I'm Normally Good With Names...

...but I can't think of an appropriate title for last night's game session. This is because so many different things occurred!

Bomilcar's narrative
Destiny takes a closer look at the giant obelisk, and realises that its veins are almost exactly in alignment with the 'spokes' of the wheel, the runes traced across the surface of the amphitheatre in the mountains. She does a quick calculation, and works out that they will all match up perfectly at sunset three days from now. This creates a problem, in that there is no way Jorthan will be fit by then - it's going to take him weeks to recover from the wounds inflicted by the trolls. So we devise our dispositions and then settle down to wait. Jorthan will remain inside the mountain passages, hidden from sight. I will wait just inside the doorway, ready with my bow. The others will be scattered in hiding around the edges of the amphitheatre, taking advantage of the cover provided by various rockfalls that have taken place over the ages.

Alternative figure for Destiny, by Antediluvian Miniatures. Their adventurers set has all sorts of useful folks in it.

Right on cue a portal writhes into existence just twenty feet from the obelisk, and at that moment a vision of the heavens all those millennia ago is created above our heads, with the terrifying sight of the Luhsaal moon taking up a full third of the night sky. Through the portal step two demonic assistants, large skeletal things with nasty claws and twitching, barbed tails. Right behind them is a tall warrior in full plate mail - Boak, I presume.

We let loose at the demons with everything we have, and they soak it up, although we are having some effect. Boak heads straight towards the monolith and energy arcs from it straight into his body. He grows to become a 20' tall giant covered in overlapping plate armour, with a third eye glowing a baleful yellow in the middle of his forehead. At that moment, Sir Blanque is wreathed in a white nimbus and he too grows to 20' tall. Clash of the titans.

I find it difficult to make out what is going on from my vantage point inside the archway, but I do manage to loose some arrows that help against the servitor demons. Marion does her shadow dance and slicey dicey with her daggers; one of the demons staggers back from a good half dozen shallow gashes, red-black ichor spewing all over the place. Both demons emit a nasty cloud of writhing smoke to try to screen themselves. Marion seems to be enjoying herself; she can easily see through the mists. Destiny gleefully sets her elementals on the other demon and then joins in herself.

The main act, though, is an epic confrontation between the two champions. Boak and Sir Blanque exchange blows, with our man getting the better of it. Boak's greatsword will surely hurt like hell (!) if it hits, but he is thwarted by Sir Blanque's combination of Virtuous broadsword and shield. The two masters of the blade trade blows, with Boak starting to bleed from a couple of good hits. Sir Blanque then sweeps Boak's sword out of the way and steps in for a killing blow straight to the chest. The chaos champion dies immediately, and his demons are returned to wherever they came from - one of the closer hells, presumably. His body turns to pure sulphur, and left in its place is a beautiful glowing gemstone - a Nanorion according to the others, whatever that is. To me it just looked like a glowing, pulsating stone. Apparently it can even bring someone back from the dead.

Sir Blanque returns to his normal size, and the white glow surrounding him coalesces into a semi-human form. "Apologies" says the voice of Zugun. "I didn't want to alert anyone to the fact that I was, well, inside you, until Boak's arrival." Marion asks about her heritage, which is beginning to puzzle everyone. "You are affiliated with the Balance by birth" is the reply. Zugun then takes his leave, thanking us for releasing him and defeating his ancient enemy. "I now go to my rest" he says, "but I leave a parting gift for you, Sir Blanque." With that the motes that make up his form disperse slowly into the night.

And what a night.

The next morning we gingerly pick our way back through the secret passage through the mountain, and then return to Bent Pines. We are greeted by the locals with a gigantic party; apparently "Ol' Black Cloak" hasn't been seen since we went into the mountains proper. Marion's surname must have scared him off permanently. We leave Jorthan at the inn and go to the squire's place on the hill to fulfil our promise to rid him of the haunts; Sir Blanque puts in a virtuoso performance on his magic violin and they disappear. We then spend a couple of weeks waiting for Jorthan to be well enough for a couple of weeks' travel, and ride back to Aflitain.

Fortunately the trip is uneventful, and we spend a couple of months resting. Destiny stays in to read a demonology textbook which she found in the Melnibonean tower back home in Ilmiora, inside the treasure room behind a demon door. She says it has done her a power of good.

We receive an unexpected visit from a lowly acolyte from the Temple of Straasha in Aflitain. He says that he is really worried about his superiors, who went off to the small town of Saltmarsh to the southwest a few months ago and have not been seen since. "The High Priest said that omens were pointing to a disturbance in the divine waters from that direction, and went off to investigate. Please, can you help? I cannot think of greater heroes who might be able to find him and his entourage." It's nice to have a reputation; news of our destruction of the Veiled Society and then Lord Jagger has obviously spread. We all have a stake in this: Destiny because she likes the Elemental Lords; Sir Blanque because of his developing affinity for water; Marion because she serves the Balance, and the elements are associated with that (I still don't understand any of this!); and Jorthan because he is keen to make any alliances that will help with his commercial empire. Me, I'm just his bodyguard.

On arriving at Saltmarsh, we are greeted by the town constable. He politely asks our business in his little town, and we tell him. He immediately conducts us to the mayor's house, and heads off to fetch the rest of the town council while we are provided with refreshments. We are guests of honour at an emergency reception; the upshot is that the Priest of Straasha and his friends passed through the town on their way through the nearby hills towards the Marshes of the Mist. "However," says the mayor (why is there always a 'however'?) "just after that some strange lights and noises started to come from the old house on the clifftops overlooking the sea." We agree to go and have a look; this seems to be too much of a coincidence.

The old mansion is a large, rambling two storey affair. Eventually, we decide to cross the overgrown patio and enter through the back door. This takes us into the living area. Destiny finds a trapdoor under a rug the hard way; it almost gives way under her weight. We decide to investigate this immediately, rather than worry about the remainder of the house - that can wait. We find a set of stairs going down into what was once a very large cellar, but strangely it is very well lit indeed. It has been converted into quarters for ten, and is fully equipped with camp beds, tables and chairs. Jorthan swears that as we came down the stairs he heard a door close from one of the corners and, sure enough, there is a secret exit to a flight of stairs going down steeply in the direction of the sea.

We work our way through some caverns and find a rather valuable cache of brandy casks and bolts of silk. Eventually we come to a hidden sea cave and, waiting for us, a good half a dozen men. "We heard you coming," says the one who must be their leader, "What do you want?" Jorthan replies, "We were going to ask you the same thing! We were asked to check this place out by the locals; they're scared of the lights and noises." "Oh, that was just us. This place has a haunted reputation, and so we capitalised on it." Between them, Jorthan and the spokesman work out a deal. They obviously don't trust us enough to tell us everything, but we make a mutually convenient truce until their big boss comes back in two days' time. We are to stick to the house itself, and they will stay in the basement. Seems fair enough; besides, as Sir Blanque always says, it's good to avoid combat.

At the dark of the moon a couple of nights later, we can just about make out the shape of a merchant vessel arriving offshore. We can see it from up here, but there's no way the townspeople would know of its existence. A jollyboat sets out for the hidden cave, and a few minutes after its arrival we hear a polite knocking on the trapdoor in the living room. We head down for a parley.

We are introduced to Captain Sigurd and Sanbalet, a minor Priest of Straasha. Introductions made, we settle down to converse. Sanbalet says that his superior, Elmo, an elderly Priest, made contact with something never seen before, a village of what he can only describe as Lizardmen. Destiny is delighted by this; she says she thinks they may be degenerate remnants of the Luhsaal. In any case, it looks as though they have been evolving again, and according to Sanbalet they worship an aspect of Straasha. "They have been driven out from their home in the Serpent's Teeth," says Sanbalet, "and it has been taken over by a tribe of what they describe as devil fish men. This event must be the source of the omens Elmo says he detected in our temple in Aflitain. It sounds as though these creatures are allies of Pyaray of Chaos." So why all the secrecy then? "Elmo was worried about the effect something like this would have on the good Lawful folks of Shazaar. If Lady Destiny here is right, and these are the remnants of an ancient race, their displacement to an area near Saltmarsh would eventually be discovered and the reaction would be excessive. Elmo took the rest of our party to investigate the fish men, but I fear for his return. I was tasked with smuggling useful weapons to the Lizardmen, to arm them for battle with the interlopers."

"Will you come with me to meet the Lizardmen in their new home?"


Umpire's notes
The finale of The Chained Coffin was suitably spectacular. Sir Blanque didn't know it, but he had a hitcher. Zugun of Law had sneaked into him to lie dormant until the appropriate moment; this is actually what happened when various party members saw a white tendril reach out at the moment of the destruction of the Chaos mini-plane and coffin. The combat was truly epic; at one point Boak shot a magic missile from his new third eye, which Sir Blanque deflected right back with a critical shield parry.  Eventually Sir Blanque struck a critical hit to Boak's chest, which he failed to parry with a natural 20, and the would-be champion of chaos went down. Sir Blanque now has a permanent increase of +2 Power as recompense for being 'possessed' by Zugun; I also decided that this would be an appropriate moment for the group to find a Nanorion.

The rest is pretty much self-explanatory. After they had all recovered with some downtime in Aflitain, I introduced the first of three linked adventures in the form of the old UK D&D module The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Purely by chance, the party discovered what was going on almost immediately, as they came in through exactly the right entrance to the house (there were three possibilities) and then found the trapdoor leading to the basement. Jorthan and Bomilcar made loads of noise on the way down, alerting one of the smugglers, who went to warn the others. However, Jorthan then made a critical Listen roll to hear the secret door snick closed behind the smuggler, and this lead to the confrontation at the waterside. The players much prefer roleplaying and conversation to combat, so I took that route through the module, most of which was unplayed as a result. Not that it's much of an issue, since it's more the plot that is of interest. The various layers of events surrounding religion, politics and sorcery are really beginning to fuel the campaign as a whole.