Session 19 Report
General Summary
[session 19: 30.06.2024]
30th of Deepwinter/ Hammermoon, 1489, in the year of the Warrior Princess.
the moon is full
The walls of Maude’s lair are tall, the icy ceiling high. Melting ice turned to water condensates until the droplets gather and fall, creating a melody of slow, faux rain in the cavern that almost echoes. The sound drowns under the crackling of fire from under Maude’s cauldron. She’s cooking something, a large pot of thin, runny stew. It smells… pretty good, actually. Like coming indoors after a long chilly day outdoors and smelling your mother’s cooking.
But you all recall the grim sight in the ossuary, of carved-out corpses with bits and pieces missing, like a butcher’s choice cuts. The chwinga’s raspy words of warning of how she feeds, and yet something pulls Viridian closer to the cookfire, accepting a bowl from Maude’s bony hands and drinking it eagerly. The effect of whatever has charmed her suddenly vanishes, Viridian all too aware of where the bits and pieces of meat are likely sourced from. When Annie tries to de-escalate the situation by offering the old lady some tyanuchki, but Viridian is adamant that they ought to have nothing to do with Maude Chiselbone. As she blocks Maude from getting any closer to Annie, the old woman finally snaps and stomps her staff into the icy ground. The sound echoes loud in the cavern as she yells, “Dáinn, Dáinn, come to my aid!”
In the distance, you hear a loud crack, as if a great force had just exploded through a thick layer of ever-rime. Then, slow dragging sounds and finally, the loud, heavy steps of the beast you thought you had just killed. The undead frost giant emerges from the shadows, its hulking body still thawing from the permafrost where you left it. The same, undead light shines in its empty eyesockets, cold and terrifying. From beneath its feet, the lone chwinga scurries off into the night.
Primrose, still imbued with the celestial light of her goddess, gets the first hit in, knocking Maude off her feet with a beam of pure moonlight. As the radiant light scorches the crone, Vilu follows suit with sounding the funeral bells for her. Scorned and now enraged, Maude tries to gore Viridian with her preternaturally long talons. Viridian, being a nimble halfling, easily steps aside and counters her with a swift sweep of her trusty staff. Something in the air changes, and what feels almost like a spell gets dropped - the atmosphere is different, colder but more… real. More here. As the illusion of Maude’s old, croneish shape shatters, you see her real form - old, even older than what she had looked like earlier, a withered-away soul of a creature that once was, but never quite departed. Vilu has heard stories of hags, having believed them to be nothing but bedtime stories to scare children to into behaving well and to eat all their vegetables lest the hag get them - but one thing they remember that perhaps isn’t just a children’s tale.
Once you look into a hag’s eyes, it will surely be your own demise that follows. Anxiously, they tell everyone not to look directly at Maude, but it is difficult. Annie, hiding behind Primrose’s larger form, is petrified from terror of witnessing Maude’s true form, scaly and hideous. The lake hag looks almost like a corpse that was left to bloat in the water, but her teeth are sharp. In her thin, wispy hair, you can see small fingerbones braided in.
The moon is full, and somewhere up in the ceiling are still cracks that let its light shine through - one of the beams bathing Primrose in its white, silvery light. She radiates Selûne’s holy aura, and the moonlight burns through the giant that is still hovering near the entrance to the cave. A quick fire breath from Coco helps to put it back down. Fire has worked before, and so you know fire will work again. A horrible clank sounds throughout the cavern as the frost giant drops its weapon once more, ancient steel hitting icy ground.
As you fight the lake hag, her sickly, green-glowing will-o-the-wisp blinks in and out of existence, until it appears right in front of Annie’s face, attempting to shock her. She manages to deflect the disquieting attack, and sends her own magic missiles at the entity. Vilu, angered that Maude would try to attack Annie in such a way, joins in on trying to rid the hag of her faerie fire. Viridian is fierce in her defence, as she rains blows of her shillelagh-stave at the hag. When in doubt, hit them where it hurts, seems to be a solid plan quite often. Before long, you have Maude begging for mercy at your feet, crying how you’ve treated an old woman in such a horrible way. She promises you treasure from the bottom of the lake if you let her go, you can even have her precious cooking cauldron, if only she gets to leave the Maw of Ivory alive.
Annie seems to consider the offer, at least maybe Maude might know where Alcor has gone? As she asks whether she has heard of her brother, Maude’s reply leaves you all quite sure that she is lying through her teeth, having absolutely no recollection of ever meeting the man or any of his friends despite claiming to have done so. This settles the conversation, and you all agree that leaving Maude alive is likely going to only backfire later. It’s better to send her off into the realm from where she came from and not to let her roam free. As Vilu recalls, hags often live in covens consisting of several members, but so far you have only encountered one hag. Meeting another one might prove too difficult a fight.
Alas, not everything goes according to the plan as Maude has set her sight on Annie, quite literally this time. As she parts the veil of bone and wooden beads, Annie’s gaze follows - you all watch as her lifeless body drops to the ground. One last victory for the hag of the lake before Viridian hits her squarely behind her knees with her quarterstaff, the blow dealing enough damage to fell Maude. Quickly, Primrose rushes to Annie’s side to check up on her. You all watch as she works, her hands bathed in Selûne’s gentle light as she calls Annie back from the brink of death. The warmth doesn’t quite leave her as she gasps air back into her lungs, hugging both Primrose and Viridian close as she takes a moment just to breathe.
Vilu stays back, stepping aside as Annie reaches out to hug them as well.
You decide to rest by the fire as you take stock of your condition and belongings - Viridian hurries to retch up the contents of her stomach just to get rid of the soup. Annie takes the time to recover, as well as to identify that the ring she found earlier might be a Ring of Warmth, a spell of warm-keeping inlaid into the stone of the elaborate piece of jewelry. Vilu is curious about the cauldron Maude promised you, and after pouring out its contents, you decide to take it with you on your journey. It’s really heavy, and has embossings and engravings of dancing fae, animals and satyrs alike. There seems to be a matching ladle, and an odd, dented copper bowl that seems to emanate magic despite its weathered look. You leave behind a necklace made with small, brittle bones, some of which are teeth. Maude has a quarterstaff of gnarly silvery wood, its head decorated with the skull of a seal. She seems to also keep a small wicker figure in a humanoid shape.
Viridian finds another earring, another E.Haven engraved into the inside of the thick golden hoop. This one is found in a small worn basket by a thick stone slab. You do not have to guess what the dark substance covering most of the area is.
Once you feel like you’ve rested enough, Viridian gets back to work to relocate any footprints that you’ve lost. In the meantime, the others drag Maude’s body to the fallen frost giant and set them both on fire, to make sure neither of them returns back to life. The large corpse of the giant takes up most of the area that leads back to the tunnel where you came from, but another tunnel opens up ahead, and Viridian soon finds that the tracks lead further into the cave system.
You hear sounds of water. Not dripping in rivulets down the ceiling, but running as a stream. Soon, you come upon what looks to be the same underground river. The ice looks thinner here, but the footprints are clear, running onto the ice and into the darkness ahead. Viridian quickly follows, being the lightest of them. The crystal clear ice groans under her, noticeably thinner here. As she tracks the prints, soon she notices movement below her, under the ice. A fish-belly white hand, larger than her body, touches the ice from below. Soon, another one follows. As she watches in horror, she sees the body of another frost giant come into view, submerged in the icy depths. Its empty eyes follow her with the same light that as the other one’s.
The ice remains intact.
Carefully, as not to crack the surface, she makes her way into a separate crevasse that obscures her from the view of the others. Annie can just barely see the other side of the cavern, but there is what looks to be another waterfall, this one even taller than the one you climbed before. There might be solid ground at the top of it, but remembering how the ice was almost cracked at the top of the one you climbed earlier, misty-stepping into an unknown area might cause more trouble than it’s worth, so she remains where she is.
Viridian finds someone, an older half-orc man sitting by the frozen shore with an almost burnt-out torch by his side. When she approaches, he asks her to remain in place until he has confirmed she’s real and not merely a figment of his imagination, or another one of Maude’s cruel plots. Viridian watches as he pulls out a gutting knife from his belt and pulls up the sleeve of his thick jacket, nicking the exposed skin until it begins to bleed. When Viridian remains and doesn’t vanish, he allows her to come join him.
The man introduces himself as Samuel, one of the missing anglers. He explains that they had watched in horror as one of them got hewn down by a skeletal creature that awoke in the ossuary, and when they ran to safety, only later Samuel realised that he was all by himself. Now that he’s no longer running, he’s been stuck here with the giants under the ice, and Maude on the other side of the river. There are cave paintings he’s found, and he shows those to Viridian. A large panorama of them on the back wall, made with hands much larger than either of yours - giants, it must be. On one side, the paintings show giants, walking up towards a mountain to witness seven important figures, sitting in a circle at the mountain top. There are scratched runes underneath, but Viridian is unable to figure out what they might mean.
On the other side, another depiction, this time of giants walking down a river and into a cave, and eventually drowning themselves in a hot spring. Suddenly she realises it must mean the Maw of Ivory, the water in the cave must be from the hot spring somewhere, thus keeping the ice so very thin, even if the Rime has gotten to it eventually. Viridian helps Samuel back to where the rest of the party has been waiting, using the time to cover up the body that you found earlier. You exchange introductions, and decide to risk it on the ice, as the other way out must still be blocked by the burning carcass of the ice giant.
Samuel confirms that the body you found is his friend’s, recognising the boot laces as William’s. His daughter had given him decorated scrimshaw beads in the shape of small fish. As you brave it onto the ice, more large bodies float up into view, the awakened corpses of drowned frost giants following you with their undead eyes as you trek deeper into the Maw.
Primrose, guided by Selûne’s twilight, notices that further ahead seems to be another pathway, but the solid ground is higher up and you will have to climb to get away from the thin ice. You make it without any issues, Annie’s disk floating behind you as you go.The pathway leads down into the ossuary, and you warn Samuel of the sight that’s ahead of you. You can still hear the fire crackling, and the odour of the burning bodies. You try not to think of them too much.
As you get out of the cave, Samuel is quite delighted to find his own fishing boat waiting for him. As the boat can not fit more than four people, you agree to move in two groups - first taking William’s body over with Annie and Primrose. Samuel leaves most of your belongings with the remaining two, in case anything happens while he’s gone.
While Vilu and Viridian wait, they hear the Maw’s eerie cries as wind blows through its tunnels. It doesn’t take long for Samuel to row back and pick you up with your gear - as the boat departs from the shore, you notice a large, hulking shadow near one of the upper entrances, its eyes gleaming in the darkness. You watch as the crag cat turns and stalks back in, away from your line of sight.
Back at the camp, Annie and Primrose have managed to get a fire going and are in the process of getting ready for bed. Primrose has some extra things to consider tonight, as it is, after all, The Night of the Full Moon, and only one night before Deadwinter Day. Carefully, she maintains her holy symbol, wiping each nook and cranny with infused oil of the evening primrose. Next, she places her ritual chalice on a slab of ice nearby, offering a prayer to Selûne to hear their prayers when a small vial of red wine is offered for the Moon Mother. The red wine shall be left there for the night to complete the ritual.
The rest of the night is spent chatting and talking, each one of you trying to relax and rewind after the Maw’s events. You sleep while the Moon watches over you.
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