Nerida 2, 22CR – Campaign Start: 

Zara Oberwald, an 18-year-old female human paladin, has been assigned to the Temple of the Bright Lady in Aerendale for the past six months.  This morning, her chandlery is interrupted by a request to accompany a party of six orcs of the Rolling Thunder tribe from Malok-Gorthai [Subchieftan Thaddar, Vaniok (wizard), Krinia (priestess of Anushar), Deger, Barrit & Tio’rik (warriors)] on an errand to the orcish embassy in the government district.  There, she meets Nathaniel Crane, a 24-year-old human Hathoraen (by way of Falgenor) wizard, who works under Emery Dayn, the consul of the embassy.  The orcs have traveled to the city to inform their Hathoraen allies of trouble in Caladan forest to the North – land which mutually borders Hathorae and Malok-Gorthai.  There are reports of increasing banditry and well-organized evil humanoid raiders gathering in the forest and preying on trade caravans and outlying settlements, and rumors of a supernatural darkness gathering deep in the forest.

 

                Emery dispatches Nathaniel, Zara and Essedar Holmwen (a 21-year-old male human cleric of Shandae, employed as an intern at the embassy) as guides and escorts for the orcs and suggests they tour the city while he consults with his superiors about a course of action.  The orcs and humans tour the city, visiting a local bakery, the famous Sun Park, the Orc’s Head Pub, and a local art museum attached to the University of Aerendale.  During the day of cultural exchange, an old friend of Nathaniel’s – Telenvor Tisiera, a 20-year-old human male rogue with aspirations to be a “professional adventurer” – runs into the group and asks to tag along, since he is at loose ends.  The group of orcs and humans spends an enjoyable day together, and Zara and Nathaniel talk at length with the orc wizard Vaniok, who has tremendous interest in and knowledge of human and other cultures.

 

                That evening, they return to the embassy and are informed of a pending mission: in the morning, they are to escort the orcs to the logging town of Caladere, the northernmost settlement of Hathorae along the Moridarian border to the northwest.  Caladere has been attacked by strange creatures in recent weeks, and the local guard post has taken several losses.  The party will travel with a contingent of eight Hathoraen soldiers, who are being reassigned there as permanent reinforcements.  Telenvor is hired as a “troubleshooter” by Emery at the recommendation of Nathaniel, to his great delight.

 

6-3-22 – 6-5-22CR:  The party of eighteen (6 orcs, 8 human soldiers, Zara, Nathaniel, Essedar and Telenvor) march north out of Aerendale, through the squalor of Tent Town immediately north of the city, into the quiet misty confines of Caladan Forest.  They arrive at the small logging town after nightfall on 6-5-22, and no one at the local guard barracks is there to greet them.  An eerie supernatural shroud of gloom seems to have fallen on Caladere, and the guards are nowhere to be found.  The townsfolk also seem depleted in number, and those who can be found are oddly unresponsive, with glazed eyes, pasty flesh, and slow, inarticulate speech.

 

The party retires to the guard barracks, determined to investigate in the morning when things are less spooky.  They post a watch and go to sleep in shifts, but around 1:00am, they are awakened by a skittering, clawing sound under the floorboards of the barracks.  A horde of small feral ape-like creatures with reddish brown fur, wicked claws and paralytic, toxic fangs rushes the barracks from below and from outside simultaneously, quickly overwhelming the party.  Several soldiers and two orcs – Deger and Barit - are killed by the horde, and the rest of the party is paralyzed and rendered unconscious by the toxin of the creatures’ bites. 

 

 

6-6-22CR:  Zara and Nathaniel lie unconscious in an underground cell together. They are unsure of the whereabouts of their fellow travelers or the fate of the town, not to mention their exact location.

 

6-7-22CR:  Some time in the early evening, Zara awakens and finds her strength returning.  She wakes Nathaniel up and, possessed by some divine spark of strength, smashes the brick wall of the small holding cell and affects an escape.  Tel and Essedar are found in an adjacent cell, and the orcs Vaniok, Krinia and Tio’rik are likewise recovered.  There is no sign of Subchieftan Thaddar or the Hathoraen soldiers.  Everyone is wounded and weakened, but led by Zara’s overwhelming strength and the darkvision of the orcs, they traverse the damp dungeon they’ve been held in – a dungeon which looks as though it was excavated and built recently – and stumble into the open air of Caladere.

 

                The inhabitants of the settlement seem to have grown more bestial, and may even have become undead, because they give chase when the party emerges, snarling and drooling as they lope after the weakened escapees.  They have no choice but to flee, and their egress leads them into the western end of Caladan Forest.  The orcs and humans run for hours, stumbling in a half trance state through the forest, and finally collapse about two hours before dawn.

 

6-8-22CR:  When they awaken around noon the following day, the group realizes they are surrounded by a hostile force of over 20 hobgoblins.  Outnumbered and too weak to resist, they surrender, and are marched eastward, deeper into Caladan Forest, to the hobgoblins’ camp.  There, they are questioned by the apparent leader of this group of hobgoblins, a cerebral, sarcastic and canny sorcerer called Sarog.  After determining that they have fled Caladere, Sarog orders them imprisoned in steel-barred cages at the camp.  They are given nourishing, if distasteful stew, and stale bread.

 

6-9-22CR:  Sarog departs from the camp in the early evening along with all but a skeleton crew of eight hobgoblin guards; his reason for leaving and destination is unknown.  The party rests and regains its collective strength, and whispers plans of a possible escape in the dead of night.  That night, in the early morning hours, strange sounds and flashes of sickly pink and green light are seen all about the camp in the forest, and the muffled sounds of hobgoblins dying in apparently painful ways can be heard by the trapped party members.  A blast wave of sickening, pulsing energy passes through the camp, and the prisoners are knocked unconscious before they can take action on their escape plan.

 

6-10-22CR:  Just after dawn, Nathaniel awakens to the sound of an unfamiliar sepulchral voice calling out “Crane…” in his head.  He finds the lock on his cage has been knocked open (perhaps by Vaniok), and quickly awakens Zara.  They find Tel and Essedar’s cage likewise knocked, and awaken their friends and make a quick search for the three orcs, who are nowhere to be found – though their cages are found unlocked as well, and no blood or other sign of struggle is apparent. 

 

                At that point, it becomes apparent that a group of strange creatures has come in close proximity to the camp.  Tiny 4-inch diameter transparent jelly-like parasites with long flagella tails slip across the ground, and pink, fleshy membranous tentacled lifeforms have taken up residence in the treetops.  Occasionally, these monstrosities move together and form organic oval gates, glaring with garish pink and green energy, from which more of the tiny parasites and fleshy tentacles issue forth.

 

In something of a controlled panic, the party (now consisting of only Nathaniel, Zara, Essedar and Tel) search the camp for their gear, which is stored in Sarog’s command tent.  While there, Nathaniel is psychically drawn to a locked & trapped steel strongbox, which Tel is able to disarm and pick open. Inside, laying on black velvet padding, is a beautiful platinum choker-style amulet which appears to be of elven make, inset with a 3” diameter blood red teardrop gem.  The voice which called his surname, “Crane,” is apparently coming from the gem, which glows with radiant blood red points of light from within when Nathaniel is near.  On impulse, Nathaniel puts on the choker, and comes into psychic contact with a presence known as “Cereborn,” and which claims to be “tasked to fight evil.”  The adventurers quickly loot the remainder of their gear and grab what valuables they can from Sarog’s tent; Nathaniel keeps the amulet.

 

A horrifying guttural roar echoes through the camp after one of the nearby gates activates, panicking the group and causing them to dash east at full speed out of the camp.  They never catch sight of the beast that is chasing them, but its strides cause the ground to shake and tremble as they fly blindly through the forest, praying to the gods and goddesses for guidance and protection.  They run until near exhaustion, and find themselves at site of an enormous hollowed-out fallen mithroak tree which extends underground into a shallow hillside in the forest.  Thinking the tree might hide them from the pursuing beast, they quickly move inside.

 

The tree turns out to be the entrance to the abandoned gnomish settlement Caladan Hollows, an underground village of gnomes which was loosely allied with Hathorae before the Convergence.  Like all known gnomish settlements, its inhabitants vanished mysteriously – without a trace – during that cataclysmic event.  The four adventurers find the mithroak doors of Caladan Hollows locked, but Tel bypasses the lock and they spend the night in a damp but clean antechamber just inside, recovering from their most recent flight from danger.  Inside that chamber, they find a feathery plant with spearmint-scented fronds growing near a leaky fountain, just under a pinhole of sunlight from the surface.  Using Knowledge (nature), Essedar identifies the plant as a magical herb called Zorfronds, named for the god of magic and the aether.  Chewing the Zorfronds energizes and cleanses the party of fear and anguish from the trauma they have endured.

 

 

6-11-22CR: Refreshed but wary of the dangers which might lurk outside the safety of the tree, the party decides to explore Caladan Hollows.  Upon penetrating the main residence halls and workspace of the settlement, they discover a passage which leads to an unfinished quarry operation.  Adjacent to this quarry is some very recently dug architecture, culminating in a narrow passage which leads out of the gnomish settlement and into a new, deeper dungeon complex.  Stealthily moving through the complex, they discover it has been built quite recently and is of sophisticated design.  This dungeon serves as a staging area and military headquarters for at least 30 hobgoblins as well as Sarog himself. With a mushroom & fungus farm, a complex, fully plumbed water pumping system for fresh water and sewage, and a collection of captured human, orc and goblin workers, the dungeon is home to a significant hidden threat.  Further investigation coupled with the quiet dispatch of a few hobgoblin guards leads the party to the slave holding pens, where they find Krinia and Vaniok, who escaped in the chaos during the trouble aboveground, but could not carry the unconscious humans to safety, and so chose to leave them in hopes of returning soon after.  Vaniok was responsible for the knock spells which opened the locks on the party’s two cages.  Sadly, Tio’rik was killed by hobgoblins when they were discovered fleeing the campsite towards Caladan Hollows; all three orcs resisted capture, but Sarog’s soldiers subdued them after killing the warrior and brought them underground. 

 

The party decides to release the captives and cause a general alarm to be raised in the complex.  After a series of brutal fights with hobgoblin soldiers, and a clever tactical ruse involving overloading the water pumping system, the party routs the hobgoblins from the level with the help of the freed slaves and discovers Sarog’s personal chambers. In a brief but tense battle, they overcome the sorcerer and his summoned minions, with Essedar striking the killing blow, crushing Sarog’s skull with his heavy mace after one of Nathaniel’s spells caught the hobgoblin off-balance.  These rooms hold an elaborate and powerful summoning circle, adorned with twisted and alien runes which could not be translated with Nathaniel’s read magic spell.  The party discovers a rune key which opens a previously impassible door near the fungus farm, and a passage with stairs going deeper into the complex lies on the other side of that door.  Upon opening that rune door, a wave of sickening evil washes over the party, clearly emanating from below.  The site is now quiet and still, but a palpable presence of lurking menace can be felt from the lower level.  Before venturing downward, the party retreats to rest and recuperate from their ordeal; they also escort the freed slaves into the gnomish portion of the dungeon and suggest they stay there until the threats inside and out are dealt with. 

 

 

6-12-22CR: The party explores the dungeon’s 2^nd level, an area which seems to still be under construction.  Aside from a secretive Dark Naga who has taken up residence in a flooded and unfinished portion of the level, the place seems abandoned.  The Naga speaks cryptically of a writhing evil in the dark and vacates her lair after conversing with the party; soon after, a horde of crazed cultists of Yshunor attack from hidden crawlspaces in the walls.  They scream “For Woregord!” (the name of their conspicuously absent cult leader) as they attack, but the party valiantly fights through the mob and puts an end to the cultists’ twisted existence.  In the aftermath of the battle they are able to free the only two surviving orcs, Vaniok and Krinia, from the cultists’ cells.

 

Now reunited with Vaniok and Krinia, the group delves deeper into the now silent dungeon, and discover a pool of green radiant slime which seems to be the source of the sickening evil feeling throughout the Caladan Hollows complex.  A horrific but evilly seductive being emerges from the pool of slime: it names itself as Suulanesh, the Font of Passion.  It appears as a 7’ tall bipedal bovine with male and female aspects, but only to those who resist its illusory powers and pheromone discharge.  Others see it as an aspect of their deepest sexual desires and move to embrace it… the first to fall victim is Krinia, who is “kissed” by Suulanesh and instantly implanted with a writhing white threadlike substance which penetrates her brain and makes her a willing servant of the beast.  Vaniok discharges all his remaining spells at Suulanesh, and Nathaniel, Zara and Essedar struggle against the magic and pheremones of the creature.  Tel panics at the sight of his friends under Suulanesh’s influence, and runs away in a fit of wild fright.  Finally, the party overcomes Suulanesh’s powers and Zara drives her spear through its heart after Nathaniel weakens the demon-like being with a barrage of spells channeled through Cereborn.  Upon the defeat of Suulanesh, Zara’s spear becomes permanently charged with the divine energy of Arinna; it is now a soulforged +1 Holy Greatspear. 

 

The origin and greater plans of Suulanesh are not discovered, nor is its purpose for being in Caladan Hollows or its motives in hollowing out deeper portions of the dungeon for itself.  The affiliation between the beast and the cult of Yshunor, led by the absent priest Woregord, is also unknown – if such an affiliation even exists.  Triumphant but thoroughly shaken, the party sweeps the dungeon clear of treasure and heads back to the surface.

 

 

6-13 – 6-15-22CR: After their harrowing encounter with Suulaesh, the party returns to Aerendale on foot through the forest.  All of the strange creatures which formerly infested the forest are now gone, with no significant evidence of their passing left behind.  The trip through Caladan is quiet and eerie, but they encounter no resistance on the way back to Aerendale.

 

Falling Stars, Rising Hope