Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 65 [RPG]

 [Wealday, 29 Erastus 4708 A.R.]

 

For Ralph Blackfeather and Anorak, dawn brings not just a new day but the sound of screams!  Changing quickly into his guise as The Reckoner, Ralph has Plate make him invisible as he investigates.  A woman on the street is obviously the source of the screams, but she’s unable to do anything but point in the direction of the house across the street from The Reckoner’s safehouse.  Inside, a body has been torn to shreds, blood is everywhere, and the place has been thoroughly ransacked.  Anorak follows The Reckoner inside, and they realise they’re looking at the work of xills! 

 

Both come to the immediate conclusion that the xills must still be after the mysterious box given to Anorak by the unnerving “baker” Mortimont.  The Reckoner wonders aloud how the xill could have tracked the box, as his safehouse has robust protections against divination spells.  He says keeping it in the safehouse is too dangerous, even if the xill can only sense its approximate location, and that they should get rid of it by taking it somewhere with windwalk.  Anorak’s mind turns in a more devious direction, as he suggests putting it somewhere they wouldn’t mind the xill attacking—like Castle Korvosa!  But The Reckoner says that could make things worse if Ileosa got her hands on it.  The two discuss why a passage to the Ethereal Plane could be so valuable (if that is indeed what the box contains), but neither knows enough about the Ethereal Plane to say.

 

Once back outside, the two see that neighbours have come out from nearby buildings—seemingly wanting to help, but scared now that there’s little in the way of law enforcement in Korvosa.  The Reckoner offers his condolences and some money to help the woman who found the body, and Anorak tries to gently ask her some questions, but she’s in too much shock to be of any help.

The two return to the safehouse, where Anorak begins memorising spells for the day ahead and The Reckoner doffs his guise to become Ralph Blackfeather once again.  Ralph walks to the Burnt Honey Inn, just down the street, and, over breakfast, tells Goldcape what just happened.  She says they have to get rid of the box, and suggests putting it in a bag of holding and filling the bag up with rocks until it explodes.  As they’re talking, the magical silver raven she sent to Harse recently returns with a message: “Our shared friend thought it safer for me not to know where he was going. But he promised to be ready when the time comes.”  Goldcape is not satisfied with the answer—she wants to know where Vencarlo is.  She asks Ralph if he could arrange a meeting with Kroft to find out, but Ralph explains about the Black Ship and how difficult it is to reach.  Goldcape tries to send Kroft a note using the silver raven, but the raven soon returns, having been unable to deliver the message.

Anorak soon arrives.  The three spend the morning trying to find a map of the Hold of Belkzen.  First, they try Bookmaker.  The squeakily-voiced proprietor, Costa Serimus, explains that he doesn’t have a map, but he does have a rare scholarly work on the area.  Goldcape is allowed to look at the index, and sees there’s even an entry for Scarwall.  The problem is that the book is quite costly—almost a thousand gold pieces!  Goldcape and Anorak argue about whether the dwarf should contribute to buying the book (since the vanara didn’t contribute to purchasing the magical contract to bind their dandasuka spy), until Goldcape has had enough and buys the book herself.  Still without a map of the area, the trio reluctantly walk south to Eodred’s Walk and enter Basha’s, a small map shop whose proprietor Ralph believes is selling fraudulent “treasure maps.”  When he raises this suspicion with Basha, the cranky old man is (or feigns to be) outraged, and refuses to sell anything to the group until Ralph promises not to spread the “scurrilous rumor” any further.  Basha claims to have a map of the Hold of Belkzen (“made by a Pathfinder!”), and, although Ralph is dubious of its provenance, the group ends up buying it.

 

As they’re in the shop, Goldcape receives a sudden mental message from Yraelzin.  “How close are you?  Lots of orcs.  Made deal with Kuthites—we’re ready to go in when you arrive.  They’re an interesting bunch!”  Goldcape sends as long a response as the spell allows: “Leaving soon, bringing maps.  Where are you? We windwalk.  Where meet? What Kuthites? Anorak don’t want deal.  Arrive soon.”  The trio discuss their travel plans, and settle on leaving tomorrow from Trail’s End and starting with a teleport to Janderhoff.  Complications ensue regarding the power of Anorak’s magic to take only a limited number of creatures.  When Rocky, Anorak’s new familiar, and The Reckoner’s horse are factored in, the spell simply won’t work.  The solution seems to be to ferry everyone to Janderhoff (and beyond) by Anorak casting the spell multiple times, which will leave him dangerously low on his most powerful types of magic.

 

The trio split up and spend the afternoon making their final preparations for departure.  The Reckoner returns to Old Korvosa, finds Xoza, explains that he’ll be gone for several weeks, and tells the spy to spend some time investigating Trifaccia, some time on learning Glorio’s plans and weaknesses, and, if time allows, more about the Commander of the Gray Maidens.  Goldcape makes arrangements with Sergeant Clenkins to continue training the members of her resistance cell; Clenkins promises the troops will be ready when called upon.  Anorak visits The Reckoner’s safehouse, collects the mysterious box and The Reckoner’s horse, and magically travels to Trail’s End.  Soon, Goldcape and The Reckoner are there as well.  The largely-Varisian village is now nearly empty, with most of the residents having departed for more promising destinations.

It’s late afternoon when Anorak explains to the others that he thinks the best way to keep the box from being detected by the xill is to place it within a magical bag of holding.  Acknowledging it could be dangerous (since the box itself could contain an extradimensional pocket), he says he could do it himself, out of range of the others or any civilians.  The snag is that Anorak doesn’t want to use his own magical bag, deeming it too valuable.  Instead, he wants to use Goldcape’s magical bag which is less-powerfully enchanted and cheaper to replace if something goes wrong.  Goldcape initially refuses, but Anorak promises that if the box destroys the bag, he’ll lend her his own magical bag and pay for the full cost of replacing her original one.  Goldcape eventually, and reluctantly, goes along with the plan, and removes everything from her magical bag.  Anorak then removes everything he’s wearing (except his armor), chains himself to a stout tree, has the others move to a safe distance, and places the mysterious box in Goldcape’s magical bag.

The results are immediate, and cataclysmic.  The bag and the box seem to implode, and in their place stands a massive tower of purest black marble!  The tower somehow casts an uncanny shadow a full mile’s radius around it.  But of more immediate danger are the hordes of gibbering, toothy insects that pour forth, straight for Anorak!  They swarm all over the dwarf, somehow chewing holes even in his mithral armor, before Goldcape recognises what they are and how to stop them.  The vanara calls upon her mastery of nature magic to send several freezing spears of ice at the creatures, freezing them in their tracks.  Apart from his damaged armor, Anorak is largely unharmed.  Goldcape raises a curious question after recognising the insects as daemonic swarms from the Abyss—what would creatures from such a place be doing in a tower said to be linked to the Ethereal Plane?

Answers may lie past the heavy stone door located in an odd-shaped recess in the exterior of the tower.  But at what further cost will those answers come?

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GM Commentary

We had a lot of fun with Basha and his map shop.  There's only a line or two in the Guide to Korvosa about him, but I took the reference to treasure maps and really hammed up the premise that he sold dubious and outright-forged work.  He was a memorable NPC, and makes some return appearances during Chapter Six.

As I've often mentioned, the story continues even if the PCs dawdle.  Having Yraelzin make an off-screen deal with the Brotherhood of Bone is part of this idea, and we'll soon see the group's reaction when they finally arrive in Scarwall.

That journey was fated to take longer because the PCs had a panoply of mounts, animal companions, and familiars with them.  I always enforce the limits of magic carefully, as it helps players see that the larger their ranks become, the more complications can ensue.  (In other words, getting a new familiar or a guard dog might seem cool, but if it means the group can't teleport or wind walk somewhere, the trade-offs become apparent)

Long before the campaign started, I had entertained my son with the tale of the players in Rise of the Runelords stuffing a bag of holding full of thousands and thousands of silver coins (from a dragon's hoard) until they exceeded its weight limitation and it exploded, swallowing up a good deal of the party's stored treasure!  Thus, he was very aware of the dangers of magical bags and very reluctant to let Anorak use Goldcape's bag for his experiment.  As was unfortunately too often the case, the adults in the group automatically thought their ideas were better than the kid's, and was often the case, they were wrong.  Opening the box normally would have conjured the tower (which provided a passage to the Ethereal Plane, which is why the xill were set on having it) and then closing the box would have vanished the tower.  But placing the extradimensionally-linked box into the bag of holding resulted in the destruction of both the box and the bag, with the tower now permanently fixed in Trail's End!  To this day, if players in any of my campaigns go to Korvosa, they'll see the mile-wide supernatural shadow cast by a strange black tower just outside the city . . .