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 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 the danger they have faced. He throws them a feast and grants them a month off, as 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 violet 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 mined cavern in which floats a horrific oculo swarm, but manage to defeat the aberrant being. Extensive mine passages lay ahead of them, but no sign of any thuvium.
Terror in the Mines
Session Date: 2020-02-08
Having slain the weird oculo swarm, the party ventures into the next chamber. They notice two things, a corpse in a rotted black cloak holding a metal rod, and, in the distance, heat, fire light, and creatures laughing and giggling. After Dog triggers the trap on the corpse and eats a fire blast, the party finds a chamber light by a very hot wall of fire and four agnibarra, who, in awe of Ember, but thinking she'd look better on fire, attack. The party slay most of the them, but the last escapes into the rift of flames.
The party treks on, coming across a strange sight: then dwarven skeletons, hand axes in their hands, around a pool of dark, thick red liquid. They quickly discover it is a blood elemental, which attacks. The elemental animates the skeletons the party does not destroy, but they destroy it before they can attack.
The party goes right, finding the nest of a three-headed cobra. In the battle, Kostix, already wounded, leaps up on to the creature's nest, and gets torn apart by its bites. Dead, his body slumps across the rocks. The party slays the beast, but Kostix is gone. Shattered, they carry on with their mission, meeting Sigismund the Keg Golem, who joins the party after they convince him that his mission, protecting the miners' ale, is... no longer necessary. Sigismund warns them of the trollkin who live further into the mines.
The party battles a patrol of trollkin warriors, who kill Chicken, but the fight is stopped when a female trollkin shaman arrives and interrogates the PCs. She denies them access to thuvium, unless they destroy a "spider monster" deeper into the mines. The party agrees, and journeys to meet the monster, leaving Kostix's corpse with the trollkin. They find the drider in its lair at the edge of a great pit that goes very far into the earth. They slay it, and return it's head to the shaman, who is as good as her word, giving the party six ounces of what she calls "power metal". The party exits the mines, with corpse and metal in tow.
Brotherhood
Session Date: 2020-02-15
The party leaves the Mines of Godrum, having found what they were looking for, the thuvium, but losing their beloved brother and friend, Kostix. They bury his body by the side of a tranquil tributary of the Illusarnae, each party member leaving a touching tribute. Bandits who try to loot the grave are brutally disposed of. Confident that Kostix's soul is in a better place, the party travels back to Greta with Sigismund the Keg Golem in tow.
There they sail The Pegasus back to Sablos, with Sigismund deciding to become the butler at the Guildhall. They arrive back almost 4 months to the day after they left, where they relate the bad news to Llandos, who is devastated, and blames himself. He gives them unlimited time off, in which Bostix and Sigismund found a bar in what used to be a meeting room, and Arkakas Malbolgia, having discovered the identity of his patron, Y'chak, successfully becomes a scroll-making apprentice of Clowder Finisbaer, though his initial attempts at making a Charm Person scroll go badly awry. Eventually, however, he feels he has a good one, which he saves.
Two weeks after their return, Llandos has another mission: he introduces them to Nystra the Dark, who relates that a powerful magical artefact, the Chalice of Reekz, has been stolen from her tower, Cloudburst. She teleports the party there and tells them all about the city of Xios. The party decides the best lead on The Brotherhood of the Six Fingers, the magical thieves responsible, is to be found at The Flask and Ghost, where they eventually meet its owner, Cilia Reyne. Reyne decides to reveal to the party that the Brotherhood's hideout is indeed underneath her bar, hoping the party removes this thorn in her side, and cleverly stages the party's entrance into their lair.
They venture down, fighting increasing numbers of thieves in the extensive underground complex, eventually battling elite Brotherhood agents in a storage room. There Lunafreya Stargazer is knocked out but survives, but Arkakas dies. The party gains the upper hand, however, and the leader of the Brotherhood, an elegant gentleman calling himself the Master of the Six Fingers (and who has six fingers on both hands), appears and offers them a deal: take the Chalice and begone, killing no more of his men and not revealing the lair's location.
The party takes that deal, and returns to Nystra with Arkakas's body. There she is delighted to have the Chalice back, which she relates holds powerful magic relating to reproduction and pregnancy. The party declines to take advantage of it, and choose to have her call in a favor to revive Arkakas rather than taking a Wand of Wonder as a bonus payment. A priest arrives, and as his temple owes Nystra, succeeds in reviving Arkakas. The party is teleported back to Sablos and reports their success to Llandos, who grants them another extended time off.
New Blood
Session Date: 2020-02-22
The party retires to rest for the evening, in their various ways, save for Arkakas Malbolgia, who leaves to find materials with which to re-summon Chicken. Just as he leaves the guildhall, however, he hears beating wings overhead. Perched on the roof of the hall's tower is aarakocra ranger Zinra Ravara, come at last to answer the same letter the rest of the party received. After Arkakas brushes her off, she goes inside and meets Bostix and eventually the rest of the guild, who question her briefly before accepting her as a member of the Legion without an audition. She moves into the central room on the second floor.
A month of downtime follows, in which the party pursues their various interests: drinking, poison buying, setting up a kiosk and selling mechanical toys, enlisting criminal minions to to surveil Clowder Finisbaer, or ending the same by taking an urban bounty. During this time, Llandos is meeting with various clients, but no job presents itself...
Until he gathers the group and shares that an old adventuring friend of his, currently part owner of the Xerxos Pit on Zaxos, has asked him to send a capable group to adventurers to rid the mine of hordes of salt mephits which has effectively shut it down in the last month. The party accepts the mission and sails for Lymoxersia on the Swallow's Wing, and arrives their three days late after the ship stops in Euphro on Kefalon so the group of elven scholars it carries might visit a book vault.
The party goes to the mine and meets Llandos's friend, Grigary Molden, who shows them into the mine, where they head down the walkway of the massive pit. Fighting through salt clouds, many mephits, salt zombies, and just stupid amounts of salt, the party arrives on the shores of the brine pit at the bottom of the shaft. There they find strange, glowing, floating, salt crystal, which raises a salt elemental, who attacks. The party battles the elemental, but figures out that destroying the crystal might destroy the creatures, and they are correct.
Once both are gone, Ember finds a ring with four tiny gems in it, which she studies but pockets for later. The party heads up to the surface, where the find Molden wounded in a battle with a huge flock of salt mephits, which has left the pit as they are resting. His staff are dead, and most of the mephits escapes. Fearing the worst, the party heads for town, only to discover it unharmed by the mephits, who have disappeared.
Molden beings to rebuild his business while letting the party stay at his mansion in town. The party meets Luciel Braveros in a tavern and she offers them free passage back to Sablos, but not before Lunafreya Stargazer gets herself arrested for trying to purchase illegal items (poison, again). Ember pays her penalty and frees her, while Zinra obtains for her a deadly poison from a strange hag who lairs in the town wall. The party then sails back home, arriving without incident.
The Catacombs of Rurk, Part I
Session Date: 2020-02-29
Back at the guildhall, the patty is welcomed home by Llandos, who has an unusual guest, the lizardfolk cleric Sibok Ecot Yaool, who hails from Varlask on Marbindor. He brings the Legion their next mission: to accompany him to Leftkada to discover and recover sacred artifacts from some recently discovered ancient lizardfolk burial catacombs. The party accepts the job, and leaves the next morning, sailing aboard the dwarf ship Sturdy to Sicomnos.
The party arrives not long before the culminating party of the island's yearly Harvest Festival, where they spend the evening stuffing themselves silly, watching plays, and engaging in competitions, with Zinra and Bostix triumphing in archery and arm wrestling, respectively, winning gold. After a night's carousing, the party departs in the morning, traveling towards the village of Bhrytarnacia, where Arkakas and Sibok think they are most likely to find lizardfolk ruins, according to local lore.
The first day out of the village ends in a hamlet tavern, avoiding a friendly bar fight. Moving along the road towards the center highlands of the island, the party travel across open grasslands, where, the first night they meet and befriend Bush, who travels with them. Passing through a forest, the party is attacked one morning by a savage owlbear, which they slay. Moving into arid, rocky highlands, the party is hunted and attacked by three fiendish leucrotta, but manage to defeat them, with Sibok's mastery of the line between life and death proving handy.
The next day the party descends into a fertile valley, walking along a road between harvested fields. There they discover a lost child, Tia Telric, crying in a ditch. She explains that her mommy was taken by some mean men, and the party sets out to find the child's mother, tracking the vile kidnappers into a some dark woods, where, with the "help" of a quickling named Poppo, they find the kidnapper's shack, slay them, and rescue the mother, Maera Telric, who explains that she was fleeing the village with her daughter from her abusive husband, named "Telric", some important man in the village, who beats her and the child, and has many other wives. The party tells her to wait for their return in the shack while they finish their mission.
The PCs arrive in the village at night, and are promptly accosted by the village guards, thugs really, who say they serve Boss Grommo Telric, leader and richest man of the village. The guards tell them that if they don't want to be arrested, they had better go drop a lot of money in the Boss's tavern across the village green. The party complies, drinking at the bar, before a round of drinks is bought for them by Boss Telric. Bostix, wary, figures out that the beer is poisoned, and confronts the boss with Ember. The Boss denies trying to poisoning them, and tells them that there's no dirty lizardfolk ruins in or around his village (which Ember knows is a lie), and they'd better blow the village, now, or there will be trouble. Strangers are not welcome. The party weighs their options and decides to camp along the road outside of the village, strategizing how to find the ruins and get revenge for themselves and Maera and Tia on the evil Boss Telric.
The Catacombs of Rurk, Part II
Session Date: 2020-03-07
Passing the night outside of Bhrytarnacia after being driven out by Grommo Telric, who party arises in the morning and discusses strategy for a full hour. They try asking nearby farmers if any know of the lizardfolk ruins, but strike out. They ultimately decide to return to the village and make Telric tell them where the ruins are. In the process, they fight his guards in the village streets, then his thugs on his property, and ultimately him, slaying them all. With the villain and his henchmen dead, his wives take over his estate and authority, forming The Sisterhood, and bringing a new era of democratic rule to the village. They also find records in his office which reveal the location of the ruins.
South of the village, in the dense wilderness, the party finds a demolished obelisk of lizardfolk origin, which Sibok Ecot Yaool is able to decipher and use to open a portal into the Catacombs of Rurk. Venturing down, his heart is broken when the party finds that the catacombs has been not only raided but purposely desecrated by troglodytes, which Sibok claims are degenerate forms of lizardfolk. He collects what sacred relics he can, and the party clashes with a gelatinous cube and several troglodytes.
Exploring further, the party finds many huge mausoleums, some of which contain undisturbed relics, some of which contains portions of the wealth and prized items of the ancient lizardfolk rulers, which Sibok gladly gives to the party. The party encounters a strange pit of Abyssal fire, and battles two barlgura, summoned from the Abyss by the desecration of of the holy sites performed by the troglodytes. The battle defeats the demons, finds more relics and items, and leaves the catacombs.
Back in the village, the party is celebrated by villagers and The Sisterhood, the new rulers of the village. The party spends a couple of days there recovering, bring Maera and Tia back from the kidnapper's shack. The villagers decide to honor the orginal lizardfolk inhabitants of the area by renaming the village after Sibok, and the party departs for Sicomnos. Sibok takes a ship for Marbindor, after saying a grateful goodbye and thank you to the party, and the party sails for Sablos which a large haul of gold and items.
