Session #18: The Emissary

The session started an hour early this week because (at least at the time) Traver had to work on Wednesday nights. I am unsure whether or not we will need to continue this, get back to me on this please Traver. If we don't, then I'll leave it up to you guys to decide whether we want to stick with this time period or go back to the original. On to the recap.

We began with the party fighting the glowing zombies. They managed to defeat them rather easily by funneling them all through the doorway. A few party members were hit with things that caused plague contamination before, but none of them were contaminated - more on that later. After defeating the zombies, the party gathered the gold they could find in the last clerical room, and then unlocked the mayor's office. Inside they found Mayor Lundgrave having a conversation with himself - one side in his own voice, one side in an entirely different voice. Three dread guardians stood guard, freshly dead reanimated humanoids clad in heavy armor. The party attacked, and quickly found that Lundgrave had been possessed by a being known as Rahzintel, who referred to himself as "the Emissary".

The battle did not prove terribly difficult - Elaureth took most of the damage, and Malthus was knocked unconscious, but the enemies were unable to do much to the party. The worst hits the party took were from Rahzintel's possession of Thomnall, which led to Elaureth being severely bloodied and Malthus being knocked unconscious. The dread guardians fell, one by one, and Rahzintel was eventually defeated. Before he dispersed into nothingness, he warned the party that a "dark tide" was coming, and it would drown all of them...

The party found that Lundgrave's soul had died with Rahzintel, and returned to the Misty Morning Inn with his body. They were provided with several rewards - gold from Halpern for dealing with Lundgrave; a +1 magic weapon, armor or amulet of protection from Geoffrey Black for rescuing Halpern; and free rooms from Torrin McCarver for recovering food supplies for them. They then retired to their rooms for the night.

The next morning, the party was met by Smolkin, who asked them to undertake a task he had been given by a noble patron; he introduced himself as an adventurers' herald, and stated that he needed to get the job done. Malthus refused to hear the proposal - Smolkin asked him to leave the room, then explained that he needed the party to recover the Silver Mask of Kas from the Amberforge Vault. When asked if he wanted them to steal it, he stated that word out of Amberforge indicated that the vault had been lost; he suggested they offer to clear the vault out and ask for the mask as a reward. Smolkin added (DM's note: this is retcon and was not explained during the session) that, as a former resident of Amberforge, he knew of the nature of the ruling clan, the Amberforges, warning the party to be wary of their shrewdness and trickery. The party agreed; Smolkin provided them with an address on where to find him in Falconia when they had the mask, and asked them to refer to themselves as the "Blacksword Band" so that the noble patron would not know that the job had been given to a new adventuring company.

After Smolkin departed, the High Priestess of Pelor who had been attending to healing the wounded in the inn, Adra, came to them and told them that she had discovered that creatures of fey origin, such as elves, eladrin & drow, were immune to the plague. This led her to believe they may have some sort of cure, and she asked them to head to Whitebough Forest and the community of Silvershade to try and find it. They agreed to this as well, though Ilivarra was hesitant to agree to head into elf territory.

Finally, the party ran into a wounded soldier riding a winded horse along the road heading out of Cairnmoor toward their destinations. The warrior's back had been littered with orcish arrows, and when the party healed him he revealed that he had been sent as a runner to seek reinforcements for Orcbane Keep, which had come under siege by a combined force of orcs and giants. The party noted this, and returned the soldier to the Misty Morning Inn. There they were met by Elaureth, whose blood-red raven's feather had turned black - he said that he would accompany them, though he wished to head to Silvershade first.

So, with options on the table, the party has determined that they shall head for Silvershade first - Amberforge and Orcbane Keep await soon after. Malthus has left the party, as he considers his oath of service to Lucas Black sacred. Elaureth has joined, though he seems to have personal reasons for wanting to return to Silvershade.

Some out-of-game notes: we will figure out what time we'll be doing next Wednesday's session soon, and I'll let everyone know as soon as I do. There will be no extra session on Saturday as Pixie will be busy; we'll look at doing one next week. Finally, about tonight's session - I realize that I lost some of you with the set-up for the three adventures I've given you to choose from. I take responsibility for that - looking back on my notes I strayed from what I had planned out in many cases; that's fine when the players do it by accident, but when I do it myself it can complicate things unnecessarily. Hopefully it didn't spoil the session (or even the campaign) for anyone, and we can get right back to the good times next week =) See everyone then!