FLGS Nightwick Session 4: Look Out Stomach...

Characters Present
Ermel the Dagger - Karslish Human Ranger 2 (and writer of the recap)
Adran Wildedagger - Karslish Human Rogue 2
"Sir" Ginger van Evergreen - Frogling Cleric of St Santa Claus 2
Flint Lichtbringer - Dwarven Paladin dedicated to St Richard the Prior 2
Anastasia Romanov - Novgovite Changeling Warlock of the Archfey 2
Rhiannon Fleetwood - Karslish Human Druid 1 (Played by my wife, who has played every incarnation of Nightwick)
Aradon, Son of Evermore - Dwarven Barbarian 1

8th of Shocktober
We leave the village about dawn for the Abbey.  This time we go towards the west tower! Flint kicks the door open, and then tries to stomp the trap door open, only to have his leg go through the door.  I help the dumb dwarf out of the door and the barbarian dwarf opens the trap door like a civilized being. Down into the trap door and into a room with flower columns [sic]! We open a door to noises and there are leather-face guys torturing some creature!

***FIGHT IT OUT!!***

We smushed um, but Flint accidentally killed the chimera that was being tortured. Rhiannon found a secret button on the St Gax column [sic]! It opens a secret door to a secret room.  There's another door with noises behind it. Time to immediately open it! There are rats with crow's heads!

***FIGHT IT OUT!!***

We kill the swarms and there are 100 silver and 4 habits. another door, another room with a pedestal and a book.  Anastasia picks up the book and blood gushes out. The barbarian tries to sunder the source, only to make it gush more.  Meanwhile, Ardan opens another room that yells "thief!" at him. "Liar!" at Ginger. The barbarian jumps into the blood hole and gets lost in space and time.  Anyway there are cultists!

***FIGHT IT OUT!!***

We killed 5 of them and the last one runs away!

Monsters Defeated
2 Berserkers, 2 swarms of Awful Rats, 6 Cultists

Treasure Gained
100 silver, 4 habits

XP Per Player
190

FLGS Nightwick Session 3: Don't Go Into the Graveyard!

Characters Present
Ermel the Dagger - Karslish Human Ranger 2 (and writer of the recap)
Adran Wildedagger - Karslish Human Rogue 1 (formerly played Ysentrude)
"Sir" Ginger van Evergreen - Frogling Cleric of St Santa Claus 2
Flint Lichtbringer - Dwarven Paladin dedicated to St Richard the Prior 2
Anastasia Romanov - Novgovite "Human" Warlock of the Archfey 2
Vlad - "Priest" [Wizard] of the "One True God" 1 (played Oberich in session 2)

1st Day of Shoctober, King's Day
There is a festival for the first frogling to convert to the God of Law!* Later, though; right now we're off to the Abbey! Time for graveyard. Seems like a bad idea to me, though. There are six freshly-dug graves and mausoleum doors in the mountainside [sic]. Inside there are empty coffins and two large angel statues with swords.  As soon as we enter the north room we are attacked by skeleton wheels!

***FIGHT IT OUT***

Ginger turned the skeletons and we killed the one that remained. Flint licked a fleshy bit of wall and fell over, unconscious. Curse his need to lick everything.** Ginger shocks him back to consciousness.  Having awakened, Flint leads us on to the room the skeletons attacked us in before. Flint opens a door to a room with a sarcophagus and a painting. Inside, a nun corpse with a habit and jeweled eyes. The rogue swipes the two eyes and Vlad shakes the corpse loose from the habit.  Suddenly there is a Hell knight of something to dislike us so flee!!

***Fight it Out***

We... scared him off???*** And now we are trapped from the Abbey changing\\ around us, but we eventually make it out!

Monsters Defeated
1 Broken Dead

Treasure Gained
4 purple gems, monk habit, nun habit

XP Per Player
425 (bonus for exploring Level 3)

* St. Toad of the Black Moor

** Flint has been licking various stone structures throughout the Abbey to perform "stonecunning." The fleshy thing in question was a strange scab formed in a door frame, a common sight in Nightwick.

*** Ginger was able to wound the creature with a damage type it had a vulnerability to, forcing it to make a morale save which it failed.

FLGS Nightwick Session 2

Characters Present
Ermel the Dagger - Karslish Human Ranger 1 (and Writer of the recap)
Dame Ysentrude - Realmish Human Paladin 1
"Sir" Ginger van Evergreen - Frogling Cleric of St Santa Claus 1
Flint Lichtbringer - Dwarven Paladin dedicated to St Richard the Prior 1
Anastasia Romanov - Novgovite "Human" Warlock of the Archfey 1
Oberich - Dwarf Rogue 1 (New player)

24th of September, King's Day
There was a hub-bub happening in the village, a mob gathered around one of the bigger buildings, yelling about deviltry and some such. Something about taking dogs up to the Abbey again.* The cleric [Ginger] disperses the crowd and we enter into the building and call out to the denizens,** who meekly come down and are immediately questioned about their state.  I asked about the skeletons of the dogs and got a satisfactory answer for now. They tell us that if we get a female dog back that they will work for us.

The drunk guard gets told that he's going to the Box!*** And we follow the goblin tracks toward the Abbey. The tracks themselves don't seem to be affected by the trees and dissipate at the edge of the Abbey. We enter the Abbey again and find more tracks in the East Tower and then down and find more tracks in the East Tower and then down the latter towards whispering. We go into the room, which has goblins!

***FIGHT IT OUT***

We only killed two and the last one got away and warned other goblins including a big one with a fancy sword but the cleric scared them so they ran off. We found them again by chasing and the fight begins again.

***FIGHT IT OUT***

We killed a King Goblin and his girls in his room. Flint found a key ring and uses it to open a locked door and behind it a chest! Flint tries a random key and he and two others get splashed with acid. One [Dame Ysentrude] just outright dies; down one paladin. Inside the chest was 6000 silver pieces, a jeweled diadem, and a red liquid filled vial that was used to heal Flint. We burned the body of the dead friend.

We continue exploring and go to a room full of broken furniture as well as "mung" spelled out in intestines.  We decide to go back to Nightwick Village but are assailed by a Blood Jelly [Sic]!

***FIGHT IT OUT***

We defeat it without problems! We leave back to Nightwick.

Monsters Defeated
8 Goblins, 1 Great Goblin, 1 Vampire Jelly/Blood Pudding

Treasure gained
6000sp, Jeweled Diadem

XP Per Surviving Hero
175

\

* Longtime readers, and those who played in the G+ era, may remember that anyone taking animals to Nightwick Abbey is suspected of Satanism because they often return without the animals.

** Longtime FLAILSNAILSers may remember Samson Jones, who had a few adventures in Nightwick.  These were two deformed henchmen he had left to breed dogs in the village.

*** The drunk guard in question was Wamba Big-member, whose drunkeness allowed goblins to enter the town and steal the dogs.  He claimed the dog breeders had "witched him" and led the mob.

Quick Update

I know I've slowed down recently after a fairly heavy revival in blog activity earlier this year.  I'm currently sitting on a bunch of 50% done posts and a mountain of play reports of both the FLGS and online Nightwick games. I hope to get those reports written up and posted in the next few days (likely multiple ones in a day) and then to get to editing the regular posts.

The Fearless Vampire Fucker

The flail known as the Vampire Fucker* was made by the dwarf Lit when the Kingdom Under the Mountain still flourished and neither Man nor Dragon had come to despoil it. Whether vampires were known to the dwarves of old, the power came to the flail only later, or Lit had the power to prophesy is unclear. No dwarven songs seem to feature it, though some human scholars of their language have pointed to "maces" and similar devices found in their legendry that may be references to the Vampire Fucker.

It is known that it still had this name when the dwarf king in exile gifted it to Liudprand the Unsparing, the first hochmeister of the Sword Brothers to oversee their time in the Dark Country. Whether the king, whose name is not recorded, gave it willingly or was a captive in Schonberg (no the central fortress in Nunhead, one of the Seven Cities) is the subject of much debate.  It is clear that Liudprand, and sometimes his lieutenants, used the flail to "banish" a number of Varkolaks that were serving as quasi-deities to Bogdani tribesmen** and supposedly even some members of his own order who had been afflicted. However, the timeline of the Sword Brothers fall is often unclear, and these incidents may have been post-hoc rationalizations for massacres and internal paranoia. Despite its vampire slaying powers, it is still effective against the innocent.

The last references to the Vampire Fucker occur only in sources by the Sword Brothers themselves and contain the most depraved incident in the history of the weapon, if such tales are true.  It seems that the Witch of Averois, was grievously injured when a knight attempted to use the flail in a perverse act of sexual torture. Thereafter she had the reigning hochmeister seal the flail in a "museum" containing multiple relics seized on crusade in the Desert Lands. The vault which contained it has never been opened since.

A peculiarity concerning the weapon is the number of sources maintaining it is a "whip." All physical descriptions known note a heavy head at the end of a long chain. This strange nomenclature may be a reference to the flails ability to extend when the lifeforce of its wielder is at its height.

Vampire Fucker
Weapon (flail), very rare
You gain a +1 bonus to attacks and damage rolls made with this weapon.

If your hit points are at maximum (or temporary hit points above your maximum) the weapon has 10' reach. If your hit point maximum is lowered by an effect (such as the vampire's bite) this function still operates as long as your hit points are at or temporarily above this new maximum.

When you hit a vampire (as defined by the DM) with an attack using this weapon, the vampire takes an extra 2d6 radiant damage.

*Its name is translated from the rough language of the dwarves, whose runes clearly articulate this meaning.

**Bogdani is the ethnonym of the pagans of the Dark Country.  They are normally divided into White and Black Bogdani, though the distinction's meaning is often unclear to Realmishmen.

FLGS Nightwick Session 1

We had a near TPK in my FLGS Wilderlands game and decided to take a hiatus at least until the end of October. In the meantime I'm running Nightwick for them. Unlike the Nightwick Regulars (who are still in the month of Elders, 1395), this game's in game month lines up with our current month - i.e. September 1395. Hopefully the coming weeks will show how I plan to reconcile this disparity.

This is another guest post by longtime player in my games, Chris.  You may remember him as Burgell the Gnome and Aslog in the Wilderlands.

Characters Present
Ermel the Dagger - Karslish Human Ranger 1
Dame Ysentrude - Realmish Human Paladin 1
"Sir" Ginger van Evergreen - Frogling Cleric of St Santa Claus 1
Flint Lichtbringer - Dwarven Paladin dedicated to St Richard the Prior 1
Anastasia Romanov - Novgovite "Human" Warlock of the Archfey 1

10th September 1394
We're in Nightwick and trapped due to some military happenings. Dame Ysentrude gets taken to a chirch for some walled-in girl to tell her some vision of seals breaking. Some lady in the town complained that her grandmother got killed by a sword brother and wants us to put her to rest. Another lady mentions her father is a wizard and wants to meet anyone going into the abbey.

We go see the lady with the grandmother problems who expresses that she is very poor and cannot offer much. Lame. Then we go to see the wizard in his tower.  Halfdan says he's a terrible wizard and he looks like it. He wants us to find some plants. Okay. So we head, finally, to Nightwick Abbey.

After journeying through woods we burst through to the abbey covered in kudzo and also two bell towers and crumbling ruins without the crumble. There is a cemetery covered in that same kudzu, though not as much. The east tower's doors are smashed open so we enter in. There is also a 10 foot hole with a metal ladder, which the trap door of is cut like meat fillet and half of it is plopped into a corner. Flint unspools rope down into the opening out of mistrust for the ladder and Ginger just goes down the latter.

Flint kicks the door open to reveal a room with a large statue at the end of it. It's a sword brothers statue! Ginger busies herself listening at each door. There's fighting beyond one of the doors. Of course one of the paladins wants to go to that. Thank goodness she is distracted by poking at the statue. Not enough though, and Dame kicks the door open and it breaks like meat. Good. Dame and Flint charge into the room where the battle sounds are coming from. There are a bunch of undead dancing around in combat with themselves. Flint throws a javelin at them and makes them angry!

{FIGHT IT OUT}

We fought a bunch of skeletons and Ginger and Flint got hurt. We prevailed over them, eventually, and were rewarded with 2 gold crowns from two lead skeletons. We decided to leave, licking our wounds, back to Nightwick.

Monsters Defeated
10 Blind Dead and 2 Blind Bruders

Treasure Gained
2 Ducal Coronets (50gp each)

XP Per Player
150

Tales from the Boar's Head: Thalos' Tomb

A Bad Way to Go

Session Date

13th Day of the month of the Crimson Dragon 4500CCC (August 13th)

Characters Present

Aslog, Skandik Priestess of Odin

Velor Silent-stream, Half Elf Druid

Dabetha Darkmantle, Dwarf Storm Sorceress and devotee of Manas

Udogar Thalthaac, First Man Bard

Thalos, Tiefling Blade Pact Warlock (Deceased)

Events

• The party met with Thalos, a warlock from the Demon Princedoms far to the south, and convinced him to seek treasure within the tomb they had been exploring.
• Dabetha also took the time to make sure she had notes on the other possible adventures around Haghill and the City State.
• They left Haghill at dawn on the 13th and arrived at the tomb without incident.
• After reviewing Velor's map, they decided to try to explore beyond the chamber where they had fought a group of guard skeletons and, on a later expedition, the shade of a typhonic beast.
• Near this chamber they found what appeared to be an ancient library of sorts filled with scrolls. A skeletal priestly figure mechanically puttered around looking at scrolls seemingly without comprehending them. In the center of the room was a great brazier.
• Thalos attempted to test the skeleton's reactions by dimming the fire within the brazier. This prompted no reaction. 
• Before the party could move in behind him, Thalos attacked the creature with an eldritch blast.
• The rest of the party filed in, attacking with spell and sword, and the skeleton had no time to react before it was destroyed.  With its last act it attempted to push some of the scrolls into the fire but was unable to.
• Searching among they scrolls they found that many were blank, but that some still contained writing.  They were able to find an ancient King's List, a strange map, and a scroll of diminution.
• Dabetha, feeling there might be a secret door nearby, attempted to search for one using her stone-cunning, but to no avail.
• They then decided to see what was within the pit found in the room where Velor, Aslog, and the now gone Torin had faced a bronze cobra.  They, in fact, used the wreckage of this cobra as a weight for their rope as they lowered themselves down.
• Or rather some did.  Udogar, frustrated with dithering over whether to go down the pit or a nearby flight of stairs, jumped down and was quickly joined by Talos.
• Below they found a strange set of cells packed wall to wall with bones, as though a great many people were locked in them and left to rot over hundreds of years, and a torture chamber. 
• The torture chamber was guarded by a hulking skeleton with a great, two handed scimitar. Once he drew this vile weapon a swarm of scarab beetles appeared from no discernible location and followed him.
• Thalos attempted to fight the undead torturer while Velor and Aslog began to make their way down the rope.
• Dabetha jumped past the two going down the rope and cast a shield spell in mid air, using her storm sorceress abilities to gently land on the ground once this was done.
• Thalos took a mighty blow from the torturer, but what slew him was the scarabs. They swarmed over him - two swarms in one space! They then set about hollowing out his corpse.
• The torturer then turned his attention to Udogar and Dabetha, but Velor was able to intervene and do a great deal of damage to him.  Aslog also helped with her mace, which had great efficacy against the being.
• Udogar was knocked unconscious by the torturer's wicked blade, but Aslog was able to heal him.
• Once the torturer was dead, they felt some sorrow for their newly met and newly departed friend, but Aslog did observe that they had not been shieldbrothers long.
• Dabetha took the sword and began experimenting with it, finding that if any part of it touched the ground scarabs began to appear. She faintly heard the voice of Thalos's shade say "careful where you sleep."
• They then climbed back up the rope, retrieved it, and went down some nearby stairs. The sound of running water, which pervades the strange tomb, was even louder in this section of the dungeon.
• Beyond this they found another guard chamber of skeletons - 4 with swords and shields and 4 with bows. These proved to be more aggressive than the first set, with the archers firing as soon as they were within sight.
• The fight saw Udogar use illusions to great effect, creating illusory cover for his allies as they moved up the hallway and dealt with the sword swinging skeletons.
• Having spent many resources and lost a friend, the party decided to return to Haghill rather than continue exploring, at least for now.