Redmark Date: Third Age—April 14, 1331

A Long Rope Bridge

The party finds themselves at the base of an impossibly long rope-and-plank bridge. It rises nearly a mile up the sheer face of a cliff, hanging over a depression roiling with fog. The heroes decide to camp the night and enjoy the amenities of Leomund’s Tiny Hut. It’s a nightly rave now.

April 15

Quakes and Shakes

The heroes climb the rope bridge. Reassuringly, an earthquake tremor occurs just as they get on the rickety old bridge.

It takes four hours to climb the bridge to the top, and it gets progressively steeper and more difficult. Near the end, it’s like climbing a ladder, and several in the party get exhausted as they climb.

Near the top, Lundie crests the ridge of the cliff just as another earthquake hits, violently shaking the bridge until it snaps just below the party. Most of the party manages to hold on, but Akamu, the eagle-eyed barbarian native, tumbles off the bridge.

Fortunately, he’s tied to the rest of the group and he doesn’t plummet to his death. Unfortunately, he’s tied to the rest of the group and nearly tugs his friends off the bridge to plummet to their deaths.

However, thanks to the mighty strength of Marcus, the Roman priest suspends Akamu’s fall and saves the party.

“I Have Bugbears”

Akamu finds Bugbear tracks on a trail leading into the wooded area on the top of the plateau.

Out of game, Stan apologizes for having lost all his Bugbear minis. To which, Bailey responds: “I have bugbears.” Which sounds like he’s admitting to having an STD. We all laugh and Loftin suggests Bailey see a doctor to have that looked at.

Back in game, sure enough, the party encounters two patrolling bugbears. Ghost Dancer runs forward, lifts his loincloth, and casts Tasha’s Hideous Laughter at a bugbear. Sadly, the bugbear just shrugs and rolls his eyes, unaffected by terrible sight of Lil Ghosty.

The party dispatches one of the bugbears and capture another. Ivamel talks Marcus from the ledge of wanting to adopt another pet bugbear to convert to Mars. They tie the bugbear to a tree, gag it, and continue on the trail.

Fortress of Hot Ladies and Sticky Goo

So, yeah. The party discovers what appears to be a fortress. More patrols of bugbears march around it, but the party stealths like unholy ninjas and aren’t spotted. Ghost snorts some pixie powder to fly and casts Invisibility on himself. He floats over, around, and into the compound.

He sees huts on the ground with two hot chicks wandering about. He sees this is not a fortress but a jail—the gates are locked from the outside. Up in the giant trees, he finds huts made of sticky goo. He floats into a hut and discovers a bookshelf and a chest, also made of sticky goo. Ghost can’t resist. He plunders several of the books and nicks a Periapt of Proof against Poison from the chest.

Ghost Dancer returns and reports. Ivamel and Lundie reason that the bugbears have built this prison and hold within it something of good alignment. They decide to liberate the prison on their way back. For now, the party forges ahead to find the mythical buffalo.

They Exist!

A few miles down the path, the party crests a rise that overlooks a lush valley filled with a herd of buffalo!

Ghost Dancer turns into Usain Bolt and sprints to the valley, where he falls upon his knees and offers a prayer of gratitude to the Great Spirit. Then he uses a potion of animal friendship donated by Ivamel, while also casting Speak with Animals upon himself and approaches the biggest buffalo in the herd. He and Ghost Dancer chat for a while, mostly discussing the stock market and what offshore banks they prefer.

The King of the Buffalo welcomes the party and grants permission for them to camp in the Valley of the Buffalo. When Ghost explains the prophesy and shows the King the birthmark, the King feels a tug of destiny and agrees that he and the herd will go to the Land of the Apache to fulfill the prophesy.

As the party argues over how to get an entire herd of buffalo down the plateau cliffs and across the dangerous island and into Kat’s Claw, Fire Willow chimes in that the Chromatic Wizards can help get the herd back to Ghost Dancer’s people. She says that they wizards have been rumored to be near the middle of this very plateau.

Ghost casts Flight on Akamu who rises high and spots a chasm glittering with gold-colored reflections and an island in a volcanic lake where the Chromatic Wizards are rumored to be.

April 16

Man on a Buffalo

The party camps. When they awake, Ghost gets permission to ride the backs of the buffalo. Ghost rides the King and Marcus rides atop the one he names Scratchy. Marcus and Ghost hop aboard with huge goofy grins and their faces and they drag race around the valley high fiving and yelling back to the rest of the party, “We’re riding buffalo!”

Ivamel and Lundie just shake their heads and follow along, Lundie on his Celestial My Little Pony.

Marcus and Ghost ride around the valley toward the rising sun, which rises in the West in this crazy place! On the way, they spot an abandoned wizard’s tower.

The party stops to investigate. Ghost and Marcuse feed their buffalo friends apples and nearly cause a riot because they barely have enough to go around.

The group heads into the tower where they find magical treasures stashed in the upper rooms: a circlet of blasting, a bag of holding, and some dust of disappearance. And for Ghost Dancer, a Tan Bag of Tricks!

Spider Skanks

Not forgetting the hot chicks back in the palisade prison, the party journeys back and liberates them.

Turns out, they’re not really hot chicks—they’re hideous spider magicians who spew stinking clouds and split into three mirror images.

They, however, are no match for the party, who dispatches them. In the remaining huts, the party finds some oil of slipperiness (wait…what? I guess Quintos will need that for some of his exploits) and a potion of climbing.

Will the heroes find the legendary Chromatic Wizards? Will these wizards help Ghost get the buffalo herd back to Apache land in Redmark? What’s to be found in the gold-glittery chasm at the far end of the plateau? The party will find out…if they live long enough.

LOOT REPORT

• Helm of True Sight—given to Marcus by Lundie; and Marcus almost immediately begins griping about it (“I have to sleep with this on my head every night? Oh man, it smells like Lundie. I hate this thing. And I can’t even get the magic to work for a whole week? Ivamel, you want this stupid helmet?”)
• Circlet of Blasting
• Bag of Holding
• Dust of Disappearance
• Oil of Slipperiness (tee-hee)
• Potion of Climbing
• Tan Bag of Tricks
• And one big-ass buffalo herd!

April 10-14, TA 1331

April 10-12, 1331

The hunt for the fabled buffalo continues as the party treks further into the depths of this mysterious, humid, densely treed island. Oh, and It’s apparently packed to the gills with dino-riding cannibal jungle savages.

As an important aside, I don’t mean “savages” in the same vain that my Roman ancestors meant when referring to the various tribes of Guals which inhabited the lands of Germania. By which they simply meant,(remember to imagine this being said with a sort of high pitched nasally voice. “Oh! I’m such a stuck-up member of “real” civilization, I can’t possibly imagine there are other civilizations out there. They’re all just savages.” No, I mean literally savage and violent.

April 13, 1331

Remember our favorite jungle people I mentioned? Well, as if to prove my point, they tracked the party by means of some giant dodo bird thing. They attacked and, though they gave it their best, the party killed more of them. Again.

April 14, 1331

Hey! No savages! Not yet, anyway. The party did find an unbelievably long rope bridge stretching from the ground up into the mist/clouds surrounding the huge plateau in the middle of the island. Oh yeah…they made it the plateau they’ve been seeking. Here’s hoping there’s some buffalo up there. Several actually. Maybe we can use the extras as a sort of buffet distraction for the native crazies when we finally start making our way back. One can only hope.

April 9-10, TA 1331

April 9, TA 1331: After the Treant

After the party talks with the Treant, they settle down inside of the hut created by Ghost Dancer.

April 10, TA 1331: Quintos Has a Vision

The Death Dealer (by Frank Frazetta)

At midnight at the start of the 10th; Quintos has a vision.  He sees a battle raging forces of good and evil in the cleft of two mountains. This battle appears to be in the time of the first age of Thrëa.

Quintos sees two “death dealers” on the side of the evil army, a taller one (15′ tall) with a great sword and the other (7′ tall) with a great axe.  On the side of the heroic army, Quintos sees someone he recognizes as the 1st Age hero named Arkland who fights alongside heroic compatriots fighting a massive army. The greater of the two dark figures uses his eldritch powers to ignite all the trees and foliage in the area, turning the battleground into an hellish arena. Arkland’s weapon shatters as his blade meets the dark sword’s edge of the taller death dealer.

One of Arkland’s helmed companions intervenes to save Arkland from a blow of a demon axe and takes a mortal blow. As she falls, her helmet comes off, revealing it is Thëa, Arkland’s love. Arkland falls to her side, devestated.

As the battle rages and Arkland is about to die at the hands of the taller death dealer, Arkland prays in the language of the Anthron. An angelic being then appears: Sephna. Quintos recognizes this as the self-same being as represented by a statue of Our Lady of Sorrows in Stonehelm.

Sephna stops the attack of the fiendish sword wielder, on Arkland. She then goes on to say, “As the sun melts wax and hardens clay, so is the Light of Eldëon: a power that brings life to the righteous, and suffering to the wicked.” She motions to a flaming tree, which transforms into a tree-styled magic sword, which floats over to Arkland who takes it as his new weapon.

At Sephna’s command, the earth opens and swallows up both Sephna and the taller death dealers as their battle goes underground.

As the vision fades, Sephna says to Quintos, “Seek the blade of the Arkoni, you will need it to fight the coming darkness.”  As the dream leaves Quintos, he is able to see the outline of the island of Dasarria and knows that the sword is buried in the tomb of Arkland near Mystkar. Arkland hears Sephna say that the name of the blade is, Spathixiforos, “The Tree Blade”.

Quintos wakes with a start and immediately wakes his life-long friend Marcus.  Marcus begins to furiously write down everything that Quintos tells him of the “dream”.  Lundie jokes that dream is obviously fantasy since Quintos saw the dwarf companion of Arkland get pushed aside by the axe-wielding death dealer.

Quintos awakes and relays these events in his vision to his friends. Others can add to the story: Gristag is the name of the lesser Deathdealer who wields an axe which is a living fiend who drinks the blood of those it slays. Margon is the name of the taller death dealer — a fallen Arkon, the most powerful of the fiendish creatures.

April 10, TA 1331: The Attack of Morgigak and Slithigak!

The party wakes up early and starts on their trek to find the buffalo’s for Ghost Dancer’s people.  They now have come to the plains of the island.  They are ambushed by Hagagakak’s sisters, Morgigak and Slithigak!  The sisters are riding dinosaurs and have shamans at their side.  Thanks to archery efforts of Ivamel, he is able to dislodge the sisters from atop their dinosaur mounts thus they lose control of the creatures.  This greatly emboldens the party and they are able to swiftly turn a certain death trap into a victory.

April 7-9, TA 1331

April 7, 1331

Hagagakak’s Tent

In the aftermath of the T-Rex beat-down at the cannibal village, the party liberates the captured villager, Lagu. As the party investigates the village, they find the shrunken heads of dozens of captured villagers decorating the huts of the cannibal clan. Lagu tells an awful tale of horrific tortures and murders. He was next on the menu, and owes his life to the heroes. From there, the party decides to search the stinky tent of the evil cannibal sorceress, Hagagakak.

Dem Bones

As it turns out, the lovely Hagagakak was into arts and crafts. Not cross-stitching or scrapbooking. No, she built stuff with the bones of the people she slaughtered. Very charming.

At one end of her hut, the party finds a hexagon shape pounded into the dirt. The hexagon is lined with femurs. The area oozes with dark, arcane energy. At the other end of the tent, a strange scaffolding of finger bones holds aloft a curious ball made of amber. Inside the ball, an imprisoned pixie is trapped, frozen in place.

When Marcus holds his light close to the amber ball, the pixie opens her eyes and glowing bits of pixie dust float through the orb.

Trixie the Pixie

Fire Willow

Marcus calls on the Lady of the Lots, who confirms that releasing the pixie from her amber prison will be a great boon to the party. Quintos tries a spell to free her—dispel magic. The orb, however, remains intact. Then Lundie casually strolls up to the orb and taps it with his divine hammer.

A flash of light blinds Lundie and the party. Lundie’s soul gets sucked into a wormhole. Meanwhile, the party simply sees Lundie’s body freeze, not realizing that his soul now zooms toward oblivion.

Lundie’s head pokes through an ethereal plane into a hut with two of Hagagakak’s sisters: Mornigak and Slithigak. They stir a boiling witch’s pot and chat. When they see Lundie, they read his mind, and cry, “You killed our sister!” Then they grab spears and approach his floating head. Lundie tries to get away, but can’t move.

Meanwhile, back in the hut of Hagagakak, the party sees Lundie twitching. Ivamel thinks that perhaps the dwarf has invented breakdancing. Leopold observes smoke emerging from the finger-bone pedestal and crawling over the ground to the hexagon of bones. Quintos, with a blessing from Marcus and some musical inspiration from the band “Ghost and the Loincloths” pushes Lundies hammer all the way down on the orb.

There’s another blinding flash of light. The orb cracks, and Lundie’s soul returns to his body.

Fire Willow

Lundie, with a few taps of his hammer, frees the pixie. She immediately gets a crush on the 20-foot-tall dwarf and his very nest-able beard.

Her true name makes Hagagakak’s sound easy to pronounce. It’s Glandirifainisiwan. Which translates to Fire Willow. She’s clearly not in her right mind, because she thinks Lundie is tall and handsome. Quintos says that she’s “fairy powerful.” As prophesied by the Lady of the Lots, Fire Willow becomes an immediate boon to the party…by tying Leopold’s and Quintos’ shoelaces together while the party sleeps.

April 8, 1331

The Ring

After spending the night in Leomund’s Tiny Hut—which the Duke of Dorn has tricked out as Leomund’s Rockin’ Bachelor Pad (Leomund’s Disco Ball, Leomund’s Buffet, Leomund’s Big Screen TV, Leomund’s Xbox, Leomund’s Fridge Full of Beer, and Leomund’s Pot Dispensary)—the party heads off to find the plateau rumored to be near the interior of the island.

Along the way, the heroes and their jungle walker buddies find an old campsite, and Quintos spots a glint of silver in the underbrush. It’s a ring! A shiny silver ring! Certainly it’s magic.

Marcus consults the Lady of the Lots and rolls double 0’s. Aught! Aught!

His unusual vision tells him that the ring is probably cursed. Quintos figures out that the ring makes one feel as if they are invisible, but really the ring whistles and draws attention to the wearer. Perhaps a useful tool to have in the future.

April 9, 1331

Leopold Picks a Fight with a Tree

After another night partying in Leomund’s Tiny Frat House, the party continues their journey, emerging from dense jungle to hill country. They approach a deep gorge over which a giant fallen tree forms a bridge.

The party sets camp for the night. Ivamel starts chopping firewood … with a rapier. I guess he just likes a challenge. Immediately, a redwood-sized Treant moves toward the party and chastises them for desecrating the bodies of his dead friends and family.

Most of the party takes a knee and apologizes profusely for offending the mighty Treant. Except for Leopold, The Duke of Dorn.

Leopold defies the Treant, and when the Treant appears ready to attack, Leopold makes a slimy non-apology apology—and it works! The Treant abstains from crushing the party. Leopold rolls his eyes, disappointed that he hadn’t started a fight with the sanctimonious tree.

The Chromatic Wizards

With the help of Fire Willow, the party speaks with the Treant and hears a mysterious tale. The Treant has lived for 13 centuries. During that time, the Treant has often encountered three chromatic wizards. According to the Treant, these wizards created the island in the bubble of the universe.

There was a male wizard dressed in blue robes, a male wizard dressed in red robes, and a female wizard dressed in yellow robes. Hmm—red, yellow, and blue. The primary colors. The colors from which all other colors can be created. Coincidence? I think not!

These 3 wizards came and went among the people and creatures of Vridensia for centuries. Then about 200 years ago, the Treant noticed that the three wizards had stopped coming to Vridensia.

Before the wizards went missing, new creatures appeared on the island. The Treant has seen a herd of buffalo on the central plateau. Ghost Dancer does the happy dance at this news and feels closer to fulfilling his destiny.

Some in the party notice that they have seen three different constellation patterns in the skies of Redmark, Earth, and Vridensia. Three different worlds in three different universes. It’s all very strange and unsettling.

And speaking of the constellations, the Treant finishes his tale by saying that many wizards fled to the stars.

What will the heroes discover at the interior of the island? Will the Duke of Dorn finally get to fight a tree? Will Lundie marry Trixie the Pixie and create a subspecies of even shorter dwarves? Will Ghost Dancer find the Fluffalo? Will Marcus get eaten by a Roc? Will Quintos attune with the Roc? Will Ivamel finally reveal that he’s Mars (“Surprise, ya’ll. It’s me, Mars. Who wants to see my flaming sword?”)

Stay tuned…

LOOT REPORT

1 cursed silver ring

April 6-7, TA 1331

Akamu, a jungle walker, joins our intrepid heroes as they begin their journey to find the Rock’s nest and the infamous White Buffalo. Looking out at the mountain, Ghost Dance and Quintos decide to fly up the mountain using Ghost’s spell, in hopes that they can retrieve several items that the party are hopeful are present. Marcus and Akamu prepare to mimic animal sounds to distract the Rock in case Quitos and Ghost Dancer are vulnerable. Upon landing on the top of the mountain near the Rock’s nest, Quintos and Ghost both use their magics to go invisible. Quintos notes a bottle of whiskey and a few notable features of a man that he has heard tale of whose body is in this gigantic bird’s nest, but can recall nothing specific. Nerio, Quintos’ reliable familiar, notifies the duo of danger and our heroes sprint and jump off of the top of the mountain (nearly 1.5 miles high).

The Rock, having noticed an odor that was off in its nest, begins to search the area. After making noises to distract the great bird, Akamu and Marcus are discovered and attempt to flee the clearing and make for the tree line. Akamu stumbles and is scrambling for safety when Marcus, in a moment of clarity and brilliance, casts Banishment on the great best – sending it away for 60 seconds. Ivamel, deciding to be useful, spots a cave on the mountainside and the trio on the ground scramble toward the hole in order to reach safety before the Rock returns. Inside the cave Marcus gets a premonition from Marsssh that there is certain evil nearby in the cave.

Quintos and Ghost Dancer make their way down the mountain and just reach the inner sanctum of the cave before the Rock reappears and begins frantically tearing up trees and brush to find those that have disrupted its nest. The party of 6 decide to head toward the mountain shown in the map that Quintos recovered from the nest. After some tracking and climbing through muck, mire, and dried out plains the party happens upon a village protected by a fence that backs itself into a large cave.

Slowly, Akamu and Marcus decide to approach the village. From the tree line, the party can see a few people moving inside the walls and all take precautions, preparing for possible battle. As the pair nears the village a witch of some kind yells out and speaks some commands in a seemingly primordial language. A rumbling starts, but the party has other things to worry about as two other sorcerous villains begin to cast spells their way. Ivamel fires arrow after arrow and Quintos blasts with eldtritch power, both picking off enemies from a distance. Akuma and Marcus freeze in their tracks as a giant lizard appears and storms toward the party. Ghost Dancer casts spell after spell at the creature and those protected behind the walls of the village. After dispatching with the shamen, the party turns its focus on the giant short-armed lizard creature. Quintos places a Hex on the creature, Marcus bestows a curse from Mars, and Ivamel strikes so furiously that the giant creature becomes frightened. After only a few seconds, the beast is destroyed. Adrenaline still flowing the party turns its fury onto the witch who had tucked herself into the cave beyond the village. A few strikes from swords, arrows, and magics subdue the woman and she is defeated.

The party find that her name is Hagagigak and she owned quite a collection of shrunken heads…