Rot and Roll in Ildrisholm (or Extreme Psychotherapy for a Hill)
The adventure takes place in Ildrisholm
Summary
Adventure: Rot and Roll in Ildrisholm (or Extreme Psychotherapy for a Hill)
GM: Dan
Session: Sprint 806
- Party
Ty Trident - male human Air mage and fighter (scribe)(mil sci)
Belladona - female human Fire mage
Sabastian - male hobbit Dark Celestial
Ishamael - male human Dark Celestial
Arkham - male human Mind mage (party leader)
additional support from:
Heinrick - Arkham's raven/jester-spirit familiar
Riptide - water mage and bargeman
- Employer
- Backo the Badger
- Mission
- Go to Ildrisholm and fix the "Soul Rot" thats effecting them
- Pay
- All the pinecones we can carry
Narrative
Day 1 (1/10/06)
Backo the Badger shows up at the Guild, there's a note from the Shaun the Leprechaun of the Ildrisholm Revolutionary Army that wants to hire the party to go to Ildrisholm and fix the "Soul Rot" thats effecting them. The badger says he lived on the Ogre Hill, and got sick, then Shaun sent him to the Guild. Some confused story; maybe a magic stone was helping them, but the Dark Circle came and made it permanently dark and spread some sort of plague?
Day 3
Organize random equipment and supplies to potentially help people, and barge up the river with Riptide to "the bottom of the rapids". Meet Shaun, he wants the "Earth Mind" back on the Ogre Hill, which might be full of Ghouls now and restore it to an Earth place of power. We chat a bit and purify etc. Sebastian reads the night sky and thinks we will be ambushed tomorrow night.
Other area rumours/info:
- says the cloisters is a main Dark Circle base, and the Air mages got killed or fled, and the Commandant now there might be a vampire with three other vampires and skellies and rat-people tribe!
- the hydra is a pet or part of the DC too.
- the goblins collaborate with the DC.
- there's something in the tunnel under the bridge, and something else on the invis hill.
- slug and witch dead.
- cats have "gone".
- baboons are more mad than before.
- kraken, troll, dwarf weaponsmith and gargoyles on IRAs side.
Day 4
We spend the day waiting, power up and head upriver. As we near the high mana zone 6 skeletons attack the underside of the barge, we pull a chain back and forth to knock them off and make them run thru walls of starlight. One explodes as it dies with a lightning explosion thing. We march to the "safe campsite", but it dosent seem to have any magical effect now. I ask the winds who think its still safe, and Arkham's precog dosent show us being attacked.
Day 5
We sleep during the day. About midday we climb a hill to have a scout. The top of the hill has a tree with magic of "portal" on it, this may be the one which goes to the Guild. Cant really see anything else. We head east and then north to the Ogre Hill. As we get to the road we spot three rats seemingly guarding and watching, we take then out and continue around and get close to the hill. Theres a shallow bowl with a waterfall and stream and the old ogre cave.
Inside are eight ghouls and a ghoul which which is a mage of Grave Magic; he cast a skeletal Hands of Earth and DTJs. We kill half the ghouls and the ghoul-master. The only loot is a cursed bone bracer, and maybe his death robe and a bit of bone club thing. We go to the top and check out the stone circle, which is now sort of dark and engraved like gravestones or something. This is in direct LOS of The Cloisters. The engravings are more like a reflection of the corruption more than the cause of it. We think the Earth Mind might be asleep or suppressed somehow. We spot two rats spies, kill one but Ishmael Starfires the other, despite the previous "no obvious magics", and run for the woods. We lurk but dont see any angry vampires, a precog indicates we might be fine, but i send off a Whispering Wind just in case. We find some writing in Ogre, but no-one can speak it.
Decide to speak to the goblins, well we send Sebastian and Ishmael in as they known them from before. The goblins are really wealthy now, did some huge trades with DC barbarians and got some rank 20 Necrosis which go off if killed, and other investeds, so noone is messing with them at the mo. They translate the Ogre writing (sort of) and said its something like Geo has gone to live with the Gnomes. Geo's brother might have gotten press-ganged into the DC army. Brother Smegma of the Air Cloister says the Abbot got killed, while Zephyr and Master of Novices got away, maybe further north? Those two get horribly trashed on fungus-juice, drugs and who knows what else. Some bestiality may have occurred too.
Day 6
Next day the party meets back up. We walk to the Sweetwater and use Air Flying to the Gnomes. We find Geo the Earth mage ogre, who left 6 years ago, says theres a Genis Loci, a "spirit of a location", who is usually asleep. Isnt sure, but thinks maybe cleaning up the hill will help, and agrees to go back and help us. Sleep.
Day 7
Fly back, Sebastian runs off into the ghoul tunnels. We ponder and decide to clear the ghouls. We block the holes at the top and work our way from below and trap them and kill what we can. We map the lower tunnels and descern that theres only one main tunnel from the lower area by the ogre cave to upper area. We crawl thru loads of tunnels, meet a sentient ghoul (Gnasher) which is odd, and DA it as plane of origin The Dreamlands.
Gnasher says he goes thru these tunnels and out to different graveyards. He also says there's a Veil of Bones where they throw crap and some dangerous "Dolls" crawl down there. Gnasher leads us for 10 mins out into a huge sunless cavern, and theres crags about. He heard about a stoney thing that got chased by a strange guy who controlled some ghouls, and went to the city of the Guggs. There's a super-large tower there which leads to the Upper World. The city has lots of tall 80 foot windowless towers with 30 foot slits for doors, the architecture is "cyclopean". When we get down there he says the Guggs like eating ghouls... We get to the big tower, and Arkham examines a rune above the door and goes catatonic. We slap him out of it and sneak into the tower. It's hundreds of feet tall, 120 feet internally and has an unsupported 20 foot wide staircase. As we get about 3 turns up a Gugg enters below and follows up after us. We decide to leg it and use various faster methods to get up. Sebastian sneaks a look back and yes the Gugg causes fear, but he fortunately passes, and sees a 20+ foot tall humanoid with four arms, nasty weird vertical teeth and one breast. We get to the huge heavy stone trapdoor and exit.
Above is the "Enchanted Forest" and theres a strange cyclopean stone circle with Zoogs; rat/stoats with tentacle mouths. They can talk and say a stone guy chased by things like us came here ages ago. They ran off towards the river Oulkarnos. They invite us to eat cats (which talk naturally) and drink Moonsap with them. We pretend to want to eat one, and grab a cute kitten and head to the river. The Cat called Zila says shes from the city of Althar on another river by mount Thorin. We camp for the night.
Day 8
There's a mountain to the SE another SSW where Althar is, and one river quite far north and another south. We Firerun to the southern river then along till it runs out. We do some fishing Sebastian-style, putting a wall of dark into the river, and eat. South further and theres a village and the city over it. Sebastian goes unseen and talks to some cats who suggest we talk to Attal the sage. They lead him to Althar and a big tower/temple. Sebastian talks to Atal and suggest to get home to go up a tree of the steps of seven hundred slumbers, then a cave of eternal flame and be nice to the two people, and then? He also says the cats dont really run things, but there is a law that you cant kill a cat. Zila is a princess apparently, and the city cats are happy.
Day 9
Fly north to river, then a huge 10 mile tall mountain, mill about up and down and all around after we see some marks which might be the Earth Mind/Elemental fighting something, but its got no air from about 8 miles up. Much dithering. By concentrating on not being ghouls we become more human, Arkham says "it's nice to have genitals again!".
Day 12
Fly back to cat city and talk to Atal. He says we are in a dream and not really here, it may be able to be controlled. Says time flows differently to the real world, and beings not from the Dreamlands have more power to create/control the dream than natives. Dream beings may be able to go thru physical portals to the real world but not common. He says the Eldar Gods sometimes dance on top of the mountain, and there are ways to contact them, but its not recommended and they are very fickle. A few more Astrology readings point that it is the mountain, so we piss about getting cash and equipment for a return. There is also a (somewhat scary) indication a mechanical breathing apparatus might help us get up the mountain. Sebastian gets distracted when he learns King Kuranes is a super artist and made/dreamed the city of Celephais and is highly skilled. Arkham learns if you go to Cadath in the far north you can meet the Great Ones (random gods) but they are capricious, and the Eldar Gods are more powerful beings than real gods. We make all this stuff, train a bit and construct our breathing devices.
Day 61
We fly to the mountain.
Day 63
Go part way up, land, power-up, rest and continue. We fly up, hit the airless bit, land and put on the air-helms, and go to 9 miles. About this point we see a plateau/shelf with about a dozen human-sized earth elementals. We land and Sebastian pokes one, who then starts moving, some Ghouls start popping up under the ground, so we flu up, and along a gorge, theres another plateau with some figures, maybe a dozen.
We fly a bit closer and Sebastian gets DTJ/bone sharded by one of those mages, as our air-tanks are running out we fly off a bit, land swap tanks and fly back to give them a slapping. Sebastians does a flyby Meteor Storm, then we land put a couple of Walls of Light down until combat. Theres much fighting in close while on fire with Greekfire, but get them all. Where the bad guys were all standing about is a badger, which appears to be the Earth Mind. We firewalk to the Jasper peace-Temple to calm it, as the badger dosent like flying. Arkham hypnotises it to keep it calm, and its massively putting on weight.
Day 66
Head into forest to look for the big tree. Theres an Oak and a weird purple tree, we head to the oak and approach on foot. The oak has a huge stone archway and up 700 steps, then into a meandering tunnel and to a stone cave with an ever-burning flame and two male humans. They say we are free to go as they stop people coming in, and other guardians stop some other entrances. They also said we should be able to return, as we are worthy, but might be hard to master.
We go up another 70 steps and become hazy/sleepy and then... wake up. With no badger. The earth-mind seems to be back via ESP/telepahy. Up the top of the hill Geod thinks we've only been gone hours, and the hill is rumbling and seems to be realigning itself and cleansing. A stoney hand rises from the earth and crushes a big purple crystal, which in turn seems to dissapate the Dark Cicrle darkness above this NE area. The Hill-mind says it thanks us and wants to give us gifts (Earth general or a limited Earth special spell), and may be willing to help clear the DC in the area. It also says it needs a Guardian, who can use its powers, to stay and protect it. people mill about and decide to do various things in Brastor the Hill or surrounds, but essentialy the adventure is over.
Quotes
Arkham "it's nice to have genitals again!"
