This week's session had the party finding a false wall in the trapped hallway. Progressing into the next hallway they found a number of skeletons guarding what appeared to be another dead end. After defeating the skeletons, they discovered another two false walls - one on each side. The party chose to head down the east passage, and found themselves in Sir Cairnstone's burial chamber, along with his personal guard - a number of infernal armor animuses.
This battle did not end well for the party - in the end, Sir Cairnstone decapitated Mika and Adrie, leaving Iados and Erik to bleed out as a mysterious robed man invited him to join "his ranks". This defeat came about for two reasons - one, the animuses, which healed Cairnstone for a significant amount upon being killed, were meant to be ignored in this encounter. Two, the party could have made the encounter easier on themselves by taking the other path first - down that path they would've found a skeletal captain whose insignia they could've placed into the basin of a shrine to Pelor (also hidden behind a false wall), which would have hampered Cairnstone's ability to summon animuses. Fortunately, Iados and Erik were rescued by Halpern and his men.
Erik and Iados spent a week recovering, each having a nasty new scar to show off - afterward they went to speak to Mayor Lundgrave, and discovered that the town was being blackmailed by a hobgoblin warlord acting on behalf of the people of Beleth. Lundgrave asked for the Blacksword Band's help against the hobgoblin's tribe; they agreed, and began to head out. On the way out, they were given a letter from Smolkin, who gave them a new job and told them he was on his way up to the town after having heard what was going on up there. The new job, from a mysterious person in the Misty Morning Inn named "I", asked them to check the windmill granary outside of town and interrogate Vilner, a former town guard, about possible corruption in the guards' ranks. Iados' paranoia has continued to grow in this session - the letter from Smolkin, delivered by the runner, and the letters "I" gave them his instructions on were both subject to arcana checks. Maybe someday he'll find some explosive runes on one of them - but don't count on it.
We will have two new characters next week - and that means two new backstories! Keep an eye out for the new backstories, guys!
There's a distinct lack of arcana checks on those letters!
ReplyDeleteI made a mistake and didn't do it right after, waited a few days instead so I forgot some stuff. I'll edit it in.
ReplyDelete