Estarion, Games 15 and 16

Game 15

After several weeks of hiatus (I moved across town and some other life events), we returned to the table with a simple dungeon crawl.

Jarrett began reading the Book of Ebon Bindings, and investigated a trapped magical box that held bits of pinkish fleshy substance, still apparently alive. Since it was alive, it wasn’t really in his wheelhouse, but a journal in the box tied the vials to a stronghold of “the enemy” of the cult of Orcus.

The PCs pursued a map to some caves north of town, where they encountered many strange creatures, including a full pinkish, fleshy gibbering mouther and some oozes, some gricks and carrion crawlers. They are beginning to think that maybe the Hags are in league with Aberrations or some such from outside of reality, which creeps them out.

In the end, they are ambushed by a flameskull and a bunch of skeletons. Timoneus is flummoxed by the first thing he hasn’t been able to burn to death, but they still manage to persevere.

The group ends up unsure whether this adventure was a set up by the Orcus cult to try to kill them, a clue about the relationship of the Hags to Very Bad Things, or both.

Game 16

The group is down two members, so they decide to look for work. They are sent on a mission to investigate the behavior of a wayward merchant and Poseidon worshipper who seems to have gone on a bender. Instead, they find that he is involved in something shady that is earning him a lot of money.

The party splits up. Team one (Jarret and Timoneus) learns the merchant is selling stolen religious artifacts to Astarte to investors out of town. Team two (Meadow and Arturius) end up seeing the merchant attacked by an assassin. They chase the assassin down and Arturius tries to capture the assassin peacefully while Meadow tries to kill him with her imp familiar. The Assassin kills the imp and leaves Arthur for dead after Arthur is unable to convince the Assassin that he had no idea where that imp came from. Arthur barely survives.

In the end, they save the merchant from death, realize he was going to stiff his crime lord partner, and end up profiting from it all, after they release the criminal (after letting the crime lord know of the release.) However, in the midst of all this, Arturius learns that Meadow has an oath binding her to a devil for her power, and Arturius decides that this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and decides he has to leave.

By the end of the game, the group is richer, but Arthur (and Carver) have climbed into the Apparatus of Kwalish and decided to wander the earth like Jules Winnfield so that Arthur can make sense of his situation. In real life, this is a chance for Arthur’s player to try out something different, for Carver’s character to take a break and spend some time taking care of stuff. Also, Anakis the tiefling bard, is missing (her player is out to focus on school) and will return when her player can, leaving me with a mystery to fit back into the game later.

Estarion, Game 14

The heroes investigate what leads they have, not quite to a dead end, but to the point that they are convinced that the Intellect Devourer is part of a very heavily covered up attack, but it isn't clear who is behind it.

While investigating at the library to learn more about their foes, Jarret, Arturius, and Carver find the brothel of Tatiana Scaevola is on fire. Calling on divine powers to bring down the rain, they find the place was set on fire from the basement, but that Scaevola's office was raided. They suspect that Tatiana Scaevola covered her tracks and eliminated the brothel among rumors and murders of her colleagues. The Guard shows up to investigate, without Captain Lucanus.

They investigate more and find that the Asylum seems semi-abandoned, with no one answering the door. They wait to see if the "patients" become uncontrolled in 24 hours and look for Captain Lucanus. They explore his house and find half of a map, and evidence the Captain has skipped town, too.

The PCs follow up by breaking in to and searching the asylum. After fighting some rather hardy zombies, some mysterious undead of an unknown sort, and a necrophidius, which Tim managed to melt with a a pair of critical hits from scorching rays. They find the other half of a map, a magical book, and a box with magical traps.

At the end of the game they end up with:

1. A map to caves with notes that the party has a bad feeling about.
2. Knowledge that the Cult of Orcus has skipped town.
3. A magical book they are not sure what it does or is.
4. A bunch of books raided from Marcellus Nonus' library.
5. A box with a magical trap they haven't opened.
6. Arturius' theory that the Intellect Devourers (and perhaps an illithid master) have been hired by the Hags.

Estarion, Game 13

The game was one of those tie-up-loose-ends games. The heroes mostly spent some time reviewing clues at the party before doing some research and follow-up. The heroes abscond with the body of the intellect devourer and its erstwhile host. They used their magic and skills to carry the body to the priestesses of Astarte to get them to use Speak with Dead to find out what the host knew.

The heroes learn a little about how the host was taken, but are no closer to learning what the bad guys know. Ana lets Tatiana Scaevola know about the death of their man, which unnerves her. Jarret lets slip to Marcellus Nonus that his ally was killed, which upsets the necromancer. Then the heroes begin to regroup. The heroes find that Nonus' house is ransacked by the Guard, and look for clues, finding very minor ones that just confirm Nonus' connection to the cult of Orcus.

At the end of the game, Nonus sends some ghouls, and Arturius is again out cold.

The heroes know the Orcus cultists are disturbed, and that they don't even know who else is hunting them.

Estarion, Game 12 (plus a mansion map)

The PCs are invited to a party at noblewoman Julia Martus' house. While mingling with a cast of colorful characters, they are embroiled in the investigation of the murder of Nevius Albanus, Imperial Master of the Keys and Orcus cultist. The death is blatant hit job, and Jerrit's ridiculous passive perception helps them quickly identify the main suspect.

A confrontation eventually follows, allowing the group to flush out and fight the killer— who turns out to really be an Intellect Devourer riding around in the skull of a party guest.

Arturius barely manages to end the night with a brain, while Meadow finds that Searing Ray provides a compelling choice for frying an enemy. The revelation of the killer is confusing, as it seems to indicate an opponent that is not seeming to belong to any known faction so far. Jerrit, at least, has a brain with animal-like legs that could provide some interesting research opportunities.

Estarion, Games 10 and 11

Game 10

We returned from a real-life holiday break to the heroes still talking to the priestesses of Astarte to learn that the Night Hag had stolen a key from the basement of the temple, one that would open an ancient enchanted tower under the bay. The coming night, a once-a-millenium low tide will make the top of the tower rise above the waves and lower the magical wards around the entrance and allow entry. Even then, the tower is enchanted to prevent followers of the goddess and the hags and their creations from entering. Inside is imprisoned a terrible master of the hags, that they worshipped as a power before the gods, and Elder Thing waiting to awaken.

The heroes plan a shipboard dash to the tower, supported by the warrior-priestesses of Astarte. They are met by a pirate ship. Using their spell-power, they mess up the pirates, but not before they drop a barrel into the water -- which turns out to be the Apparatus of Kwalish.

The heroes gather to stop the apparatus, waiting out the tide and waiting for the tower to be swallowed up by the waves again. They then dragged the apparatus to shore, defeated the drivers -- Regga and a wererat.

The heroes manage to convince the priestesses of Astarte to introduce them to the high priestess of Hecate, who helps them sequester the key in a magical hiding place, but they now know the hags will have to wait for another opportunity.

DM’s note: This was a total railroad of a session, I hate to admit, driven by the fact that we had way too many plot threads hanging out. I wanted to get the hags back on the back burner, close out the rat cult plotline, and get the PCs back to their interest in rooting out the cult of Orcus. Not my favorite way of handling things, but the group was getting stuck on where to go, so I focused on reducing options for them to make more meaningful decisions available.

Game 11

After some thought, the heroes decide to scout out two possible approaches to fighting the Cult of Orcus. They begin by sending Meadow’s familiar to scout the brothel of Tatiana Scaevola, and find out her operation is all kink upstairs and worse kink with zombie women in the basement. The rich and sadistic’s playground, and a source of potential blackmail material and wealth for the cult. They decide that, while they are squicked out about her, she isn’t a huge threat.

Next they look at Herminia Cassius. Researching the weaknesses of the penanngalan, the group manages to set up a plan to raid her house, steal her body, and burn it in the ruins of the temple of Astarte. The plan is a hit an run, and involves kidnapping a servant, killing Herminia’s charmed husband (with Arturius killing his old friend), and destroying a quasit with a lot of fire.

They also begin spreading rumors of unsavory activity in the brothel, and have yet to figure out deprogramming Regga. 

Also, it looks as if Meadow is now secretly visiting the town orphanage with children's books, helping teach the young about the good news of her patroness, Ereshkigal, to help them see the light of her warlock patroness. That's sweet, right?

Estarion, Game 9

The heroes are called to the docks to fight an incursion of sahuagin and giant crabs (and sharks, but they are in the water). After a brutal fight, the sahuagin leave, but the whole thing stinks of a diversion, as attacks happened on the river and on the docks, but only minor damage is done. Also, Regga is caught watching them, with a realistic-looking eye necklace around her neck.

The heroes then learn that the temple of Astarte is on fire. They fight a group of magmin, see a night hag disappear from the basement, and find that a hidden tomb in the secret but now exposed sub-basement is empty. The night hag seems to have struck at the temple and stolen the contents of the tomb somehow before stepping sideways out of reality.

Estarion, Game 8

Another game without combat and heavy on the roleplay. That actually wasn't what I had planned, but these players constantly go left when I plan to go right.

Regrouping at the temple, Arturius brings back some friends, Timonitus the Invoker and Anakis the Tiefling Bard. The group began investigating further into the activities of the Cult of Orcus, but moving cautiously. They begin three investigations: one into the asylum of Marcellus Novus, one into the brothel of Tatiana Scaevola, and one into the city orphanage, running simultaneously.

At the Asylum, Timonitus and Jarret try to investigate, and Jarret manages to get a job there, playing off that he is an apprentice wizard with skills in medicine and an interest in studying physiology and life and death. After an interview and a day at work, Jarret has a sense of the layout of the asylum and is doing a bit of a dance with Marcellus to feel out the place. He does learn that the inmates seem to be well-preserved zombies, the guards are not necessarily human, either.

At the orphanage, Arturius and Carver learn that the orphans who died at the orphanage really did seem to die from the Penanggalan, and coordinate efforts of priests of Apollo and Hades to try to protect the place from undead attack. Meanwhile, Meadow learns that Herminia Cassius’ maid has bruises and seems to be hiding problems at the Cassius’ home. Herminia may be getting hangry.

Meanwhile, Anakis investigated the brothel. Identifying a mark who was a client at the brothel, Claudius Blandus, Minister of Ratcatchers. She tried to get a lead on employment to get inside the brothel, but Blandus was deeply nervous about her requests for employment if they began to stray near the brothel. An attempt by Meadow to join in pushes too hard and he leaves. But afterward, Anakis goes through a gift box Blandus leaves her and finds sweets, a bottle of perfume, and a creepy book of misogynistic sadistic “erotic” poetry. Skeeved out, she still meets him again, again with backup, and Blandus, seeming distant, says he can get her an appointment with an employer and takes her to Scaevola’s brothel. Anakis talks her way out of being assassinated, and ends up instead being hired to spy on Arturius and his ragtag group. Anakis also finds more reasons to be suspicious of the brothel.

Meanwhile, the party jumps Blandus and tries to convince him to talk, but he’s too scared of Scaevola to do so. Eventually, they off him and make it look as if the last remaining wererats from the Rat Cult got to him, and fence some of his goods in a disguise to help confound their role in his murder.

Next game, the city will be in trouble, and there will be a combat-heavy game.

Estarion, Game 7

A few days pass and Arturius and Carver find themselves called to work with the church elders, leaving Jerrit and Meadow to investigate. They spend a couple of days investigating the people on the list of names they captured in game 3:

• Finding the tomb of Vitus Pontius, they end up attacked by his corpse, revitalized as a coffer corpse, which the pair defeats after Jerrit suffers a little strangulation.
• The two decide they can't really touch Lucanus Valens, chief of the guard or Nevius Albanus, Imperial Master of Keys.
• Meadow makes friends with one of Lady Herminia Cassius' servant Prisca in the market, gets to know her and uses her face to infiltrate the Lady's home. They find that Lady Herminia stays young with a nightly bath in vinegar that Prisca leaves drawn for her each night. Prisca tells Meadow that her mistress is traveling right now and not available. Meadow, wearing the appearance of Prisca, finds that there is still a fairly recent residue of vinegar in the tub, and brings a rag soaked with what she wiped up. Jerrit analyzes the fluids and finds some sort of humours, maybe blood, in with the vinegar. After much research he begins to suspect Lady Herminia may be a Penanggalan.
• Meadow and Jerrit also find an orphanage where Lady Herminia seems to be feeding on young boys, maybe around 7 or 8, who seem to be getting ill of a wasting disease, and decide that they need to get the priests of the temple to help protect the orphanage from undead incursion.
• Meadow and Jerrit also follow up with Tatiana Scaevola's brothel. The men coming out are all Aquilan men of standing and wealth, but seem furtive about being seen coming out of a high-class brothel, which is a surprise. They also seem to have some sort of token or invitation to get in.
• They investigate Fariq the Elder's home, but his shop has already been tossed and barricaded by the Guard.
• The Guard has also begun patrolling the sewers, rousting criminals inside and outside the walls, and mobilized heavily.
• Meadow seeks news of Regga from the Beggar King, but his men are not able to network well during the current Guard activity. 
• The two decide that the list of Aquilans seem not to be victims of the rat cult, but tied to the journal fragments mentioning in one instance the Cult of Orcus and in another the enemies of the cult. The PCs may have inadvertently helped the Cult of Orcus gain the upper hand by helping wipe out the rat cult. They also are now very unsure how to procede against them since they don't know the size of the cult, which are living or undead, or how to move against them because of their political position.
• They also are sure that Marcellus Nonus is behind Meadow's current undead status and theorize that the patients seem so calm and quiet because they might, in fact be zombies or similar undead.

DM note: this is a game where only two players were able to come, and they were the party warlock (Meadow) and wizard (Jerrit). Jerrit is a necromancer and master of book research, Meadow can alter self at will, but other than that their social skills are not great; their combat abilities are okay, but diminished without the party cleric and barbarian; and without the cleric with the noble background, Arturius, their access to certain levels of society are greatly weakened. So the week was not very focused on fighting, but on investigating and doing more to tie up loose ends in the mysteries so far in the game. In a game or two, things will probably get a little hairy as they face the cult of Orcus and eventually we get back to the subplot of a coven of hags that were allied to the rat cult, but who still want to destroy the city.

Estarion, Game 6

Meadow falls ill on the way back to the temple,  instead, it turns out on inspection by the party wizard — who just happens to be a necromancer — that Meadow is now undead, and that the only clue they have to that is the asylum run by Marcellus Nonus is involved.

After looking at options, the group goes on the mission set by Lucanus Vitus to go after a merchant, who turns out to be a familiar face. Approaching from the sewers, the heroes have number of conflicts with cultists, sahuagin, and even a pair of were rats. They whittle down the bad guys even more, have some wererats escape them, and end up with some clues: that the cultists are allied to a coven of hags, and that the rat cult refers to enemies in their papers who are not the PCs.

Estarion, game 5

Okay, over the past week:

• Regga, Meadow, and the head of the hag Regga took as a trophy have all gone missing.
• Drug users around town have gone missing or become "fishy", putting a lot of demand on the priests at the temple.
• Vitus Pontius, a merchant who supplies the Imperial kitchens, is found in his kitchen, killed by rat bites. He was on your list of names. 
• More gang infighting has spread through the neighborhoods of the city.

Meadow awakens without remembering most of the last week after her ambush, and finds Arturius and Carver worried about Regga missing, and doing their best to find her-- but she appears to be concealed from scrying. Arturius sends a message through the beggars to find out what the Beggar King knows.

The heroes go back to the list of names the found in the lair of the rat cult. Arturius meets with Herminia Cassius, who tries to get Arturius to believe the list is a list of people being blackmailed, but Arturius is suspicious that she is hiding something else.

Meadow and Carver investigate Marcellus Nonus' asylum, and find the place filled with strangely quiet and peaceful, and Nonus is a creep.

After both meetings, they leave Meadow's home as a contact place. The heroes hole up in Meadow's home, waiting to have flushed out the villains. Instead, they find centurions and Lucanus Vitus at their door. He seems to have been called in by Herminia Cassius, and after some evasiveness, he calls on Arturius to serve his Empire and go after a suspected cult leader as a covert mission. While this is going on, Meadow hears a voice telling her to "awaken", and claws on the walls, but the heroes do not find the creature. It seems to go away when Lucanus leaves.

The heroes, on the way back to the temple to plan a raid, end up running into a beggar sent by the Beggar King. He has no clues about Regga, but says that Regga's bodyguard, Meadow, was seen being picked up and taken to the asylum.

The heroes confront Nonus, find him clearly lying, and have to pull Meadow out of the asylum. They don't know what is going on, but something is wrong, and they now are suspicious of everyone on the list.

Estarion, Game 4

Regga is visited by Malik the Ugly; Jarret deduces that lotus powder is being changed to carry some sort of curse to turn people into sahuagin, and finds a pair of legends about the origins of the sahuagin:

1. Sahuagin originated as the result of ab Elven druidess’ curse on the followers of a sea witch who had turned on the city. The witch Juhanah gathered a hundred men to take the city that is now Estarion, all sailors from the Eastern Sea People, but when Jumana came for the city with her two sisters and a hundred men, the Druidess Zatar called on her power to magically trap the sisters and curse the men as monsters and cast them into the sea, becoming the Sahuagin, marked forever and cast away from the land. For this reason the sahuagin hate the elves. 
2. The scholar Craius Benedictus constructed much the story from fragments of old clay tablets. But the witch Juhanah is said to be one of three sister goddesses, and that they are opposed by Astarte. Astarte strips the three goddesses of their powers and casts them underground, and curses their worshippers to become the sahuagin. 

Arturius gets the church to work on curing some of the beggars becoming sahuagin by having elders use Remove Curse, but isn't sure it works after they fully transform.

The PCs spent time investigating and brainstorming how to take the fight to the rat cult, then found themselves back in sewers, attacking by surprise the cult lair under the fuller's in Downwind. The heroes find themselves in a huge running battle, they find themselves facing cultists, sahuagin, and a Sea Hag (and all save vs. fright), carver finally goes berserk and reveals a secret about himself, and the PCs barely come out on top.

Regga leaves with the hag's head, the group find a scrap of journal matching their name of list, with a mention of the Cult of Orcus.

In the down time between games, heroes learn one of the people on the list of Aquilan names they found two weeks ago was murdered by rats; Regga disappears (her player, John, won't be able to join us any more... but I can come up with a plot for Regga) as does Meadow (her player wanted to change up her character a bit, which will be set up in between games, too.)

Estarion, Game 3

• Arturius, Carver, and Jarret take a short rest in an abandoned hovel; Sharin volunteers to lead the bad guys away from the group as a decoy (mostly because Thad was not available to play). 
• In the meantime, Regga and Meadow, whose players weren't available last week, return after a brief interrogation by Ugly Malik, a high-level enforcer for Amon Sahid, one of the city's crime lords. Sahid wanted information on Regga's investigations into the rat cult on behalf of the Beggar King.
• After being released by Ugly Malik, Regga and Meadow go looking for Arturius, and end up finding the fuller's they were investingating now a buzzing hornet's nest. They note three parties of cultists leaving the headquarters: two hunting through the neighborhood for the intruders into their base, the last escorting prisoners.
• Regga and Meadow stumble onto the hovel that Arturius, Carver and Jarret are hiding in and manage to pick off a rat acolyte, conveniently creating a distraction to draw a dozen cultists, an acolyte, and a half dozen giant rat "hounds" after them, and into the territory of the Night Masks, the criminal gang of Downwind.
• The heroes manage to heroically run away, regrouping in the Temple of the Olympians. After weighing their options (tracking a hard to identify merchant, scouting out the fuller's, or searching the sewers), the characters went down the path of searching the sewers to find the rat cult lair.
• After some research and guesswork the heroes found the lair of the rat cults, a simple flop house which doesn't fool the players at all. After ambushing a cultist, trying to interrogate him, then killing him when he wouldn't break, Regga leaves him a note that makes it look like the Night Masks are out to attack the cult.
• The heroes decide to attack from the sewers. After more surgical attacks on a smaller number of foes, they liberate six prisoners from the cultists. The cultists seem to be transforming into something fishy — Arturius finds they seem to be turning into sahuagin — and then go on to brutally beat down the remaining cultists. 
• When they search the cultists' lair, the heroes find a list of Aquilan names:
• Herminia Cassius (Wife of the Otho Cassius, Imperial Physician)
• Lucanus Valens (Chief of palace guard)
• Marcellus Nonus (Runs an asylum)
• Nevius Albanus (Imperial Master of Keys)
• Tatiana Scaevola (Owns a high class brothel within the city)
• Vitus Pontius (Merchant who supplies the Imperial kitchens)

• Regga follows up with the Beggar King, who warns Regga not to get too close to conflicts he may start between the Night Masks and the cultists and to that he should be nervous that Amon Sahid is keeping tabs on the Beggar King and Regga.

Estarion, game 2.

Meadow and Regga go missing. Arturius  recruits some new muscle: grim hermit/scholar/wizard Jarret Helfiker, twin-scimitar wielding druid Sharin, and berserk axe-wielding hobo with memory loss Carver and goes looking for intelligence at the fuller’s that they had as a lead from the first game.

After some inept espionage at the fuller’s, Sharin and Carver go undercover working as laborers and, after being sized up as potential kidnap victims, they manage to be too obvious and make it clear that they are surveilling the place looking for rat cultists.

After the botched surveillance, the heroes head out after a day of labor and come in to bust in at night, clambering down the stairs and into an ambush. Unprepared and too eager to move forward, the heroes become pincushions under fire from multiple crossbowmen. Jarret goes down, is healed back up; Arturius and Carver go down; and Sharin stays up at just 1 hit point. Jarret spends his time picking off bad guys from cover until they move to regroup, then he and Sharin flee with the unconscious colleagues. They end up fleeing and hiding in a nearby shack, hoping to hide until they can recover and regroup.

Estarion: First Game

I already ran my first game in Estarion with my friends Victor, +Rich Howard, and +J.M. Perkins. Victor was playing Meadow, half-elven Warlock whose beloved childhood book is the source of her fiendish power; Rich playing Arturius Curius, human cleric of Poeidon with a penchant for speaking to sea life; and J.M. playing halfling two-weapon fighter Regga Thistlethorn.

Being the first game, we begin with a bit of a railroad: the Beggar King offers Regga 200 gold worth of goods to help investigate a number of missing beggars who have gone missing. He hires Meadow, a former fellow orphan from his youth, for 15 gold and convinces Arturius the cleric to help him for free.

After casing the neighborhood, the heroes track down a tenement run by a rat cult. Rather than predictably busting in to the building from the front, the heroes make it to the roof, then toss an evil adept out the window and run away, dragging the adept with him.

After some interrogation, the heroes get a clue that the cult now has a headquarter under a fuller's, then go back to the cult headquarters and find out that the cult has bugged out. They learn the cultists are planning a revolution against the Aquilans, worship a rat god, and seem to be trying to infect the healthy beggars with some sort of disease. The heroes plan to let the authorities know what's going on, but only after they finish the job.

Obligatory gaming material: Here is my map of the tenement and secret basement temple/prison: