Freeport Campaign

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 2500
• Treasure: ebony scepter with silver head (900 gp); copper mask with emerald eyes (1,600 gp); jade ring (500 gp); pair of copper bracers with emeralds (2,300 gp each); silver crown with diamonds (4,000 gp); cloth of gold funeral vestments (800 gp); sapphire ring (2,000 gp); golden circlet set with fire opals (3,000 gp); gold anklet inlaid with amber (1,200 gp); gold comb set with garnets (800 gp); ebony crook inlaid with silver (300 gp); dragon leather belt studded with onyx (1,200 gp); empty mahogany scroll case wrapped in gold (800 gp); copper censer crusted with topaz (2,200 gp); mahogany casket (100 gp) containing a set of five black pearls (400 gp each, 2,500 gp for set); signet ring (400 gp); silver pendant set with moonstones (800 gp); silver mask with emerald eyes (2,400 gp); gold amphora filled with incense (600 gp, incense turned to dust); 80 pp; fire opal (120 gp); ruby (400 gp)
• Magic items (including items from Session 27 identified during this session): +1 half-plate armor; +1 heavy mace of frost; divine scrolls: divine power; divine scroll: wind wall; +2 lawful scimitar; ring of mind shielding; ring of the ram; +2 amulet of natural armor; major ring of elemental resistance (electricity); crystal ball; mace of terror; rhino hide armor; breastplate of command; wand of cure serious wounds (25 charges); Rain Tiger (gem of spell storing – resurrection); wand of levitate (12 charges); +2 headband of intellect; +2 glamered breastplate; +1 spiked chain; potion of haste; potion of cat’s grace; scroll of levitate; +1 banded mail

Recovered the Rain Tiger and numerous other treasures from the crypts of the Rangka kings over the course of a few days, after triggering a water trap that flooded the crypt chamber. Used the Rain Tiger to bring Gor-bob back from the dead. Ambushed the Banda high priestess, a lesser priest, and a trio of initiates. Returned to the Starchaser to find Hurm and Terez playing cards on the foredeck. Sailed back down the Ran Pe for the next couple of days, and caught sight of Coral Bay on the third morning out. Chow also spotted the pennant of Freeport atop a Sea Lord cutter in the trading town’s harbor.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 3300
• Treasure: 4 everburning torches; altar trappings – chalice (50 gp), knife (20 gp), bookstand (60 gp); wand of cure light wounds (15 charges); 6 smokesticks; masterwork scimitar; large shield; golden circlet (600 gp); 4 onyx rings (80 gp each)
• Unidentified magic items: half-plate armor; heavy mace; 2 divine scrolls

The party infiltrated the inner Temple and defeated its traps and guardians, including the Priest-Lord Sangket. (More flavor text to come.)

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 560
• Treasure: 1300 gp, two gold trade bars (100gp each), Rangka bowl (150 gp), Quaal’s feather token (tree)

Edo awoke the next morning to the feeling of something watching him. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he noticed a tiger lounging a few dozen yards away from camp. He warned the rest of the group and approached the tiger in a non-threatening manner, to which the cat responded with a toothy yawn. The druid finally got close enough to notice a grizzled older human near the tiger. The man introduced himself as “Colonel” and soon joined the party at their camp. After some discussion about the Colonel’s history and activities in the area, he and the group agreed to join forces to investigate the temple of Rana Mor.

Will and Edo used their various means to fly up and gather the layout of the temple from overhead. The rest of the party followed the road through a massive arch supported by two carved elephants, and approached the temple’s front door quietly. They were relatively unsurprised when a crossbow bolt whizzed from a narrow window and smacked the wall close to the Colonel’s head. Will dispatched the hidden humanoid sentry with a few arcane bolts aimed through a magical sensor, and proceeded to use the eye to investigate the rooms adjacent to the lookout’s post. Finding no immediate threats, the mage joined the rest of the party and turned his attention to the gigantic double doors below.

Carvings on the door depicted a mighty king surrounded by prostrate subjects, and Rangka lettering formed a border around the doors. Balama consulted Darrezan’s notes on the Rangka language, but quickly confessed that she had no talent in that area and handed the notes off to Will. He spent a few minutes and a comprehend languages spell to decipher the text on the door: “Proclaim the glory of Nhar Phull. Hail the works of his hand. Walk under his eye all of thy days. All fall before the Lord of the Dead.” After a bit of discussion, Chow asked Will how to pronounce “Hail, Nhar Phull” in the Rangka language, then prostrated himself before the door and spoke the phrase. The doors opened, allowing the group access to the temple’s inner moat and central tower.

After making sure there were no threats in the immedate area, the Colonel leapt across the moat and worked with Spike to secure a rope bridge for the rest of the party. Once across, the group examined the carvings on the great stone door in the south wall, which depicted dozens of warrior maidens with curved swords. Still under the effects of his language comprehension spell, Will translated the Rangka script on the door: “The works of the gods are everlasting. A circle without end. Find wisdom in the eyes of the gods, and Paradise shall be opened to thee.”

Looking more closely at the walls of the tower, the party noticed that the eyes of the gods carved into the walls all seemed to be peering at a scroll or tablet elsewhere on the wall, and that each scroll and tablet contained several Rangka letters. Following the letters, the party pieced together a short phrase: “Man is empty: a vessel filled by the gods to hold their will.” They discussed various interpretations of this clue, and eventually decided to investigate the rest of the temple in order to find a vessel of some sort. During this conversation, the doors to the south boomed shut.

Rather than heading back outside, the group crossed back over to the inner gallery and started toward a broken door leading into the southeastern corner of the main temple. Their investigation was interrupted by a burst of low-frequency noise emanating from a narrow window at the east end of the gallery. The Colonel used a bit of magic to enlarge the window enough to charge through and confronted a bizarre dog-like creature in the room beyond. A combination of magic and force of arms soon dispatched the destrachan, with a little collateral damage to the massive ceramic tub at the east end of the creature’s lair. Once that small hole was patched, Chow fished around in the tub, looking for anything that could be construed as a “vessel to be filled by the gods.” He came up empty-handed, but the group did find a trio of chests in a small room north of the lair, containing a bit of treasure and a small poisonous snake. The group grabbed the loot, slammed the lid on the snake, and moved on to the next room, where they found the body of a Banda woman slumped in the corner near a carved altar. Disturbed at discovering the destrachan’s larder, they closed the door and headed for the next series of rooms.

At the end of a hall, they discovered a strange curtain that seemed to be made of semi-tangible darkness. Checking for traps, Chow stepped through the curtain into the room beyond, a black tiled chamber with a door to the north emblazoned with a blood-smeared grinning skull. Finding nothing further of interest, Chow called the rest of the party into the chamber and continued through the door into a dark shrine.

The image of a winged skeleton archer overlooked an altar at the south end of the room, and a pair of sickly yellow candles polluted the air with a foul stench. Interested in the dozens of filthy, carrion-filled bowls lying atop the altar, Chow crossed the room, triggering a magical trap in the process. While one of his compatriots provided Chow a bit of magic to help stave off any further effects from the poison inflicted by the trap, the rogue finished appraising the bowls on the altar, picking out a relatively unfouled example of Rangka craftsmanship. With this corner of the complex cleared, the group returned to the central tower.

Chow tried to use the Rangka bowl somehow to open the door, but to no avail. Several more suggestions followed, but what eventually opened the door was reciting the phrase, “Man is empty: a vessel filled by the gods to hold their will” in Rangka.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 2000
• Treasure: None to speak of

The Ran Pe grew narrower and swifter over the next few miles, channeled between towering limestone cliffs. Still nervous from their exploration of the shrine, the party was relatively unsurprised when the calm afternoon was interrupted by ululating shrieks from the jungle. Four war canoes burst out from hidden coves among the cliffs, two on each side of the Starchaser. Will devastated the crew of one canoe with a lightning bolt, and Gor-bob stitched up the defense on that side by swirling the river into a large magical whirlpool. Edo dove into the water on the other side of the ship and assumed the form of a crocodile to await the other two canoes, while Spike and Chow took potshots at the remaining Banda. When the canoes finally closed with the crocodile, Edo managed a couple of attacks before the canoes and their crews simply disappeared. (Later conversation implied that these two canoes were illusions.) By this point, the only Banda survivor on the other side of the Starchaser leapt into the river just past the edge of the whirlpool. Edo, not otherwise occupied, gave chase while the rest of the party caught their breath and watched for other attackers.

Edo returned a few minutes later, trailing a stream of blood. He joined the party on the ship, and reported that he had taken out the fleeing Banda leader and six hidden reinforcements in a bloody fight. Balama thanked the party, and the Starchaser continued upriver for a couple more hours before holing up for the night.

The next day passed without incident, and around noon of the seventh day out from Coral Bay, the Starchaser reached the Gorge of the Rain Tiger, a wide, broken waterfall that prevented further progress up the Ran Pe. In the center of the falls, the party saw a small island with a large stone carving of a winged tiger, which Balama notified the party was in fact the Rain Tiger. Hurm and Terez pulled the ship up to the west bank while the party gathered their gear for the hike up to Rana Mor. Balama gave her crew orders for the next few days, gathered her belongings, and joined the party on the old stone roadway that ascended from the bank.

The Rangka road, formerly wide enough for ten soldiers to march abreast, was so overgrown that the group had to hike in single file. They had been following the road alongside the noisy river for about eight miles when a pair of strange bipedal creatures pounced on Gor-bob from the jungle. The monsters sprayed the unfortunate half-orc with twin streams of acid before he could react, melting his face and damaging his body beyond the group’s ability to repair. The rest of the party, shocked by the sudden demise of their comrade, killed the digesters in moments. After saying their goodbyes to Gor-bob and seeing to his mortal remains, the group continued up the road.

Another couple of hours brought the party back down to the Ran Pe, as the road descended through steep hills into a broad belt of grassland beside the river. One of banyan groves dotting the plain obscured a ceremonial gate that marked the intersection of the river and a shallow canal heading northwest. Looking in that direction, the party could just make out dark spires rising from the plain a few miles away. With dusk approaching, the group discussed their options for the night. Presuming that the towers indicated the location of the temple, they decided that following the road beside the canal at night would be safer than trying to approach the temple and its unknown defenders during the day, and headed up the road.

Just past the gate, the debris-filled water of the canal seemed to rise up and attack the party. On closer inspection, the thing that grabbed Spike and Balama was in fact a massive plant-like creature with two tentacles and a gaping maw. Spike used his dagger to cut himself free before he could be swallowed whole, while Balama tricked the creature with a mirror image spell to help extricate herself. The party managed to batter the thing into submission, but suspected that acid would be required to destroy the creature fully. Lacking that capability, they opted to follow the canal on the far side of the road.

After a five mile trudge, the party finally reached the outskirts of the Rana Mor temple grounds. The last mile of the road crossed several wide moats and broad plazas surrounding the temple. The group picked a relatively safe-looking stand of banyan trees on one of the outlying plazas, set up camp, and welcomed the end of the long, bloody day.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1200
• Treasure: None to speak of

The steady trade winds helped propel the Starchaser up the Ran Pe river for the rest of the day. Balama and her crew were preparing to drop anchor for the evening when somebody spotted a small hut and pier on the bank up ahead. As the ship approached, an old man ran out of the hut and hailed the vessel with a stream of shouted gibberish. Balama shrugged and moved the ship to the pier. The old man introduced himself as Indo, purveyor of exotic crafts, heirlooms, and artifacts. Amidst his efforts to sell his trinkets to the party, he offered some useful information about the Ran Pe and surrounding areas. He warned the party that he was the last outpost of civilization, as snakes, monsters, and the murderous Banda tribe ruled the jungle further up the river.

His sales pitch over, Indo agreed to craft a fine portrait of Gor-bob in time for the party’s return trip. While Gor-bob was posing for Indo’s reference sketch, Edo noticed that the half-orc’s holy symbol was very similar to his own. The two launched into a theological discussion about Pawgma, known to Edo as Obad-hai, while the rest of the group thanked Indo for his information and boarded the ship. The conversation continued as the crew sailed further upstream and dropped anchor for the evening.

The next day, the group entered the jungle. Their slow progress through the heat and humidity was broken only once, when a flurry of blue-feathered arrows streaked from the overgrown right bank. The group dispatched four of their five assailants with a combination of arrows and a fireball, but the fifth fellow disappeared into the jungle before he could be captured or killed. The group decided that pursuit was likely pointless, and instead put as much river as possible between them and the ambush site before dropping anchor for the second night.

The party awoke the next morning to a torrential downpour that continued throughout the day. Twelve hours and twenty miles later, Balama called a halt for the night. A couple of hours into the first watch, Spike heard a pair of thumps on the boat’s hull, followed shortly by a couple of massive lobster-like creatures jumping onto the main deck. He shouted for the rest of the group and engaged one of the chuuls. Hurm and Terez continued to prove themselves more capable as sailors than fighters, but the party worked together efficiently to dispatch one of the lobstrosities and drive the other off. Chow prepared some meat from the fallen chuul for future meals, and the rest of the party headed off to bed.

The rains stopped during the night, and the following day dawned hot and humid. After a few miles, the Ran Pe widened into a vast, reedy marsh. Balama sent Terez to the bow to take soundings, but the boat soon mired up despite the crew’s best efforts. Gor-bob saved the group an unpleasant slog by magically manipulating the water around the boat to propel the craft past the mudbank. The Starchaser passed through the rest of the swamp without incident, and Balama dropped anchor for the night in the channel just past the southern edge of the swamp.

A couple of miles up the Ran Pe, the jungle growth on the east bank parted to reveal the vine-covered ruins of an ancient quay. Balama and her crew manuevered the Starchaser to the landing and tied off. The party disembarked and crept into the overgrown clearing behind the quay, where they discovered the ruins of a small shrine surrounded by a ring poles capped with skulls wreathed in green flame. As the group approached the shrine, one of the skulls emitted a shrill scream and pronounced what sounded like a curse in the Banda language. Somewhat nervous but determined, the group continued their investigation. At the base of each pole they found a small bowl, damp with a faint residue of blood. The party scanned the surrounding jungle, but found no further evidence of the perpetrators of the recent blood sacrifice. After a quick search of the shrine itself, the group boarded the ship again and headed further upriver.