dust was part of an oncoming storm.  While the dust here cannot leave the ravine unless it is carefully contained and transported, he said a wave of it was sweeping across the world from far away - so far away that, even though 800 years had passed since the elves discovered this, it was still on its way(3).  If anything can be done to stop it, it involves the gateway in the ravine.

The General was weary after finishing his tale.  A broken man, he only wanted to go to his final rest.  Aila promised him she would return his remains to his people and, with that, he crossed the statue’s arms and his face faded away.  We found the second sending stone on the now-lifeless statue, and took it with us.

Down below, the rest of the party found more journals, detailing the elves’ experiments, as well as the ritual circle Varisel spoke of.  Dramble stepped into it and said, “Manteri!” and a panel in the wall opened.  Beyond was another console room with two more (dormant) elf statues.  The next room contained a desk and another set of keys.  Using these to open a locked door, we made our way gingerly down a corridor, calling Beth’s name softly as we went.

We found her in a chamber at the end.  Or at least, her face - as expected - on a statue.  Beth was near catatonic, disoriented and confused.  She couldn’t understand what had happened to her and had no idea how long she had been down there.  She believed she had been gone only for days, and was worried her dad would be mad at her for going missing.  We assured her we would get her home and that her dad would be very pleased to see her.

We escorted Beth gently up to the dining hall and left her in Halla’s care, while the rest of us went to search the machinery room (now the guardians had been deactivated).  While we wanted to get Beth home as soon as we could, we also had to find some way of helping Annie.

Behind a crate in the machinery room, there was another hidden passage(4), which led out onto the mountainside.  Was this where Beth had gotten in?  Outside it was the twilight before dawn.  Our night vision showed us a river and a port city in the forest, which we identified as Greenhaven (or “Taurhopa” in the elven language).  It was surrounded by low hills and mountains, with the lights of other, smaller towns and villages in the distance.

Back inside, we found a Bumper Bag o’ Builder Bolts, four gems containing some of the black dust inside, and various pieces of arcane machinery.  Opening a large steel door, we found a gallery being used as a storage room for a dozen of the horrific guardian constructs we had encountered earlier.  A summoning circle in the floor bore the Raven Queen’s sigil.  Also, to Dramble’s delight, there were five more HoverSpheres(TM), which we took with us to charge up back at EnTaTraTaShan.  Beyond the gallery was a balcony with hexagonal columns, giving a commanding view of the mountainside(5).

Figuring Beth couldn’t leave the fort, and we needed to recover her body before we could get her to leave the statue, we split up.  Halla and Lady Cortina stayed at the fort with Beth, Jack and Annie, while Aila, Pip and Dramble rode the horse constructs back to the village.  Halla decided to make use of the time to perform cleansing rituals to rid the place of its evil taint, while Lady Cortina planned to sit down with Beth and slowly bring her round to the fact that she’d been gone a long time and her father wouldn’t be quite as she remembered him.

Aila was a little concerned over what the villagers’ reaction might be to animated stone constructs galloping into their home, but Pip suggested we should “just own it!”  And so we did.  We would need the horses anyway, as we planned to return with a cart to carry Varisel’s remains, Annie and enough of the fort’s treasure to afford what was necessary for a cleric to raise her.

We got back to the Oak Tree Inn to find George in his usual state, having fallen into a drunken sleep at a table.  We bought him breakfast then woke him up to tell him the good news that we’d found his daughter’s spirit and believed we could return her to him.  We had feared he wouldn’t believe us (Beth told us his nickname for her - his “little wolf cub” - before we left, in case he needed convincing), but he was only too willing to cling to the hope we’d brought him.  We tried to downplay things, warning him it may not work, but he instantly started forming a plan - If it did work, he and Beth would need to leave the village.  There was a cabin beyond the village where they could live.

In the meantime, George took us to the temple to Pelor on the edge of the village, where Beth’s grave lay.  Checking no one was around, we dug up the coffin.  A faint golden glow was coming from inside, which we took to be a good sign.  Still, we made George turn away as we opened it.  Inside, the body was preserved.  The clothes had grown mouldy, but otherwise there were no signs of decay.  It had aged slightly (nowhere near the 30 years it had lain in the ground, but a few years), showing it was still alive.  The golden glow meant the magic was still in effect too.  All seemed promising.  We brought her inside the cabin and laid her on a bed.  We had taken one sending stones with us, which Dramble now used to send a message back to the others at the fort:

“With George. Retrieved Beth's body.  She's preserved, aged only slightly.

You can send her back now.  Please warn her George older.

We'll return with cart.”

Back at the fort, the others told Beth it was time, and all was ready.  All she had to do was cross her arms like so.  She did, and her face vanished from the statue.  In the cabin, the golden aura around her body flared up in a blinding flash of sparks, there was a long, sharp intake of breath, and she sat up, returned to life once more.  There was a tearful reunion between father and Wolf Cub.  We had done A Good Thing.

The three adventurers left George and Beth to get reacquainted.  George gave us a cart, which we fastened to the horse constructs and travelled back to join the rest of the party at the fort.  Back there, we loaded it up and hit the road back to Riverglade.  Exhausted from two days’ adventuring without a proper rest, we took it in turns to rest and recuperate in the back of the cart.  We knew we had only a few days to save Annie, so we decided to press on through the night.

We passed the bridge over the river during the night, and safely went by the rocks where the kobolds lived during the daytime.  We arrived at EnTaTraTaShan early the next morning.  We put the new HoverSphere’s we had found on to charge.  Leaving the cart and Varisel’s body in Breena’s care, we loaded Annie and several of the suits of elven armour we had retrieved from the fort onto the stone horses, then took them through the teleport circle to TaUrTaIkaTaNur.

There Dramble noticed one more light was illuminated on the wall map than the last time he had been there, right next to the light indicating EnTaTraTaShan.  Others in the party seemed confused by what he was saying; the map looked the same as it had always done to them.  The “new” light indicated EnTaTraTaNur.  Ignoring it, we travelled on one further “step” through the Builder network to EnTaUrDeshShan.  We made the short trek from there through the ravine to the dwarven city of Kassiter, where we hoped to buy a diamond and find a priest to raise Annie. 

It was earlier in the morning, in this part of the world, than it had been when we left Riverglade.  The city gleamed in the morning sunlight and in the reflected glow of it from the southern sea.  For those who hadn’t been there before, it was larger than any place they’d ever seen(6).  Its buildings were carved out of the granite cliffs, with narrow alleyways winding between them.  Lady Cortina and Pip, who had been here before, went to sell the armour and weapons (Lady Cortina knew a suitable merchant) and purchase the diamond we’d need for the spell.  Halla, Aila, Dramble and Jack went up to the Temple of Moradin to seek help from the priest there.

Halla spoke with a cleric called Mehit and explained what had happened to Annie and what it was we wanted.  Mehit seemed confused as to where the Owlbear territory could be within two days of Kassiter, but there were a lot of things in the nearby mountains so we weren’t questioned too much about this.  Mehit went to fetch the bishop(7), a half-orc named Nashureem.  As they were explaining to us that the spell required the sacrifice of a large diamond(8), the others arrived and Pip declared (with perfect timing), “What, you mean like this one?”

The bishop conducted the ritual and Annie came back to us!  The bishop warned us that, while her physical wounds were healed, she will be physically and spiritually exhausted, and need a few days to recuperate.  But she and Jack were reunited, hooray!  Pip bought a Hat of Celebration!  We had done Another Good Thing(9).

We stayed at a local cantina for the next four days while Annie recovered.  In return for their help, Halla offered to go with the priests from the temple on a mission to the north.  She was gone a few days and returned dusty and exhausted, but safe and sound.  The rest of us enjoyed the sights and sounds of the big city, and went shopping and sightseeing.

After Halla returned, we escorted Jack and Annie back through the Builder network and home to Harmenton, where they settled down to ponder whether a life of adventuring is really for them or not.  We must check up on them in future, to see how they are doing.  We left them and travelled back to Riverglade to recover Varisel, the (now charged) spheres and the rest of our things.  While there, we told the gnomes of our latest escapades and let the children ride on the horse constructs.   Then all that was left to do(10) was to return home to the Valley for tea and medals!

And to see what the folks in the Valley make of all we've seen, done and learned......

And to plan our next adventures……  

--------------------------------------

(1) Inexplicably wearing a spectral, yet flamboyant, hat.

(2) Our very favourite mad necromancer.

(3) Pip was confident that our poking stuff which had laid undisturbed all this time wouldn’t make the storm come any faster.  Still, we should probably add “save the world” to our list of future things to do.

(4) What we wouldn’t give for an “IDDT” map cheat for this place!

(5) Someone clearly wanted to be Saruman...

(6) Home to three markets, no less.  Pip felt this was very important.

(7) Who arrived moving only over the black squares on the floor.

(8) “...and, incidentally, have you seen our nice, new, diamond-encrusted shrine over there?”

(9) Yes, alright, we learned we might also be hastening the End Of The World by all our meddling with the Builder sites, but don’t be a party pooper.  We did Two Good Things on this trip!

(10) Apart from look for the other elf settlement which, like I said earlier, we totally forgot about.

[Ed Chivers]

hey all - just looking through the notes from this adventure's write up (thanks for writing up!) I can see that I owe you...

"...a history of the royal families of Sesseran, a book on its military history, a journal/account of the fort, and a technical notebook of the elves’ experiments here."

I'll add something to the wiki for each of these shortly!

[Ed Chivers]

First set of notes

https://thevalley.boreworms.com/wiki/Umbra