Dark Gods

Session 17 – On the Waterfront

We decide to team up with Ran Goon and go to take out Gao Fang at one of his waterfront warehouses. Initially we think about putting explosives under one of the docks but opt for infiltration. We cut through the fence and climb through, but then we see that most of the workers here are dead.

We head into the warehouse and find a ton of guys here. Gabriel jumps through the window, ripping it from its frame. Ran follows and leaps to a nearby crate, and uses his staff to crack a ninja in the face. Ahead we see Gao Fang!

Gabe throws the window at Gao Fang’s face which proves ineffectual. After a battle, Gabe, Ran and Goodwin take out all of the ninjas and gangsters here, but Gao Fang manages to take over Ran’s mind then casts 3 green skulls at Gabe.

Before he can be defeated, Gao Fang holds aloft the two ruby eyes (ours was obviously a fake!) and there is a blinding white light.

An undetermined amount of time later, we awake with the sweet taste of grass in our mouths. We have been transported somewhere strange and deserted.

Dark Gods

Session 16 – Shanghaid

At the Dragon of the Black Pool Restaurant, Egg Foo Chow tells us that Lao Che runs a shipping business at the docks of Shanghai. The contact that can help us with more information is named Ran Goon; he can be found in a bar near the docks.

We depart, taking the zeppelin from San Francisco through to Hawaii, Japan and then finally Shanghai. On the trip, Goodwin works in the lab for most of the time; Gabriel sleeps; Slate reads.

The group’s pilot, Tom “Tailspin” Kennedy, tells us a bit about his history and his plane that we previously didn’t know. He was a pilot in World War I, and was shot down over Germany. He was held prisoner in a hole for several months, but eventually was able to break out and stole a plane, flying himself to safety. The plane was an experimental aircraft that had several enhancements, one of which was night vision. This is the plane that Tom still has and is attached to the zeppelin.

When we are within hours of Shanghai, suddenly several planes fly by us. Slate and Gabriel run to man the ship’s guns, and Tom launches off in his plane to fight them off. Goodwin uses a gadget he created, the Fantasmic Pulser, to create an obfuscating cloud around one of the planes. The pilot, blinded, loses control and crashes his plane. We shoot down the other two planes, and Tom notices that the planes have the upside-down pyramid symbol on them.

We land and look for the bar that Ran Goon frequents. After a while of searching and unsuccessful attempts at talking with the local folk, we see several people being tossed out of the front door of a nearby bar. They are all nursing their wounds on the sidewalk. The guy who manhandled them saunters back in the bar, laughing; he is a short, stocky man with a red face and permanent grin. He looks just like the photo we have of our contact.

We walk in and find him back at the bar, drinking. We ask if he is Ran Goon, and he says that he is; apparently he speaks English. Gabriel immediately challenges him to a fight, and he laughs and agrees. Goodwin, who speaks Mandarin, tells Gabriel how to insult him properly in his own language. Slate tells Ran that if he beats Gabriel, he will drink for free for the rest of the night.

Gabriel takes the first shot and knocks Ran down hard. He gets back up but misses Gabriel badly, smashing through a table and falls down. Gabriel picks him up by the scruff of his clothes, and Ran doesn’t seem to be fighting any longer. Goodwin notices that he might have some internal bleeding.

Slate tells Gabriel that we need to take him back to the zeppelin. Goodwin uses his medical machine on him; after a moment he is healed and is sober, which is very disorienting to him. We begin asking him about Lao Che, and he explains that he runs an import/export business which is legit, but he also runs opium. Ran also knows the layout of Lao’s facility. He has been doing work for Egg Foo Shen who will send him money to do miscellaneous tasks, and after he does them he blows all of it on liquor.

Lao has two docks on the water, and two gates that are large enough for trucks. The warehouse has a high fence, and a two-story office building attached. There is a secondary warehouse and a crane for loading cargo onto his ships. He also owns a hangar at the airport.

We ask Ran about the upside down yellow triangle symbol, but he is not aware of any group with the symbol.

2050

Session 5 – Spiders

We get further into the affected area and see abandoned areas. Finally we see a large room with lots of webs and radioactive barrels. They seem to have a company name on them — we snap a photo.

Moving along we come to a small body of water. A behemoth, a hippo-like creature, emerges and attacks us. We shoot at it with little effect but two well-placed manabolts by Skaale bring him down.

Alamos 20k, a humanis policlub seems to be behind the radioactive waste.

2050

Session 3 – Gear Up

We gear up for the run, buying radiation suits and guns that we won’t mind getting rid of after we complete the mission, since the rads will likely affect anything we bring with us.

2050

Session 2 – Goodwill Run

There have been more strange occurrences and we try and figure out what has been going on. We ask Smoke Jaguar who we should talk to and he sets up a meeting with the “underground.”

Jack tries to meet with a city alderman. He says that they have encountered radiation in certain spots and it may have caused things to mutate. He says that if we can manage an investigation and removal, he will pay us 10k nuyen. We feel that although the payday is very light, none of us are hurting for cash and it will be a decent goodwill run.

2050

Session 1 – Deep Tunnel

In the Milwaukee Deep Tunnel, we come across Longbarrel and KidVid being attacked by hellhounds. We help them out and decide that we should find out more, but don’t want to take them back to the warehouse, so we take them to Jack’s office. We ask them who they are — KidVid says that he worked for Fuchi and was betrayed by the corp. Longbarrel is an ex-marine sniper. We ask them to join the group.

Heroes of Neverwinter

Session 8 – Floating Lake

We toss the bodies down into the pit, then we go toward where we saw the chain going into the chasm. Gadai climbs down and looks around. He hears something. He lands on the boat which is embedded sideways in the wall. Below he sees a glowing “egg.” He tells us to come down and we string together rope to climb down.

We throw the rope down and we see a lake suspended below as well. The water has orbs floating in it. Miri’s spirit companion slices one open and a woman emerges. Miri grabs on to her and pulls her out. Belgha cuts open another one with his grappling hook but he floats up, dead. His familiar finds 3 more that seem to be alive. One of the men starts crying an dhe says that he ventured across the wall a week ago and doesn’t remember anything.

Zanne and Lennon dive in the water and swim towards the center. After almost drowning the see a column of water that appears to be a portal. Suddenly a humanoid with see-through skin appears through the portal. We destroy the portal and kill the minion and one other. We tie ourselves off and break the pool off of the walls, then it falls and smashes. We escape, and head back to the castle.

Heroes of Neverwinter

Session 7 – Hardcore

We come in to the shadow-less tower and there are more orcs. Some of them are “steaming”, they seem to be chill-born orcs. We dispatch them, but the female orcs run away with sacks over their shoulders.

In the next chamber we see a huge worked stone suspended over a deep pit. Belgha and Fianna climb down on a rope to see what is underneath. We think that this is a portal and the pit is a safeguard against unwanted visitors coming through the portal.

We all climb down and follow a small cavern for several hundred yards to an opening, we are at the edge of the scar. We see some creatures, smoke orcs, on a rock that has fallen and has wedged in the scar. Along with them is a huge orc, and they start climbing towards us. After many tries we finally knock the big orc off of the ledge. We go back through the tower to the city.

We discover that two kids are following us into the city. They are 13-year olds who live on this side of the river. They are from a group of orphans who are still here looking for their parents. Fianna gives them a sack with 400 hold and tells us that she has a soft spot for orphans. They show us a safehouse that is well secured and fortified. The children have us meet Amberson, one of the orphan caretakers. There are 3 adults and 13 children total here. Zanne gives them an additional 300 gold. Amberson is thankful and asks us how he can help out. We ask him for information.

Amberson explains that this side of the city was the more affluent section. The castle is magically guarded. He thinks that the tower has a wizard in it who uses a portal to visit another plane. We ask Amberson to leave us notes if they find out anything else. We suggest if they need our help, they put a white rag in the window at the top of a nearby tower. Also we tell them to visit the shop and get some healing potions. We go to clear the tower so we’re sure that it is safe for them.

We break into the nearby tower, but a dwarf is holed up here. He is a merchant. We exchange him a long length of chain and a large ruby for some magical rings and a healing potion. Also he has an artifact for Zanne (“Abduction Ki Focus”), and Belgha gives the dwarf a jewel and 2 rings for it. The dwarf tells us that his name is Drook. He has tried to sell his wares on a cart or store on the other side of the wall, but Neverember would not let him. He allows us to go to the top of the tower.

Upon scouring the tower, we find some silver dust. This is Rizidium, used as money in some quarters. We estimate that it is worth about 30,000 gold. Also a scroll case contains an “enchant magic item” scroll and “arcane lock.”

We come into another building and kill a few orcs in here, and suddenly the building starts shuddering and rises off the ground! Several other nearby buildings do too. We jump out of the building and try to tie it down so it does not float away. Suddenly we are blasted off of our feet by a blue wave of energy coming from the scar. We are knocked unconscious. We experience immense pain and our skin shifts around agonizingly. Our eyes glow blue. Miri tells us that we have contracted a magical disease. This is what will come to be known as the Spellplague.

Picking ourselves back up, we see that the Black Tower is also floating above the ground. We go back into the building and search around, here we find a magical spear (“Hungry Spear”). Zanne takes this.

We make our way back to the wall to see what has happened there. There are other buildings still rising up and we see cats and rats running around. We take our things to the safehouse.

We leave a note for the orphans and go back across the bridge to the main part of town. Belgha changes himself to a human form and says that we should now call him Gammon. We see people in chaos as we come to this part of the city, a lot of them crying and yelling. We go to Isabelle’s shop but the door is locked. We go in through the back, and find Isabelle there. Upon asking her about the strange happenings she unfortunately does not have answers.

We go to the nearby temple but it has been barricaded shut by the priest. We manage to climb an exterior wall and gain access. There are books missing off of the shelves. Downstairs we find a man sitting at a drafting table writing but he does not notice us. Gadai tries to talk with him but the man grabs his papers and runs off. Gadai grabs him an dsays we do not want to hurt him, but the man doesn’t listen. Belgha asks the man about the Spellplague but he does not have any answers.

The man finally tells us that his name is Atlavast, and he has been here for years, since the Cataclysm. He is keeping the knowledge safe and copying all of the books in the library. He says that the vault containing all the books will stay closed until one of the true bloodline comes; it is magically sealed. Atlavast says that the texts do not specify anything about this Plague or the “blue eyes” effect. He does know about the “Pale One” however; she has been roving the city looking for “royalty” but he’s not sure why. Gadai tells us that he had a dream that told him “The Pale One was the cause of it all.”

We ask about the castle. Atlavast says that the Neverwinter Nine, a group of ghostly warriors, wo serve Allegondor and will attack us if we try to enter the castle. Also it has been magically sealed off. There are other ghosts there as well. We apologize for interrupting his work and leave.

We squat at a building next to the castle. The next morning we find that most of us have improved from the disease — only Fianna is worse. Several of the party members are healed entirely.

We go to the castle and Gadai tries to climb up to gain access. We climb around onto a wall, 3 tiers below us. We see a few tents here and a Drow comes out. Belgha recognizes him as a possible friendly. We call to him and come down to speak with him. He says that his name is Jarlaxle, and tells us that the Pale One has been around here looking for royal dead people. He says that he has been keeping tabs on us using an information network (he already knew about our “donations” to the orphans). He says that he will allow us to camp in exchange for reporting back with any information on Neverember.

We go back to our message drop but we see no response from the Orphans. We wait one day for the orphans to respond. During this time, Zanne recovers from the plague; Fianna gets worse again and Lennon stays the same.

We finally hear back from the Orphans and they say that things are not going so well for them. The Plague has affected several of the children, and they are trying to get some help from a friend who is a cleric.

We decide to enter the castle underneath the tower that is now floating. First we start off on the eastmost part of the Scar. We see a woman in a nearby house that is hiding with her dead family. They are all torn apart. She has apparently killed them. Gadai quickly kills her with an arrow. The next house we find our old friend the necromancer (who had the 2 drakes). We had killed him before but not he appears to be back as an undead. We kill him again, but he dissolves into a swarm of bugs that attack us. The bugs have a strange skull design on their carapaces.

We take a long rest here. There is a large hole in the floor here. We make a note of it and move on.

In another building, Zanne sees some candles that look magical. This is a Ghost Light Candle; Zanne takes it. We find people here with glowing blue eyes, just like the woman we found. They are acting strangely, but we decide to leave them be.

We head into a store that used to sell clothing. Most of the clothes are nasty now. We find another artifact here, the “Ribbon of Limitless Questions.” We accidentally trip a trap and smoke starts coming out of the building. We bail. Outside we see a young elf in a tree nearby. He introduces himself as Saloce. We give him back the things we took from the clothing store because evidently he owns it. He says that he is a healer and helps Fianna beat the plague with his skills but in the process she becomes permanently scarred, and now sensitive to the occurrence of Spellplague magic and those infected.

In the next 3 houses we search, we find red paint above the door on each one. These look more repaired and possibly inhabited than the other ones we’ve seen. This must be what the dwarf received from traders.

The next 4 houses are unmarked. The first one looks to have been an armorer’s shop and has lots of armor still in it. We find a mint magical armor that protects against lightning attacks.

We continue on and see the dwarf being attacked by the town guard. We take care of them, but he says that our effort was unecessary. He asks if we want employment with him and we decline, taking our leave.

Heroes of Neverwinter

Session 6 – Farmhouse

We stash our loot 15 miles northwest of town at a farmhouse. It is hidden in the bottom of the outhouse; we collapse the structure on top of it.

Spending the night at the farmhouse, we hear invisible creatures approaching but they do not attack.

The next day we return to town through the north gate to a tower. There are orcs in the tower and we slay them. Oddly, we notice that the tower casts no shadow.