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Old 08-28-2022, 02:15 PM   #2
Astromancer
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
Default Re: Tell us how your Campaigns are going, also get and give advice

I'll be reposting the earlier sessions of this campaign here later. When I mention why I'm doing something, I'm asking for comment on that thing this time.

The three active at this time PCs have started out going down a river with dams and lockes. The Kenku Monk got a natural 20 on his Insight roll and figured how to work the lockes to lower the boat.

The group noticed the powerful preservation magic of the long gone society. The dam and its lockes have been untented for seven centuries. And everything is in perfect order.

While leaving the pool at the bottom of the locke I tossed out a red herring.

There was a plinth with cravings of a skull and a scythe on it and the words "I am in Arcadia also."

They also found scratched onto the stone the words "In the beginning all the world was..." They saw that part of a letter had been made but not finished.

(The second was a real clue)

They had been told that the harpies couldn't go beyond the fifth set of lockes. They had just left the first locke and they were in an insanely overgrown rose garden with a forest of flowering trees.

The roses would have had to have been hacked with a machete to go beyond the river's edge.

The fairy and the owlin searched several pavilions along the river bank and looted some golden plates and bowls, some fine crystal goblets, and elegant table silver. They found more signs of the conflict between the red thistle and the blue oak leaf.

The second lock had a gift shop set up.

The first thing on entering one would see were three fauns. One was a statue, the other two were petrified fauns with looks of horror on their faces.

The PCs soon saw the shadow of the Cockatrice.

After several minutes of sneaking up on it, they discovered the cockatrice was also petrified. They went back and discovered that the dead fauns had been set up as a display.

They found many small animals that had clearly been made to pose in silly ( and, for the animals in question, painful) ways and then petrified.

They also found a chessboard were the pieces were petrified kindergarten children who clearly knew they were being murdered.

This board was marked with a glass butterfly and a steel orchid.

The area after the second locke was parkland. The PCs found a warning.

"Elm he do grieve/
Oak he do Hate!
Willow will walk/
If you walk late."

The owlin picked a fight with a weeping willow. An enchanted tree as strong as a cloud giant and one hundred feet tall.

He nearly escaped. Meanwhile, the oaks and elms placed those members of the party that weren't there into a deathlike trance by sorcery.

While they drifted further south they crossed over a gigantic sun dial. They read the dial motto "Each one wounds, the last one kills." They thought it was a warning about the trees.

They came to the third locke.

There was a small inn. The owlin used Gaseous Form to explore inside. But all clues were lost when the willows ripped the building apart.

The land beyond the third locke was another area of formal rose gardens overgrown into nightmare jungles. There were magically preserved fishing cottages along the river. The Kenku Monk and the Owlin Warlock stole fishing rods and a generously equipped tackle box.

Although they looked inside the windows of the cottages, and found them richly and lavishly furnished they didn't go inside. They went fishing. Although the cottages were marked with elaborate heraldic symbols, the PCs fried fish. In the Kenku Monk's magic fry pan.

The building at the forth locke was a burned out shell that should have collapsed decades ago.

The lands beyond the forth locke were a wilderness of magnolias and mimosas.

The PCs found themselves being chased by otters the size of Nile crocodiles. (These are creatures from Irish folklore, and very deadly).

Unlike the areas above the forth locke, the gardens changed dramatically. The Magnolias and Mimosas gave way to giant flowers.

The PCs (only the Owlin and the Kenku were awake, their players there) had an epic battle with hawk sized dragon flies. The butterfly shamans tried to enchant them. But they got away.

While getting to the fifth locke the Harpies showed up. (They had been seen while the weeping willows were enraged, but it was thought that all the Harpy scouts were killed by the willows).

The actual lockes were beyond the barrier that blocked the harpies and their powers. But the harpies tried to open the floodgates and drown the PCs. It was a race to the bottom.

The PCs once at the bottom of the fifth locke were surrounded by crocodile sized otters, but the harpies actually got the floodgate open and washed everyone away.

The PCs only barely saved the boat.

The PCs soon came into the area of the city they had been shown was downstream.

The first sign they saw was the facade of a building with no building to back it up. The thing had clearly been in place for centuries even though the wind should have blown it down long ago.

Soon they saw the magically preserved streetlights on the city.

When the PCs came to the first bridge they found it was in perfect shape, except for the roadbed had been full of dirt and leaf litter so long a small forest of stunted trees had grown up. The sidewalks were perfectly clean.

The next bridge had houses on it. (Yes I always loved those old illustrations of London Bridge in the Mother Goose books. Why do you ask?)

They came to a pier with stairs up to the bridge and docked the boat. As three of the PCs weren't there playing. I ruled that their PCs were still in enchanted slumber.

The Kenku Monk and the Owlin Warlock followed the sound of music up the stairs. The boat being securely moored to the pier.

When the PCs got there, they found a hurdy-gurdy and a keyboard thing that sounded like bells.

They discovered the unnaturally preserved curtains and stage of a puppet theater. Going inside, they found the place striped of just about everything. The owners had had time to pack. The front room of the theater was a toy shop that clearly specialized in puppets and dolls.

Going out into the street they found a still active mill ready to grind flour and lift water to the upper levels of the bridge houses.

While at the mill they heard singing.

The line "Do you hear Mademoiselle those musicians of Hell?" Repeated like a broken record.

The found the noise coming from a life sized puppet made from the skin and bones of a woman. The sound coming from a cheap amulet.

The disgusted monk destroyed the figure in hopes of giving the dead woman's soul rest. He then smashed the amulet. The act of smashing the amulet caused a clearly supernatural sensation of well being and relief.

On the way back to the puppet show, in order to climb down the stairs to the boat, they passed in inn/tavern called "The Dancing Bones."

They investigated the inn. The same twisted mixture of decay and preservation was found. They also found an animated human skeleton dancing on a table in the inn.

The monk also turned this to dust. They saw the table the skeleton danced on was marked with a glass butterfly and a steel orchid.

They then went back to the boat. End of session.
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Last edited by Astromancer; 08-29-2022 at 05:56 PM.
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