Beholder Group - "No Man, Woman or Beast Left Alive" Devon's Mission Session 14
19th Sep 2019, 7:45 – 11:30pm
In-game timeline: Start of session, 1489DR, Eleasis 2nd. End of session, Eleasis 12th.
Exhausted after a gruelling battle with three Wretched, and an abomination named Goldie Chadstone, our “Heroes” are spending some time recovering – Dwarrowsteel is resuscitating and healing an unconscious Ripley, Alwaith is casting some healing-type incantations on himself and Drogan is busy chopping the arms and head off of the body of Goldie….. “just in case”. Devon heads towards Brace’s room to check it out.
All of a sudden, Dwarrow, Devon and Ripley fall into a deep sleep. Looking up from their activities, the remaining Alwaith and Drogan spot Brace walking towards them, tears streaming down his gaunt face. It seems that Drogan’s ‘sailors-hands’ let him down in tying up the surprisingly strong dwarf earlier, and he managed to escape!
As they prepare their weapons to fight, Drogan is suddenly filled with a sense of love and respect for poor Brace. Drogan sees Brace as a friendly face amongst a house of evils, and he has no inclination, or intention of harming him – it seems that Drogan has been charmed!
Immune to such niceties, both by race and by temperament, Alwaith runs over to attack Brace with Dragonsboon – landing an impressive hit. However, a magical force prevents the weapon from actually doing any damage to Brace, and Brace emerges unscathed from the onslaught. Brace raises his hands and mutters some incantations, but Alwaith seems to resist the spell that was fired at him, and retaliates with another attack, missing. Instead of facing Alwaith and retaliating, the mourning dwarf instead runs towards Devon, lying asleep on the floor. Alwaith gets an attack of opportunity on the fleeing dwarf, but misses. Drogan is standing, wondering why his two pals are fighting together, and wonders how he can get them to stop. While he is formulating a cunning plan, Brace rummages around Devon’s clothes, grabbing his locket and bunch of keys. Alwaith runs over and takes another swing at him with his longsword – another miss! Despite only wearing basic clothes, Brace seems to have some additional magical protection warding him.
Brace runs off again, this time towards the picture on the landing. Alwaith’s reaction attack again misses, and Brace quickly pulls the large picture off the wall and opens the safe with one of the keys. This allows Alwaith to run over again and take another swipe at him, this time making contact but again, a shield of magical force prevents damage. As Drogan springs into action and starts to wake the other sleeping members of the party, one by one, Brace grabs some stuff from the safe and makes a run for the door. Alwaith gets another reaction attack at him, and this time hits again, and the shield protection doesn’t seem to happen this time, and Brace takes some slashing and lightning damage from the attack, but pushes on, towards the main door.
Alwaith gives chase and manages to land another hit before Brace manages to get the door open and runs out into the night. Devon is awakened by Drogan, who moves on to Ripley. Devon spots an open safe and decides to explore that before involving himself in any fighting-type activity!
Meanwhile Alwaith is chasing Brace, but stops to fire an arrow – it scores a hit! Brace takes an arrow to the back, turns and points a finger at Alwaith. The half-elf feels a chill in his soul, and hears a large, ominous ringing above his head, and takes some necrotic damage. Brace turns back to run, but Alwaith pursues him, catching up with him due to his longer legs. A final swipe with Dragonsboon takes Brace down, and the grieving parent starts to bleed out.
As Dwarrow and Ripley awake, light a torch, and ask Drogan what has been going on, Drogan explains that two of his friends started hitting each other and then chased each other out of the door! As Devon is clearing out anything that may have been left on the safe, and Ripley runs to catch up with Alwaith, Drogan finishes his story and then suddenly realises that he has been charmed, and that Brace isn’t a friend after all! He heads down to follow Alwaith and find out what is happening outside, followed by Dwarrow.
Meanwhile Alwaith is torn. As the tear-stained face of an unconscious Brace looks up at him, Alwaith feels a pang of humanity and stabilises the unconscious dwarf. Then he remembers that Brace has been defying the Raven Queen for years, and feeding people to the monstrosity of his daughter. As Ripley runs outside to see this, but is too far away to do anything, Alwaith, all humanity gone, plunges his sword into Brace’s still unconscious body, ending his life. Alwaith begins to drag Brace’s body back to the manor house, as Ripley looks on, unsure as to the morality of the group she has temporarily got herself involved with. Alwaith probably does himself no favours in this respect by proceeding to plunder Brace’s body.
As Alwaith drags Brace’s corpse back into the house, Dwarrow rushes up to try to save Brace, but he is too late. Alwaith tries to convince Dwarrow that Brace fell in battle, but Dwarrow’s experience with battle wounds tells him a slightly different story. Alwaith hands over all the stuff he found in Brace’s possession to try to break the uncomfortable silence – some jewellery, gold, manor house deeds and a spellbook.
Being slightly concerned as to whether Erky has remained tied up, given Brace’s escape, Drogan and Alwaith head towards the larder, with Devon following, while Dwarrow wanders into the library to see what he can find there. Erky remains tied fast – Ripley did a good job on those knots – and Devon takes charge of Erky whilst Drogan and Alwaith enter the sewers and bring up the two bandits they had secured there previously. For some reason that may have made sense at the time, they bring the bandits up to the first floor, and manacle them to the bars of the large, empty cage that is in that room – they think these bars are the most sturdy things to lock them to whilst interrogating them.
With the two human bandits securely manacled with their back to the cage, Drogan and Alwaith fire questions at them – who runs the bandit ring, how long have they been doing this etc. The terrified bandits start to answer to the best of their abilities when all of a sudden one of them screams out loudly in intense pain, and blood starts to gush out of a large gash that has appeared from nowhere in his side. As the other bandit panics and yells to be released, and Alwaith and Drogan are shocked at what they are seeing, a large cut appears in the back of the neck of the other bandit. Both are screeching in fear and pain now, and both Alwaith and Drogan stab their swords into the cage, thinking that there may be an invisible assassin in there. Both attacks hit just empty air, so they worry that the assassin may be in the room with them, and start to swing around blindly.
One of the screaming bandits suddenly falls silent – a deep slit appearing in his throat, and blood pumps out of the wound as his head drops. Ripley enters the room and, assessing the scene, tries to release the prisoners from their manacles by trying to break the locks. Drogan runs away. As the last remaining bandit receives a deep cut on his shoulders and he, too falls silent, Alwaith moves in to try to stabilise him, but receives a deep and necrotic cut himself from an invisible claw that definitely seemed to come from inside the cage. As Alwaith is about to cut the wrists of the bandit to release him without getting too close to the cage, Drogan reappears, with some flour, which he proceeds to throw around liberally inside the cage, and slowly starts to reveal a humanoid figure moving around in the cage.
The attacker now visible, the group can avoid getting too close, though the bandits are now beyond saving. As Dwarrowsteel appears from downstairs, Ripley recalls some information from her basic training and suspects that this may be a Skulk – something confirmed when Alwaith picks up a shard of the mirror (which Drogan had previously smashed for no apparent reason) and could see the whole figure in the cage. Drogan, now that he can see the Skulk, peppered it with arrows and brought it down. Dwarrow, annoyed that pretty much everything alive that the party had met recently is now dead, runs over to stabilise the creature. Dwarrow then walks over to talk with Ripley and Alwaith about what to do with the creature, and Drogan takes the opportunity to squeeze his axe in between the bars of the cage and decapitate the unconscious monster. Dwarrow is not impressed.
Using the mirror to check around this room, and becoming more confident that all evil has been destroyed, the group take a short rest – Devon keeping a close eye on Erky, who just views the scene of destruction in the manor with incredulity and fear. A detect magic spell shows nothing magic around, other than faint magic from the portal mechanism. Ripley wanted to disassemble the portal and ship it to her organisation, the Order of the Planes, in Neverwinter, and the group were happy for her to do this. They also offered to share the spoils of the looting with her, which prompted Ripley to offer them some work – she gave them a reward for helping her, and gave them a Letter of Introduction from her Order, to another Order, this time based in Luscan – the Temple of the Moon – who were looking for some competent and reliable help. Why Ripley thought this group were the answer is a mystery. Ripley then, with the group’s help, hid the portal parts away from the manor, and went into town to organise shipping to Neverwinter. Alwaith accompanied her into town, in disguise.
They both found the town in disarray, but not in turmoil. It seems that the Ettin and the “Hell Hound” (actually a disguised Worg) had somehow escaped and ran riot in the town. The Ettin had been killed by Gorgeous George, but George lost his life in the process. The Worg was recaptured (as was the Sabre-toothed Tiger who had been quickly recaptured the night before) but not before killing a member of the watch. The townsfolk were picking up the pieces and getting their town back in order, as the Carnival slowly, and miserably packed up their fair.
Alwaith returned to the manor and the group decide to head to the place where Devon thinks they should hand Erky over to the Little Fingers. They want to avoid being seen, which means they must take the long way round, and remain hidden, so it takes them a while.
They arrive at the clearing in the wood only half an hour before the allotted meeting time, giving the party very little time to prepare anything. As Devon waits in the clearing with a very dismayed Erky, Alwaith and Dwarrow try and fail to hide, and Drogan tries and succeeds in hiding. At the allotted time Devon is met by the two dwarves and one Halfling that they met in the beer tent, as well as a female gnome, who seemed to be in charge. Erky was handed over to them, Drogan managed to stay his hand and not kill anyone for a change, and the gnome assured them that within a couple of hours their names would be cleared of all charges of stealing the jewellery. The Little Fingers then leave, taking Erky with them.
Heading slowly back to town, Devon, Drogan and Dwarrowsteel decide to turn themselves in. Alwaith waits until he knows how that goes. At the Stockade, the three of them are taken before the Magistrate – a female gnome named Greta – and she hears their story.
An inadvertent lie from Dwarrow, who had forgotten how they managed to escape from the Stockade, exacerbated by a deliberate lie from Devon, who tried to pin the blame on Erky, did not help their case, but they decided to come clean and tell the full story to Greta – who stopped them to ask for clarifications. She was very disappointed that the party had no evidence for any of their story, and was not happy that they took the law into their own hands rather than turn Brace into the authorities. She had them locked up while she had the story checked out – asking Ermabelle the sewer worker manager about Ankhegs in the sewers, and about ‘dark’ feelings in the sewers around the Chadstone Manor area, and sent the Watch to check out the manor itself.
All reports back in, she calls the group back in, and explains that since their story checks out, and since, for an unexplained reason, Lady Dunfall had recently dropped all charges against them for the original theft of her jewellery, the group were free to go. She even handed over a reward from Ermabelle for ridding the sewers of the Ankhegs. She explained that she would still have preferred it if Brace, and even Goldie, could have been properly tried, and she needs to search for Erky, but whilst the town does not feel indebted towards the group, they are clear of all charges. She also thanked them for explaining the cause of Wendel’s strange behaviour, and stated that whilst Wendel would still be tried for Elton’s murder, the mitigating circumstances would prevent him from being executed for the crime. She would, however, still like to see Alwaith before they left.
Having received a pardon, Alwaith does turn up at the Stockade to see Greta. He is in a bullish mood, and insists that the party did the town a massive favour in ridding Flint Rock of someone who was successfully keeping the bandit threat in check, and destroying a portal to other realms, of which there was no sign and very little evidence, and about the location of which, Alwaith was being very cagey and refusing to reveal. Greta was having none of this, and was starting to regret her decision to clear them all. She diplomatically cut short the conversation, telling Alwaith it may be an idea to move on as soon as possible. In a huff, Alwaith left to rejoin the others.
The group decided to head back to Oakhurst, having successfully delivered Erky and sorted out the mystery at Chadstone Manor. Even if Greta didn’t appreciate it, THEY know they did well. Dwarrow would have preferred fewer casualties, but the group members survived. We leave our Heroes in Oakhurst, having just levelled up to level 4, maybe doing a bit of shopping in town before heading out on the next stage of their adventure – their plans are to follow Drogan who has some business in Neverwinter, before maybe taking Ripley up on her offer of work with the Temple of the Moon in Luskan and/or following the trail of the Black Sun from Belak’s note.
In-game timeline: Start of session, 1489DR, Eleasis 2nd. End of session, Eleasis 12th.
Exhausted after a gruelling battle with three Wretched, and an abomination named Goldie Chadstone, our “Heroes” are spending some time recovering – Dwarrowsteel is resuscitating and healing an unconscious Ripley, Alwaith is casting some healing-type incantations on himself and Drogan is busy chopping the arms and head off of the body of Goldie….. “just in case”. Devon heads towards Brace’s room to check it out.
All of a sudden, Dwarrow, Devon and Ripley fall into a deep sleep. Looking up from their activities, the remaining Alwaith and Drogan spot Brace walking towards them, tears streaming down his gaunt face. It seems that Drogan’s ‘sailors-hands’ let him down in tying up the surprisingly strong dwarf earlier, and he managed to escape!
As they prepare their weapons to fight, Drogan is suddenly filled with a sense of love and respect for poor Brace. Drogan sees Brace as a friendly face amongst a house of evils, and he has no inclination, or intention of harming him – it seems that Drogan has been charmed!
Immune to such niceties, both by race and by temperament, Alwaith runs over to attack Brace with Dragonsboon – landing an impressive hit. However, a magical force prevents the weapon from actually doing any damage to Brace, and Brace emerges unscathed from the onslaught. Brace raises his hands and mutters some incantations, but Alwaith seems to resist the spell that was fired at him, and retaliates with another attack, missing. Instead of facing Alwaith and retaliating, the mourning dwarf instead runs towards Devon, lying asleep on the floor. Alwaith gets an attack of opportunity on the fleeing dwarf, but misses. Drogan is standing, wondering why his two pals are fighting together, and wonders how he can get them to stop. While he is formulating a cunning plan, Brace rummages around Devon’s clothes, grabbing his locket and bunch of keys. Alwaith runs over and takes another swing at him with his longsword – another miss! Despite only wearing basic clothes, Brace seems to have some additional magical protection warding him.
Brace runs off again, this time towards the picture on the landing. Alwaith’s reaction attack again misses, and Brace quickly pulls the large picture off the wall and opens the safe with one of the keys. This allows Alwaith to run over again and take another swipe at him, this time making contact but again, a shield of magical force prevents damage. As Drogan springs into action and starts to wake the other sleeping members of the party, one by one, Brace grabs some stuff from the safe and makes a run for the door. Alwaith gets another reaction attack at him, and this time hits again, and the shield protection doesn’t seem to happen this time, and Brace takes some slashing and lightning damage from the attack, but pushes on, towards the main door.
Alwaith gives chase and manages to land another hit before Brace manages to get the door open and runs out into the night. Devon is awakened by Drogan, who moves on to Ripley. Devon spots an open safe and decides to explore that before involving himself in any fighting-type activity!
Meanwhile Alwaith is chasing Brace, but stops to fire an arrow – it scores a hit! Brace takes an arrow to the back, turns and points a finger at Alwaith. The half-elf feels a chill in his soul, and hears a large, ominous ringing above his head, and takes some necrotic damage. Brace turns back to run, but Alwaith pursues him, catching up with him due to his longer legs. A final swipe with Dragonsboon takes Brace down, and the grieving parent starts to bleed out.
As Dwarrow and Ripley awake, light a torch, and ask Drogan what has been going on, Drogan explains that two of his friends started hitting each other and then chased each other out of the door! As Devon is clearing out anything that may have been left on the safe, and Ripley runs to catch up with Alwaith, Drogan finishes his story and then suddenly realises that he has been charmed, and that Brace isn’t a friend after all! He heads down to follow Alwaith and find out what is happening outside, followed by Dwarrow.
Meanwhile Alwaith is torn. As the tear-stained face of an unconscious Brace looks up at him, Alwaith feels a pang of humanity and stabilises the unconscious dwarf. Then he remembers that Brace has been defying the Raven Queen for years, and feeding people to the monstrosity of his daughter. As Ripley runs outside to see this, but is too far away to do anything, Alwaith, all humanity gone, plunges his sword into Brace’s still unconscious body, ending his life. Alwaith begins to drag Brace’s body back to the manor house, as Ripley looks on, unsure as to the morality of the group she has temporarily got herself involved with. Alwaith probably does himself no favours in this respect by proceeding to plunder Brace’s body.
As Alwaith drags Brace’s corpse back into the house, Dwarrow rushes up to try to save Brace, but he is too late. Alwaith tries to convince Dwarrow that Brace fell in battle, but Dwarrow’s experience with battle wounds tells him a slightly different story. Alwaith hands over all the stuff he found in Brace’s possession to try to break the uncomfortable silence – some jewellery, gold, manor house deeds and a spellbook.
Being slightly concerned as to whether Erky has remained tied up, given Brace’s escape, Drogan and Alwaith head towards the larder, with Devon following, while Dwarrow wanders into the library to see what he can find there. Erky remains tied fast – Ripley did a good job on those knots – and Devon takes charge of Erky whilst Drogan and Alwaith enter the sewers and bring up the two bandits they had secured there previously. For some reason that may have made sense at the time, they bring the bandits up to the first floor, and manacle them to the bars of the large, empty cage that is in that room – they think these bars are the most sturdy things to lock them to whilst interrogating them.
With the two human bandits securely manacled with their back to the cage, Drogan and Alwaith fire questions at them – who runs the bandit ring, how long have they been doing this etc. The terrified bandits start to answer to the best of their abilities when all of a sudden one of them screams out loudly in intense pain, and blood starts to gush out of a large gash that has appeared from nowhere in his side. As the other bandit panics and yells to be released, and Alwaith and Drogan are shocked at what they are seeing, a large cut appears in the back of the neck of the other bandit. Both are screeching in fear and pain now, and both Alwaith and Drogan stab their swords into the cage, thinking that there may be an invisible assassin in there. Both attacks hit just empty air, so they worry that the assassin may be in the room with them, and start to swing around blindly.
One of the screaming bandits suddenly falls silent – a deep slit appearing in his throat, and blood pumps out of the wound as his head drops. Ripley enters the room and, assessing the scene, tries to release the prisoners from their manacles by trying to break the locks. Drogan runs away. As the last remaining bandit receives a deep cut on his shoulders and he, too falls silent, Alwaith moves in to try to stabilise him, but receives a deep and necrotic cut himself from an invisible claw that definitely seemed to come from inside the cage. As Alwaith is about to cut the wrists of the bandit to release him without getting too close to the cage, Drogan reappears, with some flour, which he proceeds to throw around liberally inside the cage, and slowly starts to reveal a humanoid figure moving around in the cage.
The attacker now visible, the group can avoid getting too close, though the bandits are now beyond saving. As Dwarrowsteel appears from downstairs, Ripley recalls some information from her basic training and suspects that this may be a Skulk – something confirmed when Alwaith picks up a shard of the mirror (which Drogan had previously smashed for no apparent reason) and could see the whole figure in the cage. Drogan, now that he can see the Skulk, peppered it with arrows and brought it down. Dwarrow, annoyed that pretty much everything alive that the party had met recently is now dead, runs over to stabilise the creature. Dwarrow then walks over to talk with Ripley and Alwaith about what to do with the creature, and Drogan takes the opportunity to squeeze his axe in between the bars of the cage and decapitate the unconscious monster. Dwarrow is not impressed.
Using the mirror to check around this room, and becoming more confident that all evil has been destroyed, the group take a short rest – Devon keeping a close eye on Erky, who just views the scene of destruction in the manor with incredulity and fear. A detect magic spell shows nothing magic around, other than faint magic from the portal mechanism. Ripley wanted to disassemble the portal and ship it to her organisation, the Order of the Planes, in Neverwinter, and the group were happy for her to do this. They also offered to share the spoils of the looting with her, which prompted Ripley to offer them some work – she gave them a reward for helping her, and gave them a Letter of Introduction from her Order, to another Order, this time based in Luscan – the Temple of the Moon – who were looking for some competent and reliable help. Why Ripley thought this group were the answer is a mystery. Ripley then, with the group’s help, hid the portal parts away from the manor, and went into town to organise shipping to Neverwinter. Alwaith accompanied her into town, in disguise.
They both found the town in disarray, but not in turmoil. It seems that the Ettin and the “Hell Hound” (actually a disguised Worg) had somehow escaped and ran riot in the town. The Ettin had been killed by Gorgeous George, but George lost his life in the process. The Worg was recaptured (as was the Sabre-toothed Tiger who had been quickly recaptured the night before) but not before killing a member of the watch. The townsfolk were picking up the pieces and getting their town back in order, as the Carnival slowly, and miserably packed up their fair.
Alwaith returned to the manor and the group decide to head to the place where Devon thinks they should hand Erky over to the Little Fingers. They want to avoid being seen, which means they must take the long way round, and remain hidden, so it takes them a while.
They arrive at the clearing in the wood only half an hour before the allotted meeting time, giving the party very little time to prepare anything. As Devon waits in the clearing with a very dismayed Erky, Alwaith and Dwarrow try and fail to hide, and Drogan tries and succeeds in hiding. At the allotted time Devon is met by the two dwarves and one Halfling that they met in the beer tent, as well as a female gnome, who seemed to be in charge. Erky was handed over to them, Drogan managed to stay his hand and not kill anyone for a change, and the gnome assured them that within a couple of hours their names would be cleared of all charges of stealing the jewellery. The Little Fingers then leave, taking Erky with them.
Heading slowly back to town, Devon, Drogan and Dwarrowsteel decide to turn themselves in. Alwaith waits until he knows how that goes. At the Stockade, the three of them are taken before the Magistrate – a female gnome named Greta – and she hears their story.
An inadvertent lie from Dwarrow, who had forgotten how they managed to escape from the Stockade, exacerbated by a deliberate lie from Devon, who tried to pin the blame on Erky, did not help their case, but they decided to come clean and tell the full story to Greta – who stopped them to ask for clarifications. She was very disappointed that the party had no evidence for any of their story, and was not happy that they took the law into their own hands rather than turn Brace into the authorities. She had them locked up while she had the story checked out – asking Ermabelle the sewer worker manager about Ankhegs in the sewers, and about ‘dark’ feelings in the sewers around the Chadstone Manor area, and sent the Watch to check out the manor itself.
All reports back in, she calls the group back in, and explains that since their story checks out, and since, for an unexplained reason, Lady Dunfall had recently dropped all charges against them for the original theft of her jewellery, the group were free to go. She even handed over a reward from Ermabelle for ridding the sewers of the Ankhegs. She explained that she would still have preferred it if Brace, and even Goldie, could have been properly tried, and she needs to search for Erky, but whilst the town does not feel indebted towards the group, they are clear of all charges. She also thanked them for explaining the cause of Wendel’s strange behaviour, and stated that whilst Wendel would still be tried for Elton’s murder, the mitigating circumstances would prevent him from being executed for the crime. She would, however, still like to see Alwaith before they left.
Having received a pardon, Alwaith does turn up at the Stockade to see Greta. He is in a bullish mood, and insists that the party did the town a massive favour in ridding Flint Rock of someone who was successfully keeping the bandit threat in check, and destroying a portal to other realms, of which there was no sign and very little evidence, and about the location of which, Alwaith was being very cagey and refusing to reveal. Greta was having none of this, and was starting to regret her decision to clear them all. She diplomatically cut short the conversation, telling Alwaith it may be an idea to move on as soon as possible. In a huff, Alwaith left to rejoin the others.
The group decided to head back to Oakhurst, having successfully delivered Erky and sorted out the mystery at Chadstone Manor. Even if Greta didn’t appreciate it, THEY know they did well. Dwarrow would have preferred fewer casualties, but the group members survived. We leave our Heroes in Oakhurst, having just levelled up to level 4, maybe doing a bit of shopping in town before heading out on the next stage of their adventure – their plans are to follow Drogan who has some business in Neverwinter, before maybe taking Ripley up on her offer of work with the Temple of the Moon in Luskan and/or following the trail of the Black Sun from Belak’s note.
