AAR: The Temple of Raggok

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AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by etherial » Tue May 15, 2018 4:22 am

Borgan's Rest Jhonze and the Temple of Raggok
Time: 2018-05-14@23:59 GMT
GM: etherial (Ursula)
Circle: 2
Difficulty: Medium

Player Rewards:
Avalandohamagannahnieventhallailmar: 3 TIPs, 800 Legend, 155 silver, Plant Feast
Blaethynn: 3 TIPs, 800 Legend, 230 silver
Fredi: 3 TIPs, 800 Legend, 230 Silver
Quis'Tan: 3 TIPs, 800 Legend, 230 Silver
Whyr'wyndyl: 3 TIPs, 800 Legend, 230 Silver

Downtime Actions Available:
Blaethynn: Forge weapon 10 (Rank 3)
Blaethynn: Craftsman 9 (Rank 2)
Blaethynn: Item History 10 (Rank 3)
Blaethynn: Item History 7 (Rank 1)
Researchers may spend 20/2 Silver for +3 Steps

Further Information:
Futher depths of the Raggok Kaer have been explored.

Fusilliban
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by Fusilliban » Tue May 15, 2018 10:21 pm

The Observations of Avalandohamagannahnieventhallailmar, 1423 TH

Borgan's Rest is an interesting town. So few people there, but so many happenings afoot! I have traveled to it twice now, each time more adventurous than the previous, excepting the first, for reasons which are left as an exercise to the reader. This trek was inspired when the Great Library sought news of, and possibly vengeance for, a team of its scholars who had been sent to take notes on the accursed temple of the Mad Passion, Raggok. They had not been heard from in some time, and we feared the worst. As is often the case with Horrors, our fears were inadequate to the truth of what they had suffered. My previous adventure was successful due to the companions I had with me, and this time I was able to travel as part of an even larger group! My companions were four:

Blaethynn, a Windling Weaponsmith,
Fredi, a Dwarf Cavalrywoman,
Quis'Tan, a Spirit Rider and fellow Obsid
and
Whyr'wyndyl, Windling Warrior and whimsical wielder of whirling weapons

Our journey to Borgan's Rest itself was relatively uneventful, and this group of mounted riders and tiny fliers was kind enough to accomodate my deliberate pace. The roads here are well-traveled, and seem safe. We arrived in Borgan's Rest and had a brief conversation with the gate guard, who was most suspicious! She asked us if we were there to start trouble, or, by opposing, end it. We stated our mission, and on mention of the interred library loners, she suggested we prove that we were not already in the clutches of foul Horrors. I have enjoyed these past few months of being Outside and Aboveground, but I am saddened by the state of the world in which this question is so common, and so justified. We proved ourselves un-Tainted, and I left them with a gift of a small clay model of one of their tents.

After a brief moment to shore up our collective courage, we descended into the not-quite-abandoned, not-quite-ruined temple. The surface floor is dominated by a large altar, upon which blood has been spilled multiple times. I understand that further detail about that can be found in the writings of Gronk Longtusk. I have seen her writings in passing in the Great Library, and they will prove enlightening to the strong of stomach. For myself, I am glad that blood smells less strong when it has been thoroughly dried, but the look of gallons of blood spilled across ancient altars dedicated to madness is unsettling even without a smell. Behind the altar is a statue, and a quick manipulation of the statue causes a certain section of floor to slide away, revealing stairs down into the den of Raggok's madness.

The lower level did not have a prominent ritual altar, to my great relief. It was much more cramped - to my own chagrin and to that of the beast-riders among us - and had a series of small rooms, laid with traps. Whyr'wyndyl took the lead, as she has some experience with traps, and worked on disarming them. She found pressure plates on the floor caused a trap door in the ceiling to open, and we were set upon by venomous snakes. Why? Did it have to be snakes? Perhaps it did, as it seems that Raggok's worshippers had carved "Let the blessings of Raggok's Venom Enrage you" into the wall. Perhaps they found the burning pain of venom to be a spiritual experience. I stayed behind Whyr'wyndyl as she disabled traps - you know what a cautious fellow I am - but Quis'Tan rode ahead, bravely seeking fortune and glory. She found more snakes. The snakes were dangerous, but we were Adepts and resisted the pain of the venom, and the urge to turn upon each other in anger. Raggok, we will not heed your call! We did our best to disable all of the pressure plates, and hopefully future Adepts will be safer when they venture inside. Past the snakes, we found a much larger room, which had a small and glowing blue light at the center. Before we could learn the nature of the blue light, we were set upon by fell beasts!

The fell beasts had the bodies of Humans, but their heads had been replaced with the heads of animals. All of the animals had teeth, some of which were unnaturally sharp to be in the jaw of an herbivore. We were beset, five beasts upon five Adepts, a valiant and mighty struggle. Fortunately, Fredi and Quis'Tan were both able to ride their respective mounts in this room, which was wide with high ceilings. Without this, we might have fared much worse than we did. As it is, we tore into the beasts, which only drove the twisted children of Raggok to greater heights of rage. Then, of course, it killed them. I must pause here to note the valor of Blaethynn, whose entire body is the size of my shinbone, but who stood with me fearlessly while these beasts menaced us.

The beasts destroyed, I searched them for confirmation of my sinking fear. Inkstains upon their fingers confirmed it - these beasts were all that remained of the librarians who came before us. I said a prayer for their passing, and we began to examine our wounds. They all seemed recoverable, and so we returned to the aboveground to wait, and watch. I provided my companions with Heated food - their reward for traveling with an Elementalist, even a Novice one. Many compliments were had, and as we ate, Blaethynn flitted about, tending the most grievous wounds we had suffered.

Restored, we returned to the underground, and braved the darkness further. We saw another inscription, saying, "Let the blessings of Raggok's Tears cure your thirst", but before we could decipher the meaning of it, we heard horrifying noises, and came upon a walking corpse! Before we could engage it, it fled around the corner, where Quis'Tan soon discovered that there were not one, but two walking corpses. A hue and cry went up from my companions, that we must make certain to destroy one before engaging the other - and we followed this plan without deviation. I also learned material lessons in the importance of being able to lay eyes on one's target. I lost spells, empowered and ready to be cast, because my foe was on the far side of a corner, and I could not hold the magical energy long enough to loose it. Each of the walking corpses became, in turn, extremely angry with us, and less mighty Adepts might well have met their end there. As it went, we were victorious, and destroyed the tormentors of the librarians.

We left the temple, taking personal effects from the fallen with us, that we might return them to family and friends of the fallen.

Reyntrannin
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by Reyntrannin » Wed May 16, 2018 7:42 pm

From the personal journal of Blaethynn:

So I've been following rumors again. This one led me to a village called Merrith, once again in company with Whyr'wyndyl and also accompanied by Fredi, a Dwarf Calvarywoman, Quis Tan, an Obsidiman Sprit rider, and Avalandohamagannahnieventhallailmar, the Obsidiman Elementalist whose name is too long for normal conversation, so we ended by simply calling him Avalan.

Merrith is a town with problems. Founded on top of a kaer dedicated to the mad Passion Raggok, and only clean after an epic battle between the last of Raggok's follower's and a legendary band of adventurer's, there is still quite a bit of unease in the place due what may lie in the unknown depths of the opened kaer. To help ease this fear, the people of the area have apparently been doing some exploring, and it was the most recent of these exploring parties that brought us there. A group of librarians who were attemting to catalog the upper levels of the kaer had gone missing, so a call had gone out for adepts brave enough to discover their fate.

Upon arrival at Merrith, we were only allowed entry after proving ourselves free of Horror taint. Once the guard was satisfied, we made our preparations and entered the kaer, or, should I say, temple. Because that’s what greeted us once we managed to get our torches lit, an entire structure dedicated to the worship of Raggok. There was still a summoning circle inscribed there, along with some old blood stains. In pride of place though, is a statue of the mad passion with an altar facing it. After an intense examination of the room, we found that one of the hands of statue could be rotated so that it's thumb pointed towards the ground. Upon doing this, we heard a grinding sound as a section of floor rolled away, revealing stairs leading deeper into the structure.

The new area we found didn't show many signs of life t first, but Whyr'wyndyl insisted we follow him while he scanned for traps. This seemed like good advice for the ground pounders to follow, but I took to the air to scout the area. All went well for a short while, but eventually Quis Tin was the first of us to find a trap... a couple of times. The floor plate he triggered released venomous snakes from grates in the floor. The snakes proceeded to attack Quis Tin and found the final result of this was being split in twain. Overall, they did not present much of a threat at first, but eventually their numbers overwhelmed Quis Tin a bit, and he began to show some signs of distress by the time we cleared them out. We took about an hour or so to recover from the snakes, then continued our exploration. First we found a message written on the wall near where the snakes attacked, "Let the blessings of Raggok's Venom Enrage you". Shortly after moving past that room, we found ourselves in a much larger chamber with grates set into the floor again. Upon examining the grates, we found the skeletons of Namegivers shackled in place in a small area which had high water marks. Once again, there was a message on the walls, "Let the blessings of Raggok's Tears cure your thirst". Overall, I think these worshippers weren't particularly nice people.

As we moved into the new chamber, Fredi and Quis Tin were able to mount up, which was a good thing, because a small swarm of Krilworms were upon us. They proved little threat, but did distract us from the true problem, a group of fleshbeasts that descended on us from several different directions. I didn't get a full count of them, but I think there were five or six. They managed to split us into two groups, but this proved to be their downfall. The distance between each fighting group was enough to let both of our mounted fighters build up a head of steam as they charged the other's group. At one point, I'm sure they were saluting each other as they passed. Eventually, through the doughty efforts of my companions and me, we managed to fell all the creatures and were able to examine their bodies more closely. With Namegiver’s bodies that had their heads replaced with those of beasts, at first we couldn't identify who they might have been in life, but Avalan noticed the ink stains on their hands, which, combined with some clothes we found in the area, told us that we had found our librarians.

Realizing that they could not have fallen to the fleshbeasts they themselves became, we moved back up to the upper level to rest and replenish our strength. Thus fortified, we descended into the chamber once more to complete our search. I came across the source of the librarian's death first. Glimpsing something moving jerkily in the shadows, I realized that I was separated from my comrades by several walls and many yards, so I called out to them while beating a temporary retreat, allowing Whyr'wyndyl and Quis Tin to lead the charge into the fray. Throwing my torch down to light the area and free me to draw my spear, I saw that we were facing the same kind of Horror spawn that had struck down poor Robert - a pair of cadavermen. Having learned from my previous experience I closed carefully and focused on trying to bring down the one that Whyr'wyndyl had engaged. Between several powerful strikes from both me and Whyr'wyndyl, the spells being woven by Avalan, and the powerful charges from our mounted front, we were able to make short work of the cadavermen, and no one suffered overmuch.

We completed our examination of the level, and finding no more enemies, decided to head back to the surface, victorious. Although we did not manage to save the librarians, we did manage to recover their personal effects as well as the tomes they were studying and their notes. The tomes we found were... foul, and I truly hope the Library locks them away or destroys them so that none may ever see their words again.

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BattleChad
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by BattleChad » Fri May 18, 2018 2:19 am

The Great Library of Throal thanks Avalandohamagannahnieventhallailmar and Blaethynn for their contributions.

Journal Rewards: 40 Legend Points and 57 Silver

rosinavs
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by rosinavs » Mon May 21, 2018 10:33 pm

wow, the Great Library of Throal wants me to write a report? and will pay be for it? wow! um, okay, so here's what happened.

so I needed a job that would help me pay for su's stuff. y'know, food, drink, stabling, that kind of thing. that's because su decided i'm hers, so i gotta take care of her. that's kind of how it works with troajins. anyway, i got a gig to go to this place where some legendary adventurers opened a kaer and it was all tainted and stuff by horrors. the legendary adventurers founded a town there or something, but the folks there were worried about the kaer for some reason, so we went to go help them out and stuff.

aright, so, there were five of us, and some of the other folks had done some adventuring before, so i didn't say much. i mean, i'm kinda new at this, just finished my cavalrydwarf training and all, and needing to make some silver quick to pay fo0r su. so it was avalan, blaethynn, quis'tan, whyr'wyndl and me and su. so we traveled there, and went into the kaer, and it was all spooky and stuff, but most of the ceilings were high enough i could ride su most of the time. so the first part of the kaer is a temple to a tainted passion raggok? i guess is the name that passion goes by now? i don't know much about passions, that's for important people like adepts - oh, yeah, i forgot, i'm an adept now too. that's not something i thought would ever happen, not me, little fredi, mardi the tapster's daughter? oh, yeah, i'm a girl, sorry, i just never think about that, i don't understand why people care about whether people are boys or girls or whatever like they care about whether people are dwarves or humans or whatever. i mean, even that's not as important as what people do, or who they're related to, right?

oh, sorry, i was babbling again. anyway, once we figured out how to get to the levels below the temple, we heacded down there. quis'tan kept setting off traps where snakes fell on him, it was pretty funny, but i managed not to laugh out loud. if you knew me, you would know that that's really hard, i laugh a lot. and then we went into this place where there were lots of skeletons chained up so the people would drown, ew. and then we fought some krilworms, and it was so fun to charge them on su. i did that a lot. anyway, we found some fleshbeasts and cadavermen. i charged them a whole lot. we killed em, and cleaned out that area. i guess we need to go back and kill more stuff in other parts of the kaer.

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BattleChad
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by BattleChad » Sat May 26, 2018 3:33 pm

The Great Library of Throal thanks Fredi for her contribution.

Journal Rewards: 40 Legend Points and 57 Silver

ender3rd
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by ender3rd » Tue Jun 19, 2018 12:27 am

The scourge broke many beings to the destruction of that time. Perhaps worst of all was the desecration of those we know as the Passions. The village of Merrith was founded upon a once thriving community devoted to Rashoman. That community built a kaer for themselves and as Rashoman became Raggok many horrible things happened. That at least is what we understood and saw of the matter.

Once gaining entrance to the town we found the kaer easily enough. The entrance was a great temple but heavily trapped. The traps tended to release venomous snakes into the area. The snakes took their toll on me, making me irritable. Given the message found nearby of "Let the blessings [sic] of Raggok's Venom Enrage you" shows my irritation to have been potentially external in origin. I must improve my mind's self-discipline even further to resist these attacks by horrors or mad Passions.

A brief interlude of rest and restoration.

Moving on from the entrance we found grates of namegivers drowned in the name of Raggok, a number of krillra distracting us from fleshbeasts (unsuccessfully, myself and my cavalryman companion made great use of mobility), and other signs of horror/horrible activity. The fleshbeasts themselves had ink-stained hands which meant we had found the scholars for which we were searching at the great library's request. Deciding that something else must have been the creators of those fleshbeasts the search continued. Inside the warren which I assume was the beginnings of the kaer proper were two horror-made cadaver men. These were dispatched in standard fashion - being sure to only anger one at a time. Collecting the personal effects of the dead we returned hoping I suppose to provide comfort to the families of the fallen. That their bodies are no longer tormented by the unclean touch of the horrors should be enough, but I suppose the littler ones are overly attached. Their families are so small after all.

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BattleChad
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Re: AAR: The Temple of Raggok

Post by BattleChad » Wed Jun 20, 2018 2:54 pm

The Great Library of Throal thanks Quis’Tan for his contributions.

Journal Rewards: 40 Legend Points and 57 Silver

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