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| West of Prosser |
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| Captured Aranea in Dauth |
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| Behir in the Thornwaste Stone Lion |
31/7 Travel to the Dwarf Holds. Recruit dwarf sisters.
1/8 Travel from the Dwarf Holds west to the Ghost Lord's lair in the Thornwaste. Kill behir guardian & ghost lions.
Session 9 - Egg Account
30/7/1491 Flamerule, Brindol
Kythri, Tessele, Motter, & Egg leave Brindol, we are bound for the Dwarf Clan Holds with a large sack of gold coins from the Lord of Brindol to hire soldiers, then we plan to track down the sinister Ghost Lord of the Thornwaste.
We decide to use the backwoods trails south through Prosser and Dauth to avoid the main body of Red Hand forces. On the first day, just outside Prosser we came across a sizeable Red Hand scout party that had recently waylaid a caravan transporting Brindol Best Ale. Tired from the hard ride south, the enemy got the drop on us, fortunately for us, the monstrous two-headed ettins had consumed much of the ale and were quite drunk. The battle did not last long, Tessele and Motter are very experienced at fighting the Hobbers now and quickly regained the initiative by taking our the Hobber sergeant commanding the group, splitting the battlefield with an ice storm and quickly downing one of the drunk giant kin.
We arrived in Dauth late in the day, and immediately assisted the locals with their evacuation to Brindol. Since the sack of Drellins Ferry, the Vale has been in chaos, the Red Hand was burning its way to Brindol brutalizing everything in its path, leaving a wake of death and destruction. Once in the town, we encountered Miha an Arachne shapeshifter and spy for the Red Hand of Doom. She was attempting to conceal herself amongst refugees bound for Brindol. After a brief tussle, we captured and interrogated the shapeshifter in the pub. The Red Lion of Dauth was all but deserted, just a few wannabe looters, the landlord and his daughter had remained after the evacuation. After a putting off the would-be looters, the Innkeeper, a stalwart fellow, let’s use the facilities while we conduct the interrogation of the spy.
Applying some ingenious integration techniques, we managed to turn the spy and pump her for information on the Red Hand. Miha reported to the leader of the army, the Wrymlord Khan himself, and she was well versed in the Red Hand plans. She confirmed much of what we knew already; that Wrymlord Khan and the main army were approaching the Nimon Gap, their numbers in the thousands. As the host gathered, foraging parties plundered the countryside, including a perversely scheme of rounding up halflings as snacks for Turgarun a well-known blue dragon. After some alcohol-infused encouragement, she gloated about the Red Hand’s plans for the Vale, those plans are much more diabolical than we thought. Bargaining with her life, Miha told us that the mastermind of the invasion is the prophet Azarr Kul and the destruction of Brindol is just the beginning of his scheme. The prophet Azarr Kul plans to open the very gates of hell with the sacrifice of Brindol and usher the dragon queen and her demon horde into the Realms using a portal at the Temple of Takhisis in the Wrymsmoke mountains. The Red Hand army is but the vanguard of a more significant force being amassed in hell.
Tess channeled divine energy to message the Lord of Brindol, warning him of shape-changing spies among the refugees and the army being the vanguard of a much larger force. She also urges him to seek aid from Dennovar and its sorcerer Aragathos.
We reached the dwarven clan hold of Hammerfist on the second night out of Brindol. Motter is very popular here, and we get a good reception, the dwarves greeting us warmly. The council has been expecting a party from Brindol, and we conduct the business swiftly handing over the large sack of gold coin (60lbs) and enlist the services of the Shinning Axe company in Brindol’s defence. Two hundred stout dwarves march to Brindol that very night, now I don’t think it will be enough…
We spend an evening with the friendly dwarves and re-equip. Vulblood, the master smith, is particularly chatty after relieving me of much of wealth, and he regales us with stories of the cannibal tribes of the Thornwaste and the Ghost Lord himself. Inspired, Tess and employees Gagnee & Thragnee, dwarven sisters, veteran warriors, and old school friends of Motter. The sisters hired at a steep price agree to help us in our quest to find the Ghost Lord and hopefully break his alliance with the Red Hand of Doom.
It is extremely rough going in the Thornwaste, there is not a living soul to be seen. The terrain is a labyrinth of chasms and ravines covered in razor-sharp briars. The horses and I are savagely lacerated by the time we reach the Great Stone Lion that is rumoured to be the Ghost Lord’s Lair. Rising from a flat-topped hill, the Great Stone Lion is nearly a hundred feet high, and almost three times as long, spectral lions swoop around its head like tiny clouds.
The cavernous entrance to the shrine is built into the Lion's chest, and it reeks of death. Stairs lead up past two leonine skeleton statues into a large round chamber, the stench is stronger here, whatever it is coming from seems to be in the room. Kythri and I creep up the steps and a cave occupied by a vast serpentine monster, for a moment I thought it was the Turgarun, the blue dragon we had heard rumours of, but as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I could see the monstrosity was wingless, with twelve legs and a massive snake-like body ending in a long narrow crocodilian head, in Halruaa they are called the Behir. Luck was with us because this two-ton giant was snoring. Praising Tymora we started to creep back to the party to plan our attack when Kythri slipped, cursed and the serpent's eyes snapped open. The Behir flew at us with speed dazzling for a creature of such size, but Kythri met its headlong charge with a stunning blow, the dozing monster misjudged the slender wild-elf and we all fell upon it, hacking it to pieces.
Searching the chamber, we came upon a secret door in the wall that hid a passageway that rose further up into the dread cathedral. Kythir and I decided to scout ahead again, the corridor spiralled up some distance. Another concealed door found quickly enough, barred the exit from the passageway. The secret door was not trapped, but it was guarded, and we were attacked by spectral lions. The scrap was draining, the ghostly lions are creatures born of necromancy, but again we prevail once we regrouped. We left the secret tunnel through the concealed door into a reception chamber of some kind decorated in chilling murals, a spiral staircase leads to a level above. We were considering what to do when a door to another room opened, revealing a gang of Hobbers and what must be another Wrymlord...
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| Ghost Lion |
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| Miha Serani |
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| Red Hand of Doom |
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| Ghost Lord's Cat-hedral |
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