The Hunt for an Apparition (5th of Jevar'Kiev)

Trademark Sony Pictures Digital Inc.

Ara'Mar, the 5th of Jevar'Kiev in the year 14063.
It's been a couple of days after Voskkal's "funeral" and the small party has retreated to their usual watering hole. Vrykor, Voskkal's sister joins them much like Voskkal did after Rythak's passing. Vrykor thinks her brothers were complete morons and the fact they survived life in general to the extent they did was the a miracle of the Ancestors.

The Dark Titan Taproom isn't frequented by too many of the human inhabitants of Badger Falls, much less the youngsters, so when a new face arrives at the Taproom, he gravitates towards the group as well. His name is Balen and like the rest of the town, he's well aware of the group's recent exploits and he wants in. Balen doesn't fit in with the others due to his Albinism. Working outdoors is bit of a bother as well and he hasn't fared well since his discharge from the militia a month and a half ago.

The townsfolk have been whispering about folks seeing a misty, luminous figure coming out of people's homes. A few have bothered to confront this apparition and most claim to have scared it off. A lot of people have been giving Balen the evil eye for at night his extremely pale skin has an unearthly presence about it. The group decides to question Elder Foxhorn about the sightings and get quite perturbed when he heavily implies that their foray into the tomb, which resulted in Voskkal's death, must have angered the Ancestors somehow. Anise bites here tongue at these accusations since she blames the loggers who violated that temple/tomb. The group offers to look into the problem, even though at best it is just an issue of townsfolk being scared of the unknown.

They agree to meet up at the Taproom a bit before sunset and they decide to scout out one of the cemeteries. They'd like some extra help and decide to see if Lucky is available to assist them. GM Aside: I think the attempt to scope out a cemetery is a bit of a OOC knowledge since ghosts or other undead haven't been seen in centuries, but with the connection to the Ancestors it still makes sense. The re-introduction of Lucky is as a NPC since the player left the group. When they meet up that evening, Balen doesn't show, meaning the group is down to three. Balen's player didn't show. He prefers to player wickedly eeeeeevil mages and this game & setting wasn't his cup of tea.

Nobody remembers what Lucky's father did for a living and they end up stopping by the Town's Carpenter, Hadramar Stormflame, looking for Lucky. Fortunately for them, Badger Falls is not that big of a town and Hadramar knows where the Thatcher is working because he had a job near there recently. It's still not quite sunset when the group heads out to convince Lucky to come along. Lucky is easily persuaded because he doesn't like the grunt-work of being a Thatcher's apprentice. It is late enough that his work is done for the day although his father has a bit more to do while the sun is still up.

The group heads out to the cemetery nearby. When someone dies, their body is held aloft on a platform just into the edge of the woods. After a couple of years left to decay and get picked over by smaller animals, the bones are gathered up and interred in small family crypts. Not everyone gets this treatment though. Most of the demi-humans and a few families still bury their dead. The group pairs off and climbs up to some unused platforms. Even as it gets dark it is easy to tell which platforms are unused because people typically plant and attend to flowers grown at the base of platforms holding the decaying remains of their Ancestors.

Moons:

Arlora is a new moon
Bardra'Kar is Full Moon
Shadara is 2nd Quarter Waxing
Light level: Dim



Gart'Mar, the 6th of Jevar'Kiev in the year 14063.
Anise and Vrykor don't see anything that night. Myka and Lucky are in the other platform with Lucky taking the second watch. Myka falls asleep on her watch and fails to wake up Lucky. In the morning they are found to be loosely spooning and have to be woken by Vrykor. Lucky says goodbye to the group and heads off to work. he may not like being a Thatcher's apprentice, but if he blows this job he'll be completely out on his own, which he isn't ready for yet. Anise heads off to her day job while Vrykor and Myka head back to the Taproom to get a bunk and try to sleep some more to get onto a night schedule.

After a good nap Vrykor and Mykal make a crude map of the town and start mapping out sightings of this luminous apparition. The sightings map out all over town without any rhyme or reason. The last sighting was close to where they were at the cemetery the night before and the night before closer to the center of town.

As the next evening approaches the girls assemble at the Dark Titan Taproom and then go out to collect Lucky. They decide to set up at one of the crossroads near where Lucky was working, which wasn't far from the cemetery the night before. This time it was Vrykor's turn to fall asleep on watch, but she woke herself up before too long. The night otherwise passed uneventfully.

It occurs to Mykal that maybe they should talk to some of the people who have sighted the figure. They stop at the Dark Titan Taproom and hear that one of the loggers spotted it last night. They got a name this time, Yohan, and after their meal they head over to the building that houses the logging headquarters, hoping to find out which crew Yohan is on and where they are logging today. The Logging Boss informs the trio (Lucky is back to Thatching) that he heard Yohan had seen the apparition the night before too, but he hasn't seen him since he didn't show for his crew assignment. The Boss says he's probably at home, drinking, or doing both. After a quick description of Yohan's shack, the party heads off.

They check in at the Silver Arms Taproom in case Yohan is there, but it isn't. The Silver Arms is definitely a bit nicer that the Dark Titan, but it is also a bit more expensive, which they find out after having breakfast there. After their meal they venture on to Yohan's shack. When they knock on the door they are told to go away. The party keeps knocking, and keep getting rebuffed until finally Yohan opens the top-half of the dutch door, crossbow in one hand and a small jug in the other. He is convinced the group is there just to make fun of him, like his buddies did earlier that morning.

Evidently when Yohan saw the apparition the night before he got so scared he pissed himself. He isn't proud of that fact now and is drinking to forget. He isn't too keen on the party asking about details from last night, but they steer around his embarrassment and get that the figure spoke some "flowery" language and was able to walk through walls. It didn't attack Yohan and when he couldn't talk to it, the thing left, clipping through the corner of his shack as it headed off into the woods.

After talking to Yohan the party seeks out Elder Foxhorn to see who else had seen it. He mentions another logger, who is likely out working, and the Halfling Mercer. The party doesn't want to wait for the logger GM Aside: He hadn't actually seen it, just was claiming to have seen it...it was a red herring and headed off to see Greeneerill instead. The Halfling was open enough about the sighting, stating the thing walked out of a wall of a nearby home and said something in gibberish to him. He apologizes for not being able to say much else because he was so scared he turned and ran as fast as little feet would take him.

The party cannot seem to figure out any pattern to the sightings and decides to simply set up another stake-out of two teams watching a couple of different crossroads on the Southern end of town  GM Aside: They did not know that quite a few sightings were fakes for various reasons (some were actually Balen sightings) and the locations themselves were randomly generated. Mykal and Lucky formed one team and Vrykor & Anise the other.

This time the party was lucky and Vrykor saw the apparition walking into a home not far from their stakeout. They didn't alert the other two and headed off after it. They attempted to be sneaky while approaching the house and managed to get there just as the thing walked through the front wall of the home. It looked at them for a moment and began to speak. GM Aside: Since undead haven't been seen in millennia I had the PCs make a roll akin to Barbarians encountering magical creatures, and they both passed their checks The language it used was a derivation of High Elvish, which Anise was easily able to comprehend. There was a brief discussion which was a bit difficult because the spirit kept circling back to the same basic statements.

Evidently this spirit had been murdered to prevent her from interfering with her children being sacrificed by a cult. All she wanted was to be interred with her children and to exact revenge on the one she held responsible for her situation. She was able to convey that she is somehow drawn to this place and she is looking for her "rod" which will help her in her endeavor. She is tied to this place because of the "rod".

Anise knows that "rod" isn't quite the right word and this is most likely referring to a hand-held weapon of some sort. Anise tells the spirit they will do what they can to help and she leaves.

The party re-groups and heads back to the Dark Titan Taproom. They end up having to wake the owner to get in because of the late hour, and he charges them double for a room, which they gladly accept.

The next morning the three girls get up, have breakfast, and then head over to Elder Foxhorn's home to inform him of what they discovered the night before. The party assumes that the small skeletons they saw at the tomb the week before were these two children and they assume that this missing "rod" is in possession of the only other survivor from that place: Ansen. They didn't take anything from the tomb other than their dead, so it has to be something Ansen did. Nobody has seen Ansen since that night at the Dark Titan Taproom, which cements his guilt in the Elder's mind. They offer to go back to the tomb and get the bodies for a proper burial, but they don't know how to enact revenge for the spirit. They think that they need to burn the temple down and the Elder suggests that they find the priest/cult leader's remains and desecrate them. This is such a taboo thing to do that it seems like the only possible punishment after all this time. Elder Foxhorn tells the trio to go wait at the Taproom and he'll beat the bushes for Ansen.

Anise, who was so upset at the Elder before, wants to hang back and watch him work. The Elder goes over to a nearby home and gives some instructions to a child there that then runs off. They party sees him visit with a few people before they get bored and head off to the Taproom as instructed.

Close to dusk a messenger-child bursts into the Taproom and informs the girls that Ansen has been spotted sneaking out of his house. A couple of kids gave chase, but he gave them the slip at one of the creeks. Everyone grabs their gear and follows the boy out to Ansen's home. Vrykor does exceptionally well tracking Ansen and they manage to follow his tracks to the creek and again on the other side. They lose the tracks just outside of one of the other cemeteries on the edge of town. The group makes an assumption that Ansen must have a family crypt there and may be hiding out there. They figure out which crypt it would be and start sneaking up to it. Just as they get to the door.....

Two skeletal warriors walk out of the woods. Armed with scimitars and shields, these skeletons take the party by surprise. Vrykor is TOP'd (Threshold of Pain) right off the bat with a nasty wound that sends her reeling. The other skeleton attacks Mykal and the first skeleton ignores the wounded Vrykor and attacks Anise. Both take minor wounds early in the battle, but neither seem to be able to do any damage to these undead GM Aside: Using short swords. I also had Mykal make a fear check and she passed easily. Vrykor comes to soon enough and walks up behind the skeleton that hurt her and just starts going to town with her throwing axe, to little effect. Eventually she realizes her attacks aren't having much effect and simply flips the axe in her hands to bash at them with the back of the throwing axe head.

GM Aside: The skeletons were fixated on the PCs nearest the crypt door and I ruled that Vrykor could attack at half weapon speed because they were doing absolutely nothing to defend themselves against her attacks. Flipping the axe around to bash at the skeletons seemed logical and something somewhat natural to do- I've owned and thrown a few axes in my day and depending on distance you do sometimes flip the head around

A luckly blow by Anise, couple with some minor blows from Mykal and a ton of decent hits from Vrykor finally down the skeletons, but not before Mykal's shield gets destroyed. Ansen is in fact holed up in the crypt and he feebly tries to defend himself with what appears to be a well-built & elaborate mace. When the party disarms him and drags him from the crypt he starts screaming about the party abusing him and desecrating his Ancestors (a serious offense). Those skeletons were cousins of his that had died in year's past and were ready for interment.

The girls (they had left Lucky behind in their haste to follow Ansen) drag their prisoner to Elder Foxhorn's home. With all the fuss that Ansen created with his whooping and hollering, they party had a pretty big entourage by the time he gets there. Ansen is shaking and scared, but has no problems implicating the party in Ancestral desecration. The Elder calls for a couple of the men from the crowd to secure Ansen in the ice house and stand guard and that he will personally investigate Ansen's charges.

The rest of the crowd follows the party to the cemetery and is astounded at the site before them. Surely two Ancestors were pulled from their platforms and dragged out in front of the crypt and had their bones broken into pieces. The fresh blood on their blades and groups wounds, specifically Vrykor's terrible wound, leads credence to the party's version of events, as strange as they sound. The fact that some of the children saw the party heading towards the cemetery after Ansen and Ansen's behavior the last few weeks seems to cement in everyone's minds that the party was in the right on this issue and maybe Ansen is lying. Some seem to think that maybe Ansen did this to his own Ancestors for some sick reason.

NPCs Introduced:
Hadramar Stormflame (Human Male: Carpenter)
Yohan Bloodstorm (Human Male: Logger)