Brave new world

Summary

Adventure: Brave new World
GM: Jim
Session: Spring 819
Night: Thursday
Location: Discord
Level: Tangerine

Adventurers Inc*

• Sebastian Jr (CEO/CFO) - a young got getting, out from his fathers shadow, and rhythm lute player.
• Logan Kai aka The Cardinal (HR and Communications) - a man of the cloth and bass lute player
• Pierre - (Marketing and Procurement) - dabbles with Runes and plays the drums, organ and symbols. Band manager.

* warning: May contain nuts.

Notes

The author assures the reader these notes are at least 70% correct.

In the beginning

Cardinal, Pierre and Sabastian meeting in the Isenkirk city, in the county of Palentine. It’s a large bustling metropolis with much to offer and part of the Holy Empire. The city contains many competent magicians and many interesting goods. Sabastian discovered they sell bronze which is at strong as steel, and after some enquiries meets with the smiths guild. One must apprentice with them for some years to learn the techniques, but there are exception if a tasks if perform the guild master – and there is one looking for rubies from the chest of pagan idols, Herne the Hunter, located in the north.

Dastardly Ogres

The Margrave of the county hired us to deal with the Ogre menace to the north, which he claims have been recruited by the 'Heathen menace', to protect their worshipers. We are being paid 12 gold shillings a week to do this, plus extra for each kill. After some discuss, and the purchase of red glass, accompany a trade wagon north, and pass through the dangerous wastelands. Arriving the wooded north we talking to the locals we learn of horrific Orge raids, led by a fearsome Orgress, that are raising villages far and wide to steal children. Being great heros we set off to put an end to these raids. Many weeks later, having searched a small amount of the enormous forest, we finds ourselves on the coast having found no sign of the ogres. We camp of a hill for some days and look for signs of habitation. We summoning some owls, which are clueless, but have greater luck with some foxes, once Sabastian assures them he is an authorised hunter.

The foxes have an organised network, we do notice their red colour reflects their political motivations, and report a group of two dozen ogres attacking 7 days to the north about a week ago. Half went in first and once they had overcome most resistance, the rest came in. Some days later we arrive at Winterkeel, a large cove containing three villages - one of which was burning. The survivors reported it has been raised by the ogres on skiffs. The reason we couldn’t locate the ogres is they are on boats, which are anchored far from shore. We talk to the inhabitants of the remaining villages, they are enthusiastic for us to stop the Ogres, but too terrified to help. We concoct a cunning plan!

The cunning plan

A few evenings later we are being pulled by a giant squid (Hook), under Pierres darkness, toward the ogre vessels anchored some distance off shore. There are three connected boats, one fancy looking and two skiffs. As we are closing the fancy boat disconnects and sails away at an astonishing speed (magic). We spot the heraldry of a Krenchenti (three crescent moons on a shield) a merchant family from Kendrin, the, on the departing boat. They are behind the Ogre raids!

Once we are close, we hear the “grunting” sounds of celebrations. We are revolted. Hook carries Sabastian the rest of the way and he stealthily deposits time delayed grenados on the two boat. There is much panic when the grenados explode and the Ogres cannot extinguish the spreading fires, two Orgres in light armour (mages) leap overboard, into the maw of Hook. The Cardinal begins peppering them with fire bolts, which adds to the chaos. The ogres abandon one boat and all pile onto the other, which is in the better condition. There are many ogres are in the water and Hook begins a feed frenzy.

The large Ogress (wiccan) takes command and start pursuing us, even burning they are faster then us and we begin worrying they’ll catch us. Spells and weapons are exchanged until the Ogres are forced to abandon the chase and head to shore before they sink. Some well-placed darts final slay the Ogress and she falls into the sea. The remaining Ogres (about 10) make it to shore and flee into the forest. We pick up the bodies of the mages and head to shore.

Celebration and new plans

We head to the village and tell them of our success, they are overjoyed and much celebration takes place. Sabastian has to fend off the ladies. Pierre is able to identify some of the items we recovered.

Over the next few days we plan. We want to find and slay the remaining Ogres as they are still dangerous creatures. Summoning some wolves we learn they have not seen any Orgres, but their pack is fleeing a fearsome creature. Divining the stars, after a few drinks, Sabastian learns it is a vampire. Talking to the locals about the terrain the Cardinal decided the stars were wrong as there was lots of flowing water the vampire would have needed to cross. Checking the tea leaves we see it’s a were-badger, and well see it in the area again in about 22 days.

After a few days of recovery we set off after the Ogres. Logan uses his masterful tracking skills, and a locate spell, to find the breasts. Taking a boat across the bay, past Akon, and trek for many hours through muddy water deep into the woods to finally locate the Orgres – they are asleep in a deep copse of woods. After a brief talk Sabastian offers to sneak in and turn them to mice with the wicker skin change, what could go wrong!

It goes wrong

Sabastian silently creeps into the Ogre encampment and turns the first to a mouse, then pockets it. Moving to the next Ogre things go wrong, it awakes and lets out a shout. Sabastian runs. Many failed castings follow and things are looking grim for Sabastian as the rest of Ogres wake up plan a late night Sabastian snack. He finally makes himself unseen and manages to evade the Ogre pack and make it back to the party.

The party retreat a few miles away and rest up for a few hours, letting the Ogres settle down before heading back to bother them again. Logan spots tracks and spore of an enormous creature, he estimates its at least 8ft tall and weighs many hundreds of pounds, and is definitely the gigantic were badger. Given the enormous difficulty of finding the badger we decide to leave the ogres alone and track down the Badger

Were “Badger”

Following the tracks for some time we finally come across an enormous muscular creature, with wickedly long claws, feasting on a freshly killed ogre. Logan assures us he was right, it may look like a were-wolverine, but is a very rare species of badger that has similar markings. The sound of eye rolling is audible as the wolverine turns and charges us. A vicious and blood fight ensues, the wolverine has strong regeneration and quickly recovers from our blows. Pierre is able to smash its hip, which provides us a lifeline, but it still manages to down him. Sabastian comes up with a cunning plan to throw the moused Orgre into the wolverines mouth, which would kill the mouse turning it back into an Orgre in the wolverines stomach. How could it go wrong!

Things go wrong, again

The wolverine bites the mouse and spits it out, the Ogre body lands on Sabastian pinning him under the body. Logan is left facing the wolverines blows alone! Logan peppers it with fire bolts, from which it cannot regenerate, which gives us a chance. He then manages to get past its defences and deals a deadly dagger blow - the wolverine is downed. A flail of blows overcomes its regeneration and kills the wolverine, reverting it back to a human male.

Return to Akon

Licking our wounds we rest for the remainder of the night, then finally trudge back to Akon. Talking to the locals we discover the village is in a desperate situation. As well as many people dying in the Ogre attack, their food stocks were heavily hit. The village won’t survive winter with the depleted food stocks, and the other two villages in the bay wont provide them any food as they fear winter starvation themselves. The local lords of the land are some weeks away, they may help but are known to be very disorganised.

Resting up

We take some time healing our wounds and talk to others in the village. We talk to Beirtoht(sp?), a local lapidary who has some skills with naming and alchemy, about the situation. He is able to identify that Pierre was infected by the were-wolverine and is able to help us make some alchemical concoctions and some traps with wicker counterspells.

Stomach ache

Having rested up we head back into the wilderness to deal with the other Ogres. We head down the coast for a number of days, its bitterly cold at night with light snow. Logan forages for food, but its slim pickings in the snow and he only locates what he calls “Forest celery”. While we eat the cold pie we brought from Winterkell, Logan feasts on his celery, halfway through his delicious meal he starts profusely sweating and passes out. After some minutes of desperate healing Logan regains conscious, but I can tell he is delirious as he explains he is the leads lute player in the band. The next morning Logan explains the forest celery was actually hemlock, a mistake even an experienced ranger like him can make.

Fearsome action

We travel for a new more days, we are forced to walk long hours to try and catch the Ogres. One evening we are awoken by Evening as she spots a winged figure in the forest, we poke out our heads from the snow covered tarp and struggle to see anything. Pierre spots spirits of crows circling a tree, and we finally spot a winged warg in the branches that is intently watching us. We prepare for a fight, which is surprisingly short. Luck is on our side - before the first blow is laid the Warg faints from the fear and its quickly dispatched. Examining the tree we discover it’s a locus of a crow spirit, and it has a military pick axe hidden in a hollow. Logan is keen to burn down the heathen tree, but it proves impossible in this weather.

Sore Feet

More long days of travel continue as we follow the location. Sabastian summons some wolves, they are very cuddly but are unable to provide any useful information. As the Ogres seem to be heading north Logan finds a quicker route and we are able to get ahead of the Ogres. We rest, exhausted after the many days of hard travel, and awaiting the arrival of the Ogres.

As the ogres camp for the night Sabastian sneaks in and drops the hemlock into their cook pots, the ogres are large so it wont have much effect – but every little helps. Some hours later we attack. Many darknesses, fears and weapon blows later 6 ogres are dead or turned to mice, four escape. Logan is nursing a vicious stomach wound. We decide they will not return and we head back.

Back to town

Some days later we arrive back at Winterkell and rest up, sleeping in a bed seems luxurious after the many days of sleeping on the cold, snow covered ground. Turning a mouse back to an Ogre we interrogate him – its explained that dark skinned people in flying canoes and wielding powerful magic tasked the Ogres to kill all the humans. Their plan was to magically breed quickly and kill every human. Dispatching the Ogre we turn our sights to the food shortage. Some wagons of food have arrived in our absence, but more food is required. We decide to head to Isenkirk and assist their contact, Peter, with arranging further wagons. Heading to Isenkirk shout take less than a week, but it takes almost three due to some strange magic – we discover it is also making the distance to the north of Isenkirk shorter, which would make the Ogre invasion easier.

Isenkirk During our trip we take precautions on the night the full moon to protect against Pierres change. We bury him neck up in the ground and watch him change, feeling secure knowing we’ll be safe – until he begins to dig his way out. We beat him unconscious and use a skin change to transform him from his fearsome wolverine to that of a man, which is far more manageable.
We arrive at Isenkirk and locate Peter, he is preparing a second wagon train of food for Eichelhorn and would welcome our assistance guarding the wagons. We spend just over a week exploring the town, its has a large bustling population, and learning about magic, trading and getting our reward for Ogre ears.
Amber Network We depart, leading the wagon train. The Cardinal is a skilled ranger and finds a quick route back through the hills. We locate an arch with a black amber keystone, after some further investigation we learn its part of an “Arch” network that allows quick travel to each arch. Just passing through the arch increases our speed, that and the Cardinals directions get us back to Isenkirk in two weeks. The locals are extremely happy with the new shipment of food and celebrate as they will now survive winter.

Ogre Hunting

Given a potential Ogre invasion we decide to head north and to see how we can disrupt it. We set off for a long trip, one evening many days later the length of the horizon become a vivid orange, its most unnatural. It cant be a fire, as the entire north would need to be burning. The air does seem cleaner and refreshing.
The following day we stumble across the signs of a fight, it looks like wolves fought a large creature and an icy breath weapon was used. The tracks lead to a large forest. Pierre stares into the spirit realm and sees spirit dragon over the forest, so we definitely need to investigate. In the forest the Cardinal has a spiritual experience and locates a spirt weapon embedded in an alter covered in stag symbols, it is powerful against dragons. The dragon above the forest roars and flees. We locate a few item hidden in the alter.

Spiders

A group of wolves, probably the ones involved in the earlier fight, approach the Cardinal and treat him with great reverence as he has the sword. They tell us to head north to another shrine. We head off and travel for some days, one evening on watch the Cardinal wakes us we it appears there are eight gigantic spider legs stepping over the horizon. We decide is a hallucination, or we are all due to die, so we go back to sleep.
After a week of travel the terrain slowly changes from forest and grass to hilly, rocky ground. There are some unusual critters around, we see tracks of large four legged creatures.

Gottenburn.

Some time, and much walking later, we make our way to the coast and arrive at the large bustling town of Gottenburg. Many languages spoken here, but we only understanding a few, but they have a fantastic variety of fish for sale and an amazing library. Many religions are present here and we hear the leaders want to keep the city free of exclusively one religion, the rumours are that a cabal rule the city through the puppet city leader.

Making use of the library, Pierre learns much of dragons. Sabastian collates information about the ogre and learns of an Ogre village many days north in the fjords. We head sail to the town of Tromtine and meet a friendly Bishop that looks after the town. The village of ogres is a week away by boat, it has only recently appeared but has brought a history with it – some think it has been around for years. We recruit five dim, but eager, axeman and are sailed many days up a fjord to the Ogre village and slip of the boat under cover of night.

Flaming Ogres

The Ogre village is small and dominated by two longhouses, it also has a port with four longboats. We sneak about the village and find the majority of Ogres are sleeping the longhouses, including three Ogresses. We plot. We start by quietly sabotaging all but one of the boats, and sneak under and on the roof of the longhouses. We use various magics to set them alight and the chaos begins. Much fighting later, we have slain 2 Ogresses and 12 Ogres – the others fled to the woods.

Leaving the village to burn to the ground we clumsily sail back to Tromtine in the liberated longboat, our journey takes much longer than it should due to our lack of people and inexperienced sailing abilities. Our trip is interrupted by tentacles that lunge over the side of the boat and try to sink us, but we manage to slay the beast and take its body back with us. The alchemist pay highly for its parts.

Bear Island

We travel to Tromtine and then Gottenburg. We learn some additional magic and hire some sailors, we head out to Bear Island – the rumoured head quarters of the Ogres. We travel for a week at sea, a tiring and wet journey, and approach the cold and windswept island in the dark. An Ogre village is on the east of the island so we land of the west and walk many hours across the island. The arctic conditions exhaust us.

The Ogres have built an enormous single longhouse that is L shaped, it was made with bound earth and it sits on stilts, its holds about a hundred Ogres and four Orgresses. They seem to take orders from a magical portal on the wall. The other structure is a Graving dock, with four longboats. We plot and decide to return back to Tromtine to make magical earth tremor traps, and learn some magic.

A month later we sneak back on to the island, half of the Ogres and two boats are absent. We sent the earth tremor traps, which all trigger at the same time, and stay back to watch the building collapses. The elite guard, with their plate around and halberds, stagger out of the eastern door and are staggered by a hellfire before the Cardinal engages them in combat. Its going our way until a strangely likable human staggers out of the wreckage and fires bolts of ice. The Cardinal and Pierre have slain almost the last elite guard when Ogres and the witches stagger out of the north door.

We engage the Ogres and the Ogresses witches, battling through a rainstorm, and the Ogres surrender once the witches are slain. The eight surviving Ogres make the wise decision to join us and we loot the bodies and wreckage of the building. With the extra Ogres and our sailors, we are able to sail the two additional boats back to Gottenburg and sell them.

Spelbard Island

The Cardinal had learnt that knowledge of Houses of Life might be located in a remote and difficult to locate island. We head of with enhanced crew and locate the island surprisingly easily. It’s a cold and windswept, with polar bears and seals on the coast. We trek our way to the top of the island and find a strangely trapezoidal shaped building, with a worm wooden frame and black grass walls. The building is huge inside, with a huge number of levels going up and down. The top level exits to the astral and the bottom to the abyss. After many days of study we learn various things; knowledge or dragons, the location of an astral event (very close) and some incantations – but no knowledge of the house of life. We depart and sail to a mountain on a close island, we climb and wait for the astrological event – which reveals the location of etheldum, which we mine. It’s a busy night and difficult task, but we locate 10oz.

Going legit

We return to Gottenburn and talk about our next steps. With our boat and sailors we spend the next six months trading and make significant money. We head to Seagate via a nexus to spend out money.

Other Stuff

Brave new world - People and Places

Brave new world - loot

Brave new world - Trade

Time

3 days of travel to the north with the locals before we started asking around etc.
7 days floundering around trying not to starve etc, which we waited for the foxes to return with intel.
7 days travel north to the villages.
7 days greek fire grenado's.
3 days fighting Ogres and resting
13 days chasing the fighting the remaining ogres 21 days travelling to Isenkirk
10 days in Isenkirk
10 days traveling back to Eichelhorn
10 days travelling north