Tag: Rime of the Frostmaiden

Dead People, Gnolls, and A Dragon

On By ravonlockeIn Jin, JournalLeave a comment

Twitch says we have to go find his friend who is now a bad person, so we go down a ladder to a room with frozen dead bodies in it. There’s water down here and a little boat, so we put Eggy and Leshy into the boat, Saalym climbs on the walls, and the rest of us swim in the cold water. There’s bodies in the water, too. Off to one side, there’s a little room of grain and a hungry rat – boring. Off to the other side there are even more bodies in the water. These have chainmail on them. Maybe they were the Speaker’s guards or something.

The next hall leads to a wooden statue of a person in a block of ice. Twitch says he thinks it’s for their demon god, but this seems real lazy. They got all these dead bodies and they put a wooden guy inside the ice. I guess the demon god guy got encased in ice, maybe they shoulda caught a demon to put inside, but at least a person!

The next room has the tiefling lady we’re looking for. She is really rude. Twitch wants to kill her, but she says he’s wrong about her and is going to be in trouble. He attacks her anyway, but she made the air all wet and disappeared. He looks all over the room, but doesn’t find anything.

That’s boring though, so Doc and I go down the other hall and pull a lever we find there. There’s a big noise and a new tunnel has opened in front of the boat. We all head back out into the water and find another tunnel. This one has all the servants of the Speaker, so we give them food and help them get back through the water to the keep.

Leshy says she’ll clean all the water after Twitch and Saalym get all the dead bodies back out of it. Folk are worried about Twitch and want the Speaker to sign papers saying she was bad, so she can’t get Twitch in trouble. I don’t know how that’s supposed to help, but he seems happy about it. Nothing left to do here, so we head back to check on East Haven.

The dwarf lady owes us money for the killer we killed, but it takes a couple days for her to show up and pay us. People say some gnolls have been raiding and attacking people. They killed one lady and took her magic fishhook that catches magic fish. Leshy doesn’t believe in magic fish, but my Dad caught one and it took him to the faewild so there!

We head out to our ship on the way to the gnolls. The were-polarbear we had heard about is sleeping inside, but everything looks fine. He’s really nice so we tell him he can sleep there whenever he wants. He says there’s trouble with some of the nomads, so he’s going to try to help. Then we head down to the gnoll chasm to camp.

After we rest, Eggy finds a way down, but also a cave, so we go in there first. There are a bunch of gnolls in there and they attack us, so we kill most of them. Doc really doesn’t like it when people hit me. But Twitch talks to the survivor and tells him not to attack people anymore. He agrees and runs away after telling us that Chizga is the leader down below. Doc and I find a big table in the next room covered in blood, and Doc smashes it up.

We all head down into the chasm where there are a bunch of gnolls on spike and weird echoing laughter. I wonder if they were a rival clan or if Chizga worships the stupid winter goddess lady. We work our way around to another cave. This one has pictures in blood on the wall. There’s a fish cooking over little fire and a fishing pole and spear. Doc and I head in to go see if that’s the fishing pole we’re looking for and trip over a sleeping gnoll.

This is Chizga, I guess. I take the fishhook off the pole and put it in my shirt. Twitch talks to him and tells him to stop killing people, but Chizga doesn’t seem happy about it. Twitch says he doesn’t think he’ll stop if he gets hungry again. But we decide not to kill him anyway.

Further up the chasm, there’s a guy in a cage with a black javelin made from the demon rock. I let him out, but then he tries to stab me, so Doc knocks him off the cliff after grabbing the javelin from him. It’s not tingly, and Twitch takes it away with an invisible man. He says it is bad and made that man crazy.

We keep going and find a bunch more gnolls. They look really, really hungry, so we give them some food. Eggy starts getting mad then. He wants to go back and kill Chizga for being mean to his tribe and not taking care of them. Seems like they oughta take care of it themselves, but a couple others agree. We all agree to go back and talk to him at least.

We go back and ask about the crazy man, he says he caught him in the chasm, but he was too dangerous to kill or something. Doc tries to challenge him for leadership of his tribe, but he refuses. I turn into a gnoll and try, but he says I don’t smell right. We leave then, and Eggy shoots him dead.

We head out after that, to go find the last castle of blue dwarves who have come up from under the dark. It’s a few days away, but Eggy knows where to go. The walls are really huge here, and there’s a big staircase to get up to the doors. As we get close, a big dark icy dragon flies out of one side and heads up towards the Towns. We can’t go as fast as that, so they’ll have to take care of themselves. Maybe it’s just going to talk to the white dragon that’s mad at us. We’ve gotta get inside and see what the dwarves are doing first.

Evil Wizards and Bad Men

On By ravonlockeIn Jin, JournalLeave a comment

The old dragon’s real mad, so everyone wants to get far away. There’s evil wizards way up north, Doc says, who might be doing all this winter stuff, or maybe they just know about it. So, we rush all the way up along the coast to a big scary building out over a cliff. Twitch says it’s just one wizard, and he wants to just talk to him. He used to be one of his brothers and now he’s not or something. So, he, Saalym, Sandro, and Leshy go inside, but we have to hold all their things so the guards don’t take them away. I whisper in their heads in case they get in trouble, but this sounds way more boring than what Doc said. Eggy, Doc and I stay outside with Yogi and the mummy lady.

They go inside for a really long time. Saalym says one of the guards is a bad guy, so I tell Twitch. He asks me to tell Saalym to seduce a guard so he can seduce the prisoner. I wonder what’s happening in there. But they say they’re fine. When they finally come out, they don’t know anything new. Ugh, boring!

What now? We’ve gotta figure out this winter goddess lady thing so people will feel better and help us get our ship back. Eggy thinks maybe we could make the sun orb bigger to really make her mad so she’ll show up instead of just sending dead things to fight us. Or maybe do something at a shrine to her to get her to answer and find out what she wants. We’ve gotta go back and get our sleds and axebeaks, though, so we head to Bremmen, and back through Targos to Bryn Shander. I stop to buy my dad a pint and tell him all about the dragon who is probably hunting us. The magic folk get stuff to make the sun orb bigger and Eggy and Saalym make chainmail for Yogi. The orb’s not ready, though, so we had over to Caer Dineval since we haven’t been there yet.

Their speaker is missing or sick or something. One of the people in the tavern says there are weird people at his house. The barman says the Inn is closed and if we want somewhere to sleep we should go up to the Speaker’s house because it’s really big and there are lots of us. So, we go up there, but the guards don’t want to let us in because the speaker is ill. They don’t even want Doc or Leshy’s help. Call him a heathen, whatever that is.

Everybody says we have to go in for sure now, so we sneak off and hide for a bit. We see a person in rags with a glowing necklace get let in, so Doc and I sneak up and climb over the wall. Then through a tower and into the keep. There’s a burned up room, which is weird. Why didn’t they clean it up? The next room is a really nice bedroom. It’s the speaker and he’s being held prisoner. The guard shouts so I throw my mind blades at him and he stabs me. That makes Doc really mad and he kills him. The speaker says they’re bad men, Knights of the Black Sword.

I call the rest of the group to come in, and Doc calls for more guards to come fight him. The speaker says there’s a tiefling in charge here, but also a Levistus guy. Twitch says that’s an Arch Fiend, so these are definitely bad men. We kill some more guards on the way through the keep until we meet up with the rest of the group. They found a tiefling, but he’s just a servant and not the leader guy.

There are a lot more rooms, so Doc and I keep looking. First we find an old lady, though. She’s one of the bad knights, but she’s not a knight anymore and she knows about the blue dwarves from under the dark, so I call Twitch to talk to her. Next we find a kitty, but it’s scared of all Doc’s shouting. Next we find a bad man without weapons and since he doesn’t attack us, and Eggy has caught up, we don’t kill him either. Then we find the Tiefling and he’s a really bad man so we stab him a lot. Eggy is frustrated, even though he’s usually the one killing people. Maybe that’s why, he’s mad we got there first. Twitch asks in my head to not kill the leader, but we moved on by then, maybe Eggy stopped him dying so he can kill him later himself.

We go through the kitchens and leave all the staff alone cuz the speaker said they’re good people. Then out in the courtyard, more people come out, and they’re all bad, so we kill them, too. Seems like everyone’s dead so people start searching the place and Doc calms down. There’s one spot on their map of the blue dwarves that we haven’t been yet, down in the mountains to the bottom. There’s some goblins and goliaths down there that we need to talk to, too.

Pirates and Poachers

On By ravonlockeIn Jin, JournalLeave a comment

The whale is really nice, but he’s not so sure about us. He needs to get fish for himself and his friends, so we promise to get him fish if he takes the lady to the ice flow to buy oil. Eggy thinks we should promise to kill the bad men we chased away, but that seems weird, to go hunt down some stupid people just to kill them. He agrees to help and takes the lady and her friends away in the boat on his back.

There’s a big talk then about murder and good and evil and “poachers.” Eggy says that’s people who kill for fun and are selfish reasons and take more than is good for the land. He gets real mad when I say he almost qualifies, but for taking care of the land. But it’s True! He goes around hunting things because he thinks it’s fun and because he just wants to! But he doesn’t kill whole herds of animals, just one usually on his real Hunts. Not like now, when we’re being attacked all the time. Mostly when he shoots things.

Anyway. We get a bunch of fish out of the water and then the Whale brings the lady back and we give him the fish. He’s real happy and says he knows where the pirate ship is, but we need to get the lady safely back to town first. We tell him to stay out in the ocean for a few days because the bad people are still around. Twitch’ll talk in his head when we get back.

He heads out and we argue again about what to do. We promised to get the lady back to town, but Eggy wants to go kill the bad men. So, we stay by the water to see if they come back. No trouble at night so we go back to town. We hear rumors of a white dragon there! North past the trees. Maybe it likes the evil wizards at the prison, maybe it IS one of the wizards! We have to go there next! I wanna see a dragon!

We head back to the bell the next day, but the water is all poisoned. How? What? Why? That’s just not natural. I use the spyglass to look into the water, the poison is just on top, but so are a bunch of dead fish. Twitch collects up the dead ones, and I snag a couple. Leshy cleans the water by praying to his god. We’re going after the bad men now, I want to feed them their poison. Eggy shows us the way and then he and Sandy just murder them. Leshy and Saalym pray over their bodies so they don’t get back up again.

Then we go get the whale and tell him it’s safe to come back. He’s happy we took care of the bad water, and takes us out under the ice. He says he’s seen a big shape with wings flying over the ice. Yay dragon! And gets us pretty close to the pirate ship. It’s pretty stuck, so we go right up to it. The side says Dark Duchess. There’s some strange noises, so we climb right up onto it. Saalym says it’s evil inside, which means her god doesn’t like it, which seems really strange to me.

Doc and I start calling down the hole in the top, to see if there are any pirates inside that need help from the evil. A big troll shouts back up to us. Doc drops down and I follow. Twitch magics down to us. Doc says the Troll is hungry so we offer it some food, but it didn’t like that and tried to eat us. There were three of them, so we had to stop them killing us.

After, Doc starts attacking a big pile of ice covering some shiny stuff. Leshy and I go look around the ship. There’s some kobolds in one of the rooms. We met them back at the Yeti cave, so this time we tell them to go down to the mines to join the other kobolds somewhere safe. We find the kitchen next, and there’s a goat in there, I send it out to Saalym who is helping Doc. The next room has some smashed boards that make a picture of a dark elf with a feather in his big hat. Something about One Eyed Jack Rum. But the rum’s gone.

Up on the middle deck, there’s a frosty room with a dead guy holding a chest. It’s got corks, coins, jewelry, and a magic bag in it. There’s another room with beds and papers and maps in it. And another room with barrels full of supplies. There’s also a room with first aid things, I bring some back for Doc and Leshy takes the rest.

When we get back to the treasure, Doc is blowing a REALLY LOUD HORN at it. Eggy and Twitch seem upset by this and say that it all belongs to a very old white dragon. That doesn’t stop anyone from breaking more ice and then stealing the shiny things. They’re afraid of the dragon following us, though, so Eggy pulls a bunch of animals out of his bags and sends them away from the towns while we run towards them and the wizard prison.

Kobolds and Consequences

On By ravonlockeIn Jin, JournalLeave a comment

The nice speaker lady wants the Best Friends Club to own the inn in Lonely Wood, so Saalym, Eggy, and Leshy hire some folk to fix it up and get it ready to open again. Why do we want a building? We have to get back to our ship. Maybe Eggy likes hunting here so much he wants to stay?

We have a couple days until the moon is the right shape for Twitch, so we go to a new town. They’ve got kobolds in their mine, I guess. So the people aren’t mining anymore. They lost one person in the mine and no one has gone back since. I really want to go meet the pirates, but this is between us and there, so we agree to go take a look.

There’s a sign outside the mine that says Kobold’s Only, so we shout down the hole. Nobody comes to talk though, so we creep in, all careful not to scare them. Doc’s already a goblin, so I make like a kobold to make them more friendly. First, we find a bunch of mining stuff and Eggy says there’s lots of tracks. Humans, kobolds, and big rats. We follow some of the rat steps and find a big sparkly room, but it’s hard to get the sparkles out of the walls. I get a nice rock though. Then we find a couple rats, they are kinda big, but they squish just like the little ones.

We explore some more and find more mine stuff. Until we finally find some kobolds. They’re trying to break things, but after Saalym scares one to death, the other one talks to us. We convince Scorp we’re here to help and he agrees to show us where the boss, Trex, is. So we can help them trade with the town.

Scorp says not to go down one of the tunnels cuz there’s a creepy thing, so Doc and I go look. It’s a beak monster with big long arm things, but it leaves us alone, so we leave it alone. The rest of the group thinks it’s dangerous, and we should kill it, but it’s gone when they go look. Doc and I go find some more kobolds cutting up a dead rat and give them some better food.

Next we go talk to Trex, he’s put wooden wings on his back. They’ve only been here a couple weeks, came from a cave that Yetis took. We tell them they can go back if they want, cuz we killed the Yetis, but maybe there were more somewhere else. They want to stay here. He’s using a big voice and strange big words. And he’s lying about why he wants to stay here. Why do people do that?

Everyone else gets there and Twitch asks to see Trex’s bag. When he lets him, Saalym says there’s a dead spirit near Twitch. That seems bad, but Twitch doesn’t mind. Trex is really confused now. We tell them we’ll clear out anything else dangerous and help them talk to the town so they can stay here and the miners can go back to mining. They agree.

So, we go looking around. We find a weird skull with holes in it in one of the walls. It has a magic crystal inside it that Twitch likes. Eggy really wants to find and kill the beak monster. Leshy says it’s called a Grell and eats people. We can’t find it though, so we head back to town to sleep. The speaker agrees to work with the kobolds. When we go back, Twitch goes wandering off alone to try and get the Grell to show up, and it works. So we run up and kill it and everyone is much happier. So we can finish getting the deal made.

Then it’s time to go back to the moon place in the Woods. We put all the stuff on the pillars in the brazier, including the hand of the dead druid who attacked Doc and me. It lights up, and Twitch lights a torch and puts it on the rock coffin and then we can open it. How strange. The dead lady inside gets up and bows to Doc.

She says she’s in his service for freeing her from death or something. Her name’s Sahnor, I think. Doc says he doesn’t need anything, but she says she’ll stay until he does. We ask her if she can help us fight a goddess lady and fix our tree ship. She agrees to help, she wants to fight bad people. She’s not sure if she can go back to being dead or not.

So, we head north towards the pirates because that’s next until we figure out how to fight the winter goddess lady. I talk to her about the gods here, but her gods were a lot older. Someone says we should head for a talking whale to get to the pirates, He’s got a big name, since he’s a big whale, and I guess he has a boat on his back. That sounds painful. Does it go underwater with him? Isn’t there a lot of ice up here? How does that all work?

First, though, there’s a whole bunch of elks running at a small bunch of people. Leshy makes the ground grind up their legs to death. Elk are really tasty, probably even better after Leshy cooks it, but we’ve been walking a long while and Doc and me are hungry. The people say thanks, and they’re going to the whale too, only they say there’s a bell you have to ring to get the whale. Poor whale, having to show up when stupid humans ring a bell. She wants the whale to take her to camps where people kill whales and take their oil. Why would the big ship whale be okay with that? But she thinks it’s fine and rings the bell way out on a frozen dock.

Some vultures show up and we give them food to go away. Then some jerks who want to kill the whale show up and we have to talk them into going away. Really proud of Eggy for not shooting them or the birds. Then the whale shows up and he’s just SO BIG!

Dead Druids and Barry the Bush

On By ravonlockeIn Jin, JournalLeave a comment

With all the animals gone or dead, Doc and I take a look around. The front door’s all sealed tight on the inside just like the outside. Down another hall, there’s a door with a half moon on it, looks like a D to me. Inside is a big dome with sunlight coming from no place onto another big stone coffin. The group discusses breaking it open, but Doc and I keep looking. There’s a really big mirror in another hall, but it won’t come off the wall and doesn’t do anything fun. Saalym’s axe makes it glow a little, but that’s it.

There’s another path that goes up, the half moon goes the other way on this one, but it’s the same inside. Except someone’s been living here. There’s drying plants and blankets. Folks think this is where the bad druid is staying and start talking about tricking and attacking her here. Or maybe outside. Saalym’s really tired, so she, Doc and I take a nap in there while the others go look for the druid or something.

There’s a big loud noise from down the corridor after not that long and Saalym goes to look what happened. The big stone box breaks open and a dead druid pops out and attacks Doc and me. It turns me back to myself and burns a lot. We smash it back down into the box and Doc and I cut off the head just to make sure. There’s lots of shooting below so we go help. After I put my goblin mask back on.

There’s a ghost down there, telling everyone to be quiet. And a dead druid like on the floor, almost like the one we fought up above. The ghost gets really angry and screams at us, so we have to make her go away. After, just to make sure, we go to the unopened coffin in the first hall and open it up and stab the body. It doesn’t move. Doc’s mad at the dead for attacking us, so we take all their stuff.

When we catch up with the rest of the group, they’ve made friends with a bush and named him Barry for his berries. He says the angry ghost lady hangs out in the forest. I send Kit out to see if she can find any of the druid’s other talking animals while we go looking for the ghost lady. Saalym wants to give her a proper funeral so she can go away and not come back. Spirits here are so strange.

Kit comes back with some ice friends when we find the right spot. So, we make lots of snowmen to watch Saalym say goodbye to the ghost. After Doc helps dig up her bones, he helps me with snowmen. Saalym and Leshy say goodbye to the ghost for a really long time. But she doesn’t go away, she shows up instead. And then Saalym gets really mad and hits her really hard. That makes her burn all up. Saalym says she was horrible and hurt kids.

Barry doesn’t really know what to do without the druid lady, so he comes back to town with us. I teach him Hide and Seek with the Speaker’s kids. Then we go to bed in her nice little house. I think Saalym owns the town’s Inn now, how strange.