| Forgotten Realms Campaign 2001 5 November, 2001 |
Player Characters
Alamar took the morning of 8 Marpenoth to go pay for his "magic permit" at the Watchful Order of the Magists and Protectors. Sam went along with him. On the walk to the Tower of the Order, a drunk, non-descript man staggered up to Alamar and asked him, "Didn't you used to have a frog?"
Startled, Alamar told the man he didn't, and the man staggered off. Intrigued and a bit worried, Sam followed the man into the crowd on the street. Alamar continued on to the Tower of the Order and paid his dues.
Sam followed the man to the basement below a run-down hardware store in the northeast part of the Trades Ward, not far from the City of the Dead. He spent the next few hours watching the entrance to the basement, and petting a stray cat that kept bumping into his legs.
At dinner that night, Chidia told Sam and the others that people had been asking about them and "some guy named 'Frog'." Sam told the rest of the party about the man he followed.
Later in the evening, after dinner, Thartok found himself drinking, chatting, and armwrestling with a man named L'Ron. After a comment about Thartok being strong enough to fight a dragon, L'Ron asked if he had ever killed a dragon. Thartok replied, "Which one?" L'Ron spat on Thartok in disgust and left the bar.
Sam immediately left to follow the man into the night, while Thartok went up to his room to get his axe. When he got back down, he recruited Chidia to help him follow Sam. Mills and Alamar went along, as well. Chidia held hands with Thartok as she led them around the Trades Ward at night, having no clue where Sam had been heading.
Sam followed L'Ron back to the same basement the previous man had gone to. Watching it again for nearly an hour, Sam went back to tell the others, and ran into them wandering around. Sam lead them back to the basement. The stray cat was there again, but this time it was being harassed by some small-ish flying creature that squealed and flew away at the sight of the party.
As they debated what to do, a woman's scream was heard coming from the basement.
Thartok rushed to the door to the basement and began hacking at it with his axe. The rest of the party stood behind him. When the door had been split, a fireball went off just outside the door, blasting the party.
Finding that whoever was in the front room of the basement had retreated to another room, Thartok ran to that door. Sam picked the lock and Thartok opened it...and another fireball exploded. This one only affected Thartok and Sam, though, as Mills and Alamar were hanging back at the first door.
Chidia said she would keep an eye out for the city guards as the rest of the party moved into the next room.
Being more careful now, Sam inspected the doors and rooms in the basement. He found a red, hooded half-cloak in one of the rooms and showed it to the rest of the party. The people in the basement were evidently connected to the Cult of the Dragon.
Finding only one place in the basement the Cultists could have gone, Sam opened the door, "danced" backwards, and was faced by undead creatures coming up a stairwell. Mills turned the leading undead, destroying them. Thartok rushed forward to attack the skeletons that then came up the stairs.
The stairs led down to a short hallway with a door at either end. The party opted to open the nearest door. It opened into a large rough, stone chamber with 5 dragonkin, including one with a flaming halberd. Mills unleashed order's wrath, stunning them, then flamestrike, killing 3 of them in very short order. One of the survivors rushed forward and slammed the door shut again.
As the door to the dragonkin's chamber closed, the door at the other end of the hallway opened and a fireball again exploded in the midst of the party. Sam shot his wand of magic missiles at a man holding a wand. Before much more could be done, though, that door was shut again.
With Sam's help, Mills re-opened the door to the dragonkin's chamber and rushed in to attack the remaining dragonkin. Both were slain rather quickly. The first at a crude barricade the two had thrown together, the second as it desparately rushed to get past Mills.
Alamar was ready the next time the other door came open and unleashed some magic of his own, killing the first person he saw through the opened door with an electric orb. Before the door was again closed, the party could see that a young woman was chained to the wall in the back part of this room where they were fighting.
Thartok began tearing down the door with his axe when it shut in his face again. The rest of the party came into the room behind him. The Cultists had moved crates and barrels to form a barricade in front of the door, but Thartok and Mills climbed up on the barricade and fought from there.
Backed into a room with no possibility for retreat, the Cultists fought as best they could, but were soon all dead.
Searching the room, Sam was attacked by a wight hiding in a pile of refuse in a corner. Mills quickly destroyed the undead creature.
Looting the bodies of obviously magical items, armor and weapons, and freeing the chained up girl, the party decided what to do. Mills wanted to report the whole thing to the city guard, but Sam was against that.
Mills lead the girl out with Thartok and Alamar, heading for the nearest guard station, while Sam and Chidia lagged behind, out of sight.
A patrol of guards encountered the party as they walked, saying that had heard reports of a disturbance. Mills lead them back to the basement and described what had happened.
At the guard station, Mills, Thartok, and Alamar were questioned and their statements taken. The girl's story corroborated what they had to say, and provided some details about herself. Her name was Lolind, and she was from a small town near Silverymoon. She had come down for the Harvesttide festival with a friend. They had been attacked by strangers. Her friend had been killed, and she was being held for a sacrific on the 15th, at midnight.
The party left the guards to go back to their hotel, assuring the guards before they left that, yes, they would be in town for a while longer.
The next day, the party began identifying and selling off some of the equipment that had looted from the Cultists.
Everyone received 5000 XP. Sam and Mills became Level 11. [an error occurred while processing this directive]