Freeport Campaign

The group awoke before dawn, prepared themselves, and trekked off down the road. They turned off onto the game trail the innkeeper had mentioned, with Chow scouting ahead. About a quarter-mile up the trail, he motioned a halt and telepathically noted that he had heard voices on the trail ahead, speaking in the language that Gor-bob and Torya used when they were really mad at each other. As Chow crept closer to get a visual identification of the voices’ source, the conversation stopped. The scout then heard some stealthy movement in the thick jungle on either side of the trail and picked up some whispered communication in a different language of yips and growls. Chow mentally warned the rest of the party about the incoming threat, feigned dismay at his own ineptitude, and took off running back up the trail.

Two gnolls followed him through the jungle as a larger two-headed creature bounded behind them along the trail. Spike intercepted the massive ettin before it could threaten Balama or Richard, and the gnolls flanked the swordsman as soon as he showed himself. Despite being hampered by poor visibility through the thick undergrowth, the party made quick work of the ettin and gnoll scouts. The party noted that the creatures had been well-equipped – all three had carried magical weapons and armor, along with a few other tidbits that could bolster either a ship’s crew or the party’s coffers.

The group continued up the trail and soon found themselves at the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake below a familiar waterfall – they had captured and flown the Cloud Ant over this spot three months ago. Talking quietly about the Crimson Fleet magicians who had escaped from the airship and about the unreliability of bound elementals as a sole means of airborne locomotion, the group steeled themselves to navigate the narrow ledge between the edge of the cliff and the cave behind the waterfall. Most of the group made it across fine, but Chow slipped on the slick rocks and plunged into the lake below. The former ship’s cook climbed slowly and carefully back up the cliff face and joined his amused compatriots in the cave mouth a few minutes later. Light sources in hand, they began their search for the Tomb and the Black Blade.

Fortunately for the rest of the party, Chow scouted ahead a bit, spotting a nearly invisible tripwire strung across the width of the first larger cave they entered. The wire appeared set to trigger a massive ceiling collapse in the center of the room, so they draped thin strips of cloth over the wire in case they needed to activate the trap to cover their escape.

Chow took the lead again, but almost immediately used the group’s telepathic link to call a halt just outside the rigged cave when he spotted a cadre of ogres resting in another, larger cave beyond. Spike strode forth into the narrow cave opening and challenged the ogres: “Okay, which one of you bastards wants to die first?” The results were predictable – several of the brutes charged, while the rest hurled ineffectual javelins at the seemingly puny human. Four of the seven ogres died within seconds from a combination of rapier thrusts and magical attacks, and the other three dropped their weapons after a quick series of meaningful looks.

The survivors sat on the floor in the center of the cave, as directed by the party, and warned the group not to venture too near the chasm that dropped off at the northern end of the cave. They claimed that “ghosts” sometimes rushed up from the depths to harass the ogres with jolts of lightning, but informed the party that Graf, the ogres’ chieftain, received some kind of protection from his consort, a “shorter” old woman named Henfels, which kept the ghosts from bothering him when he crossed the bridge across the chasm. They claimed no knowledge of any tomb further in the complex, being confined to their quarters by the malicious ghosts.

After a few more minutes of conversation and negotiations, the party agreed to let the ogres leave the cavern complex alive, and the brutes shuffled off toward the waterfall. Chow’s further investigations of the cave revealed a chest hidden behind some barrels of fetid “piss-water” in a corner near the bridge. Buried beneath shards of bone and shiny rocks, the rogue found a pile of coins, a couple of gems, and a magical ring. Meanwhile, Spike approached the edge of the chasm. Peering into the depths, he noted the presence of eight balls of energy that would normally have been invisible if not for the group’s prior expenditure specifically mitigating that lack. Remembering childhood tales of such creatures that fed on negative emotion such as anger, fear, hatred, and panic, he issued a combined offer and threat into the void below. The nearest will-o’-wisp responded, “We cannot feed on faint irritation; you may pass,” before descending to the bottom of the chasm. Chuckling, the group filed across the stone bridge into the next cavern.

Chow led the way, followed by Spike, and Balama and Richard brought up the rear. When the last two party members entered the cavern, the weakened floor beneath the group collapsed, bringing the walls and ceiling down as well. Being nearly out of the cave at the north end, Chow managed to avoid being pinned in the rubble, but the rest of his comrades were buried under tons of rock. Their mental link confirmed that everyone was still alive, but they were in pain and running out of air. Experienced adventurers, they remained calm, assessed the situation quickly, and used a combination of magic and strength to extricate themselves. Richard patched everyone up, and the group continued past the cave-in to a T-intersection in the passage beyond.

In the days after Will’s return, the group continued their investigations and followed up on some loose ends.

Richard used a combination of restorative and curative prayers to rectify the strange sickness Will had contracted on his brief visit to the moon.

Chow reminded the group of his sister’s upcoming wedding on Midsummer’s Day, and they agreed to wrap up their affairs in Freeport in enough time to allow them to get a feel for Chow’s hometown and set up some trading contacts before the ceremony.

Governor Johar of Mavinar contacted the group, requesting a quick meeting at his palace. Will transported them there as requested, and they shared tea with the governor as they had several times before. The governor gave them a status report on their demonwood logging operation, which continued producing good results. He then cut to the chase and informed the group that he suspected the Naranjani Emperor of outright insanity. Discreet auguries and divinations seemed to indicate that the Emperor was actually an avatar of Yig, rather than an avatar of Anjeeti, the Naranjani god of justice, as had been the case for most previous Emperors. The governor worried about the potential political consequences if the Emperor’s true state became public knowledge rather than whispered intimation, and requested the group’s assistance if it should become necessary. He could not outline the specific nature of this future assistance, but the group said that they would certainly help if they could. With that, he thanked the party for their time, they thanked him for the tea, and Will transported them back to Freeport. He wandered off toward the Scriptorium, muttering to himself about Yig, Tinel, and madness.

While Edo continued looking for clues to help him grow beyond his current shapeshifting abilities, Spike, Chow, Balama, and Richard turned their attention to Spike’s list of legendary weapons, in order to bolster their own martial abilities, or at least the Four Gulls coffers, in anticipation of the increasingly likely showdown with the Crimson Fleet. The only item on the list that had garnered any immediate leads was Kurgan’s Bane, also known as the Black Blade of Aknar Ratalla. Various references and hints tied the Blade to the warlord’s tomb, which was alleged to have been built close to the village of Barilon, near where the party had recovered the Cloud Ant three months previous.

Will teleported Spike, Chow, Richard, and Balama to Barilon and told them that he’d try to stay on the same plane in case they needed a quick evacuation from Ratalla’s tomb. When they got to Barilon, the group inquired about the current situation there. The innkeeper at the Goyle’s Rest reported that there had been a decrease in the number of ogre attacks lately, but several people had seen gnolls in the area. When asked about the presence of a nearby tomb, the innkeeper mentioned rumors of an ancient tomb hidden in a local ogre den, which itself was hidden behind the waterfall the party had seen in their previous trip to the area. The waterfall could be reached by following a faint game trail that intersected the main road through the jungle a couple of miles outside of town. The party thanked the innkeeper for the information, finished their dinner and drinks, and headed off to rest.

Playing a hunch at the innkeeper’s mention of gnolls, Richard prayed for Harrimast to reveal the current location of the horned devil the party had encountered back in Harrax, the buried desert city in the Crescent Empire. The results of the divination revealed that the devil indeed seemed to be within a few day’s march of Barilon. Armed with that knowledge, the party consulted with Will over their telepathic link and formulated various plans for dealing with the cornugon.

The group spent the next few days in Freeport drinking, conferring, shopping, and researching a variety of subjects.

Spike, Chow, and several of Will’s assistants pored through the stacks at the Freeport Institute and Scriptorium of Tinel looking for the names and last known whereabouts of various legendary weapons, and canvassed their contacts in town looking for magical items to fill functional gaps in the group’s martial abilities.

Edo sought out legends of powerful shapeshifters in an effort to expand his own similar capabilities beyond his current limitations.

Richard and Will immersed themselves in matters astrological and astronomical. Seafarers and scholars had long since pieced together mostly reliable solutions to the mysteries of latitude, longitude, the tides, eclipses, and various other esoteric matters once considered the exclusive purview of divine whim, but some mysteries still remained. Specifically, Will and Richard wondered about the feasibility of traveling to the moon, for a variety of reasons: because it’s there; to see if anyone had been there before; to test the practical limits of magical theory; to establish a secure base of operations/observation post; etc. The latest data and theories available in Freeport posited that the moon was a spherical physical body revolving around the planet at some great distance, occasionally occluding the sun or being occluded by the planet. There was no indication of any civilizations or life on the body, and no records of anyone having tried to visit the place by magical or mundane means.

With those assumptions in mind, and unsure of what the conditions would be on the surface of the moon (or in the void between the planet and the satellite, in case the equations and assumptions were wrong) Will spent some time creating a necklace of adaptation and ring of sustenance to provide himself air, nutrition, and hydration for the duration of his exploratory excursion. When those preparations were complete, Will studied his spellbooks, committed powerful teleportation spells to memory, and gave his notes a final perusal. At midnight, he and the rest of the party ascended to the observatory atop the Freeport Institute. With a word, Will attempted to teleport himself the 250,000 or so miles to the surface of the moon.

His collected calculations proved almost completely accurate, as he only had to drop about six feet to plant his boots on the dusty surface. He tested the permanent telepathic link he had set up with the rest of the party, which worked instantaneously across the yawning gulf between the two bodies. Awed at the sight of the familiar shapes of the continents arrayed on a mostly blue disk suspended in the black void, he spent a few minutes taking in and describing the view to his comrades, after magically protecting himself against the extreme heat blazing invisibly around him. After placing a flag bearing the symbols of the Freeport Four and Four Gulls Shipping, he spent several more minutes zooming over the ground, getting a feel for the lonely geography of the place.

After about an hour, Will noticed that he had developed a headache, mild nausea, and a rather severe sunburn. Alarmed, he took a final look around, uttered another word into his protective bubble of air, and appeared instantaneously back at the Freeport Institute observatory. He and his friends then headed back to Teach Investigations/Four Gulls Headquarters for some rest, and Richard promised to return in the morning to look after the strange malady the mage seemed to have contracted.

The party ventured further into the dungeon below the Inverness Tower ruins. Just past the ripped curtain and pile of skeletons, they discovered the remains of an ancient trap consisting of a multihued chessboard on the chamber floor. While they speculated on the rules of the trap and cursed Galap-Dreidel for a sadistic, dim-witted lout, a quartet of invisible stalkers rushed at them from an adjacent room. The invisible elementals attempted to force the group across the chessboard, presumably to trigger the harmful consequences of stepping on an improper square. Frustrated, the group expended most of their magical and martial energies to destroy the creatures, and retreated back to the bone room to patch up before teleporting back to Freeport. They spent a very drunken night discussing whether to bother going back to the stupid Tower and lamenting their inability to smack incorporeal creatures, which seemed to be opposing the party with uncanny frequency over their last few adventures.

With time to discuss the situation make the proper preparations, the party easily defeated the remaining fiendish phase spiders. As they prepared to descend the wrought iron staircase below the northeastern tower, they heard a peal of thunder from the courtyard, where they saw a 40-ish wizard striding toward them. He introduced himself as Galap-Dreidel, the creator of the Tower of Inverness, and informed them that at least a couple of gods (Tinel and Harrimast) had taken a personal interest in their exploits. Further, based on these exploits, Tinel had granted Galap-Dreidel a respite from the wizard’s endless years of imprisonment in a gem worn on the Heavenly Archmage’s forehead. The wizard answered numerous questions from the party, explaining some of what the Crimson Fleet seemed to be up to.