Are you a new reader of the Asheraven Play Report? Consider reading from the beginning with part 0.
Good morning. This is the Asheraven Play Report's sixth issue. In the last issue, the party stumbled upon what appeared to be a conspiracy between two Narwellian guards. The party apprehended one of the guards, who had set fire to the home of the other, and brought him to the barracks’ jail to be held for future questioning. The home belonged to a guard named Simon who was confirmed by the party to be skirting his regular guard duties and taking a side job to guard Aldo’s compound in the hills outside town. They probed the launderer’s business used by the guards but did not find anything to be suspicious of in that work. Perhaps, at long last, a decisive move will be made by the party to put the investigation into Aldo’s and the guards to a close. (I’m going to use parantheses to represent when I am speaking exclusively about how the game works, in contrast to when I’m simply relating the events that took place).
With Walter in the jail, the party felt the need to check back into Simon. Gertrude was clearly no longer at their home, but Simon was unaccounted for so far. They received his post details from Jude, and they went to where he should have been, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he was not present there. They hurried toward Aldo’s compound to see if he had gone there, but he was also not seen there. It seemed to the party that he had fled the town with Gertrude, although they did not know where he might have gone to. The party went to the guardsman’s house to look through the aftermath of the fire, and they found some dye in the cooking cauldron that was made into a dry, brittle coating on the inside by the house fire as well as some of the fine fabric that Simon bought for Gertrude that had been stored in their root cellar. They also found some minor treasures in the form of loose coinage and simple jewelry of about 20 gold pieces in value. The party sold what they found, except the dye which Figlar kept, and they took the rest of the day to rest, think, and plan. The next day, they knew that Ernest at Lindel’s laundry service would be working, so they waited near the back of the guard barracks to observe what he did when he exchanged clean laundry for dirty laundry at that location. They noticed nothing unusual but decided to question him anyway. He explained his job similarly to how Lindel did, and, while he seemed annoyed, he did not say or do anything that made the party suspicious of him. Having Exhausted all of their identifiable options, the party again changed course completely and went to Castle Octavius for another quick delve, in which they hoped they might find something useful to the current investigation.
The player characters went to the 2nd floor above ground, while Stinky and Gingledoof were left in the entry room to guard the stairs going up. The players encountered an otyugh who did not introduce itself with a name. The otyugh was in a room off one of the upstairs hallways, and it opened the encounter with parleyance, commenting cheerfully about how tasty they will surely be once it is done “seasoning” them. Further comments, of reproach from the party and of approval from the otyugh, were exchanged on the matter before the otyugh finally decided to lunge forward and attack the party. However, the upper level of the mansion was not made to accommodate such great size and weight, and the otyugh fell through the floor of this 2nd level, through the floor of the 1st level, and made impact at a level below the ground. The party peered into the hole it made but did not attempt to follow it. Instead, they searched more rooms before coming to a small study with all four walls being bookcase shelving. The books ranged in topics, covering a great deal of subjects, but the contents of these books did not interest the party. What did interest them is that one of the books seemed to be a switch for a mechanism, and, when pulled, they heard and felt sounds of it activating somewhere below them.
They went downstairs to rejoin the NPCs and found them in combat with 2 giant crab spiders. Stinky fought with a shortsword while Gingledoof had a dagger. The party altogether fought and killed the two spiders, but not before both Stinky and Gingledoof had been bitten. (Because the NPCs had classes (both fighters) at this point, I treated them the same way I did the PCs. That is, if they meet death by any means, they may have an additional and final save vs. Death to decide whether they are truly dead or simply reduced to 0 hit points and unconscious). Both NPCs failed their first save vs. Poison from the spiders, and only Gingledoof failed the final save vs. Death while Stinky succeeded on the save. The PCs were unharmed by the combat. They brought the two NPCs back to Narwell, Stinky to Tipsy’s and Gingledoof to the temple, and went back to the castle. They searched in the direction that the spiders seemed to have come from and found an opening in the wall where there had not been one before. They recognized that they had opened a secret door and pressed cautiously forward. They passed in front of a door as the went deeper and entered it. Inside they found crates which seemed to have scrap iron for contents, and barrels which were filled with lard. Only one barrel was opened, however, for emerging from the grease was a zombie which gurgled and sputtered as it tried to rend Vlad, who had opened it. The grease zombie was destroyed without harming the PCs, but they did not open any of the other barrels.
They went out of the room and continued down the hallway. They saw another crab spider ahead which skittered through the upcoming intersection and went to the left. The party approached the intersection which ended with two adjacent doors in front of them and split to the left and right. The party turned right, not wanting to tangle with another spider, and were stopped by a door at the end of this passage. They had Laurana listen, succesfully, at the door, and she reported conversation in a tongue she did not recognize. At this point, Figlar always kept several of his firebombs on hand, so he suggested they open the door, throw a few flaming flasks of oil in there, and hold the door shut to kill anyone in there. The party thought it was a great idea, so they mostly did that. Even though they did not know what they would be throwing their bombs at, they were able to see at a glance that the room was a 10 by 10 room with around half a dozen goblins in it, so they all chose to throw their flasks at the center of the room. Somebody failed their attack roll for throwing accurately, and the missed bomb ended up in the space of the door. As a result, the party was unable to hold the door shut, and Vlad took damage, since he was the one who held the door open. The party won initiative and retreated from the misplaced fire, and Laurana fired her shortbow at any goblins that tried to run out of the room to escape their incineration. They did not want to wait where they were for the flames to go out, so they went into one of the doors back at the intersection.
The room they entered was sizeable, about 20 by 30 or 40, had its walls lined with barrels, and had a single continuous shelf above them. In the center was a table with a corpse on it that seemed to have been the subject of education or experimentation but now just lay rotting and open. On the long side of the table parallel to the entry door was a line of knobbed dials which could be turned. The only markings for the dials were notches, as if indicating an amount of something. The Laurana messed with the knobs while the party looked at the rest of the room. She was able to open yet another secret door in the room, and from behind it tumbled a human man who was altogether normal-seeming but also greatly terrified. He told them to close the door again before “those things” come back. The party calmed the man down, and he introduced himself as Swank Skill, a man whose expertise was “spells and spells accessories”. (Yes, I ripped Hank Hill from the renaissance fair episode and made him an NPC). Swank was in the castle looking for any magic items to sell when he was attacked by other undead. The PCs nearly shook him down and robbed him but stopped short when he said that he had lost his bag of what he had found as he fled. More accurately, the porter that he had was beset by zombies, and Swank did not want to risk losing his life to retrieve it. He said he ran into a dead end behind the secret door that Laurana opened and thought he had come to the end of his life as well. Of all the lost objects, Swank says he was most interested in the deck of cards that he had found…
He had nothing material at the time to reward the party with and did not want to accompany them, but he told them that he worked at a magic shop called Witchland’s in Narwell. (I’ll use this moment to describe the level of magic I’m going for in my campaign. While there is this magic shop, the party cannot simply purchase enchanted objects willy nilly. The purpose of Witchland’s is simply to be a place to purchase spell scrolls and receive clues for identifying magic items that the party finds. Clerics are able to use the temple to buy their spell scrolls, so this is just my way of offering a similar service for magic-users). After telling the party this information, Swank asked for directions out and left. The party went back to the room where they torched the goblins and picked up what little loot they had, which also included a magic runestone. (Runestones are a concept I lifted from Pathfinder 2nd edition, and they are actually neat items, believe it or not; runestones carry an enchantment of any sort, but they are not used as they’re found. Instead, a Magic-User may transfer the enchantment from a runestone onto a different item, such as a weapon, garment, or a piece of jewelry. Learning what the enchantment is, however, still requires activation of the enchanted item). The party then also exited the castle and went home. It was raining now, and, on the way back, they had another encounter along the road. This time, it was not Asheravian Knights, however. They came across four hill giants taking refuge from the storm under an overhang of the road, and they would have been fearsome were it not for their gaunt, hopeless visages. Neither group were surprised, but the party won initiative in the encounter and initiated the interaction by recognizing what hungry hill giants looked like (re: Rag and Tag from Gandolfo’s circus) and procuring rations from their packs to offer them. A couple of the giants spoke common, so the party asked if they knew who Tag was; Rag was from far away, so the PCs did not bring him up. The giants did recognize Tag and claimed to be from the same tribe as him. They said that they were expelled from their homeland by invading giants, both “one-eyes” and “rockies”, so they had to find a new place to settle in. The party's scheming gears began to turn, but outwardly merely exchanged some further comments with the giants. At the conclusion of the conversation, the party simply told the giants not to wander far and that they would return the next day to see how they can help. Then, the party went the rest of the way back to Narwell.
After selling off what they found, Figlar imbued a simple gold pendant with the enchantment from the runestone and, once that process was finished, went to see Swank so he could purchase a scroll of Wizard Lock to use on Walter’s cell at the barracks. The party wanted to leave no opportunity for Walter to get free and worried that there may be other guards sympathetic to him that would assist that action. The party could not afford to buy the spell scroll at a 400 gold piece value, so they besought Lord Tarban and Sergeant Renault to grant them funds to do this, since it was directly related to criminal activity within the Narwellian guard. The funds were granted at their appeal, the scroll was purchased, and Walter was thus satisfactorily held in his cell indefinitely. The traitor still refused to speak with the party, or anyone who tried to interrogate him, so the PCs simply gloated at his debased situation and left the barracks. Now, the party paid another visit to the pair of giants held captive by Gandolfo in his circus entourage. Both giants were awake, so the party actually spoke with Tag this time around. The party wasted no time getting down to business, and asked the giants “if we were able to set you both free, would you help us bring justice to someone else”? The giants would have preferred Gandolfo be the subject of justice, but they agreed anyway, although the PCs assured the giants that Gandolfo would be dealt with in due time. The party would return later to break the giants free of their shackles, but, first, a new player and character joins the party between these two sessions. The new player is called Aldo by coincidence, and he is a dwarf fighter. He has no relation to Aldo the restaurant owner, but the PC Aldo is only present for the next session before having to exit the campaign due to a sudden scheduling conflict. News also broke between sessions that many of the guards of Narwell, including Sergeant Renault, had suddenly become severely ill. The clerics at the temple were keeping them alive but would not be able to do so indefinitely.
When that next session came, the party did what they planned and went again to the giants to set them free. They chose to do this at night time, since they knew the circus employees would be in town at a pub. The circus part of the caravan was made to reside outside of town due to a mishap involving a provocateur and the giants, so the party only had to avoid being seen by the circus troupe. Freeing the giants was a straightforward task, and they kept their promise and followed the party to where the previously-mentioned four giants were told to wait. Tag did recognize them, and the party leveraged his and Rag’s opinion of them to convince the giants to help them storm Aldo the Chef’s compound. The party kept Aldo the Dwarf’s name unmentioned in those proceedings to avoid confusing the giants. (Giants in my campaign setting are not stupid brutes, but they are easily incited to action and have little impulse control. Giants who speak common do speak in very simple words and sound like they’re dumb, but that’s more due to the way the giant language is spoken and less to do with a giant’s IQ). The plan set forth by the party was simple, and they waited until daylight to execute it as followed. The PCs and Stinky approached the face of the compound and provoked the guards so that those in the compound were called out. The giants remained back in the treeline unseen until they heard the fighting begin, at which point they sprung forth and cast Percussive Burial on the guards with their great clubs. The PCs were not at all concerned with taking any prisoners back from this siege. Once the guards outside were taken care of, the giants tore down the large door at the front of the compound, and the entire group of PCs, NPCs and giants entered through it. While the smaller folk went to the smaller building hoping to find Butcher, but they only found an empty office. They heard the giants swing their clubs outside, but, when they looked at the victim, it was only the cartman as evidenced by the fact that he was with the oxen-drawn cart. No one had yet seen Butcher, so he could only have been either in the larger building or not in the compound at all.
The PCs and Stinky entered the larger building cautiously and heard movement ahead in the darkness. The shuffling ended abruptly as they entered, and they heard Butcher speak. “Unfortunate ones, you are. I know that you are spies sent to steal the secret to our steaks. Whether I live or die here no longer matters, neither is it important to me who sent you. You became fodder for our cattle when you stepped through that door, and nobody will ever find out what happened to you. That makes me glad.” At the end of his monologue, which, surprisingly, none of the PCs tried to interrupt, he snapped his fingers and from the shadows entering the party’s torchlight came many giant shrews. The party won initiative and Aldo the Dwarf and Vlad went straight for Butcher, ignoring the giant vermin. Laurana fired her bow, and Figlar put several of the shrews to sleep. Butcher tried to escape, of course, but, while he did injure Vlad decently, he was unable to recover from the loss of initiative early on. He was taken out by the party, and the giant shrews that did not get put to sleep were likewise killed, followed by those that did get put to sleep. There were no other treasures to collect in the compound, but the party did find a tough scale pouch on Butcher that contained a small swarm of rot grubs. As for the giants outside, Rag and his tribe members had high morale after the victory and would return closer to their home to strategize how to reclaim it. The party told Rag that he may as well stay and make the compound his home, and he agreed that it would be beneficial for him. The party did ask Tag’s group about the giant “Grubary” from the trade agreement they found from their last infiltration of the compound. They learned that Grubary was leading the force of the cyclopes that had expelled and sold the hill giants from their land. It was at this point that Aldo the Dwarf exited the campaign.
Once the party had finished at the compound, they returned town to speak with Domino Di Arguilo, the restauranteur of DeFine Dining and the man who hired them to investigate Aldo’s. They told him everything about the compound, that the steaks came from giant shrews, that the guards were in on it to some extent, that the giants were also involved, and that they had put an end to its operation. Domino was ecstatic and, of course, only cared that Aldo’s would be out of business. He rewarded the party with a 10,000 gold piece promissory note that could be exchanged at Lord Tarban’s treasury for coinage (minus tax of course!) as well as free meals for life. The party could not celebrate long, since over half the guard was currently in the infirmary, and they were certain it had to do with the conspiracy of the other guards. They did exchange the note for money and planned to visit the sick guards at the beginning of the next session.
This was a great change of pace compared to previous sessions. The party made decisions that will matter far into the future, and they solved one of the mysteries in Narwell that they’d become entangled in. While the issue of the guards was foremost in their thoughts, they also planned to seek Tag’s tribe to help them to take back their territory from the cyclopes and see what role the “rockies” were playing in that situation. If I can successfully cover the ordeal with the guards and the giants in the next issue of the play report, then I would be able to say I am at least approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, where the light represents being current with the play sessions. As always, thank you for reading and God bless.
Next: Play Report #7
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