Badlands Session #11

Just after dawn, the adventurers’ find themselves discussing the direction to take.

“Let’s follow the road – they were taking this cart somewhere, we play the fools once again!” – Nitsuj argues.

With no other plan, they head east along the hard earthen path, just barely wide enough for the cart. After a few hours of travel, the air heavy with the cold of autumn, they find a small clearing and rest.

“Does anyone else smell that?”, Anastasia asks right before a large brown bear smashes through the brush and charges Sebastian.

Sebastian pulls Heaven’s Vengeance up to take the blow and is thrown back, getting the wind knocked out of him as he lands hard on the ground.

Galan dips behind a stump, sees the perfect moment to leap up onto the back, sliding down, ripping a large gash in the side of the bear.

Nitsuj pulls out his holy symbol – “Begone you zombie bear!” and drives the symbol toward the towering ursa. If undead, the bear is unaffected by Nitsuj’s efforts.

Nitsuj watches the huge bear rake Sebastian with his razor sharp claws, nearly disemboweling him. Enraged, Sebastian retaliates with a mighty blow directly to the bear’s head.

“That’s the one!” – Sebastian yells triumphantly.

Even though the death blow had been delivered, the bear still managed one last violent blow connecting with Anastasia. The massive bear paw, nearly half the size of the halfling, pins her to the ground, bones breaking. The bear falls to the ground, dead.

Surviving the attack, healing spells are immediately rendered to Sebastian and Anastasia.

“That bear was going to eat you! But don’t worry! I was going to cut you out of it’s belly!” Galan says, trying to break the ice of the nearly deadly encounter.

A closer inspection of the body yields that this bear was not a normal average bear. Large patches of fur and flesh are loosely hanging on the body. Huge lesions cover the underbelly. The skin is almost translucent.

Determined to take the head back to Renye, Galan goes about beheading the beast, and processing out the body. Inside the stomach, Galan finds a chewed up dog collar similar to the one they recovered off the unholy beast earlier.

“The bear must have eaten one of those demon dogs, and probably some undead. Makes sense. This bear is more a zombie and bear to be honest. This collar though – magic or not – certainly worth a lot of gold. Rubies, maybe electrum, it’s valuable.” – Galan reports.

Continuing up the road, they spot 3 carts being pulled by 6 cultists. Shadowing them, they observe the cultists setting up for camp.

Deciding that an ambush while they sleep, stealing their cargo, and just continuing up the road is the plan, they quickly enact it.

Waiting until daybreak to attack, Galan starts off by sneaking down into the middle of the camp. The cultist on watch, completely unaware of Galan’s presence. Galan approaches, dagger in hand, and trips over a stone, completely foiling his attack. The watch screams for help, and soon, cultists are pouring out of the tents.

Watching the chaos erupt below, Anastasia casts sleep from the overlooking ridge, sleeping most of them. After a few minutes of deadly combat, the cultists are put down.

“Let’s pile their bodies on the carts – maybe we can turn them into red juice, we can sell the story with them, who will question us? They only identified us before by Morgane’s height. We don their cloaks, and ride in with these fresh bodies on the carts. We take some of their dug up bodies with us. Mix them up. We are just doing our jobs… digging up bodies, you know…” – Nitsuj offers.

Deciding upon that, the adventurers’ sleep for the night. Packing up the carts with corpses, they pull the carts north along the path.

After a half day of pulling the carts, a rough fort is spotted off the road along a small creek. Making sure their disguises are in order, they pull off the main path toward the fort.

The cultist out front of the door pulls a large lever and the door swings open, and waves them inside. Inside a foreman directs them to take the bodies to the upper floor. Wanting to blend in, they quickly unload the corpses into the juice hopper.

“Let’s steal some of these jugs of juice. We can’t burn this place, too much stone, and too many to assault directly, but clearly the juice is a precious resource. As long as they don’t have it, we are slowing them down” – Nitsuj whispers as they head to the room of empty flasks. Taking 4 large glass flasks to the room for filling, they fill them up. Nobody even sees them They load them into a cart, and wait.

Waiting for the cover of darkness, just as the gate was getting ready to be closed for the night, they drag the cart out the front. Behind them, they hear someone asking a question.

“Don’t look back – just keep going – we are on a mission! Just ignore them. If they come after us, we flee to the forest, and regroup” – Nitsuj commands under the strain of the cart.

Nobody followed them. Deciding to find a place to stash the cart off the road, they pull the cart south.

Anastasia thrusts her finger toward the forest canopy – “Look up there! Does that look like a glowing column of light? It isn’t like the other ones we have seen, but it is glowing. My halfling curiosity must know what that is!”

Carved stones form a rough trail. A carvings look Elvish in nature. Soon the main path is completely out of sight. Opening before the party is a huge tree in a clearing. Glowing lights surround the branches, blinking in and out. This is the source the light that Anastasia spotted.

XP
92 xp combat
1000 xp lifting the curse
3000 xp stealing the juice (plot quest)

Treasure
1 dog collar (1000 gold)
One beheaded undead bear & paw

Badland Session #10

After a well earned night’s sleep, the adventurers find themselves deciding their future.

“They need corpses – let’s go find the local graveyards and track them from there!” – pitches Nitsuj.

“Let’s hit the other points of interest on the map. The last one showed us the summoning portal and that dark knight.” – Morgane puts forth.

Eventually the party settles on heading to the next closes point of interest marked on the map. Finding a well used trail heading west, the party makes quick time.

Hearing a rustle off the path, a bear and two cubs are seen eating an undead corpse. The large black mama bear held the upper half of a zombie in her massive mouth as the cub ripped mouthfuls of flesh off. The other cub is spotted feasting upon a zombie leg.

Content with just being observers, the party heads further west. As the sun starts to set, they arrive at their destination. A tall plateau with a stone winding ramp guarded by 3 cultists.

Gwan holds back, as the rest of them don their cultist garb, and walk toward the guards.

“Halt – what’s your business” – a guard wielding a large staff yells out from above. Morgane steps forward and begins to spin her tale about being attacked by a group of fake cultists, barely able to escape with their lives.

“We came straight here as ordered!” – Morgane ends with. Anastasia spots one cultist pulling out a parchment, reads it, and shows the other one. “Uh oh… I think they are onto us” – Anastasia mutters.

“It’s them! Kill them!” heard below, and combat erupts. The stone ramp was presents a challenge to the adventurers. Cultists attack from the high ground, taking up defensive positions. The large human cultist steps up to prevent anyone from running up the large ramp.

“You shall not pass!” screams the cultist guarding the entrance to the ramp, as it pulls out a very large thick staff, twirls it with deft proficiency.

Gwan hears the commotion moves closer to the ramp, and readies his heavy crossbow, sighting for a target.

Nitsuj using his ability to climb walls scales up the rock face, and slides behind the two cultists in the back. Sebastian seeing the ease that Nitsuj scaled the wall, decides to try the same – not quite a fast, but he eventually makes it up.

Morgane takes a few steps back, and with just a few bounding steps launches herself at the cultist guarding the ramp. Her mass combined with her speed allows her to launch herself like a cannonball across the gap, slamming into the cultist, knocking him to the ground. Without missing a beat, Morgane dispatches the cultist with a quick precise blow.

The sounds of combat makes their way to the top of the bluff, and more cultists appear above, and start to launch arrows and spells upon the party below.

Sticky spider webs appear from the ether and the entire ramp is covered, slowing everyone down. After a few rounds of furious combat, the party makes it to the top of the bluff and see a bloody sight..

A very mean looking cultist pulls out two deadly daggers and moves forward. Behind him, a smaller undead dread dog moves to attack the party. A magical link of pink energy runs between the dog’s collar and the cultist’s amulet.

Nitsuj yells over the melee sounds to focus on the handler, not the dog.

The dog looked similar to the dread knight’s companions just half the size – its massive head could rest comfortably on Anastasia’s head for scale. Snarling and snapping, it rears back and leaps at Morgane who pulls up her shield, absorbing the blow.

Galan dispatches his assailant by throwing a series of attacks driving him off the ledge, the fall breaking his back.

Sebastian with one massive swing of his hammer, crushes his foe.

Morgane slams her hammer in a powerful overhand smash, yet the blow feels less impactful as she knows it should be. The dog yelps in pain, and a ball of energy moves across the link to the cultist. The cultist screams in pain, and clutches his chest.

Seeing this, Nitsuj charges up the ramp, swinging his new club – delivering a solid blow. Much like what Morgane experienced, the blow does not deliver the damage it normally does. Both the handler and dog yell in pain, enraging both.

The dog lunges at Morgane with unexpected swiftness, and pierces her defenses, the damage immediately apparent as blood gushes out of both her wounds. The link glows green, and both linked parties’ wounds begin to heal.

“Kill the handler!!!!” – Nitsuj yells, hoping it is heard over the chaos of combat. Galan steps from the darkness, delivering a savage and deadly strike on the handler, dropping him. The link fades between them.

Pulling out her wand, Anastasia points it at the demonic foe. Bolts of light erupt from the tip, flicker through the sky and slam into the beast, resulting in its death.

The sole remaining cultist petrified in fear is captured and interrogated. A note found on one of the corpses confirms what the party had suspected, they had been found out. They had implemented a code word. It was signed “Malon”. The forced interrogation didn’t go exactly as planned, resulting in his death.

“He did say ‘Pestilence’ before he died – maybe that’s it”

Not wanting to sleep next to a demonic altar, the group decide to push the massive black stone altar off the edge.

“1….2….3….PUSH!!!”

The altar teeters, and plunges to the forest floor. The silence of the night is broken by the impact, dust blowing up from the 60 foot drop. Satisfied in the destruction of this source of evil, the party rests for the night.

The next morning the party decides that each of the points of interest had turned up more information. The note had said that they were down to one production factory, having two destroyed already.

“This must be it!” – Sebastian points to the ruins of a church. After destroying a few undead, the church reveals a secret. Inscribed into a brass plate at the foot of a large statue of a black knight is the name “Malon” – the same as in the note.

“Hell of a coincidence…” – Galan quips.

Reaching into a hole under the statue yields an elaborate scroll case. Inside are land deeds, and a few magical scrolls. Tired from all the travel, they rest for the night.

Adventurers

  • Morgane/Gwan – Mimi
  • Sebastian/Anastasia – Sarah
  • Galan – Gary
  • Nitsuj – Justin

XP
Humans – 2283 xp
Non-Human – 2075 XP

Treasure

  • Book of recipes (cookbook)
  • Potion of healing
  • 2 unidentified potions – one with picture of an arm
  • Potion of Cure Poison
  • Perfect shaped Emerald – 1,200 gold
  • Scroll of Protection from Elementals
  • 310 gold
  • Scroll Silence 10′ radius