Campaign Diary: Session 4

Previously on The Broken World Campaign…

…Your heroes find themselves with two of Gates’ thugs magically asleep after the encounter in Sweet’s Pub. You decide to take them over to Madame Floriol’s to an unoccupied room to interrogate them. Brahm charms them and the thug opens up but doesn’t know much. Basically says that Gates is giving Kern and his employees a hard time because his employer, Councilwoman Krais, is trying to foreclose on a debt that Kern has to her. For some reason she wants his property, but the thug doesn’t know why. You let the two go, despite Leikner’s fuming, and you go about your business for the next few days until you meet with Kern again to get paid. 

As the rest of you restock, Norro gets to work again at the Trinity Temple and manages to get 10 Create Air scrolls from Walken for payment for working at the temple that week. You head back to Sinner’s Cove to meet with Kern. You each get paid 525 gold for your last haul, which seems a bit high considering the items that you got. Perhaps the statue and chair went for more than you thought they may be worth? Norro seems to think that Kern is not telling you something and though you press him about his financial issues with Krais, he basically tells you all to let him worry about the business side of things. 

You all discuss your salvage leads and the most likely one seems to be the closest, which is the lead you got from Walken when he was given a stolen map during confession. The map reputedly shows the location of a dwarf lord’s vault. Upon closer inspection, Kern notices that the island, despite being relatively close to your province, is understandably unexplored since it is hidden within a cloud of phlogiston – a highly flammable form of aether that travelers avoid due to the potential for disaster should it somehow be ignited. Still, the potential for a good haul is great if there really is a dwarf lord’s vault hidden within, so Kern greenlights the operation and tells you all to report back the following day. Leikner and Norro stay behind while the rest of you go get some last minute supplies. 

Norro asks Kern to let him see the tablets with the strange formula on them and Kern takes him to the main house, past his golem-like security guard, though a series of securely locked doors, down into a sub-sub-basement and into his vault. While Kern opened the vault, Norro looked around Kern’s trophy room where there were items including weapons armor and a variety of other items that Kern had apparently picked up in some adventuring career. Norro also sees a globe that he touches and an image of a younger Kern with a wife and child. Kern calls Norro over once the vault is open and Norro studies the tablets, comparing the writing to his own personal sample, which both match. Also, when Norro’s sample is brought close to the tablets, they both glow, even though the tablets did not register as being magical. 

On the way out of the vault, Norro noticed a irritating feeling and the source of it was a glass case in the vault containing a book bound in some kind of flesh, oozing a black oily residue, and with a severed tongue attached to the book’s cover with an iron nail. No writing on the cover or the spine, but the book was clearly evil. Norro leaves and goes to his loaned cot to rest the night. During the night, Leikner is visited by nightmares and the vision of the large, cloaked stranger that Kern said visited him before. The stranger only said “My son, I’m coming for you” which woke Leikner up. 

You all congregate back at the Salvage Company’s floating island dock and once the ship is prepped and stocked with supplies, you cast off, sail her out of the air bubble surrounding Tradeport and then open up the Spelljamming helm and speed off towards the dwarf lord’s hidden island. The first day is uneventful and you practice taking turns at relieving each other at the spelljammer helm without disconnecting from it, but one try fails using up one of the 5 remaining incarnum crystal charges. With 4 remaining you all extend your turns at the helm, risking exhaustion, to preserve the crystals and avoid another inadvertent shut down of the helm. 

On the third day of travel, your lookout notices a ship trailing you. Pops uses his viewing glass to confirm the ship but is unable to make it out. You did learn that Gates had left Tradeport the night before you departed, so there’s a chance that he’s the one following you considering he has done it before and, according to Pops, that’s what did in the last crew of Kern’s Folly. You discuss your options and Solomon comes up with a crazy plan to fly into the phlogiston, get into the island’s protective envelop and ignite the phlogiston as the other ship approaches. None of you are sure what will happen, but it is certain to be as flashy and foolhardy a ploy as ever conceived in the history of spelljamming.