Lake Placid 2

[Ronny[Deacon] was marmalading]

Giselle Pentecost

Lido, Attlee's IMAG skull, was in the Panadine shower tray. A squad of six Knives had formed a shield-wall nearby, and everyone was crouched down behind it: the Panadine High Priestess Giselle Pentecost and two other Panadine priestesses, Tylin [Ian], Burrito [Darryl] and El Cid [Shane], William "Lammy" Lamb, and the hogtied Attlee [Kevin].

Lido was screaming and sobbing and pleading in Attlee's head. Attlee was struggling and thrashing about in his ropes, and twitching with palsy as he communicated back.

Giselle reached for the remote tap and turned it. Holy water poured from the shower head onto Lido.

Lido

There was a violent concussion that rented the air as Lido ... just ... exploded. The shield wall and all behind it, were blown over by the blast. Bits of Lido (chips of obsidian) were embedded in the wooden shields of the soldiers. Lido was no more.

Instantly, Attlee was engulfed in a sphere of darkness. The sphere of darkness engulfed most of the soldiers and everyone else too. They all scampered out of the damp embrace. Interestingly, Attlee could see out perfectly; as far as he was concerned, there was no sphere.

Giselle pointed a shaking finger at the sphere.

"He's an IMAG priest," she said. "He's become an IMAG priest!"

The sergeant of the soldiers drew his sword.

"I'll fix him!" he growled.

"No," said Giselle. "This is a Panadine event, so you can't break the Heresy, sergeant."

The Heresy was a world-wide agreement to stop religions fighting or harming each other during "religious events", because there were so many gods on the continuum from absolute good to absolute evil. Unfortunately, the definition of "religious event" was rather fluid. The evil religions would kill if they could get away with it, but the goody two-shoes (like Panadine) followed the Heresy rules as best they could.

They let IMAG priest Attlee free.

Party shallop Smoking Loon

[It was at this time that Kevin switched characters. I had spoken to Kevin earlier, expecting something like this. Attlee became an NPC, and Kevin now took control of wizard William "Lammy" Lamb. The players had decided that they didn't want an IMAG priest in their group, for similar reasons not wanting to have REAL priestess Rita. Plus, it gave me a chance to play-test wizards using the FitD game system with AD&D spells. ]

That afternoon, they all clambered aboard the party boat, Smoking Loon, and as they were about to sail off, a guard happened to wander down the jetty.

"Going fishing?" he asked.

They nodded.

"Well, there're good spots up both rivers," he said. "The Kringle and the Scab. But, make sure you
don't dock or go into the Lake Placid: the marsh, the bog. The Panadines claim it."

"Oh, we just fish," said Burrito.

"Yes good," said the soldier. "There are rangers in the bog. Rangers of the Knives. If you trespass there, they will kill you. Dead."

More innocent nods.

"If you want dry land, you are allowed to dock on the left bank of the Kringle or the right bank of the Scab. There aren't any gnolls or bugs about at the moment, so is not too dangerous."

More nods.

"Well," he said. "Good luck. Oh, yeah, make sure you are back here before dark. You don't want to camp out there. Dark-kin."

Sorrow [Jeff] sailed the shallop up the Kringle river for two hours, well out of sight of the temple stockade. There were no other boats around and the river was sluggish and wide. It was nice and warm in the sun and there was a gentle breeze. They anchored midstream and started to fish.

Lake Placid Marsh

There was no clear demarcation line between the river and the the marsh. Small islands of vegetation started almost midstream, and these got more numerous and thicker as you headed into the bog. On the larger of the islands, there were trees. Eventually sight was blocked entirely.

Moonlight was nominated as the bog explorer, since, as a druid, he had lots of nature knowledge. Plus he knew what the elderflower looked like. He slipped into the muddy water, up to his chest, and made his way into the swamp, and was soon lost from sight among the trees and marsh bushes.

Everyone else started to fish. Burrito shot at some water fowl and brought down plenty.

A few hours passed and Moonlight returned. He had one clump of elderflower. Lammy had ten

Elderflower

special magic bags for holding the elderflower to keep it pure and preserved, so the elderflower was placed in one. Lammy said the Wizards' Guild wanted four bunches. But it was two bells (two hours before dark), so they headed back to the temple stockade.

[DM's note: this was a very dangerous path that the group had chosen. Had any ranger come across Moonlight (1 in 6 per hour), he would have been killed automatically. He'd get a Resistance roll to not actually die, of course, but with his stress already on 5, chances are he'd use it all up, and would thus get a trauma; traumatized adventurers can do nothing except gibber traumatically. When time started to run out, the party would have to find him, which would be an ordeal in of itself. We were rolling openly, and luckily, this never happened!]

That night there was a disturbance out on the fields surrounding the stockade. It was some goblins, but it wasn't significant.

Sorrow went for a bit of a surreptitious explore into the Panadine temple itself, hoping that maybe they had a stock of elderflower. This was because all Panadine pilgrims were given a sprig as they entered the temple. But there were several sections of the structure that he couldn't get at (due to priestess activities), so he didn't find anything but sprigs.

Lammy said that a collection of elderflower sprigs would be useless for the spell - they had to be intact bunches.
__________________________________________________________________

The next morning, during breakfast, Tylin secretly wrote a letter to Lieutenant Chung. He suggested that Chung send a group of soldiers to intercept their boat before they got to Scabport, and to confiscate the elderflowers. Then the wizards could not cast the spell. Tylin took this sealed letter to Lieutenant Maudlin of the stockade, and, since he knew Chung well, he was happy to put it in with the daily dispatches.

After breakfast, they went out on the shallop for another trip. This time taking the Scab river.
Again, they docked and fished and shot water fowl.

Again, Moonlight spent a very wet day deep in the marsh. He came back, unharmed, with three bunches.

So they returned to the stockade. Mission successful.

_______________________________________________________________

Next morning they left the stockade and headed down-stream, back toward Scabport.

There was a futile goblin incident at the first night's dock,

The next day and night passed peacefully.

However, the evening before the last day of travel, there was a coach waiting for them at the public jetty as they docked.

Tarquin Formalin

There were two wizards there, who introduced themselves as Tarquin and Bernice. Tarquin Formalin demanded the bags of elderflowers. Lammy was about to hand them over, when Burrito demanded that they be paid. Tarquin said Sly Dunbar would pay the group when they arrived at the Wizards' Guild tomorrow.

Burrito refused. There was a bit of an altercation, and it ended up with Tarquin casting a Sleep spell on Burrito, dropping him. Bernice stepped back ready to cast more. No-one else in the party moved a muscle.

So the bags were taken and the coach left. Lammy decided to travel with the wizards too.

_______________________________________________________________

Sergeant Schultz (Knives)

Not having Lammy on board turned out to be insightful, because as they approached Scabport the next afternoon, a large barge approached the Smoking Loon. There were Knives on it, all with bows drawn, and they ordered the shallop to dock.


Some troops came aboard, lead by a Sergeant Schultz. He and his men searched the boat thoroughly on some pretense of "searchin' fer contraband". Sergeant Schultz was doing stage-winks the whole time at Tylin, Sorrow, Moonlight and Huilam (he was told that some elves had arranged this and they were the only pointy-earred ones). Of course, the soldiers didn't find the elderflowers.

Eventually, they let the boat continue.

Just before dark, the group docked at the Wizard's Guild pier. The WG Liaison Sly Dunbar was there, with Lammy too. He had a chest of silver, which was the party's pay.

8 COIN.

Dunbar told them that, earlier that day, the hired priest had already used the elderflowers and had cast the Regenerate spell and had regrown Wilson's vocal tract. The Speak with Dead was scheduled any minute now.

Tylin and Sorrow went straight to the Council Barracks and spoke with Chung. He tried to work out what Wilson will know.

"Well," said Chung. "You lot will be safe. Wilson doesn't know you lot from a bar of soap. But he does know me. And the Wizards will put two and two together and work out we were targeting Daisy for the lasso".

So they left him and everyone went back to their not-so-secret base.