Foul Play in Forest Mill

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Start Date: Seedtime 13, 799 WK (13/11/799) Finish Date: Seedtime 26, 799 WK (26/11/799) Duration: 14 days
Ty Trident 13700
Tulip 12800
Game Master
Ross Alexander
Party Leader
Ty (Zane Hembest)
Party Scribe
Tulip (Tricia Hunt)
Other Variable Party Members

Hired from the Seagate guild by Duke of Kazzala to investigate the disappearance of children in the village of Forest-Mill.

Fee
standard guild fee of 200sp per week each. Spoils belong to the party.

Date: 13th Seedtime

Equipment

  • weeks hard rations
  • guild riding horse each and 2-pack animals
  • hay and oats
  • rough map or area too and surrounding Forest Mill

Date: 13-17 Seedtime

leave seagate and travel through Sweet-Riding following Sweet-Water River towards Forest-Mill-no problems

Date: 18 Seedtime

  • reach forest today, and are ambushed by bandits in the night
  • two (of the temporary) party members return to the guild

Date: 18-24 Seedtime

  • we travel on ...
  • by sweetwater river past a landing we find a peninsula (see Ty for exact position on map) of "white mana" orientated towards goodness
  • a little further on we find a stone which is of "black mana" and orientated towards evil, investigation shows that it is magically trapped/warded/cursed the trap setting off a greater summoning, the trap is triggered by approach but the trigger distance has a variable range from the stone
  • we decide to do nothing about these areas, but will inform the guild, esp about the black area
  • we camp outside of the village for the night, meet two foresters in the morning

Date: 24 Seedtime

  • enter the village in the morning, first visit and talk with the local lord, Lord George and then the sergeant and village people
missing persons
-miller's son (baby)
-crofter John's son (6 yrs)
-smith's daughter
-woodman Johnathon's son
-Widower Black's daughter (12 yrs)
-Pete and Steven's younger brother (Marcus, 14yrs)
-old man Scott's wife
-poacher Dale
and more recently
village simpleton
Will the Guard
Rumour
the miller killed his own son, his wife is also acting strange, and the son does not look like his "father" ie is a cuckoo in the nest, either one of them could have gotten rid of the son.
old man Scott is mad, but knows what's happening, he however does have a grudge against the miller
the priest that lives by the graveyard has gone mad and is obsessed and tormented by daemons, who says he is protecting the town from the dead
the old crone is to blame
the crone herself says
that the castle is much older than it looks and it may have been built to protect something on the site
there is a local silf
Will is up to something, and has his eye on the Lords daughter Victoria who has recently returned from Brasta, he can also be very nasty and will not go near the crone
and that old man Scott's wife has left him in the night
the local simpleton has been up to the old keep and returned without harm, he did say that there was treasure there
Fact
all these people have disappeared in the last 6 months
there is a local ruined keep that is cursed, and the lord has forbidden people to go there
Old man Scott says:
Old man Scott-last spell to impact is demonic, summoning
there was an incident at the keep involving Lord George's father, who was digging a new cellar and came across some artefact which the old Lords wife thought was jewellery, and when she picked it up it killed her instantly and caused the collapse of the cellar with old Lord, his wife, his son and one of the labourer diggers Fred inside. The old Lord killed himself in grief and Fred died in the collapse so only the son was dug out alive after three in the dark with his dead parents and the artefact.
There are two entrances to the cellar one is blocked and one old man Scott (another labourer digging out the cellar) dug out to fee the young George. No bodies were ever recovered and Lord George has not been able to face going back.
there is also an old mill further up the stream on the way to the ruined keep
3-4 goblin families live in an old silver mine up in the hills, they keep the local guard on their toes
Injured Guard Bill
the sergeant has one boy who could do with healing from burns, a divination on the boy under the pretence of healing shows magic to impact of telepathy,esp,hipnosis all in the last week and blackfire (celestial) about 10 weeks ago.
the boy cannot remember what happened to him, only that he was at the old mill with another guard Will who suggested going to the old keep, so that's where they went.
on further prompting bill remembers that he was in the cellar and somehow injured, he felt very cold and very sore
Old way station
meanwhile we are put up at an old waystation that is sometimes used by the guards to overnight.
investigation for secret doors etc reveals several large chambers under the stables
the first chamber is a hidden cellar that contains old confiscated goods, we manage to pick out several bottles of good wine, the rest is dusty and useless with age
a second secret entrance leads to another large chamber with a pervading aura of white magic which wards against the unholy, it is also protected to keep out lesser summoned creatures, the walls are bound earth so elementals cannot enter, there is no dust here and the air is fresh, and there is a fresh supply of water. Runes of 72 names?? run around all the walls.
Evening
we are attacked by 4 human fighters and 1 human fire mage with rnk10 weapon of flames and rnk10 fireball
Tulip almost dies but Tye manages to save everyone, we capture one attacker
the back of the Way-house is burned down
divination of the attacking humans shows fire armour, fire proofing, telepathy, esp, sleep, hypnosis, charm, all within the last week, there is also a control person two weeks old and these spells on and off until we run out of time, the spells are of mind and e&e demonic origin
Sergeant arrives after all the action, we get him up to date
we recover all the bodies and it turns out that Will is one of the dead attackers
the Sergeants men stay on guard while we sleep for the rest of the night.

Date: 25 Seedtime

We arise before dawn and take the bodies up to the new keep barracks. We then DA all the guards for last magic to impact.

  • Alfred (Sergeant) has nothing
  • John has a faint blessing
  • Chris has nothing
  • Bill has been done already
  • Mike has nothing
  • Will is dead
  • we search, question and divinate the prisoner
  • we find a small "black" magic coin (red gold, plane of origin hell), who's nature of magic is to summon (call master) Aim the duke of Fire.
  • the prisoner will not talk and Tye baulks at torture, the most we can get is that he has been promised power by Aim and his leader is a firemage
  • Will had been subverted
  • we search Bills room while he is otherwise occupied and find another small coin, however it is cursed, the person attempting to use it to call Aim will get self-immolation for his pains
  • further talk to Bill nudges his memory and he remembers two huge dogs at the old keep that suddenly appeared and burned him. He also remembers there being other men from Brasta??? at the old keep, and these same may be at the new keep with Lord George. Will gave him the coin.

We decide not to go to Lord George in case he is in it, but to find some firmer evidence.

We visit the old mill and fine Dale the local poacher near to death and take him back to the town barracks.

We visit the priest at the church and find him being attacked by two invisible imps which we deal with, but the priest does appear to be entirely mad. We also find he had been dabbling in Necromancy as he has two hefty tomes on the subject. He does manage to tell us that the old Lord is an undead revenant at the old keep and that the woman is lost in hell, if we are able to return the bones to consecrated ground this may set the revenant at rest.

We leave the priest in the "white" graveyard and take Alfred and another guard up with us to visit the old keep, only the party after "armouring up" enter past the outer keep wall.

We find the hole where old man Scott dug out young George from the cellar, we also find the revenant of the old Lord (celestial mage).

We converse and find that the revenant requires his son personally to retrieve his and his wife's bones for decent berial and then he will lay to rest. He has little knowledge of Aim's servants, only that they use the rooms under the keep and that they cannot be accessed this way, however at noon tomorrow there is to be a ceremony to summon Aim and make him non-banishable from this plane. There is one priest, a fire mage mostly rnk 10 and there are two hell hounds or dire wolves.

We are permitted to retrieve Fred's bones which we give to the guards to take back to the priest.

We try to find another entrance and set Buzz to track some burnt patches in the ground (left from the breath of hell-hounds) he leads us around to the west of the castle were we are ambushed by the hell-hounds, we vanquish these, and after much searching Buzz eventually finds an entrance into an underground corridor. Down the corridor we find several empty barracks rooms and after an upward slope the corridor terminates at a door with runes carved on it. We push through into a large chamber with archers and domes and find a priest sacrificing children at a make-shift alter, there are 5 thugs and 4 children, one is murdered as we watch.

We start out doing well against the thugs but then the tides turn and Tulip almost dies again, only Tye is left standing wounded and surrounded by the thugs, and by this time the mage has produced two salamanders. Runes on the walls are glowing and getting brighter and brighter... all looks lost.

Then the mage expires from wounds received, and before he died he managed to summon an effrete. When it turns up it cannot find its summoner, so looks to Ty for commands and he tells it to kill all the followers of Aim with ten miles ... it kills all Aims followers here and disappears out the tunnel into the countryside. We quickly do some healing etc, but the salamanders have got out and started lots of forest fires, Ty somewhat reinvigorated chases them down.

We check out the domed room, it is magical but not magically trapped warded or cursed with respect to the non-followers of Aim. It appears to be a kind of mana storage device, the triggering conditions are the invocation of a summoning ritual ... maybe useful to some in the guild. A search of the bodies recovers ordinary weapons. The priests dagger is magical and trapped warded or cursed the trigger is touch so we leave it putting a large chalk circle around it and one of the local guards to guard it. In search of the keep above the chamber we find the body of Steven's 14 yr old brother with his throat slit from behind and nothing of value.

We go up to the new keep but no-one answers the front door, we go in. Pete (the butler) is dead and Lord Georges daughter is also dead, we arrange to talk to Lord George in the morning. We go to the barracks and find everything normal, we talk to Alfred and then retire to the way station for the night

We leave the mad priest and the children with the old Crone for the night.

Date: 26 Seedtime

We divinate items at the dome

  • Alter
    • has had two sacrifices
    • is consecrated to aim
    • manna storage adds to his power when he gets here
  • Dagger
    • gives death aspect to the wielder
    • requires a sacrifice every moon cycle or it takes the life of the wielder
    • has cumulative 1% chance of dieing with every moon cycle

Ty summons Belladonna and we ask that a guild party be sent out to deal with the dome and the dagger and to intercede politically with Lord George and Duke if required.

We go to the new keep and have lunch with Lord George and George junior, Lord George's wife is absent. We explain events and that Lord George has to go up and set the revenant of his father to rest, he is not happy but we offer to come along and help. So we and Lord George go back to the old keep and Lord George goes in to get the bones of his father, when he brings them out the revenant walks into the sunlight and disappears.

The guild recovery, clean up grew arrives in the early afternoon, we spend some time explaining what happened and showing them around.

An air mage in the recovery party conjures up a cloud and we get a free ride back to the guild.

Group Expenditure/ Profit

Total time on adventure 13Nov-26Nov(Thaw)
10 days

Expenditure

  • hard rations for 21 days
  • fodder for 21 days
  • 5 guild horses (returned unharmed)

Income

Loot Mundane
5 sets hard leather armour
2 sets heavy plate armour
4 sets half place armour
5 small round shields
5 scimitars
5 daggers
5 hand and a half
armour and weapons from Aim's thugs
good wine form hidden cellar
Magical/Important
Priest of Aim magical dagger (death aspect, sacrifice every moon cycle, 1% cumulative chance of death with use) ~2500sp
1 magical red cloak (adds 3pts armour, wearer is fire proofed, 1% chance it will go up in flames)
2 tomes on Necromancy
2*rings-3 weapons of flame rnk10
3*rings-2 weapons of flame rnk10
1*rings-4 self immolation rnk10
2*rings-2 fire flight rnk10
3*rings-1 fire flight rnk10