Lost Lore 14, Season Two Game 1: Stragglers in a Harvest Night
General Summary
It's been an interesting two months since Digby's death/disappearance. I used the power of Nisaba to cast Sending to him, telling him we could reopen the portal at his direction if he told us it was safe, but didn't get a reply. I presume he's either been killed by the creatures of that place or has been turned over to their will. We were able to vast Revivify on Ser Brightshine, restoring him to life, once we sourced the right material components and while disoriented, he was glad to be among the living, as also one of the living. Tadlo and Lorgan have popped by occasionally, they're still planning heists, and Tadlo was able to successfully copy the Clockwork Familiar that Ospher was then able to use for a dragon made of metal and gears that's about his size. We've each worked with the Order of the Basilisk when called upon as well, though we've learned nothing yet as to the origin of the black puddings that were found in the sewers. No sign of a change in any of the dragon's eggs either, perhaps their secrets died with the Aun-Kri.
Charity and Ospher have been hard at work on getting the school fixed up from all the damage with no classes having started yet as we still lack instructors beyond ourselves and students continue to wander in from time to time answering Digby's mysterious invites (excluding only the Frostmerite region). They also secured lines of credit and convinced local businesses to set up shop immediately nearby, drawing no ire from Street King Nimoy. A carpenter, a blacksmithery, a renderer, exterminator, a hatter and a carriage company, specifically, are within a stone's throw from the clocktower of the school. Through Brightshine's old employer and our friend Nicholas, I've convinced the Grand Order of the Lion that we are an organization worthy of charitable giving, as well as worth lobbying for since we rear "orphans" and some of them have blood magics that come to the fore without warning. Through this lobbying on our behalf, we've made contact with an occasional supplier of manacite and magical items, one Trevor DeWitt, a man of dubious origin who frequently bandies about stories of likewise repute. While he is one of many different merchants who come and go from Frial, we know that he supplies a number of magic circles in town. Today he dropped by to seek our interest on a Crystal Ball capable of both scrying and implanting a suggestion in the subject of its observation, he claimed it to be Baradradi in origin and that he went through great danger to acquire it from the crypts in the Southlands - The Eye of Basul. He had six additional charges of manacite that would come for free with the Eye, or for 25 gp each if we elected to not purchase it. Ospher was able to confirm that Basul was in fact a Baradradi diviner that he died sometime around the Fae Wars, far to the north, helping Frostmere fight off and Ice Hag, casting immediate doubt on Trevor's stories. He wanted 2500 gp for the relic, which I considered to be a steal and so we set about bargaining with him in order to acquire it. He said he would gladly take items in trade and explained that he had learned of a technique in which he could break down magical items someone deemed worthless, and directly render manacite, and said that the manacite he sells has origin. I later told Ospher that my assessment of his statement was one of majority fact, and while he may have omitted that others taught him this, or it comes with some amount of work or trial and error, he was not lying when he said he could create the precious substance. He would not specifically explain exactly how much manacite one could obtain by item either, claiming it was a trade secret.
Charity and Ospher have been hard at work on getting the school fixed up from all the damage with no classes having started yet as we still lack instructors beyond ourselves and students continue to wander in from time to time answering Digby's mysterious invites (excluding only the Frostmerite region). They also secured lines of credit and convinced local businesses to set up shop immediately nearby, drawing no ire from Street King Nimoy. A carpenter, a blacksmithery, a renderer, exterminator, a hatter and a carriage company, specifically, are within a stone's throw from the clocktower of the school. Through Brightshine's old employer and our friend Nicholas, I've convinced the Grand Order of the Lion that we are an organization worthy of charitable giving, as well as worth lobbying for since we rear "orphans" and some of them have blood magics that come to the fore without warning. Through this lobbying on our behalf, we've made contact with an occasional supplier of manacite and magical items, one Trevor DeWitt, a man of dubious origin who frequently bandies about stories of likewise repute. While he is one of many different merchants who come and go from Frial, we know that he supplies a number of magic circles in town. Today he dropped by to seek our interest on a Crystal Ball capable of both scrying and implanting a suggestion in the subject of its observation, he claimed it to be Baradradi in origin and that he went through great danger to acquire it from the crypts in the Southlands - The Eye of Basul. He had six additional charges of manacite that would come for free with the Eye, or for 25 gp each if we elected to not purchase it. Ospher was able to confirm that Basul was in fact a Baradradi diviner that he died sometime around the Fae Wars, far to the north, helping Frostmere fight off and Ice Hag, casting immediate doubt on Trevor's stories. He wanted 2500 gp for the relic, which I considered to be a steal and so we set about bargaining with him in order to acquire it. He said he would gladly take items in trade and explained that he had learned of a technique in which he could break down magical items someone deemed worthless, and directly render manacite, and said that the manacite he sells has origin. I later told Ospher that my assessment of his statement was one of majority fact, and while he may have omitted that others taught him this, or it comes with some amount of work or trial and error, he was not lying when he said he could create the precious substance. He would not specifically explain exactly how much manacite one could obtain by item either, claiming it was a trade secret.
Adjenna and Ospher, I have something for you today that I think you might find particularly interesting...
I've learned a new craft that I haven't heard of any wizard learning in the modern age, I'm unique in that regard. I can take magic items that are of little to no worth, break them down, capture their essence and create manacite.
You don't say!
That is where my source comes from, the manacite you get from me comes from the relics of the past that have no more worth in today's world.
How much can one recover, then, from an item?Proffering the shield with crossed wings on it that we found in the lab, he explained he could get maybe 5-6 charges from it, but explained that he could possibly get more out of it, as he was still learning the craft. He said he would prefer gold overall, since he trying to open buildings, pay rents and lowered the price to 2000 gp. We offered the Midnight Tears that we found in the Aun-Kri's possessions, a Dagger of Venom from Digby's possessions, with Ospher retaining the other one, and Trevor offered us 800 gp for those two in addition to a bloodied bag he found on the road (which could have anything in it!). Our Alchemy Jug was valued at 400 gp, while Trevor blasphemed Thatur The Ledger Lord saying he worshiped only coin. Our Pearl of Power that was still tainted by Illsemine's fae magic was valued at another 400 gp. A Philter of Love appraised for 100 gp. We shook on the exchange, considering he likely downplayed the amounts he could obtain from these magical items, and would probably resell or use the stronger artifacts, and never have to bend to the whims of a cruel and mirthless Mayonaissier ever again.
It's a trade secret and also a dangerous path to walk. One cannot just crack open an item and harvest mana. It has cost many their lives and I wouldn't want to saddle you with this burden.
Are you aware of how Tairos was found by the Gods?
The gods, they moved on. Old stories that mean nothing.
I will forgive your blasphemy this once.
I've forgiven yours many times, especially with this crooked deal you're trying to push on me.
Prove it. Make me the freshest Mayonnaise you can. I'll be the judge of this.
You have a very unique relic there.
Are you familiar with the spell, Revivify?Within the bag was what I had dreaded; an invitation among some personal effects (skeleton with a hat, a toy gryphon, a piece of manacite) addressed to one Panthaydeus Trace, to join Headmaster Digby Sparrow at the newly refounded College of Magic in Frial. We adjourned to have the supper that Ospher had been working on prior to our meeting and carry on our conversation, lest we let on that our worry for the missing straggler was paramount. He explained the road to the west he had located the bag and mentioned a few nearby locations for us to know that we were in the correct area, a ruin of standing stones, an old barn, an intact grain silo and some fields left fallow for many years and creeping into the old Balmoral road. He claimed to not have frequently taken this road in past travels but the recent rains left him no choice as so of the low lying fields to the west and Lake Bask itself overrunning its banks in places, so he and his Donkey, Montague, took a road significantly less traveled.
There's not much I'm not familiar with.
Really?
I know a little bit about everything, and everything's always a little bit to Trevor DeWitt.
Trevor DeWitt is nothing if not a hopeful person. I don't think somebody would be dead with so many tracks in the area. Lots of moving and scuffling.
West of The Hole?At dinner, his contradictory stories granted me insight to the truth of his acquisition of the Eye of Basul, likely a swap meet or exchanging of wares where he gained the item. In passing, I asked him the way he normally travels to Baradrad, he explained that there's a few known safe roads, but normally he goes via boat through Tengu Town as he can unload a number of his less desirable items there with a significantly higher demand. He mentioned the desire to travel to the Stormlands as well, and we said we have all the giant in the Rylan Woods that we can handle. He didn't believe the stories of Segravia and actively baited us into presenting him with Storm Giant bones.
I don't know anything about the hole. he winks
If it is crime, I say it tastes good, I know enough. If it is not crime, then yes I want to know.We sought out Charity afterwards, she was working on cleaning and setting up a classroom and we proceeded to discuss which subjects each of us could even teach since we hadn't found any teachers yet. We then told her about the backpack we had discovered and agreed that the three of us, at least, should go check it out since we weren't sure where Brightshine was for the last few days. We decided to check with Bianca since her house/shop is only a couple blocks away and we can lock the lab and keep the College Keys with us to prevent the access to the portal. We explained the situation to her and she was very happy to help and also wanted to gift us a Driftglobe for the school's use. Showed her which dormitories were in use at the school and then left from the roof access at my Shrine to Nisaba behind the clocktower's face.
Well, I don't think it's a crime.
You never know.
Can you really teach an investigating class? That sounds like snooping.
I didn't learn magic by getting inundated by all the particulars of my school first. I had to learn what magic even WAS, for starters.The roads were very thick with people getting outdoors from the stifling heat below us in the early evening. With "frog season" coming on, the nearby morass around Lake Bask brought out scads of insects which then drew out the frogs by night. There's an interesting local delicacy of Frozen Popsicles here in Frial that Charity heard of and told us about, using ice-houses of Balmoran make that channel the coldness of deep earth and refrigerate perishable goods, evidently also in use in Baradradi locales. We also saw signs from the Kreastos warning locals about the dangers of manacite, thankfully they were outnumbered by ads from local Renders about rewards for fresh bugs. On the broom, we arrived in just about three hours, and made our way to the open field where Trevor said the backpack was found. It was in a field of tall grass, and of course, the frog noise tonight was unbearable, but eventually we found the scene he described. A traveled path by horses and footprints, there were a number of differently sized tracks, and fresh blood spilled about. They split into a number of different directions and we were able to determine that one of the sets of tracks was missing after some kind of event causing a panic among the travelers, leading me to think that the final harpy had taken up residence in the grain silo, which had some damage near the top which we could easily fit in and out of. Many trees had grown up in and around the farm, the fence had decayed from weather, but the farm house itself looked to be intact. We agreed to check the silo first in case the harpy was in her nest and observed some fresh gore and bones lit by a single candle that appeared to be within a carved gourd or perhaps pumpkin. We couldn't see far into the darkness within, so we sent Ospher in with Nisaba's blessing to sneak about and determine what was in residence. The walls and wooden floor of the loft also appeared to have some carvings that none of us could identify at that time either. Ospher told us later that he could smell something familiar, sort of like cooking bacon fat nearby. He sought out the source of the smell and was able to saw a lot of fresh blood and a bench with the pumpkin with a candle within and identified it as a tallow candle, with the congealing fat spilling out its rictus. It was very crudely done and there was a large amount of blood within the mix too. Out on the broom, I heard some singing off towards the stone ruins, and suspecting some other sinister fae about, we wheeled about to conceal ourselves within the shadow cast by the moon against the silo so we could hear Ospher and see into the opening still. Ospher said he felt a humid breath on his neck a few times while looking about this workshop, and drew his Dagger of Venom to turn around and didn't see anything and then began to edge his way back to the opening when he heard a few taps on the ground nearby. There, in the poor candlelight, he saw blood that appeared to have freshly dripped from above, at which point he heard a crude sibilant whisper in elvish, with cultish nonsense about revering The Autumn King. It then materialized in front of him from nothingness, a massive, ghoulish in appearance with skin the color of bruises, mealy green hair and large yellow eyes. Wrapped in tattered robes and cloaks, it was two full man heights, and was floating upside down slightly off of the ceiling, it was carrying a sack stained deep red with fresh blood, undulating with movement and squirming and held in it's gigantic grip was a freshly cooked child's leg.
Have you come to kneel to the king?
Depends on the king.
There is only one king.
There is but one king, The Autumn King.It then drew an impossibly long bone-like greatsword from the darkness of its cloak and swung it for a glancing blow against Ospher and then weaved the cooked leg like a wand and cast magical Darkness in the area. Ospher recognized the creature from lore as an Oni, or Ogre-Mage and familiar with some of it's prowess, he cast Haste on himself and then drew the dagger of Venom to attack it, and after slicing it with the dagger, the black veins at the site of the injury spread across the monster and made its attacks significantly more wild. Ospher's Clockwork Dragon was able to bite it as well at which point, Charity and I heard the ensuing melee and swooped down to join. It then manuevered behind him to use another of its innate abilities to launch a Cone of Cold at all four of us, stealing our breath and knocking Ospher out. I ran forward to attempt the Boomerang's powers of Banishment which it resisted and then covered Ospher from further attacks from the Oni. I healed Ospher and attempted to use the Bane power from the boomerang next, again to no avail. Ospher, conscious again, launched Magic Missiles at the Oni. It then swung at me, missing twice and moving towards the opening, in what looked like an attempt to block us in. It then summoned what Charity later identified as the Hunger of Hadar on the lot of us, with terrible whispers and grasping claws attacking each of us, encompassing most of the floor we were on. I channeled Nisaba's power into a Dispel Magic to undo this fiend's power, and then used a Shield of Faith on myself. Charity struck the Oni with a Witch Bolt and evaluated the room for possible exits and settled for defacing it's altar and tallow candle with her boot, eliciting a hiss from the monster. Ospher used his Dragon's Breath to spew magical poison blasts at the giant. Calling again on Nisaba's power to create a duplicate, I then swung at the Ogre-Mage-Warlock with The Great God Slammer and healed myself while blocking his attacks with the magical shield and Vale's power imbued into my shield. It then summoned a Cloud of Daggers atop itself to injure me and Ospher's familiar which then disappeared in a puff of oil and chimes back to ...Mechanicus? I have no idea, Ospher called him Servos when he disappeared. While sustaining her Witch Bolt, Charity pointed out a place in the ceiling where Ospher could collapse it atop it and I held onto the creature to prevent it from escaping. We continued to struggle beneath the sheet metal and he struck me unconscious with his monstrous strength. Ospher told me later, that between he and Charity, they then dispatched the Ogre Mage, mutilating it and severing the head while Charity tended to my wounds. Ospher fetched out the child from its backpack and after assessing the child as critically close to death, he administered a potion of healing to spare him from death. He also saw at this point that the kid had literally been consumed while alive, missing portions of limbs, chewed muscles off of fingers... incroyable grotesque stuff. The small half-elven child explained he was Panthaydeus Trace, and he, and some friends he had un-wisely told about his letter, were traveling to Frial when they were jumped, as we would later find out, resulting in their deaths.
I denounce your king, monster! You're going to let those children go!
My friends! They came with me, they wanted to learn to be wizards too. You have to find them.Thanks to Charity's help, I used The Great God Slammer to cut the metal off of me and saw that even dismembered, this monster was regenerating. After brief communion with Nisaba, she explained that this thing is not Fae in the sense that I understand, rather it was born of Nightmare itself and is not of our word. I used the Pearl of Power's reserves to reinvoke the Dismiss Outsider version of Channel Divinity that we learned from Sandor's book and it then melted into a black good and slipped between the floorboards down. Its cloak of tatters and its amulet with a necklace of rose thorns were the only things left of it. We then went back down from the silo and attempted to discern what the powers of the symbols were and what the amulet's powers were. Ospher and Charity recognized the power of the amulet as that of strong protection, but the manufacturer of the amulet could always remotely the possessor. We agreed that we shouldn't borrow more trouble and cut it to shreds with The Great God Slammer. We checked out the old farm house then, it was undisturbed by the recent occupants and I found a two century old bottle of mead. We recognized some runes of preservation about the area as well, incredibly similar to the cork bottles and wine bottles from the Wagner winery. Based on that we understood that the grain from the silo that was nowhere near as rotted as it should have been must have had this protection for some time. Ospher beckoned us over to the wine cellar where he heared a horrible croaking, down in the darkness of the cellar, we saw a fresh burrow through the stone wall where 11 giant toads and their spawn had set up their lair. The barn was filled with skeletal remains of animals, horses, goats and likely the former owner and a couple of sealed chests therein. Ospher made quick work of the locks, within an Onyx Monkey statue, some pieces of Quartz, and a vial of perfume, and six figurines of different sorts of fae with precious stones within their bellies. After some reasoning, we determined the owners likely died around the time of the Fae's pogroms throughout the lands, specifically with a blow to the back of the head. After leaving the barn then, I no longer heard the faint singing anymore from the revelers by the stone structure, so we decided it would be safe enough to check things out at this point. I put the regeneration ring on Trace's finger then and the gentle healing power finally granted him enough solace to sleep. I mentioned the singing to Charity and Ospher and neither of them claimed to have heard it at any point while we've been in the area. Bearing that strangeness in mind, we went to the ruins and determined that it used to be some sort of shrine or church to Tatayne The Breath of Life. All that was left of the walls was the back wall and some of the stained glass windows. Oddly out of place, even for a ruin was a large archway or gate, comprised of thick thorny branches and vines that appeared to be unnaturally grown and each thorn was javelin-length, and they were each covered in blood and flecks of skin as if someone was dragged through the gateway. Through the gate, very faintly I could hear some traces of the song of the revelers, Nisaba advised me that she and her servants can hear the prayers offered to other gods, and this was not a song, but a hymn. Was this Autumn King attempting to ascend to godhood here in Tairos? A terrible mystery is now laid at our feet. We searched the area around the profane altar and discovered some corrupted Candles of Invocation that were now dedicated to chaotic evil instead of Tatayne. Extinguishing these black candles with veins of orange caused the gateway to collapse and wither to dust, closing the connection. After we destroyed the altar, and returned to the barn, intending to set out afterwards, but discovered a large disturbance of the Barley at the base of the grain silo, as if something had crawled out. We angrily prepared the area to be set on fire to no longer be taken advantage of by the King's minions anymore, I conducted funerary rites for the slain children, and then the silo collapsed. At that loud noise, in the cellar, the toads fled extreme heat. We found two large casks of wine protected by the preservation runes we were now much more familiar with, a large cache of coins, two platinum coins, the farmer's signet ring, and a black lacquered suit of scale mail armor. We rode back to town to contract a hauling team in order to bring all this back to town safely to continue to fund the school. The Autumn King seems to be attempting to expand his base of power into that of where the gods tread. We'll need to determine exactly how far his power base has spread and see if there's anything we can do to curtail it.
Rewards Granted
A job done
Missions/Quests Completed
The Great God Slammer - another name of this spear of Digby's
Character(s) interacted with
Trevor DeWitt - A charming and enigmatic man of very vague origin. He's a reliable supplier of quality manacite and has given us access to items as oddly rare and unique as Bianca.
Bianca Loame - A good friend of ours and understandably sees the students as future customers, and possibly recognizes them as the future practitioners of magic.
Bianca Loame - A good friend of ours and understandably sees the students as future customers, and possibly recognizes them as the future practitioners of magic.
