The Last
Moonboat
As the party journeyed
deeper into the Frontier, they unexpectedly came upon the fortified town of
Erstlin. Many refugees, driven out of
forest villages or remote mining communities by vicious bands of cultists, were
camped outside the well-defended enclave.
Guards at the town’s main gate directed our heroes to the Sundial
Tavern.
Talking to folks
in the busy tavern, the party learned that the abandoned temple being used as a
base by the Orcus cultists was two weeks north along the rough track known as
the Black March. But everyone agreed
that travel north of Erstlin along the Black March was suicidal. In the villages razed by the cult, those the
cultists don’t drive off or kill are taken to the abandoned temple at the
Pillars of Night. The locals told our
heroes that the strongest and toughest villagers are forced to join the cult. One old-timer said, “Only safe way north is
the river, but you’d need a moonboat for that and the boats are long gone.”
Shortly after
the PCs heard of the moonboats, a taciturn dwarf motioned them over to a quiet
corner of the tavern. From beneath a
flat cap, the thickly muscled dwarf gave a deferential nod. “Name’s Glasur. Heard you’re looking for a
way north. People tell you the March’s death,
and they’re right. People tell you the moonboats are gone, but they’re
wrong. I’ve seen the Pillars of Night
from the river many a time. I can get you there in four days.”
Glasur turned out to be the
last of the captains who once sailed the river.
He told the party he could have his moonboat ready the next morning for
the journey upriver. In response to a
question about payment, the dwarf said that a mere 10 gp would cover his coasts. When asked why he wasn’t charging more for
the trip, Glasur’s mood darkened and he said: “I had family in a village a few days up the
March. Not anymore. Cult saw to that.”
Fire on the
Water
The next
morning, an hour of steep climbing brought the adventurers out above the
waterfall. Along banks of dark shale lay
a deserted dockyard. Where a dozen boats
might have once been moored, a ramshackle 35-foot cutter floated. The name “Blacksnake” was etched on its prow. Glasur was amidships, tying off ropes. He acknowledged the party’s approach with a
nod.
The heroes
noticed Glasur’s boat had no mast, but even as they wondered whether the dwarf
expected them to row against the raging current, they saw movement down in the
foaming water. Two dire pike thrashed
there, both creatures harnessed to the ropes Glasur was setting. “Been a while since my girls got a chance to
run. We leave when you’re ready,” the
dwarf said.
For three days,
the moonboat made steady progress north.
Glasur’s dire pike pulled the boat with unceasing strength by day; the
dwarf unharnessed them each night to hunt in the river’s frigid depths.
Late in the
afternoon of the third day’s travel, the party saw a heavy plume of gray-black
smoke rising into the sky beyond a bend in the river. When asked what lay ahead, Glasur said, “There’s
a small village up ahead… or there was a village, by the look of it.”
When Glasur
piloted the Blacksnake around the bend, the adventurers saw a burning village
along the river’s edge. Three dragonborn
in scale armor were torching buildings.
Some human villagers were fleeing into some trees or up a nearby
hillside. With a whoop, Glasur drove the
moonboat right up onto the shoreline and yelled, “Go get ‘em, boys!”
- 3 Dragonborn Soldiers (Level 5 Soldier)
- Bugbear Strangler (Level 6 Lurker)
- Death Cultist Mage (Level 5 Artillery)
Once Blake,
Gaultis, Dagon, and Silas had jumped ashore and engaged the dragonborn, the
mage showed himself. He stayed inside a
building and popped Boojum with Magic Missile.
As Silas got into it with one of the dragonborn soldiers, the bugbear
slipped out of a hut and used its Strangle attack on the eladrin vampire. The highlight of the battle (at least for me)
was when Dagon targeted the bugbear with an attack, but the monster used Body
Shield as an immediate interrupt and Silas became the target of Dagon’s attack
instead. And did I mention that Dagon’s
attack actually dropped Silas? Hee
hee. My delight didn’t last very long,
though, since the chagrined artificer then healed his fallen friend.
All five of the
cultists fought to the death. All of
them sported Orcus talismans and also wore distinctive gray cloaks over their
armor or robes. The adventurers snagged
these items, thinking they might come in handy sometime. One of the dragonborn had been wearing a
nifty horned helm that caught the fancy of both Blake and Gaultis. Blake offered to armwrestle the goliath for
it. Armwrestling a goliath might not
seem like the best idea in the world, but darned if the shifter didn’t end up
claiming the helm when he rolled a natural 20 on his Strength check.
DM Tip: For the series of encounters set in the
Frontier, the wild and woolly areas north of Newhaven, I’m using material from
an adventure by Scott Fitzgerald Gray called “Heathen,” which was published in
Dungeon 155.
The Pillars of
Night
After the
encounter with the cultists at the riverside village, the party continued the moonboat
journey toward the Pillars of Night. The
next day, as the sun was setting and the dire pike were thrashing against the
current, they saw a twisted pillar of dark stone rising in the distance. Its lower third appeared to be carved into
perfectly aligned upright slabs. As the
peak disappeared into the descending dusk, the pillars appeared to hold up the
dark sky itself. The temple lay before
them, a day’s march away.
For the better
part of the next day, our heroes hiked toward their goal. They finally slipped through a screen of trees
and up to a low rise. A mile or so off,
they saw the Black March end where it met the base of the mountain. At the base of the peak was a temple. On both sides of the road, a settlement
spread beneath the peak. While some
people went about the ordinary communal business of any northern village, other people
could be seen training with sword and shield.
Everyone wore the gray cloaks that apparently served as the cult’s “uniform.”
After observing
the settlement for a while, and with the sun getting low in the sky, the party
decided to don their gray cloaks, make their way through the settlement, and
approach the temple. Down in the settlement,
our heroes encountered many cultists making their way home from the day’s training
or labor. One cultist, assuming the
adventurers were new arrivals that had just come up the Black March, started to
chat with them. When the man noticed
Boojum and thought it was odd that a pixie would be a member of the group,
Boojum rocked his Bluff check and the cultist’s suspicions were successfully allayed.
As the sun
finally slipped behind the mountains, the party came to the base of the Pillars
of Night, where a wide flight of stone steps led up to the temple’s
entrance. Torchlight flared from within
the entrance hall and several guards could be seen inside. Thinking their disguises had worked pretty
well so far, the confident adventurers decided to just waltz on into the temple
and bluff their way past the guards. Unfortunately
for them, it was very unusual for anyone to approach the temple that late in
the day, so the guards were instantly alerted that something strange was
happening. As the party entered the
temple and were challenged, the they rather spectacularly failed their group
Bluff check, and so the guards slammed the temple doors shut and attacked our
heroes.
- 6 Advanced Human Berserkers (Level 5 Brute)
The confined
space of the temple’s entrance hall made this a close-in, vicious fight. The elite guards were armed with greataxes,
which did d12+4 damage with each hit. On
a crit, the greataxes would actually do a wicked d12+16 damage, so I was really
hoping to roll quite a few nat 20s during the encounter. But, sadly, I just
rolled one. Bummer.
When only two wounded
guards were still standing, one of them made his way over to the doors, opened them,
and started to yelled, “Help! Intruders in the temple! Help!” As the sound of shouts and running feet from
outside the entrance grew louder, our heroes frantically cut down the last two
guards and then just barely managed to shut and bar the doors ahead of the
enraged crowd of cultists.
With our heroes
now trapped inside the death cult’s temple, what will happen in the next
exciting session of our campaign? Tune
in to the next post to find out!
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