2026-08-21

Players Present: Steve, Andrew, Dan Mu
Party Level: 3
In-Game Date: Festival +9
Interacting NPCs: Brand, Daven, Orra, Sera, Torr
Next Game: 2026-09-18

Bones on the Road

The party made short work of the skeletons that rose to meet them, though Skylos did his part to complicate things, bumping party members out of position whenever something caught his nose. The night's rest that followed was uneventful, and the party pressed on toward Ashbridge.

The Ambush

A man and his crew stepped out to meet the party on the road, and the exchange went straight from threats to blades — Kaelen struck first, and the fight was on. Skylos, true to form, kept getting underfoot at the worst possible moments. Of the man's crew, only one survived: a woman who turned into a bear and, when the man was killed, ran rather than fight. She didn't get far before Kerialalta put a Needle Dart in her back, though she kept running regardless. The party didn't press the survivors for information beforehand, so little was learned about who sent them or why. Two orcs among the dead carried 50 gold between them.

Ashbridge at Night

The party arrived at Ashbridge after dark to a standoff already in progress: Cornelius, a woman, and four guards confronting a crowd of farmers outside the granary. Marcus Thorne stood with the villagers. The party argued the point directly — burning the grain wouldn't purify anything, it would kill people who depended on it through winter. They accused Cornelius of acting out of fear rather than conviction. Cornelius fired back that the party was listening to a deceiver, pointedly noting Kerialalta's talk of hearing Hades's voice, and insisted he had studied every religious text available to him and never once encountered the name. Kaelen made the party's position unambiguous: harm to the villagers would be answered, personally and directly, by the party. Cornelius, furious, told them the corruption of the village would be on their heads — and rode off without giving the order to burn. Nothing was resolved. The grain still stands, but so does Cornelius's crusade.

The Man Who Refuses the Word

As Marcus turned to leave, Kerialalta stopped him with questions. Asked if he knew what had happened, Marcus wanted to know when — and when Kerialalta couldn't clarify, he answered anyway: "What always happens? The Gods overreached." Pressed on the village he'd helped fix, Marcus corrected the framing — he hadn't fixed it. He'd helped the people fix it themselves, and taught them to keep doing it without him. Asked where he'd learned that, he said the village had taught him, and he'd simply passed it along. When Kerialalta called him a Champion of the Gods, Marcus's patience ran out. He wants nothing to do with the title, and made it clear the only voice guiding him is his own. What he wants, plainly stated, is for mortals to learn to take care of themselves.

The party needs to level to 4 for next game