Previously: Sartorin’s Backstory (the campaign began before Sartorin joined, but these notes are written as if journaled by Sartorin, and won’t contain those details)
Yet Another Courier Gig
It was your average job. Someone needed something delivered to someone else. Quiet, no names, coin up front. The package Gili gave me simply said “for those running the Brackus Estate.” Simple enough. It was the harvest season and the roads near Westruun were dense. Too many eyes, too enticing to bandits. I liked the solitude of the wilderness anyway, and the grasslands surrounding the main roads offered long sight lines with plenty of scrub to make evading bandits easy. By main roads, it would have been a little more than a week of travel. The contract provided for two. Better to play it safe.
I stayed far enough from settlements that no trouble ever found me, and rejoined the main road just south of Deva. Traffic this far out was constrained to traders between Westruun and Stilben, and those long haul crews keep enough security with their carts to be poor targets for highwaymen. Taking the last leg by legitimate paths presented an opportunity to catch up on regional gossip anyway.
Something seemed off when I reached the entry marker for the estate. Smoke rose behind the main building, and despite the fields clearly needing turning no workers haunted them. I faded into the woods outside the perimeter wall, and skirted around to get a closer look. A large tree at the edge offered both a view over the wall and an opportunity to cross it. Unfortunately I wasn’t the only one considering that tree at that moment. No sooner had I gained a view of the balcony than an arrow whistled from it and into my thigh.
Information
How we got from Yorin shooting Sartorin to Sartorin joining the party inside the estate, I flat-out don’t recall. It happened though. (maybe there was a back-and-forth calling over the wall?)
Technically Correct
The instructions were to deliver the package to those running the Brackus Estate, and these guys fit that description. Clearly they’d just slaughtered the previous inhabitants, but I was a day early and for all I could know, maybe this was the plan. That’s the thing with “no names” jobs: there’s nothing to verify. On the balance, survival was key. I delivered them the package, which contained a cryptex, which further contained a message. “We got word that you taxed a recent shipment of product by taking one of hizzoner’s guests. This is unacceptable. Future tax will be in GOLD ONLY. - Gili”
IMPORTANT
This moment was accompanied by me actually delivering a 3D-printed cryptex that the GM had made for a player and given me to bring to the table in secret. It was extremely cool.
We covered introductions. Caillite (Cail for short) is a halfling fighter, Mitro (“the Magnificent” apparently) is a human sorcerer, Dracarys is a dragonborn monk, Doros (“the Minor”) is a human bard and the sketchiest of the band by far. And last there was Yorin, a human ranger and the one responsible for that arrow earlier. I’d keep my eye on him. Not just because of the unprovoked wound… there’s something about people whose names sound too similar to mine. Confusing. Suspect. Best to avoid.
I’m no idiot. These probably weren’t the intended recipients and Gili probably wasn’t gonna be happy about it, but I could maybe still salvage this. Plus, this group needed to go to Westruun, and if Gili got mad I’d probably end up with bottom of the barrel jobs. They were offering good coin to guide them to the city, and that was where I was going next anyway. I had my next job.
Interplanar Violence
Trust was scarce in those first weeks, but I gleaned a little of my new compatriots’ aims. The dragonborn, Dracarys, was a pirate and the rest of his crew had been captured or slain by slavers. He’d traced them to Westruun. The others had some other aim, but Westruun was the best place to advance it so they were aligned. We needed to make a stop at Zephrah first though.
This group seemed like they could handle themselves, and taking roads to Zephrah would have meant going halfway to Onstall, then backtracking a full two days east from the fork. Much faster to make the climb directly overland from the southern approach. It was quick going. We had a brief run-in with a frost salamander as we broke camp one morning. It got a bit dicey, but we survived and better still we were able to harvest some unique and rare resources from the carcass.
After a short rest, we made the rest of the climb to Zephrah. As we rounded the bend to the final approach, a blizzard began forming out of nowhere. Clearly some kind of magic, but its source wasn’t apparent. Ran into a couple of locals, who are out investigating. Apparently the blizzards had been cropping up daily and are whittling away at enchantments that protect the town. We agreed to help track down the source.
Sometimes approaching things straight on is best, and sure enough the casters behind this weather were right where we started looking, square in the eye of the storm. A storm sorcerer and his djinni bodyguard. We killed the sorcerer briefly, but the djinn resurrected him and they fled back to another plane (probably air elemental, given what they were up to). The denizens of Zephrah were immensely grateful, and we got some supplies for cheap. Horses a cart since the next leg was all going to be by road.
Note
This is where Cail got his skysail and animated shield, and Doros acquired a scroll of Leomund’s Tiny Hut. All quite important tools for us to have in the future.
DOG QUEST
The trip from Zephrah to Onstall was a quiet five days of driving the cart. I’m sure we talked, but at this point, as far as I knew I was a cross word away from a knife in the back, so it was nothing substantial. We arrived in the late afternoon, found stables for our cart near the city center, and picked up word that the captors of Dracarys’ crew had been seen in the vicinity of the Twin Snakes Forge. From what we could tell, during the day the forge was no more than it appeared. But at night, it was a hotbed for the underbelly of this town. We made plans to go that night, but in the meantime we had a day to spend and it seemed a shame to waste it. A bulletin board in the town square carried notice of a missing dog. It didn’t pay much, but it’d be enough to cover our lodging for the night and… well, it’s a lost dog. Easy money, yeah?
Information
We were missing Cail (who had an important plot hook in Onstall) for this session. The lost dog thing was a fully seat-of-the-pants session where all players and the GM were in agreement to just do a goofy side quest instead of skipping the session or proceeding without the player. The result was DOG QUEST, and was the incident that convinced me I was 100% in for the long haul in this campaign.
What ensued was madness. A child desperate to have their family pet back. A father who’d done his level best to be rid of it for no valid reason. A butcher who’d been hearing strange noises in the alley. A dead silent run along rooftops to surround the poor mutt and prevent its escape. In the end, we returned the dog, thoroughly chastised the father, and put the eternal fear of future retribution into him. Don’t rightly remember if we actually got paid though.
We visited Spock’s Enchantments, a store purporting to sell magic items. Doros managed to swing us a permanent discount by offering to sing tales of the wonders of Spock’s Enchantments in every town we visited, which meant I could afford an armor upgrade. Cail got swindled with some tale of magic beans and spent a hefty chunk of change on a bag of ‘em. Spock even threw an Unbreakable Arrow in as part of the bargain.
Cail visited the temple of the Wildmother. Apparently he’s got weird dreams, and his memory is hidden from him - tied in black knots. The hope was that the Wildmother will help him access it. The temple priests managed to free one memory, but we’d need to visit the central temple in Westruun to go further. By this point, night had fallen, so we went to the forge.
It was an absolute blood bath. We infiltrated the forge with no problem, got into an underground room full of Onstall’s worst, and then lit the place on fire. And I’m not being figurative. Between Mitro and Doros, I think at least three fireballs were lit off. Only one guard survived. This party calls themselves The Good Guys. Between the fire here and the one at the Brackus Estate, I think The Arsonists might be more apt. We learned what we could from the survivor, and then Doros did some kind of magic compelling him to wait 6 hours, then turn himself in and explain everything about what went on at the place, except anything to do with us. Good to have that guy on our side, terrifying to think of having to face him down.
Peasant Uprising
The next morning, we continued on our way. Didn’t quite make it to Baford that day, but we did have a nice night protecting a family along the road (they may have seen it as the other kind of “protection,” but it’s not like we’re going to see them again, so let them have their fears). Upon arrival at Baford the next morning we found the place surrounded by guards, looking rather oppressed. One of the guards immediately spotted Mitro, who immediately charmed him. I thought that bought us time to get through the town, but instead we went to the tavern and started fomenting unrest. I guess Mitro and Doros have been here before and have a mythos about them?
At nightfall, the plan was for the local peasants to gather in the town square, where Mitro and Doros would speak to them. The rest of us hid out near the gate to the manor compound. At the appointed time, whatever the casters said must have worked, because alarms started going off and many of the guards rushed to the town square. We dispatched the remainder in short order and entered the manor. Then things went to hell.
I think I was the first to encounter trouble. We entered to find the place eerily silent, and I poked my head into an antechamber. I spotted a safe, then spotted Arthund Whaney just in time to get hit with some kind of spell. It took me over, and I found myself riding along as my body began plotting to attack the party. We regrouped and made our way deeper into the manor, at which point Arthund and Caroline Waney seeped out of the floor… apparently shapeshifters comprised of some kind of goo. The party attacked, and I attacked them.
Thankfully, Yorin figured out something was up, and they didn’t immediately turn and slaughter me. The rest of the fight comes in flashes. Fireballs everywhere. Caroline obliterated. Arthund’s fury. Fleeing the inferno into the front courtyard. Yorin dying. Collecting his body into the Bag of Colding. At some point in the middle of it all, I snapped free of the compulsion and was able to instead aid the fight. As the manor burned, the villagers joined us and watched to ensure Arthund didn’t escape. We returned to the town square, where I found there were statues of Mitro and Doros. Apparently they’d been here before and after leaving the villagers had mythologized them as folk heroes. Mitro made some kind of sappy speech about how the villagers were the heroes here (never mind Yorin’s corpse freezing solid in the bag) and destroyed the statues. After that we fetched the cart and horses and left for Westruun in the dead of night.
Temple of the Wildmother
We wasted no time upon entering Westruun, making straight for the temple. The cost to resurrect Yorin was high, but the clerics agreed to perform the spell. It seemed that Yorin resisted returning at first, but ultimately relented. The clerics then examined Cail, and after conferring with the Wildmother, helped him recover a fragment of memory. The Wildmother offered to fully undo the spell wrapping his memories, but he needs to accomplish something for her first: visiting three locations, facing their guardians, and learning the lessons to be found there.
- The Overgrown Temple in heart of the Rifenmist Jungle
- The Chaos Pillars deep within Gatshadow
- The Sundered Heartwood Tree of Palecrest
Before we could spend any time considering the quest, Yorin announced he was leaving. His brush with death had caused him to reconsider this journey. The party was stunned, but a few short farewells later, we all watched him walk off into the sunset.