Freeport Campaign

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 6000
• Treasure: N’Tal’s spellbook, 6 gold Yellow Sign amulets, 6 falchions, 5 composite short bows, sickle, quarterstaff, 4 darts, light crossbow, small steel shield, 450 gp
• Unidentified magic items: amulet, ring, breastplate, dagger, hide armor

The group spent a few minutes investigating the second floor, paying particular attention to the body of an apparent thief slumped in a pool, and to the various statues of Shalimyr and Terak in their shrines. Chow eventually discovered a pair of secret doors, and triggered a third secret door by twisting the arms of two of the statues. The secret doors revealed a staircase up to the next floor of the Lighthouse.

The party ascended into a disturbing mess. The floor of the chamber was smeared with dried blood and littered with bones, and a hideous slurping noise emanating from a corner alerted the group to the creature lairing in the chamber. The group’s fighters charged up the stairs and engaged an amoeba-like mass of mouths and eyes. The party killed the thing before it could devour Vivian, but the creature left its mark with a pair of mouths that continued chewing on the dwarf after the mouther died. Gor-bob did his best to patch up his comrades while they searched the chamber. Amid the bones and gore, the group found picks, chisels, and various other evidence that the remains belonged to the unfortunate laborers assigned to completing the upper stories of the Lighthouse. While the rest of the party mulled over this disturbing discovery, Gor-bob patched up their wounds somewhat, and Chow examined the room in greater detail. He soon found a faint trail of footprints through the gore leading to the southwest pillar, and noticed a hidden ladder that ascended to a trap door on the ceiling. The group steeled themselves and opened the trap door.

As they crossed into the fourth story of the Lighthouse, a familiar voice boomed from above, “Well, well, well. I see you’ve dispatched my pet.” The first couple of party members saw Milton Drac and a group of six serpent men at the head of a steep, narrow stairway hugging the walls a good hundred feet up to the summit of the Lighthouse. The Sea Lord continued taunting the group as they crawled through the trap door: “No matter, as the ritual is almost complete. Soon the Yellow Sign will return to Freeport and drive all the unfaithful masses to madness! Your attempt to stop us ends now. N’Tal, I leave them to you. They should provide some amusement.” With that, the Sea Lord hurled a pair of skulls into the party’s midst and walked around the corner at the top of the stairs, out of the party’s sight. The skulls exploded on impact, shredding the party with bone shards. Before the group could react, one of the serpent men at the top of the stairs stepped into the empty air and unleashed a magical hailstorm on the party below. This opening salvo took a heavy toll, leaving Vivian unconscious and the rest of the group battered.

A frantic fight followed, with Chow getting a few shots off before falling unconscious, and Will and Gor-bob chugging unidentified potions in an attempt to keep themselves alive. Spike charged up the steps through volleys of arrows from the serpent men above, while N’Tal conjured a magickal ring of fire around the rest of the group. Gor-bob summoned a divine quarterstaff to distract the serpent man mage, verified that Chow and Vivian were beyond his ability to help, and then followed Spike up the stairs. Will added a few charges from one of his wands to fell N’Tal as Spike reached the serpent men at the top of the stairs. Their leader slain, the archers quickly succumbed to a combined assault from the swordsman and the cleric, who had been turned into a frothing madman by one of the random potions he chugged on the way up the stairs. As the last serpent man tumbled to the base of the tower, Will, Spike, and Gor-bob paused a moment to mourn their fallen comrades before continuing upstairs.

After catching their breath, the group turned the corner at the top of the stairs and approached the summit of the Lighthouse, where they found Drac, Melkior Maeorgan, and a serpent man surrounding an altar housing a large crystal. The Sea Lord taunted the group once more, informing them that they were too late to prevent the madness soon to spread from Freeport to infect the rest of the world. As he spoke, a sickly yellow light suffused the crystal, which focused the light and sent the Yellow Sign into the night sky. With that, the opposing groups squared off. Maeorgan and the serpent man blocked the party at the top of the stairs, while the Sea Lord summoned a wolf to help defend the Lighthouse. Spike and Gor-bob engaged the Councilman and the dagger-wielding serpent man in a vicious melee that left Drac’s cronies dead, but also cost Spike his life. During this bloodletting, Will summoned a dog of his own to occupy the wolf, and used his potion-induced spider climb ability to ascend the wall adjacent to the stairs. From this relatively safe position, he conjured a magical pair of hands to choke the Sea Lord on the other side of the altar. Thus distracted, Drac could not manage to complete a spell, and soon gasped his last breath. After verifying that Spike was beyond help and that their opponents were truly dead, Will and Gor-bob dislodged the yellow crystal and secured the Jade Serpent in its place. The Yellow Sign faded and disappeared, replaced by a soothing green glow that bathed the Lighthouse and the city below, and turned the bodies of the Sea Lord and his cronies into dust. A peaceful smile on his face, Gor-bob suddenly passed out as his potion-fueled rage subsided. Exhausted, Will sat down to collect his thoughts.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1380
• Treasure: 100 pp, 1940 gp (240 from Brotherhood cultists), 6000 sp, 2 gems (100 gp each), 2 gems (250 gp each), 2 golden goblets (100 gp each), 10 golden plates (25 gp each), silver necklace (250 gp), gold necklace (300 gp), masterwork saber, 4 scimitars, 4 light maces, 1 heavy mace, 8 light crossbows, scroll of water breathing (caster level 5), ring of protection +1, 9 gold pendants bearing the Yellow Sign
• Unidentified magic items: 7 potions

The group rowed back to the beach with the impaled skeletons. Suspecting further traps, Chow fashioned his whip into a remote trigger and cleared the path to a secret door in the eastern wall of the cave. The secret door opened into a small hallway with a wooden door at its end. As the group opened the door, a low moan emanated from the small chamber beyond.

The moaning continued until the ghostly figure of a pirate captain rose from the floor. The apparition, presumably Black Dog himself, pointed his saber at the party and bellowed a threat of eternal damnation. Gor-bob, unimpressed with the spectre’s taunt, stepped into the room and turned the undead pirate. As Black Dog cowered and hissed in a corner of the room, the rest of the party began dragging chests out of the chamber. When all the chests had been relocated, the party dispatched the spectre without much trouble.

Chow took some damage from a trap on one of the chests, but the party opened the rest of them without incident. After they had loaded up Black Dog’s famous treasure, the group boarded the rowboat and headed back to town.

When they arrived in Freeport Harbor, the party finally saw Milton’s Folly in all its glory. The scaffolding had been removed, revealing the massive white marble bulk of the Lighthouse gleaming in the morning sun. The harbor was choked with an amazing number of ships and boats of every description, but the area around the Lighthouse was kept clear by a patrol of four Sea Lord cutters, each brimming with marines.

The party returned the rowboat and checked in with Thuron/K’Stallo at the Scriptorium of Tinel. The High Priest thanked them for acquiring the Jade Serpent and the other artifacts of his faith, and gave them some suggestions on how to use the Serpent to disrupt whatever plans Milton Drac had for the crystal in the Lighthouse. The group discussed their plans in that regard, settled on a method for getting to the Lighthouse before the lighting ceremony that night, and holed up to gather their strength.

After sunset, the party slipped inconspicuously into the harbor and made their way underwater to the Lighthouse without incident. Rather than forcing their way through the large double doors, the party elected to climb through an archway twenty feet up the wall. After a few moments of reconnaissance and whispered discussion in the archway, the group’s scouts were spotted by one of the guards on the floor below. A running battle ensued, with most of the party still outside the walls of the Lighthouse.

A few minutes of confused fighting later, the party had defeated nearly a dozen cultists and a trio of summoned vipers.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 2400
• Treasure: book entitled The Way of Yig, scroll of water breathing, 500 gp, Alistar’s journal, Amulet of the Serpent, the Jade Serpent, smaller replica of the Jade Serpent
• Unidentified magic items: incense, ointment, short spear, 2 potions

Recovered the remaining three items for Alistar’s ritual, and returned them to the shadow serpent priest. Alistar warned the party that the price for the Jade Serpent would be high, costing one member of the group some of his life essence permanently. Will volunteered to act as Alistar’s hands for the somatic portions of the ritual, and to provide a splash of his own blood to mix with the Venom of the Serpent. When the ritual was complete, Alistar proclaimed, “It is done!” and thanked the party as his shadowy form dispersed. The Jade Serpent rose from the center of the altar, and the party felt the building begin to shake. They grabbed the Scales and Amulet of the Serpent, and raced through the Temple and out of the serpent doors as the building began to collapse behind them.

Still bloodied and winded from their exertions, the party loaded up their boat and started rowing back through Black Dog’s Caves.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1080
• Treasure: Unidentified magical saber, amulet

The group talked with Thuron about the Jade Serpent. He informed them that the item probably rested in the nearby sunken temple of Yig. The High Priest shared a page from a log written by the infamous pirate Black Dog detailing a huge stone doorway carved with serpents. Thuron suggested that the party ask around in town to find any of Black Dog’s surviving crew members.

The group poked around and discovered an old sea dog named Gareth living in the Old City. The party paid the wizened sailor a quantity of gold in exchange for the location of the strange door mentioned in Black Dog’s journal, and set off to secure a rowboat for the short journey up the coast of A’val.

Right around low tide, the group found the distinctive rock formation Gareth mentioned, and manuevered into Black Dog’s Caves. The strong current in the narrow tunnel beyond the cave entrance caused the boat to lurch violently, knocking Gor-bob into the water. The half-orc washed quickly into a large cave, and was immediately attacked by a large turtle-like creature. The party killed the tojanida before it could consume the cleric, but Gor-bob was not in very good shape after the encounter. With their friend safely back on board, the party examined the rest of the cave.
On a beach to the left of the entrance, Chow discovered an untarnished saber stuck in the sand. When he plucked the weapon from the beach, a ghostly figure appeared from the wall of the cave and set upon him. While the party attempted to dispatch the undead assailant, another tojanida attacked from the lake. Gor-bob soon dealt with the allip, and the rest of the party took out the turtle.

The group followed the first tunnel to the left out of the lake, discovering a small shrine to Shalimyr, the God of the Sea. The tunnel continued around to a grisly sight on another beach – three skeletons impaled on large stakes jutting out of the ground. The party opted to ignore this beach for the moment and allowed the boat to follow the increasing current in the tunnel. Spike navigated the craft past a lengthy side passage and into a tunnel whose entrance was boarded up, with the warning, “DANGER! KEEP OUT!” written across the barrier.

Beyond the rotted wood, the group discovered the massive serpent-carved doors mentioned in Black Dog’s journal. Will deciphered the Valossan script on the doors: “All those who would enter the temple must pass the test of the fangs. Reach into the mouth of Yig, and your courage will be rewarded.” Will placed his hand in the mouth of the poised cobra carved into the wall and winced as the snake bit him. When the rest of the party seemed confused by his reaction, Will realized that the bite was an illusion. He reached further into the mouth of the serpent, grabbed the doorknob, and opened the door into the sunken Temple of Yig.

The first floor of the temple consisted of a single chamber dominated by a 15-foot high marble statue of a coiled snake. The continuous mural on the walls of the circular room was marred by scrawled Valossan graffiti: “Beware brethren, for Yig will abandon us.”

A ramp led from the first floor to the second, which was completely inundated with water. The party enacted some magical waterbreathing effects and plunged into the murk. Chow spotted a statue of a serpent person near the far wall. When he lifted the amulet he found around the statue’s neck, the rogue was attacked by a strange shadow in the shape of a serpent person. The party dispatched the shadow serpent, and followed Chow down the ramp to the floor. Incredibly, the water filling the second floor did not flow down the ramp, but simply stopped halfway down.

On the third floor, the group met another shadow serpent, a former priest of Yig named Alistar. The shadow informed the party that he could give them the Jade Serpent, if they would agree to act as his corporeal hands to recover four items from the rest of the Temple and help him complete a ritual of supplication to Yig. He believed that the ritual would appease Yig and allow Alistar and his shadowy brethren to rest after centuries of unlife. The party showed the priest the Amulet of the Serpent that they had found previously, and agreed to recover the Fangs of the Serpent, the Venom of the Serpent, and the Scales of the Serpent.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 300
• Treasure: Various finery commissioned for the Ball

The group interrogated the captured assassins, turned them over to the city watch, receieved invitations to the Grand Lighthouse Ball, commissioned the tailors at Enzo’s to create some magnificent suits for the occasion, invited various lady friends, and attended the Ball at the Sea Lord’s mansion in the Old City. After receiving the Order of Drac for defeating the evil Verlaine and his nefarious Brotherhood, the party rubbed elbows with the city’s upper crust, including most of the members of the Captain’s Council. The group turned down a request to help assassinate Milton Drac, but did learn numerous unsettling details about the Lighthouse. The Ball came to a close when an old man wandered into the ballroom, recited a prophecy from the scriptures of Yig regarding something called the Jade Serpent, turned into a snake, and then disappeared in a puff of smoke at the end of a guard’s spear. Thuron gave the group a meaningful look and departed, followed soon by the party members themselves.