Freeport Campaign

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.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 300
• Treasure: Coastal ship Henrietta (renamed Sea Skate)

After a few minutes of consideration, Will decided to send Nicodemus to swim back to Freeport with a note to High Priest Thuron and Brother Egil requesting any assistance they could offer the sole conscious survivor of the Lighthouse assault. While the rat swam, Will moved his friends’ bodies to the secret room on the second floor that concealed the stairs into the upper part of the Lighthouse. He sat quietly for a while, but his curiosity eventually got the better of him, so he wandered to the windows overlooking the harbor. He noticed that, while two of the Sea Lord cutters still appeared to be patrolling, the other two were drifting aimlessly in the water.

When Nicodemus finally arrived at the Scriptorium, Thuron and Egil acted on Will’s note immediately, making themselves invisible and splashing into the harbor. A few minutes later, Will heard a hushed noise below him. The priests quickly dropped their invisibility and revived Gor-bob. The group then loaded up the bodies of the remaining party members and the female thief, and swam carefully back to town.

Will paid handsomely for discreet rickshaws back to the Temple. When the party was safely stashed away, Thuron procured a scroll and began conversing with the dead party members. Vivian seemed irritated to be interrupted from his drinking in the Great Beyond, and declined the offer to be raised from the dead. Chow and Spike, on the other hand, were quite glad to hear Thuron’s voice. The High Priest sent Egil to fetch Father Peg-Leg Peligro from the Church of Harrimast, in hopes of raising the fallen party members.

Peg-Leg showed up a while later and informed Will and Gor-bob that he did not have the ability to raise the dead currently, but that he would be willing to do so as soon as he had rested enough to entreat Harrimast on the group’s behalf. He warned them that the two spells would require expensive diamonds to complete, and suggested they talk to Dirwin Nimblefingers, Captain’s Council member and leader of the Jewelers and Gemcutters Guild. With that, he thanked the group for their service to the city and headed back to his church to rest.

While waiting for the priest to return, Gor-bob slept and Will began dispatching notes to the group’s various contacts in the city. Husani was first to respond. He and Will discussed the group’s arrangement with the sage regarding the remaining Valossan artifacts recovered from the lizard man village. Husani informed the mage that, given time, he could probably net the party 30,000 gold pieces for the lot. Will, anxious to get his friends raised and leave the city for a while, settled for a lesser immediate payment to help offset the cost of the diamond components for Peg-Leg’s clerical magic. Husani left to procure half the funds, with a promise to have the other half within a couple of days.

Lady Elise Grosette showed up with Dirwin a couple of hours later. The Council members listened with great interest to Will’s tale, and expressed very guarded thanks for solving the problem of what to do with Milton Drac. Lady Grosette warned Will that Boss Tillinghast, the current chief of the Sea Lord’s Guard, would probably do his best to fulfill the arrest warrants that Drac had signed for the party, but also told him that she would try to deflect such attention as much as she could.
Dirwin verified that he had a cache of diamonds earmarked for clerical use, and would be more than willing to part with a couple of the stones. He agreed to accept partial payment from Husani on the group’s behalf later in the week, on the condition that the party would eventually investigate the crystal Drac had used in the Lighthouse. Will tentatively accepted the arrangement for the party. That settled, the Council members departed.

Husani came back by to drop off his first payment, and agreed to send the remainder to Dirwin Nimblefingers as soon as it was ready. Dirwin himself dropped off the two requested diamonds and wished the party luck.

Balama showed up at some point during the evening to let Will know that she was indeed still interested in pursuing the Rain Tiger in Rana Mor, and that she would see to it that the Blue Heron would be ready to sail by dawn.

At around 3 or 4 in the morning, Father Peligro dragged himself back to the Scriptorium, looking rather haggard. With a minimum of fuss, he prepared an area for Spike and Chow, and began casting. Chow was the first to return, choking and gasping, to the world of the living, followed by Spike a few minutes later. Exhausted, Peg-Leg stumbled back to the Church of Harrimast. Will and Gor-bob informed their compatriots about the end of the Lighthouse fight and the subsequent wheeling and dealing back in town, and Vivian’s posthumous decision to remain deceased. The group agreed that staying in Freeport under the current circumstances was a bad idea, and that Balama’s offer to sail to Rana Mor was the most appealling course of action for the moment.

Balama came back by with Hurm and Terez, her First Mate and cabin boy. After a brief discussion with the group, she sent Hurm to rouse the crew and Terez to fetch some personal effects from the party’s house. Terez returned shortly with the required materials, and with news that the house had been ransacked, presumably by the Sea Lord’s Guard. Further convinced that leaving was the best course of action, the group took what rest they could while waiting for Hurm to return, and Will and Spike composed notes to Maria and Carmina explaining their sudden absence.

During their wait, Thuron asked the party to join him and Brother Egil in the catacombs beneath the Scriptorium. Once the group was assembled, the High Priest announced that we was going on a lengthy pilgrimage, and surprised Egil by naming him acting High Priest for the duration of the sabbatical. Thuron asked the party if they would be willing to escort him to the ruined city where Ssvalish, the ghostly serpent man priest, dwelt. They agreed after a quick discussion with Balama, and congratulated Egil on his sudden promotion. Soon after, Hurm returned in the pre-dawn gray and informed his captain that her ship was ready to sail.

Watching carefully over their shoulders, the party followed Balama, Hurm, Terez, and Thuron to the docks and boarded the Blue Heron. As soon as they had stowed their equipment, Spike and Chow set to work with the rest of the crew in preparing the ship to sail. The ship made good time in the offshore dawn breeze, and Balama maneuvered expertly past the treacherous sandbars a mile or so from the city.

The day-and-a-half journey to the swampy lizard man island was uneventful. Balama shared the information she had gathered about Rana Mor, the surrounding area, and the Rangka people who built the temple some 700 years ago. Will and Thuron discussed the artifacts the group had recovered from the sunken Temple of Yig, including the Jade Serpent. Will requested that he be allowed to study the Jade Serpent to determine whether he could use it, to which Thuron agreed, at least for the time being. Spike and Chow assisted the crew of Balama’s small sloop, the Starchaser, and Gor-bob pondered the mysteries of Pawgma.

When the group arrived at the island, they were met by a strange sight: another sloop, seemingly anchored and abandoned near the mouth of the river leading inland. Balama approached carefully, and the party rowed up to the boat to verify that it was indeed empty. Expecting an ambush, the party quickly boarded the sloop, which they now saw was named Henrietta. All they found on board were several days’ rations moldering in the galley, and a few extra weapons and other supplies in the hold. The group made sure the ship was securely anchored and headed back to the Blue Heron to help prepare the ship’s boat for the journey to the lizard man village.

The party managed to avoid the hazards that had plagued them on their previous trip, and soon found themselves back in the ruined city, escorted by a squad of lizard men to the temple. Ssvalish welcomed the group, and was pleased to meet Thuron, especially when he assumed his natural serpent man form and introduced himself as K’Stallo. The two priests thanked the group for bringing them together, and immediately launched into a discussion in Valossan, leaving the party to find their way back out.

The group conversed briefly with the lizard folk villagers, and guessed from the stack of treasure maps identical to the one that had led them here, as well as the triangular captain’s hat and other accoutrement adorning certain of the lizard folk, that the crew of the Henrietta had probably met a bad end. The party bid the priests and the villagers farewell, and boarded the rowboat for the uneventful return to the Blue Heron. On the way back, the party discussed the fate of the Henrietta with Balama. She agreed that the abandoned sloop was unlikely to be reclaimed by its original crew, and asked the party if they’d like to take over the ship. Spike agreed immediately.

When she and the group were safely aboard the Blue Heron, Balama ordered all the ships secured for the night. When that work was done, the party set to renaming the prize vessel. After a few minutes’ discussion, the party settled on Sea Skate, and helped some of the more superstitious sailors scrape off and replace the former name.

The party spent the next three quiet days familiarizing themselves with their new vessel, and eventually pulled up in the small merchant village of Coral Bay. Balama secured supplies and lodging for the group, and gave orders to her crew for the next couple of weeks. The group rested up that night in preparation for the 130-mile trek ahead.

The next morning, they boarded the Starchaser with Balama, Hurm, and Terez, and set off up the broad Ran Pe river. The wind sent them steadily upstream for a couple of hours, until a strange bank of fog appeared out of nowhere and brought them up short. Balama ordered the sails drawn up to slow the ship’s progress, and steered carefully through the fog. After a few tense minutes, the ship passed through the fog bank unharmed. As they emerged, a streak of lightning blasted into the river near the ship, and a voice boomed from the riverbank, asking what the party was doing there. The group answered, and after a few minutes of negotation about their intentions further up the river, they saw a pair of figures emerge from the jungle. One of the figures changed shapes several times as he approached the ship, but he eventually clambered aboard and introduced himself as Edo Brushback, caretaker of the jungles in this area. He agreed to accompany the party to Rana Mor, along with his gorilla companion, BB (Back-breaker).

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.