ang | Scarlet Citadel Campaign Diaries #5: The Wedding

(This diary entry was written several months after the session in question was played, and thus the details are somewhat fuzzy.)

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7 Thunders 482 AR

While Arodan searched the body of the Gaoler for treasure, Razog collected a blanket from the Gaoler's sleeping chambers to throw over the frog statue.

Morrigan took Ushulx's holy symbol from her while he spoke with her. The party discovered that she was a cleric of Charun, but probably considered a heretic by the main churches of the deity due to her strange beliefs and focus on the undead. She explained that she had only been working with the Gaoler to be close to the Charun shrine on this level of the Citadel dungeons, and to potentially explore the old Holzanger crypts, which allegedly have a portal to the Dry Lands within them.

She told Morrigan what little she knew about the rest of the dungeon -- including where the stairs to the next floor down were -- and told them an alchemist lives on the floor below.

Ushulx also shared information about the Network -- the red-garbed bandit group that Cagoth-ze and Gellert ally with -- known for blood magic (although not the same kind she practices) and their use of constructs. She wasn't able to tell the party much more than their name and that their leader, Hadathi, was an atavist -- a person who'd had blood magic performed on them to mutate and alter their body.

With that, Morrigan returned Ushulx's holy symbol to her. She asked the party if they'd be interested in going into the crypts with her. They said yes, but probably not for a few days's time as they needed to return to Redtower for supplies.

The party did explore some other rooms on the first level of the dungeon with Ushulx, though. They found a room where the Gaoler had tortured people in a water pool, where a mud mephit messed with Murphy and tried to trip him into the pool.

Meanwhile, Razog explored a room with a strange rodent-like statue, perhaps to some dark god or fiend. He pulled out the gems in the statue's eye sockets without triggering the trap in the room, but worried the gems might be cursed in some way.

The party then agreed to meet up with Ushulx to explore the crypts in a few days, and headed back to town via the shorter route on the main road.

Arriving back to town fairly late in the day, they stopped at Zula's cottage to buy more health potions. Razog traded one of the gems he'd found for potions, and asked Zula if they were cursed. She said they didn't seem to be magical, and accepted the one she was given as payment. Zula then told the party that there was to be a wedding in town tomorrow evening and that it was considered socially acceptable for all the townsfolk to attend.

(The wedding came from a roll I made when prepping the session on These tables from the Mystical Trash Heap blog originally written for the Village of Hommlet; I like the random town encounters in the Scarlet Citadel book proper, but I wanted to branch out from the 8 options given there.)

The party heard that in preparation for the wedding, the liege lord (i.e. Gellert the Gruesome) had sent a member of his household with a hog for the wedding feast. The party were intrigued by this and found the person -- a teenager named Tymon -- at the inn. Arodan proceeded to get Tymon drunk and attempt to convert him to the worship of Baccho, while Morrigan successfully sneaked into his room at the inn, where he found a sending stone and some notes about the lifeless clearing just outside of Redtower.

Everybody went to sleep and the party achieved Level 3!!! The party chose their subclasses: Morrigan became an Inquisitive Rogue, Murphy became an Alchemist Artificer, and Razog became a Beast Barbarian. Arodan continued to be a Death Cleric.

8 Thunders 482 AR

Since the party decided to attend the wedding that evening, they decided to spend the day in town doing shopping and interacting with townsfolk.

Murphy was able to hunt down some cartographer's tools, and was approached by Mayor Broz about the items they'd recovered that likely belonged to townsfolk who had gone missing. Murphy returned those items to the town.

Arodan checked on Tymon, who was extremely hung over after the previous night, and received a letter from Konrad. Konrad's letter ofered to purchase the items he'd planned to purchase from Dugan Lovay directly, if he could steal them if the party went with Barrett to recover her lost goods.

Razog left the other ruby as a gift for the happy couple along with a message that the gift was from "Morrigan Raam and friends."

The party agreed to check out the lifeless clearing and see why Tymon was so interested in the place, but that they would go after the wedding.

At the wedding, held in the old training grounds in the middle of town, everyone had a very nice time, but the party noticed Tymon was not in attendance. They slipped away from the party and out to the lifeless clearing, where they came upon several (black-cloaked) bandits.

The next few sessions will be the party going through the Light of Memoria sidequest, slightly edited to be appropriate for level 3 characters.

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