Session 3: Saving the Salvagers

General Summary

Flamesday, 15 Seeding, 998 Y.K.
The following morning, the group reconvened at Krayg's office in the basement of House Tharashk's guildhall. The orc made a big show of being pleased to see Spark and the company, an act quickly belied as Krayg told Spark he was only still talking to her at all because Rellick saved his niece Xena's life.
Krayg told the group that he'd gotten wind of an expedition from House Cannith to explore an abandoned lumber camp and recover some reagents that had been lost during the war. The players were told they could keep anything they found above and beyond, and they'd be rewarded for their time, but they had to bring back either whatever the recovery team was after, or precise information about what they wanted and where it went. He also made it very clear that, after this, the party and House Tharashk should probably part company for a while, to let the recent sting of Siege's actions fade.
Spark and the party hired a freight transport to fly them eastward. The dockmaster, a member of House Orien, was pleased enough with the group's rigging and piloting skills to trust them with a whole boat with no captain, and they proceeded to make their way to the camp. After two hours of steady sailing north against the current, the boat reached its apparent destination: a palisade built around a clearing that crossed the river. The crew hauled the boat up out of the water using Zer's "sliding touch," and from there they snuck into the camp.
The lumber mill, a three-story building built across the river, would have been a remarkable feat of magecraft in its day, but this many years after the war, most of the building was rotten and falling apart. The machinery that ran the mill was decrepit and collapsing, and part of it even tried to lash out at the players as they got too close: a cluster of blades from a milling machine broke free of its spell-housing and attempted to render the party into planks. As nobody in the party was made of wood or interested in becoming part of a building, they resisted with some force, and eventually the energies of the machinery were dissipated and the blades salvaged for more teeth for Bell.
Also of note, however, was the blood trail leading in from the door and upstairs to the mill's offices. There, in the break room, the party found the survivors of the House Cannith expedition; they'd recovered a case from the safehouse, detoured to the ruined company store to look for salvage, and awakened a trio of bear-like abominations covered in bony plates that dripped acid from their muzzles. The bears killed one of their party members and put two more close to death before the party fled. One of the bears gave chase and trashed the inside of the safehouse when the party disappeared into a space the bear couldn't follow. The other two bears, wounded by the party, retreated with the case they reclaimed from Cannith's group.
Zer got the Cannith expedition back on their feet, a move for which they were grateful after the party managed to enrage the bears further. They abandoned the case and their fallen comrade, then fled south back towards Sharn, leaving the party to recover the lost reagents if they chose. They did, after a great deal of internal debate about how to proceed. Zer successfully sent one bear flying across the river, only to be sent soaring when another smashed his inertial shield hard enough to launch Zer through the third-story window, sending a cluster of giant bats flying. With some additional teamwork, however, the part was able to put the other two bears down and recover the case, as well as some personal effects on the dead adventurer working for House Cannith.
Case in hands, the party opted for discretion and beat a hasty retreat back to the boat.

Rewards Granted

• Glasses of Elluim
• Half a dozen deposit slips with House Kundarak
• 170s found scattered across various tills and safes left undisturbed since the war.
• Three vials containing an unknown substance.

Character(s) interacted with

1. Krayg
2. The party from House Cannith (names forthcoming)

Report Date

11 Dec 2018

Primary Location

Abandoned Lumber Camp