Session Date: 09/20/2024
Ships (Awake)
We were all sleeping before leaving to check in on Ser Lothar’s estate. Ships wakes up sometime in the middle of the night and there is a noise coming from the room next door, which is Calthel’s room. Ships tries to be sneaky as he grabs his rapier and goes to investigate. As he steps into the hall he notices three things:
- Brother Decimus in his night shirt with a mace in one hand and two holy symbols wrapped around his other wrist, looking around the hall somewhat similarly to Ships
- There is a lit lantern that is sitting in the hall across from Calthel’s door and left it there, lit. It’s relatively full so it hasn’t been there for very long.
- He can hear Calthel’s voice in his room sounding like he’s having a nightmare. There are mutters and whimpers and tossing and turning.
Brother Decimus points to the lantern and then shrugs. Ships uses his mage hand to lift the lantern and see if anything happens - nothing unusual happens when the mage hand does pick it up. He uses prestidigitation to snuff out the lantern so that it falls dark. It still sounds as if Calthel is having a nightmare, so Ships lights the lantern and leaves the lantern behind him in the hall, but opens Calthel’s door and peeks in to enter. Decimus walks over that way as well.
Calthel’s door is not blocked so Ships opens the door and heads in, leaving the lantern and cleric in the hallway behind him. Calthel is floating 2’ above his bed having a nightmare. Ships tries to figure out what’s going on and he thinks that Calthel is just telekinetic (nat 1 arcana check moment). He defers to Decimus, asking if anything infernal or abyssal is at play here. Decimus holds up a holy symbol and takes a moment, then confirms that there is something affecting Calthel, but he thinks he can stop it: he casts protection from good and evil on Calthel.
Calthel (Dream)
Within the dream he is very, very high up in the sky. He’s shedding white light from his body and he feels both very cold and very warm at the same time. He’s looking down on the ocean far beneath him as he falls toward it. He flails helplessly and his course shifts, and he looks at his fingers and they are crumbling away like they are eroding stone. He sees a series of shapes in the water far beneath him.
Calthel definitely can make out that the shapes below him in the water are the shapes of the islands of the archipelago, and he’s moving unthinkably fast. As he sheds more white light, one of the islands grows very dark and almost looks like a pit, and another that is halfway behind him - the peak breaks open and starts flaring green fire. Calthel can feel that green fire reaching for him, pleading with him. As it happens, he’s headed more and more straight for the pit.
This is the point that he wakes up, having fallen two feet from the air and belly flopping into his bed.
(Player note: Grislith was the pit, the green light could have been Skerry Auchterbahn, Skerry Wesswyck, or Duffholm - none of which are actually volcanic).
The Party & Combat
Calthel is very confused and is trying to figure out where he is after being startled awake. Decimus speaks up and says from the darkness, saying “Ser Calthel, you were touched by evil. Were you aware of it?”
Calthel explains that he had a dream where he was falling - he was above the islands and one of them was turning into a pit. He pulls the map out and checks, and Grislith was the one that was a dark pit. Decimus speaks up and says that perhaps this is an omen, something dark is toying with us after all. Ships speaks up and says that the holy folk are obviously protected from such outside influence, and he is no threat to such entities, so clearly it makes sense that the entity would attack the wizard in the party. Calthel and Decimus both say that Ships could be a threat, and Calthel says that Ships is underestimating his own ability.
Ships turns to refresh his mage hand as it holds the lantern, and he notices that while there is light down the hall, the lantern is no longer in the mage hand. Ships gets up and sprints down the hall to catch the lantern and Calthel gets up to poke his head out of the room. Sarras wakes from her sleep, and as Ships makes it to the lantern, it is on the floor again. The big feasting hall is empty.
Calthel starts to ritual cast detect magic and Ships pulls some chalk out and tries to dust it and blow it out on someone so it settles on someone, if someone is there. The chalk doesn’t catch on anything as it floats through the air, but there is an area of the matting where the chalk powder particularly clump up - as if it were wetter. It leads right underneath the table. He considers some alchemist fire, but Sarras gives him ink instead.
Ships sprays the ink and finds a spot where the ink catches in the air and dribbles down the air - combat starts, with positions starting as follows:
The is the feasting hall with the tables, and the right are the rooms we were staying in.
- Cloud Enemy???
- AC ⇐ 22
- Notes
- Ships figured out it’s someone/thing with a spell on them
- Very likely someone using the gaseous form spell
- WIS save: +2
Calthel sees just the tail of the cloud as it squeezes into the crack of the wall, and he shares this information with everyone. We try to get the thing out of the wall to no avail, and then the guards make it as we give up on the venture. The guards ask what is going on, and Ships gives the incredibly short version of events: dark magic was cast on Calthel, there was this gaseous form of someone who was trying to leave, and they escaped through the hole in the wall.
Ships and Calthel know that this is an exterior wall from the actual keep, but it goes into the walled in courtyard, marked in red:
Sarras sprints to the courtyard, casing detect magic on the way. Whatever it is is no longer in the courtyard by the time she makes it, and the magic is not powerful enough to leave lingering traces once out of sight. The walls are also too thick to let detect magic through unless she finds the specific correct crack that goes through the wall. She walks in the courtyard and finds no good spots to check within the wall itself. She walks her way back to the group and guards at a moderate pace.
The Baron’s Chaplin (Reneya) - 1/2 elf woman who was not at dinner the night prior - is in charge of the interrogation of what’s going on. She seems to be fairly peevish about the events and will openly double check if multiple of us have seen it. Decimus grows closer to saying something incredibly snappish the longer this goes on. Ships cuts in and tries to intimidate her by saying that she surely isn’t inquiring of the honor of the Marquis’ knights. She says not our honor, but a nice spring evening after a long day of travel? She can tell that Ships hadn’t gotten drunk over dinner.
As we are discussing this, one of the Baron’s sisters comes out in a night dress and shawl and wrap. She says that if something has disturbed the Marquis knights, they should double the guard on the walls and light the torches in the towers so that their men can see it. It is embarrassing to be intruded upon in the evening and have the guests take up the duty of defending the hearth. The castle staff falls all over themselves to comply and she will sniff and leave to go down another hallway, with Sarras interjecting saying that the person appeared to be invisible until they were showered with ink. Sarras suggests some sort of marking material to identify a threat, should something happen.
Decimus offers to sit vigil over Calthel for the rest of the evening, which Calthel graciously accepts.
Sarras pulls in Best Largest - her pupper dog steed - and uses her to try to track the person in question. Best Largest doesn’t find anything outside, but does track it inside, and it’s clear that there’s a distinct difference between normal and gaseous form. Best Largest tracks the normal form as coming from the noble’s quarters, and then gaseous form into Kerran’s room and then back out, then went back to normal form down the hall. They shifted back into gaseous form when Ships started to give chase.
We check Kerran’s room and he’s fine and still breathing. There is a path up to Kerran’s bed that looks like a snake’s belly that goes right up to the bed, and then the track vanishes. Best Largest confirms that there’s no snake in the room, and it doesn’t smell right: it smells like milk. Best Largest also says that the milk snake smell is distinct from the cloud person smell. The milk snake smell occurs outside the room, and only right outside of the room.
Map:
Red is the path of the cloud person, green is milk snake.
Kerran wakes and asks what snake, and Sarras gives an abbreviated explanation as to what’s gone on. Kerran asks Calthel to help check him over for snake bites and they find no evidence of a bite, and there is no evidence of snakes anywhere in the room. Ships supposes that it is possible that Kerran wildshaped into a snake in his sleep, and slithered out, then went back to bed. Kerran explains the specifics of how wild shape works.
With regards to the smell, Kerran does know that people who domesticate snakes will often use warm milk. With regards to him turning into a snake, there have been a few rare times where something may have slipped into cracks that he couldn’t otherwise reach.
Sarras recommends that perhaps Ships speaks to the household staff that he may go for a midnight snack and ask if anyone normally asks for warmed milk. Kerran goes ahead and turns into a dog and sniffs around, and then turns back. He then climbs up onto the bed and requests that when he turns again, someone hold him off of the floor so that he can look around under the bed - he turns into a swap adder, and Calthel helps him. Kerran does mention that it’s not just milk, but milk with cream and warmed. He’s very certain that the snake did not venture under or into the bed and that there’s nowhere under the bed that a snake could hide or exit - no crack in the wall big enough for a snake, for example.
Ships
Ships goes off to query the scullery staff and they tell him that milk with cream is had nightly by four of the Baron’s five children to help them sleep. They always make extra so they can leave some out for the cats to get them back into the castle for the night. Lately, the cats have had more trouble hunting outdoors and some of them have gone missing so they have taken extra precaution to make sure all the cats are in at night. Sometimes some of the adults also have trouble sleeping so they may have some of the milk as well.
He rummages through the cabinets and realizes that the sausage and cheese that he had taken is nicer than what they have here, and he can try to buy back some good will with the Chaplin.
Calthel & Sarras
Calthel decides to retire for the evening to try to salvage some sleep for the evening. Sarras wonders what rooms to alarm, and Calthel recommends that Sarras uses alarm on Kerran’s room because Decimus will be sitting vigil to watch over Calthel in the night.
Sarras pulls Decimus aside to ask about curses and identifying them, and they realize they’ll need to cast an identify spell on Kerran to know all magical effects on someone. Calthel casts identify and the staff of the adder that Kerran has is connected to him by a curse.
Calthel sleeps better, though he is a little overwarm as he rests.
The Morning
We wake and the Baron does a little bit more of his unsettling chuckle, apologizing that he cannot offer us the same seats as we had over dinner. Sarras offers to pay him for the table, and the Baron declines and says that the fact that something had intruded and we had to defend the castle, the loss of the table is the least of his worries and is certainly not among our duties to replace.
Ships approaches the Baron and explains that where he is from, it is polite to give the host some food and/or drink. He offers some sausage, cheese, and hard breads from his bag - ultimately offering 10lbs of the food over. The Baron graciously accepts.
The Baron asks if we are still intent to travel to inquire about Ser Lothar’s children. He says that if we wish to make a more imposing first impression, he would be happy to lend some of the mounts from his stables. Ships graciously accepts. The trip will be 3-5 hours round trip - 1.5 hours there, 3 hours back.
Ships apologizes to the Chaplin for being so cross in the morning, and she apologizes in kind. She explains that this is not the first time strange things have happened in the castle. Ships asks for more details and she hesitates, saying that perhaps this is not a subject for breakfast. Ships accepts her offer for a blessing, and Decimus speaks up to offer the blessing of Rahovy over the chapel, and it’s very clear that the Chaplin understands what a jab this is and she has an expression essentially saying “listen here you little bitch”.
Ships convinces Decimus to follow him to help diffuse the situation, and Decimus ultimately explains that given what she said about visions and the way the cats are going missing, then she’s probably negligent.
Ready to Leave
OOC: Party Split
Ships, Sarras, and Decimus go to visit Ser Lothar. Calthel, Kerran, and Charity stay behind.
IC: Continuing On
The Chaplin comes out and gives a lovely little blessing to Ships, Sarras, and Decimus before they head out. She does not think that our intruder, and hers, are connected to each other.
She says that the Baron has many cares, and sometimes he manages them - sometimes they weigh heavily on him. At such times he imagines that his castle, rather than sitting beside a river, sits above a great sink hole that might swallow half the island, and that there are creatures. Sometimes he calls them beetles, sometimes dragons, sometimes great scratching hounds - undermine the banks, and burrow about the foundations of the castle. This is why he does not permit bare stone - why there are wreathes, and plaster, and tapestry, which does not contribute to the repair of the castle.
She continues on, saying that this is why she tries not to speak of nightly visions within his presence. It would only unsettle him more.
Renfragens:
Make up the bulk of the most high offices of the church as she is the goddess of life. Because higher ranked church officials are more likely to have divine blessings such as visions, there is a confirmation bias.
Calthel catches something in her phrasing that isn’t obvious: she doesn’t speak of the Baron’s nightly visions in front of the Baron, for it would upset him. Why would it upset him? She sees them. She doesn’t speak of other people’s visions in front of the Baron, implying that others see visions as well.
Decimus says of course, but if they’re all vapors, then what’s eating the cats and the vermin they hunt? Then he fucks off before she can answer. Ships mentions he was going to ask about this, but Decimus beat him to it, then follows. Sarras follows, saying that given how strange things have been, if everyone’s seeing vapors then perhaps it’s not vapors after all. Sarras actually waits for Reneya to speak if anything, and she mentions to herself something along the lines of “but of course the watchers would think that,” implying that we will see them everywhere. Sarras says that when we see them, we deal with them, then leaves.