Arandish Campaign 2010 - Session 9

Last session, the party -- consisting of PCs Hazel (Ftr-1), Innominus (Clr-2), and Uncle Junkal (Bard-1) plus NPC Dalgoop (Ranger-2) and hirelings Snikrop and Meathook (both Ftr-1) -- ventured south into the strange, mountainous land of Minoch.

Near the end of last session, four days into their southward journey, the PCs met a small group of cloaked humanoids leaving the Minochian town of Farn Junction, heading north toward Kaladar with a strangely empty-seeming wagon (most northbound travelers are contracted to haul goods to the Free City).  The two groups did not speak, but the PCs got an uneasy or uncanny feeling about the five cloaked figures escorting the empty-seeming wagon.  But they passed the cloaked weirdos by and, at the outset of this session, entered the town.

Once in town, Dalgoop (the NPC ranger) made for the Lazy Basilisk, a local inn friendly to traveling adventurers, to make contact with some people he knows.  Innominus and the hirelings hung out at the bar with Dalgoop, while Uncle Junkal performed his juggling act in the streets (making a small amount of sp) and Hazel sent her kestrel on a reconnaissance flight over the whole town. 

The kestrel soon returned, agitated about something it had seen, and it led Hazel to the southeastern end of Farn Junction, to a group of secluded, windowless, cylindrical huts in the woods a good distance off the main road.  As a clever disguise, Hazel donned her bearskin, which she had had tanned in Kaladar last session, and then she crept through the woods toward the huts.  At one point an arrow or bolt whizzed through the air near her, but she crouched down and froze, and no further missiles were loosed her direction.  Emboldened by the sound of retreating footsteps, Hazel made her way forward through the woods again and reached the first hut, finding the door padlocked.  She then decided to return to town to gather the other PCs before attempting to break in to the huts.

It was now late afternoon, and the whole party sans Dalgoop headed to the southeast end of town and crept up on the huts.  Hazel used her axe to break the first padlock, revealing an empty hut with some blood and gory remains on the wood-plank wall and dirt floor. The second hut revealed a fresh grave in one corner of the dirt floor, but no sooner did Innominus expose a dead arm than the party heard footsteps approaching through the woods, and fled the scene.  Night had fallen and Uncle Junkal in particular seemed convinced that the huts had some connection to the undead.

The next morning the party left Farn Junction (as planned) and headed further south -- and further up in elevation -- toward the mountain town of Fortinbras.  During the three-day journey to Fortinbras, the party was twice attacked by monsters, first a large roc and then a saber-toothed tiger.  In these skirmishes they lost both their hirelings: Meathook was dispatched by the roc, and the tiger slashed Snikrop to ribbons before anyone knew what hit him.

But despite these losses, the party made it to the small town of Fortinbras, and once there, fueled by rumors of an eccentric wise man thought to dwell on the mountain slopes nearby, they hired a local expert mountaineer named Crazy Ted to lead them on an expedition to find said wise man.  With Crazy Ted's help, they climbed the steep mountain and soon found old Zeke Duncaster, a very strange yet dedicated man who was busy carving wooden gravestones for hundreds of people he claims have been dead a long time.  The party attempted to ask Zeke questions about the local area, especially about any underground caves or passages that might lead to treasure, but Zeke was reluctant to advise them, and became extremely agitated when Innominus showed him an idol depicting Orcus.  The hermit Duncaster also seemed to recognize the bone tile Innominus showed him, though he refused to speak about that either.  The session ended with the party making camp in the same clearing as Duncaster's lean-to, with the intention of (next session) heading up the mountain to a "bad place" Duncaster mentioned. . .