shifty louts

Antarctica Campaign Session 1 - The Storyweaver and the Cheesemaker

Players

Abarran Horno the Armsman (Idraluna), Mendebal Frane the Armsman (Ivan), Xixili Degli the Red Magus (Oldhawkeyes), and Xarles Marato the Green Magus (EvilTables)

Summary

The group has heard of a great bronze dome and, within it, a greater treasure. Having forded the river upon the vast expanse of grassland, ahead a mound, like a pimple on the skin of the earth. The first sighting they’ve seen in their travels. Xarles suggests using it to gain a greater vantage.

The group heads northward, and by evening’s rising, they find many huts and manors of farmed buckwheat. Riders of Appaloosa horses met them, one named Pedir asks if they seek the bounty offered by King Penalan to track the Storyweaver.

The Red Magus Xixili asks where the Great Dome is. Pedir does not know, but can offer the audience to the King if they seek it. The King’s Great Lodge is open to all of Vallahuela, unlike the prior King.

Pedir comments that their accents are foreign but still intelligible. The group is led into the ringed fort of Vallahuela, a simple place heaving with hundreds of huts. Some citizens hold strange marble squares within their hands, and stranger images dance across their faces.

The group is offered an audience at the Grand Lodge of the King, and introductions are made. Pedir excuses himself to attend to matters at his manor, but offers a stay within the stable if the group seeks shelter for the evening.

Meeting King Penalan, the group learns of the bounty offered, so 400hs in loose-leaf tea and ingots to warriors who bring the Storyweaver dead or alive back to the King. They learn that for the forty-third naming ceremony of the King, entertainment was called for. In a moment of too-sharp wit and careless cleverness, The Storyweaver’s joke was taken by the King as an earnest insult.

The group asks for the King to repeat the joke, but repeating such an offence is beneath the King. The group is told by an advisor, Ble, that the Storyweaver fled without a horse, travelling light, carrying only with him his large mask made of birch wood, smeared with black. Small slits for eyes. Red lines across what would be its eyebrows.

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The group asks about the strange marble devices, and the King tells of calling out the wisest storymen, the most knowledgeable herb women, scholars and chromatic magi far and wide, hoping they would know what purpose these handheld devices are meant for. He speaks of a scholar from a “Southern Tower” who thought it a remnant of the original inhabitants, called by those of Vallahuela “the Builders”. King Penalan says that the storymen have said that such devices were here when Vallahuela was established. For what original purpose is lost.

Xarles speaks up and asks for a storyman to be brought to the Lodge so that they may ask where this Great Dome lies. An elder storyman, Vansacco, is brought forth by the Advisor Ble and Xarles and company ask of the Bronze Dome.

Vansacco tells that the necropolis of Heriotza lies to the east, some three or four days away. Within rest the remains of a great conflagration. Within are ruins and forgotten memories. Of human shadows etched upon the marble stones that still stand. The preserved, exact moment the Builders left. Vansacco has never gone there, only hearing stories and preserving them, never leaving the safety of Vallahuela. Vansacco comments that he believes the Second Princely Offspring rules over it as his fief, but is unsure of the veracity. As a storyman, he cannot leave, unlike storyweavers.

The group is satisfied with the knowledge and heads back to Pedir’s manor to bed for the night. In the night, a piercing, ear-rupturing cry is heard. Alerting the group who see in the distance underneath the moonlight, a figure atop a strange creature. It stands outside another house, seemingly calling to it.

As the screaming becomes more focused, the word “Svapo” is heard, uttered from the mouthless fiends again and again and again.

Xixili casts a tarantistic light around the thing, illuminating a horrid figure. Atop the giant body of a plucked chicken coated in mud. Where its head would be, a weeping stump oozing contagion. Its fleshy body shivers with agitation. It's rider, a man with a gourd for a head. Illuminated by black magik from within. In its hand, a whip of bone.

Xarles and Xixili run towards Vallahuela’s walls to alert the town and call for the guardsmen. Abarran and Mendebal draw arms, with Abarran firing off a crack shot with their crossbow into the “throat” of the figure.

The rider charges the armsmen as the two magi cry out for the Storyman Vansacco. The rider’s whip and mount strike Abarran with contagion, the awful fluid finding its way into Abarran’s mouth while Menebal’s attacks swing wide.

Xarles and Xixili finally draw the attention of Vansacco. The two chromatic magi demand assistance with Vansacco yelling as to why they’ve inserted themselves into this otherworldly matter, the fiend seeks revenge, and the culprit is the cheesemaker Svapo. By inserting themselves into the matter, they’ve doomed themselves to fall to the fiend’s deathly intoning.

Realising that perhaps they are outmatched, Mendebal breaks for it to the walls, while Abarran makes a final desperate stand. Abarran, bloodied, draws his sword and strikes the figure, stunning them as the headless hellish chicken attempts to strike once more.

Eventually, the fiends run off into the night, southward away from Vallahuela. Xixili, armed with the knowledge that Svapo has done something to draw the ire of such a hellish fiend, forms a small mob and leads them to the hut of Svapo the Cheesemaker.

The small mob finds Svapo gone and follows his muddy tracks northeast until they have to camp underneath the stairs. Sleep doesn’t come easily for Abarran, who soon begins a hacking cough with a sweating pallor.

In the morning, the group heads back to Vallahuela, empty-handed. Abarran looks worse for wear and, after speaking to Pedir regarding last night’s events, tells them to speak to Planeta the Herbwoman, who can be found drying herbs near the Grand Lodge of the King.

Entering the town again, they find Planeta to be a young teenager with dark hair who immediately identifies Abarran's respiratory issues and says to seek out the elfdock that grows near the Stele at the river’s north in the north. When eaten raw, it can be used to protect the lungs.

The group heads northeast, arriving at the Stele in the evening redness. The stele itself displays in low relief two men, ornately dressed with large headdresses, facing each other and extending their hands to each other while their other arms extend upward, displaying their open palms. It was once painted with red, yellow, blue and black, now long faded from the lashing rain and sun.

Xarles examines the faded, flowing vertical inscriptions that appear upon the left and right sides, commenting on the ancientness of the inscriptions as Abarran eats the yellow petals, while Xixili collects more.

The group heads southeast, arriving at a dozen or so structures that hold the rotting remnants of hydroponically grown leeks. The strange metallic framework encased in hide. The group considers cleaning up the place and using it as a shelter for the evening, and eventually finds fourteen thin hammer-beaten copper chips. The night passes with Abarran’s affliction seemingly passed.

The next day, the group continues eastward in hopes of finding Heriotza. Eventually, they find a wide river that flows southward, its current too swift to ford, but in the distance, the smoke of camps. The group heads southward and finds a crude bridge, and is able to cross it and head back northward, finding the sixty or so canvas tents of Cholachni resting along the river. They encounter a man with a basket of leeks who asks nervously if they are Nahia’s folk, to which the group says they are not. The man lets out a sigh of relief to once again not be extorted by the River Reavers of Nahia, commenting to avoid the north if possible to these strangers.

The man introduces himself as Calfreds and befriends them, speaks of Heriotza and strangers, far crazier, who seek out the ruins. Calfreds is commenting on wanting no part of that. After talks of pescatarianism, the relative evil banalities of the consumption of animal flesh, and a glaciating gesture by Xixili on the river’s edge, the group is invited to sup on a communal pot of potato and leek soup in the village of Cholachni.

Aftermath

Treasure Found:

Foes Encountered:

Rumors:

Deaths:

XP Awarded:

Notes