Game 1 Part 2

Last week we started the story with the Arrival of the Irish Knights in Donegal. They left the city to head toward Londonderry to spy on the forces of Ulthorion who are rumored to be building a large fleet. The Irish Knights encountered a band of brigands who were less than skilled at their trade and then later that night settled into a camp among burial caerns. The group hadn’t realized the nature of their camp and close to morning they were attacked by wraiths.

They survived the battle, just barely and one of the wraith’s swords remained behind. It is an enchanted blade and the group decided to crawl inside one of the burial caerns and see if any other treasures awaited within.

Into the Caern:

The passageway into the caern is small and cramped and after only a dozen steps the trio step out into a large dirt floored chamber with a vaulted ceiling. The room is littered with sealed urns, pots, and random rubbish. While there are a few valuables in the urns there is little here of interest to the knights. Davey opens a few of the urns and discovers a handful of scrolls and a jar of slime that makes the wearer invisible. Odd to say the least he distributes the items amongst the three of them.

Ragnall seems to have a nose for treasure and points out that there is a stone on the back wall that is actually a doorway. It is only three feet tall and after levering it open it reveals a similar sized tunnel. They will have to crawl from here. Davey sparks a torch.

Going Deeper:

The knights crawl through the tunnel and after a while it drops them into a large tunnel that worms deeper into the earth. After traversing 80 meters they realize that the pebbly floor is actually a later of shattered bones. The tunnel is lit with a green glow emitted by fungal growths along the walls. The carpet of shattered bones grow deeper as the fungus gets brighter. The Tunnel widens and they begin to feel the flow of air, they are coming onto a larger opening in the underworld.

They come into a chamber that has three more Barrow Wraiths in the centre of the room. The undead are looking down at shattered bones and fleshy limbs strewn about the room. The walls are lined in niches which once held bodies, those bodies are torn apart on the floor. Ash notes that the bones and fleshy bits on the floor are gnawed upon, and then mentions that wraiths don’t eat. The three wraiths notice the three knights.

Wraith Swarm

The wraiths swarm over Ash, their black blades slashing through the air. The lithe elf manages to turn aside two blades and merely take a cut from the third. He circles around the wraiths trying to draw them away from his companions.

Davey throws his torch into the center of the room and draws a machete into one hand and a club into the other. Davey and Ash coordinate to attack the trio of wraiths from opposite sides as Ragnall uses his powers to Ward Enemy, bolstering the defenses of his whole team.

Unlike the battle in the camp where the wraiths got the drop on the party this time the knights are determined and coordinated. Flurries of blades, strikes and feints, back and forth. The beginning of the battle starts in the favor of the knights. But half of the attacks from the knights have no effect on the ethereal bodies of the wraiths. The battle starts to turn in the favor of the undead as the Knights slowly begin to tire.

Turning Point:

Ash decides to fight fire with fire, he draws the black blade from his pack and attacks the wraiths with one of their own blades. His attacks cut into them deeply. Ragnall blesses the strength of Ash and Davey’s arms.

One wraith falls and now its two on two, with Ragnall hanging back from the actual fighting. Ash redoubles his efforts and leaps between the two wraiths he unleashes a torrent of attacks shredding both wraiths to tatters, but not finishing them.

[At this point Ash’s player rolled a 67 and dropped a GLORY card, this is the SECOND glory card in the VERY first game. It empowers all of the players and also affects the wraiths, empowering them.]

The End of the Battle.

With the glory flooding the battle with possibility energy and vitalizing all combatants. Davey and Ash shrug off the attacks of the wraiths and then tear them to shreds. Ragnall blesses the knights’ dexterity, lending them quickness of action. Seconds later the wraiths are gone, only the tears on the knight’s clothing remaining to show there was even a battle here.

Digging through the rubbish and strewn about remains the party discovers a suit of elven chainmail that appears to be resistant to the damp corrosion of the chamber. It proves to be magical and Ash claims it as a replacement for his own armor.

There is a tunnel out of the room that is much larger than the passages they took down. It is so large that even Davey can stand tall and walk down. Ragnall looks over the edge of the tunnel and remarks that it shows signs of having been expanded and widened by both clawed hands and tools. The entirety of the walls of the tunnel are smeared with the phosphorescent fungus, they won’t even need a torch to travel on further.

And even Deeper:

The tunnel breathes, puffs of fungal reeking air hits them in their faces and they slowly follow the tunnel down into the depths. The wet earthy smell is also over powered with the smell of rot and decay, and human waste. As they tunnel starts to come to end it gets even wider and the glow gets brighter, ahead a massive chamber yawns.

The trio ease against the wall and Ash edges forward to peek into the chamber. More bodies and gnawed bones cover the floor but the center of the room is dominated by a massive throne crafted out of corpses and seated on that throne is a bloated fat creature. Sitting down it is over six feet tall, standing it would have to be 9 or 10 feet tall and it must weight in at close to a thousand pounds of blubbery flesh. It is leaning back and taking huge bites out of a corpse’s thigh meat.

Ash leans back into the tunnel and shakes his head, almost unwilling to relate what he has seen to his companions. Ash: “I felt a crackle of energy, that thing is a stormer, or at least reality-rated. What do you guys want to do?”

Ragnall starts to summon a bolt of lightning. Ash sighs, I guess we fight.

Ghoul King:

Ash and Davey charge out of the tunnel side by side. Ash’s blackblade cuts a rent in the blubbery hide of the creature. Davey’s machete bounces off the hide only making a welt rise up. The creature swings massive fists at both men, missing them, and then lunges forward on its throne and tries to bite them with its massive jaws. The only thing that hits is spit and chunks of rotting flesh.

Ragnall unleashes his lightning bolt, but he’s unsteady on his feet and the lash of light burns along the side of the room, well away from the creature. His string of profanity is long and doesn’t need to be recorded here. The creature heaves up to its feet and Davey strikes is firmly in the vast belly, but the creature absorbs the blow and the follow up from Ash. It’s a net of zero on all sides as the creature is slow and easily dodged.

Ragnall stops swearing and boosts the defenses of his companions with another prayer. The knights attack in concert and only put a few more welts on the creature’s sides. The Ghoul king than strikes back. It backhands Ash, dislocating the elf’s shoulder and sending him bouncing off the floor and into a pile of bones in the corner. The Ghoul then turns to Davey and bites a chunk out of the wrestler’s shoulder. Davey falls back, pissing blood everywhere.

Better Finish this Faster:

Ragnall steps over the fallen Davey and prayers for healing energies to stop the bleeding and regrow the missing flesh. The ghoul king spits the chunk of flesh out of his mouth, disgusted by the freshness of the meat, it laughs. Ash gets back up and charges the creature, using his sword onehanded the blade bounces off the hide, his long sword needs two hand to cut deeper. Davey pushes Ragnall back and invigorated by the healing he hits the monster hard. Finally, he opens a second, deep cut in the ghoul, entrails spill out to the floor.

The creature tries to bit both of them while holding in some of its ropey entrails but it misses. Ash and Davey double their efforts, their blades bounce off the hide but they keep striking. Ragnall blesses their strength and they keep smashing blades into the creature. It tries to bite them both and fails. Finally, Ash ignores his shoulder injury and grabs his sword with both hands, he then jumps up and drives his sword down into the Ghoul’s gullet and cuts from chin down through sternum. The king is dead.

Late night!!

At this point we have NOT finished the first Act of the story but the night has gotten so late that we need to stop the game. In case you never read the original posts of this series (HERE) to give the short answer, the game is meant to be played in Acts. Each Act should be a single gaming session, sometimes they take two, and each Act is broken into 3-5 (or more) scenes. At this point you have just read through scene 3-4 of the Act.

Now I need to ask myself if I should stop this post here as well, or if I should go into the next session and finish Act 1 for you readers. I’m going to keep the posts based on the gaming sessions and not the Acts for Irish Knights. We’re currently 15 sessions into the game as I type this and some how that only equals 12 acts.

Next Week:

The finish of the catacombs and the rest of the journey toward Londonderry, though we’ll take a while to complete that three-day journey. The Tree of Woe (a prison of evil things) and the major turning point in ALL of the future stories in this campaign.