Session One: 21/07/2023

We start ourselves back at the Inn, where the group is huddled around a table in corner, huddling over food, drink and the mysterious torn up letter gathered from the murderer of Gregory.

From the events that have just taken place over the course of the last few hours Stripes (for this session) has going inwards a little bit, not sure to make of the situation, but didn’t want to leave the group for their own safety, and stayed back to assist where needed

Upon discussing, the group determined there were two potential paths to take:

  1. Stay at the end and wait for the person that Gregory mentioned
  2. Try and find these Caves of Sliphafau and see if they can catch up to the meeting place.

Option 2 was the option that everyone landed upon, and Ko was very disappointed that he wasn’t going to be ‘Smashing everything up’ and that the team though being diplomatic was the better approach.

as they leave the inn, they come to the conclusion that no one in the party actually know where these caves are since they’re all from different parts of the world so they decided to ask the nearest guard….

….and this is the decision they will choose to regret? as the guard that appears was that of the guard they had met in the chaos that happened earlier that night. Trying to pull some information from him, to work out if they (the guards) had any idea of what might have caused the chaos and if they had any leads, and like first time, stuttering and useless the guard did not provide much information at all. eventually the group then asked about the caves and the guard did mention the location of the caves and pointed the group in the right direction…..

… after about an hour of travelling in the direction of the caves the group then spot the opening in the side of the cliff face that the guard had mention about. trying to work out who was the stealhiest (and trying to dig a hole for Ko to ‘hide in’ as there wasn’t really anywhere suitable for him to hide) Fentrix offered their services as being the smallest and stealthiest of the group to go in and investigation. Rae wasn’t very stealthy due to the armour they were wearing at the time.

As Fentrix arrives at the mouth of the caves, they could here echos coming from the caves, not quite clear enough to make sense, and thus ventured further into the caves.

going deeper and deeper Fentrix arrives at where the cave suddenly turns to the right, holding up against the cave wall to try and get a better listen of what is being said, words were still undisguisable, but the tone of the conversation can be determined, someone was unhappy and they were letting the world know about it…

Curious, Fentrix then continues around the corner keeping their stealth up they could see some light at the end of the ’tunnel’ getting closer and closer, words were starting to become clearer, but it wasn’t anything that Fentrix could understand. Still not able to see who was doing the talking, Fentrix crept even closer to the opening and discovered a large chamber and could spot 4 people ’talking’ in the centre at the bottom (it went down down down)

Though at this point, Fentrix’s stealth didn’t quite keep up to scratch at this point and a small pebble was kicked and alerted the 4 people to the presence of an intruder. Fentrix quickly spots that 3 of the 4 are suddenly appear to be casting a spell and at that moment ignores stealth and just runs, runs, runs for freedom and away from the sudden bursts of fire coming towards them. As Fentrix runs, the 4 others give chase, as Fentrix reaches the turn the group of 4 reach the top of the ramp and 3 of them fire off another volley of firebolts, all missing as Fentrix dashes round the corner and runs out of the cave (Cool Halflings don’t look at explosions)

Fentrix then runs behind Rae and Ko who both take a defensive stance to defend Fentrix…..

First time combat!

This is the first time combat for some of the members of the group, but it surprisingly went very very well! diving into it now!

Initive Order

Character Roll Position
Rae 7 6th
Mage 1 (DM) 7 6th
Mage 2 (DM) 11 5th
Fentrix 14 4th
Mage 3 (DM) 16 3rd
Ko 19 2nd
Spymaster 27 1st

As spritely as the spymaster is, as they’re running towards the group, draws out their trusty hand crossbox and fires off a bolt towards Fentrix whom was escaping the cave, grazing fentix on the arm ( Causing 5 damage ), in retailiation of this action towards Ko’s newly acquired friend changes to wielding their Great Axe and enters into a raging state.

Carrying on their bosses onslaught of the intruders, the third mage tries to conjure up a firebolt to fling at the potentially very dangerous Ko, and ends up missing by a long shot, and the firebolt just fizzles out, the mage looking a little worried in the process.

Not like being hit by the spy master, Fentrix turns around and returns the favour by aiming and shooting an arrow towards the Spymaster, which catches the spy master in the arm (dealing 9 damage) and causes them to let out a small grow of pain as it happened.

Not wanting combat to carry on for much further, Rae attempts to persuade everyone to put down weapons so everyone can just talk things through… The mages see sense and stop their ambush, but the Spymaster solid in their ways did not see into Rae’s persuasion… and in retailiation tries to intimindate the mages to start fighting again, but failed massively.

Not wanting to get involved in any combat, the mages just stand to one side, cast some magic to create some ‘pom pom balls’ and starts cheering to see how the rest of the combat goes.

Still feeling the effects of the rage, and Ko wanting to enact revenge for the spymaster damging Fentrix rushes up and twonks the spy master with Ko’s Great Axe, brushing against their armour (dealing 5 damage) and pushes them back slightly, this allowing Fentrix to fire another arrow towards the Spymaster and another graze (dealing 6 damage) and then Rae walks up to the spymaster, raises their sword high in the sky and pulls it down towards the spy master, using the blunt side of the weapon to knock out the spymaster, this works and the spymaster falls flat on their face, and also losing 6 teeth in the process.

Fentrix then goes over and picks up 4 teeth, and plans to give each of the mages one tooth as a sign, during the commotion the mages were about to sneak away, but the group manages to catch two of them, while the third does manage to sneak away from the rest of the party.

Fentrix then takes the Crossbow and bolts from the Spy Master, then thinking that if the magic words manage to change the personality of Gregory, then it might have a similar effect on the mages, to get them to talk more openly… but as the words were being spoken, the mages start to emit a horrifying scream as they just self-combust out of no where and end up as pile of dust.

While Fentrix is dealing with speaking the magic words and taking the Spymasters Goodies (the spymaster the group decides is the height of a certain Sunak person) Rae channels their energy and checks around to see if the presence of the undead is still around, but theres nothing. Upon making sure the area is clear, Rae then heals Fentrix up a little bit (Heals 3hp). Then Rae decides to throw the Spymaster up upon their shoulder and takes them with the group so they can get some answers from the Spy master when they decide to wake up.

The group then venture into the cave, where Fentrix saw them chatting away, and when they reach the overhang the group can easily see a massive chamber in the middle, walkways to get down to the chamber to the sides of the overhang, and down in the epicentre of the chamber the group can see some crates.

Down, down, down the group ventures to see what they can find, the crates? Nothing much appears in those, some plates, vases, bowls, random trinkets worth nothing to anyone. But lurking away, the group manages to find a chest with a padlock on it. No one able to pick the lock, Ko decides it would be smart to smash off the lock. Ko succeeds and the lock falls off…

Inside they find a Silver Dagger, in which Rae then acquires, 2 books of ledgers, 3 papers, and a small bag of various gems which Ko instantly has their eye on!

Each of these pieces of paper contains the following information:

  • Letter 1 - Shipping Manifesto
  • Letter 2 - Letter Explaining the plan (old)
  • Letter 3 - Letter Explaining the next steps. (Link to Next Steps Letter)

Having gone through the chests, the group then has another look around the area, and sees that other than the 2 walkways back up from where they came, there is also 4 other tunnels that they can venture through.

The team decide that there may be something special hiding away in each of the tunnels, so it might be worth to investigate them out!

Starting from the left most tunnel, the group go up to it, and Ko decides that they would check for Traps down the tunnel ( Rolls a 19 on Investigation) they identify that there was a loose rock, which plots a coy against them. Ko decides the the rock needed a kicking, which then reveals a very… very… very deep pit.

Moving along to the 2nd tunnel, Ko decides that the area needs some light, and uses their breath weapon down the tunnel… this inadvertantly sets off all the traps within this tunnel, which involve all sorts of swinging blades.

The 3rd tunnel, Fentrix steps up and holds ko back, saying that they would search for traps this time around, and notices a tripwire at the entrence of the tunnel. Rae then walks down the tunnel, misses the trip wires and continues to walk down the path, and finds sadly nothing. and then Rae returns back to the team.

Finally the 4th tunnel that the team wants to go and explore, the team instantly spot a collection of Pressure pads dotted along the floor of the tunnel…. At this point Fentrix looks at Ko, and just as quickly looks away again, Ko spots this and decides to venture down the tunnel. Getting in the trusted Crab position, Ko crab walks down the tunnel, Fentrix then casually follows Ko’s footing and eventually they come across a small chest. Fentrix looks at Ko, Ko looks at the chest and goes to open the chest. Upon doing so Ko gets a shock taking some lightning damage (1 point) but manages to open up a chest, with reveals a vial of Celstial Blue liquid sitting on a Red Velvet looking cushion. Pulling up the cushion reveals another vial, but this one looks like a vial of molten lava, and a letter containing a Wax Seal.

returning back to the main room, the loot is shared out among the party, with Ko getting the Blue Vial, and Rae gets the Red Vial. The group then looks at the letter and determines the origin of the Wax Seal, which ended up belonging to a group of Bird People Alchemists, which was an ancient Civilaisation that existed about 4 eons ago. Located in some Mountain Range.

At this point, the Spymaster starts to wiggle, the sign of them potentially waking up? Who knows? Tune in next time!

[End of Session]