14th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We let Captain Darren know that we are going to be heading off. We shop for some horses and supplies.

This is a portrait of Vondal based on his look from Captain Darren's party.

13th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We are under house arrest for killing Hondal, while Captain Darren searches for evidence. We decide it is definitely time to get going. Towards the end of the day, we are told we are free.

The painting today is Vorest, as she was for Captain Darren's party. 

12th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We go to the address we found yesterday. There are cultists here, which we take out quickly, though Vorest gets pretty badly hurt. We search upstairs and find a letter addressed to us. We bring it to Captain Darren's to open it up. Maybe it'll have evidence - it's for sure from Hondal.

Vandederp opens it and it says:

Then the letter explodes.

Captain Darren is annoyed. We are annoyed. Barnaby runs in and announces that his troops are being attacked by zombies, where they are burying Crymson Starr.

Vorest summons war horses so we can keep up to Barnaby. We get to the grave yard and see 14 zombies overtaking the guards that stayed. We beat the zombies and the guards say that some zombies took Crymson's corpse off with them.

We follow the zombies and catch up to them, as well as some cultists. We beat them and then burnt Crymson and the zombies. After this we start tracking the cultist that ran off during the fight. We follow the trail back to the city, where we lose it. 

We go to Captain Darren, where everything has gone crazy. Apparently Lord Thadeus was attacked by zombies at the temple of Ilmater, where he was saved by Hondal.

While talking about how weird the zombies behaved, we walked to the temple. We wonder around and then walk through the market and find Gwyneth. She mentions that she has gotten on with "Master Kensingley," and that he has shown her the "way" and insists on bringing us to meet him.

She brings us to a nice house. She acts like this is her house. She runs off to another room and shuts the door behind her. She comes back and beckons us on. The room is big, and there are balconies and doors.

And we see Gwyneth casting a spell and Hondal shouting down.

Well. Damn.

We manage to beat them, but Hondal has escaped. Again. Vondal is going mad trying to find secret passages. Vorest says that he could have possibly gone in the stone floor with a spell.

We wait, and Hondal eventually comes out of the ground. We beat him up, and Vondal mentions that Vorest should try Moonbeam on him. She does, her last spell, and he bubbles and burns to a crisp. We worriedly told Captain Darren. He searched Hondal's house and found dead people and an altar to Loviatar, and, eventually, thanked us.

11th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We go ad check out Hondal's soup kitchen (instead of his orphanage). We see that a dozen or so beggars, all varieties of people. There appears to be a halfling in charge. Vandederp speaks up and Miriah, the halfling, suggests going to the back to be put to work. Vandederp also introduces us. I stay out front and help serve - the others go to the back. They tell me after that they are put to work by Guy, and that he says Hondal spends quite a lot of money on food to help them. Miriah and I serve all the people. I ask about Hondal, and she says that he is really good at getting donations. I ask if she knows anything about the orphanage and she mentions it is just "over there." He seems to care about the poor. He has even gotten some of the meaner lords to donate. After everyone leaves, I realize that Miriah looks worried. She mentions there are normally more people and that she was hoping to see Gwyneth, a girl who was having troubles at home. I offer to ask after her - a human with raven hair, white skin, and a birth mark on her temple. She likes to hang out around the market.

We decide to head to the market. We don't find her, but we do find someone wearing a Loviatar symbol. Vondal tracked him to a house. He comes back to us, and tells us about the house. We go back to get armour and such, and then return to the house. Vondal listens at the door and then opens it up. We follow him in. We are attacked by some cultists. One of them has another address on them.

We update Captain Darren on our adventures, and head back to the inn.

10th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We go to the salon to get fancied up. It is very weird. Vandederp gets polished up. Vondal gets braids done. Vorest gets her hair done to look wild, like her hair is branches. I get my horns buffed and a simple elegant updo. 

A carriage comes for us and we head to the nice part of town. The houses are HUGE. Captain Darren meets us outside. He brings us inside and he is announced. Captain Darren whispers to the page, and then we are announced, as the heroes of Kelethoen.

We are greeted by a lanky fellow who seems happy, and surprised, to see Captain Darren. His name is Thadeus Stormshield. His eyes catch my attention, they are lilac coloured. Captain seems quite at ease with him. We go around and meet many other people - Lady Gwendoline and her son Renwick Starsong, Pikesworn, Jebeto Often, who is a gnome, Barion Elfdonus, who is a high elf, Judge Donald Olearson, Lady Millicent Greytower, Magus Aleria, another high elf, Abbot Warren Traderson, who worships Waukeen. There are many, many more - and I don't remember them. I am not one to remember so many people in such a short amount of time!

We eat and chit chat with those who will. Captain Darren leaves and asks us to behave - I believe we are doing well! Thadeus comes back with Hondal - who acts like he does not know us. He mentions that he's opened a soup kitchen and we, innocently, of course!, ask if we could help. It is located on Summerslee Way. After a while Hondal re-approaches without witness, and points out that we haven't done anything to hurt his operations in Kelethoen, and saunters away again. 

Captain Darren comes back and asks how our evening is going and is surprised to hear that Hondal is *the* Hondal. He asks that we have evidence before we make a move, as he is favoured by many in the upper classes of Kelethoen. 

The night gets later, and eventually we head back to the inn.

9th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We take Crymson's corpse to Captain Darren's. He thanks us and takes Crymson. As we go to make our leave, he speaks up, awkwardly - he is clearly having a very hard time saying whatever it is he wishes to say. Eventually, he asks us to come to a soirée, a birthday party as it were, where he could also present us as heroes of Kelethoen to the other lords. 

We accept, and after getting some recommendations, we head out to go shopping. We make appointments at a salon to get cleaned up. We also manage to find some fancier clothes and we sell some things to Cedric (he really does appear everywhere!). We also manage to find some fancy looking swords, because the guys didn't want to be completely weaponless.

8th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We wake. We go to the building in the center, it's a large warehouse. Everything is boarded up. We walk around and see the other archer from before, but he also sees us, and ducks into an alley. We follow him. We see him drink a potion and jump in the sewer. I chase him, and he is stupid fast. I follow until he goes up and then I return to tell the others where he ended up going.

Vondal heads up and into a dark warehouse. That gets bright quick. The archer had run up a rope ladder in the center, onto a floating floor. Crymson is also there, and stood with a bottle of thick red potion.

We are in trouble. We fight and manage to kill everyone, except one scout, when Crymson screamed bloody murder and vanished through her magic doorway.

They had been well prepared for us. There were scouts and thugs everywhere and they were ready to kill us from a distance. There was eve a point when a demon was conjured (though Vondederp did really quick work of him). I think he was a fiery gorilla - all I saw was he was red. 

We took the scout prisoner. We need to talk to Captain Darren about this. While we were looking around we also found a scroll, to create an abysmal tear, I think, and it sounds like we did a lot of the dirty work - basically there need to be 10 people killed on 10 nights in specific places, "annointed" - like we did today. Below us a strange red, cold "fire ball" appears.

We go see Captain Darren and talk about the scrolls and what we saw. He mentions that there were circles at the other sites in the map star. We choose a site on the star and head there. We heal up and set up for a fight.

Crymson comes this night - and we manage to interrupt her spell. She brings up a three armed mouth nightmare, but we still manage to beat them. We rest for the remainder of the night.

7th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We let Captain Darren know his problem has been dealt with. He says we'll join Barnaby's team in their raid on a warehouse, coordinating at 2 in the afternoon. 

We arrive at the warehouse. Barnaby sends the other 4 to the back, and we enter the front.

The people inside try to destroy something by fire, which I stop. We beat everyone up and save the papers, which look like they are detailing their slave trade operations. 

We go back to Captain Darren's and he marks up the map a bit more. There are locations they were told to look for Crymson. The dots look like a star, as Vondal pointed out. Captain Darren asks if we can check out the middle buildings tomorrow.

We head back to the inn, when we are attacked by 6 thugs. While fighting them, Crymson brings an air elemental to the party. I go to chase her, and she jumps to different roofs. The others destroy her elemental and she runs through a magical door. 

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

We return to the inn to rest.

6th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We go to the guardhouse and we are greeted by ALL the guards. We are warned by them about the Captain. He was attacked by the lady in red at his home during the night. Her name is Crymson Starr. She's been here for months. She's been in the Warehouse District. We probably ran into her a few times. She has a couple jobs going - but freed her men, including Paldo Daggerfell. Captain asks us to take him out, discretely if possible, at the Lucky Badger - a frequent haunt.

We set up an ambush location and I got on the roof to look out, and watch the inn. When he comes out, with guards, I manage to lure them into our trap. We manage to beat them, but I was quite hurt. That's quite frustrating!

Then we hid the bodies in the sewer and tidied up a bit. Vorest let the rats know there was some fresh food.

And then we went home for the night.

 

5th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

After lunch (because of all the excitement early this morning!), we head to Captain Darren's office. We see Boris in the main office. He shoves us into the captain's office.

He hasn't had a chance to really interrogate the prisoners, but they were close-mouthed on the way to jail. He asks us to join him in an attempt to get some information.

We head down to the cells. Everyone looks angry. Captain Darren says that they were just like this last night. He asks a bunch of questions and it's like talking to a wall. 

We suggest talking to the oil covered guy. He mentions that he can't say her name, though he would like our protection. We hear a huge *CRACK* while talking about how he needs out. It's in the other room. I stay with the prisoner, while everyone runs off.

The wall in the cell I'm in vanishes. I rush in between the oily fellow and the missing wall. Through it I can see Captain Darren and Vondal. There's a stone elemental being controlled by a lady in a red cloak. The elemental goes to attack Vandederp. We beat the elemental and the lady runs off and jumps in the sewer. Vandederp jumps down but he can't tell where she went. He comes back up. We head back to Captain Darren and he mentions that there have been reports of a person with a red cloak - in the market, in the warehouse district, just all over. 

We say we're going to try the sewers. Captain Darren wishes us well, and beware.

We go into the sewers and Vorest leads, but we get lost and then are attacked by gross looking people. 

We exit the sewers and head back to the inn, defeated.

 

4th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We fine tune our plan. Vorest plans to hide inside the warehouse. I will take out the roof guard and Vondal and Vanderderp go through the doors. 

We nap and get ready to go.

We head in a bit after midnight, and there is no guard. There is a guy tied up, in oil, in the center of the room. Once the guys break down the doors, guys come out from different buildings, archers and thugs. The archers have flame arrows, which I snuff before we go to start fighting. We manage to beat them, and they are dragged into the building, as I run off to get the captain.

We return and all the people are tied up. We explain what happened and Vorest pipes up that 3 guys carried in the pre-tied up guy. He fought and they smacked him, and poured oil on him. The tied up guy had screamed for forgiveness.

Captain Darren comments on a new thieves guild. He takes them and invites us to talk tomorrow. 

We return to the inn for what's left of the night.

 

3rd of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

Go and talk to Captain Darren about the orcs and if there are any plans in regards to the 5th of Mirtul. Barnaby is manning the front desk and trying to deal with an upset farm hand.  Barnaby shoos us into the back to the Captain. We let him know that the orcs were dead. He is concerned with the amount of orcs around.

Then he pulls out the letter and says that he has no ideas. And asks if we can help him. We say sure. 

We go back to the inn and argue the best way to scout it out. We decide that Vorest should change into a mouse and check it out. Vorest heads out and we sit and wait.

After a while, she heads back and tells us: There's and apothecary on one side and an animal feed store on the other. Across Weasel there are two story tenements. There is a guard on the roof, he is a high elf. Behind the warehouse there is a crate hiding the symbol from the note. There are doors on the front and back and a hatch on the roof. The warehouse is VERY empty. 

We spend the rest of the day planning.

 

2nd of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We went back to the altar room and continue exploring. We go down a hallway and Vorest tells us that we are passing doors that no one can see. We enter and see mold devoured art. The mold likes the torch that we lit, so we leave it there with the mold. 

We enter another room with a chapel for Skoraeus Stonebones. Vorest recognized him. 

We return to the room with the giant circle. Vondal opens (eventually) the iron door, by pick axing the wall. It leads downstairs. We head down and find some rooms. One appears to be a lab, but it is split in two, with bars. On the far side are 6 statues, one with a necklace. Vondal shoots some firebolts and they come to life. We whack them through the bars, but some others break through the door. We beat them back and looked around. 

In the next room, we find a circular space, with a sarcophagus in the center. There are 4 armed armour stands at the corners. And the braziers flared to life. The armour stands headed towards us, with their swords floating on their own.

Vondal opens the sarcophagus and loots it. We rest for a bit to heal up a little. We also figured out the magical armour and staff. 

We head upstairs and leave. We get Lilac and start going back to Kelethoen and head back to the inn.

 

1st of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We explore more. We enter a room covered in mud. As we enter, the mud starts moving. A whole bunch of mud things get up. They were super annoying - if they got mud on you, you would be stuck. We managed to beat them.

We continue and find another room. A jail cell covered in ash. I look at the pallet, and Vandederp trips a fire trap and the room lights up. There is nothing in the ashes. There is another door that gets opened.  

We go and find a library where the orcs were burning books, in a campfire. There is a dead orc in here, by another door. His head is cleanly chopped off. I find some books I think Stefan would like. Vondal opens the other door in the room. Vondal finds some treasures, and a saddle, and another trap (the one that decapitated the orc). He gets a nasty looking cut from it, but gets out safely.

We continue, and find a pick ax that appears to have been used to extend the tunnels.

We return to the barred door and Vondal attacks it with the pick ax that we found. We enter the room. It's a really big room with an altar and pews. There are some neat statues up near the ceiling. As we enter, 3 of the statues start moving. I ran up to one of them and we all managed to kill them, but we took a fair bit of damage. Vorest healed us, but we are still going to rest in the library.

 

Greengrass Holiday, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We find the orc "house" (previously belonging to cultists of some sort). We enter and find a bit of a maze. You can see a lot of big rooms. We find 6 orcs and what I imagine are 3 lady orcs. 4 more orcs and a leader comes and helps the fight. We manage to beat them. 

We continue exploring. We find an orc room, presumably the leader's, and loot it. We continue exploring, and find a door that appears to be barricaded. 

We decide to take a long rest in the leader's room. 

We return to the door and start clearing the barricade. We go in and see a circle with fancy sigils (I don't think religious ones?) and 3 boulders - and 1 very flat orc. Vondal says he thinks it's a summoning circle, maybe, and Vorest says that there are earth-ish sigils.

Vandederp and Vondal try to open the stone door (avoiding the circle). It is stuck, so they go to the iron door, and wake up a stone. It now looks like a stone guy. After fighting it a bit, it wakes up the other rocks. We manage to beat them and Vondal ran across the circle to see if anything happened. Nothing does.

Vondal breaks down the stone door and charges in, yelling "Orcs!" We beat them up.

We explore more. We find a giant purple mushroom in a room that looks like a kitchen.

More exploring. We find some blue and white spiders. They seem to pop in and out of existence.

As we are leaving, Vondal walked into a gelatinous blob. We pause for the night (after getting rid of the blob).

 

30th of Tarsakh, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We go to Captain Darren's office. Gilbert hasn't shown up for work. Captain Darren asks us to join him on a walk to Gilbert's house. We arrive at his house, and asks us to guard the back. I go up to watch from the roof. Vondederp and Vondal are asked to open the door. Captain Darren goes in and upstairs, and finds Gilbert stabbed in the chest, with a curved dagger. Gilbert has no tattoo. 

 We head back to Captain Darren's office. He asks us for help on the 5th of Mirtul, as well as help with the orcs, right away.

 We get Lilac, and head out.

 In the evening, we are greeted by a bunch of orcs. We destroy them, but they did hurt us. We stop for the night.

 

29th of Tarsakh, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We are heading through town and Guntor runs up to us. He says that there will be slavers coming at midnight. We decide to inform Captain Darren, with Vondal and Guntor grumbling. Vondal told Gilbert that we would stop the slavers after they got in the city.

We set up near the gate. Some thugs have appeared. Slavers come and we attack. The thugs and guards join the fight with the slavers, so we also fight them - but make sure to just knock them out.

After the fight, more guards join and get the captain. The captain claims to not have known, even though we had told Gilbert.

Captain Darren was disturbed. There are a lot of curved dagger tattoos on the slavers, and some of the guards. He asks us to come by at 9am to help him speak with Gilbert. 

Good guards, Jeremiah and Roderick show us a note:

 

Guntor goes to the Sleeping Goblin for the night. We go to our normal inn.

28th of Tarsakh, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

Vondal and Vandederp go shopping for armour. Vorest and I go talk to Stefan.

We talk to Stefan and he tells us that he has heard some tales and found some information that might be of interest. He had sent missives to colleagues out east, and one of them had a story to tell.

"As the story goes, Huăngyán Shān (Huangyan Shan) was a great and powerful wizard warrior, but is home was located near a Demon Pit. Year after year, attacks came and Shan barely fended them off, but they were taking their toll on him and his family. So, in desperation, he summoned Admodeus and bound him using a ki technique called Binding of Law. Once bound, Shan offered Asmodeus a deal: teach Shan and his 5 sons to fight demons, and in return, Shan would fight demons here, on Toril, and teach generations after as well. For Shan knew that Asmodeus hated demons and would be most grateful for a chance to have humans fighting the battles as well. Asmodeus agreed and produced a contract which Shan signed.

"So great was Shan's mastery, that Asmodeus taught him all of the elemental forms in 1 week, which Shan then passed on to his sons. When he was done, Asmodeus then laughed and boasted: "Now you shall come with me to fight the demons."

"Shan expressed mild shock: "I said I would fight them here."

"Asmodeus grinned evilly and said: "What you signed was to fight demons *in* here, and here happens to be a little place I named In Nessus, and these are not demons, these are devils." and he snapped his fingers and the now revealed Devil Pit closed.

"Shan knew then that he had been tricked, but he was not unprepared for this. He then pointed out: "I see, but you only get me when you've taught me and my 5 sons. And I do not have 5 sons." With that, his 5 sons dropped their disguises to reveal 5 warrior maidens.

"It is said that Asmodeus then threw his head back and roared with such laughter as to shake the heavens. "Well done Mortal! I will enjoy you."

"Thus it was that Asmodeus spent the next year bespelling women to seduce Shan, with such success that Shan sired 5 sons by the new year.

"Now Shan tried to escape with his wives, sons and daughters, heading for the foreign West, but there is no escaping a devil with a lien on your soul. Even so, Shan embarked on his journey but halfway there, in the evening of the last born son's 8th birthday, Asmodeus appeared. Shan knew he couldn't prevent the teachings of his sons, so Asmodeus proceeded to teach the sons over the next month. At the end of the period, Shan knew that he had lost and bid his family to continue their journey."

We then talked about how Tieflings came to be and how we've changed. Basically, Tieflings are people who have been "tainted" by a demonic or diablolic presence. It can happen a lot of different ways - mating, or dealing for power being the most direct. But Warlocks can also produce Tieflings by being in a pact with a demon or devil. Or really anyone, corrupted by someone from Baator. There has even been stories of an elf that used a demon forged sword and then birthed a Tiefling. 

He then asks how old I am (about 17, I think?) and tells me about the Time of Troubles, 18 years ago, when 13 Tiefling Warlocks tried to make Asmodeus their god, thus granting him godhood. It was very powerful, and while it didn't give Asmodeus the title of god, it did change all Tieflings so that they looked like I do. Apparently, baby Tieflings are starting to vary again, and take up the traits of the devils / demons that they are tainted by.

It was a lovely visit. But I must think on this, I feel my leaders want more for me than they have said.

We leave Stefan's and head back to the tavern. I tell them I have my info and they decide that next we should hunt slaves. 

 

27th of Tarsakh, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

See Captain Darren. Talk to Gilbert. Let him know about the banshee. Still wants us to go south. Vandederp finds out there are trolls and he walks off - and seems extra eager for a fight. He mumbles something about dead parents and tries to hurry us up.

We get to the farm that Gilbert mentioned, and there had been a fight. And big feet prints. Vandederp immediately starts tracking. We find them, trolls, and Vandederp charges. Damn! We manage to beat them with fire eventually - they regenerate. Farmer thanks us with lunch. We return to town. We let the guards know that we got the trolls and that fire was an excellent way to fight them. We head to the inn to rest and bathe (trolls are stinky!).

 

26th of Tarsakh, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We walk to Kelethoen, it's uneventful. We go to the inn to sleep.