Previously, in Nightwick Abbey...
Session 70 - 28th of September, 1392
This week's adventurers:
Mayfly (Magician 4)
Cherwe (Cleric 4)
Yevegniy the Coward (Cleric 4)
Verinka (Changeling 3)
Ulf (Magician 3)
Liminal Space (Changeling 3)
Krupe (Cleric 1)
Bluegum (Changeling 1)
Hirelings: Gutteral Noises, Ditl (Cleric 2)
Downtime in the Village
Liminal and Blossom have spent the past couple of weeks in search of a cure for Mechtilde. Blackleg to the south holds potential, as do rumors of a saint in the forest to the southeast, but as far as we know, the rebels who bested Lord Eckhard in battle still reside there. We decide instead to go to Lychgate to petition the Bishop for healing.
Hearing of our journey, Lord Eckhard pays the party 100sp to deliver a letter from him to the bishop, sealed with his was seal to prevent prying eyes.
Verinka, Krupe, and Bluegum all go carousing during the week. Verinka winds up hungover, Krupe offends the local church, and Bluegum loses all of her money and barely survives a poisoning attempt.
Fall has arrived in the world of Nightwick, the air is damp as we set out at dawn to go north to Lychgate, carrying Mechtilde along with us.
Early in the morning, not far outside of the village, our horses become agitated. Liminals' makes as if to run, but he calms it before it bolts off. The changeling smells a strange smell in the air that he once smelled when we encountered the werewolves previously, but this smell is somehow different.
A Foul Hunter
On our guard, we continue north. The rain eventually lets up, but a fog develops and visibility is reduced. We come to a fork in the road - to the north is the Witchfort, to the northwest is Vollage, beyond it, Lychgate. Sixteen boars lay in the road, dead. Their throats are bitten out, as if taken down by hunting dogs, but the corpses have been left in the road.
Liminal examines the corpses and discovers that it was human mouths that took down the boars! This doesn't seem like the tactics of the werewolves. Mayfly thinks some horrific creature has crawled out of the abbey while Ulf is concerned that something is on the prowl from the nearby Fog-Bound Forest.
A Funeral in Vollage
A trail of blood leads down the road from the boars, directly towards Vollage.
Seeking to avoid whatever it was, but still needing to spend the night in Vollage, we turn off the road, head southwest towards the river and follow it north to Vollage.
We arrive at night and find the village in a better state than last time we visited. It is still in the process of being rebuilt from the White Lady's attacks, but there are more new buildings than last time.
As we approach, we find a group of villagers, dressed in a mix of Realmish and Bogdani clothes, standing between the road and the river. They have built a funeral pyre and are cremating a corpse while singing a funeral song.
"Hello there, sorry for your loss. Who died?" Liminal inquires, tactfully.
The Bogdani recognize us as the heroes of Lychgate and invite us to drink with them.
The Hundprest
When pressed about their friend's death, they ask us if we've ever heard the legend of the Hundprest.
Mayfly has, he knows it as the shade of a horrid chaplain of the Sword Brothers who would hunt Bogdani women and children for sport.
This reminds us of the rooms in Nightwick Abbey depicting skeletons on horses hunting women and the nearby room with women's heads mounted on the wall.
They tell us that the Hundprest, once every month, leads a hunting group out, leading men who act as dogs and that he has a hunting lodge to the southwest where he resides. We suspect that the recently disappeared Realmish folk from Nightwick Village may have been "recruited" to be the Hundprest's dogs.
The dead Bogdani, Bogdan, was killed in the Hundprest's latest attack.
We debate going after the Hundprest, but definitely not with Mechtilde still paralyzed.
After much drinking with the locals, we go to bed in the inn and are briefly awaken in the early morning to the sound of dogs barking in the distance, but we soon fall back asleep.
To Lychgate
29th of September, 1392
Early in the morning on the road, Mayfly's palfrey gets a stone stuck in its shoe. Without someone equipped to fix it, we continue along, the horse hobbled slightly and make it to the city of Lychgate uneventfully in late afternoon.
Dealing with the van Toads
Liminal leads the way to the van Toad trading company to sell some silver masks and robe we took from some cultists and have been unable to sell in the village. Barcke van Toad, the head of the company in Lychgate, a great frogling who dresses as a Realmish noble, offers us 75% of the value of the item for a profit of 2250sp.
He also gives us very hoppy beer in exchange for rumors from Nightwick, for which we tell him about the Hundprest and the letter to the Bishop we are carrying.
This Frog Sounds Like Henry Kissinger, who is somehow still alive
He asks to inspect the letter and takes out a jeweler's loop to examines it. Barcke van Toad sends a guard out to fetch something and he returns with an identical Nightwick seal as was used on the letter. With this seal, we are free to open the letter and reseal it with the Bishop being none the wiser.
The letter details the Lord's defeat at the hands of a group he calls the Yimslyites and requests reinforcements from the Bishop to help him defend the village and then push to attack the rebels.
Sure, Let's Defraud the Bishop. That's a Good Idea
Liminal and Barcke come up with a way to profit off of this information: we could hire the Corbies before going to the Bishop, inform him they're already hired when he will want to hire them, and then tell him that they will release their contract for a fee. Barcke will take half a cut of the profit in exchange for his silence.
As we leave, Barcke leaves us with a warning, "If you do not bring me my half by noon tomorrow. Then certain parties in the city will know you're here..."
Glamors of the Big City
We enter the city and pay the entry tax, including an additional 5sp "bad news tax" for bringing bad news to the Bishop from Nightwick. The guards at the city gate make us leave our large weapons at the gate and the non-clerics have the leave their plate armor as well.
We go off in search of the Corbies as night falls and eventually find their leader, Gaunta Fatstaff.
We hire his party for 1,500sp to fight the rebels in the south and spend the night in the Corbies' camp.
Meeting the Bishop
30th of September, 1392
In the morning, we wash up at the local bathhouse and then head to the Bishop's palace with the letter.
Most of the party elects to stay outside, but Liminal and Ulf go in to the solar, where the Bishop currently is.
He is very unhappy at the news from Nightwick, but still provides his healing services for Mechtilde for 1,000sp. He also pays us 3,500sp for the Corbies, under the impression that it will all go to them, to get them to fight for Nightwick. We depart Lychgate, lie to the Froglings that we only recieved 3,000sp, give him his 750sp share, and return to Nightwick with the Corbies in tow.
Our final haul for the session was 2500sp profit, 312sp each, and 0xp (we didn't recover any of the money from the dungeon). Most importantly, we learned about the Hundprest and healed Mechtilde.
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