Stonehell Session 17

 ~prep for undeath~

~funeral barge spookies~

~acolyte destruction~

Tibia Mariner from Elden Ring

6 of Bloom

Breagle the Bandit, accompanied by William Irons

Gringle the Warrior

Emrys the Mage

The party began by prepping an excursion into the Quiet Halls to take on more undead in the crypts. They bought out the small Goddess Shrine of all of their holy water, and considered the possibility of hiring a priest to produce more for them. They also discussed investing in a protective wall for Stonehome, to help resist the goblin scourge (using scourge rules from Errant). 

Beagle also returned from a 2 week scouting expedition to Forttown. He hopes to start a trade route with his partner William Irons between Stonehome and the other town, cutting out the middle man that is the Capitol. He returned with a map, and a list of interesting locations he discovered along the way.

Made with HexKit and the Fantasyland tileset

D8 - Ruined Tower
Perched on a hilltop, in the middle of a dead and rotting wood.

D11 - Waste Plateau
Sticks up out of the rolling wastes. At night, purple lights can be seen emanating from the top of the plateau.

H11 - Weird Valley
Tucked between hills, a luscious and verdant valley was spotted, almost glowing with an inner green light. Far off in the distance, a bear wearing a hat and fishing.

J14 - Dragon Tower
A relic predating the Sterling Potentate. A cylindrical megastructure 1 mile in diameter of bone white cement, it floats 2 miles from the hills below it, connected to the tallest tower of Forttown with a rickety and winding path. It stretches into orbit, approximately 200 miles tall, and its shadow stretches 100's of miles to the east and west every day. Its said that a princess from the Sterling Potentate was abducted and taken to the top, and any that reach it can claim her hand in marriage and bring back the old empire.

K14 - Forttown
A town built at the base of a tall spire of rock, which itself holds a ruined set of watchtowers once maintained by the Sterling Potentate. The town is at the edge of the desert, exporting expensive spices and exquisite cactus rum.

The Hellseekers have a newly acquired building, and an expensive safe imported from the Capitol, establishing the first bank in Stonehome.

Bookkeeping completed, the Seekers took the 8hr hike through the swamps to Stonehell Valley.

Entering the dungeon, they first made their way to harvest more nitre to make some more bottles of accelerant. One the way to the Quiet Halls, they stopped by the orc camp to talk with their friends, and stopped at the Stone Oracle to ask it some questions.

They absolutely love asking the Oracle questions. RAW, its ⅓ chance of: truthful answer, false answer, or a roll on a list of weird prophecies. It requires a little bit of digging through the Stonehell Supplement to answer their questions, but they have yet to pass by it without stopping in. They’ve gotten quite a lot of information out of it, most of it false.

Once in the Quiet Halls, I kept rolling Local Events on the Errant Exploration Table, which I decided would be ghostly manifestations of the funeral barge. Brine taste in their mouths, the sound of oars hitting the side of a boat, and drumbeats. I rolled this twice as they made their way to different crypts, and each time they quickly turned and fled. This meant they didn’t get as much treasure as they could have, despite their decent preparation for undead. 

They did eventually run into 6 Acolytes and their Cleric leader, chanting while encompassed by the remains of a giant serpent. The party decided they were ready for some combat, and tired of running away in fear.

The Seekers got the drop on the Acolytes. Emrys used elemental wall to surround the Acolytes and Cleric with flames. Gringle threw a bottle of accelerant into the flames, causing an explosion. The Acolytes, however, used their Ward ability to negate the damage. At this point the Seekers were freaked out. Breagle began whipping stones at them with a sling, while William dashed in with his greatsword.

The Cleric, using the Skull of Darkeplague relic (came up with on the spot, oops) blessed an Acolyte’s dagger with unholy flame, which the Acolyte immediately plunged into William Irons, knocking him unconscious and nearly killing him. The Darkeplague entered his wounds, but his body succeeded in fighting the infection. The rest of the Acolytes went after Emrys and Gringle, braving the fire to stab at the surviving Seekers.

Gringle tossed more accelerant, the explosion killing the Cleric, shredding him despite his 3 armor, and Emrys claimed the Skull of Darkeplague with his telekinesis spell. 

What followed was 2 more rounds of slugfest, resulting in two scars, one for Breagle to increase his HP to 5, and one for Gringle to increase HP to 12!! 

With the Acolytes dead and looted, the party safely made their way out of the dungeon, camped in their FOB, and hiked back to Stonehome the next day, having looted around 2k gold from various corpses. 

Skull of Darkeplague, 3 charges

A skull with one glowing sapphire embedded in one of its eyesockets, it is small enough to fit in one's palm.

Use - Chant and embue a weapon with an unholy darkness. The next attack will do an enhanced 1d12 damage and 1 WIL damage. On a failed WIL save, the darkness enters the body of the creature, infecting it with the Darkeplague. After incubating for 1 week, the creature is overtaken and any other creature it touches is infected. After 2 weeks, the creature dies and its corpse is reanimated as a zombie.

Recharge - Find a corpse that is transforming into a ghoul, place the Skull on its chest, and bury the body in desecrated soil. When the ghoul hatches, the Skull will be recharged.