It was an interesting night, and a bit on the slow side, as usual. I'm a touch worried about the general cohesiveness of the party, as Pat and Mary are paranoid psychos that stay with the party as a whole simply out of plot. Heck, Mary is dangerously paranoid, though that could very likely be painful metagaming on her part on top of a healthy level of paranoia. Heck, the Jharkorian and Pan Tangian (Adam and Jon respectively) are the most stable members of the party; where Jharkor is a nation not unlike Cardassia, and Pan Tangians are psycho pirates that deal with demons on a cultural basis.
After their little rondeveau with the hopped up lotus eaters, they left town shortly thereafter, not running into anything out of the ordinary for about four days. On the fourth day, while Analee (the dairy farmer girl) was relieving herself, she screamed for help and the party moved out to see what was wrong. There they encountered four hostile, flying sharks ('native' creatures of chaos) who were pacing around her.
After a bit, they took down the sharks, though they didn't think too hard on the fact that sharks in my setting tend towards hit-and-run tactics unless they're very hungry. With a bit of work, they now have quite a bit shark jerky for their journey.
While traveling, they begin to notice a lot of sloths hanging from the trees. Minor interlude, sloths in my setting are more or less normal except for several items. One, they only live in a forest of seqouias to the northwest of where the party is. Two, their reproductive cycle is a biyearly process where they become incredibly aggressive and feed off combat until they burst off a larvae within half a minute. Three, they are creatures of life and positive energy, and their venom (only really produced when 'reproducing') actually heals victims.
The party travels a couple more miles and begin to hear the sound of a plodding storm of steel on wood, without any footsteps amongst them. They hide behind some trees while surrounded by a score of sloths (small clumps of flowers blooming directly beneath them). Within twenty seconds, a cow-sized ball of ooze bristling with weapons and shields and armor bursts out of the trees and leaps onto Mary's horse. Not wanting to be anywhere near it, everyone except Mary leaps onto their horses and moves away. Mary goes toe-to-toe to get it to release her horse, which is promptly killed and absorbed into it.
After their little rondeveau with the hopped up lotus eaters, they left town shortly thereafter, not running into anything out of the ordinary for about four days. On the fourth day, while Analee (the dairy farmer girl) was relieving herself, she screamed for help and the party moved out to see what was wrong. There they encountered four hostile, flying sharks ('native' creatures of chaos) who were pacing around her.
After a bit, they took down the sharks, though they didn't think too hard on the fact that sharks in my setting tend towards hit-and-run tactics unless they're very hungry. With a bit of work, they now have quite a bit shark jerky for their journey.
While traveling, they begin to notice a lot of sloths hanging from the trees. Minor interlude, sloths in my setting are more or less normal except for several items. One, they only live in a forest of seqouias to the northwest of where the party is. Two, their reproductive cycle is a biyearly process where they become incredibly aggressive and feed off combat until they burst off a larvae within half a minute. Three, they are creatures of life and positive energy, and their venom (only really produced when 'reproducing') actually heals victims.
The party travels a couple more miles and begin to hear the sound of a plodding storm of steel on wood, without any footsteps amongst them. They hide behind some trees while surrounded by a score of sloths (small clumps of flowers blooming directly beneath them). Within twenty seconds, a cow-sized ball of ooze bristling with weapons and shields and armor bursts out of the trees and leaps onto Mary's horse. Not wanting to be anywhere near it, everyone except Mary leaps onto their horses and moves away. Mary goes toe-to-toe to get it to release her horse, which is promptly killed and absorbed into it.
Something about this very intense scene ignites the entire horde of sloths, who break out into a berserker rampage and descend upon every combatant and start clawing and biting like crazy. The party is fine for this, as their venom completely negates the damage they take. Meanwhile, they're unloading all sorts of ranged attacks at the very busy ooze creature, who gives out a 60' cone of shrapnel just before it dies under a pile of violent sloths (immune to poison, so it doesn't get healed).
Feeling a bit weird from the events, and a bit disappointed they can't milk sloths for their venom after they budded a larvae, they pack up and leave. After three more days of travel, they come upon a large plot of ordered land with the trees in neat rows and seemingly used as a farm, along with a giant pillar of smoke coming from the hill. Since they realize a massive storm is coming their way, they decide to attempt ask the resident for shelter.
Behind the hill, they discover a large man (6'8") tending to a blindingly bright bonfire (yes, during the day) who claims to be a disciple of a Lord of Law (specifically the one of Light). He asks what they want, gets informed of their reasons for being there (simple travellers) and allows them to spend the night in his home. He demands that they leave all of their belongings in a stone box out front and no weapons.
The party does so, except for Mary who wants her stuff to be kept on her mule in the stable and proceeds to expertly hide five daggers on her person. Once inside, he provides them with fresh sloth meat and water. Analee breaks out some of her travelling cheese after getting permission to bring it inside from her pack mule, which Mary makes the excuse to follow and watch her. Mary makes up some cheesy excuse to stay a bit longer to dig through Analee's bags, where she finds two masterful kukris dripping with exotic poison. Our little snoop hides the daggers elsewhere and asks Adam's character to 'look at her bow string'. There, she shows what she discovered and begins to be very paranoid indeed. Note, she made extra certain to verify that the daggers were masterwork. Of course, she's passing on eating any of Analee's cheese.
After showing and telling Adam her discovery, they go back in and proceed to sleep, with Mary wanting one of the primary four to stay up and stand watch in the living room (the host provided simple bed rolls for all). Just before they began to bed down, however, a stranger began to beat on the front door while the storm raged outside.
The host, Chanter his name is, answered and gave him permission to stay the night as well. The stranger was a simple laborer heading for the seqouia forest for a logging job. Mary and Adam are a touch skeptical, but he seem simple enough, and Analee provides him with some cheese and leftover sloth meat. He acts and seems simple enough, staring awe-faced at the tales of danger the party has already been through, eventually going to sleep like the rest of the people.
Several hours later, the stranger gets up wobbly and then bolts outside in a raging storm to begin retching like a madman. The party awakens, curious as to what happened, had Pat and Jon examine the retching man (they have medical training) while the other two already figured it was poisoning on Analee's part, so they question her after checking their bags (the shield of chaos had been relocated from Adam's stuff to the stranger's bags).
It doesn't take much cajoling, as Analee is almost certain Mary is just waiting for the tiniest of excuses to kill her and she doesn't have much chance against a house full of people and running in a bad storm. She tells them she's a spy for the Yellow Night clan (a guild of assassins that honor the Lord of Nightshade and the Lord of Daffodils), who had heard of the Lotus Eater's vision and knew that whatever they were after is something they shouldn't have. One of their nightshade caste had tried to follow earlier (Adam's stalker back in the first town), but it showed they were too canny, so they sent Analee instead (of the daffodil caste). She recognized the stranger as a civilian mercenary sent by the Lotus Eaters to obtain anything valuable, and her orders are to kill them on sight (or at least make sure they die).
Oh, the poison used on the Lotus mercenary was a highly concentrated form of daffodil poison that causes near fatal levels of vomiting, which our arcanist friend was able to help make sure he would actually survive through. Chanter, the host, curtly informed the party that as soon as the bad part of the storm passed they were to leave post-haste.
Feeling a bit weird from the events, and a bit disappointed they can't milk sloths for their venom after they budded a larvae, they pack up and leave. After three more days of travel, they come upon a large plot of ordered land with the trees in neat rows and seemingly used as a farm, along with a giant pillar of smoke coming from the hill. Since they realize a massive storm is coming their way, they decide to attempt ask the resident for shelter.
Behind the hill, they discover a large man (6'8") tending to a blindingly bright bonfire (yes, during the day) who claims to be a disciple of a Lord of Law (specifically the one of Light). He asks what they want, gets informed of their reasons for being there (simple travellers) and allows them to spend the night in his home. He demands that they leave all of their belongings in a stone box out front and no weapons.
The party does so, except for Mary who wants her stuff to be kept on her mule in the stable and proceeds to expertly hide five daggers on her person. Once inside, he provides them with fresh sloth meat and water. Analee breaks out some of her travelling cheese after getting permission to bring it inside from her pack mule, which Mary makes the excuse to follow and watch her. Mary makes up some cheesy excuse to stay a bit longer to dig through Analee's bags, where she finds two masterful kukris dripping with exotic poison. Our little snoop hides the daggers elsewhere and asks Adam's character to 'look at her bow string'. There, she shows what she discovered and begins to be very paranoid indeed. Note, she made extra certain to verify that the daggers were masterwork. Of course, she's passing on eating any of Analee's cheese.
After showing and telling Adam her discovery, they go back in and proceed to sleep, with Mary wanting one of the primary four to stay up and stand watch in the living room (the host provided simple bed rolls for all). Just before they began to bed down, however, a stranger began to beat on the front door while the storm raged outside.
The host, Chanter his name is, answered and gave him permission to stay the night as well. The stranger was a simple laborer heading for the seqouia forest for a logging job. Mary and Adam are a touch skeptical, but he seem simple enough, and Analee provides him with some cheese and leftover sloth meat. He acts and seems simple enough, staring awe-faced at the tales of danger the party has already been through, eventually going to sleep like the rest of the people.
Several hours later, the stranger gets up wobbly and then bolts outside in a raging storm to begin retching like a madman. The party awakens, curious as to what happened, had Pat and Jon examine the retching man (they have medical training) while the other two already figured it was poisoning on Analee's part, so they question her after checking their bags (the shield of chaos had been relocated from Adam's stuff to the stranger's bags).
It doesn't take much cajoling, as Analee is almost certain Mary is just waiting for the tiniest of excuses to kill her and she doesn't have much chance against a house full of people and running in a bad storm. She tells them she's a spy for the Yellow Night clan (a guild of assassins that honor the Lord of Nightshade and the Lord of Daffodils), who had heard of the Lotus Eater's vision and knew that whatever they were after is something they shouldn't have. One of their nightshade caste had tried to follow earlier (Adam's stalker back in the first town), but it showed they were too canny, so they sent Analee instead (of the daffodil caste). She recognized the stranger as a civilian mercenary sent by the Lotus Eaters to obtain anything valuable, and her orders are to kill them on sight (or at least make sure they die).
Oh, the poison used on the Lotus mercenary was a highly concentrated form of daffodil poison that causes near fatal levels of vomiting, which our arcanist friend was able to help make sure he would actually survive through. Chanter, the host, curtly informed the party that as soon as the bad part of the storm passed they were to leave post-haste.
No comments:
Post a Comment