Today marks the beginning of Paul's new Highthrone D&D campaign. For this remarkable occasion we have perfect attendance: Chris (Tonk Sangaree), Tim (Anpago Yost), Bruce (Longfellow Yost), Chuck (Morgan Sangaree) and Mike (Grod Sangaree).
The characters are all part of the Sangaree trading family. The Yost branch is related through marriage to a Sangaree daughter. The group consists of:
Uncle Enzo Sangaree takes Longfellow Yost and Tonk Sangaree out for a hunting expedition in a nearby preserve. There is a substantial fee associated with using the preserve, but Uncle Enzo covers it. He tells them, "I like inviting my nephews out for hunting expeditions, but you need to know that sometimes hunting is more than just killing animals. Sometimes you need to... bond with nature." Longfellow and Tonk exchange cautious looks, but say nothing. Enzo continues on, "I've been checking up on you and listening to stories of your training. It sounds like except for that wastrel scum Morgan Sangaree you have been very diligent and capable. I have a task for you, but I want you to bring that ADD-afflicted scatterbrain Morgan along to leaven him a bit."
Longfellow and Tonk agree to do as their uncle asks. He explains that their cousin Jebediah Sangaree is traveling to the great city of Highthrone to start trade relations. The government there is planning on building a trade road, which will provide an alternate route to the city. Until now, flying ships have been the only useful way to reach the city. The problem with the flying ships is that they cannot carry much weight, and using them is very expensive.
Uncle Enzo indicates that if the characters can help cousin Jebediah arrange an overland deal, then the family stands to make quite a bit of money. Cousin Jebediah is going to the city on a skyship, but uncle Enzo cannot afford the fare for the characters, who will have to walk. The journey is expected to take about a week. Uncle Enzo expects that the characters will help Jebediah in any way he requires, though if they can find any opportunities on their own that will reflect well upon them.
Both Longfellow and Tonk know that cousin Jebediah has a rather substantial arrogant streak. However, he has also achieved some good successes in the past, which is probably why he is being given this opportunity.
Uncle Enzo cautions the characters that they will be the representatives of the family, and should not take any actions that will reflect poorly upon it. In particular, he does not want the Sangaree family to be seen as a gang of heavy-handed strongarm artists. He would prefer that they be seen as respectable, dependable members of the community. He is willing to let the characters take their time on the trip to Highthrone. They do need to make sure that the route is safe, because the trade route will be going through the same cities.
Longfellow heads down to the Rusty Scabbard to fetch Morgan. He dunks the Bard's head in a bucket of water, then leaves him there while he goes to purchase provisions. When he returns, either the Bard will be drowned or awake. Either way is good.
Tonk knows that the Wizard-hazing is happening down at the pig-lots. He thinks he can find Anpago Yost there. And Grod Sangaree should just about be back from his recruiting ("slaving") expedition.
Everyone buys themselves seven days' worth of trail rations. Grod buys himself a mule and a cart - he is quite confident that the characters will soon need to transport around tremendous quantities of loot.
After the first day of travel the characters stop at a shrine to Fahrlangn that has been set up as a hostel. Anpago casts Prestidigitation to clear away the mites from his bedding. Unfortunately, he doesn't have another use of the spell available to ease the smell.
At dinner in the common room the characters meet a traveler named Erwin who doesn't eat meat but who does have bread to sell. He is from Port Delour and is traveling to the characters' home city to see his brother. He says that the port has seen hard times because the fishing catch has not been good recently.
Midway through the second day of travel the characters notice that a storm is coming. They spot a one-eyed tinker and his family pulled up by the side of the road. They have a wagon and a fire. The characters instantly decide to make their acquaintance.
The tinker and his relatives are fairly willing to let the characters take refuge on the same patch of roadside. His name is Scirengi and his wife is Rianna. The rest of their group includes their son Carloni and Carloni's two children. Scirengi says that there is a town nearby, but it is a place with troubles. The characters share bread with them, and Scirengi promises that there might be time for a fortune-telling later on. Morgan performs some music and tells a few stories. After it gets dark and the children go to sleep, a gorgeous young woman emerges from the wagon. Scirengi says, "This is my daughter Volanna. She will tell your futures." Tonk rushes forwards, "Me first!" She throws some runestones and gasps. She says, "The lost one has called you! The dead will walk in the coming storm! If you do not put them to rest, then the rain will turn to blood and you will drown!" The other characters are suddenly a lot less eager to have their fortunes told.
Volanna returns to her wagon, whispering quietly, "Beware the madman! Beware his blood!" to Tonk as she goes. Tonk thinks that she is trying to avoid her brother Carloni.
The character on guard in the morning is unsurprised when the tinkers pull up stakes very early and head off at all speed.
The characters continue to walk. They see a small house along the side of the road. Someone has placed lit lanterns all around it, providing a small bit of light and cheer in spite of the brooding storm clouds overhead. The river delta is nearby, so the ground is very swampy and the house is up on stilts to protect against flood.
Nobody answers when the characters call up. They enter anyway, to find a young man sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by a circle of five lanterns. He stares out with an expression of pain. He is wasted-looking and unkempt. His stare has the focus of the truly insane. There are several other items scattered about the place, including an open barrel full of clear water and several boxes that turn out to contain fresh food.
Tonk walks up, and finds that the young man is clutching a book. As soon as Tonk draws close, the fellow starts spouting random scary nonsense. Tonk gets Anpago up to listen to it. Anpago isn't able to see the title on the book, but he's pretty sure that it's written in Kobold.
Grod takes the book from the lad. He finds that it is a book of common children's stories. The inscription reads, "To my dearest Luke." Grod gives him some food; Luke accepts it.
The characters continue towards the village. Luke follows them.
The highway goes right through the village. The center of the village features one large building with a few smaller outbuildings surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. The place looks like an inn. A church to Pelor stands to one side, surrounded by locals. The characters decide that there is a funeral going on. On the other side of town several shops cluster about, all of them closed.
The characters watch as the funeral procession heads towards the graveyard. The local priest of Pelor presides over a coffin wrapped in heavy chains. He intones, "Friends and family, we say farewell to Jeremiah DeGree. You will be missed but you will not be welcome here again." The characters are surprised to hear muffled banging from inside the coffin. The banging becomes rather loud, and the coffin starts to shake back and forth. Neither the priest nor the townsfolk seem to be concerned about this development.
Longfellow approaches some townsfolk and does his diplomatic best to ask, "Are all funerals hereabouts like this? With the chains and the thumping?" The local he's talking to doesn't take his inquiries very well. Morgan manages to apologize for his companion and sweet-talk the fellow a bit. He learns that there have been several deaths recently, and there has been a problem with the people involved not staying dead. But the locals can't bring themselves to desecrate the corpses because it wouldn't be respectful to the departed. The second one to die was the Constable's son, and he has been too grief-stricken to come up with a plan to deal with the problem. The only recent visitors were some Tinkers, and there has been a lot of talk that all the troubles have been the Tinkers' fault. The villagers say that the Tinkers did do a reading for a "quiet, disturbed young man."
The large building in the center of town is the Full Moon Inn. Its symbol is a big white circle. The bartender Gerald is the owner of the inn. He employs some five barmaids in their skimpy little britches and their cut-down halters, which seems a bit excessive. Curiously, there is a painted sign on the wall of the bar advertising "Choctaw Bingo." In the back of the bar, one of the locals is flirting with his second cousin.
The Full Moon Inn is directly across the street from a General Store run by a dwarf and his family. They sell all manner of things, including traveling goods, foodstuffs, and so on. Anpago Yost buys a big wheel of cheese for 2 sp. Anpago drops it on the table in front of the others. "WHAM! It's bigger than my spellbook!" Morgan dryly notes, "And much more useful at the current time?"
Morgan works the crowds. He finds that the large inn is there to provide housing for the migrant workers who work the D'Tarascon plantations. They grow cotton, corn, wheat and sorghum. This place is in the river delta and is good farming land. He learns that nine people have died in the last few weeks. Someone says that they saw Lady Grissom walking in front of the cemetery, and when they turned around she was just gone. And nobody has seen her since then. She was a local house servant at the plantation above the town.
The barmaid is very interested in the characters. She chats them up, and Tonk obliges by telling her everything about him. Anpago tries to act friendly and she tells him she saw Francois just drop dead in the Inn. Before people started hollering, she smells this terrible smell, like rotting meat but worse. She forgot about it until Flora mentioned that she'd smelled the same smell too. She also tells Anpago that the spooky young man who has been following the characters around looks like Lucas D'Tarascon, the younger brother of John D'Tarascon, the master of the plantation. The barmaid indicates that ever since the troubles have started she hasn't seen any of the D'Tarascon family around. The characters decide to visit the D'Tarascon house bright and early the next morning.
Hoping to verify the barmaid's story, the characters take a look at Luke's hands. They are soft, and don't look like they've been used for hard manual labor, though he may have been trained to fight. Lucas cooperates with the examination, then says, "The mother stern of child lifeless found heralds evil in time unbound." Morgan rather lamely offers, "I have the Solve Cryptic Riddle skill here..."
Tonk Sangaree pays for a room. Longfellow is too poor to afford a room, and sleeps on the floor. Morgan does his best to sing for his lodging. He does a tremendous job and collects almost 18 sp. The barkeep is so impressed, he knocks a couple silvers off the price of a room and lets Morgan have a room for only 18 sp. Grod sleeps on the floor of Morgan's room.
Dawn. The sky is still stormy and thundering, but still no actual rain has fallen. The characters smell the pleasant scent of sweets and baking bread - they deduce there must be a bakery nearby. Tonk spends 1 gp on hard candy and baked goods, which he shares among the others. There's a lot of it. The big woman who runs the place agrees to toast some of Anpago's cheese onto some bread. She says that her specialty is red licorice. Everyone buys it. John D'Tarascon loved it. So does Mordu, the town eccentric. He's got a lot of books.
The group heads up to the D'Tarascon plantations. Along the way, the characters notice someone kneeling in an alley. He has a Constable's badge. Spattered all around him are flecks of reddish-brown. The characters approach and see a reddish-brown bloodstain in front of him, centered upon a single piece of red licorice. He tells the characters, "I saw you people at the funeral yesterday. You planning on staying in town, or just passing through?" The characters indicate that they're planning on heading on soon, but will be around for a few days.
Tonk mentions meeting some Tinkers outside town. The Constable tells Tonk that those Tinkers are nothing but trouble. Tonk isn't so sure, "They seemed pretty earnest." The Constable is, telling Tonk, "They're nothing but trouble. You should have made sure to count your money after you finished talking to them." He urges the characters to just walk on through and not get involved. He's afraid that having strangers in town will just be a problem in finding the real killer: people are likely to blame them. He says that Lucas' older brother Marcus died about three weeks ago. Lucas really idolized Marcus, and the loss has sort of altered him. Unfortunately, the Constable just polices the town, and doesn't know much about how Marcus died. He does mention that the D'Tarascon family has a town house in the village.
The characters delay their trip to the plantation to check out the D'Tarascon town house. They find that all the windows are shuttered and the doors are locked with big locks. Nobody answers a knock on the door, but Grod is able to hear someone inside. He can hear them breathing. He asks, "Lucas, do you have a key to the Town House?" Lucas responds with more hard-to-understand threatening poetry.
The characters turn to the Constable, and persuade him to agree to let Grod break the door down. Grod has been waiting so long for this chance: he has a crowbar. He shatters the latch.
The interior is dark. Until Anpago demonstrates that he can light all manner of candelabra inside with magic! Tonk grumbles, "Why didn't you say you could do that when I was trying to light a torch? Do that again and I'm gonna kick your ass, spells or no spells."
The characters spend some time exploring the house. Tonk stands at the door while the others look around. Morgan finds a small space in the upstairs study, behind a bookshelf. Inside he finds a black hooded cloak and a scroll tube with a scroll. The cloak pockets are full of red licorice. The Constable is summoned to examine the evidence. Anpago examines the scroll.
These signs were foreseen by Hyskosa, a Tinker most gifted with the Sight. Spread word of these wherever you travel. Only the true hearted can stop the fall of the night of evil.
The night of evil shall descend on the land
When this hexad of sighs is near at hand;
In the house of Daegon the sorcerer born
Through life, unlife, unloving shall scorn.
The lifeless child of stern mother found
Heralds a time, a night of evil unbound.
Seventh time the son of suns doth rise
To send the knave an eternity of cries.
The light of the sky shining over the dead
Shall gutter and fail, turning all to red.
Inajira will his fortunes reverse
And all shall live with dreaded curse.
The journal of Pierre D'Tarascon talks about his friendship with the Tinker Hyskosa. Hyskosa was quite gifted with the Sight, and his last prophecy was very potent. Pierre hid the scroll upon which the Six Signs of Hyskosa were written.
The characters also find some signs that someone has recently been in the house, and probably left out the back door while the characters were in the house. Longfellow is able to confirm this. They develop a simple plan to copy the scroll, and then put everything back just as it was.
Tonk talks to the backyard neighbor. She was the caretaker of the Town House, but ever since Marcus died John has had the place pretty much locked up and he's been staying up at the plantation.
The characters take Lucas over to see the priest. Inside the church they are able to see that there are small shrines to Bahamut, Ehlonna, Hieronyous, Pelor and Kord, all deities of good reputation. The priest takes a look at Luke to see if he okay. Lucas responds by quoting another corrupted verse from the Six Signs of Hyskosa. The priest asks the characters, "So, have you been taking care of Luke?" Anpago tells him, "He's sort of like a puppy." Tonk adds, "With antlers!"
The priest says that Luke is a lost one. Shortly before Marcus' death he became interested in finding the scroll (which Grod hands over to him). Priest admits that the scroll doesn't make any sense to him, and he doesn't know whom Daegon or Inajira are. The characters don't know why the priest is being so evasive, but he offers to buy the scroll for 10 gp.
Grod, Anpago and Longfellow leave. They are convinced the priest is evil, somehow. The priest thinks they're corrupt.
Morgan and Tonk go to talk to Mordu, whom they have heard is quite the eccentric. Mordu is friendly to them when they knock on his door. Apparently that qualifies as "eccentric" in this town. He offers them red licorice from an earthenware jar. He has dozens of scrolls and books, primarily on geography and local history. Morgan can see that some of them are total nonsense. Among these is the much-thumbed copy of The Cult of the Swamp God near his bedside. Mordu claims it is his favorite book - he's read it at least thirty times. "I know a lot about local history. Of course, the most interesting is what's been happening recently, ever since the cultists took over. There have been all these mysterious deaths, well, not mysterious to me." He says that the Tinkers told Flora that the Night of the Dead is soon at hand. He knows how Marcus died. John carried him into the church, so he thinks the priest knows too.
The characters immediately return to the church, barely pausing to thank Mordu.
The priest protests, "Marcus' body was never found!" Everyone believes him, except for Anpago, who realizes that he's lying. The priest finally admits that Marcus was murdered. The characters demand, "Details!" The priest explains that Marcus was practically ripped apart. John brought the body to the church, and Lucas was with him. Luke had the scroll in his hands and hasn't spoken a lucid word since that night. Then John took off with the body. There was no funeral. The priest doesn't know what John did with the body.
Anpago gets fed up with this and casts Charm Person on the priest. The priest resists, then throws the characters out of the church.
The characters enter the graveyard. Through the gate. A path flanked by statues goes through the place, leading to the Old Graveyard where the older D'Tarascon family members are buried. The Old Graveyard is surrounded by a wall with a gate labeled, "D'Tarascon" and flanked by gargoyles. The characters enter and look around. The place looks like nobody has touched the place for at least 100 years. Even with the lack of maintenance, there are recent tracks. Longfellow takes a look at them, and figures out that there are scraps of flesh and whatnot around. Obviously, there is a colony of lepers living back here.
The characters pick out a good-sized old tomb in the back of the Old Cemetery to investigate first. Tonk leads. The doors open with a dismal creak. A vile, fetid air flows outwards, carrying the scent of fresh corpses. The entire chamber is littered with bones and half-eaten corpses. A platform of bones lies in the middle of the chamber, flanked by braziers. A dread throne stands on top of the platform, but nobody is seated upon it.
Grod takes the first step inside. He finds nothing particularly interesting. Longfellow follows him. He can see dozens of sets of tracks, some going into other crypts. Tonk offers, "Cool! Lets pick on a crypt with tracks leading to it, then kick it in."
The characters move to another crypt. They see that the door has six stars carved in it, and is slightly open. Lucas is becoming very agitated. And then the zombies come out. One launches itself at Grod, who swings at it. His strike slides across its thick, leatherlike skin. Tonk moves up for an attack. Anpago runs up and cracks it on the head, with no visible effect at all. The other characters pile up on the thing and inflict variously miserable attempts at attack upon it. Anpago finally manages to do some actual damage by zapping it with a Disrupt Undead. Grod takes a jab from its spear. Hurt and upset, he attacks the spear, breaking it into flinders. The zombie cracks him in the ribs with its stick. Then gets hit with another Disrupt Undead. Grod attempts a Bull Rush against the zombie, which fells him with an attack of opportunity. Morgan grabs Grod's body and drags him away. Tonk and Longfellow block the thing's way while other characters withdraw. Longfellow gets smashed upside the head and gets disabled. Morgan hits Grod with a Cure Light Wounds scroll, bringing him back up in time for him to light a torch.
Tonk yells, "I drop my useless greatsword and fight with a torch!" Anpago starts handing torches to everyone. The characters swarm over the creature, torches in hand.
Frustrated with the slow pace of the fight, Grod shouts, "Hey, Anpago! Is there anything around here of magical significance that we could break and dispel this thing?" Anpago responds, "Fuck if I know! Set it on fire! Set it on fire! Now! Nooooow!"
The characters surround the zombie and slowly burn it to death.
Once the zombie has been thoroughly burned, the characters take a moment to see what they have found. The body is wearing ancient robes indicating noble stature. Everyone is able to see that it has been in the ground for a long time.
The characters come up with a theory on what might be happening. They speculate that Marcus found the scroll and got torn apart by the zombie. John and the priest came along, repelled the zombie and brought back Marcus' shredded carcass. John kept the scroll in the pocket of his robe.
The characters go back to the temple. Anpago walks up to the priest and tells him, "Dude! We iced a zombie in the graveyard, but we need healing." The priest responds in kind, "You're hurt? Of course I'll fuckin' heal you." He explains that nobody ever goes into the old cemetery, so anything could be back there. Tonk: "Okay, maybe that wasn't our best move, but we kicked its ass." The priest still seems unimpressed by the idea that the characters were poking around the cemetery. Tonk explains the Marcus-finds-scroll theory. Even this does not impress the priest much.
Tonk buys everyone two torches and one tindertwig (which turns lighting a torch into a standard action). The dwarf at the general store is very curious by the fact that the characters are all bloody and dirty. Morgan tries to tell him about killing fifty zombies. The shopkeeper is unconvinced. Very unconvinced. But he does try to sell the characters magic arrows, a magic longsword, magic bracers, healing potions and various other things. For way more money than all of them have put together. Anpago asks the others, "Would he accept sex as payment?" The other characters persuade him not to ask.
Each character gains 180 experience for killing a zombie.