Dramatis personae
Xóran, fox-man scout
Kim, thief
Mayhem, short barbarian
Ash, squire
Grymálkus, whiny cleric of the war god
Caleb, wizard
Áttikos, holy warrior of the sun god
Kôštē, cleric of the farming goddess
Quid occurrit
The heroes set forth for Érrōn Point, taking Bašêr with them, along with Áttikos. On the road, the heroes ran into eight older bandits. The leader, a man with bloodshot eyes, shouted, “Pay up on the toll for the Queen!” Xóran bade the old man to back down, but he spurned Xóran's handout.
The battle was short (in game time; it took over an hour of real time) and swift. Kim went down after her backstab didn't get through a bandit's armor, but otherwise it went fine. Bašêr, the High Cleric of Saundīvós, healed Kim after moping for a bit.
After looting their gear, which included many doses of Monster Drool, Xóran drilled the bandits to see whence they came. One came from Érrōn Point while another two were from Rēláištiš; they were the only ones still awake, as the others were down. They were farmers who had been mercenaries in their youth and now had taken to striking wayfarers owing to bad harvests. Xoran told them to go home and live with their grown children or to kill themselves, and it he saw them trying to rob others again, he would kill them himself. After that, he bade the living bandits to take their knocked out or belimbed brethren with them, and to bury their dead.
They made it to Érrōn Point not long before nightfall. They knocked on the door, and Néttōr’s manservant opened. Right after opening, he spontaneously combusted.
Uh-oh.
Néttōr didn’t like this one bit. Bašêr said nobody did anything to his servant, but didn’t want to upset anyone. Grymálkus, however, gave a long-winded speech about giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, while Mayhem gathered some herbs and gave them to Bašêr to chew.
After a speech and some chewing, Bašêr was ready. “Bring me the foul girdle!” He grabbed Dīdótē and took her outside. Then, with the last light of the day, he undertook the long ritual of casting Remove Curse. While Bašêr was casting, Áttikos was looking into the sky and looking for some sign from Saundīvós.
With the last light of day, the whole crowd lit up so bright that they cast no shadows. That is, the whole crowd other than Néttōr. Áttikos took that to mean that somehow he was shrouded in darkness. Meanwhile, Dīdótē got her godly gastric bypass surgery and went back to being curvy instead of fat.
After all this, the group trudged back to Praigên’s house, and spent the night there chatting. Both Áttikos and Bašêr agreed the shadow was a sign from Saundīvós. However Grymálkus, who took a good look at Néttōr, didn’t think he was possessed. Bašêr said he would undertake an Augury the next morning, which he did do, finding out that Lord Néttōr was indeed in league with dark forces.
So, they took Bašêr back to Mīstássun, then trudged back to Érrōn Point. Áttikos, Kôštē, and Grymálkus chose to preach to the flock of Érrōn Point to give the others cover for snooping. (Kôštē was also bothered to find out that Krellévos, the cleric of Rōripermónē in Érrōn Point, was a womanizing hack.) Mayhem and Kim hid to get a good look at the manor house.
And so they watched it for eight days, until the Love Feast of Lutōdîvē on the Winter Solstice.
Res aliae
Hey, you give your players some rope, and they take it in unintended directions. Which is totally cool. Actually, when I wrote the basics of this, I had no idea just how they'd handle it if they ever ran into it. I’ve given no hints beyond what is here about what is going on with Néttōr. Roman, who plays Xóran and Grymálkus, thinks it’s a vampire.
This is definitely a non-standard Dungeon Fantasy scenario, and some of the players are relishing it. Much of it comes from my attempt to build something of an urban crawl into the setting. Since this area isn't heavily populated, I treated the whole lot of human settlements as a big, dispersed city, and made sure to have the different layers interact with each other. I think this one comes from the noble crawl layer.
My random encounter tables for civilization are the Road Encounters in the D30 Sandbox Companion, and I'm starting to get sick of all the bandits. So I wound up rewriting them this afternoon for future use. Mind you, I still think this is one of the greatest supplements ever written, but I'm getting way too many encounters, especially weak bandits.
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