Skyfell - Rise of the Glutton : Session 24
Introduction
A little while back I started a once-per-month Dungeons and Dragons campaign in my Skyfell setting that I call The Rise of the Glutton. I wanted to provide my players with a log of their adventures and then realized that such a log might make for fun blog posts. See Rise of the Glutton in my Session Index for a complete listing.
The cast is:
Session 24 - The Dead Isle : The Heroes of Moss Creek
Preparation
The only real prep for this session was to rebuild the map from the previous session. I had picked up a pack of “bar scenery” and was eager to use it. I very much liked the results even though I haven’t really painted any of the set pieces yet.
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| The Map Before the Game |
Eldath, Huru, Gubrash, and Fizzlestick (the sidekick crew of the Howling Wind II) were all due for some leveling since the entire team was now at 8th level. However, I kept forgetting. It didn’t feel like a priority so it kept slipping from my mind. And, as of this writing, I still haven’t gotten that done. I will though. I promise.
Aside from the scenery and my laziness, Laura (Meribore’s player) messaged me about wanting to restore the island to a healthy, living environment. We kicked around a couple of ideas and it seems like an exciting path for her character. Dan (Drekzhar’s player) was also eager to make the island the party’s secret base...a pirate cove of sorts. The other players all liked this idea so at least I have some long-term goals to set now for Meribore.
On a sad note, I received word that Michelle (Bronte’s player) would be dropping out of the game. She simply no longer had the bandwidth for it. She is a wonderful player and a wonderful person, but these things happen in a long-term campaign. Michelle, we love you and we will miss you.
I asked Megan (the person who had pinch hit for Michelle in session 23) whether she would like to join permanently as Bronte’s player. I also gave her the option to create another character once the party had reached a location where introducing a new character made sense. She agreed and so now we have a new player in the game.
Pre-game
The hardest part of the pre-game was to officially announce that Michelle would no longer be joining us as a regular player. I also explained that Megan would be taking over as Bronte’s player moving forward. Fortunately, there was some levity during the pre-game as well. A while back we had joked about live streaming our games with Dan and Rodney sitting on a balcony making snarky comments about the game, in much the same as Statler and Waldorf do from The Muppets. As a gift to kick off regularly-occurring sessions post-COVID, Dan brought shirts for everyone with the two curmudgeons printed on them. This will likely be my new Dungeon Master shirt for this campaign.
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| Curmudgeonly Gift from Dan |
There had also been some confusion about the game schedule and so we were down one player once again (Jeff). So, my wonderful wife agreed to sit in to roll for Oma.
Itching to get started, I provided a review of events thus far and we got started.
In-game
After the fight, our heroes decided to clean up the aftermath and to explore the rest of the ruins.
Oma and Drekzhar first went to the chamber that looked to belong to the head priest of The Glutton worshippers (see the Session 23 summary). There was a suit of very ornate plate armor with a breastplate shaped into a highly detailed gaping mouth full of fangs. This, of course, put Oma on edge. Drekzhar made a point to maneuver in such a way as to keep himself between the frightening armor and Oma’s direct line of sight. They discovered an airmap beacon (most likely the one they had followed) tucked into a cupboard along with a wealth of information about the enemy’s activities (see the The Glutton Followers section below). Drekzhar also found an academic book discussing the history of the lost civilization whose ruins could be found all around Piruna Fields.
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| The Maw of The Glutton |
Meribore (who had wild shaped into a giant spider) and Tauffae decided to get rid of the creatures that had fought for the Glutton worshippers. Their intent was to toss them into the islands’ gravity well. During the battle, one of the Glutton followers had emerged from a room with a root intrusion. Believing the root was the one that connected to “Ship Island,” the pair decided to follow that root as a means to get outside and get rid of the remains. The root did indeed protrude outside of the “Temple Island” but it angled upward, not down. It also proved too weak to hold Tauffae’s weight. (It was only by luck that he did not fall through the root and tumbled down to “Ship Island'' some 60 feet below.) This was good enough for their general purposes, though, and so they tossed the creatures’ bodies through the rip in the root that Tauffae had accidentally made.
During this work, the two also found a makeshift “hatch” in the ceiling of the root. A quick peek through it revealed that the root passed very near the surface of “Temple Island” before burrowing into its mass. They also learned that the root connected to “Zombie Island” rather than “Ship Island.” This implied that the worshipper and her pet had planned to circle around to the entrance of the temple in an attempt to sneak up behind the party rather than to escape to the ship as they had initially believed.
Bronte decided to collect the remains of the slave Tauffae had killed in his rush to attack the Glutton worshippers so the gnome could be buried properly. (Tauffae was feeling incredibly guilty about his mistake. His instinct was to justify his actions as just a matter of combat. Innocents die. This just made him feel worse because it was the sort of thinking he had rejected when he had left his family. It was not necessarily the way his new family thought about things.) Bronte then went to the slave cell to talk with the female gnome who had called the group The Heroes of Moss Creek. The gnome was badly bruised, definitely in a state of shock, and not just a little scared despite her obvious relief that the Glutton worshippers were dead and that honest, real heroes were there to put things right. Bronte offered her his wicker doll to help the gnome refocus and calm down.
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| The Wicker Doll |
Eventually, she introduced herself as Marnib, a daughter of Moss Creek. Bronte asked a few basic questions about her captivity and about the Glutton worshipers. Marnib answered as best she could and expressed a real desire, if not a need, to return to Moss Creek. (I’ve folded this information into the The Glutton Followers section below).
After comparing notes and conferring, our adventurers decided on the following courses of action:
- Finish exploring the ruins and clean up the cultist remains
- Reset the airmap beacon to sever the tie to any other airmaps that might also be bound to it
- Investigate “Zombie Island,” the object on its surface, and the undead that were perhaps collected beneath the stump of the dead evermore tree
- Move all the supplies (and there were a lot) from the storeroom to the Howling Wind II so that anyone returning to the island would not have them
- Return to Moss Creek
The Ruins
From a survey of the mosaics and statues (and a ritual use of the comprehend languages spell) the party was able to piece together that the temple was most definitely of the same origin as the other ruins scattered around Piruna Fields. It was devoted to a deity named Solonor Thelandira, god of hunting, archery, and survival in wild and harsh places. The defaced statue in the main area was most definitely a representation of him. His holy symbol (an arrow) was etched into the statue’s cloak. It seemed that the temple had been built here so that Solonor might watch over and protect the evermore tree.
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| Holy Symbol of Solonor Thelandira Source: D&D 3e |
In a chamber near the very back of the complex, there appeared to be a secret door whose magical defenses had been triggered. Filling what would have been the door jam were a series of stone formations that looked a lot like vines. These fused the door with the rest of the wall so that it could not be opened. Someone had made a few perfunctory attempts to break open the door but didn’t get very far.
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| Exploring the Ruins |
Also in the chamber, they found a second secret door that had long since been opened. Beyond was a passage rigged with a trap tied to conjugation magic. Meribore also sensed a cold presence trapped behind two different sections of the walls of the passage. Each presence was filled with a desperate, and angry, need to drain the life from all living things. Meribore tried to explain what she was feeling and Oma pointed out that it sounded like she was talking about vampires. The group were convinced that these entities were the reason the island was dead and if Meribore wanted to restore the island, the party would have to deal with them one way or another.
Airmap Beacon
This was a simple matter of casting the right rituals to reset the beacon and rebind their airmap to it. It took a few hours. (See my Airship post.)
“Zombie Island”
The skeleton crew on the surface of the island were finishing up what looked to be a high-walled corral that ran from the stump of the evermore tree to the edge of the island. It was a simple enough matter to dispose of these undead workers from the air. It gave Oma a chance to play with the new ballista. Once it was safe, the party landed so that Oma could investigate the object. It was a purple orb mounted on a pedestal carved in the likeness of a clawed, skeletal hand. (A bit theatrical, perhaps, but disturbing nonetheless.) Upon closer examination, Oma decided that it was a magical object most likely designed to provide a set of simple commands to the skeletons in much the same way as the devices that were used to control clockwork. This was his best guess at least. He’d have no way to know for sure unless he attuned to it.
Beneath the stump of the evermore tree was a gaping pit filled with at least 60 zombies. Most were gnomes. A few were firbolgs. Still fewer were of the other races of Skyfell. This tracked with the information the adventurers had gathered from the temples. Among them was one zombie that wore the same kind of armor as the Raven Queen’s minions (and as Naivara, the huntress the party had encountered in the Shadowfell when they were tracking the thessalhydra way back in Session 11). Meribore believed this might be the individual whom Naivara had mentioned had gone missing.
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| There was a Shadar-kai Zombie Source: Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, 5e |
The party decided to rely on the divine gifts of Hiatea to turn the entire horde. They would then leave the bodies to decompose, with the thought that the corpses would eventually provide nutrients that could help return plant life to the island. The overall process might take a year or more, but it was a start. Disease would eventually be a concern but they could manage that when the time came. However, for this plan to work, they would have to deal with whatever was hidden in the walls of the temple ruins.
The Supplies
This was a straight/forward task that took a day to complete, even with the help of the ship’s crew.
In the end, all these activities took two days to work through. The team still had to deal with the evil in the walls and to take Marnib back to Moss Creek. Hopefully, their tasks hadn’t put Moss Creek at the mercy of their new enemy.
End session 24
Experience earned:
Bronte - 8280 (45,815 total)
Drekzhar - 5604 (43,816 total)
Meribore - 5580 (43,369 total)
Omagoshno - 5580 (44,055 total)
Tauffae - 5,604 (43,669 total)
The Glutton Followers
The following is an amalgamation of the information that the party gathered in bits and pieces while they searched the temple ruins.
Hungryfang was a Priest of The Glutton and the leader of the group of followers on the island. His personal diary ranted about the corruption of gnome society and the various ways in which it crushed individual freedoms under the guise of the greater good. Among these personal freedoms were the right to take whatever you might want from those too weak to protect themselves and the right to indulge in every whim to your own liking and desires, no matter who might get hurt. He possessed a formal contract with someone named Kayleth Tanithra (whom, according to Marnib, the Glutton followers had referred to as The Necromancer). The Glutton followers would provide bodies to Kayleth as they destroyed the gnome burrows they targeted. In exchange, Kayleth would provide transport and undead creatures to help in The Glutton’s campaign to destroy gnome society. There was also some mention of dividing up any treasures that might be left behind after a burrow was destroyed. Upon Hungryfang’s corpse, the party found a ritual dagger of fine, but cruel making. He also possessed a magical baton; the one he had tried to use against Tauffae during their fight. More insteratingly, or perhaps more frightfully, all of his teeth were needle-like fangs very similar to a velociraptor or other predator. They hadn’t been filed. They had clearly grown that way quite naturally.
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| Hungryfang Source: Heroforge Design by Me |
Razortooth was Hungryfang’s second in command and loyal follower ever since she had destroyed her home burrow Round Rock. She was the follower who had tried to sneak up on the party while they were fighting Hungryfang. She was more cruel than any of the other followers. She really seemed to enjoy the pain of others; which was why she no longer had a personal slave like the other followers did. While there were some letters and other documents about her, there was not much detail. Marnib knew very little about her as well. Razortooth had upon her body a sickle and a ritual dagger. Her teeth were fangs just like Hungryfang.
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| Razortooth Source: Heroforge Design by Me |
Wormmouth was the newest member of the cell and the follower who tried to run away during the fight. He had been planning to return to his burrow, Ten Trees, and begin his campaign to destabilize and then destroy it within a week or two. Oryn, the slave whom Tauffae had killed in the stairwell, was his cousin. Marnib explained that Wormmouth was very similar in temperament to Greasehair. From what Oryn had told her, he and Wormmouth had been friends and still were in a manner of speaking. Enough at least that Oryn had been trying to convince Wormmouth to get away from Hungryfang before it was too late. It had seemed to be working. Unlike the others, Wormmouth’s teeth were still normal gnome teeth. It occurred to Bronte that the fangs might be a gift from The Glutton, part of committing one’s divine path to his worship.
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| Wormmouth Source: Heroforge Design by Me |
Greasehair had been a member of the Moss Creek burrow until he helped to destroy it. Marnib and he were cousins; he had taken her as a slave as part of his reward for overthrowing the corruptive influence of the burrow. According to her, he had always been a little off. He didn’t fit in. He would abuse anything that he believed was weaker than himself and because of that he often found himself in trouble. Somehow, though, he always managed to find a way to paint himself as the victim. He had returned to Moss Creek after it had been liberated and learned about a group of adventurers who had killed Swiftwords and the undead that were left behind to keep any stragglers from returning. The followers clearly were aware of the meddling and were on the lookout for any group that fit the description. The Moss Creek survivors, who had started rebuilding, called this group The Heroes of Moss Creek. As far as Marnib knew, Greasehair and The Necromancer were headed back to Moss Creek.
The Necromancer came and went as she pleased. She didn’t bunk with the gnomes; she instead stayed on her airship or spent her time on what our heroes were calling “Zombie Island.” Marnib had only seen her maybe three times and each time the woman had been fairly well wrapped up in leather armor, a hooded cloak, and a face mask so that most of her features had been obscured. Even so, Marnib had pieced together that The Necromancer was tall, slender, with pointed ears, long white hair, red eyes, and obsidian-colored skin. When she had spoken with Hungryfang, they used a language Marnib didn’t recognize.
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