Session 3: Spooky Woods & Mountain Jerks.

Part 1.

The party departs the Lonely Goat early in the morning, opting to save their cash and not purchase mounts. They spend the better part of a day leaving The Fields of Amber. The path to the mountains is heavily forested and they reach the woods around nightfall. The woods are very spooky and theres like, a lot of owls.

Deciding to find a spot to camp for the evening, the party wanders off the trail only to be met by a voice in the dark.

"Stay back you fiends!"

So theres a knight sitting at a campfire wearing this really old, worn armor that's covered in crests that nobody recognizes. And the party is like, whoa, relax my dude we're not here to do you dirty just looking to camp it up in these woods. The knight relaxes a bit and relates to them his story. He says that he's the last left from an expedition to the West to get medicine for his town, which he says is about a days journey away and beset by terrible disease. Around now Ovaria leans into the rest of the party and is like-

"Can't we just fucking murder this fossil?"

Which is a thing you say when you're the only chaotic evil member of the party, but the rest of them are like...nah.

But they do go through his stuff while he spends some time monologuing and find some pots of medicine hidden in the back of his cart that I think I described as "really old" because I wasn't playing my clues too close to my chest for this one.

So The knight keeps talking and name dropping a bunch of stuff that some good rolls confirm the party has no fucking clue about. And it's about now that Ted, who's playing an Eldritch Knight named Vorador Twitchel says

"I bet he's an unstuck from time Kilgore Trout ghost knight"

And of course he was because thats exactly the kind of shit I'm always peddling in my games, and so I panic and move on to the next bit of the encounter because for some reason I didn't think they would get it that fast because most of the time there has to be a neon sign to get the party to clue in on something that isn't a weird fixation they have on a jar that I described too well.

So there's a noise in the woods and some arrows come flying and one hits the knight in the leg and then he's like

"AROOOO I'm a kill you bandits and save my toooooooown"

And the party is just sitting there while he grabs his sword and he's like

"To arms my comrades!"

But they're like, let's see how this plays out and do nothing and of course the ghosts do a ghost fight with each other and one of the bandits attacks the party and it's sword goes through them in what would have been a big reveal if I cared more about developing an air of mystery but mostly it was good comedy and the knight got murdered by the bandits and the whole scenario of the bandits looting his shit played out and then I started to think on my feet and decided that this whole scenario would play on a loop. 

So now it's Groundhog Day + Unstuck from time + the knight at the end of Last Crusade and the party watches the whole scenario play out a bunch of times through the night and starts doing MST3K style riffing of it like its a bad movie and there was much merriment yada yada.

The next day they take the medicine* into the town (which is rubble because the ghost was from like 300 years ago) and they put it on the alter in the church and a bunch of children's ghosts fly out of the church and on the breeze they here the crusty old knight say

"Thaaaaaaanks"

And that was a hex and it took about an hour. Oh and the party searched the rubble of the town and found a box with some weird cubes that caused various minor magical effects like flashes and steam and stuff (Thank's for all the random loot over the years Vornheim)

*It was hidden so the bandit's didn't find it and just took the Knight's armor and food.

Here's my rules for Ghosts real quick:

Ghosts are created when a creature dies with unfinished business in a particularly magically charged area.

Ghosts cannot speak of their misfortune for they do not know it.

Ghosts cannot leave the place where their blood was spilled.

Ghosts are free to leave this plane when their task is complete.

Part 2.

The party sets off once again and begins to traverse the Gaptooth Mountains and after about a half day's march they find themselves at The Bridge Keep.

like this but without the waterfall.

They make their way across the first half of the bridge and meet the nice man (think Billy Eichnor) who extorts you for a lot of money so you can cross and he informs them that it's 50g per person and when they don't have enough to cross he's like

"I don't care"

So they try a lot of hijinks to get try and get past, but it didn't work because this is the kind of place designed to foil all of your hijinks with bows and arrows and rocks and hot oil and get your cash so I got to say no a lot and I made the guy SUPER rude and sarcastic so the players REALLY hated him. After about 3 or 4 hijinks he informs the party that theres a rowboat back a the beginning of the bridge down a precarious set of stairs and wishes them luck rowing across The Lake of Tears.

They all vow to murder him someday and climb in the rowboat.

They make it about halfway across the lake and I let them know that there's (obviously) something swimming up from below at them. So it's at this point that my players start to play a little game called:

GUESS WHAT THE DM IS ABOUT TO THROW AT US

After cycling through all the pop culture references they can think of (Krakens, Eels, Etc) I yelled at them all and said it wasn't going to be ANYTHING THEY COULD POSSIBLY GUESS. (which was a total lie because it was evil mermaids) and I considered making it like 30 regular horses just to fuck with them but accidentally perfectly described Old Gregg without realizing what I was doing.

So then Old Gregg The Evil Mermaid told them that it's people also required tolls and that they could pay with

1. Newborn babies blood
2. Everyone's left eye
3. A bottle of wine

And after a meticulous combing of their character sheets for wine (all they had was brandy) and a realization that they all really like their eyes somebody threw one of the weird cubes they picked up in the village at the mermaids head and it got distracted and they did a rowboat chase and made it to the shore and climbed up the cliffside because more than half the party has Spider Climb I guess.

Another hex completed and I did not expect for this blog post to be this long.

Thanks for hanging in there.

BONUS CONTENT

Dungeon Room

"The First Guess"

"The room is an unassuming 30x30 feet with pattern printed tile walls, floor and ceiling. The first character to guess the gimmick of the room is absolutely correct and whatever they say happens, happens. If no one makes a guess by the time the party has made it through the room, a treasure chest containing Type A loot will appear in the center of the room. The party can poke and prod the room however they like without invoking the "curse" as long as no one says "I bet its X" or a similar phrase.