Emergence Game Thread

Group skill check time! Everyone roll Perception.

The four men do their best to cover their tracks, but it's a tall ask given the circumstances. Therrien leads the group down the long dark hallway, flickering torchlight casting dancing silhouettes onto the wall. He turns the corner, and continues until he reaches the cleric, laden with her belongings, standing at a hallway intersection. Noting the serious and far-away looks on the faces of the companions, she simply nods and takes the hallway to the left.

After a series of twists and turns, three flights of stairs interspersed, she pauses at a corner. "We're about to pass out of restricted access. Try to act normal." Turning the corner, she leads the group down a short final hall to a small wooden door flanked by two royal guards. The guards open the door and the group moves through in silence, passing by four more guards.

The five adventurers snake their way through kitchens, cellars, and other storage areas and empty rooms, obviously intending to avoid the most public spaces of the castle. They finally stop in a small room that looks like an office or records room where the Captain is waiting. He looks the group over. "Why the sour faces?" he asks with a smile. "Oh, right! Listen, you don't have to be afraid of porting. It's perfectly safe, if a little disorienting." After a brief pause, he remarks, "Well, you seem ready. Let's go." He moves around to behind the desk and unlocks a drawer with a key. Then he removed a false back from the drawer, reaches his hands in and pressed a button on the underside of the desktop. A panel of the rock wall behind to scrape open, revealing a passage that none of the party noticed before as sconces alight themselves . Captain ________________ starts down the musty stairwell before pausing and turning back to the group. "I hope none of you are afraid of tight quarters," he quips wryly. He turns and heads down the stairs.

The journey through the passage takes another 15 or 20 minutes, and when the group reaches the end of the corridor, the captain halts the group. He unsheathes a small wooden dagger and with the handle raps an intricate pattern on the door. bop-bop——bop-bop-bop———bop—bop-bop. He waits a full 60 seconds, his open hand extended towards the group to request silence and his attention focused on the door. He quietly repeats the pattern. bop-bop——bop-bop-bop———bop—bop-bop. This time after about 15 seconds the door creaks open, just a few inches.

Captain ________________ turns back to the group. His smile has been replaced with a set jaw and intensity in his eyes. [b]"Through the door to the right are a dozen barrels of King's Leaf Tobacco. Five have been mostly emptied. Do your best to stay low and quiet. When you're set, be sure to tuck as much of the leaf around you as possible, otherwise you'll be bounce around in there like an angry hornet trapped in a jar. I'll come by in five minutes and seal you up. Someone should be by less than an hour after you've stopped moving for good to let you out." He puts two fingers to his chin in the traditional manner of farewell blessing. "The favor of the gods rest on your journey. Good luck." Then, he slides out the door, leaving it open just enough for the group to follow.

The halfling, elf, half-orc, half-elf, and dragonborn find their way to the barrels and are struck by their size. On end, Rhiv or To'ot could stand to his full height with space to spare. With the group snug in their barrels, Captain ___________ returns and quickly seals each party member in, shutting out light completely and nearly snuffing out all sound as well. It's not unlike being in a womb, one would imagine.

After a short while, the barrels begin moving. They're rolled several hundred yards across the massive warehouse, where they wait another several minutes before their inhabitants hear a dull BVVFF, followed by the knocking sounds of wagons being hitched to the barrels. The wagons travel a half-mile or so before coming to a stop, and the barrels are unhitched. The party member are dizzy and nauseated, those susceptible to sea sickness suffering worse.

Time passes differently when one is trapped in total darkness, unable to move. But, some time later, the ends of the barrels are pulled out and their contents spilled out onto the dirt floor.

The adventurers look up to see two armed elves, and a young gnomish woman with short green hair and purple eyes standing on a platform smiling, arms crossed. "Welcome to Hanover," she offers in a high pitched voice. Then she bubbles into laughter at the site of the five characters sprawled out on the ground covered in tobacco.

Session 10

After a relatively straight-forward, trip from the portal to the docks of Hanover the party arrived at the location of the ship they were set to be deeded following coordination with the King's guard captain. Upon arrival the human that had agreed to sell the ship "for three times its value" met them at his office near the docks. After a roundabout story of woe, the man apologetically extorted the group into helping his cousin with a problem. After Therrien and Rhiv unsuccessfully try to intimidate him into going with the original deal, Harp and Rhiv try--and fail--to persuade him into promising to take care of the problem after they complete their mission. Grumpily the group agrees to take on the quest in exchange for the pilot meeting them at a point down river and taking them the rest of the way down the river.

After trying to invent a new-person to person horse sharing model, the company decides to just walk. After a 6 hour hike they arrive at ________, a small village _________ of Hanover. As grudgingly as they offer help, the receipt is just as grudgingly accepted. The pilot's cousin, the barber cum sheriff cum mayor of the town, walks them to a nearby field where they see crops that have seemingly been turned to some tarry rock from the roots down. After a short discussion and some investigatory digging the party makes their way to a small nearby cave--at which point the sheriff excuses himself and returns to town. After several minutes of spelunking their way through the caves the party encounters an inky darkness that slowly deepens to the point of overwhelming all of their light sources, both magical and non-magical. Even Brighthill's divine light was overwhelmed by the overwhelming gloom. Despite their fear and concern rising in their hearts, they press on. Suddenly both Brighthill and Therrien are attacked by some unknown creature that latched onto their faces. The party quickly dispatches two of the three monsters through some powerful--and lucky--strikes.



Seconds after the darkness was lifted with the departures of darkmantles, a growing rumble began around the party, growing quickly louder and louder. As the rumbling was too indistinct to know its origin, the party chose to hunker down and prepare rather than flee. Within seconds a powerful monster bore a hole through one of the walls merely feet from the group.



Despite their preparation, Harp, Therrien, and To'ot were struck dumb by the monser's gaze. Before the stones and dust had a moment to settle or the umber hulk had time to strike out on its own, Rhiv was able to overcome the affects of fear and rushed forward bringing down his hammer with ringing forth with the power of Adonai shattering the jaw of the wicked beast. Despite this strike the monster was able to quickly return the favor and with his powerful claws and jaws it brought Rhiv almost to his knees. Brighthill managed to keep everyone relatively hearty and only To'ot was actually knocked out of the fight for a short period. After several rounds of failure each member of the group gradually realized the importance of avoiding looking at the eyes of the enemy . Once this technique was used the beast was quickly subdued with the final killing blow being delivered by a raging Therrien leaping down a tunnel after the fast fleeing enemy.



As the group gathered their breath and examined the corpse of the enemy they heard the unexpected sound of voices speaking. Harp quickly ascertained the origin of the noises and crawled to the edge, seeing an odd gathering of _________________ circling a bubbling pool of the same tarry substance they had seen in the fields above them. Unfortunately, while crawling to the edge Harp managed to disturb some pebbles that clatter loudly into the yawning cavern............

A few rocks tumble into the cavernous, uh, cavern, clattering down the face of the wall some 25 feet to the floor below. Hoping that the crackle of the small fire, the bubbling of the oozing darkness, and the hum of the ritual performers would drown out the sound, Harp lets the darkness surround him.

Keeping his gaze in the open space below, Harp sees one of the robed figures look in his general direction. He touches his nearest companion on the shoulder and gestures toward the area where the sound originated. The second figure motions to two of the group who break off from the circle. One comes toward the wall that the party are inside, and the other heads to Harp's right. Both disappear from sight in only a few steps.

The rest of the group returns to their humming and chanting.

That's when Harp notices that the black goop seems to be responding in some way to the ritual, pulsing in time with the rhythm of the chant like a heartbeat.

Rhiv takes a look around and realizes that there's not any reason anyone would follow down this burrow hole made by the insect beast, and leads the group back out of the tunnel and into the room where the battle(s) took place. After a few moments of pacing around the room, Rhiv looks back at the piles of rubble created by the ant-man's ingress and egress, and realizes it creates the perfect choke point for an ambush.