Sunday, February 5, 2023

Nightwick Abbey - Session 43 - Making Friends in the Dark Country

 Previously in Nightwick...

Mayfly's new friend.

Session 43 - 2nd of Duodecember, 1391

This week's adventurers:

Blossom (Rogue 4)

Mayfly (Magic-User 3)

Sotar (Cleric 4)

Liminal Space (Changeling 2)

Mechtild (Fighter 2)

Yevgeniy the Coward (Cleric 1)

Verinka (Changeling 1)

Hirelings: Gerung Floating Disk (MU 1), Ticze (Changeling 1), Heyno, Elger, Ditl, Gele, Mikush


Downtime in the Village

We're back! After two weeks off, we're ready to cause some more havoc in the world of Nightwick Abbey (and there's a spot open to join us). Liminal blew all of him money of a feast, even going into debt, but came out of it enriched and inspired by the fine foods (he gained 3 max HP from his downtime activity). Verinka spent the week getting rumors and learned that the road to Lychgate is dangerous, often frequented by pigmen and elves. 

Fortunately, we're heading to Lychgate today! The Lady of Nightwick has fallen pregnant immediately after giving birth to a son. Rumor is, among the midwives and clergy, is that the child is a devilman or changeling. We are going up to Lychgate today to petition the Prince-Bishop for help, as there are no Clerics in Nightwick village strong enough to help the Lady. As we pack up and arrange ourselves for the journey, Sotar remembers he has a hireling - the peasant Gele and so brings her along.

Hexcrawling!

We depart to Lychgate early in the morning, but have not been traveling long when Blossom, scouting ahead, spots a group of froglings breaking camp, having an angry discussion among themselves. There's around 10 of them, with ponies and plate armor. We decide they're probably not bandits and approach cautiously. Liminal Space greets them warmly and we learn that they're out here hunting the bandits of Handsome Klaus and are upset at how cold it is out here (they are cold-blooded after all). We help them break camp and they offer to pay us with 2 ponies if we take down the bandits for them.

Mechtild's player then reveals he is afraid of horses. This snowballs into a discussion concerning (in order)

  • The differences between ponies and horses
  • Pigs
  • Hurricane Katrina
  • The similarities between beagles and pigs
  • Did Paris Hilton make her own species of dog?
  • Hogs again
  • Cuttlefish news

At some point during this conversation, the froglings get tired of waiting around in the cold and go their own way, off to kill some bandits. This is fine with us, as 2 ponies was probably not enough to entice us to abandon our quest on behalf of the Lady of Nightwick.

A New Friend?

Blossom continues to scout ahead for us as we continue north. She reaches the crossing between Vollage and the Witchfort first. There's no one there, but as she turns around, she bumps into an old woman. She asks the woman where's she's from and where she's going, but only receives a curt "None of your business!" from the old woman as the rest of the party approaches the crossing. Liminal Space, who's here for a good but not a long time, tries to grab the woman, shouting "I caught you - now you owe me a wish!" but fails to get a hold of her. 

Some of the party suspect we've met this woman before. Liminal tries to trade a random skull he held onto from Nightwick Abbey with her, but she's relatively uninterested. We then notice a coffin on the road by her. Either it just appeared or we missed it horribly as we approached the woman (or the GM forgot to mention it earlier, but surely not). The witch seems interested in soul stones - the currency of demons - and Mayfly still has some. He offers them to her in exchange for a scroll of Fireball. She asks for five stones, Mayfly demands to inspect the scroll first. The witch turns herself into a towering vulture-like creature, takes Mayfly's sack of soul stones, gives him the scroll, and hop in her coffin and flies away. Afterwards, Mayfly reveals that he only had 3 soul stones in the sack.

"Cheating a Witch, That's Good"

The party continues on and shortly before we reach Vollage, we come across ~10 corpses of heavily armored men-at-arms wearing the livery of Lychgate. They're wearing plate armor heavily damaged by cuts from iron claws and they have all had their groins destroyed. Someone in the party remembers that the witch Good Gallows (who we surely just met with) is infamous for this method of killing. She also hates brides and is scared of geese. 

"Good luck," Liminal Space tells Mayfly. Maybe his mentor Halfdan the Black can help him deal with a cheated witch. We identify the men a the Badgermen or Bader's Boys from their badges. We take the time to collect the Badgermen badges, so as to offer evidence in Lychgate of their demise. We also scavenge their armor and come up with 2 usable sets of full plate and 600sp. While the plate armor is worth 1,000sp for a single set, they also represent significant defensive power for a hireling or new party member. We finally arrive in Vollage, late at night and make our way to the inn where we sleep soundly in the crowded common room, all our genitals intact.

Lychgate: Bronze and Heresies

In the morning, we coin the idea of using a Waffle House menu as a die drop table, which I promise you I will do one day. That day (3rd of Duodecember) the weather is horrible, cold, rainy, and low visibility. We briefly debate waiting for it to pass and wonder if it could be the work of a witch, but decide to go on toward Lychgate nonetheless. 

We make it to the city without obstacle just as the rain turns to freezing mist. Blossom finds cheap lodging for us - The Brazen Strumpet. Inside, the party members of a more sensible taste recoil, as they see the inn's central decoration - a statue that looks like it was made by pouring molten bronze over a living being. We gather in a corner of the inn, away from said strumpet, and discuss our plans for tomorrow. 

The two clerics would be the best ones to approach the Prince-Bishop of Lychgate for help, but, as Sotar and Yevgeniy both believe the God of Law is a cube and not a sphere and serve the Eastern Church, they are technically considered heretics in the Dark Country of the Western Church. This wasn't a problem the last time Sotar spoke with the Bishop, but that could be due to the fact that it was the feast day of St. Ralph the Liar and the Bishop was in a particularly good mood, or perhaps the GM forgot that aspect of Sotar's background at the time. Regardless, we hope the Bishop will be amicable to our mission, if not to us personally, and Sotar and Yevgeniy walk off together, contemplating the goodness of vertices, edges, and flat sides.

A Good Night's Rest  at the Strumpet

This was a pretty good hexcrawl for us. We didn't have to fight anything and Mayfly potentially gains a huge boost in power once he scribes that scroll (he wrote about his side of the exchange on his blog: I Cast Light). The plate, too can either be sold or used to equip the party. If things work out with the Bishop, we could potentially gain significant goodwill with the Lord of Nightwick. The only thing to worry about is how to deal with a cheated witch. Perhaps we can buy some geese in Lychgate...

Treasure gained:

600sp

2 sets of Plate (1,000sp ea.)

Fireball Scroll (Mayfly)


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