Rise of the Runelords Recap # 105 [RPG]

[23 Pharast 4708 continued]

 

Disaster has struck the Heroes of Varisia!  Two of their group are dead, killed by the explosive death throes of a frost worm.  And now, swirling winds, heavy snow, and an unearthly keening presage the coming of the wendigo!  The survivors—Erik, Jinkatsyu, and Morgiana—rush back towards the comparative safety of the Vekkers’ cabin.  But before they get far, they see two massive shapes in front of them, looming out of the blizzard.  The desperate adventurers know they’re not capable of surviving another fight, and decide to try to dodge past them.  But as they get closer, a booming voice calls out in the Giant tongue—a language that Morgiana happens to speak—and the menacing shapes resolve into a pair of taiga giants: a younger female named Cirdassa and an imposing shaman named Tanaq Mammoth-Eater.  Tanaq explains in his stilted way that his tribe’s ancestral spirits have foreseen the coming of the wendigo on this day, and that there is a chance it can be destroyed forever.  There’s little chance for conversation, however, as the wendigo keens again—and this time, it’s so close that panic sets in and the adventurers flee headlong for the cabin.

They’re lucky to find their way through the harsh terrain and limited visibility, and duck inside just as the wendigo is ready to set upon them.  The roof suddenly falls in as a hideous shape with the head of a feral elk and legs that end in blackened, burnt stumps crashes through.  The flying creature sweeps Erik into its claws and hurtles up into the sky, releasing him from great height!  But Erik’s angelic wings allow him to glide down to safety.  Back on the ground, Tanaq calls out a challenge, but the wendigo ignores him, crashing through another part of the roof to land next to Jinkatsyu.  But instead of attacking, the wendigo only stares deeply into the kitsune’s tortured soul and delivers a promise from mind to mind: “You are me.”  Too large to fit into the cabin, Tanaq jumps onto the roof and stabs down into the hole created by the wendigo, striking deeply with his enchanted spear.  The other giant, Cirdassa, tries to get an angle from the doorway, and with the adventurers joining in, they seem to have it surrounded!  It claws and bites in a vicious fury before suddenly turning into mist and floating away on the winds.

The sudden winter storm quickly dissipates.  Tanaq, who barely survived the onslaught of the wendigo’s attacks, takes one look at Jinkatsyu and says “The wendigo has marked him with its curse—he will be dead by dawn with the creature unslain—and it will not return once driven away.”  Jinkatsyu, exhausted from lack of sleep and another gruelling battle, takes the news bitterly and isolates himself from the others.  Erik asks the taiga giants if they can help return the deceased Kang and Ava to life.  Tanaq says that their valiant souls deserve a return to mortal life, but that the journey back from

Few dangers in the north

 compare to the dread wendigo . . .

the beyond may find them in a new shell.  Erik opines that Kang certainly wouldn’t want to be anything other than what he was, but that Ava probably wouldn’t mind.  Tanaq says the ritual can be conducted at the new day’s dawning.  He and Cirdassa disappear into the distant treeline to commune with the spirits, while the others rest after their day’s ordeal.

 

For Jinkatsyu, it is the longest, darkest night of his life.  The fate that awaits him should he succumb to the curse is one far worse than death—as he’ll become a monstrous thing akin to the wendigo, constantly hungering for sentient flesh.  But Morgiana and Erik offer no comfort, callously trading routine quips with each other as their companion is left locked in a storage room.  Somehow, though, the swashbuckler finds the inner fortitude to survive for one more day.  But he knows that, without a miracle, it will be his last.

 

[24 Pharast 4708]

 

The adventurers wake with headaches, nausea, and fatigue.  Without Ava’s or Kang’s magicks, the mountain altitude has taken its toll overnight. The survivors stumble out into the cold to meet with the taiga giants, camped nearby.  After a lengthy ritual, Tanaq calls upon the spirit world to return Ava’s soul for another journey in the mortal realm.  Her deceased grippi body seems to melt and reform into that of a living half-elf, and Ava is back!

The cleric of Sinashakti is stunned by everything that’s happened since the battle against the frost worm.  Not only are there giants around, the wendigo has been permanently dispatched, and Kang is deceased—but she herself is suddenly taller and with unwebbed fingers!  Before she has time to compose herself, Erik tells her about Jinkatsyu’s curse and asks her to remove it.  She calls upon her divine magicks, but the curse of the wendigo is just too strong.  But, there is something else she can do: bring Kang back to life!  The tiefling returns to life in a spray of vomit.  After some initial confusion over Ava’s new form (and an off-the-cuff remark that “slimy skin was Ava’s whole personality”), he promises to make it up to her.

Tanaq is a savage shaman among his clan and wields

 his father's enchanted spear, the bloodstone impaler.

 

Later that day, as the group prepare for a return visit to the isolated mountain shelf to the north where the bones of Karivek Vekker lie, Tanaq gets Erik’s attention.  The giant says he has performed a ritual divination and the future is clear: Jinkatsyu will succumb to the wendigo’s curse at midnight.  The giant suggests Erik and his friends kill him first, and spare Jinkatsyu and everyone else the horror of an irreversible transformation into a cannibalistic spirit of pure evil.  But magic and money are always cause for optimism, and the adventurers instead decide to see if Magnimar might offer a cure for what ails Jinkatsyu .  . .

---------------------

Director's Commentary

This was a really exciting, dark session with the desperate return to the cabin, the wendigo crashing through the roof, and Jinks honestly getting *this* close to dying and turning into a wendigo.  Not everyone in the group was on the same page with the role-playing, but overall I was happy with how the session turned out.

Cirdassa and Tanaq Mammoth-Eater were the temporary replacements for Ava's and Kang's players.  I wanted them to be able to participate in the session while waiting to see if their regular PCs could be brought back to life.  Cirdassa was a "stock" taiga giant from the Bestiary, but Tanaq Mammoth-Eater was from Giants Revisited.  He was a level 10 druid with a really cool magic spear, and (although I didn't pick him for this reason) had the ability to cast reincarnation.  I had Ava's player roll on an expanded table of possibilities to see what Ava would come back to life as, but it ended up on a pretty mundane result--half-elf.  That's dice!