Nightwick Abbey Session 17

This session has a very low turn out, but as long as I can get three players I tend to try to run a game anyway.  We had...

Slimey, master thief
Ffraid, cleric of the old gods
and Jop, ferocious frogling

Slimey suggested that they retrieve the staff of power they had left with the sage back in Lichegate, and Jop and Ffraid agreed.  They called in a favor with Eckhard the Reeve and got two men-at-arms and horses for the five of them and set off down the dangerous winter road.  At about midday the party heard a ghostly baying all around them, and Ffraid was correctly able to identify the approaching creatures as Yeth Hounds.  The party was barely able to give them the slip, and had they not had horses they would have surely been slain.  Just outside of Hommlet they encountered their most horrible creature yet: a herd of reindeer!  They fled, terrified.

They arrived in the village of Hommlet, which lies in the shadow of the city, close to nightfall and decided to rest for the night before continuing onward.  Early the next morning, within the 10 miles between Hommlet and the City, they were attacked by a large pack of wolves.  Luckily, Slimey was able to distract them with a large amount of meat he had purchased from the owner of the Medusa's Head in Nightwick for provisions.

After giving them the slip they arrived at the city, where they were forced to pay a leg tax before entering.  They made their way to Almaric the incontinent's hovel where they conversed with him about the Staff of Power.  It seems that it once belonged to the wizard Shazam, and that the word needed to cast every single spell was in fact Shazam!   Other wizards, such as Vennax the Vainglorious, tended to be a bit more creative with their naming patterns but this was sort of Shazam's calling card.  

The party also presented the sage with Edrick's gilded skull, which greatly unnerved the senile sage.  He said that it would take him a few extra months to research it without having the physical skull to work with, but he preferred it that way.  Slimey was particularly interested to see if there was a way to shut Edrick up, and Almaric said it would be the first thing he looked up.  Slimey also drew an image of the stolen Bishop's wring for the sage, but the sage did not recognize it.  He offered to research it for Slimey, but Slimey decided against this.  He then burned the picture so that no evidence would be left, and the party headed back into the city.

Slimey bought a large bolt of cloth and some black paint and made a sign which read "I still have your ring, asshole!"  Sometime in the night he dressed himself as an old woman and scaled the Cathedral.  Once at the top he set up a system using a candle and bits of twine that would cause the banner to unfurl after he had left the area.  On his way down he was spied by a guard, who asked what the old woman was doing in so dangerous a place.  "She" claimed that she was doing penance before the festival of "Saint Shoulder-pads" which seemed to appease the ignorant guard and Slimey scampered off to find his companions.

It was close to dawn, and the party mounted up and rode hard for Nightwick village.  They paused only to watch the banner unfurl and when a viscous owl flew overhead.  Thus we ended the session with the party getting ready to go see Halfdan the Black, Nightwick's resident wizard in a tower to ask him about the ring and the skull.  Apparently he has a hatred for the Bishop rivaled only by Slimey's.

It was a pretty good session, though admittedly I was a bit easily distracted.  At one point most of us were looking at Slimey's Player's Goya art books which brought both a level of class and a number of pictures of Satan to the table.

Sorry I haven't been posting much recently.  I've been spending some time flipping through Traveller and sleeping a great deal.  I, unfortunately, didn't get to run much over my vacation in Mississippi so I don't have any further notes on Uz.  I'll try to get back to posting more regularly