The Mirabar delegation has gone missing. With no trace of their disappearance, and unable to locate the missing members through scrying, Mirabar has reached out through its agents in the Lord's Alliance to recruit adventurers to investigate the matter. Despite pickings being slim this time of year, the contract was soon enough filled by adventurers who had their own motives for accepting the mission in the Dessarin valley. After a week and a half's travel from Waterdeep, the Party now finds itself a day's journey out of Red Larch and prepares to begin its investigation with the locals.
Diana the Wandering wizard, Puft the Salutary Sorcerer, Logan the Proud Paladin, and Idril the Drifter druid will find themselves embroiled in a conflict no one in the sword coast has been prepared to expect.
Session 1
The party is one day out from the town of Red Larch. Not wanting to spend another night on the road they decide to travel through the night to reach town. They deliver the cart to the local Enterprise Rent-A-Cart. Diana gets the attendant at the Enterprise to make a crude map where everything is shown based on where it is from the Enterprise. He tells them about three different places to stay.
Madame Yolanta’s Boarding House
Helm and High Sun
Swinging Sword.
He also makes on their map where they can find the All Faith Shrine and the Bathhouse. Monty runs off to the Swinging Sword and Diana follows.
Logan, Gil and Idril head to the boarding house. There they get 2 rooms for one night with Logan paying one silver. Idril convinces Madame Yolanta to allow the use of the kitchen and she makes sandwiches. Gil starts to dumpster dive for scrapes but Logan gets him to eat a sandwich instead. After eating they retire to their rooms.
At the Swinging Sword, Monty has made friends with some of the locals. He also asks Diana why they are traveling with the other party members as he hates Clerics, Paladins and animals. He then introduces Diana to Gaelkur, the local barber and criminal contact. Gaelkur has a job the party can do but they need to come to the barber show for information. Monty also apparently owes Gaelkur some money for a commission for Diana. Diana laments that Monty has spent nearly all their gold.
Diana also meets Kaylessa Irkell, the proprietor for the Swinging Sword. Kaylessa tells Diana of some of the recent troubles of the town. She has two different jobs the party can look at:
Investigate disappearance at the quarry
Investigate the Lance Rock where local teens have been getting sick. (Pays 50 gp)
She also tells Diana about some of the other troubles in the area. Banditry has been on the rise with a group of River Bandits working out of a ruined keep by the river. Also there have been strange people in the valley seen wearing strange stone makes. She suggests that Gaelkur might have more information. Diana goes to bed telling Monty not to say up too late.
In the morning the party meets back up with Monty sleeping in and Diana leaving him a note. Diana tells the group what Kaylessa told her the night before and they decide to go to the All Faith temple first and then visit the Bathhouse in the evening when the miners might be there after their shifts. Diana apologizes to the group for them not all staying together, telling them she would have gotten them a room at the Swinging Sword. Idril finds some gold in her pack that she received from a village she helped. Feeling uncomfortable with it, she gives it to Logan for safe keeping.
At the All Faith temple they meet Imdarr Relvaunder, a member of the Order of the Gauntlet. From him they learn that the mission caravan was carrying dwarven texts and historical documents as well as trade goods including Mithril. None of the other caravans traveling the road noticed an attack site. There has been some strange weather in the area as well as a rise in bandrity. Summit Hall, where the Knights of Samular are located, might have more information on the troubles.
Revaunder also suggests that they talk to the Constable about the local troubles. The Constable doesn’t have an office but instead works out of the Butchery, as they are married to the Butcher. He also tells them that some of the miners have talked about seeing people in stone masks watching them while they work from the top of the quarry. He tells them some about the illness the local teens have been acquiring at Lance Rock and that a shadow cloaked the source. He offers the party 10 gp to investigate. He also tells them that if they need supplies, i.e. healing potions they can visit Valovo’s Sundries.
SIDEQUEST: [Led Into Lance Rock]
Session 2
The party returns to town. They go to the bath house where Idril uses her connection to the proprietress to gain access to the bathing rooms where the local miners are. Gil and Logan talk to a miner named Randy. He tells them about people going missing after telling Melico about spotting the masked strangers. The strangers are often seen around midnight. Also some of the miners have heard screaming from the rocks but they don’t know about any tunnels in the stone. The strange happenings started three to six months ago after strangers came into the valley. They bought a wagon from a gentleman named Waelver while in town.
In the other half of the bathhouse, Idril and Diana are less successful with finding information. After promising a woman fifty gold Diana learns that there is a new knight order in the Slumber Hills, and that the figures in the masks are seen on the northern side of the quarry. Unable to pay the woman, Diana quickly leaves with Idril following shortly afterwards.
The party heads to the Swinging Sword and collects their reward of 50 gold. They also get two loft rooms and a free meal and drinks. The party decide to wait until closer to midnight and then heads to the quarry to investigate the mine and the masked figures. Diana, Idril and Gil head upstairs to rest up. Logan remains downstairs where he is approached by an employee of Waelver who tells him about a hidden tunnel at his wagon shop. The employee also mentions that Waelver has been late paying his employees.
Close to midnight, the party, including Monty, head out the back of the Swinging Sword with Kaylessa’s assistance. They head to the quarry. After some time, they see a figure enter the quarry and enter a tunnel hidden by a rock. They follow into a large chamber that looks collapsable. They travel through the tunnels finding a chamber where rats are eating corpses. Backtracking, they are able to trick their way past a guard. Inside that chamber they find a boy, Braelen Hatherhand, trapped under some rocks who the guard said is being punished. Convincing the guard that they are cult members who weren’t wearing their masks because they were traveling through the town, they get the guard to go back to the chamber with the rats. After the guard dispatches the rats, the party knocks him out. Gill takes his studded leather armor to wear. They find a levitating rock, which Diana and Idril investigate.
Continuing along this path, the party reaches a chamber where six masked figures wait. The figures identify themselves as “The Bringers of Woe.” The party dispatch them and collect the masks the figures were wearing. While Diana investigates the dwarf statue in the chamber. Logan opens a door and discovers the chamber where Braelen was trapped. He frees the boy. Braelen tells the party that in addition to his father Rothar Hatherhand, Gaelkur Milico and Waelver are all members of the cult. Logan tells Braelen to go to Imdarr Relvaunder at the All Faith Temple and tell him what he knows.
The party travel into another chamber where a priest in stone armor and two unmasked figures are. The party tells the priest that they are new hires sent by Gaelkur but the priest sees through their ruse. Combat ensues and the priest is defeated.
Session Three
The party investigates inside the Tomb of Moving Stone. Diana discovers some damaged corpses. Logan questions Wilbur and Milico. They talk about how the man appeared and that he said the room gaves messages from beyond via the stones in the room moving. Wilbur states that the people that bought carts from him wore different masks then the ones given to them. Also says that workers and travelers were sacrificed. Larrakh came from a monastery in the Sumber hills. Gil finds some Mirabar bars on Larrakh’s body. Gil also takes a skull from one of the corpses to attempt to get Wilbur and Milico to talk more.
Diana casts detect magic and discovers that the room and the dagger they had previously found use the same type of magic. When Diana gives the dagger back to Monty, it falls to the ground. The standing stones in the room levitate. Diana pushes one and it moves across the room. Eventually all the stones return to the floor. The prisoner’s know nothing about the crystal found at Lance Rock even though the necromancer had said the cultists he ran out had stone masks.
Unsure who to trust, the party take Wilbur and Milico to Imdarr at the All Faith Temple. They then go to Milico’s office at the quarry but find little of value beside 30 gold. At Wilbur’s Wagon Works they discover that the tunnel there goes to the Tomb of Moving Stone. They retire to the Swinging Sword to sleep. Monty goes to check at Gaelkur’s and discover that he is gone and his place is trashed. He informs Diana who informs the rest of the group.
When the party finally wakes, they discover a town meeting is going on down in the tavern. People from town have either left or gone missing, including Gaelkur and Fienstone, the other quarry owner. Logan finds out that the Hatherhand boy is with the Constable at Gaelkur’s barber shop. After sending Monty to search for Rothar Hatherhand, the party goes to meet with the Constable.
Logan tells Constable Harburk everything that has happened including the prisoner’s at the All Faith Temple and the people still tied up in the tunnels. The party goes to fetch the people they left tied up and to retrieve Larrakh’s body. They take them to the butcher shop. Logan suggests that Braelen Hatherhand go use his “Boy Detective” skills to see if his mother knows where his father went. The Constable tells the party about some graves that were spotted south east of town down the Cairn Rd which could be the people that had been sacrificed by the cultists. The party buys some supplies and sets off.
A few hours outside of town, they find an abandoned homestead. They interrogate a crow who tells Idrill that the people who had lived on the homestead were taken by giants. Meanwhile, Gil builds a bonfire outside. While the party gathers around the bonfire to discuss the giants, three men come out of the sky using balloons on their backs. The party is able to kill two of them and remove the armor from one. The third gets away. Diana discovers that the armor is “Wing-Wear” and that only those who have been indoctrinated into the element of air can use it. The party takes the set of armor with them for further study or to sell.
The party finds four shallow graves. Two appear to be members of the Mirabar delegation, while the other two are likely cultists. Logan is confused as to why the delegation members would be this far south. They decide to report back to the Constable and then head north to Beliard via the Larch Path through the Sumber Hills, likely to find giants, possibly griffons and may be some cultists.
So the party leaves Red Larch behind to its own devices, and the expedition to the sleepy village is at end.