Vigilante Game Three: We Are Off To See the Wizard Tower?

Martin awoke to the noise of a complaining raven. Alvin was sitting over the book we had found after fighting the cultists, ignoring his raven who was clearly in no mood to be ignored. We gathered in the Tavern for food and to talk about what the next step should be. Deciding we should attempt to gather more information about what these cultists were up to, we split up to follow a few different leads. Our Cleric and Hilda set out to talk the Lieutenant who was injured by our best friend Jimmy. Alvin, June, and Martin headed out to talk to the Captain of the Guard to exchange information. We gave him our book that we found with the cultist names and plans in it and he handed us a necklace was found on the body of the Vulture. It was a small ruby necklace with an intricate design, on the back of it was carved O.M. The Captain told us he believed these cultists were part of the Ocrate Magisterium. This group of sorcerers had been giving Bastion a hard time for quite some time. It was rumored that a ruined tower two days to the north may be connected to the group. Something would have been done about it but all of the adventurers who had helped during the Battle of Bastion had followed leads elsewhere and had been gone for weeks now.

The Cleric and Hilda, after torturing the already hurt guard, received similar information from him. Apparently the Lieutenant was also a cultist… (Having three DMs in three weeks can make the story kind of wack…) we all gathered up our supplies and decided to head north to where the ruined tower might be located. We traveled easily the first day setting up camp, food and then eventually getting some sleep.

During the first watch, our Cleric spotted movement about twenty feet away from our fire. (I’m real glad he was the one watching out for us…) Instead of yelling to wake everyone up he did the only logical thing and Sacred Flamed the figure in the dark. It let out a wail and rushed at our Cleric, quickly followed by a second figure. They were wights. After exchanging a few blows our Cleric realized he was still alone fighting these creatures…. And finally yelled out to us.

Rising from our sleepy states we charged into battle, already wearing our armor because plate mail is the comfiest of beds. We quickly realized our non-magical weapons had no effect on these creatures and had to improvise. The cleric summoned a magical war-hammer, I picked up a fiery stick as did Hilda and June. After a hard battle where we couldn’t seem to hit the creatures, Alvin was knocked out, the Cleric was drained of most of his life energy and June missed every attack, they finally fell to our combined effort… luckily this happened fairly early in the night and we were all able to get some rest. We rose the next day and continued on the road north.

Late in the afternoon after some searching, we discovered the ruined tower. Before us were two large ogres ripping what appeared to be the remains of several sheep apart. We succeeded in hiding and devised a plan to distract the ogres. Alvin sent his raven to fly above them and tell them how pretty and well mannered their mothers were. Being ogres, they were very insulted by this and attempted to swat the raven out of the sky. Our Cleric placed a light on a crossbow bolt and launched it into the trees away from the tower. Following the light, Alvin’s Raven, who had now received minor illusions from Alvin, distracted the ogres into following him into the forest successfully distracting them long enough for all of us to slip into the tower.

After a quick examination of the room, we found writing on the wall, “PATRON ORE POD” with buttons under each letter. We also found the center of the room was slightly higher than the rest of the floor around it. Realizing this had to be some sort of puzzle to open the trapdoor. We as a group hunkered down to solve it. This took much longer than it should have... when we realized it spelled out OPEN TRAPDOOR. This wasn’t our proudest moments as adventurers but I suppose everyone has bad days. Pressing the buttons in the correct order opened up the trap door.

The Cleric pulled a full on Peregrin Took and immediately dropped a rock with a light on it down the hole. We groaned as a whole and slowly made our descent down the stairs.We avoided the traps and resisted some poison making it to the bottom. Everything and I mean everything was covered in what appeared to be cobwebs. There was a crunching sound and suddenly we were swarmed by fist sized spiders. In a panic the Ranger used hail of thorns on everything in front of her, ripping apart the spiders and smashing June to the ground unconscious….. We cleared the room and made sure it was safe enough and took a short rest to recover from the day's events. We rose to the smell of death coming from one of the hallways. We began to move forward, but before we go out of the room our Cleric noticed a small eye behind the cobwebs on the wall. Clearing away all of the webs we discovered the wall was completely covered in stone eyes that seemed to be watching us as we moved. Looking more closely we found one to be slightly discolored, pressing on it cause part of the wall to slide away revealing a secret passageway.

Deciding secrets were meant to be uncovered we headed down the hallway. At the end of the hall, we came into a room with a stone chest in the center of it. As soon as we entered we all felt a pressure, several of us suddenly felt a strong desire to smash our heads into the wall. After a few seconds of this feeling, I shrugged it off and rushed to the chest, loot is loot after all. Opening the chest we found 700sp, 50gp, 3 obsidian stones, 2 turquoise stones, 3 unidentified scrolls, a small glass globe and a potion of healing! The desire to bash our brains out ended once the chest was cleared. We parted from the room, not wanting to stick around a room that caused us to go full on House Elf.

Venturing down the hallway that smelled the most of death we came to a set of stairs that lead down to what looked like a well. The smell of death got worse as we approached the well. Looking over the side we found what was causing the smell, the body of a halfling floated there, bloated and half decayed. Underneath the body appeared to be gold, gems and other things that must have been their belongings. Being careful of possible undead, I poked the corpse with my glaive. The water around the body erupted around it! I jumped back and in front of us was a water elemental and it did not seem friendly… the body floated in the center of it half torn apart from its time in the water (I added the body inside the elemental after the fact because I thought it would be funny and my DM didn’t think to do it). Alvin stepped forward and cast Thunder Wave, blasting the elemental out of the well and onto the wall completely destroying it. I think the party was starting to appreciate Alvin more and more. We gathered up the gems from the well and examined the room. There didn’t appear to be anything of use here so we headed back to the cobweb room.

We took the last hallway coming into a room covered in sand. Stepping in caused the sand to stir up and swirl, forming makeshift bodies. They let out groans at us and moved forward… great… more elementals! “Come on Alvin, do the exploding on them.” Battle began and ended all too quickly. The elementals went down and the room was cleared out. We decided to camp and recover before moving forward.

End of Game 3.

Again I’ll explain the game this is part of, The idea behind Vigilante’s games are that several D&D groups are all active in the same world and are all influencing the happenings and goings on of the Town of Bastion and surrounding area. I’m not sure where this will lead I think it is an interesting idea to have Seven+ groups all playing in the same world. It allows groups to exchange items and also allows players to switch parties to pursue different quests. Overall, I think it will work out great and I’ll keep posting updates of my weekly games!