Father you would not believe all that has past since we left, so many things have happened, the prime plane moves so fast

I miss you

I know you would say come back it’s not you Sariel and I wish so much just to hear your voice for a few hours. To talk of old times and tall stories.

Together we talked for days on end

And before you ask I am fine and Berian is just fine too, he’s doing very well for himself, even picking up some sword play!

You always said we’d never stray far from each other

We’ve had to ah, develop our skills you know, we are pursued, hunted, chased…Entirely worse then the scolding you gave us after eating all the ripe fruit in our little orchard

I long to lean more of the lessons you taught us

Doubtlessly the winters court is on our heels, it hasn’t really left us has it? Thought it is not us to blame though, but we have made a stand against the court. This time it was a mistake father, being outright!

When winter came you stood firm until the end, we shall as also

In a human place with wild elves we made a name for a time, you could say we’ve found a spring for a time, but it wasn’t long until autumn came, things were never right there

If only we had your insight father we could be more certain of the mortal plans

However we have good friends with us and solid, reliable folk. We’ve had such interesting times and plenty of action. With the latest onslaught of our winter wind we escaped though a teleportation field!

Through a strange chaotic feywild we all walked, on the way I heard your voice

It placed us in different places on the other side, we found each other but have no idea where now. I think our demon blooded friend is formulating a plan and our stalwart human is unfazed

Perhaps you are closer now, enchantments may pull us together

We will find a trail in these dark mountains Berry and I will bring our fey magic and perhaps, this next adventure will bring us home. I would like to see our home again, just for a time, our time.

And there, on your grave I would lie, and talk, and stay there, till moss grows over my skin

But then father, I’m sorry, I don’t think I could stay forever. Escapades and excitement are found so easily in the mortal and human lands. The next one starts in just a few moments I believe, the others have started packing, Zeon is sneaking a peek into the tent… be with you in a near future.

love&light
Sariel Te’astrain’phj’li

Everything had been looking good in Leymos. You’d found the impoverished Ser Armory who had immediate access to High Town but had gambled himself into poverty, so lacked the funds to maintain himself there. On the back of the recent money you’d come into you set him up as your front and found a small house at the top of the cliff, posing as his new body guards and advisers, working for him to pay off a debt. And against all the odds it was working. Armory convinced people that you were legitimate, and also dangerous, and suddenly much more beneficial work started coming your way. Most of it was easy and relatively well paid, and now Ironhelm’s guards in low town and even the goblin king’s men were willing to pay you respect – afterall you had the status of a noble on your side.

But the problem was Armory was a gambler… and the Duke still hadn’t forgotten about his daughter. In your calmer moments you are now able to begrudgingly respect how well Armory played it. His dalliance with a favourite whore turned out to be a contact with the Duke. And the Duke had the resources to set up a proper ambush. You saw it coming, but only just in time. And with the best of the Duke’s men, led by the ruthless killer Gilesh, backed up by a contingent of Ironhelm’s guards (you can still picture the smirk on the dwarf’s face now) you had no choice… you ran. You left behind the wealth you still had hidden in the warehouse and all of the investments that are officially in Armory’s name.

You got out before the Duke’s men realised, but it didn’t take them long. And the tracker they had with them was good… damned good. The ambush you set up hurt them and gave you some space, but not a lot. And the tricks you came up with at best gained you time. That was until you discovered an abandoned tower. While Rinn and Hannibal tried to fortify the place to hold off the Duke’s men and Sariel ransacked the rest of the tower for whatever she could find, Berian scoured the remains of the wizard’s study for anything that might help… and found a half completed teleportation ritual.

You couldn’t figure out exactly where it went but it was at least on this plane of existence, and everything indicated it was to another wizard’s tower. And while the ritual was complicated and more advanced than you would normally have been comfortable with, the circumstances seemed opportune. Beri started the ritual, following the instructions as best he could… hoping that he was reading the spidery scrawl of the notes correctly. But it took time… more than you had hoped.

When Gilesh and the Duke’s men arrived Beri alone was chanting in the tower. Despite your best attempts to hold them off they soon made it to the base of the tower, but had a harder time getting in. The tactical retreat up the three floors to the study was thrown into disarray when Beri shouted for help… Sariel left the others to help with the ritual. Hannibal and Rinn worked closely together, concentrating on staying alive, attacking only when the opportunity presented it, and with the help of the obstacles they had put in their way. Four of the Duke’s best men didn’t make it up the tower, including two you would never have dreamt of facing before.

But still they pushed you back, until the fight was at the door of the study itself. Rinn was firmly planted in the middle of the doorway, refusing to move when Beri finally yelled for everyone to jump into the arcane vortex. After Sariel led the way it took Hannibal to grab the warrior and hurl him into the circle to get him to move. Hannibal followed leaving Beri just enough time to smirk at Gilesh before stepping through the portal and closing it behind him.
It was only then that you sensed something was wrong. The arcane energies should have been more organized, but the pattern of the flows was in chaos. Something must have gone wrong with the ritual, but you still have no idea what.

You landed hard on wet rocky ground, alone, in the rain and the dark. It took several hours for you all to reassemble and by then you were cold, wet and exhausted, either from the fight or the ritual. For the first time in weeks you felt you actually had enough time to use the instant campsite you took from the goblin Bodrack. It was a full day later before all of you were rested enough to move on.

You were in mountains that none of you recognised, but after the storm broke you found a trail, with recent tracks heading up hill. Figuring your best chance for information lay with finding people you followed them, and half a day later you caught up to the caravan. They were heading for the Hall of Seven Pillars, which turned out to be an unusual trading post in the ruins of an ancient Minotaur city, where surface dwellers could trade with residents of the Underdark, it sounded like your sort of place.

Our four ‘heroes’ Hannibal Ocean, Sariel Ocean, Berian ‘Berry’ Ocean and Rinn the Stout arrived in the small city of Leymos. While they weren’t in danger of starving any time soon they knew that the money they had would only last so long. So they quickly set about finding employment. They were directed to The Rusty Anchor and a man called The Major, and though they never met him, they made contact with his organisation and took a job disposing of a nest of goblins that were disrupting the Major’s smuggling routes.

Having done that the Oceans decided they needed to operate independently, rather than working exclusively with the Major. They found themselves an old warehouse that they have turned into a base of operations. They had a run in with Sargent Ironhelm, who runs the Blackshirts (the local guards) and who essentially extorted money from them on various legal grounds. He also offered them some work clearing out some thieves that had apparently taken up residence in the Clifftop sewer systems. In doing so the Oceans found the three Bruce brothers who they’re now paying to act as spies and observers around town.

The gang had noticed that their activities had been being watched by goblins and so put on a show of force by walking boldly into Goblintown to make their displeasure felt. They didn’t meet the Goblin King instead being accosted by one of his lieutenants Bodrack, who told them rather frankly that they weren’t in command and were not going to speak to his King. However from then on the goblins have either stopped watching them or are being a lot more subtle about it.

Later Sariel visited the quiet temple of The Raven Queen, one of several aspects of Thanis. There she learned that a follower of The Walker (another aspect of Thanis) was corrupting the peaceful rest of the dead by animating their corpses. So Sariel enlisted her fellows to travel out to the local graveyard where they found a young man in the middle of a ritual outside one of the tombs. The four launched a brutal assault, and while Berry faced considerable difficulty from a Deathlock Wight, they destroyed the small band of Undead and their master.

A few days later the four were resting in their warehouse when a young half-elf knocked on the door. Lorne told them of an opportunity to make some money by finding Rock Drake venom and selling it to a wizard in Clifftop. They travelled out to the east for a day and a half where they found a gang of drakes they quickly dispatched. On the way back to Leymos they came across an old and abandoned house complete with a wizard’s tower. While they explored there a blue light burst all around them and they were all shrunk down to just a few inches tall. After fighting rats they found that Lorne had disappeared and a dwarf named Shurf living on a shelf with a jar of rice. Not long after a force of Goblins led by Bodrack turned up. Whilst hiding underneath a rose bush the gang listened in on the goblins and learned that Lorne’s wizard was entirely fictional and that the young half-elf had been set up by the goblins to try and ambush the gang outside of Leymos. The gang waited until the blue light burst out again, this time noting that it came from the vicinity of the small pond in the garden. As the goblins shrank the gang launched an ambush on them, finding and killed Bodrack, but several of the others escaped. The gang then found the orb responsible for shrinking them, and destroyed it, returning to full size, then fought off the last of the goblins.

A few nights later Berry was woken up by a tiny shadowy hooded creature frantically attacking him. The creature was easily dispatched, but over the next hours the party was repeatedly attacked, each time by more of the creatures, and no matter where they were. When they were attacked in a tavern the tiefling owner told them to seek out the darkest place they could to break through to the Shadowfell and find the source of the attacks. The gang fled to the graveyard and broke into a tomb, finding themselves in a shadowy cavern where the fought huge bats and then battled their way across a rickety bridge while under fire from shadowy creatures. They paused at the far side of the bridge, exhausted and battered from the long string of fights they had been through, trying to decide whether to battle on or to risk resting in this place where shadows might swarm around them at any time.

Session 2 ~ Sewer-side!

We kick started with an array of local facts we learnt over a few days wandering about looking for a dwelling. Things were already moving by the time I arrived in the morning-ish.

In the town of… Lymos

Rare Races
Eladrin
Dragon Born
Tieflings

Great! That makes 75% of the party sticking out like dogs bollocks. Maybe this place wasn’t a good place to stay…?

We move on to popular races
Humans
Half Elves
Elves (mostly worshipers of Pheroe, those all the half elves)
Halflings
Goblins (esp in goblin town)

Then… onto business. First call was to set up the warehouse… deciding to get boxes and things to pack it out to look a bit more like a warehouse the group bought and found some. After bringing them all back and assembling them into some kind of plan (will make a map later) Sariel went out to get domestic items while the guys finished the job. During this time some captain of the local guard arrived. Bit of a chat and a bit of an argument later he went off. Sariel got back and was told they needed to register the place with the guard. She went there to see captain Hard Hat and after some negotiations did so in her name and Rin’s. On the way out she picked up a couple of jobs from the notice board out side where merc jobs are posted. Also on the way back two half-orc mercs that worked for our old ‘boss’ (also were noted for their taste in hattery) were spotted. Thankfully avoided.

The jobs were a tax collector guard and cleaning out the sewers of some oozes and possibly some wayward thieves. Sariel was voted down and the took the sewer job, so they headed, sewer-side!!! ;) … In the sewers they found the ooze and sliced it in half and half again and half again! Sar was of course covered in ahhh poo again, this time not by Berry but Berry did get leached by a bird immediately after the ooze was liquified. They went on and found the thieves den. After a bit of a struggle in small corridor as Sar got heard and we had most of the thieves down. We decided to keep some alive and after a little chat thought they could be useful and left them alive with instruction to report to us. When we got back the half-orcs were inside the warehouse… after a short battle they were dispatched and the bodies feed to the pigs and the hats not above the mantelpiece ;) Sar bought some locks.

All during the days before and after the sewer events the group spotted goblins tailing and watching them soooo…. After a chat to Marcus at the rusty anchor where we offered to do some work for his ‘boss’ we decided to magnificent 4 the goblins.

Striding in the group were met with a barricade and a goblin pimp or something that claimed to know the King. After a not so polite conversation where we asked not to be followed it was all over without a shot being fired… and we strolled out.

Two of thieves that were left alive reported to us at some stage.. the third was struggling. We hire both of them for 3GP a week to follow various people. One turned out to be good so we got him to follow Captain Hard Hat for some reason only known to berry.

On her travels Sariel saw an old friend Zeon (small human child that wares raven masks that has been with her for about 20 years… no one else can see Zeon… & Sariel IS well adjusted thank you! ). She followed him to the door of someone’s house where he disappeared again. This house was a dwelling of a follower of the Raven Queen (an aspect of Thanis the god of death.. or something) … Anyways after a chat involving visions and such and some mention of ‘the chosen one’ she was tasked with stopping ‘the walker’ (the god of undead ~ an enemy of the raven queen)

SOooo…after heading back and gathering a posse they headed to the graveyard that Sar was told was the source of the trouble. A HUGE battle later they had some big mofo undead licked and an emo in a cloak who possibly started the mess went down in the cross fire. They buried the bodies… didn’t open the tomb that was the source of all the undead interest, took the robes of the emo kid and whatever else was around and head back to town…