Adventure 09 - Under the Surface

Under the Surface

Played November 29, 2004
Dateline River Cyre: 20 Therendor 999 (early spring – equivalent to mid-March)
Featuring Baqar, Jory, Kirin, Metal Guy, and Quarion


Capsule Summary

Salvaging is boring work. Every day Jory used her Dragonmark of Finding to help Drekel and his crew find the chest he had been commissioned to find – a Cyran expatriate noble had hired Drekel – it would prove his title and claim to what remained of his fortune beyond the borders of Cyre. Drekel had found it late last autumn but had lost it in the river in a skirmish with another riverboat salvager.

Finally, after several days Jory’s Mark of Finding located the chest under the surface. Drekel gave her a potion of water breathing so she and Metal Guy could leap underwater with a rope to mark its location. They found it nearly completely buried under the riverbed – in the center of several round objects. Soon Jory and Metal Guy realized it was a nest – and the mommy fintail, a dinosaur-like beast, paid them a visit. She went for Metal Guy first, though she was disappointed to discover he did not taste very good. While she was distracted, Jory swam to the surface to get help. Kirin, Quarion, and Baqar leapt into the river. The five of them surrounded the fintail and finished her off, albeit with great difficulty, most of their weapons not optimal for use underwater. Quarion had some luck using his dagger – it was more effective than bulky slashing swords. However, they did manage to defeat her without any permanent injuries and retrieve the chest. Metal Guy and Baqar took trophies – both took some fintail teeth and Baqar feasted on her raw heart. (yum?)


Drekel lived up to his end of the bargain, taking our heroes to a riverside town some forty miles awar from to Kerrine Grenhol’s inland village – a nice sleepy town named Dirania. Their riverboat pierced the cloaking fog of the Mournland, taking them to some already-forgotten town which had once been the site of many battles between the forces of Cyre, Karrnath, and the Talenta Plains. Drekel told them he would give them a week – if they weren’t back by then they would almost assuredly be dead.

The town shoed the carnage of the Last War like a open wound. A primitive warforged piled bodies which refused to decompose, piling them in neat stacks and then after finishing moving them to a new pile. Drekel told them, as they departed, that warforged had been doing that for at least a year. Probably best to leave it be... While the corpses refused to decompose, Drekel gave them the unnecessary reminder that no natural healing took place in the Mournland – nor did clerical healing magic, though Kirin had hopes her druidic goodberry magic would still function – she had brought several freshly picked berries.

After several hours of travel, with Baqar, mounted on Fluffy, scouting ahead, they heard a horrible scream from a house atop a hill. As they closed in to investigate, they found odd bone sculptures – dog heads atop human bodies and countless other strange combinations. Peeking in the house they saw a human strapped to a table. Bones were littered all over the dirt floor. A cage was in one corner. And smashing the prisoner’s ankles with a hammer was a horrific gaunt man – not undead, but certainly not human. Bones nearly poked through his flesh – indeed they did in some places.

The more stealthy heroes – Jory, Metal Guy, and Baqar, opened the attack with an ambush through the windows. As they did several bones animated, forming a pair of bizarre skeletons which attacked them. They had a lot of trouble dispatching the skeletons, bladed weapons being far less effective than blunt ones against the skeletons. Kirin, Quarion, and Fluffy joined in in a second wave. Our heroes were badly hurt – Metal Guy suffered from several hammer blows from the gaunt one while Baqar was cut several times by blade-wielding skeletons. They were forced to resort to some bizarre tactics Quarion sought higher ground atop the table the prisoner was strapped to and Jory used her rope and grappling hook to trip the gaunt one. They triumphed in the end and freed the prisoner.- a merchant named Hobb Darksteel. He was the last survivor of a band from deep within the Mournland trying to escape. Kirin set his wounds and our heroes had him wait in an adjoining house for them to return, Hobb promised them a sack of silver is they returned.



Treasure
Not much as yet, though they have been promised 1600 silver pieces. Plus some fantail parts…

Experience

• Fintail dinosaur (technically a Cryptoclidus which is not really a dinosaur) from Monster Manual II. See http://dsc.discovery.com/stories/dinos/bbc/fact_files/sea/cryptoclidus.html for some information. Challenge Rating 3 for 900 experience points.
• The gaunt man was a Bone Cobbler from Necromancer Games’ Tome of Horrors. It was Challenge Rating 4 for 1,350 XP.
• The two skeletons were both Challenge Rating 1/3. This is worth 200 XP.
• Total Experience in this adventure – 2450 - 490 each. That gives 4191 total experience gained per character (with some at less due to scroll creation). All characters are at third level.