Last time, the group defeated a beastly ogre in the Merchant District of the abandoned Imperial town of Harzgard, and they acquired a magical wooden statuette of a bear. The statue can be transformed into the Elder Bear: a mystical, horned bear whose breath can cause plants to wither and decay. The gate into the eastern district of the town was bound up by oversized vines, so they had the Elder Bear kill the vines, allowing them to pass through to a new area of town.
I designed the town like a video game: limit your access to one zone within the town, until you find the “key” that opens up a new zone. I think if I designed an adventure area as big as this one again, I would break it up into more, smaller zones, with different “key” items to give you access to new zones. But this town only has three zones: The Merchant District (where they started), the Military District (where they’re going now), and the Governor’s District (where they want to go but haven’t yet).
They passed through the gate to the Military District, and they saw a very different place. The Merchant District was a ruined town, with half-destroyed buildings throughout much of it. The Military District looked comparatively pristine, with most of the buildings apparently intact, but with a thin layer of moss over most of it.
The streets of the Military District were arranged in three concentric loops, with smaller streets linking them. The loops surround a prominent stone building, which quickly become a target for the characters.
After a brief exploration, including searching some storehouses and finding a bigger, better cart for themselves, they decided to head back to a settlement to recover.
This time, they didn’t go to the city of Sole Harbor. Instead, they met a couple of members of “Elmore’s Rangers” on the road. Elmore’s Rangers guarded the roads in the area against bandits — while asking for a small donation from travelers. They were invited to stayed at the rangers’ camp.
At the camp, they met the rangers and several other folks living at the camp, including some hunters, a human named Samuel — an adherent of The Book who made protective amulets, and Vilmar — a dwarf from one of the Hordes.
Vilmar was, in fact, from the same Horde as Agorak (our orc pilgrim), though Vilmar left before Agorak was born. Vilmar was a berserker — a warrior who entered a trance-like state in battle — who fought against the Empire in the war. He regretted refusing to work with non-Horde rebels in the war, so he resolved to teach others his berserker trance techniques. It’s like a yoga class, but with sudden yelling.
Lendel — our gnome magician from the metropolitan lands of the Spire — decided to get trained as a berserker. He’s not a particularly smart magician, but he is strong, so being a berserker seems a good idea.
The gang stayed in the camp for about a month (that’s how long Lendel’s training took), then went back to Harzgard, to explore the Military District more deeply. This time, they entered town through the eastern gate, which was blocked by a massive tree. The Elder Bear’s breath causes the tree to recede enough to give them a path through.
Through the gate, they were surprised to find a forest. A complete forest had grown inside the walls of the Military District of Harzgard. They walked forth into the woods, dense and foggy, and they likely would have gotten lost, if not for the fact that Tony was a pathfinder — he had selected the Pathfinder vagabond skill, which means he never gets lost, always knows which way is north, and always knows the way to the nearest settlement. Tony guided them westward, toward the part of the town they explored.
They were accosted by a pooka (horse-headed, super fast, shapeshifting fairy), a spridjan (a wood fairy) and a walking tree. This was an imperfect, but entertaining, fight. Jana (Agorak’s warrior follower) quickly dispatched the pooka with her spear skills. For as much trouble as the earlier pooka fight gave them, this seemed quite funny. The spridjan quickly inflated itself, becoming bigger and stronger, and lurked in the branches of the walking tree.
Mostly, the tree pummeled our heroes. I mostly regret giving it such a good Armor Class. I have a clear system for determining a monster’s AC now. Big creatures are easier to hit, small creatures harder to hit, very slow creatures easier, very quick creatures harder. Then, some creatures have natural armor enhancing their AC, which can be broken by some attacks (like normal armor). I designed the walking tree before I figured this out, and its AC is way too good. It’s big and slow. It should have natural armor from bark and branches, but that’s it. It should be easy to hit, but with lots of hit points.
Between the tree and the spridjan, the group was beaten up pretty good, but Forram (our saber-wielding ettin magician) was able to dramatically slay the tree. Jana took a beating, but she’s an effective “tank”, and she made it through. The fight was good, but it could have been better. They were definitely frustrated (but in a fun way, I think) that they fought so hard and had to use up a lot of resources (like healing potions), and they didn’t even find any treasure.
They pushed through the forest and even saw the overgrown remains of some buildings, as if the forest had grown straight through the buildings. They reached the edge of the forest, and found the intact town they recognized.
They found themselves in a quaint neighborhood just swarming with geese.
The geese weren’t aggressive or dangerous, but if agitated, the geese would honk, potentially drawing attention from dangerous creatures. They explored the few houses where the geese were focused. First, the house of a strange obsessive man (now dead), where they found his journal and his “research”: dozens of bottles of ordinary water and a spell book he wrote. The spell was called Goose Mastery. He learned to summon geese.
They also found a house that had rocks jutting through the floor, revealing a spring. They observed a couple of geese drink from the spring and immediately become big, beefy and muscular. Lendel drank from it, and geese started following him. They could not predict what the spring would do, but it was definitely magic. No one else wanted to risk drinking from the spring.
Cowards.
Next time, we’ll talk about Cultures selected during character creation, and after that, our heroes encounter another ghost! She’s pretty cool, though.