Campaign News 7/28
Campaign News 7/28
Since returning from your successful raid on the Children of the Spore, your stature has clearly risen at the pagodas. Malichar takes a proprietary pride in your accomplishments, smiling and jesting with you in his booming voice. He sates your prodigious appetites (Dozar and Sleestakarus) with only the slightest hesitation, and the mellow and complex wines of Zyan flow freely. There is now a festival air around your pagoda, which is well-lit and passably furnished, and overflowing with your goods and possessions. Meanwhile, lank Nekalimon stares bitterly, skulking about your pagoda trying to catch your attention and interest. Your lessons on valuable plants with Ulram continues. He is frank with you that he hopes you might become a more natural and easygoing source of products than the ones with whom he usually deals.
You witness some remarkable sights. Malichar rouses you from deep sleep one night to show you the splendid sight of a storm forming in the chasm below. The mists gather around the trunks of the giant tress, growing dense, until they swallow the footbridges that head down into the brambles in a sea of rolling red clouds that flows through the forest below. With them comes a rank smell, and the already sodden air becomes weightier. Suddenly in the darkness light crackles within the clouds, illuminating with a sudden flash the ceiling of roots that hang above for miles. Then you hear the offal rain begin to fall on the brambles below, dripping its way down to the lower levels.
During the flashing of the storm, you catch a glimpse of something stealing from Nekalimon’s lit pagoda, a thing all horns and twisted spikes, that slips over the edge of the bridges and disappears into the fog below. You see Nekalimon glance outside, drawing the door quickly behind him.
The following five hooks and rumors remain relevant:
(1) Passage down the great Sewer River has been impeded recently by the Lurid Toads, bloated white amphibious parasites. They have erected a slime dam in a large natural cavern upstream, and are demanding an ever-increasing fee of (very) fresh meat for passage. This is not a small inconvenience for the merchants who regularly ferry their wares to and from Zyan above. In an unusual act of cooperation, they have pooled their resources to offer a bounty for the dam's permanent removal of 2500 GP.
(3) Not far from the hanging pagodas, there stands an ancient funerary shrine to Lady Shirishanu, concubine to the last of the Incandescent Kings. When she died, the King's grief was all consuming. He would have erected a fitting cenotaph to her graceful personage in the sunny gardens of the Summer Palace, but the Queen would not hear of it. In her jealousy, she forced him to build it in the rank and lightless precincts of the highest level. Shirishanu's corpse is not to be found there; as befit a noblewoman of her time, it plummeted through the endless Azure Sea to its resting place in the heavens below. But the King is said to have filled the shrine with lavish tomb decorations and Shirishanu's remarkable possessions. The shrine is carved into the far side of the mountain that descends into the white jungle about a mile to the west of the Great Falls.
(4) The good witch Zalvorex is always seeking apprentices and champions in his endless struggle with Bazekop, the demon of the west wind. Such service is very lucrative, but also dangerous. Zalvorex's traveling manse drinks regularly at the emerald pools that are said to flow in the densest part of the jungle below, two miles southwest of the pagodas. [Malichar is the source of this rumor]
(5) A benevolent spirit of the air known as Bazekop is in need of able personages to help him in his ceaseless contest with the foul demonologist and necromancer Zalvorex. Bazekop can be sought in his invisible tower, which floats near the aerie of the giant crows in the lowest level of the jungle, on the far west side of the island. [Nekalimon is the source of this rumor]
(6) The legendary Summer Palace, if indeed it still exists, is located deep within the lower levels of the jungle. If you wish to find its location, you would be wise to seek the Chittering Masons who are said to have constructed it for the Incandescent Kings. They are disconcerting conversationalists, but their memory is long and they love everything they have crafted with their long and slender hands. They are said to maintain a village somewhere in the densest part of the jungle below.
The roster for the session is Joshua Blackketter Aleksandr Revzin Eric Boyd Anthony Fournier B. Portly Chris P. Zak Sabbath (Maybe) Travis Miller (Maybe)
Since returning from your successful raid on the Children of the Spore, your stature has clearly risen at the pagodas. Malichar takes a proprietary pride in your accomplishments, smiling and jesting with you in his booming voice. He sates your prodigious appetites (Dozar and Sleestakarus) with only the slightest hesitation, and the mellow and complex wines of Zyan flow freely. There is now a festival air around your pagoda, which is well-lit and passably furnished, and overflowing with your goods and possessions. Meanwhile, lank Nekalimon stares bitterly, skulking about your pagoda trying to catch your attention and interest. Your lessons on valuable plants with Ulram continues. He is frank with you that he hopes you might become a more natural and easygoing source of products than the ones with whom he usually deals.
You witness some remarkable sights. Malichar rouses you from deep sleep one night to show you the splendid sight of a storm forming in the chasm below. The mists gather around the trunks of the giant tress, growing dense, until they swallow the footbridges that head down into the brambles in a sea of rolling red clouds that flows through the forest below. With them comes a rank smell, and the already sodden air becomes weightier. Suddenly in the darkness light crackles within the clouds, illuminating with a sudden flash the ceiling of roots that hang above for miles. Then you hear the offal rain begin to fall on the brambles below, dripping its way down to the lower levels.
During the flashing of the storm, you catch a glimpse of something stealing from Nekalimon’s lit pagoda, a thing all horns and twisted spikes, that slips over the edge of the bridges and disappears into the fog below. You see Nekalimon glance outside, drawing the door quickly behind him.
The following five hooks and rumors remain relevant:
(1) Passage down the great Sewer River has been impeded recently by the Lurid Toads, bloated white amphibious parasites. They have erected a slime dam in a large natural cavern upstream, and are demanding an ever-increasing fee of (very) fresh meat for passage. This is not a small inconvenience for the merchants who regularly ferry their wares to and from Zyan above. In an unusual act of cooperation, they have pooled their resources to offer a bounty for the dam's permanent removal of 2500 GP.
(3) Not far from the hanging pagodas, there stands an ancient funerary shrine to Lady Shirishanu, concubine to the last of the Incandescent Kings. When she died, the King's grief was all consuming. He would have erected a fitting cenotaph to her graceful personage in the sunny gardens of the Summer Palace, but the Queen would not hear of it. In her jealousy, she forced him to build it in the rank and lightless precincts of the highest level. Shirishanu's corpse is not to be found there; as befit a noblewoman of her time, it plummeted through the endless Azure Sea to its resting place in the heavens below. But the King is said to have filled the shrine with lavish tomb decorations and Shirishanu's remarkable possessions. The shrine is carved into the far side of the mountain that descends into the white jungle about a mile to the west of the Great Falls.
(4) The good witch Zalvorex is always seeking apprentices and champions in his endless struggle with Bazekop, the demon of the west wind. Such service is very lucrative, but also dangerous. Zalvorex's traveling manse drinks regularly at the emerald pools that are said to flow in the densest part of the jungle below, two miles southwest of the pagodas. [Malichar is the source of this rumor]
(5) A benevolent spirit of the air known as Bazekop is in need of able personages to help him in his ceaseless contest with the foul demonologist and necromancer Zalvorex. Bazekop can be sought in his invisible tower, which floats near the aerie of the giant crows in the lowest level of the jungle, on the far west side of the island. [Nekalimon is the source of this rumor]
(6) The legendary Summer Palace, if indeed it still exists, is located deep within the lower levels of the jungle. If you wish to find its location, you would be wise to seek the Chittering Masons who are said to have constructed it for the Incandescent Kings. They are disconcerting conversationalists, but their memory is long and they love everything they have crafted with their long and slender hands. They are said to maintain a village somewhere in the densest part of the jungle below.
The roster for the session is Joshua Blackketter Aleksandr Revzin Eric Boyd Anthony Fournier B. Portly Chris P. Zak Sabbath (Maybe) Travis Miller (Maybe)
Shrine or Sewer River- the latter would really win us friends with the merchants. A thought strikes me: what if the door disappears while we're on this side? Are we taking less downtime accordingly?
ReplyDeleteWe could halve the downtime again, making it 2 days between sessions if you want. I think your characters would need a bit of rest between each of these harrowing excursions.
ReplyDeleteIf there's a group of traders waiting to go back to Zyan, I say we work with them to poison their meat tribute to the frog-things and then launch an attack after waiting long enough for the poison to possibly work. Otherwise, let's explore the shrine.
ReplyDelete