WLB Ep. 1

WLB Ep. 1
Welcome to the new Malachi campaign, everyone. :-D  In this first session, the group met two new PCs, investigated the disappearance of some of their Hastenport friends, and made their way to Chavalk's Abyssal plane to break into his stronghold.

Specific details as remembered by me:

1) The party found police detective Kell Noyar talking to the seer Shoshana (also known as the Paeta) who had contacted the spirits of Aler's parents for him. She turns out to be Jay's new PC, a wizard who specializes in divination and necromantic magics. Being a friend of the oneiromancer Morgana, Shoshana had come to Hastemport to consult Morgana about something and was shocked to find her missing, joining forces with the party to try to get more information about what happened to her.

2) The party learned from Noyar that there had been several demon attacks in Hastenport on the day of the Invasion, and apparently this was the case for other cities in the duchy as well. It did not seem to be an organized assault, rather multiple small groups of demon raiders causing trouble in different parts of the city. Eight townsfolk were killed in the skirmishes, one of whom was Jarth Ardmore (the cartographer-monk who traveled to Ruastin with the party, who was Seven Quinn's boyfriend.) Seven, Morgana, and Barris are all missing. (Vanessa is also missing, but since she left two days prior to the Invasion and left a note saying where she was going Noyar is not treating her absence as suspicious.)

3) Jon told the party some demons had apparently broken into his house that day, trashed a room and stolen a few objects before Ben the tree scared them off (Jon's family was not harmed as they hid in the warded basement.)

4) Jarth's body was found outside the Oneiromancy with slashing wounds. The police mage ID'd it as a demon attack, but Speak With Dead failed to work on him and there weren't any witnesses. The other demon attack victims elsewhere in the city were reachable via speak with dead and their accounts of their own deaths were consistent with what witnesses to those attacks saw.

5) Shoshana cast Discern Location, a powerful 8th-level divination spell, to locate Morgana, but the spell also failed. This is significant because normal protections against scrying don't work against Discern Location, so it means something very unusual is going on.

6) The party went to see Jarth's body, which has been magically preserved. With the first die roll of the campaign, Aler rolled a natural 20 and identified Jarth's wounds as caused by a Vrock (a type of large flying demon.) Shoshana used her special Seance spell (the one that had been able to reach the Aler's parents despite their being too long dead for a normal Speak With Dead) and did succeed at channeling Jarth's spirit, but it was staticky, confused and could provide little information, saying "Where am I?" "I'm not supposed to be here!" and "Where is Seven, did she get away?"

7) The party decided to go to Seven's house, which was one of the buildings in town damaged by demons. The lower floor, where the bookshop is, was little disturbed but the upper floor, where Seven's bedroom and her father's magical study are was trashed with all the bookshelves knocked over and items strewn everywhere. Bay found claw marks on one of the bookshelves consistent with the Vrock's claws. The window was open and the fire escape looked broken. Aler found a black and gold pin snagged on one of the curtains which depicts a snake biting its own tail in the sign of an infinity symbol, which Zadkiel and Shoshana recognized as an emblem of Vecna.

8) Shoshana used another high-level Divination spell to give her a vision of events that happened recently in this room, which replayed for the whole party to see. They saw Seven and Jarth fleeing down the fire escape, pursued by the Vrock whose weight broke the ladder before he launched into the air. Back in Seven's house could be seen two more demons and a human man in a stylized cloak. Shoshana's vision followed Seven and Jarth as they ran down the street towards the Oneiromancy. Seven used a magic item to delay the Vrock, then Jarth fought the demon for a couple of rounds while Seven escaped into the Oneiromancy. Eventually the Vrock killed him and went into the building and the vision ended.

9) The party went back to look inside the Oneiromancy. There were signs of a fight in the salon, with a blast mark on the wall consistent with a fireball or similar effect. Though a few items in the salon were overturned, Bay believed that no one had spent more than a few minutes looting this room. Jon sensed lingering Abyssal energy in this room which indicates Abyssal magic that had been used here-- possibly a portal to the Abyss or a summoning spell. Since it happened a couple of days ago he couldn't get more information about it than that.

10) The party met Piper and talked amongst themselves for a while, concluding that the attack on Seven and Jarth was significantly different than the other demon skirmishes in town (there were no human attackers present in any of the other incidents, Jarth's death was clearly unnatural in some way due to the failure of Speak With Dead and the strange vocalizations of his spirit when Shoshana reached it.) However, trying to locate Seven, Morgana and Barris came up as a dead end. The party decided that they might find more information about this among Chavalk's intelligence, since it was unlikely that the demonic attacks in Cloudwatch on the same day as the Invasion were unrelated to it.

11) The party talked to Tisha. Tisha is distracted by broader goings-on in Peraine, which the players know includes the assassination of the Duke but the PCs aren't aware of yet. Although she is clearly an extremely busy woman right now, Tisha is both very concerned about her father and agreed with Jon's assessment that breaking into Chavalk's fortress may yield information about the League of Snakes that would be valuable to His Majesty's Secret Service, so she agreed to come to the Abyss with the group as an intelligence analyst.

12) Adriel took her leave from the party at this point, she and Cartino will remain in Hastenport to found the hall of their knightly order which several other knights have already arrived in town to join.

13) After resting and recovering spells, the party decided the best course of action would be to Plane Shift the walking hut to the correct plane of the Abyss (plane 456), then use local recon to find the way to Chavalk's fortress and a safe way into it. Tanya unveiled her new Invocation which can create the equivalent of a Mansion spell inside the hut, giving it some additional protections, magical servants and food, and cool new decor.

14) Shoshana asked the group if she could bring a necromantic ally with her for protection. Jon balked at this idea, but Aler convinced the party that he could handle it, so Shoshana summoned a Mohrg, a revenant-like skeletal undead she considers a friend of hers as well as a capable bodyguard.

15) Looking more like a baroque train car now than a witch's hut, the Walking Hut removed to plane 456 of the Abyss and stepped promptly out into a punishing sandstorm. The party guessed they were probably somewhere in the area identified as the "Wrathdunes" on the map Asteppo gave you. Unable to see through the whipping sands and not knowing where on the map they were to begin heading towards a landmark, the party used a divination spell to find the closest living creatures and approached a demonic caravanseray.

16) The demon tending the bar offered to hook you up with an Abyssal guide for a price, who could lead you to one of the locations on your map once you decide which one you want to go to. More interestingly, though, the party saw a Tenarri man drinking at the bar, who seemed excited to see other Malachians. His name is Mirin and he is a historian/magical scholar, specialized in transmuting. He explained he is an associate of the other adventuring group you met, the Returners, who have also gone missing. Believing Chavalk to have been banished to the Abyss during the Invasion, and possessing intelligence about the layout of Chavalk's stronghold, he had the idea to portal himself into the fortress and kill Chavalk while he is weak. Unfortunately the stronghold was shielded against portals and the magic had a strange effect which dumped Mirin into the Wrathdunes. The party told Mirin they had already killed Chavalk, which he didn't seem like he was sure whether to believe or not. He informed them that he knew the location of four rooms within the stronghold which might be of interest to the party's mission: Chavalk's personal quarters, his summoning chamber, his war room, and his vault. The vault, however, Mirin tells you is heavily guarded and would also be the first place demons would be trying to break into in Chavalk's absence.

17) Finally, the party noticed some movement inside a barrel in the Walking Hut and bracing for an attack, they opened the barrel to find... Jon's 10-year-old daughter Kit, who apparently stowed away on board and waited there till you were too far into your mission for it to be easy to turn around and bring her back home. :-D

And there we broke for the day!

Onward