#fighter adventure

Martin awoke to the noise of a complaining raven. Alvin was sitting over the book we had found after fighting the cultists, ignoring his raven who was clearly in no mood to be ignored. We gathered in the Tavern for food and to talk about what the next step should be. Deciding we should attempt to gather more information about what these cultists were up to, we split up to follow a few different leads. Our Cleric and Hilda set out to talk the Lieutenant who was injured by our best friend Jimmy. Alvin, June, and Martin headed out to talk to the Captain of the Guard to exchange information. We gave him our book that we found with the cultist names and plans in it and he handed us a necklace was found on the body of the Vulture. It was a small ruby necklace with an intricate design, on the back of it was carved O.M. The Captain told us he believed these cultists were part of the Orcus Magisterium. This group of sorcerers had been giving Bastion a hard time for quite some time. It was rumored that a ruined tower two days to the north may be connected to the group. Something would have been done about it but all of the adventurers who had helped during the Battle of Bastion had followed leads elsewhere and had been gone for weeks now.

The Cleric and Hilda, after torturing the already hurt guard, received similar information from him. Apparently, the Lieutenant was also a cultist… (Having three DMs in three weeks can make the story kind of wack…) we all gathered up our supplies and decided to head north to where the ruined tower might be located. We traveled easily the first day setting up camp, food and then eventually getting some sleep.

During the first watch, our Cleric spotted movement about twenty feet away from our fire. (I’m real glad he was the one watching out for us…) Instead of yelling to wake everyone up he did the only logical thing and Sacred Flamed the figure in the dark. It let out a wail and rushed at our Cleric, quickly followed by a second figure. They were wights. After exchanging a few blows our Cleric realized he was still alone fighting these creatures…. And finally yelled out to us.

Rising from our sleepy states we charged into battle, already wearing our armor because plate mail is the comfiest of beds. We quickly realized our non-magical weapons had no effect on these creatures and had to improvise. The cleric summoned a magical war-hammer, I picked up a fiery stick as did Hilda and June. After a hard battle where we couldn’t seem to hit the creatures, Alvin was knocked out, the Cleric was drained of most of his life energy and June missed every attack, they finally fell to our combined effort… luckily this happened fairly early in the night and we were all able to get some rest. We rose the next day and continued on the road north.

Late in the afternoon after some searching, we discovered the ruined tower. Before us were two large ogres ripping what appeared to be the remains of several sheep apart. We succeeded in hiding and devised a plan to distract the ogres. Alvin sent his raven to fly above them and tell them how pretty and well mannered their mothers were. Being ogres, they were very insulted by this and attempted to swat the raven out of the sky. Our Cleric placed a light on a crossbow bolt and launched it into the trees away from the tower. Following the light, Alvin’s Raven, who had now received minor illusions from Alvin, distracted the ogres into following him into the forest successfully distracting them long enough for all of us to slip into the tower.

After a quick examination of the room, we found writing on the wall, “PATRON ORE POD” with buttons under each letter. We also found the center of the room was slightly higher than the rest of the floor around it. Realizing this had to be some sort of puzzle to open the trapdoor. We as a group hunkered down to solve it. This took much longer than it should have... when we realized it spelled out OPEN TRAPDOOR. This wasn’t our proudest moments as adventurers but I suppose everyone has bad days. Pressing the buttons in the correct order opened up the trap door.

The Cleric pulled a full on Peregrin Took and immediately dropped a rock with a light on it down the hole. We groaned as a whole and slowly made our descent down the stairs.We avoided the traps and resisted some poison making it to the bottom. Everything was covered in what appeared to be cobwebs. There was a crunching sound and suddenly we were swarmed by fist sized spiders. In a panic the Ranger used hail of thorns on everything in front of her, ripping apart the spiders and smashing June to the ground unconscious….. We cleared the room and made sure it was safe enough and took a short rest to recover from the day's events. We rose to the smell of death coming from one of the hallways. We began to move forward, but before we go out of the room our Cleric noticed a small eye behind the cobwebs on the wall. Clearing away all of the webs we discovered the wall was completely covered in stone eyes that seemed to be watching us as we moved. Looking more closely we found one to be slightly discolored, pressing on it cause part of the wall to slide away revealing a secret passageway.

Deciding secrets were meant to be uncovered we headed down the hallway. At the end of the hall, we came into a room with a stone chest in the center of it. As soon as we entered we all felt a pressure, several of us suddenly felt a strong desire to smash our heads into the wall. After a few seconds of this feeling, I shrugged it off and rushed to the chest, loot is loot after all. Opening the chest we found 700sp, 50gp, 3 obsidian stones, 2 turquoise stones, 3 unidentified scrolls, a small glass globe and a potion of healing! The desire to bash our brains out ended once the chest was cleared. We parted from the room, not wanting to stick around a room that caused us to go full on House Elf.

Venturing down the hallway that smelled the most of death we came to a set of stairs that lead down to what looked like a well. The smell of death got worse as we approached the well. Looking over the side we found what was causing the smell, the body of a halfling floated there, bloated and half decayed. Underneath the body appeared to be gold, gems and other things that must have been their belongings. Being careful of possible undead, I poked the corpse with my glaive. The water around the body erupted around it! I jumped back and in front of us was a water elemental and it did not seem friendly… the body floated in the center of it half torn apart from its time in the water (I added the body inside the elemental after the fact because I thought it would be funny and my DM didn’t think to do it). Alvin stepped forward and cast Thunder Wave, blasting the elemental out of the well and onto the wall completely destroying it. I think the party was starting to appreciate Alvin more and more. We gathered up the gems from the well and examined the room. There didn’t appear to be anything of use here so we headed back to the cobweb room.

We took the last hallway coming into a room covered in sand. Stepping in caused the sand to stir up and swirl, forming makeshift bodies. They let out groans at us and moved forward… great… more elementals! “Come on Alvin, do the exploding on them.” Battle began and ended all too quickly. The elementals went down and the room was cleared out. We decided to camp and recover before moving forward.

End of Game 3.

After a few days of not much going on, Martin and compatriots all receive notes asking to come to the Green doored building on Bard Street at Midnight. Seeing nothing wrong with this, not thinking it sounded like a trap, we all agreed to meet one another at the Green Door.

It was dark on Bard Street that night. We all arrived, slightly sleepy and confused why this couldn’t take place during the day instead of the middle of the night when we should be sleeping. We examined the building with the green door and discovered it to be empty and very damaged from the battle of Bastion. Martin knocked, rolling a 22 Strength check, shattering the green door into pieces. The room was dreary and mostly empty. After a time of searching our Cleric noticed a small Gnome across the street waving for us to join him. We waddled across the road and he told us to hush and come in. Immediately we asked what was all of this about, ignoring his pleas for us to be quiet.

Once inside he introduced himself as Cornelius Finch, a scribe in service to the city. He told us that he had been transcribing a book in Abyssal for a man named Ben Kelson who had been killed earlier this week. He was afraid for his life and needed to leave town. Handing us the book, which the necromancer took gleefully, he attempted to scurry out the door. We attempted to make the argument that he would probably be safer with us than alone on the dark roads outside of Bastion. He didn’t want to hear any of this, so scared that he was stuttering and shaking in his little boots. That’s when we heard a sudden bang on the wall.

The window shattered and what appeared to be a chaos infused Mud Mephit burst into the room launching its bile at all of us! This was quickly followed by what appeared to be more cultists like the ones we dealt with the week before. The Mephit was successful in trapping a few of us in its bile, luckily I’m quick on my feet and slipped past the disgusting creatures attack with ease. Martin charged one of the cultists and cleaved his head off launching it at the other two. Surprisingly this did not phase the evil doers and they charged our Dwarven Paladin, who gladly yelled at them to repent their evil ways or she would have to do it for them. After some squabbling with the filth of the Mephit, the rest of the party joined the fray. After exchanging some blows, a man entered the room and told us to stand down or be killed. Since we were already up to our knees in blood and Mephit vomit we ignored him and continued to attack.

A sudden rumbling from outside quickly followed by a large bang against the far wall drew our attention. A hulking undead like figure burst the wall down and groaned threateningly at us. Martin rushed forward and cleaved the beast down with my mighty glaive! This, of course, resulted in bile and who knows what else exploding from its gut and covering us. (This had been a very messy and slightly disturbing fight all things considered). The Mephit still fighting and vomiting on the group was grappled by our Monk and thrown towards the man leading this ill begotten attack. Alvin, our necromancer, seizing upon the opportunity used Thunder Wave and blasted the Mephit into the robed figure, ending both of them.

Once the fighting ended Martin turned to Cornelius, who was now scared shittless, and said: “See! I told you, you’d be safer with us!” He bolted out the door as quickly as he could. Alvin took the time to examine the remains of the undead figure while we looted the bodies of the cultists. We uncovered a Cultist Book that referenced people in town called “The Coin Keeper, The Watchdog, and the Vulture.” We decided to call it a night and headed back to our Inn. All of us smelling of something awful.

The next day we began talking to people around town, gathering information about anything odd happening. We discovered that corpses had been going missing from their graves and that an odd death had occurred at the guard house. The guard house was the place to be so it would seem and we headed out. Approaching the GH we met a guard who seemed to be a little out of it. We introduced ourselves and asked about the death, we were met with rudeness and aggression. How odd. Seeing a name tag that named him James, Martin immediately started calling him Jimmy or “My good friend Jimmy” and tried to show him a few card tricks to lighten the mood. Jimmy did not appreciate either of these things, demanding that we call him James and that he hated card tricks and that we should leave before he had to make us leave! Seeing as he hadn’t helped us in the slightest we kept asking questions all the while calling him Jimmy over and over. Finally, he cracked and told us the death happened during the changing of the guards. Tom, another guard, had been late for his shift and Jimmy didn’t want to wait any further! He asked Alex, another guard if he could cover the watch until Tom arrived. So this was our situation, Jimmy wanted to leave his shift but couldn’t because Tom was late, Alex checked on the prisoner twice during the hour that Tom was not there. And Finally Tom arrived and the prisoner was dead. The prisoner had been a cultist and was going to make a deal with the guards for information. That clearly never happened. So.. the question was how did this man die and who killed him?

We went and talked to the Guard Captain since Jimmy was useless and rude (suspicious), The captain wasn’t exactly helpful either he also had a very strict policy of no swearing… ever, but eventually, he agreed to let us question his men in exchange for the information we had on the cultists. We questioned Jimmy first since this death happened when he was supposed to still be on duty since Tom hadn’t shown up on time. Jimmy was less than useful. Martin kept calling him buddy, friend, Jimmy to help calm him and show Martin was his best friend and Martin just wanted to know what he knew, we notice he seemed extra nervous and started sweating. To help encourage Jimmy, Alvin cast Charm Person on him, which convinced Jimmy that we were indeed his best friends… but he still didn’t want us to call him Jimmy. But it only made sense that we continued to call him that since only his friends call him Jimmy. After the questioning, Alvin sent his raven to follow Jimmy... just in case. We then talked to Tom who hadn’t seen anything other than the dead body, Tom appeared to be clean. We were about to start questioning Alex when Alvin yelled out that Jimmy was stabbing the guard Lieutenant! We rushed out of the interrogation room and over to where Jimmy was!

Martin: “Okay, best friend Jimmy. We can talk this out”

Jimmy: “WE ARE NOT FRIENDS! MY NAME IS JAMES!”

Jimmy then lunged at Martin with his dagger, Martin easily knocked it away. Suddenly, Martin became very sleepy and so it appeared did Jimmy. Martin stumbled forward into him and whispered, “See, we are friends. We’re cuddling up for a nice old nap.”

Jimmy was executed after we found proof on his person that he was tied to the cultists. He was the Watchdog that we had found mention of in the cultist's book. We also learned the location of one of the cultist hideouts from him. The guard captain gained this information and we were left out about how it was acquired. We geared up and set out to the hideout, the cultists unaware of Jimmy’s failure, were caught unprepared by our assault and we dealt with them quite easily all things considered. The leader in charge of this group of cultists had been the Vulture, named for a number of corpses he had been stockpiling under the building we raided. The guards set up a perimeter and we were told that they would take it from there.

We called it a night here after successfully thwarting Jimmy and his cultist buddies. Fucking Jimmy. End of Game Two.

Again I’ll explain what this game is part of, The idea behind Vigilante’s games are that several D&D groups are all active in the same world and are all influencing the happenings and goings on of the Town of Bastion and surrounding area. This has been going on for several months now and I have just joined the fun about two weeks ago. While I’m not sure where this will lead I think it is an interesting idea to have Seven+ groups all playing in the same world. This allows groups to exchange items with each other and also allow players to switch parties to pursue different quests. Overall I think it will work out great and I’ll keep posting updates of my weekly games.