A6-Shut It or I’ll Break your Hip!

The party decided to investigate the confluence of magical winds they saw on the last journey. Sailing out from Skeggi, they noticed that the marsh seemed closer to the town than before. Even stranger: the marsh was advancing from the jungle not from the sea as would be expected.

The first 3 days of overland travel were in a constant downpour. The party took care to keep their feet dry not wanting to repeat the foot rot of last journey. Rufus was in the lead and soon found himself mired in quicksand. Dargo was able to pull him out using his boat hook.

The next 3 days the sun came out and so did the bugs and humidity. Dargo led and didn’t notice that the game trail was subtly changing direction. He then realized that something was wrong when a savage orc arrow flew past his head.

4 orcs and a shaman and a chief attacked the party. The orcs were engaged, and the party was dealing with them, but the shaman cast Headbutt, and then an orc head materialized in front of Lemmy and rammed him. Lemmy responded with a critical cast dart (+6 overcast SLs). He hit 3 of the orcs with critical wounds causing bleeding conditions on all of them.

The chief orc then charged Rufus and scored a critical hit that cracked Rufus’ hip. Dargo jumped in to help Rufus and the fight was on. Rufus took another hit from the chief which severely dislocated his knee, taking him out of the fight. Tolker, Dargo, & Kruger ganged up on the chief with Tolker finally cutting him in half.

The party debated turning back as Rufus was in bad shape, but it was only a day to the destination versus 8 days back to the boat.

They finally reached their destination, “The Fallen Gates” on the west coast of the isthmus. Lemmy saw all 8 winds of magic entering the well-tended garden inside. They saw a 55-year-old man pruning some hedges when they entered.

He greeted them and told them he was Egrim Von Holstermann. He told them that he was a witch-hunter, showing them his old hat, that was cursed by a Nurgle demon he slew in this very garden decades ago. The curse was he could never leave the borders of the garden again. But he was making the best of it.

He told them that he and his companion Ernst Zimmerman, had come to Lustria to confront the Nurgle demons that were working with the Skaven to create a new disease that turned living tissue into moss. He had tracked one demon here and slew it. Last he heard Ernst was sailing south along the east coast of Lustria to find the other demon who was believed to reside in the city of Quetza. Ernst had a magic sword to slay the demon.

Egrim invited the party into his home where they found the interior was much larger than the exterior. He then gave them the items he used to kill the demon: a magic bow, magic sword and mail coat. He gave Lemmy a skull that he could use to communicate with Egrim if he needed to.

Lemmy was quite suspicious but failed his Intuition test. Lemmy was positive he saw faces appear and disappear in the corner of the ceiling. But with Rufus in pain from his knee and hip they stayed the night. Dargo dreamed of an ever-changing landscape, while Tolker dreamed of giant birds and constantly changing creatures (gaining a corruption point).

The journey back to Skeggi was slow due to Rufus’ injuries but they made it back. This time there was no mistaking it: the marsh was closer. A building had ringed with sandbags to keep the mire out. Dargo talked with the king who showed great interest in the skull. Tolker and Kruger did some research and gossip and discovered that the weapons were magical but also cursed. The bowstring would at times snap back inflicting a bleeding condition on the user while the sword tended to get stuck in the opponent’s armor.

A galleon arrived bringing 3 witch-hunters. Lemmy talked with them, and they were quite excited to hear about Egrim (a notorious killer of witch-hunters and believed to be a worshipper of Chaos). They destroyed the skull as it must be evil if it came from Egrim. Then Lemmy proved he was a competent wizard and was granted his magic license.

NEXT SESSION: A7-Tomb of Gold

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