Not the Mod Game: Rise of the Roselords: Runelucks Group

[Roseluck]

This will be the thread for AARs from my group!

First of all lets introduce the characters, I don't have quite as pretty pictures as the others though.



From left to right, a quick introduction

Ayashi Kaze - Ayashi

The resident rogue-type Ayashi typically comes off as a stranger from a far away land, a human with striking vibrant eyes and exotic appearance, along with an arsenal of equally foreign weapons. Friendly and keen to try local delicacies as well as share those of his home, this foreign foodie is actually a mischievous kitsune with a penchant for murder. A ninja whose natural aptitude for blending in with people assists in his more sensitive operations.

Reitinuil - Rei

A sorceress of questionable decent, raised by elves, but paler, more enigmatic, and with mismatching eyes she is of mysterious birth. A free spirit raised under the teachings of Calistria, she has up until now been wandering the world, going wherever her elegant looks and liberal religion can take her.

Traster Loreweaver - Traster

This half elf recently arrived in sandpoint at the behest of the head of his temple, who has foretold a great evil arising in the area and upon arrival it didn't take long for him to find his first,

Abroshtor - Abe

Your "friendly" gnome alchemist, he enjoys long walks on the beach, romantic moonlit picnics and... wrong guy, this miniature maniac as a prolific pyro, a fan of fire and explosions his defining feature is the great efficiency at which he has vaporised goblins. What he lacks in stature and strength he makes up for with ingenuity, and with a moral debt to his teacher in Magnimar he has high hopes that the adventurers life will find him the riches to repay him.

Winter K'shalar - Winter

A girl with a gun Winter has been making an earning as a caravan guard, maintaining a musket in a world where they're not too prevalent is difficult and expensive, but as her current firearm is showing its age and she's hoping that she'll soon be able to afford a worthy replacement.

Retired Members

Novennia Umaha

A particularly grumbly human paladin, on account of her shorter stature and religious teachings make her a proper lady, you could hardly tell she was raised on a farm. Her manner is lost though when it comes to her faithful steed Haverdash, whom she dotes on frequently.

Recordings
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

[Minuette]

Today is the day of the festival for the new cathedral they built here in Sandpoint. The mayor does his speech, the sheriff, named Hemlock, gives a boring speech about safety and stuff and the priest tells a bit about his new cathedral. It’s quite a nice building and a nice town they have here. The food is good, some laughs from the gnome and a rogue-ish guy trying to win a tug of war against a strong, bare chested man, presumably the smith of this town.

And then some goblins decide to ruin the fun by singing horribly off-key and killing a poor, innocent dog. Most people don’t respond well to goblins, so most of them run into the new cathedral, except for a handful that stays in the square, readying themselves for a fight.

One of the goblins jumps up on one of the food tables and swiftly catches a bomb thrown by the gnome. Quite a good throw and an even better catch, although I doubt the goblin was expecting the explosive since it seemed quite confused before exploding.

A second one ran up to the bomb thrower and took a swing with his weapon. However, he had the ninja standing next to him and giving him a quick stab, followed by a shot from the girl with the musket. After the smoke from the gunpowder cleared, it was clear that the goblin hadn't really considered his position all too well, since his chest now contained a large gaping hole.

Meanwhile, the third one seemed to be the smartest one of the group and had ran up to me. He got rewarded for his intelligence by a magic missile to the face, swiftly followed by a stab through the neck from the ninja.

The spectacle has roused the people, all of them watching from the cathedral, their cheers interrupted by a second group of goblins with a cart full of flammable material intended for the bonfire later. The smartest one of the bunch was dancing on top of the cart with a lit torch... And promptly lost his balance, igniting himself and the cart, getting laughed at by everyone.

As the goblins moved closer, one of the bombs from our gnome friend bounced off a goblin and exploded on the cathedral steps, getting him a lot of protesting sounds from inside. Another goblin managed to dodge the ninja’s sword, but the third one wasn't so lucky and got shot by musket girl. And came running up to me, bleeding profusely from the gunshot wound.

Sure, I look the least threatening of the bunch, with only a dagger and wearing just some simple clothing, unlike the others wielding more formidable weapons and wearing armor. Which is probably what the goblin also thought. So I took a step back and gave him a stern look, conjuring up a magical hand and slapping him clean across the face with it, downing him instantly.

Meanwhile, the big singing goblin had come up to the group, getting a stab from both the ninja and the musket girl’s rapier. This didn't stop him yet, but a quick magic missile cast to his face did.

After all the goblins were dead, the priest came running out of the cathedral, followed by the sheriff and some other people, all thanking us profusely and the priest healed our wounds for us. Names were exchanged, but further introductions were cut short by loud barking and a shriek coming from one of the streets nearby.

Heading up there, we saw someone hiding behind a water barrel, a large dog trying to defend him from a small group of goblins and their leader, riding some kind of rat-dog. The poor mutt was immediately killed, but the gunshot from Winter, the musket girl, distracted them and they came running up. We also noticed a new face had joined us when coming up here, looked to be a young girl with a lance.

A goblin ran up to Winter, past our ninja, Ayashi, who promptly sliced his head clean off from where he was hidden. Don’t think the goblin saw it coming. Meanwhile, another goblin had run up to our paladin girl, who was fiercely trying to get him stabbed with her lance while dodging his attacks. I couldn't get a clear shot on them with my magic, so I missed a few times.

The goblin on his rat-dog shot at people with arrows, lucky for us he was quite a bad shot. After his companions were killed, he got blown off his rat-dog by a bomb, but the rat-dog was now free of a rider and apparently interested in a taste of gnome. Lucky for the gnome, our paladin cleanly stabbed the beast through the neck, killing it.

After every goblin was dead, the man that was whimpering behind the water barrel came out, a noble apparently, named Aldern Foxglove. He ran up to me and thanked me profusely for saving his life and complimenting my beauty, offering me free lodgings in the fancy inn he was staying at, the Rusty Dragon. And for my companions, of course. By now, the fighting has died down, the last few goblins are running away from town. While getting acquainted with each other at the inn, we hear the goblins were apparently ordered to burn the town and kill everyone by “one of you longshanks”, meaning it wasn't just a random raid. This needs some more investigating...

[Minuette]

The next day, while we’re having breakfast at the Rusty Dragon, the sheriff walks in to talk to us. We take it to a private meeting room, where he explains the stone door in front of the old priest’s burial vault isn’t completely closed. He’s worried there might be some goblins still hiding in there and wants us to keep an eye out and help him check it out. We won’t get paid for it, but if there are goblins inside, it’s very likely the stable owner will pay for the ears. On our way to the graveyard, the sheriff asks a lot of questions about who we are and such, just out of curiosity it seems.

Once at the tomb, there’s a lot of footprints here, coming from and going back to the wall. A gang of 6 goblins, along with a normal human-sized person. As we open up the door to check inside, two skeletons pop out. One of them stumbles out, the other one takes a swipe at Ayashi and lightly hits. The first skeleton gets a footing and takes a swipe at Winter, who responds by taking it’s head off. The other skeleton gets knocked apart by Ayashi.

Inside the tomb, we find a faintly magical robe, a Robe of Bones. Abe tries it on, letting us know it’s expended. Novennia wants to burn it and rips it off of his back, trying to light it with her candle. We also notice the sarcophagus for the old priest is opened and is now empty, his remains were stolen!

Heading over to the stables, they really have a large collection of goblin ears. And the few people we've asked in the streets say the stablemaster probably knows most about them. So we go in, haggle a bit for the price we can get on goblin ears from him and he offers us a good rate on horses if we ever need any. He doesn't really know much about the raids though, but he can tell us there’s a ranger who visits now and then, an elf woman who tends to cover the hinterlands and the area around town. She mostly reports to the sheriff though, so we decide to go talk to him.

Sheriff Hemlock says they don’t really have too much trouble with goblins. There’s 4 or 5 tribes around town, but they mostly harass merchants on the road. The ranger mentioned by the stablemaster hasn't been in lately, but she’s expected in soon due to this raid.

The sheriff also doesn't know why anyone would want to steal the remains of the old priest. He was popular in town and a religious man, with an adopted daughter who also died in the fire that burned down the old church. She was an angelic kind of girl, very nice and pretty, quite religious as well. Her remains were never uncovered.

While we’re going through town, Ayashi the ninja seems to be quite popular with the girls, as they giggle when he passes. Winter and me get glances and catcalls from the local male population. Novennia seems a bit upset by this lack of attention, as she speeds up a little to go investigate the cathedral. There’s nothing really interesting to find here though, so we continue on to the other side of the wall. Arriving there, the only new thing we find out is that whoever was with the goblins must have been light on their feet, but all the tracks leading into the forest have been erased.

With no more leads, we decide to take a free afternoon, everyone doing their thing. I decide to go exploring town, seeing the impressive glassworks and the fine theatre. From what I heard later, Novennia spent her afternoon taking care of her pony. Winter was drinking with Ayashi, who snuck off for a bit with one of the local girls, but got interrupted by her father. Abe went out, probably for shopping, took care of his pack pony for a bit and went to drink with the others. Around dinnertime, I end up back at the inn, walking in at about the same time as Novennia.

Aldern is here and gives us 10 gold pieces for saving his life yesterday and invites us to go hunting with him tomorrow. His other offer seems mostly aimed towards me, but everyone is welcome to come along to have some nice drinks with him tonight, go from pub to pub, see what this fine town has to offer! The first pub we visit is the Crabtooth's Tavern, where some sort of open performance night is going on. Nice place, we bump into the owner of the theatre here, who offers to do a reenactment of our saving of the town. These drinks are starting to get to my head, but we still make it to the Hagfish, a pub noticeable for having a hagfish in a tank behind the counter.

The challenge is to drink a mug of the tank water, letting you win a bag of coins! Winter is the only one not stepping up to the challenge, so the rest of us sits down and gets a mug. Both Abe and Ayashi fail at even getting it down, Ayashi doing a fine effort at trying to drink but Abe just gags at the smell alone. Novennia and me manage to down the vile stuff, but both of us take a look at eachother, cover our mouths and sprint outside to vomit it all out, to the great amusement of the bar patrons. The rest of the evening is filled with more inns, like the Fatman's Feedbag, and more drinks, so all of us are very wasted by the time we get back, with Aldern coming with me into my room for some more... private matters.

In the morning, we all wake up with quite a hangover. Aldern seems to have one too, so we’ll do the boar hunt after lunch, once we've recovered from last night. We get some horses and head out to hunt some boar, where Aldern asks the same kind of questions the sheriff did earlier. A boar is found and chased towards us, so we all prepare for the kill.

As the boar appears, Novennia is the first one to charge at it with her lance, managing to get a great strike on a tree with her lance and falling flat on her back from her pony. Abe fires off a crossbow bolt and manages to hit the boar, annoying the animal. Both Winter and Ayashi slash at the boar with their weapons, but fail to take it down. A magic missile from me doesn't stop it either and it charges at Novennia, who is just trying to get up, knocking her down quite painfully it seems.

Novennia gets up, pulls her lance from the tree and rubs the painful spot where the boar hit, looking rather annoyed. Abe decides to not take another shot, so he doesn't risk hitting anyone, but Winter and Ayashi both slash the boar again, the animal now bleeding profusely but still standing. Another magic missile finishes it off though, and the servants pick it up to bring it along for dinner tonight.

Arriving at the inn with our catch, the owner seems very pleased and immediately starts the preparations to prepare a feast. Ayashi follows to the kitchens, offering to make some dishes from his homelands. While we’re having a nice feast, eating our boar, an elderly nobleman crashes into the inn, yelling loudly for his daughter. From the murmurs around us, we gather he’s the father of the owner. When he notices us, he starts yelling that we caused the goblin raid, that the town was fine without us and other accusations. Ayashi gets ready to stand up and take it outside with the old man, but remains seated when I put my hand on his shoulder and tell him to not make a scene. None of us are very pleased at this interruption though, but the owner comes out of the kitchen and starts a yelling match with her father. He’s leaving, she’s coming along or is getting disowned, threats like that. Her response is to hit him over the head with her soup ladle, covering him in splatters of what seems to be a delicious fish soup. He storms out, yelling that she’s disowned and no longer his daughter. She takes a deep sigh and gets an applause from the patrons of the inn, returning to her kitchen with her head held high.

[Minuette]

We’ve just finished our feast, with Winter drunk and asleep on the table and Novennia drunk and asleep under the table, apparently after a drinking contest. A woman storms into the inn with her son and a baby, sobbing and crying that there’s a goblin at her house! The son does have bitewounds on his arm, so we don’t hesitate and go check out the house, sending the woman to find the sheriff once we get there.

In the house, the master bedroom is empty. The kid’s bedroom however, has a dead dog on the bed and a pair of legs sticking out of the closet. We pull out the person, who is very much dead. However, the goblin that killed the man jumps out when we pull out the corpse and takes a stab at me, getting in a rather nasty cut. After some slashing from Ayashi, some magic missiles from me and Abe accidentally shooting Ayashi, the goblin is dead. His hiding hole is nothing more than that, a hole under the floorboards. He was probably left behind during the raid and now popped out from hunger and thirst. Ayashi informs the woman, in a very untactful way, that her husband is dead while Abe covers the body with a sheet.

A few bandages, a nice warm bath and a good night’s rest later, during breakfast (what is it with these people and interrupting breakfast?) the sherrif comes in to inform us the elf ranger, Shalelu, has arrived in town! Leaving Winter and Novennia to sleep off their hangovers, we decide to go along to hear what she has to say. The sheriff will be going to Magnimar to request more guards and asks us to keep an eye out in town and we get invited for lunch by Shalelu.

At lunch, Winter joins us, with apparently the king of hangovers. There has been an increase in goblin attacks lately, with the most recent attack being on a farm outside town. The goblins seem to have been chattering about the heroes that prevented their raid. And the worst news of all, the five tribes that live nearby have apparently united under a single leader, a normal sized human-shaped person, which probably explains why they stole the dead priest. They’ve also been wearing a new symbol, instead of just their tribe symbol. In any case, now we know more, we can investigate further once the sheriff gets back.

The next day, while on my way down for breakfast, me and the others get stopped by the maid, carrying a note for Ameiko, the owner. It says of a meeting at the glassworks with her estranged half-brother, because their father knows something about the goblin conspiracy... And Ameiko has disappeared. So, we get a quick breakfast to go and head out to the glassworks.

Arriving at the glassworks, the curtains are all closed and the door is locked. The nearby people claim nobody has gone in to work today, but that it happens sometimes when the glassworks gets a large order in. After dispersing the crowd, Ayashi and Abe climb up on the roof and see a bunch of goblins inside, along with dead people and what Ayashi later described as “modern goblin art”, an attempt at encasing people in glass...

We decide to get into the building, Winter and me through one of the side windows, Ayashi through a skylight. Abe stays on the roof and tosses his bombs from there. Ayashi swings down, surfs on a goblin and just... vanishes, terribly confusing the other goblins. A few others get dispatched by a bomb, one gets shot and one gets a few magic missiles to the head. However, one of them runs off shrieking something about “the longshanks from the raid!”, probably calling up some more goblins.

Ayashi goes into a pursuit, down into the basement, while Abe and me go up to the little hallway with the stairs. Suddenly, the goblin comes back up the stairs, followed by a half-elf! I yell at the others as I take a swing at the goblin. The goblin didn’t really seem to be expecting me, so he swings and misses. The half-elf however just plain shoots me with his bow! He gets a magic missile to the face for his troubles, along with Ayashi slashing him across the back.

Winter and Abe come running up as well, while the half-elf puts his bow away. I figure this is a perfect time to try and take it away from him, so he doesn’t shoot me again, but instead he just punches Ayashi! After a brief fight, where Winter accidentally shot Ayashi, the half-elf is knocked out.

Meanwhile, the guards have arrived so we let them in and Ayashi leads them through the hall full of dead people encased in glass, acting like he’s a museum guide. One of the encased people is the owner of the place, face twisted in pain as they apparently did it while he was still alive. Meanwhile, a search through the other rooms has uncovered a tunnel leading to parts unknown and a tied up, unconscious Ameiko, our missing barkeep. We let the guards take it from there and head back to the inn for some well-deserved drinks.

[Minuette]

After last week’s fun visit to the glassworks, we’ve taken some time to rest up. But since there’s still the matter of Tsuto, his journal and the tunnel in the glassworks, we decide to read the journal, maybe ask some people about it. Novennia had to leave, but coinciding with her departure, a new paladin arrives in town, a rather handsome half-elf named Traster. He’s already proving his worth, because he found out more about the weird drawings in the journal. One of the acolytes in the cathedral told us they look a lot like the (supposedly) dead daughter of the old priest, but with demonic wings and such. And since Tsuto does say a lot about demonic transformations and “my love” in these journals, along with a plan to burn down the entire town, it seems like it was a good thing that we managed to stop him.

Our next step is interrogating Tsuto personally, but he doesn’t seem to be very cooperative, so we decide to take it a bit further. Traster steps outside, paladins not exactly being too keen on more advanced interrogation techniques I suppose. The rest of us steps into Tsuto’s cell, he decides to punch Ayashi in the face. A quick magic missile downs him, allowing us to bind him down and proceed with waterboarding him for information. Unfortunately, he does seem to be more interested in getting back with his demonic girlfriend and death doesn’t seem to phase him, so we leave him be.

Off we go to explore the tunnels. In the middle, it splits up, with one end going to the beach in the northern part of town, the other part collapsed midway but presumably leading down to the river in the south. However, a closer inspection reveals a secret door in the tunnel, leading to another set of tunnels. We decide to not make too much light, since we can all see pretty well in the dark anyway. These tunnels lead us down, with an evil looking vile creature in a small cave. The creature is quickly dispatched of and our search continues. Ayashi tries to be quiet through most of this, only to have the paladin walk up clinking around and Abe throwing bombs. I guess that if there’s something else down here, it knows we’re here.

Next up, we find an underground construction, with actual flooring and walls. Our search leads us past a few hallways up to a small statue, with a passage back into the tunnels. Our ninja takes the weapon from the statue, thinking it might fetch a nice sum of gold. Stairs lead upwards, but our investigation continues to a wooden platform in a large room with what appears to be cells. Another one of those vile creatures claws up at Ayashi’s leg, making him scream like a little girl, A second creature comes up the stairs, but both creatures are taken care off rather swiftly with some slashing, some magic and some ranged attacks like bombs and a crossbow bolt.

Since Ayashi wants to be quiet and Traster doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of “stealth”, Ayashi decides he’s going to explore the first hallway we passed, along with Abe. I decide to stick with Traster and explore the hallway on the other end of the wooden platforms we’re on. The hallway leads into a room filled with all sorts of fun torture devices, things that might lead to a fun night if used properly. As I take a look at one of the torture devices, a weird 3-armed mutant kind of goblin comes down the stairs leading up to another room, yelling something about a queen. The paladin jumps in and I cast a magic missile on the goblin. It doesn’t seem very phased by this and spits a burning liquid at both me and the paladin, who seems nauseated by it.

I don’t get paid enough to stick around for this, so I decide to run off back into the tunnels, after hearing something that seemed to be one of Abe’s explosions. A clanking sound behind me shows that the paladin made a similar decision, but the laughter of the goblin makes for a sign that he’s in pursuit. Our paladin friend decides to stop and smite the monster, which does seem to slow it down a little. I throw magic at it, but it doesn’t seem to be going dead anytime soon.

A while later, suddenly a bomb gets thrown and a cloud of smoke conceals everything, coming from a side passage. I decide it’s a good idea to go there, since it’s probably Abe throwing it. My suspicions were correct and he’s accompanied by what seems to be a black fox-like humanoid that has a certain resemblance to Ayashi. They both look rather beat up, from some kind of demon that attacked them. Great, now we have two enemies around.

Since there’s no sign of the demon, we all decide to gang up on the goblin. Suddenly, there’s a mass of flesh followed by a giant rat coming up, which requires my more immediate attention. Abe’s bombs don’t seem to have an effect on the flesh, with the rat deftly dodging the explosion. Meanwhile, the goblin dies and we can focus more on these two newcomers. They don’t seem to be very impressed with the damage we’re doing to them and meanwhile the small demon-girl has appeared again, trying to use her spells. Shortly afterwards, the monsters disappear and we can focus on the demon-girl. She gets an “oh crap” expression before vanishing, with Abe running up to try and catch her. A bit of looking for clues as to where this demon went later, we manage to grab her, get her tied up and our paladin cleanly slices her in half.

After ridding ourselves of all the threats, we explore the place some more. The “cathedral” holds a runewell, which we should probably take care of later. Some hallways lead to collapsed staircases, the large room next to the room with torture devices holds pits in the floor with zombies... We put the zombies out of their misery and continue exploring. Another strange room is found, this one a spherical room containing weird markings on the metallic walls. Abe jumps in and retrieves the interesting looking items held within. After making sure the place is safe and we have everything of value we can take, we decide to leave and get some well-deserved rest.

[Minuette]

I wasn't available for a week as I was in Egypt and last week we did part 1 of what we did this week, so there were no AAR's for a while... This post is the "AAR" for the week I wasn't there and wrote something up to at least have a reason to be out. Part of it is what I heard later from the others.

“You’re an elf, right? At least, you look like one... And Shalelu knows a lot about plants, maybe you do too... I could use some help gathering medicinal plants in the forest...” the apothecary stops me on my walk through town after a small breakfast. I have nothing better to do anyway, the rest of the party wasn’t awake yet when I got out of bed. So we head into the forest, just outside of town, to gather medicinal plants. I think I saw a goblin glaring at us from a distance, but when I went to take a look, it was gone. After several hours of filling our baskets with plants, some mushrooms and herbs, we head back into town, the apothecary happy to have restocked his supplies.

When I arrive back, I hear new rumours about Ayashi's lack of performance... Maybe he should offer a prayer to Calistria to help with those issues... Shortly after I sit down in the tavern, Abe, Ayashi and Traster walk in, having aided a merchant caught by a bunch of goblins. By the time drinks arrive, Winter and Shalelu walk in, they had apparently been looking for the goblins that got killed by the others...