Upon a Dark Place: Part 2 Sessions 6-10

 

Halfbuilt in flames! The central stalactite had been knocked down and had fallen across a considerable part of the city. The group left their carts at the entrance and snuck in to see what was happening. They found the Kaismar, this world’s dark elves, capturing townsfolk and giant ogres with baskets on their backs trapping any they found hiding. The townsfolk were given two options, become slaves or die by fire in the pyre of others that had resisted. Many townsfolk resisted which only made the flames burn higher. The group attacked the Kaismar and were able to free the remaining townsfolk. One of the kaismar survived the attack because the creepy dark elf Nor that befriend the party and his “Sister” Nira incapacitated her with a paralysis poison. The party found out the other townsfolk not still in Halfbuilt were taken to New Gracklesnap, a dark dwarf stronghold a few days journey away. Before going after their allies, the party went to check on Lord Halibar and found him quite dead. With the help of both Bastion and Nor, they cast speak with dead, they were able to discern what had happened in the town and each was rewarded for the last mission and each given a note from Lord Halibar as well as a boon and a new ally, his treasury imp, Engire, that could help finance them. Lord Halibar had left each of the characters magic items.  They also found out about the mystical Udaren, a group hiding somewhere in the deep that may have abilities to help the party as well as strange things from each of their backgrounds. Burf turned the body to stone. They also question the drow priestess and found time was of the essence to save the townsfolk that had been taken. Wilbur was also approached by an elderly ratfolk lady that told him about her town, which had been wiped out by a strange man with the ability to control fire. Her son had wounded the man with a strange dagger, which she gave to Wilbur, and then disappeared into the crowd.

On quest of vengeance the party found the raiders had left Black Bettie alone, or at least they found a few kaismar bodies in parts near the farmhouse she was sequestered in. They let her out and with the help of a goblin friend Corvo were able to ride all the way to New Gracklesnap in a few hours by cutting a path through the stone itself. Once there, they noted a small encampment outside town full of Kaismar and prisoners. They snuck in and got many of the prisoners out with clever lies of Corvo and all was going well until the priestess in charge and her night companion, a tiefling sorceress, came out of their shared tent and noticed not only the party but the fleeing prisoners and the light bridges Bastion created as ramps. Using their new found magic items from Lord Halibar they defeated the priestess and a few of her guards and the tiefling left a dire warning with Zamira and disappeared with teleportation magic. They were able to loot the tent and found a chest with strange broken Udaren sun stone. The party made their way back to Halfbuilt and put their heads together to find a new solution to this new problem of homeless Halfbuilt. The druid Burf remembered a cave to the north that had everything needed for a new home but could not remember why it was abandoned. The party made some blood deals by selling their blood to Nor, met with townsfolk and eventually borrowed Toppa the bard to adventure to the north. Nor also looked at Wilbur’s new dagger, finding it was made of some sort of angel bone and with a blood magic spell they learned about the human fire mage and the fire cult he was a part of. The rest of Halfbuilt agreed to give the party a few days head start again and follow in their wake with the other group of heroes working as guards in the process.

The abandoned town was supposedly near the towns of Lowgren and Latiea. The party was not quite as fascinated with the stories of Stormcroak that Toppa was preaching and eventually came across a passed-out traveler face down on the cavern floor. They woke him up and he claimed to be a simple mage named Victor looking to fix the portals of the Deep and had a summoned dragon friend. He looked human and gave them great bits of information about the goings on within the city of New Gracklesnap as well as the Kaisimar capitol city Korshad. After helping him get back on his feet they brought him with to explore some of the tunnels. When they rested, there was a commotion when a strange tentacled man flew past the group on watch and told them to make ready as a group of odd dwarves came down the tunnel yelling about a traitor. When pressed for information the dwarves’ forms twisted into horrible fleshy monster the party quickly went into combat mode and were able to save their newfound friend. After combat, the goblin pressed the tentacle man for payment and was promptly stunned and the man faded into the darkness. The party was also dismayed in their friend Victor, who had done nothing but cower behind his dragon from the monsters, even Toppa helped.

They continued on their path until they found a large nexus of chambers and saw a giant slug being eaten by three overly large bugmen. Bastion hit the slug with a daylight rock startling the bugmen and combat ensued. Their allies helped control the battlefield while the party dealt damage quickly enough to drop all three foes in short work, sending bugmen parts all about the cavern. The next challenge the party faced a corridor that crackled as they walked on it. After noticing all the bones, the party saw an obviously trying to hide horrible giant eyed cave beast that blasted them with a spell of confusion. All three of their newer allies started flailing around like madmen and the oracle Bastion almost was bitten in half by Victor’s dragon. The party attacked the beast and made very short work of it. They pressed onward after bandaging their wounds with magic.

After days of traveling, they found the abandoned city and started investigating the buildings finding most of them decrepit they found a house that was impervious to wear and tear but had a dead tentacle faced man husk in an armoire. Cecil saw something either flying through the water fall either on its way in or out of a cave but was not sure. They investigated the town hall and found the vault and a few other magic bits. They crossed a main thoroughfare and four ghosts appeared and started chanting a fell chant. The party started attacking them to no avail as lightning cut across the street hitting a few of them. Victor was knocked out and his dragon disappeared. Nimhe saw something strange when the lighting blasted, it seemed to come from a point in space lined with eyes and teeth. She blindly felt her way around and felt something warm, soft, and fluttery like a thousand eyelids blissfully opening and closing then the grazing of teeth passed by her hands. She grabbed it and attempted to grapple it. As she started compressing, it became visible and left a shell of itself in her grip having teleported away and behind the rest of the group, blasting them with more magic. The group beat the hell out of it and it kept jumping to another clone until Cecil was able to smash its core. They picked themselves up and went to check on Victor, finding the skin on his face mostly featureless and eyes white as pearl. He was a changeling or shadow man. Then Zamira stabbed him in his “god damned throat”, tied him up, and they interrogated him just short of torture. They found out quite a bit about the slave markets and strange creatures known as the formless. They made their way with him in tow to the water fall and into the cave. The cave was full of bones of a staggering number of creatures all with the same part of their skull missing as well as a pedestal with a strange black broken urn covered in eyes and teeth. The goblin smashed it into a fine powder and they left, sealing off the room. They rested and waited until the goblins, mushroom men, and survivors of Halfbuilt arrived.

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Upon a Dark Place: Part 1 Sessions 1-5

 

At the start of 2017 we started playing a game called Upon a Dark Place taking place in the Deep, or my worlds equivalent to the Underdark from Forgotten Realms or the Darklands from Pathfinder. The game world is entirely homebrew and modifications were made to some of the Pathfinder content to make sense story wise, creatures were altered, and bad guys customized. The adventures started around the city of Halfbuilt, a haven for the lost and forgotten of the Deep. 

Our party consisted of Nimhe the lamia grappler, Bastion the aaismar oracle of the heavens, Zamira the tiefling rogue, Cecil the goblin barbarian, Burf the deep gnome druid, and Wilbur the rat person alchemist. We have troubled pasts across the board, people that hate drow slavers, people hiding from past crimes, hiding from strange otherworldly monsters, or seeking revenge for lost family. 

When the adventure began, they were hunting troglodytes that had been attacking trade routes within the Deep. They were suspicious because they were offered more than the normal amount for such a base task. As they began their journey in the tunnels, they were able to catch one of the troglodyte patrols unaware and eradicated the threat before an alarm could be raised. They followed the trail to an old and no longer abandoned dwarven mining outpost and found the leader of the troglodytes as well as their devil spawn brethren. The battle was quick, finding the building full of strange devilish eggs. They crushed most of the eggs and Nimhe ate a few. On their return home, they encountered two friends from town fighting against trolls by the main entrance. They met Stonebreaker, a large sized bug person with an even for him oversized maul. Unlike his fellow bug people, Stonebreaker was severed from his old hive and was a mercenary within Halfbuilt. They made their way to Lord Halibar Nel Daxis Aldrabriane, their employer, to collect their reward which suspiciously seemed like too much money. He had given them a bonus as well as a new mission to accompany a goblin alchemist gunsmith, Torobor, back to her home cave to retrieve his order of firearms and mechanical wonders. They were also asked to drop off a parcel in a town they would be passing through to a friend of his, they did not ask any questions about this friend. The group grabbed supplies they knew they might need as well as things they just wanted to spend money on while wandering town. They met an enormous riding beetle named Black Bettie as well as bought pickles. They purchased much smaller riding beetles and sojourned into the Deep. There was much attempted flirtation with their new goblin boss, and she ignored most of it. She had two metal men constructs as well, her people were oddly gifted with magical science they used to create helpers for their various dangerous experiments with the dark powder that fueled their guns.

They passed sites where struggle was apparent and made camp in an easily defendable spot. After sharing stories around the cooking fire, they were attacks by large bug men that grew huge when shot at. These Trox seemed infected by some foul abyssal power. The party made quick work of the monsters, took a power nap, and broke camp after. They passed tunnels that looked carved out by giant worms and eventually found a large sized city with giant open adamantine doors. The city was empty of people and a large surface folk castle sat on a stone shelf above the common folk dwellings. The empty city was silent except for the sounds the party made as well as a distant irregular clicking sound. They investigated the castle and found a gargantuan purple and black scaled dragon slain on a throne and decided it was time to leave, only to be stopped by a weird floating man. He was wearing a dark verdant green cloak and introduced himself as Pullman. They attempted to cast magical spells at him but he countered with swarms of beetles, so they ran. As they fled, they made tactical decisions on routes and obstacles and made their way out of the city and back into the tunnels, sealing the exit with stone magics. Further and a few miles down the corridors they found themselves on a stone bridge crossing a deep chasm. As they started across, they heard odd strange warbling sounds and saw stone squids flying in the darkness. The squids and their master, a strange flying cloak like beast attacked the party and made off with one of their riding beetles. The party killed the monsters and broke the bridge in the process but were able to make it across before most of it fell into the abyss.

They finally made it to the goblin city of Noragast and spend three days resting and preparing for the return journey which would have to be a new route, the old one full of bugs and a broken bridge. Cecil and Wilbur worked on a new mount for Cecil, since monsters stole his riding beetle, the artisans of Noragast were more than happy to help. Together they made what looked like a stone and metal spider that would listen to Cecil’s commands and had some sort of hidden feature as well. While there they made friends with the goblins and recruited them to come to Halfbuilt and the empty city they saw on the way there. The goblins were on the lookout for a new home and agreed to come along, but a few days behind. The party and their escort of carts and a few more goblins made their way back to Halfbuilt. 

The group found a mushroom enclave with friendly mushroom men, but part of the party of skeptical of their alliances, where the others embraced them and welcomed them to come along. One party member, Bastion, did try to purify food on a mushroom child till he was convinced that might be a bad idea. Deeper into the darkness they found a group of slaver dwarves with some of their Halfbuilt allies in chains and combat ensued. They found a map maker gnome as well as another lamia that told a tale of a patchwork man trading items with her clan and shortly after all the men died. The party was joined by the now free Toppa, Lady Shar, and Tor. Their small army came to a large terrible smelling chamber with pools of not jade, but acid. About halfway across the chamber there was a triggered rockslide blocking the exit and gunshots as a rival gang of gunslingers attacked the party. The rockslide also woke the acid hydra sleeping in one of the pools. Chaos ensued, the rivals gun slingers were devoured, and eventually the acid spraying beast was put down. They cleared away the rocks and made their way back to Halfbuilt only to find it in ruins, still burning.

As a bonus chapter, session 5 was a flashback session, as to playing with a few players missing and wanting to save the big reveals and drama for the full group. The party encountered a group of Kobolds in the caverns being forced into labor by Ogres and their cruel secret master. The Kobolds were chained up to ogre task masters and forced to mine within a series of tunnels. The party did not like this arrangement and defeated the ogres, making sure not to hit the kobolds in the process. Eventually the ogre's boss showed up, a Gauntlin giant. Gauntlin are giants in my world that were cursed by a god to be forever hungry, they are just as strong as normal giants but thin, emaciated, and terrifying. This gauntlin also was missing an eye. The party made quick work of the giant and it's minions, freeing the kobolds. As a reward the kobolds gave the group a bag of holding as well as a token of respect they could show to other kobolds they found in the wild to show they were allies, not enemies. 

    Stay tuned for more tales!

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