Campaign Diary: Session 3

You spend a week in Tradeport, each doing your own downtime activities. Solomon is hired by Madame Floriol’s Red Room as security for her girls; Bantu spends time between visiting the local dragonborn astronomer (aetheronomer?) and weaving compelling tales in Sinner’s Cove. Norro visits the Trinity Temple and is essentially pressed into taking over the day-to-day operations to give the lead cleric, Walken, a mini-vacation that he spends in Sinner’s Cove “saving” people in the brothels and gambling houses; Bantu spends his time between the town of Nightfall and the observatory, studying history texts for some leads on potential salvage jobs, and Leikner makes inquiries regarding this cloaked stranger that “smelled of death” that Kern warned was looking for him, who may or may not be a ghast or similar type of undead according to Walken.

You come up with a few potential leads: 

• Rogan expressed interest in a site located in the Gap of Vaag, about 100 aether leagues from Tradeport, which reputedly is where the remains of an ancient dragon can be found. 
• Rumors of the legendary “Golden City” place the island within 30 aether leagues of Tradeport, but further research reveals that the city that is supposed to be made of gold is actually the refuge of some nobles from the old Five Kingdoms (now the Confederacy of Agrivaar) who wished to escape the oppression of the kingdoms and the violence of the wars and they moved their fortunes and assets to this remote island in another region to do so. They specialized in creating Tobor; the race of sentient clockwork and warforged constructs. The historical writings indicate that the last known visit of the island showed that the island itself died, having lost its air bubble and all humanoids upon it were dead, but nothing is written about the fortunes of the nobles or the fate of the tobor living there.
• Walken gives Norro a map that he was given by a thief that had wanted to repent for his thieving ways. The map supposedly leads to the secret vault of a dwarven lord. Upon reviewing the map, it looks like the island it is supposed to be located on is within 5 aether leagues from Tradeport.

When you all gather at Sweet’s Pub to find Walken to take his temple work back, you see the pirate Gates and half a dozen of his thugs enter the pub and start to bully the patrons around. It gets ugly when the barmaid is manhandled by one of Gates’ thugs and her boyfriend, who happened to be in the bar, and is stabbed by the thug that was groping his girl. A fight breaks out, Gates leaves the bar and you end up sleeping two of his thugs and killing the rest. The boyfriend dies.

After the fight, all of the light in the bar dims and you see a dark robed figure appear. He addresses the owner, Sweet, saying something to the effect that he’s here to collect per their agreement. He waves a hand and the corpses of the dead disappear. The robed man tosses something to Sweet and disappears. When you question Sweet about him he says that he is a dark wizard that deals in death magic. The wizard’s name is Blackmoor and he has apparently forced all business owners in Sinner’s Cove into an arrangement whereby he is somehow instantly notified when a death occurs in their establishment, he appears and collects the bodies for some dark purpose that Sweet doesn’t know, and then gives the owner a copper piece with the symbol of the Reaper engraved upon it. This has been going on for the better part of a year and Sweet is none too happy about it and the Tradeport Council is doing nothing about it either.

You are left with two pirate thugs snoring and tied up and a few potential salvage job leads.