Wherein the characters assemble in the town of Riverside, encounter something unexpected floating down the Whitewater, plunder a forgotten temple and return to Riverside as heroes.
A new campaign is finally underway - we played our first session on Saturday evening, using AD&D 1st Edition as the rule set, in a setting of my own creation. Our game began in the small, frontier town of Riverside, nestled upon the bank of the Whitewater, a river which flows from the mountains to the north. The town and surrounding hamlets and farmsteads are independent of any government, having fled the tranquility and safety of civilized lands to the southeast, trading this for the opportunity to live in freedom in a region that is largely untamed.
Assigned as guards to a caravan of goods, the adventurers arrive safely in Riverside, having traveled from Greymarsh, a struggling village to the south. Riverside prepares for the Sowing, a springtime festival where merchants, farmers, laborers and others congregate to buy and sell seeds, services, tools, and implements for the coming planting season. The adventurers now find themselves at loose ends--they are: Daisy, a halfling with shadowed past; Granny, a venerable half-elven sage and herbalist; Kanaen, a stalwart dwarven commander on a mission from his king; Kragh, a simple (yet mighty) half-orc priest, warrior and animal midwife; and Nash, a private, though impulsive human skilled with blades.
The morning after the group's arrival in Riverside, they awake to cries and commotion at riverside, where several men are setting up tents and pavilions for the coming festival. Floating down the Whitewater are several waterlogged crates, barrels of goods and broken timbers, signs that a river boat due to arrive today with a shipment of goods has run into trouble. As the party searches the debris for clues, Kanaen appeals to the chief shareholder responsible for the shipment, a grey-haired and stern-faced man named Holden, and offers the group's services to investigate the wreck and search for survivors, as well as to ensure that future shipments have safe passage.
The likeliest site for the wreck is a sharp bend in the Whitewater, referred to by locals and river folk as the Scythe, about a day and a half journey north of Riverside. The party makes preparations and leaves immediately, accompanied by six porters employed by the shareholders. At dusk, they encounter an aggressive band of goblins--the party had heard rumors of especially feral goblins raiding outlying farms--but they quickly put the threat to rest with a volley of missiles and some blade-work. The night, and the rest of the journey is uneventful, until eventually they arrive at the wreck--the river boat pinned between the muddy shore and a large boulder, in the middle of the Scythe.
Several corpses of oarsmen are found, and Daisy encounters the boatswain of the vessel, Crawford, who had locked himself in the cabin. He explains that the night watch was attacked, the anchor somehow cut or raised during the attack, and the boat entered the rapids of the Scythe at night, eventually crashing upon rocks and breaking up. The attackers were humanoid, but not much more could be made out--Crawford seemed extremely shaken up by the attack, noting only that he's sure that the men were dragged off, and that they were alive.
Some of the shipment remained unspoiled, so the porters set to work under Crawford's direction preparing them for return to Riverside while the party investigated the forest, following bare footprints and drag marks from the wreck deep into the wood. After some time, they came to a finished, open stone entrance and stair leading into the earth--the stones surrounding the entry were adorned with pictographs of men and serpents, as well as text in an indecipherable language. Muddy footprints lead into the dark, with stairs covered in mold an lichen--signs that the temple was flooded in the past.
Descending carefully, the party actually discovers that some of the stairs are missing, concealed by a clever illusion--a pit trap! The pit leads to a natural cavern below the stair flooded with water and the party, deciding that discretion is the better part of valor, leaves the cavern for future exploration, instead following the trail deeper into the cavern. More pictographs and text decorate the walls, and three separate passageways lead from the entry chamber. In one, the party sees that the wooden slats of the door are piled up in the entryway, the iron binding the slats having disintegrated. Inside, they interrupt a scavenging arachnoid--actually a rust monster--and Nash throws caution to the wind, instigating a reaction from the creature. Daisy and Kragh suffer losses, having their respective weapons and armor destroyed by the creature, before they finally overcome the beast with pummeling fists and lit oil.
Another chamber reveals an eerie sense of old and dark magic--the chamber is lit by a green, glowing stone--with an altar to a forgotten serpent deity. A hole in the floor leads into the cavern below, and Kragh thinks he catches sight of a humanoid before hearing something drop into the water below. Cautious of the room, and of the shadowy inhabitant, they spike the door behind them while they investigate further.
The center passage is actually a huge, distended snake's jaw, worked into the stone--Daisy's search for traps reveals nothing, so they group passes into a worship chamber, the tunnel ending in another snake's jaw on a landing above the floor. The floor is about 12' below the landing, with twin stairs leading down one side of the chamber and up the opposite side, but the room is flooded, the water stagnant with a thick layer of algae. Kragh takes the plunge, swimming to the other side to anchor a rope, but is nearly pulled underwater by the grasping claws of a submerged skeleton. Kragh is able to pull it from the water and smash its skull against the wall, but not before it gouges his eye with its bony thumb.
The rope is soon anchored, however, and the party crosses into the next chamber--where they find surviving members of the crew! They find, them, however, in a pool of stagnant water up to their chins, literally being pickled, by a pair of lacedons which also reside in the chamber, attacking them from two sides. Kanaen falls to their paralyzing claws early in the fight, though assists in finishing off the first, while Granny shatters a lit lantern against the second before falling to the ground paralyzed, having been struck at the same time. The others finish off the ghoul, some time is spent in recovery, and the group escapes the drowned temple after some quick looting of the chamber.
Returning to the wreck, the party finds that the porters have assembled the goods, and the surviving crew and party stagger wearily into the forest. They are eventually caught up by a second river boat, laden with goods, which picks them up and the session ends with the party returning to Riverside as heroes. While some of the crew were lost, half were saved, as well as a portion of the goods for the festival. A most excellent beginning!
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