Campaign Reboot due to real world relocation.
Bea Miglin - 1st Level Female Halfling Fighter - NPC
Dalor Grumblemine - 1st Level Male Dwarf Cleric
Razzi Hawkes - 1st Level Male Human Alchemist
Valeron Amakiir - 1st Level Male Half Elf Ranger
11 June 981, Saturday
Drigbolton
A few clouds and warm
Valeron, a half elf who looks like a woodsman (green cloak, bow), arrives at the King Deer and joins with Percy and Felix, laborers/body guards for Miss Zelda Spinewith. They came with her after her dad died and she became the local Miss. They are filling the crater where the Temple used to be. They were not here, but the locals tell them that some thing fell on it from the sky, there was an explosion, and fire. The Temple was a total ruin, the priest rose as some sort of burning thing, and out of the church yard skeletons and zombies rose. Some out of towners were able to beat off the horrors and protect the hamlet. One of them was Valdell, the elf that Valeron is asking after. He and his friends left a couple of days ago for Helix on the Miss's business.
Razzi arrives and joins Bea Miglin at the bar. Bea has been day drinking. She laments that she used to be a hunter, but ever since the big Green Sphere fell in the near by woods, Nobs Spinney, the animals there can speak. She can hardly kill things that speak now can she?! And the animals rat out their non-speaking brethren. Where is the challenge in that?! She has nothing useful to do any more, which is why she spent the morning getting drunk. She did join the folks who came the night the Temple exploded. There was Dolin, the dwarf priest of Apollo; Akadum, the dwarf who wore funny armor; Valdell, the shifty elf who looks a lot like that guy there; and Kethry, the magic user who wore lots of black and quoted angsty poetry. Once we all defeated the undead we began to worry about the Laird up at his manor. We went there and found it had been attacked by the meat in his pantry that had joined together and come alive plus some sort of bone monster. They had killed the Laird and he had risen as some sort of screaming zombie thing. We had to kill it. Then Godfred read a letter from the Laird saying that he had three daughters and Zelda was the new Miss. The villages asked those folks to go to the Two Goblins and escort Zelda back here to take up her Miss-ship.
The Dwarf Priest of Hephaestus Dalor Grumblemine arrives. He also joins Razzi and Bea at the bar. He asks after Dolin, and Bea goes on to say that the Two Goblins is an Inn between Tealford and Stattleford where two rivers come together. There is an ancient metal bridge with a statue of two goblins on the top. The inn is where you go on your honeymoon or to gamble. When they, including Dolin, came back with Zelda they went to the Clooney Caves, and a few days ago they headed west to Helix. She is now thinking she should have gone with them. She thinks they were going to the Barromaze on the Miss's business. They should go see the Miss and join the others in exploring the Barrowmaze, she proclaims loudly to the whole tavern. Valeron tells them he is looking to find Valdell and will join them too, if they do not mind. Also he is curious about talking animals.
Razzi says he is not so interested in the Barrowmaze, but heard that Zelda had some unusual alchemical items and is investigating that. Come along, Bea, invites him loudly. The new Miss is really nice, not like the old Laird who only showed up for festivals and such; she says that anyone is welcome to come visit her. She comes down regularly to check on her garden, and her guys Percy and Felix are preparing the ground for a new Temple she is going to have built. When we walk up to the Manor the fox will probably be there. He likes to insult people. The Miss's garden, is just south of the hamlet at the Shrine of Demeter. The same night the Temple exploded, this Green Sphere fell in Nobs Spinney. Bea says she helped them gather it and bring it near the Shrine.
After they finish eating their goat stew, which is actually quite good, served by Freya King, the woman who runs the King Deer along with her laconic husband and two teenage sons, they head up to the Spinewith Manor. Along the way they are insulted from the brush. It is the talking fox and he tells them that while he could always talk to other foxes, when the thing fell from the sky he could suddenly talk to the rabbits, mice, deer and even the big bear. Where the big green ball fell, the bushes went crazy and the trees got really tall. Bea agrees, it was like what she thinks a jungle must be.
What is the fox supposed to do now? He can't eat things that talk. The animals made an agreement with the villagers to not eat the crops, the goats, or the chickens in return for the villagers not coming into the woods and killing their children. And now he can talk to you two legged things. That one there, indicating Bea, tried to kill me lots of time. He knows all this disruption has been caused by you two legs things. It is all your fault that he has to travel farther to get something to eat. Birds and fish do not talk and Razzi offers the fox some complex advice on how to catch birds, which only seems to infuriate the fox who storms off with a final insult.
They continue on to the Spinewith manor. Godfred, a wizened man, leads them to Zelda's sitting room. They note a small woman of around 30 whose dress is rather revealing and colored a bold red. She hears their story and confirms what she knows. Dolin and Valdell and the others came to her at the Two Goblins with the news of her father's death. She was about to take up a position at the University of Mora. She would have been training mages for the Imperial Army fighting Emperor Devit's war to Make Mora Great Again. She is much happier doing this. Drigbolton may not look like much, but Bea's father is a master at goat husbandry and they provide many goats for the Imperial Outpost at Ironguard Motte, a half day to the west. Not only does it make lots of money, but they are able to buy out any Imperial Army service obligation for the hamlet. Someone needs to keep that organized. Her father did it and she is now happy to continue the family's duty to the people of this little valley.
Indeed Dolin, Valdell and the others did head off to Helix to explore the Barrowmaze. The Dwarf Akadum, and she knows this sounds crazy, claimed he was a survivor from a Dwarven space ship. The space ship was in some battle with a fiery thing near the Moon. The Dwarves lost and he escaped in an "escape pod" which landed near Drigbolton. The Temple was destroyed by one of the engines of the space ship and the Green Sphere was a thing they used to grow plants in the space ship to keep the air good. They never could find his "escape pod", but there were pieces of metal, the local smith could not soften chunks for working, scattered around the village.
Razzi asks after this stuff and Zelda tells her that Percy and Felix found some small bits and she would be happy to let him have a few. The big chunks got taken away by the Smith's Guild, apparently the local smith told them, to the Dwarf underground town known as The Wreak/Karnak which is just south of Tealford. Apparently chunks the previous party had gathered were going to be turned into helms and weapons. The Bog Witch Griya also gathered some. At the mention of Griya, Zelda's normally smiling face falls into a frown.
While the "Space Dwarf" story sounds crazy her father, who has a far seer at the top of the manor, observed a cloud next to the Moon in the days before the event, and expected something to happen the night the Temple exploded. Apparently both Dolin and Valdell had also been sent by a Professor at Mora U and a Dwarf mystic respectively who also observed the "moon cloud" and expected something to land near Drigbolton. Razzi had also noted the strange cloud about a month ago, but did not think any thing of it after if faded after a few days.
They went off to the Barrowmaze as they all noticed together that horrible things that happened in the last month, undead rising in Drigbolton, undead attacks in the mines of Tealford, some sort of ghost thing at the village of Weston Netherly were all in a line, and that line continues on to the Barrowmaze. That is an ancient Moran Necropolis in the swamp, known as the Barrowmoor, south of Helix.
Razzi asks after the strange potions she had sent to Professor Ashkott at the White College in Leechfeld. She tells them that when she got here with the party they decided to explore the cavern in the mountains just north of Drigbolton called the Clooney Caves. Her father's notes spoke of goblins and some sort of skeletal snakeman who occasionally came out to sell things. The goblins had been harassing travelers on the road between Tealford and Helix and stealing the occasional goat. She asked them to investigate.
The goblins actually tried to ambush her and the party when she first arrived in Drigbolton. She gathered some samples and found the goblins, which look like animated potatos, are actually some sort of fungus. In the caves they found a Fungal Goblin spawning ground, which they burned out, and the skeletal snakeman. He claimed to be the creator of the Fungal Goblins and to have perfected a method of potion creation by placing living things in vats of solvents, salts, acids, etc. and extracting their essence to power up the potions. They party apparently raided his store room on the way out and liberated a bunch of potions, including the two that went to the White College which she could not identify. She has some small samples, but the party took the potions with them to Helix as they thought they could be useful in their explorations.
The samples she has are 1) Acid Resistance (blue, constantly moving and shifting) 2) Courage (light blue, bubbles) 3) Speed (blue and clear, seperated, shake to use) 4) Undead Stench (metallic, swirling and shifting) 5) Regeneration (green half full and steaming) 6) Dead Ringer (pale green, glowing feintly) 7) Growth (green with brown chunks) 8) Mighty Blow (dull gold, swirling and shifting) and 9) Healing (yellow with a shadowy face). All except the last they "liberated" from a store room. The last one they got when Kethry traded her bird familiar to the creature.
Razzi tells her that the two potions sent to Professor Ashkott which Razzi eventually examined, were spoiled and no longer active. The base solvent were some sort of fungal secretion, which seems to match what the previous party reported in the Clooney Caves. They both note that is is not likely to be a good idea to return to the Clooney Caves. The snakeman creature seems to be thousands of years old, likely is very powerful, and now is probably very angry by the damage and property stolen by the party. She notes that since the party's explorations there have been no sightings of the Fungal Goblins along the road. She will monitor what happens when the next Goblin market is scheduled to take place, full moon which is in a little over a week. According to her father's notes the snake creature only comes above ground when the full moon and equinox fall on the same day. That will not happen again for a few years.
Zelda calls for tea, and Godfred and her other servant Iux, a goblin from Two Goblins, who seems civilized, begin preparing. She and Razzi go to a closet, open a trap door in the floor, and climb down to the basement. There is a modestly equipped alchemical lab. Zelda tells Razzi that she is not an alchemist, she is evasive about what exactly her arcane powers are, and this was built by her father. She gives him a couple of small stone chunks of the Dwarf Space Metal. Razzi does some simple tests and concludes it is a metal which is very hard and dense. She also gives him a Potion of Flesh to Stone, wipe on to work, which she extracted from some Blue mushrooms the previous party had found in the Clooney Caves. This was found in some sort of mushroom garden and the magic user recognized these mushrooms. She is certain this potion will work, magic test, but does not think she extracted it very efficiently. She is badly out of practice. They also killed a basilisk and extracted one of its eyes and some of its blood. They sold that stuff in Tealford. The Fungal Goblins attacked with a mushroom they threw and when it landed it released a cloud of spores that caused brief confusion. She has a couple of these, and gives one to Razzi. Her father mentions the Fungal Goblins would sell special mushrooms at their monthly market:
Type, Appearance: Usage
Resta, Tan pale, puffball: When crushed releases a cloud of spores that causes blindness for a few 10's of seconds
Este, Tiny, skull pattern: When consumed makes one more puissant for 8 hours, but at the cost of the ability to heal and recover. Fall into a stupor after
Meniart, White, red dots: Mild poison
Lyiart, Black puffball: When disturbed explodes and makes a large cloud that if breathed causes confusion for a few 10's of seconds
Oneit, Ochre: Highly poisonous, can be pounded into a paste and coated on weapons
Tsyche, Small toad stool, dark dots: Attunes users of magic to the magic field, aids spellcasting for hours
Retid, Slimy, brown, leafy: Deadly until dried, then when heated acts to heal wounds and physical damage
There are none of these here, but she mentions according to her father the Goblins traded with Griya, the Bog Witch here in Drigbolton; Muzzahs the Magnificent in Helix; Obediah Hawkes in Brignorth; and Pye, the "Mad" Wizard of the Cairn Chase Forest.
After tea, the party heads to see the Green Sphere, which is next to a Shrine to the Goddess of Agriculture, Demeter. Bea leads them back through the village, over a bridge over a small stream down a path about a quarter of a mile south of the hamlet. The shrine is a marble statue of the Goddess about four feet high. It is very well made, very life like, and gives the impression of being very old. A wooden hut has been built around it which is open to one side but otherwise protects the statue from the elements. In front of the statue sort of half buried in the ground is the Green Sphere. As it is near the end of the day, they can see the sphere glowing faintly. To one side there is natural vegetation and it is clearly doing better when it is 10 feet or so from the Green Sphere. To the other side is a garden of mostly vegetable and some ornamental flowering plants. The same pattern is clearly visible.
Bea tells them that the Miss had Percy and Felix plant the garden. Besides being a resort, the Two Goblins is also a farm taking advantage of the rich land at the junction of the two rivers. It produces lots of food stuffs that is sold to the Imperial Army and Two Goblin canned goods can be found all over the Midlands. Many say that Zelda has been important in making the Two Goblins Farm a success. She certainly seems to know what she is talking about when she talks with the farmers and her master goat herding father here in Drigbolton.
Razzi looks and notes no valuable herbs. Dalor preys for guidance and gets the impression the Goddess is watching over the Shrine and the Green Sphere.
They make their way back to the King Deer as night falls. Just arrived from Helix are Gern Barrelgut, son of the local Dwarf Smith, and Curran Rhahan, a young Constable. Apparently the party including Dolin and Valdell met some unhappy fate in the Barrowmoor. Their torch bearer, a halfing called Jon Fairbrain, appeared out of the swamp early this morning. He said the party started to explore the Barrowmaze the day before, but were ambushed on their way back to Helix. He thinks all the others are dead except Valdell, who was captured. The attackers were a mixed group of cloaked humans, goblins, and skeletons. A web was followed by a hail of arrows. He managed to remain unseen, followed the attackers to a ruined tower on the edge of the swamp. He waited the night, he was lost, and when the morning came made his way to Helix. They have letters for Zelda, the Miss of Drigbolton and Master Morvran, High Priest of Hephaestus, at the Wreak/Karnak.
Dalor and Valeron begin composing letters.
