Lazy Saturnday

Dael’s Adventure Part 6

Start from the beginning

As we made our way to the tenement district Hubert explained a bit about Night Hags to us. Apparently they are super powerful dream creatures that consume the life force of people through a straw. Enroute we got into a bit of a discussion about whether to take the main streets or a more direct route through smaller streets. As we traveled through the apartment district several of the Basingstock natives commented that the area seemed shadier than usual, with a certain menace to it not normally found. This grew even worse once we reached the tenements. There was a river that looked to be full of crocodiles or worse, but it didn’t take too long to figure out that we the likely place for a Night Hag would be under the district in sewers or catacombs.

There weren’t any big signs saying “Sewer Entrance Here” so I suggest the possibility of smuggling tunnels leading out from the basement of a bar. Ultimately this was mainly an excuse so that Solei and I could liberate some top shelf whiskey, and whilst we were doing so Vyrez found us our secret entrance into the sewers. Once down there I was the first to hear it, but it wasn’t long before others did as well, an ominous, nay creepy, echoing laughter, as if from a child coming first from one tunnel, then another. Moments later we were ambushed by more of the exploding ninjas. I spent much of the battle flailing ineffectually, mostly because I never did pay much attention to the blind fighting lessons and I was closing my eyes each time I threw a punch to try and avoid getting blinded again.  Though on the bright side, my blind drunk defensive technique was actually pretty effective at avoiding their blows in return.

Once we had defeated them, a bit more wandering in the sewers eventually led us to a weird portal, and we found the Night Hag. Apparently she was limited to sucking up a single soul per night, so was tired and sullen. We explained the situation to her, and she suggested that probably the Diviners were anchoring the city in the dreaming, and if we could defeat them we could restore the regular cycle of day and night. She agreed to help us locate where they were likely holed up, I think largely to get us to shut up. After climbing to the top of a temple she suggested our likeliest targets were the Clock Tower (which we kind of already knew) the Park, the Red Light District, the Lord’s Keep and the Garrison.

We decided to attempt the Garrison District first, Hubert was brash and used acid to burn a hole in the iron fence, and when we were confronted by a guard, Honch used military discipline to tell of the guard. Once inside we decided to attempt to disguise ourselves as soldiers while we searched for the Oneironaught responsible.

Dael’s Adventure Part 5

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With the location of our new headquarters picked out, Cilla began setting it up while Team Intern went to investigate the Temple  of Pharasma. I really should have paid more attention during religious studies, though to be fair the Order never really put too much effort into explaining the gods, but Master Thevarada always said worship was a personal affair, that it was tangential to the pursuit of appreciation. Regardless, if I had spent a bit more time I might have realized that since Pharasma is the goddess of death, it would be the obvious place to look for information about a corpse! Plus apparently the Necromancer Sammael was friends with the Medical Examiner who worked there. Boy, a city sure is complicated. Though I have read several logs of initiates who went to Hornshroud, it all seemed to make much more sense; I wonder how much of this weirdness is due to the whole waking dream situation? I kind of feel like not so much since none of the others seem particularly bothered by any of this.

The Temple, once we arrived and went inside seems awfully decrepit but we perservered, splitting into two groups this time, with Solei, Hubert and I heading to the administrative rooms to look for records, whilst the others headed down to the morgue in case the Medical Examiner was there. Spoilers, she totally was, and I heard later from Honch that she had a weird zone of music that was so loud it was physically painful, but was limited in area. I really wish I’d gone with that group as that sounds amazingly unusual, and much more interesting than looking through records, a thing I was basically no help with. My boredom did end up working out for us as I spotted the first zombie well before it got to us. I closed the door whilst we discussed what to do, then I opened the door and again and Solei made short work of the foul creature slicing off it’s arm and head almost before Hubert could even ask what was going on.

Shortly after the rest of the group returned with the Medical examiner, I think her name was Abbae; She looked weird: pale and washed out as if seen at dusk, yet that may have just been an illusion caused by the fact that everything else around her was not just thrown in stark relief, but appeared more real, and also more clean and upkept, almost as if she was providing window into the waking world. She seemed to have a better grasp of the filing system and agreed to help us look, which is when I again noticed more zombies. It was a good thing we’d regrouped, as there were a lot more of them, and I’ll admit this was one of my least favorite brawls I’ve ever been in. Half the time when I punched or kicked one of them, rather than sending them sprawling my fist or foot would end up going into them and come out covered in rotting bits.

We had almost finished off the putrescent corpses when there was a great crash and a huge skeleton, that looked like it was an agglomeration of man and bison smashed through the wall into the main admin chamber. It was then that I had what might have been a tremendously foolhardy idea, but I went over to try and get a closer look, as I’d never seen anything like it before. It was far too big to fit through the door so I might have taunted it a bit, as at that time I hadn’t realized it had already smashed through one wall. When it rushed forwards to try and gore me I dodged to the side, thinking it would smack the wall and  the rest of the interns would come to my aide, but things didn’t play out that way at all… for starters several of the zombies had some sort of paralytic effect, stunning both Honch and Vyrez making it so they could barely walk meanwhile the Skeletal Minotaur’s charge missed me but destroyed the wall. Vyrez called out some sort of challenge to the beast, which it seemed inclined to accept, except that it couldn’t figure out how to get around me. At this point it occurred to me to try the Fist of Cracking Boulders technique which is well known to break ribs in normal people so I rarely have used it outside of practice, but this thing was basically all ribs! And low it was effective, every punch I threw cracked and shattered ribs, and emboldened by efforts Vyrez and Honch joined battle drawing it’s attention off of me. There was also some mystical light of some kind which I assumed was manifested at the behest of Mortia, as I’d seen her create a similar attack against the Ebonbiter thugs.

Anyways, we were able to defeat the undead hordes, and it wasn’t too long afterwards that Abbae found the information we needed. Or rather, that what we sought was basically unattainable as Sammael had pretty much split the corpse up into pieces and sold them to a variety of customers across the land. After a bit of discussion, and some more investigation by the more bureaucratically inclined a new plan was hatched, go to the tenements district (where there might be a living night hag) and (this is the part I’m not super clear on, I was kind of busy cleaning the gore off of myself) either killing it and presenting it to the diviners, or convincing it to help us break the spell on the city and have us all wake up.

Dael’s Adventure Part 4

Start from the beginning

After conferring with Cilla at the Eight Arms offices, we reconvened at our new defensive Headquarters, the estate of Killian Shae. There we discovered (from Killian) that all of the help had gone missing, and Cilla explained a little about why the black good had her and Killian so worried. Specifically there had been a war between Light, Shadow with the city of Basingstock right in the middle. Honestly it was a little confusing but as far as I understand it the Light faction was trying to create a light plain* since there was already a shadow plain, but somehow doing that would destroy the world because Basingstock already had a light plain? Basically people from Shadow were attacking, and some of them were bad, but the light people were doing a dumb thing and once the founders of the Eight Arms explained things the light people were very very sorry.

*Editors note: Dael is confused because he doesn’t understand Planer Cosmology.

We split up again to search the house, this time I paired up with Vyrez, hoping to ask him some questions. I guess I was a little bit indelicate, though it could also be that he just doesn’t like talking, but apparently he devoted himself to Pharasma and without irony adopted a stance of detestation of undead, even though apparently he was already undead at the time he did so. I guess I’ll have to be more tactful next time I get a chance to talk to him, as that was about all I could garner whilst we searched the servants quarters.

Honch and Hubert searched the kitchens and also found nothing. However Mortia and Solei figured out that anyone who went to bed disappeared. We were about to go search for Killian, as he’d proclaimed he was going to bed just before we split up, but before we could, we were ambushed! I’d never seen an actual goblin before, and hadn’t quite believed the description of how wider their mouths were, but seeing them in person was quite an experience!  Their mad cackling and the way they threw themselves into the fray without concern for self-preservation was kind of disheartening. Fortunately for us most of them were fairly tiny, and a bop or two on the head would knock them out. Their maniacal shaman took a bit of effort, and I later learned there was a berserker at the top of the stairs that kept most of the party busy while Vyrez and I dealt with the rest. We had just barely gotten the situation under control when fire started spreading; at first I thought the goblins had started it, as they are known for their pyromania, but once we had defeated them and escaped the building we discovered the truth.

Outside were 5 emo looking ne’er do wells. Dressed in black, dour expressions, too much makeup and mostly in monochrome, the leader who we would later find was imaginatively named Darkness (hold on they’ve got a theme, which I’ll get to in good time) was chuckling maliciously. They demanded to speak with the various leaders of the eight arms, finally settling on tasking us with finding a corpse. They did go on to explain that their group was called the Diviners, the other four were Desire, Despair, Doldrums and Dread and that they were Oneironaughts which i guess is Dream Travelers? And slightly explains why they all picked named which began with D. Further apparently we are now in a dream version of Basingstock, and if we go to sleep before we find this corpse for them we’ll be trapped in the dream forever?

After talking with Cilla it’s apparent that a licensed necromancer by the name of Sammael was the last one in possession of the corpse, which I guess makes sense, but unfortunately he’s no where near Basingstock, possibly on some other plain. So we’ve set up shop in the estate of the head of the Baker’s Guild, hoping that since she’s generally well liked, no one will be having evil dreams about her. And I guess the next order of business is to figure out how to escape?!

Dael’s Adventure Part 3

Start from the beginning

With our heroes triumphant we bound the thugs. The orc started to torture them for information but we managed to calm him down and the surviving Ebonbiters seemed perfectly willing to talk without the need for disfiguring them with hammer blows. We dispatched one of our number to locate and bring a patrol of the night watch. We did our best to explain the situation and events leading up to it, however between several of us trying to explain at the same time, and the rather amazing nature of events it rapidly became apparent that they believed we were indeed working for Eight Arms, but on the down low.

They became more and more dubious of our story as it progressed, to the point where the guard said “Audible Wink, and then the giant wolf attacked.” It was fairly obvious to me there was more going on… I mean even the orc couldn’t have bitten the wererat’s head off, but the guardsman was having none of it, and they’d trundled the thugs off before I could even finish explaining about the Manticore.

We did our best to re-secure the Wilkerton Shipping warehouse, however with two busted windows we figured it best to stay and keep guarding the place for the rest of the night. That is, until Hubert noticed something weird with his watch and the city bell not agreeing. Solei and I climbed to the roof, but couldn’t quite see the bell so it was decided to send some people to the clock tower to investigate however things kind of got out of control with everyone wanting to go on this excursion except me… and I certainly wasn’t going to guard the warehouse on my own, so we abandoned our post.

Upon arrival the clock was still showing midnight, no staff was apparent, and the lock on the door thwarted both Solei and Mortia’s attempts to bypass it so we returned to the Eight Arms office to report in. It then transpired that Cilla considered the black goo to be extremely dangerous, and so she hired all 6 of us on the spot. She had us split up into three groups to notify apparent movers and shakers. Solei and I headed to the park to try and track down Crazy Eddie and his pet dragon Teawrecks; who apparently it is a bad idea to fight though I’m not quite sure why anyone sane would pick a fight with a dragon, much less a domesticated one. We were unable to locate the erstwhile Eddie, but we did encounter some exploding ninjas who were very impolite and threw poisoned knives at us. However our failure to locate Eddie was probably the least ignominious of our three parties.

Honch and Vyrez went to the slums to try and locate a retired sea captain named Gallagher. They also encountered an exploding ninja, but in the process of defeating it basically leveled the poor captain’s abode, as well as broke into a neighbors house to try and find additional information.

Hubert and Mortia went to Killian Shea’s estate, an elven noble. They ran afoul of, and destroyed his automated security and then it transpired that most (or possibly all) of his help aside from a single guard had disappeared. When they named dropped the Radiant Kings Killian was willing to host/relocate the Eight Arms to his estate as a sort of temporary HQ to deal with the process.

Dael’s Adventure Part 2

Start from the beginning
So it turns out The Eight Arms only had two positions open, and 6 applicants. Dael wasn’t too worried about succeeding, in fact he was pretty sure several of the others were far more qualified than he was as adventurers, but seeing the rest of them work together or at odds would probably be at least one worthwhile entry in his log book, and he could surely find some work elsewhere in the likely event he didn’t get one of the two openings.

Eight Arms : The Six Applicants

Dael: Aesthetic Monk and Drunken Master.

Solei: She looks like a fighter with her heavy armor, but seems by turns sneaky and arcane.

Honch: A big half-ork. His bearing says ex-military; something tells me he didn’t spend that much time in the front lines.

Vyrez: This one I’m not sure about. Maybe he’s a vampire? He looks half dead; he is certainly intimidating. I’m sure his story will be interesting. I kind of hope it’s the two of us so I can have a good excuse to ask him questions.

Mortia and Hubert: I’m not sure what to make of this mystical couple. Sometimes it seems like they are paying so much attention to each other they don’t see the wolf in front of them.

Ebonbiters bite off more than they can chew

In this instance, the proving would be in protecting a warehouse for the night. The desire was to not only prevent the looting of the warehouse, but also to capture alive as many possible. We arrived at the warehouse shortly before dusk. With basically no discussion of plan we each cased building on our own and then proceeded to surround the building in a vary obvious manner. Varyz and Honch both tried to be nonchalant, while Mortia attempted to break into one of the side doors. Meanwhile I’d stepped into a nearby bar and procured a large bottle of local swill, which wasn’t much better than water, though it certainly had a lot more character than most water does. With my ale in hand I could rest outside the bar and watch two of the exits.

A group of thugs approached, and well, I must admit the swill was a bit stronger than I expected and I took it upon myself to try and apprehend all three of them at once. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure there were more of them then my initial reckoning summed to, and I was rapidly overwhelmed. Fortunately Hubert came to my rescue and with his aid, as well as that of Vyrez we were able to knock out pretty much all of the thugs. I did not witness it first hand, but apparently at the same time a wererat and several giant rats snuck into the warehouse through a window, espied only by Solei who finished the job Mortia started and gained entrance through the side door.

Just as we were finishing off the thugs in the front of the building, a giant ice wolf and a manticore joined the scene making it a 3 way battle. Honch forced the front gate open and we joined battle against these terrifying beasts. After a hard fight against the wolf it turned into some sort of black goo, with the head of the wererat lying where it’s stomach had been. Fortunately for us this seemed to frighten off the Manticore.

I do wish I’d made it inside the warehouse sooner, I’m sure the wererat would have been a sight to behold while alive. That said, even if I don’t get the job, this night alone has already been fantastic enough that I doubt any of the elders will be unimpressed.

Dael is a monk from The Aesthetic Order of Cluodesa, a group founded on a misspelling, or so the story goes.  As the final part of his initiation a monk must walk the world, appreciating many things, ideally that few others in the Order have experienced. Since few of the Order have visited Basingstock, this seemed the ideal location, being a fairly large city, but far enough from the monastery that most initiates instead trek to Hornshroud which has a slightly higher population, but is also much closer.

Dael had been in the city for a few months, travelling around and seeing the sights, and sampling all the city has to offer, and keeping meticulous notes in his log book. While he started in the more well to do districts, sleeping in luxury, admiring fine parks and museums, eating at the finest establishments (some of the newer ones which no Cluodesa monks had previously patronized) and having a fairly great time, as the months passed his funds rapidly diminished and he moved to the more middle class districts, sampling theater and street fare, sleeping in more common inns and boarding houses. Eventually he moved on to the lower class districts, and slums. Sampling the life and entertainments of the poor and downtrodden.

Now Dael has sampled a broad cross section of all the city has to offer, he’s decided it’s time to build up the cash for a trip out of the city and on to see some of the wilderness and areas around Basingstock, and to that end he has responded to an advertisement for employment with Eight Arms Adventuring Guild. If nothing else, his employment might take him on some adventures outside the city, where who knows what he’ll see.