Player Characters
Tim, a Wizard - male human from the Free City of Freegate, student at Outlands UniversityDangar Stonekleaver - male dwarf from the Northern Dwarven Kingdom
Mikal Torvaldsson - human male, of the Uplander Clans
Darian Kyle - human male, formerly of the Imperial 7th Legion [deserter]
Begin
The sage Montiflurio needed a small group of adventurers to go secure an item from a deserted town north of Freegate. Using his contacts at Outlands University, he was put into contact with an undergraduate wizard from the High Energy Thaumatics College by the name of Tim. Tim and his associates agree to take the job. They would secure the diary Montiflurio wanted and in return they would get a small sum of money and may keep anything else of value they find, providing Montiflurio gets to look it over first.
Tim's companions consisted of Dangar Stonekleaver of the NDK, Mikal Torvaldsson of the Uplander Clans, and Darian Kyle, formerly of the Imperial 7th Legion. They used the advance from Montiflurio to purchase a cart to carry their supplies and headed north toward the Great Nef.
A Week Later
A week or so later, they left the domains of Freegate and entered the lands of the Horse Lords. After traveling another two days, they found the abandoned town Montiflurio has sent them to and realized it was actually the ruins of an entire city! Approaching the city, they heard the sounds of fighting. Cautiously moving into the ruins, they discovered a number of the Horse Lord people fighting a pack of three odd feline creatures, each with two tentacles protruding from their backs. The creatures seemed to magically shift position, blinking out of the way of attacks.
Seeing an opportunity to get into the good graces of the Horse Lords, Tim and his companions attacked the creatures and helped drive them away. The leader of this tribe of Horse Lords, Lugalbanda, introduces himself and thanked the strangers for their aid. He offered the hospitality of his camp and the additional security it would provide against the creatures who would likely attack again during the night. The adventurers accepted his offer and helped set up defenses and shared food.
The adventurers learned from Lugalbanda that the strange creatures only recently appeared after a major windstorm blew over some of the buildings in the ruins. Lugalbanda's people did not build the city, which his people call El Djem, but take shelter inside its walls during the cold months. They never enter the buildings because they believe the interiors are haunted by hungry ghosts who cannot leave the buildings. The adventurers explained why they were here and Lugalbanda offered to show them the way to the building they were looking for, but his people would not go in. The adventurers accepted his offer.
During the night, the creatures attacked again. Several people were wounded in the fighting before one of the creatures was killed and the other two driven off. The adventurers were very helpful during the fighting and shared some of their healing potions afterwards.
The next morning, Lugalbanda showed the adventurers to the location described by Montiflurio. The upper floors of the building had collapsed and fallen onto one of the adjacent buildings. Dangar found a set of stairs leading down into the basement and the adventurers cautiously entered, following Montiflurio's written instructions. In the basement they found stacks of oddly shaped boxes with markings on them, just as Montiflurio said there would be. Upon further investigation, the markings appeared to be numbers and the boxes were locked. Mikal found a cabinet that contained short strips of metal that were also numbered. He determined they were some strange sort of key. The adventurers set to opening the boxes.
While opening the boxes, the adventurers discovered three things. First, the boxes were magical and keep whatever is put in them in some sort of stasis. Second, the items kept in the boxes were thousands of years old and extremely valuable, which made the adventurers quite happy. Third, the strange creatures made their lair in an adjacent building connected by a tunnel and had just found lunch in the form of the adventurers. Intense fighting commenced immediately.
During the fighting, Dangar took a massive head wound as one of the creatures [which he dubbed "squid-kitties"] bit through his helmet. This will not be the last time Dangar is injured this way.
Eventually, the "squid-kitties" were killed. Tim, realizing they may be valuable back in Freegate, rearranged the contents of some of the stasis boxes and puts one of the carcasses in a box to be preserved until they got back to Freegate. The adventurers then finished going through the boxes (finding the book Montiflurio wanted) and started moving the boxes out of the basement and into their cart. They gave several (empty) boxes to Lugalbanda as thanks (and to make sure they could leave the Horse Lords without being robbed) and headed back to Freegate.
On the trip back to Freegate they cataloged their gains and discussed what to do with it all. Tim advocated selling/donating most of it to the University in exchange for money and useful items. The rest of the group eventually agreed that this will be the easiest way to unload the stuff, most of which is historically important, but not particularly valuable to anyone else.
A Week Later
When they returned to Freegate, they headed directly to the University and sent messengers to Montiflurio, the Dean of the HET, the Dean of the History College, and to the Director of Antiquities, explaining what the adventurers had found. They also hid away some of the non-magical, monetary treasure for themselves.
The adventurers handed over the diary to Montiflurio when he arrived and allowed him to look over everything else they found, including the squid-kitty carcass. Montiflurio claimed the epic poem from the treasure pile and agreed to pay a small sum for it. Satisfied the adventurers had lived up to their part of the bargain, Montiflurio payed the group the remainder of their fee and told them he will have a job for them in “a month or so”. It might be the location he is searching for, but probably will be some intermediate point to verify locations referenced in the diary. He then arranged with the Director of Antiquities access to several of the other items and left.
The two Deans and the Director looked over the artifacts that the adventuring group returned with and haggled over the payment. The amount to be paid was not in question, only how it would be paid. The final arrangements were:
- Tim sold the original Freegate copy of the Treaty of Buried Memories directly to the Deans. They would claim credit for the find, but Tim will graduate at the end of the current semester, no questions asked.
- The adventurers took two rubbings of the clay tablets that no one can read, but the University will hold onto the originals for them.
- The University got half of the stasis boxes.
- The adventurers get paid a small fortune in coins, trade bars, and some magic items:
- 300g in coins
- 200g in Freegate trade bars
- A Healing Stone (8d6 Healing 3x a day, loses 1d6 each time the third charge is used) [I, as the GM, would come to regret this item]
- A Ring of Free Action in Armor (cancels encumbrance penalties from armor, had the Seal of University Guard on it)
- Spectacles of Reading (Provides nightvision if there is any source of light, translates most languages, goes black if used to attempt translation of writings of The Enemy.)
Once the payment method was agreed upon, the collection of artifacts was moved to the Secure Room in the Antiquities section of the History building and designated the El Djem Collection.
Tim arranged to sell the items the adventurers held back through a fellow undergraduate student, Stefan the Red. Stefan had connections with the Rare Art Brotherhood, a thieves' guild specializing in works of art and high‑end jewelry. This money was combined with the money from the Deans and Montiflurio.
The adventurers each took part of their cut of the money and then Tim and Dangar placed the rest of the money (~650gp in various denominations) in a safe deposit box at Prasutagus Private Bank in Brass Town [the banking and pawn shop section of Freegate]. They split their half of the wooden key and give half to Mikal and half to Tim. While Darian took his share and went to find wine and women, the rest decided to try and get the tablets translated.
Several Days Later
Tim, Dangar, and Mikal spent the next couple of days trying to get the clay tablets translated. Eventually they wound up at the Temple of Toth, God of Knowledge. After making a rather large donation, the High Priest agreed to perform a Ritual of Translation.
During the ritual, there was a massive power surge in the magic which blew part of the roof off of the temple. The stunned (and slightly crispy) High Priest presented the set of rubbings back to the adventurers. One set of rubbings was changed and now had the same text, but in phonetics. The other set had not changed. When asked about this, the High Priest said Toth would not allow the other rubbings to be translated, they contain an evil spell that needs never be rediscovered. Toth also directed the High Priest to give a warning to the adventurers - "Beware where this tablet will take you and what it will uncover."
The next day, Tim, Dangar, and Mikal headed to the Dwarven Quarter to find a dwarven linguist to translate the tablet rubbings for them. They ended up at the shop of a dwarven translator by the name of Krankk Fireworker. He recognized the script but needed time to translate it as it was an obscure variant. Tim, Dangar, and Mikal agreed to leave the rubbings of the tablets with him and return the next day for them and the translation.
The next morning, after fishing Darian out of the City Watch's drunk tank (they found him drunk, unconscious, and missing everything of value in an alley), the adventurers returned to Krankk's shop. Or rather where it had been – the entire structure had burned down during the night, but only barely scorched the adjacent buildings. The building was now a smoking pile, roped off by the Watch. The adventurers asked the Watchman guarding the site from looters what happened.
After accepting a donation to the Watchman's Benevolence Fund, the Watchman told them that late last night the building went up in flames. The fire resisted being put out, but never spread. Once the fire was out and the rubble had cooled enough, the Watch investigated and found the proprietor dead in the basement, apparently tortured. He appeared to have bled to death. The adventurers thanked him for the information and headed to the Screaming Shrieker, a tavern in the Adventurer's Quarter, to discuss their next action.
On a side street on the way to the tavern, they were accosted by a group of dwarves. The leader of the dwarves, heavily cloaked to hide his face, demanded that the adventurers hand over all copies of the tablets or die. The adventurers looked at each other and then reached for their weapons. As the adventurers started to win the fight, the dwarf leader fled. Mikal was able to pursue after a brief delay. When he caught up to the dwarf leader in an alley, the dwarf was dead, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his left eye.
Mikal took cover waited for the rest of the adventurers to catch up. When they did, Mikal searched the body. The only identifying item on the dwarf was a pendant. Dangar recognized it as a dwarven priestly pendant, but he was not certain which Order it belonged to. He recommended they go to the Dwarven Temple in the Dwarven Quarter and ask there for more information.
Game Session Ends
Session 2 - [Not Posted Yet]
[The Dayjob and Real Life are running me ragged this week, so I'm posting this, which I think I originally typed up, um, 22 years ago? The session itself happened well before that, but never properly typed it up. Some time in 2003 I started organizing my campaign notes using skills sharpened and improved while working as a Tech Writer. The file name suggests I last touched this file August 23, 2003. The vagueness is due to the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2014. I recovered most of my Word files, PDFs, and graphics, but they were stripped of file names and metadata, so I had to open them up, figure out what they were, and resave with a filename that I hoped matched the original. Luckily, the template I was using included the file name in the footer, so for many files, this was easy. I still have hundreds of files to sort through.]
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