Beholder Group - "Everything's Gotta Die" - Fallen Fortress Session 10
1st Aug 2019, 8:00 – 11:00pm
In-game timeline: Start of session, Midsummer’s day +10. End of session, Midsummer’s day +12.
An exhausted group of Heroes pick over the spoils of battle. Dwarrowsteel uses a potion of healing on Bella the kidnapped Halfling, restoring her to consciousness, though she is dazed, tired and very pale. Nige the owl is sent to check out the extent of the cavern, and to fly up the hole in the roof of the cavern which is currently letting in some dim light. He returns with a report of no other enemies in sight, and nothing else of interest in the cavern.
Alwaith grabs Belak’s staff, and finds around Belak’s neck a black metal amulet in the shape of a stylised sun. Devon finds a piece of translucent paper showing points – one of which is labelled with “Belak – Bord-heim”, and a potion of healing and elixir of health. The large, red pear is recovered from the tree by Dwarrow and carefully stored in his backpack.
The party spend some time discussing their next steps. “Everything’s gotta die” is the expected statement from Drogan. “I actually agree with Drogan” is the unexpected reply from Alwaith. But they are knackered and need to rest. So, after burning the remains of the tree, Belak, the frog and the bugbear, they head back to the small library room and hole up in there for a long rest, taking time to set up their usual perimeter defences. The watch guard spends time searching around the books in the library, and they discover a couple of useful magic scrolls, and Alwaith finds a rare, old book that talks about a past event that has been almost wiped from the history books – The Corruption (or The Cleansing, depending on which side you were on).
8 hours later they head out, refreshed and determined to rid the place of evil. Arriving at the arboretums, they find some of the previously closed doors have been opened, and no goblins are to be found. A few twig blights remain, but they are swiftly taken care of, and they also encounter another set of mysterious holes in the ground, one of which is glowing. They again decide that this is not what they are here for, and in a rare example of restraint, they leave well alone, instead just burning everything left in the laboratory area.
On the way out, Alwaith collects a decent looking long sword, and Dwarrow spots a patch of cultivated yellow and purple mushrooms. As he is gathering them for Corkie, Alwaith suggests that he take some of the earth too, to hopefully get some of the spores and living samples. Dwarrow carefully gathers up a large sample of the earth too.
The group head out of the underground grove, with Bella in tow, and find the sun is about to come up. Looking for their horses, Drogan and Alwaith cannot find them where they left them, and head to the tree to investigate. Both are so focussed on looking around to see if they had just wandered off, that neither spot a large net in the branches of the tree. They trigger a simple trap, which causes the net to drop on them both. Not only that, but the net contained a large bees nest, which also crashed to the ground, releasing a swarm of very pissed-off bees. Unable to immediately run away from the bees, both Alwaith and Drogan were stung before they both managed to escape the net and move out of the way. Their suspicions of the culprit were confirmed when they saw, scratched very crudely in the trunk of the tree, the draconic letter representing the sound “Me”. It was that damned Meepo!
Drogan checked the ground, and spotted horse tracks and a single set of kobold tracks heading south. They quickly run off, following the tracks, in the hope of catching up with Meepo, who, Drogan estimated, had a few hours head start. As they reached the main track, the trail seemed to show that the horses had broken into a run. They could not tell if they headed towards the Fortress, or the other direction, to Oakhurst. Giving up the chase, the party headed for Oakhurst.
Arriving in Oakhurst in the evening, the party split up to perform their many tasks. Drogan headed straight for the stables, and was initially relieved to see both horses had arrived back there unharmed. His relief turned to anger, as it so often does, when he found out that Meepo had returned the horses much earlier that day, and in good faith, the stable owners had returned the party’s 100gp worth of gems to Meepo, as he claimed he was returning them on behalf of the party. Drogan started taking his anger out on the stable owners, blaming them for the loss of their deposit. The owners, in some fear for their health at this point, did point out that either Meepo was part of the group, in which case they did nothing wrong in returning the deposit, or the party had allowed the horses to be stolen, in which case they forfeited their deposit anyway. Very unhappy, but with anger more focussed on Meepo than the stable owners, Drogan backed down and left in a huff – hunting the town and the outskirts for Meepo, but not finding any sign.
Dwarrow and Alwaith visited Corkie, who was pleased to see them, very pleased to see they had a potential cure in the red fruit, and rewarded them for the mushrooms and soil sample. Dwarrow generously returned some of the reward as a donation to the shrine. Corkie and Dwarrow spent the next few hours researching the red fruit to see what it was able to do, and if it could cure Boris.
Devon informed the town Watch that they had found Bella, then took Bella back home. Her family were incredibly elated at her return, as was Gredor and his family. They rushed around gathering all their money to pay to Devon as a reward for her safe return. Devon generously returned some of this money, seeing that they would otherwise be left with nothing.
Back at the Inn, after some discussion with Alwaith and Drogan, Devon extended his generosity once more and gave Garon the recipe for the Goblin Brew ale, in exchange for free board and lodging every time they passed through Oakhurst, and to also enlist Garon’s help in improving the party’s standing in the town – basically to help go around tidying up after Drogan’s interaction with any non-dwarf in town.
Dwarrow and Corkie discovered that the fruit could be used in quarters, each quarter would restore a large amount of health, cure conditions, diseases etc. It would, however, take half of the fruit to get Boris out of his coma. Without hesitation, Dwarrow used half of the fruit on Boris, donated a quarter to Corkie for her use in helping others, and, in response to a recent offer he received from his temple, sent the final quarter off to his temple in exchange for six “Blessings of Berronar”. When he returned to tell the others all this, there were cheers and slaps on the back from Alwaith and Devon, and grunts of incredulity and a face palm from Drogan, who could not believe the bunch of over-generous hippies he had ended up in league with.
After a night’s sleep at the inn, they woke up to discuss their options, and to visit Boris, who was now wide awake. Alwaith revealed some of his history to the rest of the group before slowly and gently breaking the news to Boris that the rest of his group, The Righteous Brotherhood, were all dead, and that in fact ‘young’ Alwaith was a lot older than expected, and was now Boris’ older brother. Boris was a little taken aback by all the news, and they left him to rest and take it all in.
Drogan packaged up some vials of purple goo, and a detailed description of what happened, and sent it off to his old commander. Dwarrowsteel did a similar thing for his temple, and left some vials of purple goo with Corkie to look at too, along with another, personal, donation to the temple.
Devon, meanwhile, had decided upon his next task. He wanted to head to a town called Flint Rock, a few days trek away, and do a favour for a friend there – something about escorting a friend of a friend to a place a little way outside town. The rest of the group were keen to help out.
So we leave our Heroes stocking up in town in preparation for a short journey to Flint Rock to help out on Devon’s Mission.