[NOTE: For this game, Micah was unable to attend. While the party investigated the mines, Nikolai stayed behind with a “stomach bug”… which actually meant he was keeping Jimmy busy so he wouldn’t start preaching to the slaves… er… SERVANTS and fomenting revolt.]

January 27, 2013
In-Game date: Summer 10-11

Return of the Warforged
The game began with the party returning to the carts after their rescue of the tiefling girl Catrina from recently-awakened Cappodocian undead. As the party returned to the carts, they heard noise from inside, and found that the warforged, M.U.D., had awakened, and that Karath had stopped breathing.

MUD, with oddly deva-like eyes, looked at Akara/Valarie, looked at Praxis/Lisa, then said “Akariel, why didn’t mother kill the child?”. He then went dark, and started making reboot beeps & boops, returning with his normal warforged eyes, and no memory of having said anything about Akara. However, he had a tale to tell of the adventures he and Karath had.

The Vecnal book had taken their souls and transported them into the empty bone shells of bodies the Lich Valindra Shadowmantle wanted to use to create an army of warforged-like creatures she called the “boneforged”, with the combined powers of undead & warforged, with none of the weaknesses or drawbacks. She intended to use this army to take over Thay from the other high wizards in their government, and she had paid the pixie assassin The Little Death to steal some kind of life-infused totem of some sort to create a huge ritual that could “copy” the work done on Karath & MUD’s models, which she believed were a secret gift from Vecna.

Karath had, apparently, made some deal with a servant of Vecna to learn the secret of how to alter Valindra’s ritual to send MUD back to his body, but there was an unfortunate cost, and Karath’s soul would not be returning to his body. Karath told of a classmate of his, Ersatz Tallfellow, who was in Kislev researching a similar thesis project on the origins of the warforged, and he asked that the party seek out this classmate before Valindra found him.

Town of Freton
In town, the party met some local lawmen at the inn and tried to raise the alarm about the potential many families of undead ready to rise underneath the nation of Coventry. The cops agreed to take the information to Lord Dunwall, who would bring it to the nation’s Council of Lords. However, locals in the town were distressed by the news of an impending undead invasion. Fortunately (?) for them, Jimmy was outside to preach the anti-undead message of Pelor to all who would listen. The party quickly tried to hush him, given what they’d heard about preaching from the border guards.

Hammermain Estate
The party stopped at the mining estate of their friend Jethro Goldeneye, whose older sister Sharda had married Lord Fjorin Hammermain. While they were able to give Kanye’s mother the new address she could use to contact her son, they made little progress with Lady Sharda, who was worried about her husband, who had not been seen in some time… ever since he went to a mine claiming to be able to smell adamantine in the ground. The party agreed to investigate.

The party found Fjorin to be obsessed with adamantine, and only attended by base-model Gnometech automoton diggers, which he’d done his own adjustments on. Eventually it was learned that the dwarf had made a deal with creatures known as Chitine, sentient spider creatures created by drow wizards. Due to a misunderstanding, the Chitine believed the party signified a betrayal on Fjorin’s part, and they arrived just in time to join a battle between Fjorin, the automotons, and the Chitine. Of course, the automotons malfunctioned, attacking whatever creature was nearest, and Fjorin was, unfortunately, auto-hammered to death while the party focused its energy on the Chitine. The Chitine were defeated, and the party took Fjorin’s body back to his wife.

Experience: 200 + 200 from “Find Fjorin” quest = 400 each. Everyone should be at 7000 XP now (level 6 is at 7500).

Treasure:
- Adamantine Ore worth 500 GP
- Ritual book purchased at inn (subtract 775 GP from party total) [Akara, Ginger, & Nikolai]…
Dark Light, Battlefield Elocution, Endure Elements, Lesser Telepathy, Undead Ward
- Karath’s Tome +1: Chronicle of the Dawn War
- Karath’s Belt of Nourishment (lvl 7) [Art/Jenn]
- Karath’s Faerie Field Catalog (lvl 5) [Ginger/Elizabeth]
- Karath’s Thesis Ledger: enables communication with Arch Magirium
- Karath’s book of teleportation sites
- Karath’s “journal of Ariel”