Heading to the Castle Ruins Report
General Summary
Our heroes assemble, ready to head northwest on their quest to clear out the ruins of an old castle, as hired by the Town of Woodfare. The castle ruins they are supposed to investigate are estimated to be three days travel to the north west. Once they are one day's travel beyond the town there are no maps and they have to go by the rumours and directions given.
They travel the first day without incident. Felix climbs a tree to scout around and see if they can find the old road. He does. They then decide to set up camp, as it's already getting dark. They do the watch. During the night Saiya hears screams that disappear rather quickly.
Come morning the pack up and start along the road, trying to find a way to get safely through the trees to the old road, They come across an abandoned camp. Upon examining it they find small mounds of dirt piled all over, but no signs of people, except all their things are left behind. Saiya realizes that these look like extremely large bug hills. Everyone books it out of there, while still trying to be quiet. Felix makes noise, and the mounds start to expel some kind of large bug, approximately 1 foot (30 cm) long, very beetle-like. They ride away quickly!
Clayton managed to grab a backpack and a guitar from the camp before they fled. It had a full set of climbing gear, cook ware, 2 pairs of gloves (one light, one heavy), six bee's wax candles, a set of men's clothing, a machete, a wine skin and a water skin, and about a week's worth of dried food. Oh, and a toque.
They did figure out, thanks to Barclay's background, that these were Frazzlebugs.
Felix finds a way to get to the old road.
Later in the day they come across a tower. They try the front door and it is locked. Saiya notices that the top of the doorway is covered in cobwebs. Clayton decides to grab a bunch of these for spell components and gets bit by a spider. He uses a spell to dispel poison. While he is dealing with this, Barclay goes around and with Saiya's help gets a grapnel into the third story window (the lowest window in the tower), He climbs up and starts to go through the floor. The first door he opens, on the left, is an empty room.
He continues in and goes down the stairs. At the bottom is a room with two statues that look at him and their heads follow his movements. He runs down the stairs, through a short hallway, down another set of stairs, and is now in complete darkness. He crawls towards the door, which he figures should be at the end of this hallway. His hand feels an alcove, and he hears the grinding sound like what he heard above. He crawls quickly to the door, smacking his head very hard on it. He then quickly opens the door and flees to his wagon.
Clayton and Felix decide that they will go in. Saiya watches. The two statues block the entrance with halberds. Felix does a know essence on one of the statues and realizes that they are golems that are connected to someone.
Clayton tries talking to the statues, to no avail. Felix asks if he can charm them. Clayton says, "Well, hello there!". They try talking to them more. and there is no response. After a few shouts, Barclay finally comes out of the wagon to see what is going on. Barclay manages to walk past them, but they do not let Felix pass. Barclay goes back out, gets a rope ladder and walks and runs back to where he first came in. He gets them in with the ladder.
They go in and up to the top floor, which is an observatory. The telescope is capable of looking across the horizon, but only in the direction away from the already settled and civilized area. The telescope is also capable of looking at the sky from a 30 degree angle and higher all around, allowing complete observation of the sky.
Barclay decides to leave via the ladder and stay outside, while the two wizards want to stay in the observatory overnight.
Felix decides to investigate further. They get to the room with the two pillars covered in faces. Felix decides to cast know essence on it. He immediately collapse and start screaming. While rolling in apparent pain, he slowly moves towards the pillar. Clayton casts a sleep spell on Felix, which barely works. Saiya carries Felix upstairs. Clayton decides to know essence on what happened to Felix, and is affected by the same curse and begins to scream and crawl towards the pillars.
Eventually Clayton manages to will himself out of the curse (Extreme Test). He uses a spell to try and calm Felix, which works, and this allows Felix to try again to will his way from the curse, giving him a bonus on his willpower, which he succeeds. The curse is such that anyone who interacts with the pillars will be in extreme pain and see their worst fears. Once they touch the pillar, they permanently become part of it. The pillars are covered in the faces of former victims, and can stick their tongues out up to 30 cm (1 foot) from the pillar trying to touch anyone who comes close.
Felix and Saiya explore the third floor room that hasn't been entered. It is a large bedroom. The locate some boots hidden under the wardrobe. These are boots of no trace (they do not leave footprints).
They continue to explore, and are joined by the rest of the group. The explore the study, library, and the dining room and kitchen. They do find a life-sized, working sculpture of a set of mouse armour made from sterling silver and gold (value = 3500 blun). They also find a magical cooler, which Clayton copies the runes (successful scribe roll) that make it work.
During their exploration Barclay came across a statue of an extremely beautiful woman. The statue seemed to interact with her on an intelligent basis, including waving hello end goodbye. It did reveal that it had hidden in one hand. The ruby is ~1 cubic cm and flawless. It is not magical. The statue, however, is the spirit of the tower and is intelligent, but mostly still asleep. Barclay did not take the ruby.
End of Day 3. They have traveled for half a day from the observatory.
Barclay smells burning meat, so sneaks (scouts) to the west, where the smell is coming from, and sees a Gnar stronghold. They all flee north for an hour as fast as they can go. They bravely run away!
Nightly camp. No problems!
The next day they cross the first river into a village that is a ghost town. They find some skeletons, They realise the people died of malnutrition and were eaten by rats. They do search the place and find a sealed box with an old wedding dress in it. The chest is worth ~300 blun, the dress is worth ~50 blun.
Barclay explores the upper floor and finds a short sword that detects active danger within 10 metres. It starts to glow! They run away just in time to avoid a small group of giant rats.
We break for the session here.
Rewards Granted
chest worth ~300 blun
dress worth ~50 blun.
dress worth ~50 blun.
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