Freeport Campaign

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 2000
• Treasure: Masterwork dagger, 4 normal daggers, wand of summon monster II (36 charges, CL 3rd), bracers of armor +2, brooch of shielding, periapt of wisdom +2, Yellow Sign pendant, pink and yellow robes (slightly used), various books and papers

Spike charged past the demon and ended the older man’s insane ramblings in short order. He then joined Richard, Isaac, and Lumineaux in convincing the vespertiliac to leave the room with its prehensile tail intact (Balama and Chow having fled the house in a panic when the thing emitted a terrifying shriek of hatred and fury).

With the eastern half of the first floor cleared, the group moved on to the west wing after Balama and Chow returned. Richard dispatched another group of ghost children who were playing kickball in a hallway, and the party elected not to investigate a blood- and excement-filled claw-footed bathtub in an adjacent room.

When the group entered Cresh’s nearby game room, they were attacked by fat blobs of oozy, leaking flesh that various written sources speculated were living tumors plucked from the Unspeakable One’s skin and flicked into the Material Plane. Disgusted by the remnants of that battle, the party paused uneasily at the entrance to Cresh’s indoor conservatory. Spike and Balama recognized the large living plant in the center of the room as similar to the vegetative creature that had nearly digested them in the canal outside Rana Mor several months ago. Grumbling about the noisome denizens and horrifying decor of the manor house, the group discussed their options.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1000
• Treasure: 180 pp, 462 gp, 350 sp, 600 cp, ring of protection +1, arcane scroll (bull’s strength, invisibility, rope trick, all caster level 3rd), oil of invisibility, ring of counterspells (banishment), periapt of wisdom +2

Based on Will’s advice regarding devils, Spike armed himself with a matched cold iron rapier and dagger after the group left the house. After another restless night, the party assembled in the Eastern District and headed back into Cresh Manor. Checking the remains of the chain devil a little more closely, they discovered a trio of magical trinkets they had overlooked in the post-battle sweep the previous day.

As they investigated the former play room next door, Balama seemed abruptly puzzled when she heard a child’s voice whisper, “Mommy?” in her ear. When she picked up a toy and held it out in front of her, a ghostly apparition of a child rose from the floor and grabbed her hand, while seven other ghost children emerged and struck at the rest of the party. Richard informed the children that their parents (not to mention Harrimast) were probably severely disappointed with them, to which the kids gave a screech before disappearing.

The party collected their breath and checked out the remaining rooms in the east wing before approaching the fire-dancing devils. Chow approached the shattered tea room with some trepidation, fearing that the slowly oscillating chandelier overhead and broken glass on the floor implied a trap or creature that he couldn’t detect, so the party avoided the room. Instead, they positioned themselves around the door to the living room and prepared to face the devils.

The next few moments were a blur of combat, seeing Spike’s nice cold iron weapons dissolved by contact with one babau’s skin, Richard banishing one devil to what appeared to be a plane of water, and the other devil teleporting away from the melee. Once again the party caught their breath and searched the room. Chow spotted some strange holes in the western wall that further investigation revealed to open into a narrow secret tunnel, presumably used in Cresh’s day to spy on guests in the living room.

The group next moved on to the great room where Richard had been accosted by the allip. This time around, they formulated a plan and took out the undead apparition with minimal fuss. With that room cleared, they turned to the only unopened doors on the east side of the first floor. The first revealed a storage room containing a mass of gore that may have been a corpse at one point, and the second opened on a man in pink and yellow robes rifling through piles of books and papers among the toppled bookcases on the floor. As the door opened, the man’s demonic companion leapt at the party.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1250
• Treasure: 3 masterwork breastplates, 2 masterwork falchions, masterwork composite longbow (+3 STR rating), 20 arrows, 83 gp, 60 pp, white opal (1100 gp), +1 greatsword, wand of cat’s grace (22 charges, 3rd caster level)

The group went to the temple of Harrimast to get their wounds healed, and then checked with Will and the Wizards’ Guild to verify that the things they had seen dancing around a fire in the former dining room were in fact babau demons. Spike went off in search of weapons to exploit one of the demons’ suspected weaknesses. That done, the party holed up to recover for their next foray into Cresh Manor.

After a restless night, the party reassembled at dawn in the Eastern District. This time around, Richard brought along one of his crewmates, a tall cloaked figure named Lumineaux, for backup and additional muscle.

Chow led the way back into the house. The group discussed their options and decided to clear the first floor before moving upstairs. Chow was set upon immediately when he opened one of the interior doors off the entry hall.

(More flavor text later…)

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 1250
• Treasure: 500 gp each (reward from Countess Matilda)

After a good night’s rest, the group had audiences with deposed King Albigensius IV of Avalon and Countess Matilda.

Following the events at the Last Resort, Spike, Chow, and Richard spent a few quiet months seeing to their various business and personal interests. A couple of weeks into the dry season, Chow received a message from Finn, requesting his assistance in a disturbing matter in the Eastern District. After an initial meeting, Chow brought in Spike and Richard to discuss the matter with Finn.

Apparently, many children had gone missing over the last few months in the District and elsewhere in the city, and Finn’s “constituents” wanted them back. The Syndicate’s questioning pointed to Cresh Manor, an abandoned house at the edge of the city with a dark reputation.

The group agreed to investigate and set off to talk to the families that lived nearest the manor. The families and friends of the missing children told similar stories – little Paitr or Jenny had gone to the manor wall on a dare, or been playing stickball near the house, and just didn’t come home. After cataloging these unfortunate tales, the party grabbed a few hours of sleep, and met up to stake out the manor to verify the reports of strange lights and noxious odors emanating from the house.

Shortly after dawn, the group entered the front gate of Cresh Manor. Rather than follow the path to the front door, they bushwhacked through the overgrown vegetation to a clearing around back. While investigating a disturbing fountain in a clearing behind the house, the party was surprised when a massive hedge sprang up out of nowhere to separate Chow from the rest of the group. Spike, Richard, Balama, and Isaac heard Chow engaged in a fight on the other side of the hedge, but their efforts to hack and burn through the vegetation were largely unsuccessful. Frustrated, they turned their attentions to the barred back door of the manor and crashed through it in half a minute or so. Spike, Balama, and Isaac charged through the front door and back around the house in time to fight off a small, strangely resilient lizard that was trying to drag Chow’s unconscious body through the hedge.

Meanwhile, Richard was distracted by a babbling apparition that coalesced in one of the fireplaces in the main hall of the house. He huddled fearfully in a corner for the duration of the fight with the devil lizard, but used a brief moment of lucidity to wrap himself in silence and escape the allip. He quickly joined the rest of the party outside the house and entreated Harrimast to bring Chow back to consciousness. That done, the group exited the manor grounds to rest and regroup.

Rewards Earned

• Experience Points: 500
• Treasure: None to speak of, other than favors owed by some of the upper crust

After returning from a quick milk run to Coral Bay, the group received invitations from Bobbin Brandydale, owner and manager of the Last Resort, to the Grand Reopening of the city’s premiere hotel. Spike and Carmina spent a fair amount of time getting decked out in new finery, while Chow saw to some personal business about town.

The group arrived at the Last Resort a half hour before the doors were scheduled to open and took their place in the long line of ticketholders among the crowd of onlookers. While waiting, they ran into Father Peg Leg Peligro, who introduced them to a fellow ship captain and follower of Harrimast, Richard “the Hawk” (last name).

After being seated by Bobbin himself, Chow, Spike, and Carmina invited Peg Leg and Richard to join them at their table. The group swapped numerous stories over dinner, while generally keeping an eye on their fellow diners and listening to the conversations around them.

The pleasant evening was punctuated with several notable events:

• One Henry Tranco, tenant of the Last Resort, was visited by a couple of large guys in ill-fitting suits, who left the hotel after a quiet but heated conversation with the man. Chow bought Tranco a drink, but learned little from the ensuing conversation. Later, several other fellows joined Tranco for a couple of bottles before retiring upstairs for what sounded like a high-stakes game of poker. In fact, the stakes were apparently high enough to draw Captain Lydon from the table he shared with his new comrades on the Captain’s Council.

One by one, Tranco’s buddies returned downstairs in varying states of inebriated despondency. Lydon was last to return, and seemed put off when Spike rebuffed his efforts to borrow “just enough for one more buy-in.” The thugs returned around midnight, and seemed disappointed when they came back downstairs with a pair of jingling bundles under their coats.

• Countess Matilda, an elderly noble exile from Eisen, made a grand entrance to the delight and scattered applause of the gathered diners. She was seen to by Bobbin and the hotel’s head chef, and was soon joined by Baron Philippe de Clorevin, a noble visiting from the mainland nation of Montaigne. The Countess held court at her corner table all evening, and passed some small talk with Chow regarding trade opportunities in Eisen.

After a full evening, the Countess retired to her suite. Baron de Clorevin, deprived of his sparkling companion, sipped a glass or two of fine brandy and headed upstairs to his suite.

A while later, one of the Countess’s servants discovered that her Lady’s famed necklace, the Tears of the Sea, was missing. The Countess upbraided her staff and the hotel guards, but was soon assuaged by the Baron, who took immediate charge. Unfortunately for the Baron, Chow and Spike were upstairs investigating another matter, and found the necklace hidden in the Baron’s chamber pot. The Sea Lord’s Guard took the Baron into custody after Spike apprehended the man, and the Countess thanked the group and the Guard for returning her (since cleaned) property.

• More events to follow…