AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

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Xzandrate
Posts:382
Joined:Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:28 pm
AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by Xzandrate » Sat Jun 12, 2021 1:58 pm

LFG: [9M] Caving in
Time: 2021-06-18 @ 18:00 GMT
GM: Aegharan
Difficulty: 9 Medium

Requesting Player: Lazulin
Rumor: : Lazulin has heard that there is a lost kaer of trolls in the Throal mountains

Revised Time
Last edited by Xzandrate on Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Xzandrate
Posts:382
Joined:Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:28 pm

Re: LFG: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-13 1800 GMT)

Post by Xzandrate » Sat Jun 12, 2021 2:05 pm

Name: Lazulin
Date of Last Game Played: 2021-05-21
ECR: 9
Discipline: Raider (8)/SunHerald(9)
Unique: Combat and combat related accessories, and the guiding light of the sun.
Downtime: Research 3(9)

Anoush
Posts:160
Joined:Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm

Re: LFG: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-13 1800 GMT)

Post by Anoush » Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:56 pm

Name: Bloodbeat II of Syrtis
Image
ECR: 9
Last game played: May 11, 2021
Discipline: Nethermancer 9 / Weaponsmith 7
Quote: Tsch!  I hate birds!!
Unique/Notable Abilities: Experience Death, Friendly Darkness, Frighten, Last Chance, Soul Armor, Spirit Talk, Summon Ally Spirits, Viewpoint, Foul Vapors, Lifesight, Recovery, Orbiting Spy
Downtime:
* Alchemy 11 (rank 4) [Booster Potion, Small Light Quartz]
* Forge Armor 18 (rank 7, step 14 + karma)
* Forge Weapon 17 (rank 6, step 13 + karma)
* Item History 17 (rank 6, step 13 + karma)
* Research 27 (rank 9, step 16 + karma +4 [Speed Reading spirit] with library access +3 [20 SP])

bronzemountain
Posts:606
Joined:Fri Feb 21, 2020 10:02 pm

Re: LFG: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by bronzemountain » Mon Jun 14, 2021 4:36 pm

Now that this has been moved to Friday,
Name: A'horangi Ha'hana Syrtis
ECL: 10
Discipline: Monk
Quote/Unique: "Respectfully, I must now punch you."
Notable Abilities: Very polite dinosaur. Fully Item History/Research a Journeyman TI in one week.
Downtime: Research 1/22 (+3 for 20sp), Item History 4/25
Last Game Played: 2021-04-11

Alternately: Temur, Juniper. You decide!

sigfriedmcwild
Posts:335
Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: LFG: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Wed Jun 16, 2021 9:03 pm

Name: Elisen
Last played on: 2021-06-05
ECR: 9 (282030lp)
Discipline: Cavalier 8 / Troubadour 7
Quote/Unique: Deliverance flies on silent wind
Notable Abilities: Inspiring Sparkly Zoak power!
Downtime: Animal training step 16 (rank 5; 12 + karma), Item History 20 (rank 7; 12 + 2 karma), Research 20 (rank 7; 12 + 2 karma)

Aegharan
Posts:439
Joined:Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:58 pm

Re: AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by Aegharan » Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:45 pm

Caving In
Time: 2021-06-18@18:00 GMT
GM: Aeggy
Circle: 9
Difficulty: M

Player Rewards:
A'horangi: 39,000 LP, 1,000 sp, 3 TIPs
Bloodbeat: 39,000 LP, 1,000 sp, 3 TIPs
Elisen: 39,000 LP, 1,000 sp, 3 TIPs
Lazulin: 39,000 LP, 1,000 sp, 3 TIPs

Journal Rewards:
1,950 LP, 250 SP

GM Reward:
Perrok:

Downtime Actions Available:
Bloodbeat: Alchemy 11 (rank 4) [Booster Potion, Small Light Quartz]
Bloodbeat: Forge Armor 18 (rank 7, step 14 + karma)
Bloodbeat: Forge Weapon 17 (rank 6, step 13 + karma)
Bloodbeat: Item History 17 (rank 6, step 13 + karma)
Bloodbeat: Research 27 (rank 9, step 16 + karma +4 [Speed Reading spirit] with library access +3 [20 SP])
Elisen: Animal training step 16 (rank 5; 12 + karma)
Elisen: Item History 20 (rank 7; 12 + 2 karma)
Researchers may spend 20 Silver for +3 Steps (the Haggle discount may lower this cost)

Further Information:
Kaer Olgud has been opened. It lies near the Lalai Gorge on the side of the Throalic Mountains and houses 600-700 Trolls. 2 Shadows had slipped into the kaer, but have been killed.

Xzandrate
Posts:382
Joined:Tue Apr 07, 2020 8:28 pm

Re: AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by Xzandrate » Sun Jun 20, 2021 3:05 am

***The intricately covered ice blue journal contains a single blue crystal on the centre, with the simple gold lettering below it 'Lazulin' ***

Page 21

Word had reached me of a Trollish Kaer in the eastern reaches of the Throalic mountains that had yet to re-establish contact. This seemed like a loss for the Troll people and Barsaive at large. I collected some colleagues and ventured forth to investigate. We gathered more information and set out towards victory.

A'horangi, Bloodbeat, Elisen, and I began our trek to Sosanopa, along to the Cliff City of Syrtis and then after a days preparation, up the mountains into the heights of the Throalic mountains. It didn't take long to find the caves leading to the kaer, but we made camp outside to avoid any potential inhabitants.

The next day we tacked the caves and traps and found our way to the entrance to the Kaer. With a bit of investigation and luck we managed to alert the residents of our arrival and were granted entry, though we were told we were not the first to arrive in the past few days. Most suspicious.

The other travellers were found dead, murdered quite violently by someone or something. The story they had spun was an outside world full or horrors and dangers, we worked to correct that understanding and locate the things responsible for the murders. Through the powers of Bloodbeat and A'horangi we quickly determined that the cook was one person of interest, an soon fcame across the scene of a second murder, the Stonemason.

We gathered the populace and divided them into search parties and began to scour for the cook. The first alarm was raised when the search party came across the librarian and the baker. Each man claimed the other was possessed and trying to kill him. Bloodbeat quickly determined the cook's shadow had a pattern and was the likely culprit. She suspected it was a horror construct known as a Shadow. I leapt forward pinning the creature to the ground and we dispatched it quickly. Understanding what we were dealing with, we were able to just as quickly dispatch the Shadow attached to the cook when we found him.

We liberated the trolls from the darkness of the caves and brought them forth into the light. Some joined the Cliff City, while others travelled with us to Throal. The battlefield does not always reveal your opponent, or in this case the battlefield. However, a prepared commander has many weapons ready for many circumstances. This day the Trolls of Olgud should bless the fact that I had the best weapons travelling with me today.


***A great Iced Claw adorns the bottom of the page ***
Image

Anoush
Posts:160
Joined:Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:53 pm

Re: AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by Anoush » Tue Jun 22, 2021 4:52 pm

Bloodbeat's Journal:

Lazulin approached a group of us (A’Horangi, Elisen and me) about a troll kaer that still hadn’t opened post-Scourge. He wanted to find and open it. The kaer, Named Kaer Olgud, was supposedly located in the eastern Throal Mountains near the Lalai Gorge. We did some research at the Great Library and found enough information to give us a starting point.

Against Elisen’s better judgement, we traveled up to Sosonopa, and then took passage on a riverboat to Syrtis. Something about Sosonopa always reminds us of murder investigations… The riverboat crew expected us to entertain them, and they got much more than they bargained for when A’Horangi began reciting a 23-hour epic poem about an ill-fated love between two librarians who never met each other, which she’d written herself.

Once in Syrtis, we found a mountain guide and collected some gear, like climbing kits and dwarf winternight cloaks. The trek into the mountains was easy, or perhaps we’d chosen an excellent guide. After a few days we got into the set of valleys where we expected to find the kaer. I summoned a spirit to help us find the kaer and within a day had identified the entrance.

The kaer entrance was really a cave entrance, so we followed the tunnel down into the mountain rock. We did note a flurry of tracks, coming and going, in the tunnel. This was surprising since the kaer was supposed to still be closed. The tunnels twisted and turned and had defense mechanisms still in place. At one point, Lazulin saved us all by identifying a spear trap that would’ve skewered us. But with his guidance, we were able to avoid any harm.

Eventually we came to a tunnel that was mostly blocked by a massive block of stone. And the area stunk horribly, worse than any nethermantic experiment gone bad, worse than any rotten, festering corpse I’ve laid to rest. Ewww! It turned out that there was a dead and rotting creature — some kind of giant centipede — crushed beneath the stone block. We could make out some details by getting down on the floor of the tunnel and looking under the stone, but not enough to figure out how to get around it. So, I used Viewpoint to look at the stone and tunnels all around us and realized that the mechanism for resetting the trap, moving the stone into place and opening the tunnel was still intact. All we needed to do was get rid of the centipede’s body. So, the others hacked and hewed at the thing, until finally the chains began clanking and with them, the stone was reset back into place.

Avoiding the trap, we continued on down the tunnel and came to a dead-end. This had to be the actual kaer entrance. We found runes on the walls when we looked astrally, but they were some form of protection runes. Eventually, we found another set of runes, off to the side, set in a circle. We drew the circle with a finger, then another rune appeared in the center, and so we touched it. We heard a loud, deep sound, like a giant stone falling. The walls even shook with an aftershock. The runes had disappeared. Then we waited.

Not long afterwards, an outline of a door appeared on the wall, and it opened, revealed heavily armed and armored trolls. After plenty of trepidation, exchanging of greetings, and Elisen’s innate charm and glib tongue, they let us in and we began learning about them. The trolls were particularly worried about us because they’d heard that there were still horrors about in the world, and it wasn’t safe to open the kaer yet. We corrected their misconceptions, and learned that the previous day two visitors had arrived and given them this sad news. The travelers claimed to have been chased here by horrors, after their own kaer had opened its doors too soon. All this was surprising since we’d spent the previous day and night in the kaer’s valley, and had seen no travelers enter the tunnel.

The kaer leader, Named Teshi, received a messenger with more bad news. The two travelers had been found dead, murdered. We speculated that perhaps they’d brought something into the kaer with them. But we offered to help solve the mystery. We were given an escort, Named Ekon, a scout. And another troll, Seshi, an elementalist and Teshi’s sister, also accompanied us. We proceeded to the travelers’ room and examined their bodies. There was one dwarf and one human, both stabbed multiple times with a dagger-sized weapon. It seemed that there’d been two assailants, both shrouded. Both murders must’ve taken place within the last hour, based on when the travelers were last seen. I performed an Experience Death on one of them, and amidst the pain of the stab wound, I smelled fresh bread baking, and suddenly was hungry. How odd? I also saw a clear image of the murderer, a male troll with a twisted right horn and scars from a childhood illness. When I described him, Seshi recognized him immediately as Kurogi, their cook. But she proclaimed that Kurogi was a gentle man, not a warrior, and would never hurt, let alone kill someone.

Still, we went to the kitchen to find Kurogi. He wasn’t there. Finding one person in a kaer with about 700 inhabitants was tough. But we looked. He wasn’t home. He wasn’t in the fields. He wasn’t in the hall. Eventually we tracked him to a friend’s home, but instead found another dead body, this one killed with a sword — one that had been hanging over the mantle. The dead man was a stone mason Named Ayargajin. From the evidence, A’Horangi deduced that the two had had a drink or two, which had poisoned Ayargajin such that he was paralyzed, and then he’d been tortured, until finally he was killed with the sword.

We had the kaer residents spread the word that we were looking for Kurogi and that any missing people should be reported to Seshi. All in all, there were three missing: Hokajin, a librarian; Ugoki, a farmhand; and Napokue, a baker. We found Ugoki, dead. Then we found the other two — Hokajin and Napokue — alive, with shovels, each shouting how the other was possessed, as they began to fight each other.

Astrally, we saw that the baker’s shadow had a pattern. A normal shadow was just, well, the absence of light, and so had no pattern. But this one did. We concluded it must be a horror, or construct, or something. Lazulin attacked it first, pinning it to the ground with a spear of light. The rest of us then finished it off, and the shadow and its pattern, shriveled up and died. We repeated the same procedure for getting rid of the second one.

With the shadows gone, both the baker and librarian returned to normal. The general conclusion was that the travelers had been possessed by these shadows and brought them into the kaer. Once inside, the shadows possessed other people and killed, then hopped to other trolls and killed some more. But now the kaer could open and join the post-Scourge world of Barsaive.

sigfriedmcwild
Posts:335
Joined:Wed Nov 13, 2019 6:59 am

Re: AAR: [9M] Caving In (2021-06-18 1800 GMT)

Post by sigfriedmcwild » Tue Jun 29, 2021 12:10 am

From the memoirs of Elisen of clan Adorjan, Haressa-tis and Lore Keeper

Lazulin (troll Raider and Sun Herald) found out about a lost troll kaer in the Lalai gorge and organized an expedition to try and open it. A couple of my frequent traveling companions had signed up (Bloodbeat II of Syrtis, t'skrang Nethermancer and Weaponsmith, and A'horangi Ha'hana Syrtis, t'skrang Monk and Bodyguard). Given that I had just spend the better part of six months fruitlessly trying to investigate how we had lost our memories on the Serpent, I figured a change of pace would do me good. And Jacint needed some exercise before they got fat.

I dug up some notes and found mentions of a kaer Olgud which matched the location Lazulin was thinking of, just at the entrance of the Lalai gorge. Despite my protestations we went up to Soanopa to take a boat down to Syrtis. The trip was actually pretty uneventful, I helped A'horangi with her latest poetic efforts and managed to get an ork and elf to let me learn Or'zet and Sperethiel off them.

In Syrtis we quickly gathered some climbing gear and started our climb, sadly leaving Isidoros and Teh behind. After about a day we found the entrance to a cave system that matched the tales of the kaer. As we made our way into the caves we found some markings that could have been runes of protection, then a still active trap that had just crushed some monstrously large centipede.

Soon after we reached what could be the entrance to the kaer and triggered... something. Soon the door opened and a couple of trolls greeted us with great suspicion. I managed to convince them that we were not a threat and to let us in after suitable greeting rituals. After that they were friendly enough but mentioned that some travelers had arrived in the last week with stories of the scourge still raging.

We're introduced to the moot's leader a Weaponsmith named Teshi (the guards were called Ekon, Scout and Seshi, Warrior). Ekon was sent to find the travelers but soon came back saying the tavelers were murdered in their beds (seems like the murder we missed in Sosanopa caught up with us). We eat and then start investigating.

The travelers were a humand and dwarf, A'horangi believes they were killed without struggle while they slept by a pair of trolls. Bloodbeat used experience death and noticed the killer smelt of baking, Seshi recognized Kuroji the cook. We went looking for the cook but they aren't at the kitchen. We asked around trying to track them down and went to their house where we found another corpse, this time killed with a sword. Seshi recognized this one as Ayargajin the stonemason.

At this point we returned to Teshi to round up the kaer and see who else was missing. Five trolls were missing: Kuroji and Ayargajin of course, but also Hoakjin, the librarian, Napokue, the baker, and Ogoki, a farmer. We set up search parties to find these people and soon one group sounded the signal.

There we found Napokue and Hokajiin shouting at each other claiming the other is possessed, we just tie both up and then Bloodbeat spots something astrally wrong with Napokue's shadow, so Lazulin stabbed it with their spear made of sunlight as it tries to flee. After taking care of the shadowy horror, the baker broke down in tears.

Soon after another group found Kuroji where we just went straight to the shadow murdering. With the horrors dead we managed to convince Teshi to send some envoys to Syrtis and Throal.

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