The Sacking of Orm Session #3

 It has been a minute, hasn't it? How things were last left, the elfin airship the Purple Rose had crashed into Orm as a consequence of a battle between the Dragon Slayers and the monster known as the Oloth El'gg Ssuson. Orm was set ablaze and in the chaos the unliving raiders that call themselves the Worthy Dead set upon the settlement to pick its bones clean. A group of adventurers protected the Athenaeum of the Dying Sun. The Dragon Slayers prevented total destruction the untouched copse of trees connecting Orm to the Twilight Shores (I will post about that as soon as I can dig up my notes).

This post concerns itself with a third group of composed of the following adventurers that found themselves outside the Burning Witch:

• Bludoon (Level 1 Dwarf)
• Heike (Level 1 Cleric of the Free Prince)
• PakPak (Level 5 Kobold)
• Phasmo (Level 4 Magic-User)
• Lirazil (Level 2 Elf retainer)
• Wolfgang (Level 3 Duelist)

PakPak's player Rob A. provides us a look at an anti-cleric of the Wolf Mother, his strange mace, and a transformed cat.

Here is a play report written up by Phasmo's player Ben recapping the sessions events:

During the night of blood and flames, Phasmo’s horse, Cadmium trots up to the Athenaeum, bearing a slumped rider. The horse lets out a whinny to announce his presence. The Athenaeum’s tense defenders see that the figure is the elf Lirazil, companion to Phasmo. She is tied to the saddle and unresponsive to their calls. The clever horse kneels so that they may untie her. Lirazil’s fair hair is drenched in blood. Her plate armor has been grievously pierced, displaying a huge, gory wound of twisted metal and flesh. She is dead. A note has been affixed to the saddle, which reads simply,

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Athenaeum,   Please protect Lirazil’s body. If I return tonight we will have a proper wake. If I do not, Crannoc, there is a sealed letter in my room for you to read. Apply the instructions to Lirazil.

Yours, Phasmo

It is after midnight when Phasmo, Pak Pak, Wolfgang, Bludoon, and Heike approach the Athenaeum, covered in soot and the black ichorous blood of the Worthy Dead. They carry a bound and sleeping figure who Crannoc and the other members of the Transcendental College recognize to be the Zarthur of Mere the Seer, although his appearance is strangely altered. Once the figure is shackled properly and gagged in the basement under guard, the exhausted group tells their tale.

They tell how they defended the Burning Witch from the Worthy Dead, slaying a cohort lead by an unliving priest of the Wolf Mother, but lost Lirazil who was impaled terribly upon a spear while she bravely defended the party; how they went to quench the flames that threatened Pak Pak’s Shop Shop, and along the way faced a cat that was transformed into an eerie beast by contact with the starry matter of the Oloth E’lg Ssuson; how they came upon a slaughtered group of firefighters, the disciples of the Free Prince  to which Heike belongs and their leader the Miracle Worker Shilo, who had wounded the Worthy Dead grievously by holy water before falling; how the party was sustained through these confrontations by Heike’s copious healing magic and defended by Wolfgang’s wicked blade work.

The strangest part of their tale comes last. Phasmo relates a recent disturbing revelation. His early experiments on the diabolical complex water corrupted his mind, opening the way to possession by a mirror version of himself. This twisted version of himself would arise in the night and make perfidious mischief, which Phasmo learned to his horror has been going on for a long time. This mirror version of himself works at the behest of the Crooked Hand, the mobsters of Orm, somehow with the help of the magic-user Zarthur. Impersonating his mirror self, Phasmo received a command to come at midnight to the Loan Bank to help the mobsters on a heist. The party agreed to accompany him to help him get some answers from Zarthur.

The party save for Phasmo donned the mantle of invisibility. They met three members of the Crooked Hand, the Duke, Whisper, and Slim Rude, along with Zarthur, in front of the Loan Bank. All four bore distorted visages of their mirror selves. They referred to “passing through to the other side”, suggesting that they had further corrupted their hosts perhaps to receive more permanent occupation of their bodies. Eventually springing to action, Bludoon snapped a wicked bear trap on the head of the Duke, the most formidable of the mobsters! With this gruesome surprise, the party was able to slay eventually 2 out of 3 of the mirrored mobsters and took the slumbering form of Zarthur hostage. But Slim Rude fled the scene, likely alerting the Crooked Hand of Phasmo’s betrayal.

As daylight breaks and the tale comes to an end, Phasmo carries Lirazil’s body to the bath in the Athenaeum, cleaning the soot and the blood from her wound, wringing it from her hair, perfuming her, and combing out her matted tresses. He clothes her in clean magician’s robes that lie ready to hand, laying her out in a pose of peaceful slumber in the Atheneum’s rooftop garden, around her head heaping flowers. He invites those who remain in the Athenaeum to come have a drink and share a few words in remembrance over her pale body. At the end of this rite of remembrance, Phasmo brings forth a chalice of a milky liquid, saying, “The last drink shall be hers.” As soon as this liquid passes her lips, the corpse pallor gives way to a livelier pinkish hue. The members of this wake give a start, as Lirazil gives a yawn, stretching her arms, and raising herself as if from a slumber to the strange sight of so many onlookers. “What are you fools gawking at?”

Loot

• The mace of an anti-cleric of the Wolf Mother
• Mantle of the Wolf (+2 to saves against magical effects that are Lawful in origin)
• Gold chain (worth 50gp)
• Assorted very foreign coinage (worth 16gp but more to a right buyer inserted in exotic coins)
• A flask filled with a star-field like substance that has the faint fragrance of pernod (worth 100gp to the right elfin or magic-user buyer)
• A  glowing glass orb filled with strange grey-violet gas (worth 500gp to the right elfin or magic-user buyer)
• Two marble-sized mirrored orbs

Experience Points

• 666xp from treasure
• Members of the Worthy Dead defeated 3 x 35xp
• An Anti-cleric of the Wolf Mother defeated 1 x 300xp
• Cat touched by a piece of the Oloth El'gg Ssuson defeated 1 x 125xp
• The Duke and Whisper defeated 2 x 125xp
• Zarthur of Mere captured 1 x 200xp

Player Character Cut

• There are a lot of find the right buyer chances here so it is hard to know the loot division.
• 322xp ea.

As always, player write-ups and art earn PC Level x 100xp. We are entering a protracted period of downtime as Orm adjusts to changes brought on by recent events. Downtime during this period will be handled differently than usual so keep your eyes peeled. Though, I will allow each PC a chance to find the right buyer for one item each if the group is so inclined to part with their loot.

The Cult of the Free Prince

First mention all the way back in the second post of this blog, the Shrine of the Free Prince and its followers were the most popular of the myriad of spiritual spots in Orm's Alley of the Gods. Languishing in the comments section of a later adventure recap, a brief summary about the faith around the Free Prince could be found:

The Free Prince is a deity whose tales intertwine with those of the Fury. The lore of the Prince is filled with survival through impossible circumstances and impressive displays of willpower. It also tells of how an traumatized outcast finally finds comfort in the structures of a found family. The Shrine of the Free Prince is the most popular one in all of Orm.