The Last Delivery

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Summary

GM: Stephen
Session: Spring 809 WK
Night: Wednesday (from 23rd Sept)
Location: Stephen & Lisa's in New Windsor
Level: Low-Med to Medium

Summary
An empty courier satchel has been delivered to the guild, attached is the Revenant of the courier. He would like some help with completing his last delivery and ideally exacting some revenge.
Employer
Lafayette, deceased courier.
Dramatis Personae
Payment
The balance of the delivery fee: 30,000sp.

Scribe Notes

ACT I

Scene 1

Scene: a room in the Guild. Gathered together are a motley band including a halfling, two dwarves, a goblin and three humans

Lighting is dim and shadowed. Table in centre of the room with a closed box on it. At one side of the table is a flask and 7 glasses. A robed figure is standing beside the flask. 6 guards, also in black, file in and take their places around the edge of the room.

Robed figure: Everyone, stand back! Are you ready?

Dramatic pause, then he opens the box.

Inside is a satchel, and from within, the gloomy figure of a revenant rises (suggest either an invis person with fluorescent paint, or smoke, or lit from below coming up through a trap in the stage).

Lafayette: I am Lafayette, courier! I was most foully murdered while undertaking a commission. I need to engage the services of a likely band to locate the item I was delivering and take it to my customer. But Beware! By accepting this commission, you will also accept the geas (mayhap curse? Will the audience understand geas?). The price of failure is unlife like me.

Party: Great, sounds like a job for us!

Robed figure: State your names for the record and sign them in blood on the contract.

Tall human female: I'm Tegan

Goblin (male?): Gobbo

Female hobbit: Daisy

Human female: Kayseri

Extremely tall Human male: Sven

Male dwarf: Henric

Another male dwarf: Mavric (becomes apparent from the voice that this is in fact a female dwarf)


All sign the contract. The guards file out, so does the robed figure with a backwards glance and a shake of his head. Can be heard to mutter "poor sods" as he leaves.

Tegan: Right then you unlikely lot. We'll sail to Aladar and ride from there. I'll arrange passage and we'll meet at dawn at the harbour.

Mavric: (wailing) no, not a boat, not again!

Exeunt stage left

Scene II

Scene: A boat, dawn. Items are being loaded onto the boat. Various crewmen, a Captain. (maybe just a cutout?The boat, not the captain. We'll need a person to play the captain - reuse Mysterious Robed Figure from Scene I??)

Captain: Ahoy there me land lubbers, welcome aboard, ooh aar. Tegan: Thanks Gobbo: Being on a boat is like sex (begins to hump the nearest sailor's leg) Captain: Someone kick that rat off the ship! Henric: It's OK, I'll look after him. Gobbo - behave yourself! Gobbo: (humping Henric's leg) Sure thing boss. Mavric (downstage): retches Captain: Make yourselves comfortable landlubbers, we'll be there in a week!

Scene III

Scene: A stable. Party negotiating for horses.

Scene: An inn. Gobbo is tied to a table leg with a leash. Chaos ensues with a cleaver-wielding chef.

Scene: The party riding through the countryside. Gobbo is standing up behind Mavric. Daisy is riding with Henric. Ride past villages and towns, inns. Busy road, lots of horses and wagons.

Scene: An inn. Run down and dilapidated and somewhat larger than a human or dwarf would require. Stormy night. Main players are all wet.

Boris (an ogre): Welcome to Boris's Inn! Come in, come in! Dinner? Rooms? Beer - we make Boris's beer! Whiskey? Come in, come in! We give the inn a 1 shield and 1 axe rating - it's warm and dry and they didn't eat us.

We ride. Heinie needs to stop and pee cos he drank too much beer this morning. Tegan is going to forbid him from drinking at breakfast time in future. I told her, I told them all what it would be like, but did they believe me? No! Well they will now.

Come across scorched earth type tracks crossing our trail going north. We decide it's probably fire walking and decide not to pursue it.

We catch up with a wagon. We're travelling MUCH faster than they are! The people in the wagon speak some funny language that some of the party understand. They recommend staying on the road and minding your own business - there's things best not to know. And above all don't stay with the ogres - they might eat you!

We get onto a good road with farmlands around it. Reach outskirts of town an hour or so after dark. Town is called Gyldholm. Guards on the gate, typically nosy. This is Princess Isileth's town. She is a Guild Member and apparently someone of some importance. The guards and the carter recommend the Wayfarer, but it looks very expensive. We look for another place to stay. Tegan takes the satchel off and suddenly she has a tail and wandering eye. But it's that or a visible revenant. Plot device "Whatever you do, don't mention the eye". It's very flash here, and we have to dress for dinner. We get a private dining room (it's either Sven's codpiece or the revenant, not sure which!) and the serving people don't want to come in. It's very flash, but somehow I liked Boris's Inn better. It's amazing that it was only 24 hours ago that we were enjoying their generous serves and bad beer!

We dance in the ballroom. We watch and sleep. We have a marvellous breakfast. What was our mission again? Couldn't we just stay here and dance and eat? We decide to press on to Asprintown, a full day's ride. This is a more normal town. We reprovision and ask around about ways of getting places. We decide to cut across country rather than taking the roads. Heinie learns about good fishing spots. Tegan finds that it is all safe, no known monsters.

We travel for the day and end up at the river. We camp. Sven makes a boat. We observe Tegan's basilisk catching food - it's too small to turn them to stone, so it can eat! The night passes quietly apart from Heinie's snoring.

Sven builds a boat. We cross the river. Yuck. Fortunately it's not long enough to make me sick.

Gobbo sees signs of goblins. I practice goblin polo with my war hammer so my horse gets used to it. Sven gives Heinie and I extra strength - yippee!! I pick Heinie up! We see the signs of their potential ambush. We make a plan and battle ensues...

End result: party: many! Tegan's horse: Tegan (broken arm, one eye put out). We decide to continue on through the pass. We travel till nightfall and make camp. The night passes but sme of the party are looking the worse for their encounter with the Goblins.

Scene IV

The day dawns with the party significantly infected with various 'interesting' diseases and we (those thinking straight that is) decide to press on to the town we think is a day and a half ahead. The party avoids some undead ruins and lunch sees us well clear of the dangerous woods. Half the party is tied to the horses and some of the rest just look off colour and green. After lunch we travel the rest of the day ending our travels at a homestead where we beg healing tisanes and poultices from the locals. No-one gets healed. We travel to a fairly large town, Moulinette, about another half day's ride, where we find a healer (and some grateful town guards who are pleased that we have dealt with the goblins, although we think that they might want us to go back and do a complete job).

We get herbs and I talk to Capt of the Guard who is an excellent gentleman and line us up another job on our way home clearing out goblins from the hills. We sleep overnight. We purchase an extra horse to replace Tegan's. Sven magics and old barge to be a nice new one and we head up the river toward the mountain pass.

We are greeted by a guard. He is from Aladar and he hates the people from Aquila. Side note - could be a great idea for a tragedy. Thinking the son of an Aquilar soldier and the daughter of an Aladar soldier meet accidentally and fall in love. Much misunderstanding and confusion, then both die and everyone is sad. Not sure if people will go for it, maybe make lovers young?

We join up with a caravan going north through the pass. Tegan has a pull towards that direction but also east-ish so we may need to head off to the side of the track. There is singing and dancing that evening. We have a good time. Until the bar keep cut me off. There was just a good fight beginning too.

Around midday, the pass is still going north but the directional pull is strongly east, so we may be parting company with the wagons. Tegan's wolf smells what she thinks may be Lafayette's remains nearby. We find his bones and a horse's bones. We determine that a whirlwind vortex killed him and that there is a ward or two in this area. Triggering conditions are either an ITN or someone who is keyed to the satchel. One ward is still active. We work on a plan to go around the ward. Tegan reckons that the contents of the satchel are about 5 miles away.A few miles on there is a camp with no buildings covered by illusory terrain. The illusory terrain is a higher rank than Kayseri's. We see two small figures doing washing. After a sterling combat, where Gobbo chases downhill and bravely attacked the enemy, we capture two kobolds. They are very scared of the Dark Lord. And of Gobbo, so the Dark Lord (who is dark and a lord and has henchmen) may not be very fearsome...The DL has only been around for 6 months. We go down the tunnels to find their healer who can cure broken arms in days! Tegan is taken to the healer. Daisy and I peer out over the DL's camp. We see about 45 men at arms types in partial/ full leather armour. Temporary camp with tents and cookfires. Lots of kobolds around doing various chores. There is a black silk looking tent from cliff wall which is presumably where the DL lurks.

Daisy, Sven, Kayseri and I go to see the Kobold Chief. He is in his Great Hall. The Chief's name is Argod. He is very welcoming and tells us that the Kobold are peaceful people who want to live in harmony with their neighbours. They have ancient feuds (well 30 years) with the goblins. The DL has driven the goblins out. We give our pledge not to cause trouble or expect the kobolds to shelter us if there is trouble. The healing takes 3 days.

We determine that the book is in the DL's tent. Luckily for us, he is leading his men on a raid tonight. Unluckily for us, he has a huge ward around the entrance to his tent. Luckily for us, we have several volunteers to break the wards - a random camp merc (we volunteered him actually), Water Sven (looks like Sven but made of water - actually, Sven volunteered him), a water elemental (now I come to think of it, we volunteered him too!) and Gobbo (he volunteered himself).

We make a plan. Water breathing on all of us. We go into the camp 2 hours after the DL has left. We use the water elemental (let's call him Aqua) to detonate the white fire ward. We loot. We run, using our water breathing and proofing and hide in the river. That's it. Simple and effective.

We start off OK. We have the water elemental and water breathing. Then Tegan starts rummaging in the camp and attracts attention. Oops, they start to notice.

Scene V

A wise man said that no plan survives contact with the enemy, the first planned actions go awry and the battle is joined. We end up defeating the guards left in the camp and then recover the book and a few bits and pieces before we flee into the stream looking to avoid detection by flying mercenaries. Just before dawn we leave the stream and find shelter some way away from the river in a gully.

Act II

We have the book

Scene I

We spend the day hidden from flyers looking for us in a cold but dry gully. Night sees us emerge and head south heading out of the mountains and then cutting east away from the pass. We avoid a local patrol of humans and before dawn again we find a cave to rest up in along with the mountain lion occupant. The day passes until evening when we again take to the night and travel east along the river in the direction of Moulinette which we estimate to be about some 60-70 miles away. Estimated travel 6miles.

Scene II

At dawn we camp and we spend the another day hidden from flyers in a larger cave. Night sees us emerge and head east and we travel stealthfully and before dawn again we find a cave to rest up in. Estimated travel 15miles.

Scene III

We spend the another day hidden from flyers in a cave. Night sees us emerge and continue heading east. We travel stealthfully and before dawn again we find a cave to rest up in. We have some rabbits in a stew and rest. Estimated travel 15miles.

Scene IV

We make to leave the cave in the early evening only to find it un-naturally dark outside, oops. A voice from the darkness wants to know who we are and why we stole from him. We identify ourselves as a guild party and start discussions. An impasse is reached and the voice retreats unhappily leaving us to complete our mission due to his contractual compunction. We travel for the night again covering 10miles and once we make camp before the dawn Mavric reads the book...

Scene V

Mavric gives us some information and we muse about it for the day before we again set out after dark heading eastwards again until before the dawn we again find camp after travelling only 9miles. Most of us read the book during the day with the result of this impetuousness being something unexpected.

Scene VI

Some of us wake feeling tired and with ache and pains in the head - some want to stay for the night but Tegan is a slave driver and makes us travel that night continuing eastwards (covering 12miles) where we get to Moulinette by 4am so we find a secure camp deeper in the hills nearby and again set to sleep the day away to avoid possible discovery. The day passes.


Act III

We pass Moulinette heading into the very rough and broken lands NW of Moulinette on route to our final destination

Scene I

We awaken in the early evening and travel NW through the night covering 10miles as we have entered the broken lands and then we find a camp and hide for the day in the rough terrain.

Scene II

We awaken in the early evening and travel the night covering 8miles and continued hiking the mountains the full day covering another 12 miles before we find a camp for the night.

Scene III

After a normal nights sleep the dawn breaks, finding us in the deep roughlands and we start a normal days trudge through the barren clefts and hills heading directly westwards now and we cover 12 miles. We camp the night during which Gobbo reads the book to see how far he can get and gets to page 8 & 9.

Scene IV

Dawn sees with an overcast sky threatening bad weather so we push on hard covering another 11miles across the roughlands. We camp the night after seeing a Wyvern in the Mountains to the South. We think we can see the border of the roughlands in teh distance - perhaps by the end of tomorrow.

Scene V

We travel the day yet again covering another 10miles before we get out of the roughlands and make camp for the night in a nice cave on the edge of the roughlands.

Act IV

We are now back in level lands hopefully far enough away from the eyes of our pursuers

Scene I

We travel by horse across the plains heading west and arrive at the foot of the mountains SW of Norbarrety some 10 miles West of the Drosky Pass. We make camp to rest up the night to refresh ourselves some 2miles north of the mages tower that is our destination. During the night some of us read the book more causing issues including Kayseri's death.

Scene II

We walk with the corpse up to the tower and a weakened Mavric. The tower is almost melded into the hill and we go up to the thick iron bound gate and ring the knocker. De'Maro is the client we are informed by Lafayette. We wait and are greeted by a being who invites us into his warmly furnished home that looks very homely. He resurrects Kayseri for us and then heals Mavric's arm, followed by Tegan's eye. To get Lafayette back into a body, we need the chest skin of a mummy. Luckily, De'Maro has a magic mirror that will take us to a place where we will be able to find a mummy. Oddly, we all leap through with no reservations...only after we are through does Lafayette suggest that we should have asked what payment will be required for all these services...

Scene III

We find ourselves in a jungle, with a stone structure in the distance. We head towards the structure. It is an enormous tomb. There are lots of levels and lots of undead and we feel worse and worse as we go down and down. The bottom level has what appears to be 4 mummys laid out on funeral biers. We remove one and wake them all up. A fight ensues. We seem to be winning, thanks to Gobbo and Daisy's valiant efforts. We charge back up the stairs only to find that the doors are magically shut and can only be opened by the push of a man. We try many different ways including Sven taking one for the party, dropping his codpiece and thrusting against the door. Note to self - could be a good atmospheric piece with going down the stairs, cloudy misty spirits following, mummys. Maybe lose comedy of thrusting against the door.

The door turns out to be an anti-theft device and as soon as we put down all the gems, Sven is able to open the doors, but not before Daisy dies taking treasure out with her. Yippee!! Unfortunately it's only 9ish at night and the mirror portal doesn't open until dawn. The undead don't seem to be following us out, so we hope that we're clear of them now. We still have the mummy skin. The night passes uneventfully, we hope!!!

Scene IV

Morning has broken! We get through the mirror OK and back to De'Mora's. We had forgotten that we also needed a body to resurrect Lafayette into. We head back out to Norbarratty and get our nasty infections healed. We also liberate a corpse and then head back to De'Mora where he resurrects Lafayette into the body.

Scene V

  • 18th Seedtime: Depart Alechon
  • 21st Seedtime: Depart Sven's Tuscana estate heading westwards across the plains heading for the river that will take us down close to Zirac Holdings.
  • 28th Seedtime: Arrive at head of the river XXX
  • 29th & 30th of Seedtime: We travel downriver and then walk for the final 20 miles until we get to Zirac Holding. We spend the night catching up with relatives and relaxing after some arduous journeying.
  • 1st of XXX We go hunting for some of the evil local goblins to fulfil the party's need for captives. We capture 4 goblins from a patrol of 20 and take them back to the Cave of Eagles under the high mesa some 12 miles away from the Holding. Tegan and I utilise some new magic and the goblins are disposed of - the cave is possibly now known as the 'Cave of Souls' as a result. It's late and we decide to spend the night in another cave nearby. During the night some 20 goblins and 1 troll come to exact unpleasant vengeance on us. We do well and seem to have the upper hand using flash of lights to keep the goblins away until they let loose the troll on us. Things look bad with the troll trampling and doing lots of damage and being quite hardy until I mental attack it, he drops and the remaining goblins flee at seeing this. Since the Troll is down and defenceless Mavric hacks his head off using a flaming weapon until he finally dies - Yeah. The rest of the night passes but a few more goblins die for Tegan and Mavric to be 'enhanced'.
  • 2nd of XXX We return to Zirac Holding and tell the tales and show our proof which impresses the family. We make our goodbyes and head off to the bay via the secret tunnel using Sven's magic. We travel the day
  • 3rd of XXX At the end of the day we sight Seagate and make landfall near the seawall and we re-enter the Guild, safe, sound and soiled.

Calendar

Spring 809wk: Thaw (10)
Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
Candlemansa 1 Guild Meeting 2 Arrive Sanctuary 3 4 5 6
7 8 Arrive Zoomalar 9 Travel 10 Travel 11 Travel 12 Travel 13 Travel. Overnight at Boris's Inn
14 Travel. Overnight at Gyldholm 15 Travel. Overnight at Asprintown 16 Travel. Overnight at River 17 Travel. Goblin Fight 18 Travel. Sickness. Heal at Night 19 Travel. Healer at Moulineytte 20 Travel. Barge to fort pass
21 Travel. Mountain pass, bones discovery. Meet kobolds 22 Healing with the kobolds 23 Healing with the kobolds 24 Healing with the kobolds 25 Attack Camp, Get Item, Flee downstream 26 Move South and eastwards 27 Move Eastwards via Horse Illusion
28 Move Eastwards via Horse Illusion 29 Move Eastwards via Horse Illusion and Mavric reads the book 30 Move Eastwards via Horse Illusion and book reading for rest of us 1 Move Eastwards with dead Kayseri and see De'Mora 2 Overnight in the tomb 3 Travel 4 Norbarratty
Spring 809wk: Seedtime (11)
Moonday Duesday W'ansday Th'rsday Frysday Reapsday Sunday
5 Travelling 6 Back to De'Mora and then more travelling 7 Travel to the river 8 Rites of Thunor Travel by river to Moulinette and stop overnight 9 River travel towards Bowcourt, past Vannes to Valliere 10 River travel up to Vallon 11 Rest the day in Vallon
12 river travel to Foxcourt 13 river Travel to Faircourt 14 We take foot between the Faircourt rivers 15 Equinox

Arrive at Couer-de-fer

16 River travel again down to Alechon 17 Eostre 18 The Seagate Spring Ball
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 1 2

Nominations and SGT Snippets

Reference Information

Divination of the Courier Satchel
A plain brown satchel (18"x12"x3") with a simple shoulder strap. This is a powerful artefact that will protect itself and its contents.
When the gold seal is closed, only the person that closed it and entities named at the time may open it. If star-silver wax is used to bind the courier to the delivery then they are affected as follows until the delivery is complete:
Effects as per Geas (to complete the delivery), Greater Enchantment, Disguise, and Illusion of Innocence.
Effective Rank = SP / 1,000.
The satchel cannot be harmed.
Anything within the satchel is undetectable and untouchable. Outside of time.
When a possession, the satchel is not affected by any magic targeted at the courier. Any magic targeted at the satchel will instead target/affect the courier.
The only time the satchel may be targeted by magic is when it is not a possession, even then most destructive magic will simply nudge the satchel out of time for a while.
The satchel is millennia old, it has some sort of link or origin with a messenger god or something like that, possibly from another plane.


People

Places

Loot and Expenses

Boat trip 250sp Seagate to Zoomalar

Snacks in Sanctuary 20sp

Horses in Zoomalar x 6 2500sp

Healer in Moulinette 500SP

Horse in Moulinette 800SP

Exposure to The Art of Magic and Life

Loot:

  • Healing Cauldron
  • The Seductions of the Grey Sylph
  • Celestial Scabbards
  • Warm Bedrolls
  • Camp Charms
  • Vial of Life Water
  • Vial of Elemental Source Water
  • Waters of Healing
  • 50,000sp and covering some of the healing expenses from employer
  • Troll Skull and Bones for Henric - to be added to the Pubs decorations

Quotable Quotes

On seeing a pitched battle between harlequins and mimes sprinting down the street, Gobbo was heard to remark "that was a running gag"

Tegan to Daisy, about Gobbo "I don't care what as he does as long as he's back on the leash before I notice"

Sven on being asked to drop his trousers and thrust against a door which can only be opened by the push of a man "I'd rather die." Pause "Actually, I'd rather do this". Drops his trousers and thrusts to no avail.

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