Monday, December 14, 2015

The Hydra Cometh

    When we last left off the party had just lost the barbarian due to a unfortunate side effect of having ones skull smashed in with a large war club wielded by a gnoll warrior. The group brought his corpse back to the city and left him with the morgue at the temple in the hopes of seeing if they could raise him in the morning. The party awakes and heads down to say goodbye to the druid who has had enough adventuring for a while with the group and wishes to return to life at sea. The group then does a quick check and notices the assassin is gone and so is the flaming sword they found. With no way of reliably tracking him at this time they decide to let it go as they had quite a few things on the agenda that required their attention first.

    An old soldier over heard they had made it to the castle and returned. He tells them that he served in the army many decades ago and helped fight off the barbarian invaders. It was believed that the fighter Roghan and wizard Zelligar had buildt the castle as a bastion to prevent further incursions by the barbarian hordes as well as central hub for their adventuring into the wilds in search of a temple holding a long lost artifact of some previous lost god. They did not want some strange terrible artifact getting in the hands of those who would destroy the growing kingdom. No one has seen either of them in over 30 years but it is believed they continued their quest for this artifact and that it may not be too far from the castle they buildt long ago. The group considered the old soldiers story and would look into further in the future.

    Before they could get going they however ran into the brother of the fallen dwarf who was traveling with them who died gruesomely at the fangs of a giant spider, and a wandering elven bard who seemed intrigued by their current exploits and wished to join then in their adventures.They went to the temple of Heironeous and met with the high priest, Farn. The priest told them that a miracle of the kind they requested was no small order and where they had never stopped in to the church before now it would require a tithe of 1,000 GP and 300 SP. The group did not quite have this much and looked to their new found silver tongued bard to work out a more reasonable deal. He was able to broker them a deal down to 500GP, 300 SP, and a favor to the church. Farn agreed but to prevent these unknowns from accepting a blessing from the church and not fulfilling their agreement requested they willingly submit to a quest spell to see to it that the archpaladin's will be done. The bard and dwarf only having just met the group and having never even met the barbarian requested that they be left out of this agreement so long as the rest of the group agreed.

    Farn indeed felt this was fair, prepared the ritual to bring back their dead friend (who came back to life with 1 less CON), and then proceeded with the quest upon them. There is a old graveyard that has became a target for undead and grave robbers in which they have now been tasked of cleansing in the name of the church. The wolf then collapses nearly on his last legs nearing his last day until his advanced lyme disease takes him and seeing as he would not be able to server the lord of justice in this capacity received healing of his malady free of charge.

     The group wanted to see before they went to the graveyard if the mages guild made any headway into reversing the rogues condition from a wolf.  The great Jodah and they believe one of their senior members of the guild may be able to dispel the enchantment placed on him. He casts his spell and feels that a curse has been lifted, but not the one that has him changed into a wolf, but the one that changed his alignment nearly a year ago. It is now obvious that only some one or something with strong ties to the natural order can possibly reverse his transformation.

     Afterwards they head over to the Aerie of the knights of the wyvern to see if any of the knights had returned. Five of the knights are discussing another portal that had just opened up a a monstrosity made up of multiple heads on long necks but have no faces just nasty maws and a body covered in sickly green skin and metal. The group decides to go with them to stop this thing from destroying a small hamlet to the north. They meet it in battle on the open planes a few miles away from the hamlet and unleash all their ranged attacked and the wyverns deliver some devastating attacks upon it. It becomes apparent that some of the wounds are not as grievous as they first look but the terrible bite attacks of the wyverns and the additional support of the party from afar bring the beast down and it dissolves into a pool of black oily ichor. The wyverns, whose mouths are now stained black by the oil, and their riders head back to the city and they prepare to head to the cemetery.

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