Caravan to Ein Arris - adapted for a fantasy setting

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

In fact, it is an exemplar of "low fantasy," before that term got co-opted to mean near-Earth swords-and-sorcery.

Eh, Low Fantasy has too many definitions, and the "official" one is about as useful for gleaning any information about the story as which font was selected for the cover.

According to academics, an epic story of wizards is low fantasy if it's set in Mythic Britain, while a story about a quartermaster keeping track of arrow usage in an imperial legion is high fantasy if it's set in a fictional world.

[SolemnGolem]

Session 8 - Strakeland and Desert - 2024-08-13

Surviving in the Desert

The party continued heading south, with Tsorvettar in the lead carrying the magic compass and the map, with Aya beside him. The cart of goodies with JWW, Riana, and Irdri was in the center. Kylerean rode his camel unsteadily right beside the cart. Ferrvarro brought up the rear.

Each human needed 1.25 gallons of water per day, making 6.5 gallons. JWW's horse needed 5 gallons alone. The seven camels needed less, but would eventually need to refill at a river or water source.

Kylerean's Create Water spell would prove utterly lifesaving. It also left Kylerean exhausted every time he cast it, requiring almost an hour of quiet to recover his spellcasting reserves.

Irdri sat in the cart with the metal hawk's chest open, scanning the surroundings. The bird could fly about half an hour before having to come back and recharge for another half hour. It flew at about 40 mph top speed, so it could fly over a total of 20 miles' loop, or a circle of about 3 miles' radius. Irdri conducted constant overflight to track any terrain features or intruders.

Irdri found both: about 15 miles to the south was a karst formation that might offer shelter against raids or sandstorms. And to the west by about 12 miles was a straggling group of three mounted figures on camels, heading towards the party, leaving a track of camel hoofprints in the sand.

Irdri conducted several more overflights, revealing that the western three camels were steadily adjusting their path, parabolically, to walk directly towards the party's current location. They weren't heading to try to cut off the party at its destination, or falling behind the party to follow their tracks. It became clear that they could sense the party's current location and head towards it directly.

The Strakes' Pursuit

The PCs conducted a panicked search of all the belongings to try to find out how the bandits were tracking them, including JWW making alcohol into formaldehyde and pickling Irdri's captive mindworm sample. They used Detect Magic to figure out all magical items in their possession to see if the bandits had put a tracking device with them. (Tsorvettar vetoed their attempt to look inside the sulfur springs chests, as they were buried long before Rianna was born and thus were much earlier than the Strakes.)

Eventually JWW surmised that the mindworms could just detect sapient minds innately, perhaps like his Sense Minds spell.

The party stayed vigilant as Irdri sent the metal hawk surveying to the east. There, Irdri reported two developments: another group of three camel riders was approaching their position from the other side, and behind them a sandstorm was coming.

The sandstorm was soon upon them, and the party had to coax their camels and horse onwards. Their horse's spirit failed first, halting and refusing to pull the cart any further. The rest of the party stopped and huddled at the cart, setting up a tent in windward direction to break the sand whirls slightly. They prepared their spells and arrows to repel the pursuers.

JWW cast Sense Mind periodically, until he discovered the western set of bandits within range. Their minds felt wrong - inverted from the current dimension's sapient mass, somehow. A break in the sandstorm revealed three vacant Strake riders on camels, all uncaring of the sand filling their eyes and faces. Clearly, the mindworm infestation was crippling.

In the first combat, Ferrvarro and Tsorvettar loosed arrows into the storm and Aya cast Flame Jet from her staff. After a few shots, they unseated or killed the three riders, and turned to protect their eastern flank.

These proved equally as unthinking and undeterrable as the western assailants. Aya dealt with them, scorching Flame Jet from her staff.

Mindworms in the Maelstrom

A shout from the cart alerted them back to the other side. A riderless camel had made its dull-witted way through the sand and was hanging menacingly low over Irdri and Rianna. Aya came over and torched it, and Irdri swatted away the mindworms that fell onto the cart.

A spell of silence, aside from the windstorm, fell upon the party. Catching their breaths, they decided to press on through the sandstorm.

Kylerean, never a familiar camel rider, used the Circlet of Knowledge to wear a Camel Riding Skill stone, but even that had its limits. After he tried to nudge his camel onwards, the unhinged beast roared and ran off into the sandstorm. Kylerean's last audible shout was something panicked about "mindworms!"

Ferrvarro rode up alongside JWW and nudged him. "You better do your mind tricks and find that water mage, quickly, or we're all dead within a day."

JWW cast Sense Mind and picked up Kylerean's mental trail fading before them. He set off in the sand, but quickly realized he had the Poor Sense of Direction disadvantage. Aya caught up with him and the two of them forged onward together.

The cart and the rest of the group vanished into the sandstorm behind them. Kylerean's shouts grew dimmer ahead of them. They kept up a periodic Sense Mind ping, picking up tiny glimmers of "inverse mentality" from the discarded mindworms.

Eventually, they located Kylerean, on his way back to meet them. It turns out he had Seek Water, and he could cast that to locate them by the water in their waterbags.

They picked over his camel to find and kill the mindworms, then he cast Seek Water to get them back to the cart and its spare bounty of stored water.

They progressed onward and made it to the rocky outcroppings and mazelike valleys of the karst formations before nightfall.

JWW contacted Chronotis and made his report, handing the formaldehyded specimen of the mindworm over. Chronotis was fascinated, as this seemed like an interdimensional being.

More Strakes

JWW woke up from disturbed sleep to find Irdri nudging him and asking him to cast the Sense Minds spell. JWW did so, and discovered something approaching on foot, dull of mind and possessing the mindworms' "inverse mental" signature.

The entire camp had woken up by the time the Strake lackey arrived. It called out to them in a Perras'hi voice, similar to Ferrvarro's.

They went to confront it. A scrawny Cat-Man, face bulging with parasitic worms, addressed them.

It started off by saying a burst of a graduation number, a class number, and a mentor mage number. Aya, JWW, and Kylerean recognized it for some identifier of some mage at the Thaumatorikon - they themselves had one (or a portion of one) too.

Then it asked each wizard in turn which school of magic they were from and who their mentor was. Aya was the only one who refused to answer, and she reached out with her staff and torched the unfortunate infected Perras'hi.

They conferred hurriedly and determined that the rogue mage (mentioned to be in cahoots with the Strakes) presumably could speak through mindwormed individuals. This mage probably wanted to know information about the PCs. Although why they wanted to know this, and what was the meaning of the Thaumatorikon serial number they rattled off to the PCs, was unknown.

The sandstorm had cleared over night and they made their way onward before dawn, unable to sleep again.

They made quick progress on the second day, and got to a good, defensible location before nightfall to make a safe camp. This night, too, they had an intruder - a Polebi Windrush, riding in with her horse. This rider spoke too, but just repeated the orders to "kill the guilder, kill the cat-man, flay the girl, spare the wizards" over and over.

This time, JWW did the honors, trapping and petrifying the enemy in sand. Tsorvettar and Ferrvarro cut off her head from a safe distance using a shovel, and stored in a cloth bag. JWW hailed Chronotis and gave it to him through the fire.

Chronotis had done some research on the Thaumatorikon serial number, and determined that it was from some seven decades back. In fact, it was likely related to the Purple Robe senior wizard who had died of old age a few months ago. There had been some hushed up affair about a robbery attempt on his tomb, to retrieve some of his prized Purple School artificer equipment and trappings, and the perpetrator may be tied to the rogue mage with the Strakes.

Chronotis also handed JWW a black spell stone, and gave Aya a red spell stone. He advised them to spend a full week to properly learn these magicks, as they were very powerful.

[SolemnGolem]

Within Sight of Kiel'Nurn

The third day brought them to the first sign of Kiel'Nurn, the settlement of the Half-Orcs: a windmill perched atop a tall karst formation. Tsorvettar gladly hailed the stocky, solidly-built green skinned humanoid there, speaking a few words of Kiln'Urn language, and the guard replied in kind. They were welcomed by the city leadership, the eloquent and hospitable Kiln'Urns, and shown to their lodgings. After resting awhile, their guides showed them the city.

The entire city was built alongside a river running from south to north, and a flat market area beside the banks on one side. Then, going uphill, the city burrowed upward along a cliffside, and then crossed over the river in a soaring natural rock archway, to the other side, where the Kiln'Urn administrative palace building stood.

The river water also was diverted and rose upward through karst columns, pulled up in buckets by windmill power, and then released along aqueducts that flowed through porous rock, filtering and purifying it for consumption in lower levels.

Downriver there were tanners and laundries. Upriver, beyond the main settlement of Kiel'Nurn, was the wider riverway, powering some of the largest waterwheels and the largest firing kiln ovens.

Link to portraits of Ekrugasht, Gar'Kord, and Gorkerrak, principal Half-Orc leaders in Kiel'Nurn

The Kiln'Urns were clearly awaiting the main caravan with high hopes. Ekrugasht and Gorkerrak showed the PCs to a room full of fine glassware, commissioned by the Thaumatorikon (although nobody knew what for, exactly). Tsorvettar let slip that fully nine of the 12 wagons of the caravan were specifically in exchange for these glassware products - clearly, glass was worth a small fortune in Korrem's magitech industry.

Gorkerrak showed the PCs some of the glass works he was working on - some lenses, intended to help focus the sun's rays in special arrangements to allow for evaporation of saltwater or brackish water pools to create drinkable pure water. He was looking forward to glass lens holders, expected to be delivered in the caravan (and which the PCs had seen before, under Arun Pallevander's seal).

Rianna seemed shyly taken with Gorkerrak's gentle manner and the rest of the Kiln'Urns' welcoming hospitality.

Gar'Kord spoke with Aya and JWW, filling them in on both the Kiln'Urns' history and the secret of a great wealth resource.

The Vrengarian Empire

2,200 years ago, these were arrivals from another place - associated with the water. The Vrengar ("warrior rulers") first overran a human settlement on the ocean, and then overran a human settlement on the shore. They ruled for five centuries before their empire collapsed. In good times, each parent could communicate with all their descendants by thought alone, and often no young were born unless an elder died.

The Vrengar had four stages of life, known to humans as kobold, goblin, orc, and ogre. The orc main sequence stage was the only fertile stage, and reproduced by biting off portions of a partner orc's face, gestating a young from the tissue.

After 500 years, a Balemoon second sun appeared, causing strange births. Vrengar children could not understand their parents' thoughts. Humans eaten as food resulted in half-Vrengar offspring. The Empire collapsed as language and command fell apart.

A tiny portion of the mutant births resulted in half-human, half-Vrengar hybrids. And a tiny portion of those hybrids were somehow able to breed true: following the human heritage of gender based reproduction (albeit also using reproductive systems parallel to elimination, rather than the Vrengarian parallel to feeding).

After the Vrengar polity collapsed, the human and weaker races enslaved the Sal'Vrengar ("warrior ruler slaves") and put them to work in the fields for centuries. One faction escaped and fled ever southwards, eventually settling in modern day Kiel'Nurn, developing a system of writing to record and transmit knowledge, in an imperfect echo of the Vrengarians' telepathy.

The Kiln'Urns rode out the excesses of the Pharaohnic feline Ahrru'wiy'sah Empire in the Rassh desert valley, and hid from the Yemeluspa Theocracy's conquests up north, until finally the Union of Korrem liberated the Sal'Vrengar slaving in the fields. Korrem's leaders brought them south to reunite with their clay-working Kiln'Urn cousins. The two factions rejoined, and the Union of Korrem helped build a true city in the karsts for the Kiln'Urn to call their home for good.

The Secret of Silly Noobie

Gar'Kord pointed at the roomful of conventional glass, worth a small fortune (75% of a large caravan's wealth). But there was an even bigger treasure out in the wastes, among the ruins of the old Ahrru'wiy'sah Empire. Just as JWW and Aya had found tiny beads of malleable glass around the site of an old dimensional portal, Gar'Kord said that recent massive sandstorms in the desert had revealed massive glimmering inland seas of glass.

But this was not just any glass - this glass was malleable itself, like that found near dimensional anomalies. A whole sea of this wildly expensive and precious material - silico nubius, or "silinubi" - with all the wild applications waiting for magic and science to unlock it.

In centuries past, evil powers killed intruders or warped them into Khost'hab (desert ghosts). But now the latest storms seem to herald a safe approach for the brave - and a future adventure?

Moments with Mirroire

Aya's familiar, a tiny Mau kitten named Mirroire ("mew-rawr"), was tucked into Aya's robes during most of the adventure. Mirroire had a few memorable moments.

First: In the aftermath of the attack from the Strakes, Aya and her band anxiously inspected each other for stray mindworms, to make sure nobody would get infected. After setting off again, Aya suddenly felt Mirroire convulsing uncontrollably in her robes. Panicking, she pulled Mirroire out and combed her frantically for worms... only for Mirroire to vomit up a large camel-hair furball and then look at Aya with placid bemusement.

Aya put her back into her robes.

Second: Upon arriving at Kiel'Nurn, Aya fell asleep in dream communion with Mirroire, asking her if she had seen this place and what it looked like in the times of Ahrru'wiy'sah. Mirroire's dream responded that she had left the cat city very early in life and didn't remember much, but she did recall the smell of the river, Vensa. It was sweet water, back in her day, and the river was much larger. Something had changed in the intervening 1,500 years: the river was brackish now, and sickly by comparison.

Third: After exploring the city more, Aya asked Mirroire to dream about the Rassh Valley and the Ahrru'wiy'sah city at its height of power. Mirroire sadly dreamed about the day she left by sedan, to spend the rest of her life in the borderlands. Rassh with its noble districts, temples, glittering riverways, and pyramids. The oldest pyramids were tiny - a great ancestral ruler who accomplished surpassing deeds, so that his subjects loved him truly and sustained his life a while longer by belief. Then the subsequent rulers building on this legend and belief to live yet longer and build larger pyramids. Until finally Mirroire's uncle, Ahrru'wiy'sah's god-pharaoh ruler himself, with so many slaves and such grand temples, never to die, destined to rule for untold millennia without end.

And now, a mere millennium after its collapse, the sand reclaims it...

END OF SESSION 8