1. Journals

RC 17 - Autumn Hunt

Session
AC 17 - Splintering 2022-10-28

Father's day, 19th of Muvay (continued)

Have I mentioned I hate this day? Day, not date. Worst day of the week consistently. Personal hangups, I suppose. 

We went to the opening festivities for the festival. It was just the usual nonsense of the town's values, so on so forth. Same 'values' every settlement claims to have. Tilley is probably the closest to following them but with people like Harris getting away with everything he does it's not much better than anywhere else. People can turn their eyes away from anything. Lots of words for naught. We know we're just going to find something cool and bring it back. Let's get on with it. We have to go find Christopher at some point in the temple. Then find an actual prize.

Even after the night's rest and morning's activities his previous actions have bothered me. But water under the bridge. Eventually.

There are 4 other groups participating. 

  1. The Boot (a few witches)
  2. The Vanguard. I recognize Nida Velponda among them
  3. Timophy Thimofea (that weird guy who seemed to be absolutely smitten with Christopher the other night)
  4. Potin' and the gang. A bunch of local kids from the Orphanage (I feel bad for them)
  5. Us.

I'd say of the competition two of them worry me. The children would only win if they got lucky. The fanboy as far as I'm concerned is a jester nobody wants. The Vanguard seems competent, and the Boot are a collection of Witches and magic cannot be underestimated.

It seems that Harris and the Hunting Lodge have become a bit of an ane anatheme anathema (even after all this time writing is hard, journaling helps). His name and mention has been deliberately avoided. I spotted Lestran and some of the guards being extra vigilant. Looking out for him, I suspect, given the poisoning. Oris was trying to be serre- ser... fuck. Sneaky about saying we were going back to the temple. He kept saying to go see the moon plate. He seemed to think we would understand he was trying to be surreptitious (got it this time) about it. I figured it was more likely he forgot that it was night only.

((We're going on a quick break. Things got heated out of character. Some things got retconned.))

We went back to the Pyramid and found that Vékell was deactivated, the food we left was gone. Christopher nowhere to be found. We proceeded down into the pyramid underground. Uneven steps and darkness made for a not-so-stealthy entrance. Still no sign of him. He left a note saying thanks for the food. Where he went we may never know. I... just hope he's alright.

The crack we left him at last night was too small for Sett or Aggma to fit through, but Sett seemed to channel the powers of Tormaa herself and managed to make it wider to get through. This is a city for some of the smaller folk. Not dwarves, unlikely to be halflings either. Nobody aside from our Treasure Hunting friend has been here in a very long time. It seems abandoned intentionally, not in a rush. No corpses, no valuables or sentimental things remain. Interesting. 

We did find a legbone under some rubble but that's basically it for any signs of people. I asked Aggma if they could identify more about the person based on the bone and they told me quite flatly that just a legbone wouldn't do much so we cleared the rubble to find the rest of them. We also found a map on a stone slab that she handed me (and I could barely lift). Sett managed much better carting the rest of them. With the rest of the skeleton being (roughly) reassembled Aggma was able to make out that it seemed to be the body of a human child. Not just the size of one, but actually a child. The size and the age don't seem to match up to that of a normal human. Cause of death: attempting to protect the slabs we found from the cave-in.

Vékell was depicted in one with instructions on how to deactivate the defense system. Interesting. So it was an ancient city's defender. I suppose we should have been able to piece that together but this completely confirms it. The map does show a few other towns and one much larger to the East. Perhaps there was a whole collection of underground locations. I looked it over and something felt like it clicked in my mind, recognizing the natural boundaries from today. The enormous city would be near... Whitlington Bridge. A day out.

Goddamnit.