Treasure Hunters of Jesenreth Campaign

Campaign taking place in Jesenreth (Crystal Sphere) (mostly). This campaign's first session was 2020-01-04.

Ship of Fools

Session Date: 2020-01-04

Late in the year 1115 CY five disparate individuals receive letters summoning them to the city of Sablos, Ketten Islands, to attend an audition to join a adventurer's guild called the Legion of Llandos. Given free sailing ship tickets, they sail aboard the Splendid Anger from the city of Lutran. Kostix, Bostix, Ember, Lunafreya, and Arkakas (and Chicken!) get to know each other. With only a week left in their journey, after a raucous new year's celebration, the party awakes to find something wrong on the ship: it is silent, and drifting. It seems that the whole crew is paralyzed, and the walkway through the cargo deck blocked by a strange overturned chest, apparently opened by a crewman. A weird purple glow comes from within.

Before the party can find out more, they are attacked by four minor ghosts called shrouds, who are in some way connected to the strange, curse-producing chest. They defeat the shrouds, and eventually correct the course of the ship and figure out that tossing the chest overboard may break the curse. It works, as several feet of salt water block the chest's magic.

Captain Braveros, awakened with the rest of the crew, angrily punishes the crewman responsible, Bunkle, locking him in the ship's tiny brig. She rewards the crew with a 10 gp gem each, and promises them one free passage on the Anger. The ship sails on and docks in Sablos, the PCs all knowing that they have the same mission: find the guild hall of The Legion of Llandos and participate in the audition, hoping to gain membership and the rich rewards it promises.

Adventuring 101

Session Date: 2020-01-12

After another week at sea, the Splendid Anger docks in Sablos. The party takes their leave of the captain and crew and make their way through the city to find The Legion of Llandos guildhall. Once there, they meet Camarion Llandos VII, who makes them welcome and tells them that tomorrow will be their audition for membership. He also admits that the Legion has fallen on hard times, and he is the only member left, being well over 60 and walking with a pronounced limp. He hopes, however, that the party will prove to be worthy of restoring the Legion to its former glory. The party settles into the dorm rooms, and gets to know the city, including The Lower Deck.

The next morning the party assembles near the banquet tables and Llandos tells them that he is taking them to the building's lower basement, which is magically mutable and has been set up to duplicate many of the challenges and dangers of exploration and reclamation work. The party descends a set of steps from the wine and rations room, and works their way left through several rooms beset by traps, talkative paintings, a strange pool of water, and Devet-worshiping Drow, who the party slays. In the next room, the party finds the ghostly remains of of Lua Llandos, the young wife of Camarion Llandos IV.

In the next room the party finds the way up to the street and out of the dungeon, completing the test. Llanos VII congratulates them and offers them guild membership, telling them the benefits and responsibilities. They accept his terms, sign contracts, get the tour, and move fully into the guildhall. There follows a week of downtime, in which the PCs pursue their interests: research in the library, annoying Clowder Finisbaer, setting up the workshop, teaching themselves blacksmithing, cataloguing the city's bars, etc.

At the beginning of the third week of the first month, Llandos calls the party together: they have a job! A local noble wants to reclaim an old lighthouse his family owns near the town of Liparo, three days up the North Coast Road. The party's job is to travel there, assess its condition, drive out anything or one dangerous, and report back. The party accepts the job and sets out toward the town.

One their second night on the road, the party is assaulted by bandits, whom they swiftly and gorily defeat, capturing one of them and tying him to Kostix. The next morning they take their captive with them, hoping to turn him into authorities at at town or village along road or in Liparo.

The Darkhouse

Session Date: 2020-01-18

The party, with its bandit captive strapped to Kostix's back, head up the Road and discover the village of Jinto. There they meet village head Dagur Dain, who reveals that their captive is actually wanted criminal Beff Touff, the leader of a bandit gang called The Jackals. The village can't hold Touff, so Dain advises the party to take him up to Liparo and Sheriff Hodbar. Before they can do so, however, Touff attempts to escape, leading Bostix to kill him. However, they share some fine brandy with Dain get some very fine handmade soap from Tella Dain.

Camped along the road that evening the group finds a scout from The Jackals, but let him go. The Jackals trouble them no more, and the party makes it late the next morning to Liparo. Asking about the lighthouse at Phosabo's Inn and Bar, they meet local wood merchant Malzahar Del'anor. As a concerned citizen and someone familiar with the lighthouse, he offers to guide them up there the next morning. The PCs accept, and spend the rest of the day and night mostly getting drunk. All come home safely save for Kostix, who finds himself in the town's drunk tank. After he swears it will never happen again, the Sheriff let's him go, and he tries to find the inn. He fails utterly, winding up at the Shrine of Raketra, where the priests are delighted to discover that he is a true believer and has a lovely singing voice. The party finds him leading a song service, and eventually pry him away from the appreciative believers.

The party and Malzahar make their way to the top of the cliff and enter the lighthouse. They slay a swarm of rats and discover a secret door in the cellar's floor, but cannot open it. Moving up the tower, the party finds the remains of the last lighthouse keeper's life and finally, on the top, the remains of him. Then his ghost appears, warning of an "Evil Below" and asking the party to drive it out, "find my treasure" and "release me." Determined to find out what this evil is and what lies beneath the cellar, the party tries the secret door again, which Malzahar eventually gets open.

They find a tunnel sloping down into the cliff, and come across a cavern full of bats, which attack them as a swarm. Defeating the bats, they venture on and find some sort of temple cavern, containing small huts, a grisly sacrifice altar, and a deep pit. Kostix tries to sacrifice Chicken, but fails as usual. Ember, looking in the window of one of the huts, sees movement and alerts the party. When she, Bostix, and Lunafreya investigate, five cultists spring out and attack. Malzahar reveals himself to be the evil mastermind behind it all as he turns the floor of the cavern into slippery mucus and attacks.

A savage battle ensues, in which the powerful sorcerer and his aberrant minions knock several of the party out and slay Kostix. With determined bravery and the surprising assistance of Chicken, the party battles back, slaying the cult leader and the cultists...but Kostix is dead. Bostix, desperate to save his twin brother, ties his body to his back and sprints back to town, the party on his heels. Crying out for a cart to transport his brother back the Legion, where maybe Llandos can help, they are found by one of the priests from the Shrine, Clisteme Bortus who, devastated at the loss of one so faithful to the goddess, brings them all to the Shrine.

There, the head priest, Mylani Cuturo, manages to raise Kostix from the dead. He sees his ancestors galloping the celestial plain, and they salute him, but his brother's grief and his Lady's will bring him back. But at a price: she places upon him an as yet unknown burden...

The Long, Hard Road

Session Date: 2020-01-25

On the road back to Sablos, the party is attacked by two displacer beasts, whom they force to run and then pursue into the woods, losing the beasts but discovering an ancient, ruined keep. Exploring it, they call into an abandoned underground hideaway for the kings of the Ketten Islands. The party explores the dungeon, encountering and befriending a tribe of kobolds whom implore them to ride the complex of its dangers, in return for being shown the way back to the surface. The party agrees, following the path described to them, battling giant spiders before clashing with a sinister "flamewrath" wizard, using the place as his lair. Lunafreya is killed by his Fireball, but the party defeats him.

Owing the party for clearing out their home, the kobolds use a scroll of Raise Dead to return Lunafreya to life, and the party returns to the surface.

The Thuvium Job

Session Date: 2020-02-01

The party takes stock after two of them die and are resurrected in within three days, and decide that they just want to go home. The trip back to Sablos takes another night of camping out, but soon they are back at the guildhall, and Llandos is happy to see them. Happy, and astonished at the extent of danger they have faced. He throws them a feast and grants them a month off, as they he negotiates a big new contract with an important client.

During this month off, Arkakas finally makes inroads with Clowder Finisbaer, getting accepted as his apprentice IF he can find out exactly what his patron is. And Arkakas does get some important clues: a female tiefling, and a pillar of violent flame, coming to him in dreams. Meanwhile, Kostix masters the basics of blacksmithing, Ember tinkers with her tools, Bostix becomes the most famous bar lizard in Sablos, and Luna goes shopping.

One month after their last mission, Llandos summons the party to his office and introduces them to Dreder Kohn, a blacksmith who has been granted an amazing commission: the Royal House itself wants him to reforge the ancestral sword of King Oriel, shattered by magic long ago in slaying an evil wizard. To do so, he needs a very rare metal, that is known to be found in only one place on the planet, the Mines of Godrum. The party accepts the mission, and the next day sails on The Pegasus for Greta.

Arriving two weeks later, they find the River Road leading towards the Mountains of Mourning and travel north along it for a month and half, finally finding the collapsed entrance into the Mines. Before they can enter they are assaulted by a fearsome camo-troll, and defeat the monster, despite grievous injury to Ember. Finding a passage inside, they explore the dark, cold, wet, dirty interior, finding plenty of signs of the struggle of the dwarf miners against the monsters, so long ago.

Going left, they find a minded cavern in which floats a horrific oculo swarm, but manage to defeat the aberrant being. Extensive mine passages lay ahead of them, and no sign of any thuvium.