AAR: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

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etherial
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AAR: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by etherial » Fri May 01, 2020 8:53 pm

LFG: At the Gates of Dawn
Time: 2020-05-03@15:00 GMT
GM: etherial
Circle: 2
Difficulty: Medium

Rumor: Looters exploring the ruins of Wolf Ridge have reported hearing strange music coming from the cave system nearby. Who is brave enough to enter? Only a fool...or a hero.

New Player Friendly: I will take all new players that sign up.

Reyntrannin
Posts:270
Joined:Mon Apr 23, 2018 3:59 pm

Re: LFG: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by Reyntrannin » Fri May 01, 2020 9:10 pm

Name: Langren
Last played: Never
ECR: 1
Circle: 2
Discipline: Shaman
Quote/Unique: This land is a wonder, simply waiting for us to embrace its lessons.
Notable Abilities: Support and offensive magics, mundane healing, good with animals
Downtime: Animal Training (9)
Last edited by Reyntrannin on Mon May 04, 2020 4:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: LFG: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by ChrisDDickey » Fri May 01, 2020 9:22 pm

Name: Mazor
Last played: 16 April But already accepted for Sunday afternoon game.
ECR: 1
Discipline: Beastmaster 1st Circle, Windling
Quote/Unique: The night is dark, and full of Horrors.
Notable Abilities: Claw Shape & Pet Tricks.
Downtime: None

ender3rd
Posts:182
Joined:Fri Oct 06, 2017 2:19 am

Re: LFG: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by ender3rd » Sat May 02, 2020 12:01 am

Name: U'K'Talla
Last played: A good long while ago.
ECR: 2
Discipline: Circle 2 Swordmaster
Quote/Unique: Hello my new friends!
Notable Abilities: Prehensile Tail Attack.
Downtime: None

MadJaymilton
Posts:33
Joined:Thu Apr 23, 2020 12:44 am

Re: LFG: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by MadJaymilton » Sat May 02, 2020 1:35 am

Name: Torgun Neumani
Date of Last Game Played: None, but will be playing in the Sunday afternoon game as well.
Circle: 1
Discipline: Swordmaster
Unique: Style!
Downtime: None yet.

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etherial
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Re: LFG: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by etherial » Sun May 03, 2020 7:22 pm

At the Gates of Dawn
Time: 2020-05-03@15:00 GMT
GM: etherial
Circle: 2
Difficulty: M

Player Rewards:
Langren: TIPs: 3, Legend: 800, Silver: 200
Mazor: TIPs: 3, Legend: 800, Silver: 200
Torgun Neumani: TIPs: 3, Legend: 800, Silver: 200
U'K'Talla: TIPs: 3, Legend: 800, Silver: 200

Journal Rewards:
Legend: 40, Silver: 50

GM Reward:
Daldorer: TIPs: 3, Legend: 2200, Silver: 375

Downtime Actions Available:
Character Name: [Talent] [Step] ([Rank]) ([Further Details])
Researchers may spend 20 Silver for +3 Steps (the Haggle discount may lower this cost)

Further Information:
The caves near Wolf Ridge (41.10) have been cleared. J'inal and Lyrliant had been experimenting in Necromancy.

ChrisDDickey
Posts:1011
Joined:Sun Nov 27, 2016 10:02 pm

Re: AAR: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn

Post by ChrisDDickey » Mon May 04, 2020 12:44 am

From the journal of Mazor, Windling Beastmaster of the 1st circle. 

I was drinking with my new friends: Langren the Shaman, U'K'Tala, the T'Skrang Swordmaster (who actually has mastered the whip instead of a sword), and his friend Torgun Neumani who is also a Swordmaster (of the axe), We heard some people saying that looters have reported hearing strange music coming from the cave system nearby. Having nothing better to do, and with some of my companions never having been outside of Throal before, we decided to go investigate. First we traveled to Juniper Hollow, which took us 2 days. There we talked to a very nice dwarf shepherd named Shep. He gave us directions to Wolf Ridge and filled us in on some more details about the occurrences at Wolf Ridge. 

We arrived in Wolf Ridge shortly after noon of the next day. The place was abandoned, the former inhabitants having been killed to the last person by a Plague Horror. There were some Boars in a pen, and at first I thought that somebody had resettled and was recapturing the animals, so I went over to check on them. Once I got way to close, I realized that the pen had been broken for months, and the boars were only in it because they wanted to be. They wanted to be in the pen because somebody had dropped a headless cow carcass in there that they were eating. We later found that somebody had dropped some dwarven bodies in there as well. The Boars were used to eating name-giver flesh, and tried to eat us. It was a very brutal fight, the boars seemed unusually strong and aggressive. U'K'Talla went down, nearly dead, and then I did also. I awakened a few hours later in a nearby house. 

That night the watch's all reported Wolf activity. In the morning we found that an amazing amount of the Boars had been eaten. We also saw that all 4 boar heads had been chopped off. It looked like somebody hacked them off with an axe. Nobody on watch had not heard an axe being used. There was a blood train to the cliffs NE of the village. We also noticed the tracks of a cart pulled by two Hattawas. We thought about it, and decided that we were in no particular hurry, so we returned to Juniper Hollow until we were all healed again. Three days later we returned and entered the cave.

We entered the caves and explored them. At the far end we found a wolf den, but Langren managed to cast "Sooth the Savage Beast" on the Alpha wolf, and when we retreated they let us go unmolested. However the rest of the cave proved uninteresting. We did a bit of sneaking, and decided that there was a shaft to a lower level within the wolf den. I borrowed a whistle from Torgun, and blew it, getting the wolves to chase me. I kept well out of their reach, until I got the wolves onto the trail of some game. When they started following that, I returned to the cave. The others had figured out how to open the hatch to the lower level, and had started to explore that. I arrived just as they were attacked by 4 Flesh-beasts, beasts composed of the flesh of various name-givers and animals, crudely sewn together. One had the head of a cow, the others had the heads of three of the boar. We killed them fairly quickly. 

We explored some more, and unwisely got separated into two teams of two, which proved to be a problem when I spotted some more flesh-beasts and only U'K'Tala was nearby. fortunately the other two were not too far away, and together we defeated 4 more flesh beasts. We found a laboratory that had notes from a T'Skrang named J'inal, a T'Skrang cart driver who has been bringing bodies here and experimenting on them with somebody named Lyrliant.  It seems like in the days we had been healing in Juniper Hollow, the had returned to their base in Grakor. We never heard any piping, but assume that ether J'inal or Lyriant were playing. 

We have been hearing very bad things about the settlement of Grakor, and it is a shame that we did not deal with these two while they were alone here performing their vile processes..

We got back to Throal, and I trained to 2nd Circle. 

MadJaymilton
Posts:33
Joined:Thu Apr 23, 2020 12:44 am

Re: AAR: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by MadJaymilton » Wed May 06, 2020 1:47 am

From the Journals of Torgun Deepbronze Neumani, Swordmaster

We have apes outside the Gates! We saw them the first night, near camp. Thankfully they didn't come near, but can you imagine? I shudder to think. The people of Juniper Hollow were much more friendly, thanks be to Garlen. We four arrived--Langren the shaman, Mazor the beastmaster, my compatriot U'k'talla, and of course myself--and we were given directions to Wolf Ridge, which turned out to be aptly named.
The town was in ruins; dilapidated, unpainted, abandoned by all but the most desperate of squatters. We found evidence of foul deeds: a cow with its head hacked off, and wild boars that had been feeding on Namegiver flesh--that had, I fear, been fed on it for ill purpose. In any event they did not care for our company. I was knocked down almost immediately and came much closer to boar tusk than I'd ever cared to be--I much prefer them on my table. They very nearly did for us. U'k'talla and Mazor were both nearly killed, and I was grievously wounded; lucky Langren stayed mostly unharmed and kept us all alive. After killing the boars we dragged ourselves from the muck and camped for the evening in an abandoned barn.
Something came in the night. Wolves, yes, but something else, something we did not spy despite keeping watch. When we awoke the boars had also had their heads removed. We followed the trail of blood northwest to the ridge, where it entered a cave. We retreated to Juniper Hollow to heal our wounds, returning a few days later.
We found a pack of wolves within the cave, making their den; likely the ones that had been in Wolf's Ridge while we slept. Rather than face them, we tricked them. I gave Mazor a whistle and he flew off, leading them away to find something to hunt while we examined their den--in which a crude wooden facsimile of a rock hid another, deeper, set of caves. Within we found flesh beasts. Horrid creatures, with the heads of dead animals sewn to Namegiver corpses and given cheap life. We struck the four down quickly but could not find their maker. Instead we found a laboratory, and notes from J'inal the t'skrang. The notes indicated J'inal, and someone Named Lyrliant, were on their way to Grakor. Dark days ahead for them, I'm sure.

Reyntrannin
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Re: AAR: [2M] At the Gates of Dawn (2020-05-03@15:00 GMT)

Post by Reyntrannin » Wed May 06, 2020 8:06 pm

An ill wind has blown through the land, striking the settlement of Wolf Ridge with plague and leaving an abandoned and forsaken place in its wake. Recently reports have come of strange occurrences in the place, with foragers and scavengers alike hearing strange music coming from the nearby caverns. Hearing this, I looked for other intrepid souls to travel to this place and look into the matter. I found a few such had already begun drawing together and added my lot to their number. Thus I set out with the Beastmaster Mazor and the Swordmasters Torgun and U'k'talla.
The trip to Juniper Hollow, another village near to Wolf Ridge, was uneventful, with clear sunny weather and a fine breeze to accompany us on the road. We passed the night in the wilds, sharing stories and building our camaraderie.
Upon arriving at this new place, I observed that the village, though crude, seemed a happy and relatively peaceful place. This was a far cry from the drear and fearful peoples that had been fueling my imaginations of the world outside Throal, and it instilled an even stronger desire to stretch my sight to the distant horizons and reclaim the land that was once ours. We spoke to some fo the villagers, hoping to get more information about the situation in Wolf's Ridge before we ventured there ourselves. A farmer called Shem was very helpful, outlining the history of the area and telling us of the 'pickers', as he called the scavengers looting what was left of the village. While Shem did not seem overly worried about the sounds that some of these folks had reported, he was not willing to venture forth to Wolf's Ridge himself and wished us luck on our journey.
We set out the next day to explore the nearby town, but as we had been told, there was little to be seen there. The houses, although reportedly only being a few months old, were grey and weathered as if they had been standing uncared for and unprotected for years. The population itself, as expected, was nowhere to be seen, but more worrisome, the scavengers were also nowhere to be seen. The only inhabitants of the village that were still present were a small drove of pigs, more on these later. Some of the houses, although weathered, were still sound and could provide solid protection from the elements, so we first focused our attention on these. One showed signs of recent use, perhaps by scavengers or a passing traveler, but they left no signs of their identity behind. The only other sign of recent Namegiver presence was the decapitated carcass of a cow, which appeared to have had it's head removed with some kind of bladed instrument that required multiple strikes to finish the job.
Then Mazor and I turned our attention to the pigs. We each attempted to calm the animals, which seemed agitated by our presence, but this only roused them to greater fury, upon which they felt the need to defend their territory. The ensuing fight was fierce, but we managed to render the boars unconscious, although both Mazor and Torgun were brought to the edge of death before the finish. After having scraped closely by this encounter, we were able to more closely inspect the area the pigs had been lairing in and found the remains of a Dwarven arm and enough evidence to convince me that these boars had developed a taste for man-flesh, which sadly forced us to put the still sleeping boars down.
As our party was so heavily wounded, it made sense to rest in one of the still standing hovels to rest and regain some of our strength. As I stood watch that night, I felt a pack of wolves visit the village, but as we were quiet and remained in our improvised shelter, they left without attempting to molest us.
The following morn, we looked out onto a grisly sight. The boar corpses, which we had not been able to dispose of, had been been violated, with their heads removed in the same way as that of the cow we found before. This discovery disturbed us greatly, as did the additional discovery of a bloody trail leading from the village toward some cliffs we could make out in the distance. After much discussion, we decided to follow the blood trail, but to avoid any confrontations before we had more fully recovered our strength.
The trail led to a cave system running deep into the cliffside. A quick survey of the caves from outside did not show the presence of any creatures, natural or otherwise, but we chose to fall back to Juniper Hollow to rest and heal our Wounds.
It took us three days of biding our time before Mazor and Torgun had recovered enough that we felt it was safe to venture into the caves, and as we discovered, this was a wise decision.
Upon entering, we found the light from outside dissipated only a few yards in, and we were forced to proceed by torchlight and Torgun's heat vision. Getting deeper into the cavern, we came across a pack of wolves who were using it as their den. These forest children seemed in good health and spirits, for, rather than immediately moving to defend their territory or try to find if we were food, their alpha only maintained a distance and observed us for a time. Also,they seemed to resist Mazor's attempt to Bond with them, almost as if they had already formed a pact with another master. This worries me for we never did find a trace of this master elsewhere in the caves. Since the wolves maintained a peaceful, if wary disposition, I was able to use my magic to Soothe the beasts, and we retreated to form a plan to avoid having to risk injuring the wolves.
Finally we agreed that since Mazor would easily be able to out distance the wolves using his wings, he would lead them away using a whistle while the rest of us explored their den. This plan worked so well, that he was able to give them something to hunt, and after a short while return to us. Meanwhile, we looked at the cave and investigated a rock that glowed strangely warm to Torgun's heat sight. This rock proved to be the entrance to a lower level of the caves.
These lower levels proved to be even darker, if possible than the ones above, and shortly after entering them, we found a an abomination of Namegiver flesh and animal head that attacked as soon as it sighted us. The abomination, or flesh beast as I now know, had several allies who came to it's aid in the dark, but Mazor was able to intercept some of them as he returned, making the initial fight short and simple, allowing us to move on. As we continued exploring, I became separated from the group and only found them after hearing their shouts and the sound of combat. Following the sounds I arrived to find that there were yet more of the flesh beasts awaiting us, and this time they had managed a more creditable attempt at ambush, finding us separated and alone. We managed to overcome this attack as well, and found that these last had come from a lab hidden deep in the caves.
Notes in this lab gave us a few clues as to the source of these creatures. The documents showed that a T'Skrang merchant Named J'inal had been making deliveries to another person Named Lirlian for some time, and Lirlian has recently relocated to a place called Grakor, which has been the focus of much malign activity of late. I fear this bodes ill for all if they have brought more of these Horror-spawned creations with them. Perhaps one of these persons was the mysterious flute player, of whom we never found a true sign.
A most puzzling, and chilling, conclusion to our outing.
With guidance of the spirits, I sign this,
Langren Vogel, son of Carla and apprentice to Shar'gaz.

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