Session 11- Inhospitable in Orlane Late evening, Day 34
After Draden’s reunion with Rev. Ramsey, the party meets the owners of the Slumbering Serpent, Ollwin and Belba. They are kind and their food is of much higher quality than the Golden Grain Inn, and those who taste Ollwin’s homemade wine say it is the best they have ever had. Malden mainly talks with Ollwin, trying to impress his goodness upon him in hopes of getting some clues about Orlane. He says things are dangerous and different in recent months, and trust is in short order. He tells him to seek out Ramne, a local resident who is a force of good. He can share no more at present, but hopes the party can prove their intent to help, not harm Orlane. Exhausted from the week in the wilderness and sated from meals and drinks, the party retires at the Golden Grain. Day 35. The party sleeps well into the late morning much in need of catching up on sleep. When they rise they are rather quickly chatted up by Sheriff Grover, who let’s them know dangerous strangers are noted and looked after, hoping the party is good natured adventurers just passing through, but concerned of more evil intentions. He offers no information, but asks many questions of the party and warns them that walking around town fully as fully armed and armored slayers may cause fear and concern from the citizens, and encourages them to dress down. After lightening their arms, Mandigor again asks Bertram some questions about local activity in a more tactful attempt to get information about the mysterious L or Master. The only info Bertram offers is that Zara, a marsh ranger used to frequent the Rushmoors and trails into the Dim Forest, but she has not been seen around recently. Unimpressed with the information, the party then meets the dairy farmer who lives directly across from the Golden Grain. He is the most affable of all the people inviting the party up onto his porch for cheese and tea after some friendly conversation. Unfortunately, he knows nothing of what is afoot in town save that things are dangerous at night and he is focused on keeping his family and his farm safe. Next the party visits the local store, where they meet a rather surly and curious family of merchants. They haggle over the price of some leather armor and a lantern, and are asked to leave when the lantern deal goes sour. The party makes its way back to the Slumbering Serpent for drinks and meals and hopefully clues, leaving Manny and Mondy, the newly rescued hirelings, to dine back at the Golden Grain. There they realize the need for some night surveillance. They elect to hang outside the Golden Grain pretending to socialize while Thantas Climbs the roof of the inn to surveil with darkvision from above. They wait for nightfall, and Thantas does his sneaking up to the roof of the inn around 8pm, and stays perched and observant until almost midnight when he hears a distant but familiar sound beyond the nearby stables. He indicates such to the party and they hastily make their way past the stables down to the waterfront of the town lake where they spy two elves about to enter a small cabin along the lake. The party hatched a hasty plan to pretend to be in their cups and kind of jovially ask the elves to hang out and party. They knock on the cabin door only to be confronted by two savvy elves who appear dressed as adventurers. Amused but unfooled, they ask the party to leave, and tell them they personally can say nothing about the mystery of Orlane, but if they really want some questions answered they should talk to the Mayor of Orlane. After this exchange, the party returns to the inn only to realize that once again, Manny and Mondy are missing. Bertram the innkeeper says they finished their meal and headed out looking for the party, perhaps to the Slumbering Serpent. The party rushes there hoping to find them or at least get information from Ollwin, but he has neither seen them nor knows anything about their disappearance. He does see that the party is now deep in this mystery and offers the information that Ramne, the force of good mentioned earlier, can be found living a hermit’s life in a nearby forest grotto. Perplexed and frustrated by the loss of the hirelings again, the party considers what to do next. End session after midnight on day 36.
Session 12- In the Thick of It Midnight Day 36
Despite remaining exhaustion from the harrowing trek through the swamp, the party springs into action in an effort to find their hirelings, Manuel and Mondius. They ring the Sheriff's office and are met by Donovan and Hulbar, Grover’s deputies. Unsure if they can be trusted, the party tells of the missing men and sees how the pair will react. They seem concerned, though do pre suppose it's possible the men just wandered off or quit their employment. They do ask good questions about the men and the disappearance, go up the road where it may have happened, and do a search around the village for any signs. The party also does a little searching around, turning up no signs of a struggle or evidence of the men or their property. Stymied, the party goes back to the inn to get much needed sleep. In the late morning they rise refreshed, ready to search more. Upon entering the tavern of the inn, they are met by Derek, a roguish gentleman who introduces himself as someone who can get things or knows things, and he tells Belgium he has heard he is looking for a henchman, which he can procure. They agree to meet at dinner time to meet the hireling, and ask Derek if he knows about the missing men. He admits not, but he will do some digging. They also are briefly visited by Sheriff Grover, who relays that he and his deputies continue to patrol and search, but no news from Mondy or Manny. After this, the party decides to head up on the lead given by the elves last night to visit the mayor with any questions. They head over to his stately manor on the lake, and are easily let in for a visit with mayor Ormond, a former adventurer and kindly mayor to the village. He assesses the party and hears their story about the kidnappers in the Rushmoors, and is alarmed. He tells the party about the problems in Orlane, the midnight disappearances, and the fact that sometimes the people came back weeks later acting strange. He tells the party he suspects the carpenter, smith, storekeepers, temple clerics and the old hermit Ramne as being somehow connected to the disappearances. He hopes the party can assist him, and tells them he can give them no legal authority as he has already asked his old adventuring pals, the elves, to assist in the mystery. The party assures Ormond that they will get to the bottom of the mystery. Following up on these new leads, the party visits the carpenter, who is reported to formerly be an excellent craftsman, but his recent work is shoddy and poor quality. They walk into his shop and see evidence of just that. The older works he has for sale are fine quality, but the work currently on his workbench is crude and poorly crafted. The carpenter and his wife both seem in a fog or easily confused and lost in thought. After some coaxing and parley, he forgetfully admits that his 2 teenage children are missing, and he seems unsure if that is a bad thing. Mandigor, sensing that he may be mind affected, cursed, or somehow otherwise afflicted, flies into a rage and smashes one of the pieces of furniture, demanding to know what is going on. The carpenter is terrified, and jarred from his stupor. He admits that something is affecting him, and clouding his mind, but he knows no more. Mandigor apologizes for the outburst, but it seemed to have some effect in getting the carpenter to give up a little more information. They then head off to the temple of Merrika where they are greeted in the courtyard by Misha Devi, the assistant to the head priest. They ask about the missing men, and of course she knows nothing, asks the party where they are from and what they are doing in Orlane, the usual procedure from the unfriendly Orlane residents. The party informs her that the mayor suspects them of being part of the mysterious disappearances, and she calmly dismisses this and says she will speak to the mayor herself outside the party’s involvement. The party asks if they can see more of the temple or if they can look around for their friends, but are told only members of the temple may enter further. Again met with limited information, the party heads back to the inn to meet Derek and the new henchman, introduced as Whit. Belgium checks him over, pretty average farm lad with mildly above average strength. He seems brave and eager, so Belgium lets him check out the magic dwarven axe he recovered. He takes it outside and formally “wields'' it, the first in the party to do this. It is revealed that the axe is of masterwork quality and will impart the spell Stonehand once per day in combat, turning the victim to stone for several minutes. Hopefully Whit will serve Belgium and the party well. After a meal and the meeting with Derek and Whit, the party retires to their room for bed. Somewhat paranoid, rightly so, they elect to put the beds across the doorway and have the heaviest person sleep in that bed, barring the way should someone try to attack. Eerily after midnight, much of the party is awakened by a presence in their rooms. Each room had a one way secret door on the back wall, which both open. A figure rolls an object into each room, and both rooms are filled with pure silence, nothing can be said or heard. One of the figures doing so is seen to be Misha Devi, the temple priestess. Then the party is bum rushed by several stinky troglodytes and several surly bandit type humans led by none other than Derek the rogue. Another group of intruders unsuccessfully tries to push through the bed barred doors, but are stuck. With the party unable to cast spells, the attacking clerics stay in the hall outside the secret doors, just out of range of the silence spell, and cast hold person on Mandigor and Malden the Paladin, freezing both in place. The thugs, Derek, and the Trogs then beat on the others with clubs, knocking them out cold, with Thantas having Blindness cast on him by the other cleric, then being grabbed and tied up. The party has been captured! About an hour or so later, exactly how long is difficult to tell, the party awakens in a near pitch black dirt dug underground passage. They are stripped of their equipment and only a barely lit torch lays on the ground amongst the unconscious bodies of the party, now waking and stirring to their newest dilemma. End session middle of the night Day 37.
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