Month: January 1994

This adventure was mostly information gathering, with one exciting incident to end off things.
Scrying — We were concerned with the encounter we had had in the city and not knowing what exactly we had run into, we decided that information gathering would be our next best step. To this end Dari agreed to do several scrying’s at different locations in the city. During the course of the adventure she scryed on:
the Barnaire Theatre — nothing unusual
the bell room in the castle — nothing seemed changed
the altar room in castle — nothing changed/altar still broken
the stairs and arch to city — nothing
the hexagonal area — swinging around saw two dead bugbear bodies which looked half burnt and at least one had two holes pierced through the chest. The head of one was bitten or ripped off. (mmm.. yumm!)

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: Loose Ends… Bugbears and Lesser Ones”

Ern (dog) ran around the room excitedly. He seemed quite cheerful that morning and eager to play, though he did not linger long to “talk” with any one person. Finally, everyone from the party was gathered in the hall. Everyone was present except the one who had called the meeting. Even Gerald’s hawk Craig was there, since Alegra had been asked to take care of him for the morning. Several party members began to wonder where Gerald could be and why he would be rude enough to show up late to his own meeting.
Suddenly Dog grew silent. As the last echoes of his barking died away, he sat down and turned to face the entryway. Just then the door to the hall opened and a cloaked figure entered. Though he walked hunched over and his hooded cloak was drawn close enough to cover his features, the brown cloak and the walking staff revealed the man to be Gerald. He walked slowly down the aisle, leaning on his staff in an uncharacteristic manner. He ignored comments from the party members and advanced into the chamber.
When Gerald reached the centre of the gathered party, he stopped and addressed the group. His face remained tilted down and much of his weight was on his staff as he spoke. “Thank you for gathering together this day.” His voice revealed a hint of weariness but held an inner strength. “Before the Stone Soules embark on further actions, there is an important story I must tell you. I invite you all to sit and make yourselves comfortable and to listen well.” Gerald gently sat down on the floor and lay his staff before him. He kept his cloak drawn around him, and it formed a circle on the ground as he sat. Dog came closer to his master and sat facing him.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: Gerald’s Farewell and Revelation”

Sphinx met us, told us he was moving south. Asked Snag to come with him to be his front-man, said he’d pay 10,000 gp to load his wagons and move him. We agreed Snag & Quick would leave and would get this money as their share. We also talked him into giving us good rates on a few questions-in particular, we asked him to tell us about the major forces in the city.
Then we decided to attack the pagoda (the one with the force field around it).

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: Sphinx’s End Game”

The party made plans to attack the sphinx. They began making extensive plans, even contacting Duntill & Illic for assistance. There was much debate over attacking the sphinx, with Snag and Quick presenting the most resistance and Gerald and Alegra being uncertain. Most others agreed to kill him.
These plans turned out to be for naught when the sphinx approached the Stone Soules one day to address the party.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: To Do Battle with the Sphinx”

After my attempt to bury the poor bones lost to the troll shaman’s evil lusts turned out to be unsuccessful (their souls were lost, used by some foul god as building material and I could not save even one), we packed up and headed to Middle. We soon discovered that Eli’s clean spell had somehow managed to transport all of the sewage we cleaned off from the trolls’ lair, to the Sphinx’s library. Ceydric informed us of this (he wasn’t in a good mood, mind you) and said that he had had to pay the Sphinx in cows for his stonegoyles. I hear that the townspeople were (rightfully so) not too excited about this either. The Church needed some work, and I concentrated on that for awhile. The keeper of the Church, Star, Aria, and I all worked at some sort of a midsummers welcoming celebration, to try to draw people of all sorts into visiting. Star also began some work on composing a poem about Gerald getting his sword. In a few months, he will unveil it.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: After the Crushing Defeat of the Trolls”

Well, I guess that it’s Snag’s turn to write an adventure description. The title of this one will just have to be:
DEN OF TROLLS, PART 1: The Great Battle
(As recounted by Snaggle-Tooth the Hobgoblin.)
We all knew that the stone soules were running low on funds. We had little cash left and several party members ready for training. Furthermore, the Barony is still far from self-sufficient, and in a month or two we would be unable to meet payroll, even if we spent nothing on training. So the Stone Soules met in our war room to plan our next expedition.
There were many suggestions of where to go and what to do, but it was Gerald’s pointing out that Trolls are known to collect treasure that finally won us over. There was a great deal of discussion of how exactly to attack the trolls. We considered simply pouring some of the vitrioli into the cave — the little para-elementals seek out living creatures and then explode in a burst of acid and fire — making them the bane of trolls.
But we decided that there wasn’t any need to go to such lengths — we were certainly capable of taking out a trolls by more conventional methods. We decided that both Eli and Dahri would attack using lightning: Eli thought that if the trolls could be caught in the narrow canyon approaching their cave then he would be able to manipulate his “pool-ball” lightning bolt so as to hit all of them; hopefully multiple times. Dahri’s druidic spell required the presence of clouds from which to summon the lightning, but the weather is frequently rainy in these parts (sometimes, when it rains for days, I *almost* envy the naked races their lack of fur), so we were confident this would at worst cause a slight delay. We loaded up M.U.L.E. (that’s Mighty Ugly Lugging Engine, my pack mule) with some 30 pints of oil, and set off.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: Den of Trolls”

Good and bad is pretty much the general concept here. This is LONG.
Okay, by the time we all got settled in last night (about 7:30) we didn’t really know what we wanted to do besides train some party members.
Because of all the magic supplies and texts Eli recovered he had enough to be trained to his next level (as was seven other party members). Eli had been promised training and a spell when he was capable of learning it so he was at the top of the list in order and actually expense. There were several people that were very easy to train; Tesla was trained by Ceydric and Quick by Theo for the two cheapest and Ludo and Canstin ranked second and third respectively (I don’t list Alegra because we need to train other people to second and third before anyone to Alegra’s much higher level). In turns out, to avoid bankrupting the barony, that we only had money to train Eli and the two easy people so Alegra and Eli set off for Teft and Poseidinus respectively. They traveled in the same caravan, accompanied by 20 guards and a merchant, through the wonderful weather of winter in Petethal. The party back at Middle had its own excitement but I will talk about the uneventful caravan trip first.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: A Trip to Teft”

The city is recorded as the City of the Lightning’s Call in records and is discussed very briefly as a northern city of great wealth and physical ease. The city was a sort of strange separatist place and seemed to discourage contact with the outside world.
The object that is designed to fall apart looks like a grenade. They have been used with green slime in the past.
Most of th ebooks are valueless, three are magical research texts, the only books of interest are Gertov’s Guide to Setient Thought (45 volumes, similar to Blackmov’s, approx value 3,000 gp): a definitive psychology text.
The bookshelves that retard flame are a standard magic item of great value to scholars and wizards. Worth 2,000-5,000 gp each depending on the buyer.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: Notes on Tan-El Adventures”

[The adventure this past weekend went as follows (beginning Oct. 24th 2172)]
We travelled back to the transporter in Tan-El (The Greate Olde City as we now know it), specifically in the “Tan-El Constable Dispatch.” We moved through the section of wall upwards until we reached the bedroom of what we conjecture must be Brogarra, the most snake-like of the ‘Spawn. Over some time we discovered that both Silence and Dispel Magic would _sometimes_ stop the bell, though it would restart when one broke the plane of the doorway. There was a construct of hooks below and around the bell though that suggested there was some item of slightly greater than magnet-size that would in all likelihood stop the bell until reactivated. Through some experimentation (and some damage to Snag and others, unfortunately) we located the item on the bookshelf that would release the bell but the invisible creature tried to recover it. Luckily, Eli’s clever use of a spell [the contraband Forget] sent it back into the room and we quickly left the city with it.
When we returned we could take anything we wanted from the room with no hastle, since all the other traps had been removed. We loaded the fire-retardant bookshelves, warm/clean cushions, perpetually clean rug, and books (“Subconscious repurcutions of pyromancy,” “Improve yourself through cloning,” and “Gertov’s Psychology” to name a few) and headed out. The Sphinx, annoying guy that he is, (as we expected) stopped us on the way out. He wanted one of the bookshelves “and he wasn’t leaving without it.” Eventually, I bargained him into giving us about 1750 g.p. in information and about 1000 g.p.

Continue reading “Stone Soules Summary: After the Defeat of the Lesser Ones at the Barnaire Theatre”