My campaign in Stirling

[Laurent MEKKA]

Hello,
I have the luck to be the DM of a pathfinder campaign in Khoras.
Both of my players came to work on the expansion in the swamps (see stirling page on the site ) and the third is a the magic student of Akyron. (I also have 4 others players, that played once each, but I'll make it short).

It started with a very young dragon eating cows and hiding in a old bandit cave now used by goblyns, before entering in stirling when they came to sleep to the goodway inn.
They made it escape to the trackless mire with a lot of luck and because the dragon was very young (and they killed all the goblyns).
It made them a little bit famous in stirling as "Dragon slayers"... and some had a bad opinion about them because of a polemic about goblyns (cruel monsters or poor people with feeling escaping Duthelm and living in poverty ?).

After that, because of their little renown, the chief of the guards asked them for help with a series of murder where a Sayune circus in towns these days was accused for the murders.
They resolved the affair, that was smugglers in town that used the circus as a black sheep for murdering the people that made their business hard.

After that, the chief of the guards (embarassed...) came to them again because there was a rumor about a sort of rogue goblyns guild in the sewers that was being created...
It would be bad for his reputation to send his men to kill everyone and he knows the two outsiders have no problem dealing with goblyns.. so..
But they were asked to choose someone to join them, either the new Barrinor cleric (a grum addicted to battle spice and willing to destroy all undead, bored by the life in a church) or his bodyguard, an half-ogre.
Turios the half-ogre was chosen and became the firt NPC in the party !
They found a little goblyn dressed as a girl (goblyns are asexuals in my campaign) and captured her after the tried to steal from them.
They were menacing at the start but soon they became nicer as they started to understand her, and she helped them to find a way inside the sewers.
Welcome Kittie the Goblyn, the second NPC !
Let's make it short, they searched the sewers, and were shocked to find that the chief of the goblyns was a talking skeleton.
As every movie bad guy, he need to talk to much before fighting, and explained he was Heppe Lone, the husband of Sadie Lone, a Stirling woman that got into necromancy when he died (she wanted to bring him back). They are both back and seek revenge agains Stirling that banished her wife into the Trackless mire.
She sent him to the sewers to sewers to gather the goblyns for an assault from inside when time will come.
He got beaten but one of the 2 PC has gotten ill after being bitten by a vargouille (Heppe has 2 pet vargouilles).
(In fact my player's wife was pregnant and he couldn't play anymore for a while...)
They had to go to Akyron's tower to tell him about the skeletton (because it's very uncommon to see such a thing !), and he told them the same story about Sadie Lone, that happened 20 years ago.
Rumors of disappearance of the site of the Stirling expansion into the swamps made Akyron asking for the healthly PC to investigate there, as he was already registered as a worker. Akyron's student joined him, taking the identity of the ill PC, also registered.

Malcolm Teroth, the mayor of Stirling wanted them to blame a solitary ogre living in the swamps, to kill him and come back with his body, so the work can restart quickly (the workers on the site stopped working after 23 of them disappeared..). They didn't do that and found out that the workers were abducted by saurians.
They found the prison in a cave in the swamps... Killed all the saurians and captured the Kobold that was enslaved by them and used as a cook, Madkax. He was also skilled at poison making and told to the team that it was planned by "the masters" to use his poison to poison Stirling. One of "the masters" arrived, it was a sort of intelligent, armored and powerful ghoul. They barely beat it.
But it was too late, once back in town, they couldn't enter, Stirling was in quarantine, many people dying inside.

To be continued later..it's already too long !

[Laurent MEKKA]

Akyron explained to them the situation (his tower is outside the town) and took with him the Kobold so he could help him to make an antidote to the poison.
The team came back to the swamps to hide near the prison to see the others "masters" coming and being able to follow them from the prison to their base.
They got intercepted by bandits, but they negociated and learned by their chief that saurians and them are in conflict since forever but that the bandits are now too weak and hiding because the saurians are helped by a witch and undead skeletons and their "masters". They learn that bandits have disappeared too and that they have been turned into skeleton, and so, that's the same fate that may have meet the workers...
The bandit chief accept to help and they find the ruined castle where the "masters" go.
One was hard to beat, there's a least 12...
Turios thinks it's a good idea to go to town to take the cleric with them but it's impossible to enter the city.
The bandit chief know a way through the river that join the sewers under the city, used for contraband, and there's a bandit camp inside the sewers at the entry.
The bandits and Turios will stay to monitor the activity near the ruined castle and the 2 PC will go to town.
Once in the bandit camp inside the sewers, they go to town and join the cleric, already looking for action ! (and looking too speedy and drugged....).
They sneak into the sewers again and find the bandit camp ravaged, undead have invaded through the same way they entered !
They fight and close the door, but are trapped in town...

[Laurent MEKKA]

Istar, Akyron's apprentice remembers that Miran Malaren is hiding in town. A technomancer from Kalimura that fled his country because he wants to mix technology and magic, an unacceptable thing in Kalumura.
He's now hunted by the Watchers, already in town, and Miran contacted Akyron and they worked together, hidden in a warehouse, but Akyron is not competent enough (his experiments broke an arm of the clockwork golem Miran took with him during his escape...), and is working on a way to make Miran out of Stirling despite the Watchers.

The team thinks that maybe Miran could help them to go out of the town. They sneak to his warehouse, and Miran find a solution. They all go each one inside a barrel and the clockwork golem throw them above the wall of the town, donkey kong style

They go back to the swamps, and here's the plan. The bandit chief will attract the "masters" outside the ruins, to lead them to an ambush where all the bandits will attack them while the cleric uses his power (and drug habits) to turn them and Turios would slaughter them with his axe, while the others members of the team, Istar and the 1st PC, Aldi, a beast master and also 2 "one night PC", a sorcerer from Normidia and a little grum girl (the sorcerer stole the fiancee of the son of Malcolm Teroth, and this one took advantage of the panic and the quarantine to hunt him, but the little grum hid him because she was secretly in love, and they escaped from the town with the others),  will sneak inside the ruin to find and defeat Sadie.

Inside the ruins they find the basement, that seems to have been the place where an Irenni mage worked and experimented, a very long time ago... They find something horrible. Prisonners without skin, slowly turned into skeletons by a large ooze (the skeletons later to be reanimated by Sadie...) and after that, Sadie, as young as 20 years ago, looking corrupted by her necromancy and behind her, a portal, seeming to lead to the shadow plane, a dark parallel universe.
Almost beaten, Sadie took the sorcerer with her inside the portal, where we can see a Barulda priest waiting for her (cenobite looking with chains and black leather and scarifications).
It was a dramatic moment and nobody dared to follow them inside the portal.
That's when Turios arrived, bloodied and limping, struggling from not passing out.
He walked to the portal and destroyed one of the pillar on its side so the portal is destroyed and closed, and go back outside without saying a word, leading the team to the ambush site. All the "masters" dead, but also all the bandits and the cleric, that used too much his turning ability, killing every undead and himself in the process (he could overuse his ability because of the battle spice).
Very sad moment.
The seductive sorcerer kidnapped, the grum with no reason to stay with the team, the cleric dead, Turios destroyed by the fact of not having protected the clerk when it was his mission and the evil Necromanceress (?) that escaped, with the hind of a bigger threat (the Barulda priest).

Back to stirling, Akyron made the antidote and there is no more quarantine.
Everybody goes to Akyron's tower and Miran will hide there but Akyron has a job for Aldi, Turios and Istar while still waiting for the 1st PC, Peval, a barbarian/rogue to recover (the one that was hurt by the vargouille).
2 jobs in fact.
First, is that there are some people disappears in town, not a lot, but rumors are pointing to the sewers, AGAIN.
Akyron already told the team that they didn't actually killed Heppe Lone as they didn't destroy his bones. He thinks Heppe is reborn and, unaware of Sadie's rout, continue his mission.
They have to destroy him for good.
Second, they have to visit the orphanage that Sadie Lone ran, renowned as haunted, in order to find clues, as for now, nobody knows she is up to.
Heppe is killed and its bones destroyed (after meeting him being merged with it's 2 vargouilles and having now 3 heads) and the visit of the orphanage makes the team discover that in fact, sadie was not banished to the swamps as Akyron told them, but tied to her bed and burned, and the orphanage closed with all the children inside (they saw ghosts of the children, sadie's spirit, an animated doll created by Akyron, and so on...).
They burned the house to purify the place and make the spirits rest forever.

Back to Akyron, he admit it's the truth. Istar in angry.
Big argument about Akyron closing his eyes to this murder and what is good for the town and how to face 2000 furious citizen. About the fact that nothing is black or white and there's grey areas... Akyron admit he even was in love with Sadie but it wasn't reciprocal and he's even suspected that he could have been responsible for the murder of her husband, but the discussion went too far and Akyron stop it.
Now they have to make the choice to trust him in the interest of Stirling or not.
They decide to trust him and give him the grimoire they find in the orphanage but he's not able to decypher it.
Peval awakens. Turios decide to stop here, destroyed by the death of the cleric and feeling dishonored.
Akyron and the team owe Miran a favor after Akyron broke the golem's arm and the team managed to escape the town thanks to him.
He want to go to the Baen desert to meet Morlokk, the only one that could help him mix magic and technology. We learn that the golem is powered with a sunder shard, and that's why the watchers won't let him go. It's already gone to far in using magic power with technology... and moreover, the shard is very precious for everyone (magic or not, who cares, even Kalimurian loves gold....).
Morlokk should also be able to decypther the Sadie's grimoire in order to discover what happened and if Stirling is still in danger and how to destroy Sadie (was it really Sadie anyway, or "something else" from the shadow plane, as they fought and "liberated" sadie's ghost in the orphanage....)
It's where it ends for 2014, Istar, Peval and Aldi (the PCs) and Kittie (the goblyn) and Madkax (the kobold) will escort Miran to the Baen Desert. It'll be a long road (they have chosen their road and in order to avoid the trackless mire will go to Newcaslte, then Thunder falls and then will go to the south) and who knows what will happen...

[sid6.7]

good story so far....

[Laurent MEKKA]

I'm sorry if the writing is not that good but I'm better in french
Also I didn't detail anything so I could seems weird sometimes (I didn't talk about a character, a Stirling ranger called Vallen that helped the characters and stayed in Stirling when the others escaped the quarantine, so he could organize the defenses of the town and try to warn the soldiers at the expansion site in the swamps so they could counter the undead invasion both from inside and outside, flanking them).
I also didn't talked a lot about malcom teroth, in my game not a very likeable character but sure he's doing best for Stirling, obsessed by the expansion site and the risk to lose to bronzedale.
Almost nobody is white or black.
In the end of our last session, before preparing to leave Stirling, my players had to meet Vallen the ranger at one of the forts around the towns, because they gave him an armor and wanted it back...
They found him in charge after the role he played in the battle.
They had a great idea, giving him a map of the location of the bandits camp in exchange for the armor.
He's surprised, he should have given it back anyway...
And he ask them : "The bandits camps, where they live with their wifes and children, so we can attack them by surprise ?"
"Yes", they replied...
He was an almost "invisible" NPC, just "a guy with a ranged attack because the PC are only 2".
And for the first time he talked really, he told them that all of this and himself gaining ranks in the rangers' hierarchy made him think about his life, what is wrong and what is right and what are his responsabilities.
He evokes that there's corruption inside the rangers and some are working with the bandits (bandits are outsiders living in the swamps with families, children and all...) to help them and that he had to find a solution but it's not easy.
He takes the map and destroy it. He say he want to be white not grey or black "for a greater good".
And he remembers the PCs that they are not as good guys as they think.
(Player smiles and thinks I'm talking about the jokes about sex with kittie the goblyn or the "is killing goblyns right ?" meme and things like that...).
"To make a diversion for you, half of the bandits died, you took the cleric and buried him, but never even talked about the bandits who sacrificed for you, didn't even think about their children and widows, and let their bodies rot, you're not the nice guys, and I was like you, I was with you this day. I changed. Think about it. Think about responsabilites.".
Silence around the table...


Well !
I think I will make them halt by Se'auri or the Golconda.

I've had an idea that the se'auri ruins could be like Lourdes in France. A holy site where people say that miracles happens.
The ruins could be famous for being haunted by a benevolent spirit (whatever it's right or wrong) but are very dangerous to enter, being haunted also by evil spirits (whatever it's right or wrong) and all around the ruins, there's shops, it's being turned into a business...

[David Roomes]

First of all, great story. I like it. Sounds like you've got a really good plot with a lot of intrigue.

Your English is fine. I can follow the story with no problems. (Your English is MUCH better than my French!)   

I like that the bandits were suffering losses just like the workers and the players joined forces with the bandits. That's a nice twist.
I love the Donkey Kong style "barrel over the wall". That's great. Players are always coming up with cool tricks like that.
And a Barulda priest!   Love seeing some of the new religion material mixed in to the plot!

I also like that you've got a lot of "grey" people... not quite heroes or villains. More like everyone has their own agenda and no one can be fully trusted. Nice!

[Laurent MEKKA]

The bandits and the saurians in the swamps are fighting for territory and the ruined castle was a saurian hideout.
Sadie appeared as it was assaulted by bandits and revived the dead bandits and turned them against their former allies, running in fear.
That's how the saurians started helping her by kidnapping people for her, they considered her as their ally.
The bandits, afraid of what they saw, stopped fighting the saurians and "lost".

So Sadie is a common enemy of Stirling and the bandits, that's why they helped.

The funny thing was, once the PCs were in the bandit camp, the chief couldn't just talk and make an agreement with them and let them go.
They arrived blindfolded and tied, they couldn't leave "good bye, thank you, see you later" in front of all the camp, the chief was afraid of being dishonored to let them go this way.
So he asked for all their money. After arguing, all the money of one of the 2 PCs...
The richer was also the first player to agree, so it was fun to see the other player trying to stop him and see them plotting to give the less money possible

Anyway I have to admit I'm a little bit lost on the Sadie Lone segment.
Now they are going to Baen desert so it'll be a while since they come back to Stirling so I have time, but for now I have no idea who is "this" Sadie Lone (the real Sadie is dead and they "killed" her ghost in the orphanage).
My first hypothesis could be that the shadow plane is populated by reflections of people of the material plane, so this is "dark sadie".
The priest of Barulda made contact with real Sadie when she was trying to do necromancy to bring back her family (thus the grimoire found in the orphanage), knowing the town will turn against her and he could use her against the town.
But the townspeople were harsher than he thought and burned her.
So, the priest opened the portal, released "dark Sadie" and conviced her she was the real Sadie, now seeking revenge from the town.
That's OK, I imagine... but why the Barulda priest wants to attack Stirling while trying not to be involved since 20 years ? There must be a reason...

Ok... now I understand the screen writers of series like "lost" where plot is more and more complicated and nothing is resolved in the end
At the start Sadie was the real Sadie and the PC had to kill her (or take side with her, or reason her) but at the time I didn't have yet an idea about how to continue after completely ending the episode about the stirling problems, so I made her escape and added the barulda priest in the background, then the orphanage, the real sadie, the no-so-good townspeople 20years ago....

[David Roomes]

Yep. Sometimes it's possible to "paint yourself into a corner". You have several threads of plot, but then you suddenly find you've got no where to go. I'm sure every writer (and game master) has done that. But keep at it. You'll probably come up with a brilliant solution that's even better than what you would have come up with if you had planned it out in advance. Sounds like the players are having fun. As long as their having a blast, players will forgive the occasional hiccup in plot. At least that's been my experience.

[Laurent MEKKA]

Just to say hello here,  not much active on the forum but still reading and waiting for the new gods
My campaign is still going, we almost meet every friday...
Too long to tell, but the PC and NPCs are going to the Baen Desert to meet Morlokk, now they are in Zesrun.
But "my" Corvenia is Corvenia with a twist. Because almost everyone can use magic (one or two level zero spells..), they see themselves as an elite, and they are very racist...
If gold is accepted everywhere, in Zesrun, only the Corvenian crystals are accepted as money...
And when entering into the city, you have to change 100 gp into crystals, no choice. So there's no beggars, poor people from somewhere else... Streets are safe and clean, sure...
And it seems that the fact that everyone can cast a few spell has social consequences... As some have useful spells and some don't...
The wizard of my party wanted to earn money and tried to impress dockers in Thunder Falls by making crates levitate to load a boat easily. It fact, it enraged them. Magic was forbidden for such jobs, so people with useless magic can have a job. It seems the social climate is a little bit complicated because of it.
Xenophobism and social tensions, there's a precarious balance here  that enable Corvenia to be the pleasant place it seems to be...

[sid6.7]

very interesting hope you will fill us in with more information as the game progresses...

[Laurent MEKKA]

Thanks for your interest, so...

By the end of 2014 :
"It's where it ends for 2014, Istar, Peval and Aldi (the PCs) and Kittie (the goblyn) and Madkax (the kobold) will escort Miran to the Baen Desert. It'll be a long road (they have chosen their road and in order to avoid the trackless mire will go to Newcaslte, then Thunder falls and then will go to the south) and who knows what will happen..."

Now :
They stopped by Se'auri, as expected. Istar the wizard (student of Akyron) thought he could learn new magic here.
The legend is that the ghost of a wise Irenni woman appear sometime to visitors who deserve it and she reply to any question asked. Only one question, but she always can reply.
This is turned into a business, there's an inn, a monastery, tourists... the ruins are safe near the inn and the monastery but become dangerous the more you go away from the inn.
Into the Inn, they meet a woman, a cook working for a noble woman from Newcastle. She's here because the woman she works for, Dame Verrin is missing after telling her she'll go to Se'auri. Dame Verrin is ill and her husband is her second husband, the father of her children died a long time ago. She's afraid to what will happen to her children when she'll die, because her husband doesn't like them much. So, she hopes to ask the wise ghost.
They go to the ruins looking for Dame Verrin with the cook and another woman, a druid grum willing to help the cook (she was talking with her when the PC arrived).
They were attacked by a gang of Skrells (the rat-men) and the PC where not very cautious and their strategy used the dog of the druid grum in a very risky way and the poor dog died, and the Skrells ran away.
The grum was sad and furious, and even more because the PCs where not sorry at all and didn't care.
She left them.
A little time after that, she's back, but with a  knight on his horse and 4 warriors, all with a white tunic (sorry can't remember the name I gave to this team, but they where famous "heroes" from Arkalia, very popular).
The knight, pretentious, arrogant and sure of himself ask the PCs to apologize and to pay the grum druidess 100gp for the loss.
They refuse at first (they were evil this night, I noticed it and used it in the campaign later) but the warriors are stronger than them, so they accept in the end.
The knight makes fun of them and they left them.

Istar thinks he'll need some things he forgot to Akyron's tower and ask Madkax the kobold following them to go to Stirling quickly and come back with the spells.

They find a tower in good shape but are attacked from one of the higher floor (arrows flying). They run and enter in a very subtle way. Fight against saurians and weird creatures looking like... werespiders ?
The fight is stopped by Dame Verrain. She explains that she's not in danger and that the cook (who is here with the PCs) don't know everything about her. She's a noble woman but, in fear of what will happen to her children, she created a thief guild and she raises money by trafficking of all kinds. The saurians and the monsters are accomplices from the trackless mire that she smuggle with.
While going on the top of the tower, she explains that she could invoke the wise ghost on the top of the tower.
But she needs 3 red crystals owned by the temple of Barulda to do so.
In fact she stole them. But she was stolen after that by a gang of Skrells.
The PCs let the cook and Dame Verrin here and go outside, looking for the Skrell they meet...

Later they were attacked by a giant mutated goblyn that they disturbed as he was eating rats.
The fight was hard... they retreated behind a collapsed wall, hoping to suprise the hulking goblyn after.
But, behint the wall, they start to hear noise. Swords, cries of pain.
The knight and the 4 warriors killed the monster easily... while the warriors stay behin the wall to loot the corpse (its large belt looks magical but is hard to wear for a normal sized human and they try), the knight go the other side to taunt and make fun of the PCs...
They hated him and were very evil here... (And we went from "LOTR-mode" to "The Hangover-mode"...)
Aldi shot the sleep arrow he had at him to make him shut up.
Surprised and with a few second before the warriors notice that their chief just felf from his horse, Istar the wizard made the unconscious knight invisible. And Peval the 3rd PC kicked the horse to make him go away.
The warriors came and the PCs told them that the Knight left and they show the horse galloping far away (the warriors failed to notice there was nobody on the horse).
The warriors left.
Now, there's a problem.
The knight will wake up.
Peval has a GREAT idea...
While Aldi and Istar were arguing on what to do, he... decapitated the knight.
Now, there's a problem.
They just murdered a famous knight and have to dispose of the body.
They transformed it thanks to a device created by Miran the scientist from Kalimura and they hid the "kobold corpse"....
They continue to explore the ruins....
They find the way the Skrells took while escaping and decide to go after them.
They find a sort of terrier where the skrell must be hiding.
The place is short, 2 rooms but the first is trapped and the second is where the skrells are entrenched.
Fight again... they are winning but are very hurt. The chief of the Skrells tries to make the fight stop.
He explains them they have no time. They have the red crystal but the emissaries of Barulda are on their way. They'll find us. They'll kill us. And they'll take the crystals.
The Skrell chief say that they're on a mission to prevent Dame Verrin to complete her plan.
She lied, she's a worshipper of Barulda, and want to invoke the wise ghost, true, but also, thanks to the crystals, to trap the ghost in the room forever, forcing her to answer to all her questions (a very great power...).
The PCs run to the tower and it's true, the cook has been killed. Dame Verrin feels that the emissaries (who are from another dimension, think the Cenobites from Hellraiser...) are near and that they'll have fun with the PCs, so she escapes.
After a lot of arguing, the skrells are considered reliable and will go to Newcastle (their base of operations), Aldi, Miran and his mechanical golem and Peval will follow but try to clear their tracks and will meet the skrells at Newcastle, and Istar will stay here, waiting for Madkax the kobold to come back.

While waiting, outside of the tower, they hear sounds of a fight.
Turios, the half-ogre who was the bodyguard of the cleric that died helping the PCs, and abandoned the PCs because he felt responsible of the death of the cleric, useless and sad, is fighting.
He followed them after all !! (more exactly he followed madkax coming back from stirling)
He's fighting against... the 4 warriors (who were with the knight). But they are strange, like suffering a lot from the barbed wire wrapped all around their bodies and acting like zombies.
That's a gift from the emissaries of Barulda.
Turios knows it and make everyone run to the tower. The emissaries of Barulda cannot enter Irenni holy ground.
The emissaries are happy with the situation and will torment the trapped characters. They have all the time they want.
Into the tower, Istar and Turios try to find a way to escape. They find a tunnel but in the end there's 2 giant spiders and anyway, going out from there or from the door of the tower won't change anything, the emissaries are outside !
The go back to the tower and the wise ghost appears, and the question asked is "how to escape and join the rest of the party safely ?". Answer is "A sacrifice has to be made, but be careful, they'll follow you because they are here for the tainted one that is with you." (Aldi ? Peval ? and what about the crystals ?).
They decide to face their destiny and go outside.
Out of nowhere a flying chain with a hook get through Madkax. The emissaries appears (very Hellraiser's Cenobites-like) and tortures madkax with more hooked chains while the others tries to stop them (but fail miserably).
Madkax dies. The emissaries laugh and let the others escape. They think they let them escape so they could follow them to the crystals or the "tainted one", so they decide not to go to Newcastle but to go back to Stirling, tell Akyron they'll go to Edgewood instead, that mira is already there with Aldi and Peval, so if the emissaries follow them and ask Akyron, they'll go the wrong way.
WHAT INGENIUS PLAN !
AKYRON is mad, and really "WTF ??!!".
Istar is here, in stirling, telling him the man he had to escort to the baen desert is not with him, but supposedly on the other side of the world.
They sleep, they wake up, and go in the direction of Bogtown (the plan is to go to bogtown and with a boat, go to thunder falls and meet (how ) the other character here).
Nothing interesting will happen so let's go see what is happening in Newcastle...
Aldi and Peval needed to ask someone in an inn (a contact of the skrells) so he could lead them to the skrells.
In fact, the man is a victim of the skrell that stole him a lot of money (they conned him. Is "conned" a word ? like "con" in "con-artist").
The PCs realize that the skrell lied and just stole the crystals ! They didn't stole the crystal for a greater good, but for themselves and the PCs were a diversion to the emissaries...

They head for the east of Newcastle where there could be a hiding place belonging to the skrells. They find a cave, with "boar-men" inside and gelatinous cubes. The place is weird because it's populated but there's no bed, no tables, nothing.
In fact, after killing everyone, a wizard appears, furious. That was his creations, not natural humanoids and creatures.
He's unhappy everyone got killed but... it means they weren't good enough.
Seeing the mechanical golem he's excited and ask for a deal.
He explains the place was the hideout of the skrells and he "cleaned" the place (so, beware, he's dangerous).
There's a lot of money here that was belonging to the skrells and he will forgive the PCs ans even give them all the treasure IF they accept to let him test his latest creation against the golem.
After arguing, they agree and they go outside for the fight with all the crates of gold with them.
No monster, no enemy for the golem...
Heh, the latest creation of the wizard is an hoard golem, the treasure start to form an humanoid form and the fight start.
As it was agreed, if the "pack of money" dies, they keep the money.
If the mechanical golem is badly damaged, the fight stop.
The mechanical golem IS badly damaged, but Miran don't stop it as it almost killed the hoard golem.
The hoard golem is a treasure on the floor again !
The wizard is annoyed but a deal is a deal.
And the 3 crystals are into the treasure !
Going back to Newcastle where they are supposed to wait Istar, they have now a few problems :
- A LOT OF MONEY IN A CART IN A TOWN WHERE THERE'S A THIEF GUILD (thanks to Dame Verrin).
- A MECHANICAL GOLEM TO HIDE.
- A BROKEN MECHANICAL GOLEM, in fact
The gold could be hidden inside the golem, so there's a problem solved.
But the golem cannot "sleep" in the cart.
They find a inn, ask the owner if there's a backdoor (to bring the golem inside, but they don't tell).
No luck, a crazy NPC...
The owner think that if they need a backdoor to bring something inside, it could be a treasure ! He starts to talk to them how much he wanted to become a treasure hunter when he was young, and insist to see the treasure and that they tell him the story.
Unfortunately, no back door, but the owner, a genius with a genius plan, AGAIN.
He'll start a fire in the inn, so everybody will run outside and they'll use the panic to bring "the treasure" by the front door.
Except the fire didn't stop. Inn destroyed, and PCs with their cart followed by an obsessed man screaming behind them "show me the treasure !" in a town full of thieves...
Things go crazy as they manage to convince him to shut up, to join them in their "treasure hunt" and to go meet the rest of the team in Se'auri (where there's nobody, in fact) to help them find a treasure. Excited he decide to change his name to "Ulrich The Great Treasure Hunter" and disappear.
They find a inn with a backdoor and can sleep but are awakened by a noise in the room where the golem is.
And they find the golem shut down but his fist inside the wall, the wall tainted with blood, with a headless thief body on the ground. It seems someone thought he'll find a treasure...
Meanwhile, thanks to a spell Istar can tell them to meet at Thunderfalls 3 days later.

... It's 4AM, so I'll tell what happened in Corvenia later... going to sleep

[David Roomes]

Great stuff. Great story. I'm sure the players are having fun. I love the bit about the inn accidentally burning down and the irate innkeeper joining the group.