Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 42 [RPG]

 [Moonday, 22 Sarenith 4708 A.R. continued]

 

In the anarchic streets of Kaer Maga, after a journey filled with disagreement and tension, The Reckoner brings everyone together to clear the air and find a way forward as teammates.  The Reckoner undertakes not to needlessly kill animals or magical beasts, while Goldcape agrees not to go off on her own unless it’s a group decision.  Everyone agrees that it’s all for one, one for all when it comes to combat.  They also discuss the best way to pay for resurrection magicks should a party member die in the course of their quest to bring down the cruel Queen of Korvosa.  The conversation goes well, and the renewed spirit of teamwork seems to bode well for the future.

But as the group’s discussion is winding down, panicked shouts and screams can be heard coming from the mazelike collection of streets known as The Warrens.  Goldcape drags Yraelzin onto Rocky’s back to scout from the air, and they see a scene of utter chaos!  Discrete knots of Kaer Magans are acting incredibly strangely—babbling, hitting their heads against the wall, or even clawing and biting each other!  The strange behaviour is clearly clustered around something even more disturbing: slithering, tentacled horrors larger than horses!  “Seugathi!” Yraelzin calls out, explaining they’re evil telepathically-powerful creatures from below the ground.  Goldcape steers Rocky toward the closest seugathi, but they’re not the first responders to the emergency: Hellknights are there!  The merciless warriors wearing black, spiked-armor and wielding ranseurs have also engaged the seugathi.  Goldcape points out a rooftop just overlooking the nearest monster for Rocky to land on.  The tentacles of the seugathi are incredibly long and somehow wield both blade and wand, leading to several injuries.  But although they feel a psychic assault, Yraelzin, Goldcape, and Rocky manage to resist the aura of madness that has affected so many of Kaer Maga’s residents.  With the help of the Hellknights, the first monster is quickly destroyed.  Goldcape has Rocky fly herself and Yraelzin toward another seugathi, while the Hellknights attack yet a third, demonstrating a willingness to trample any Kaer Magans too slow to get out of the way of their heavy warhorses!

Anorak and The Reckoner try to follow their allies on foot, but The Warrens are difficult to traverse: dead end streets, an open sewer channel, and fleeing pedestrians all make progress toward the threat incredibly difficult.  When Rocky lands near the second seugathi, disaster strikes: the grotesque horror launches a powerful mental attack that makes Goldcape imagine she’s being attacked by a massive molten-red worm so large it blocks out the sun as it looms over her!  The overwhelming fear is just too much for the vanara’s heart, and she dies instantly, tumbling from Rocky’s back to land on the street below.  Rocky, too, is affected by the seugathi, as the roc becomes unable to distinguish friend from foe and attacks Yraelzin!    The priest of Razmir uses short-range teleportation magic to escape and fetch help.  Meanwhile, The Reckoner’s magical boots have allowed him to run, jump, and climb a circuitous route to reach the battle.  He smashes into the seugathi with his earthbreaker, leaving it badly hurt. When Yraelzin teleports back with Anorak at his side, the dwarf conjures a powerful lightning bolt that nearly blows the seugathi apart!  Several streets away, the Hellknights have triumphed over the last seugathi, but not without also paying a price: the madness aura caused one of their members to slay another.

With the sudden threat ended, the streets of Kaer Maga return to as “normal” as they get.  The surviving members of the Harrowed Heroes pool their gold and pay a (not-too-inebriated) cleric of Cayden Cailean to cast the necessary spell to call Goldcape’s spirit back to her body.  The vanaran wakes up shouting about the monstrous apparition, but the others manage to calm her down despite her protestations that it couldn’t have been a mere illusion.  Still, she’ll be weakened by the experience for several days.  Anorak raises an important question: why did the seugathi attack on what seemed like a suicide mission?  The Reckoner speculates it could have been an attempt to sow chaos and undermine any resistance to the giant armies of the north, perhaps in the same way that the sabotage of the earth elemental’s summoning circle might have been intended to slow down the production of weaponry by the dwarves of Janderhoff.  The tired adventurers decide to find an inn for the night, passing by an entrepreneur buying and selling corpses from the back of a cart—including the body of a slain seugathi.

 

[Toilday, 23 Sarenith 4708 A.R.]

 

The final step of the journey toward the Kallow Mounds begins as the team make their way through The Warrens and out of the city without any further complications.  The journey east introduces the group to the unforgiving nature of the Cinderlands, a rugged, inhospitable terrain full of rock formations, canyons, gullies, and deep gorges.  Large areas are solid rock, but other areas have stretches of leached soil and silt.  Short, weedy scrub grows in patches throughout the Badlands, interspersed with occasional sights of more exotic plants, but it is clear food and water will be hard to come by.  The wind is ceaseless and unrelenting, and dust and ash get into everything: backpacks, canteens, boots, eyes, and nostrils!  But it’s the boiling heat that quickly takes a toll on the group, leaving them sweating and tired after just a few hours.  Goldcape uses magic to alleviate some of the fatigue, but even her spells have limits, and the travellers make the risky decision to remove their armor to make it easier to deal with the heat. 

 

At one point during their journey into the barren landscape, they come across a gruesome display: the rotting head of a Shoanti man mounted on a sharp wooden pole, the other end of which has been jammed into a cleft between two rocks.  Bright red crossbow bolts, aged and weathered, have been driven into each of the head’s eyes.  From her research in Korvosa, Goldcape immediately recognises this as a totem left behind by the legendary Cinderlander: a mysterious figure that has stalked the Cinderlands for many years, attacking lone Shoanti braves with strange, screaming crossbow bolts.  Goldcape relates that she came across plenty of legends and tales about where he’s from and why he hunts Shoanti.  The Skoan-Quah (Clan of the Dead) believe he is the unquiet ghost of a Korvosan general who stalks these lands and will continue to slay Shoanti until the number he kills equals the number of friends and family they took from him.

 

After about a half-day’s march in total, the travellers come across an area spotted with hills of blackened rock pouring smoke.  Before they journey into the area, one of the hills explodes into a fountain of magma, ejecting globs of half-cooled rock hundreds of feet into the air!  With the beating sun continuing to beat down on them and progress through the area looking extremely dangerous, the decision is made to look for a place with shade to cool down before continuing through.  A little backtracking secures the group some shade in a steep-sided gully.  Goldcape persuades the group to pitch camp for the rest of the day and plan to complete their journey to the Kallow Mounds in the morning. 

 

But as they’re enjoying their evening meal, the ground around them begins to shake.  Chunks of rock roll down the sides of the gully, and in the distance, the ground has started to split apart in a crack slowly headed right toward them.  The Reckoner is the first to realise this is no natural phenomenon when he spots some sort of dark purple plates in the crack.  Suddenly, a truly gargantuan worm rises up out of the ground, its giant, tooth-filled maw capable of swallowing an ox!  With only seconds to act before it arrives, the Harrowed Heroes better act fast.

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GM Commentary

The seugathi encounter was pretty exciting.  I think I put it in for a few reasons: to add a bit more excitement to what would otherwise be another travel session; to give the PCs a chance to interact with the Hellknights, something that didn't really happen in Korvosa; and to get a chance to use some new urban flip-cards I had.  The flip-cards definitely made a maze of streets, but one of the unanticipated consequences was that there wasn't always a land path to get from one of the monsters to another!  Fortunately, Rocky could fly some of the PCs there and The Reckoner could climb and jump well.  The seugathis' aura of madness was a pain to manage for me, as I had to roll checks for all the NPC Hellknights and even some attacks they had against one another.

Notably, Goldcape died in the battle--the result of a phantasmal killer.  Even though she was raised from the dead right afterwards, it was probably eye-opening for some of the players.  I think it was good in the long run because it kept the group from thinking they would automatically easily win battles by playing on cruise-control or that I would intervene as GM to make sure nothing really bad ever happened.

This scenario also has the PCs' first taste with the Cinderlands.  I tried to work hard to really bring out just how inhospitable of a landscape it was.  And despite the warnings they had back in Korvosa, the PCs weren't ready for it.  The high temperature alone really started to wear them down.

And as for that last bit at the end, they triggered a random encounter and when I rolled on the table, it was the very worst danger: a purple worm!