When we last left our intrepid party, they had agreed to carry a message to the Enchantress of the Burning Forest. (Or, rather, Thamon had agreed, and hired the others to come along.) The previous session ended on the cusp of an encounter, and as we pick up the trail, an encounter there was….

Our party found the path through the forest blocked by a trio of men, whose shambling gait (and the fact that they were on fire) revealed them to be fire wights. Thamon quickly pulled out the charm he had from Chedorlai, which gave the wights pause, but quick empirical testing indicated that while the wights hesitated to approach it, it didn't provide a physical barrier, nor did it enable the bearer to command the wights. Since the wights didn't want to surrender the path, it was time to fight.

Joshohai struck first, burying a throwing knife in a wight's eye, but it didn't go down. Josiah managed to take one out with his sword, and Joshohai finished off the others with two more throwing knives. Tobias got his licks in, but ended up receiving a bear hug from a wight, which set his shirt on fire. His “stop, drop, and roll” technique wasn't terribly effective, but fortunately Joshohai was there to smother him in a wool cloak. (Evidently, smothering her younger brother was one of Joshohai's hobbies as a wee lass.)

Flush with victory, Joshohai was disappointed to learn that fire wights don't go out when they die, and can't be extinguished with water, either, so she was unable to retrieve her knives. Aware of his sister's thrifty nature, Tobias offered to replace the knives at his own expense, in gratitude for the loan of Joshohai's cloak. Thamon heaped praise upon his employees' efforts, and the party set out again (with Joshohai aiming some impolite comments about sheep at Tobias).

The group soon came to a fork in the road, which struck them as odd, since they had been informed that there was only one road in the Burning Forest, and it went straight to the Enchantress' tower. Fortunately, Thamon had the presence of mind to try the charm on the paths, and found that it tugged to the right. A couple of uneventful hours later, the party found themselves at the gates of an imposing stone tower.

The party was suitably impressed with the tower, from the courtyard full of non-burning plants, to the gates that opened by themselves, to the spacious interior floor plan that didn't match the outer dimensions. The Enchantress herself was no less impressive, a tall, striking beauty with long black hair. She accepted the message with grace, and invited the party to feast and stay the night before returning to town. As the hour was late, the party agreed.

Tobias cautioned Joshohai against stealing silverware from an enchantress, and Joshohai gave him a noncommital reply that didn't ease his mind any. She was too busy stuffing her pockets with food, in any event, despite Thamon's warning that the food would probably vanish once they left the tower. The party retired to separate rooms, decorated more sumptuously than the three commoners had ever seen before. Rumor has it that the Enchantress entertained Thamon more personally during the night, but if so, he's not saying.

In the morning, the Enchantress gave Thamon a return message for Chedorlai. She then thanked the party for their service, told them they were welcome at the tower any time, and gave them each their own charms, for which they were grateful. The party set out quickly, hoping to get back to the tavern in time for lunch.

Back in the forest, Joshohai was pleased to note that the food she'd “set aside” the night before didn't vanish, but she was frustrated that Thamon wouldn't let her examine the Enchantress' letter. She didn't have much time to stew about it, though, as a clothyard shaft landed between Thamon's feet. A voice from the woods proclaimed, with much profanity, that the voice's owner was an assassin, looking for the Enchantress. He'd spent all night wandering confusing paths in a forest that was supposed to have one straight road, and he was tired of it. He demanded that the party divulge the secret of how to find the tower. When Thamon tried to prevaricate, the assassin chose to continue negotiations with arrows. Tobias proved to have some skill with profanity himself as he readied his bow and challenged the assassin, but Josiah was faster, flinging a “cloud your sight” curse. Instead of venturing into the forest to face the assassin, Thamon opted for the better part of valor, and the rest of the party followed their employer.

After a quick discussion, the group decided that delivering the letter to Chedorlai took priority over warning the Enchantress about the assassin, and that they could head back to the tower later, if they desired. Most of the party headed back to the tavern to wait for Chedorlai, except for Tobias, who, after a gentle reminder from his sister, headed off to the smith to commission a set of three throwing knives.

Next time: Will the party go after the assassin? Will Joshohai get her throwing knives? Will Chedorlai get her letter? Tune in and see!

Oh, the situation was dire indeed: my character, Ham, was imprisoned in the oubliette for a murder he didn’t commit, and Scott’s character, Benel, couldn’t have cared less! And this had been the adventure where I hoped to demonstrate that not all my thief characters are evil! **sob!**

Fortunately, I was released from my prison by the Dolphin steward’s humongous cousin, who believed I was too stupid to have killed anyone and told me to flee to the lower city. I trudged around underground, making for the docks, and encountered no monsters thanks to a merciful GM.

Benel, meanwhile, looked for employment elsewhere. First he tried the House of Otter, but they were in mourning. Then he tried the House of Octopus, where he was able to convince them to hire him to write a dirge honoring the fallen Otter steward. They said yes, as long as it was also an acrostic. He came up with:

O T T E R
T O W R E
T W I G S
E R G O T
R E S T S

Um. Yeah. His versifying was, amazingly, better.

I reached the docks, had a bath, found an inn, and slept. Benel, working on his acrostic in a tavern, was informed of my escape and my innocence. Gullible as he was, he believed every word (of course, it happened to be true…). Did he set out to look for me? No, he bought himself a drink.

Later, he went looking for the dolphin steward, who wasn’t in. He left the steward a note saying “Ham is not the real killer! If you need me, I’ll be down by the docks, alone!” He went walking by the docks. He was found later, his throat slit.

Upon seeing his corpse, I ran to the steward’s cousin to offer my services finding the real killer. He informed me he didn’t need an imbecile helping him. He gave me some money, and I went back to the inn, where I awaited the arrival of spring…

One evening as Ham was wandering about, and while I was getting beat up by a jug band in a taverna, someone apparently came into our room and rifled through our stuff without taking anything. Ham took it onto himself to ask around, and to search the room of another house guest, whom he concluded must have been behind this. The guest, who turned out to be the steward’s cousin, discovered Ham in the act, to which Ham responded: “Somebody rifled through my bags, so now I’m here to rifle through yours.” The other guest concluded that Ham was mentally defective, and meant no harm. Ham then went to harass the steward of the House about how our room had been searched. The steward denied that this could have been possible, and he and Ham took a strong dislike to each other. Ham was in fact thrown into the oubliette for the night, but let out the next day. Ham then swore terrible revenge against the steward within hearing of a chambermaid. Foolish Ham.

The steward and I agreed that given what had happened, it would be best if Ham left the House to find other lodging. Ham reluctantly agreed, but secretly decided to sneak around the house and get revenge. To further this peculiar goal, Ham stole a maid’s outfit, dressed as a maid (despite being a man and having no skill in disguise), and was sneaking around the House. I uncovered Ham in my room, and insisted that he leave. He then promptly crawled out a window while still wearing the maid’s outfit.

That evening the performance went splendidly. I actually wrote out my verses. Let me record the first several lines of the poem that Benel actually performed for the assembled dignitaries in the House of Dolphin:

Back when the world was young
Many songs were once sung
Of Krokan of the House of Otter
Who had a lovely daughter
That betrothed once became
To the scion of the house of fame,
Dolphin, a mighty lord
Throughout Harmody adored.
The two houses together ventured
On ships with servants indentured
Across the realm of Harm
To lands where it was warm
Wine-eye Krokan and
Long-thighed Dezeldun
Sailed for many a moon
Trade they made with Goos
Of the House of Octopus
In mercantile ability
Achieved great civility.
The rate of exchange was great
Profitable was the freight
From ships laden with goods
Like rain upon Par-quds
That for long aeons fell
As Harm’s realm did swell.
Tax benefits did accrue
To the Three Houses Great and True
As Pendel-bar’s thunderous shield
Cleaved on watery field,
As Hazaltar slew the marg
So sailed to Harmody carg-
o, rich and true
On Harm’s plain of blue.

I kid you not.

That night, during dinner the visiting steward of the House of Otter was poisoned! The steward of the House of Dolphin immediately proclaimed Ham to be the prime suspect, since he had (1) been caught rifling through belongings in someone else’s room (2) had been thrown in the oubliette overnight (3) had quarrelled with the Dolphin steward, and had been heard threatening revenge, (4) had poison, cheese and extra socks in his bag, and (5) had been seen climbing out a castle window while wearing a maid’s outfit.

The guards searched the town for Ham and found him easily enough — he wasn’t trying to hide, and of course, I wasn’t about to warn him. Now, Ham had in fact done all of the things attributed to him, except for the actual crime of poisoning the Otter steward. In spite of being innocent, you must admit that the circumstantial case was damning. Benel immediately disavowed all knowledge and association with Ham, believing him to be utterly guilty.

(To be continued)

The party ran into a rather large ice-golem that seemed to be immune to the pink light. Trust me — the first thing we did was have Merath zorch it, so she
stayed firmly in character (Wendy was absent this session). After that didn’t work, Merath cleverly cursed it so that its ice became rotted and brittle. Nathan found a giant bow in the chamber, but he wasn’t strong enough to draw it. Marath quickly blessed him to increase his strength. This allowed Nathan to shatter the golem with a couple of well-placed arrows, which was a good thing, because Jacob the Mighty (TM) was busy rolling 1′s. We learned an important lesson about ice golems, though — splitting an ice golem in two gets you two full-sized ice golems. So although there was some clever strategy and teamwork in evidence, we required the legendary cunning of Bastriel to get us out of this mess (Editor: This was in Brian’s original version).

After extricating ourselves from the Golem Menace, we wandered about the caverns, finding that they exhibited some odd physical properties. This was quickly dubbed the “Scooby-Doo Effect” as we found that when we left the central room via one passagway, we almost always returned to the central room via another passage.

Trail and error finally worked in our favor and we stumbled upon the a small “city” of humanoid moths (we had run into one such fellow a bit earlier in the evening). Bastriel straining the limits of his diplomatic skill instructed the Mothmen to “Take me to your leader,” and surprisingly enough they complied. Queen Mothra is her name, a blue-skinned beauty (much to Bastriel’s delight), and she informed the party, due in large part to Nathan’s gentle manuevering of the conversation, that all is not right in Moth-ville. Being heroes, the party looks like they are going to help, and there have been knowing glances exchanged about perhaps adding the mothmen to the Rose Kingdom’s faithful subjects.

Russell has a two characters Carlys eal Tharstorr and Salaomer ein Ringoral (who drop in on the other campaigns when he’s available generally once or twice a year); when one of us visits the other, we usually get in a solo adventure for one of them.

The Rose Tower campaign is the one that my Sunday group played for about two years, before we decided to put in on hiatus. One of our players (Rob Barrett) left, and three new ones joined (Scott Oser, Rachel Hartmann, and Mike DeSanto) and there seemed to me to be a real divide between the characters who had been adventuring together all along and the new characters; the campaign was big on politics and continuity with past events, and the newer characters tended to not have the ties that the others did and the players tended not to know what was going on unless someone stopped and explained it to them frequently. I thought it would be best to start everyone with new characters, at least until the new players got “caught up” enough on world events and developed enough of a backstory not to be put in the shade by the established characters.

The Rambling Bumblers campaign was the result of the decision I mentioned; the characters all started as students attending the same boarding school in Neng, although they were free to leave and adventure after that. The Rambling Bumblers was the name the group gave to itself after its first couple of adventures in alternate dimensions led to horrible, horrible things happening in those dimensions. I had meant for the dimension hopping to be a short diversion, and give all the players an equal footing as far as knowing the history of the place; in retrospect, it was a mistake, and afterwards they never really fit into the Neng setting, plus they developed a bad habit of running away from any trouble they stirred up–generally to a new dimension. They are currently semi-stranded in the Spice Islands, far to the south of Neng proper, and since Rachel and Scott are leaving for Canada at the end of the summer, if we continue with Neng we may revert to the Rose Tower campaign.