Kid Charlemagne
I am the Very Model of a Modern Moderator
Aboard the Waterbug, Retic Sea, January 24th, AE 420
“Yikes,” exclaims Jovah. “Not only are they Drow, they’re undead Drow.”
“Their powers are different from other vampires,” Tolaro says. “They are able to attack while invisible, and haste themselves. On the other hand they cannot turn into a gas and escape that way; at least that’s my understanding.”
“Is Loraxus still around? Has she been destroyed?” Batista asks.
“The last anyone heard of Loraxus was over a millenia ago,” Tolaro says. “She was involved in an attempt to find an entrance to the dwarven kingdom of Arthendain. You might be more familiar with it as the Lost Kingdom. Misleading name, really. Its not lost at all; everyone knows exactly where it is. They just can’t get in or out of it. Loraxus supposedly wanted in, and then disappeared. It’s possible she was forced into a hibernation; vampires, especially really old, powerful ones, can hibernate for centuries. The Loraxites may feel that they can use the Egg to find her, or waken her. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the Egg to figure out why or how it could be used.”
“We need more info,” Aris states. “And we need to figure out what the Sahuagin are going to do with the Egg. The Loraxites may try to deal with them for it. If they do we need to figure out where.”
Over the next two days Jovah casts several divinations. He learns:
The party send the Waterbug on its way, limping back to port. Tolaro teleports home to Cape Varna to do more research on the Egg. The party sails along the mainland shore, until they find a waterfall cascading down a shoreline cliff, with a small fortified tower at the top of the cliff.
“This would seem to be the place,” Jovah says. “The new moon is tonight. We made it just in time.”
“But where is the handoff going to take place?” Brennen asks.
“We’ve got a couple of hours of daylight left, lets see if we can check out that tower and see if we can get into position to do something,” Gavin suggests.
“But what if it isn’t happening at the tower?” Jalea says. “Maybe some of us should go up there, and some of us should stay here to see what happens. We can signal if there’s trouble.”
They agree on this plan, and Sir Brennen, Aris, and Gavin go up top to check out the fortified tower, and Batista, Reana, Jovah, and Jalea stay in the boat to react to any other possible signs of Sahuagin or other activity.
The ship docks at a rickety old pier and lets them off. It then sails out a bit from the shore, and drops anchor behind a rock formation, keeping it concealed from view. Jalea goes to the cliff so he can see everything and signal the ship or those onshore if needed.
On the way to the tower, Brennen, Gavin, and Aris are accosted by a small group of undead, who they take out, but not before the creatures severely weaken them.
They were wights; in 2nd edition, I had level-draining undead drain various stats instead of levels…
Once inside, they find the tower deserted. There are signs that someone lived here as recently as a few years ago, but no sign of recent inhabitation. Aris sees a crest on the back of a few tattered chairs, but it’s not one that he recognizes. Further searching reveals little on the upper floors, but they do find a concealed door leading to a stair spiralling down.
Outside, Jovah has cast locate object looking for tridents. “If a sahuagin swims nearby, I’ll be able to tell this way,” he tells the others.
Shortly thereafter, the spell registers something moving, under the water. It (or perhaps they) appears to be heading for the waterfall. Jovah signals Jalea, and Jalea heads over to the waterfall to see what he can see. He finds that there is a cave behind the waterfall (isn’t there always?) and motions for the party members still on the ship to approach. He then goes inside to scout it out.
Jovah, Reana, and Batista load up into a rowboat and head towards the waterfall, giving orders to their captain to keep out of sight. They pass through the curtain of water and find a long cave that passesunder the cliff wall until it reaches a small sandy beach. A wooden dock has been built here – in much better condition than the one outside, and showing signs of more recent use. Jalea signals to the three from the shadows, and then sneaks closer to tell them what he saw.
“There’s another chamber beyond this one, and a small pool. A whole bunch of Sahuagin came up out of there and went through a door into a big carved out chamber. I didn’t follow them any further.” They move up slowly, exploring the caverns as they go.
Up top, Brennen, Gavin, and Aris are descending deeper and deeper on a narrow spiral stair that eventually ends in a small chamber with a door. Aris opens the door a crack and looks into a large oval shaped room, with slowly sloping stairs along the long curves of each side of the room leading up to a high platform at one narrow end. On the platform is an altar, darkish in color. At the other narrow end is a set of double doors, made of oak and reinforced with iron. Twenty sahuagin have just entered the chamber in a double file procession. One is carrying a metal chest, still dripping with seaweed and salt water. They enter the room, and proceed to seat themselves on the floor, facing the doors.
“Looks like they’re waiting for someone,” Gavin says.
“But who?” Brennen asks. “Their ‘human allies’ like the divination said, or the Loraxites?”
“I don’t know,” replies Aris. “All I now is that they’re seated in a nice, tight, fireball pattern.”
“Well, then what are we waiting for?” asks Brennen, unsheathing his swords.
Gavin kicks open the door, and Aris lets the sea devils have it. The fireball goes off in the middle of them, and the majority crumple; however, the others form into a defensive formation and prepare to repel the three warriors.
Not far from the double doors, Jovah, Reana, Batista, and Jalea see the fireball go off.
“Looks like Aris found them already!” Reana says, and draws her swords and charges in, followed by Batista and Jovah. Jalea starts to follow them in, but then gets a brainstorm.
“The most important thing is that the Egg doesn’t get away,” the elven rogue thinks to himself. He then pulls out his lock picks and locks the door from the cavern side, so that he’s on the opposite side from the battle, which seems to be going well for the party.
Inside the chamber, Brennen is fighting the leader of the Sahuagin. He’s a four-armed monster who reels off a number of heavy blows on the Sword of Kelanen, but finally goes down, dropping the seaweed-covered chest he had been carrying with his second set of arms. The chest pops open, and the party can see the Egg inside, along with a number of other things seemingly dredge up from lost ships on the bottom of the Retic Sea.
That’s when the Loraxites attack. They’re invisible again, of course, and hasted from the beginning of the combat. They begin tearing through the party with a vengeance. The party members can see blurry outlines of them, but find them difficult to hit, and of course, being vampires, they regenerate. Luckily, Aris discovers after several spells that they seem to not have the typical Drow resistance to magic. Small favors, he thinks to himself. One of the Loraxites is an especially tough and strong fighter, while the other two seem to have magical skills in addition to their vampiric toughness.
On the other side of the door, Jalea is beginning to wonder if he made the right choice in terms of which side of the door to be on.
“The right side, from the sounds of it,” he thinks. But then he hears the sounds of someone coming up behind him, and he turns to see a group of armed men approaching, led by a familiar face.
Arlen Kentfield. The demon-worshipping, political power-grabbing nobleman who chased Jalea out of Ulfang.
“Wrong side, after all,” Jalea mumbles under his breath.
Kentfield see Jalea and recognizes him. He knows that Jalea has seen his little shrine to Pazuzu once, a long time ago, and has tried to have the elf killed on more than one occasion.
“Baraban, get that door open!” Kentfield says with a grin. “The rest of you, get me that elf. We have some… reminiscing to do…”
Baraban, Kentfield’s massive bodyguard, moves up to break down the door, but Jalea moves first. He takes the last remaining smokepowder from Brisco’s stash, and strikes a flint as he throws it at the fighter. It bursts into a flash of flame and smoke, doing little damage, but offering the elf a chance to dart off into the dark recesses of the cavern as Kentfield’s men avert their eyes. Jalea hops from rock to rock, avoiding leaving footprints in the sand. He then huddles in a corner and draws his velvet black cloak around him, blending expertly into the shadows. Kentfield’s men look but can’t find him.
Meanwhile, Baraban is finding that the door to the chamber is much stronger than anticipated. Inside the chamber Jovah can hear the pounding.
“That can’t be Jalea,” he thinks to himself.
During the commotion, one of the Loraxites has gotten ahold of the Egg, and apparently tucked under a cloak. Jovah sees this, and casts a detect magic to try and find the Egg and its bearer. He looks about, and finally sees a magical form, moving closer and closer to Aris, who is terribly injured. The radiation of magic is strong, and matches what Jovah has seen from the Egg before. The form is over forty feet away, though, and Jovah can’t do anything about it. Then he sees what he can do.
“Batista!” the gnome yells. “Fireball arrow, five feet to Aris’ left! NOW!”
Batista is puzzled, but spins as directed and fires. The arrow flies and misses its target, but hits the wall right behind it, and explodes into a small fireball. A smoky, unseen, burning figure drops to the floor, and the jade Egg rolls out of its hand and down the steps. Aris pounces on it, and then rolls to some unseen corner of the chamber to hide, as he is an eyelash from death.
Aris had 1 hitpoint at this point.
The two other Loraxites have become visible by now, apparently their invisibility is limited in length. The bigger of the two looks back and sees the smoking body of his compatriot becoming visible (appearing to be a young teenaged female Drow – the girl from Aris third vision).
“Sharat!” he yells. “We need to get out of here!” he adds in Drow, which Aris can understand.
From the back of the room, a billowing cloud of shadow appears. The bigger Loraxite runs to the young girl, and throws her over his shoulder. Brennen tries to block his path, but even with the extra baggage he avoids the Sword easily. The other Loraxite, a bookish looking male, dodge around Gavin and runs into the cloud of shadow. The roaring sound from the ship is heard again, and shortly thereafter, the shadows lift, and the chamber is empty.
“I think I know what that roaring is, and I don’t think I want to meet the source,” Aris says.
“We got issues,” Reana says. “There’s a bunch of people pounding down those doors, and we’re beat up pretty badly. And Jalea is on that side of the door.”
“Well, Jalea will have to take care of himself for now,” Brennen says. “We’ll have to leave the way we came in. If Jalea can’t sneak out, we’ll have to go in and find him once we’ve healed up a bit.”
“Yikes,” exclaims Jovah. “Not only are they Drow, they’re undead Drow.”
“Their powers are different from other vampires,” Tolaro says. “They are able to attack while invisible, and haste themselves. On the other hand they cannot turn into a gas and escape that way; at least that’s my understanding.”
“Is Loraxus still around? Has she been destroyed?” Batista asks.
“The last anyone heard of Loraxus was over a millenia ago,” Tolaro says. “She was involved in an attempt to find an entrance to the dwarven kingdom of Arthendain. You might be more familiar with it as the Lost Kingdom. Misleading name, really. Its not lost at all; everyone knows exactly where it is. They just can’t get in or out of it. Loraxus supposedly wanted in, and then disappeared. It’s possible she was forced into a hibernation; vampires, especially really old, powerful ones, can hibernate for centuries. The Loraxites may feel that they can use the Egg to find her, or waken her. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about the Egg to figure out why or how it could be used.”
“We need more info,” Aris states. “And we need to figure out what the Sahuagin are going to do with the Egg. The Loraxites may try to deal with them for it. If they do we need to figure out where.”
Over the next two days Jovah casts several divinations. He learns:
- The Sahuagin will most likely take the Egg to their human allies.
- This will take place on the night of the new moon (conveniently only a couple of nights off).
- He also gets a fairly clear idea where the transfer will take place – along the mainland shore about a day away.
- He does not learn any more info about the Egg itself.
The party send the Waterbug on its way, limping back to port. Tolaro teleports home to Cape Varna to do more research on the Egg. The party sails along the mainland shore, until they find a waterfall cascading down a shoreline cliff, with a small fortified tower at the top of the cliff.
“This would seem to be the place,” Jovah says. “The new moon is tonight. We made it just in time.”
“But where is the handoff going to take place?” Brennen asks.
“We’ve got a couple of hours of daylight left, lets see if we can check out that tower and see if we can get into position to do something,” Gavin suggests.
“But what if it isn’t happening at the tower?” Jalea says. “Maybe some of us should go up there, and some of us should stay here to see what happens. We can signal if there’s trouble.”
They agree on this plan, and Sir Brennen, Aris, and Gavin go up top to check out the fortified tower, and Batista, Reana, Jovah, and Jalea stay in the boat to react to any other possible signs of Sahuagin or other activity.
The ship docks at a rickety old pier and lets them off. It then sails out a bit from the shore, and drops anchor behind a rock formation, keeping it concealed from view. Jalea goes to the cliff so he can see everything and signal the ship or those onshore if needed.
On the way to the tower, Brennen, Gavin, and Aris are accosted by a small group of undead, who they take out, but not before the creatures severely weaken them.
They were wights; in 2nd edition, I had level-draining undead drain various stats instead of levels…
Once inside, they find the tower deserted. There are signs that someone lived here as recently as a few years ago, but no sign of recent inhabitation. Aris sees a crest on the back of a few tattered chairs, but it’s not one that he recognizes. Further searching reveals little on the upper floors, but they do find a concealed door leading to a stair spiralling down.
Outside, Jovah has cast locate object looking for tridents. “If a sahuagin swims nearby, I’ll be able to tell this way,” he tells the others.
Shortly thereafter, the spell registers something moving, under the water. It (or perhaps they) appears to be heading for the waterfall. Jovah signals Jalea, and Jalea heads over to the waterfall to see what he can see. He finds that there is a cave behind the waterfall (isn’t there always?) and motions for the party members still on the ship to approach. He then goes inside to scout it out.
Jovah, Reana, and Batista load up into a rowboat and head towards the waterfall, giving orders to their captain to keep out of sight. They pass through the curtain of water and find a long cave that passesunder the cliff wall until it reaches a small sandy beach. A wooden dock has been built here – in much better condition than the one outside, and showing signs of more recent use. Jalea signals to the three from the shadows, and then sneaks closer to tell them what he saw.
“There’s another chamber beyond this one, and a small pool. A whole bunch of Sahuagin came up out of there and went through a door into a big carved out chamber. I didn’t follow them any further.” They move up slowly, exploring the caverns as they go.
Up top, Brennen, Gavin, and Aris are descending deeper and deeper on a narrow spiral stair that eventually ends in a small chamber with a door. Aris opens the door a crack and looks into a large oval shaped room, with slowly sloping stairs along the long curves of each side of the room leading up to a high platform at one narrow end. On the platform is an altar, darkish in color. At the other narrow end is a set of double doors, made of oak and reinforced with iron. Twenty sahuagin have just entered the chamber in a double file procession. One is carrying a metal chest, still dripping with seaweed and salt water. They enter the room, and proceed to seat themselves on the floor, facing the doors.
“Looks like they’re waiting for someone,” Gavin says.
“But who?” Brennen asks. “Their ‘human allies’ like the divination said, or the Loraxites?”
“I don’t know,” replies Aris. “All I now is that they’re seated in a nice, tight, fireball pattern.”
“Well, then what are we waiting for?” asks Brennen, unsheathing his swords.
Gavin kicks open the door, and Aris lets the sea devils have it. The fireball goes off in the middle of them, and the majority crumple; however, the others form into a defensive formation and prepare to repel the three warriors.
Not far from the double doors, Jovah, Reana, Batista, and Jalea see the fireball go off.
“Looks like Aris found them already!” Reana says, and draws her swords and charges in, followed by Batista and Jovah. Jalea starts to follow them in, but then gets a brainstorm.
“The most important thing is that the Egg doesn’t get away,” the elven rogue thinks to himself. He then pulls out his lock picks and locks the door from the cavern side, so that he’s on the opposite side from the battle, which seems to be going well for the party.
Inside the chamber, Brennen is fighting the leader of the Sahuagin. He’s a four-armed monster who reels off a number of heavy blows on the Sword of Kelanen, but finally goes down, dropping the seaweed-covered chest he had been carrying with his second set of arms. The chest pops open, and the party can see the Egg inside, along with a number of other things seemingly dredge up from lost ships on the bottom of the Retic Sea.
That’s when the Loraxites attack. They’re invisible again, of course, and hasted from the beginning of the combat. They begin tearing through the party with a vengeance. The party members can see blurry outlines of them, but find them difficult to hit, and of course, being vampires, they regenerate. Luckily, Aris discovers after several spells that they seem to not have the typical Drow resistance to magic. Small favors, he thinks to himself. One of the Loraxites is an especially tough and strong fighter, while the other two seem to have magical skills in addition to their vampiric toughness.
On the other side of the door, Jalea is beginning to wonder if he made the right choice in terms of which side of the door to be on.
“The right side, from the sounds of it,” he thinks. But then he hears the sounds of someone coming up behind him, and he turns to see a group of armed men approaching, led by a familiar face.
Arlen Kentfield. The demon-worshipping, political power-grabbing nobleman who chased Jalea out of Ulfang.
“Wrong side, after all,” Jalea mumbles under his breath.
Kentfield see Jalea and recognizes him. He knows that Jalea has seen his little shrine to Pazuzu once, a long time ago, and has tried to have the elf killed on more than one occasion.
“Baraban, get that door open!” Kentfield says with a grin. “The rest of you, get me that elf. We have some… reminiscing to do…”
Baraban, Kentfield’s massive bodyguard, moves up to break down the door, but Jalea moves first. He takes the last remaining smokepowder from Brisco’s stash, and strikes a flint as he throws it at the fighter. It bursts into a flash of flame and smoke, doing little damage, but offering the elf a chance to dart off into the dark recesses of the cavern as Kentfield’s men avert their eyes. Jalea hops from rock to rock, avoiding leaving footprints in the sand. He then huddles in a corner and draws his velvet black cloak around him, blending expertly into the shadows. Kentfield’s men look but can’t find him.
Meanwhile, Baraban is finding that the door to the chamber is much stronger than anticipated. Inside the chamber Jovah can hear the pounding.
“That can’t be Jalea,” he thinks to himself.
During the commotion, one of the Loraxites has gotten ahold of the Egg, and apparently tucked under a cloak. Jovah sees this, and casts a detect magic to try and find the Egg and its bearer. He looks about, and finally sees a magical form, moving closer and closer to Aris, who is terribly injured. The radiation of magic is strong, and matches what Jovah has seen from the Egg before. The form is over forty feet away, though, and Jovah can’t do anything about it. Then he sees what he can do.
“Batista!” the gnome yells. “Fireball arrow, five feet to Aris’ left! NOW!”
Batista is puzzled, but spins as directed and fires. The arrow flies and misses its target, but hits the wall right behind it, and explodes into a small fireball. A smoky, unseen, burning figure drops to the floor, and the jade Egg rolls out of its hand and down the steps. Aris pounces on it, and then rolls to some unseen corner of the chamber to hide, as he is an eyelash from death.
Aris had 1 hitpoint at this point.
The two other Loraxites have become visible by now, apparently their invisibility is limited in length. The bigger of the two looks back and sees the smoking body of his compatriot becoming visible (appearing to be a young teenaged female Drow – the girl from Aris third vision).
“Sharat!” he yells. “We need to get out of here!” he adds in Drow, which Aris can understand.
From the back of the room, a billowing cloud of shadow appears. The bigger Loraxite runs to the young girl, and throws her over his shoulder. Brennen tries to block his path, but even with the extra baggage he avoids the Sword easily. The other Loraxite, a bookish looking male, dodge around Gavin and runs into the cloud of shadow. The roaring sound from the ship is heard again, and shortly thereafter, the shadows lift, and the chamber is empty.
“I think I know what that roaring is, and I don’t think I want to meet the source,” Aris says.
“We got issues,” Reana says. “There’s a bunch of people pounding down those doors, and we’re beat up pretty badly. And Jalea is on that side of the door.”
“Well, Jalea will have to take care of himself for now,” Brennen says. “We’ll have to leave the way we came in. If Jalea can’t sneak out, we’ll have to go in and find him once we’ve healed up a bit.”
- my position on that is that Jalea has never demonstrated any such ability in 2e, why change now? 
