Session 5 - Brian
Session 05 (2024-08-30) - Brian
Road to Bad Doric
On the road that final morning of travel, Barrick approaches Kira and tells her that he had some strange dreams last night. When he woke, he noted that a network of thin, green roots had grown out of the mucky soil and curled around his fingers. Those weren’t there when he went to sleep. The roots themselves are young and though Barrick can’t identify the plant specifically, they look native to the swamp. Fresh and bright green, perhaps a vine. He shows a sample to Kira to see if she’s seem them before or if she knows anything about them
Gavin: Oh crap Barrick has the ick. 😨
Barrick also waves over Lepett and asks him as well about the roots
Lepett gives Gavin an unkind look at his comment about the sick, but focuses his attention on the roots. “Common swamp ivy. It’s harmless.”
When Gavin jokes about Barrick getting the Rotting Disease, Barrick says, “I don’t feel any worse than I did yesterday when we were all getting over that stomach bug. I feel better in fact.”
Barrick asks Lepett, “does common swamp ivy grow around your fingers while you sleep? Is that normal? It can shroud a corpse in a few days time, but I’ve not measured it on the living.” He doesn’t seem particularly interested - perhaps the subject is mundane, the pain of traveling too distracting, or the apathy of the swamp is working on him. Hard to say.
Kira: “The stomach bug was minor. Bikke’s just being overly dramatic. I assume he made himself ill in an attempt to bed one of the sick in the Lazoretto.” Looking at the roots Barrick pointed to, “I’m surprised by how fast this Swamp Ivy is growing. The skin is cracked. It hasn’t had time to adjust for its increased rate of growth.” She looks at Lepett. “I’m surprised you don’t find it interesting that this grew as much as it did in only one night.”
“Something is affecting how fast it’s growing. Unfortunately I’m unsure what that thing is.”
Hugh: “Strange. I was sleeping near Barrick, but the ivy didn’t grow over me,” Hugh says. Then he chuckles to hide his anxiety and claps Barrick on the shoulder, “Frideric always said you’d grow moss if you didn’t show a little more hustle. Guess he was right!”
Barrick shares the good natured chuckle and refocuses on the road ahead.
As we travel toward, the ground has grown more solid, and the swamp fades behind us. Lepett seems be quite sick. We find an actual road - signs of civilization - and find a fast flowing river, a tributary to the Ith. See the Omlarandin Mountains. Lepett departs, and leaves markers for us to help us find our way back.
Bad Doric
(See Forge map of river)
We see the stone of a collapsed tower. Hills and cliffs obscure our view.
We cross the river on a wooden bridge, and see a valley. We investigate the tower - it wasn’t well made, was ignored and not maintained for decades.
See another building in the distance. We see motion in the distance.
Kira, as a fox, finds goblins and orcs in the ruins of a small town, slightly past the first building.
Kira uses telepathy on one of the Orcs to say “stop stealing my food” in a feminine orc voice / language.
Kira returns to the group and tells us about the orcs and goblins she found.
{combat}
We see smoke over the next rise, and hear human screams. We run over.
{combat}
We defeat them all, take a prisoner [[Mulekick]]. We saved one of their prisoners - Amelia.
We interrogate [[Mulekick]] and force her to drink some of the milk we found.
Kira casts detect thoughts. She is a zealot and devoted to joining the Laguna-kin. [[Occhi De Vermi]]. Eyes of Vermin. They have a temple south of the town.
Barrick feeds her to her own flames.
Barrick asks Amelia what happened to her. Stoica were in the cages, they were caught by the white skull. Most were taken away, we think they were sold as slaves, women were held back. These were the last few, last 2 women.
She was heading west to Baldur’s Gate or Neverwinter. From Cormyr.
The good news is that Amelia’s injuries are mild, and she’s healthy, smart, and observant. The bad news is she doesn’t speak Orcish. You learn:
She is Cormyrian, and left her home to avoid an arranged marriage. She took passage west with a group of “Stoica” (stoy-kuh), who she would describe as nomads - sometimes workers, sometimes entertainers, sometimes thieves. She had no particular destination other than escaping Cormyr.
Her group was captured by the White Skull in a late-night raid almost three weeks ago. Most of the men were slaughtered outright, but some were taken as prisoners as were all the women and children and the group was held at a fortress in the mountains. Every few days the White Skull would gather a group and force-march them out of the camp, not to return. Occasionally new prisoners would come in, but it seemed sporadic to her, more opportunistic than intentional. Eventually her group was gathered and marched to Bad Doric. The others were taken away one-by-one over a few days, leaving her and the other survivors you found.
She doesn’t know where the fortress is - it was a long march though, many days and mostly down hill, though she was hooded. She can say the Orcs are led by women, the most revered of which are witches. She gathered the witch caste is called “Laguna-kin” and they follow a leader, who she never saw, “[[Laguna]].” Whether that’s a person, god, or what she doesn’t know.
We find a hidden path through the trees and find the temple in a clearing to the south.
Unhallow affect on the temple. Desecrated temple. It was originally good - Gavin knew something about this.
We find stairs leading downstairs in the temple.
{we find some herbs in a cellar - to investigate over text}
Underground, we find 4 massive fountains - gently flowing. Also desecrated.
Path branches. South path has torches and steeply declines deeper.
East, find library with burned books. We find a note {to be transcribed}
Current year: 1501 - note is from 130 years ago.
We don’t find the secret passage in the eastern room.
We go down the southern passage.
{combat}
We explore the area.
Following chamber west, we find the cloisters. Sink hole has taken out the floor, and most of the rooms are in disrepair. By exploring ot the south, we find the ruined bedrooms. Locked room - swollen shut. We bypass, and go into the bedrooms, crack in the wall that leads into earthen tunnels adjacent to that sister’s room. There, we find to the south a well and shelves of alchemist ingredients and preparation table. Well and springs that are the source of underground aquifers. Hugh drinks some of this water - it is bitter and he feels his guts twist. This is the source of the desecration of the wells - where the desecration happened. Kira takes ingredients.
Moving further south, we find a pit where there is a tree stump that is used as ritual table. Arcane that happened here was not the sisters - close to shamanistic orc magic.
Path to the north leads into the room behind the door that was swollen shut. Find silver framed full length shattered mirror. No magic is obvious from the mirrors, but there are magical residue as it was used as a magical focus. Room is badly damaged, but we find last pages of the journals here. (Todo: review the pages of the journals)
Repeated flooding happened here. Temple was founded less than 200 years ago, and abandoned 60 years ago.
Todo: ask questions over text