The Salvage Crew
-Bantu the Halfling Bard
-Brahm the forest gnome Wizard
-Leikner the half orc Paladin
-Norro the high elf Cleric of Mortalas
-Solomon the human fighter
NPCs featured/mentioned in this session:
-Kern the retired dwarf adventurer and owner of the Salvage Company and the PCs employer.
-Councilwoman Krais, a former colleague-turned-enemy of Kern who has been trying to put him out of business and acquire an evil book in Kern’s vault.
-Vayl Naris the magically altered human sorceress of the Ordo Arcanis, who is looking for a ride to a dying island to study.
- Pops, the helmsman and navigator of Kern's Folly.
Previously on The Broken World Campaign…
The heroes are back in Sinner's Cove and need to rest badly, so they rent a room at a local inn. As they do, the strange old lady from the market is present and draws attention to herself briefly before settling back into her own mania. The heroes ignore her and go up to their room where they all sleep restfully except Leikner, who cannot block out the noise coming from the next room. The half-orc tries to politely quiet the noisy couple and has to resort to bursting into their room and knocking out the jerk that won't listen to reason. Leikner declines the invitation of the jerk's lady friend to take his place and goes back to bed. Later that day, after their rest the heroes find that their connection to the Micronians seems to be growing stronger and they each find that they have gained an ability seemingly from that connection. Not sure what exactly all of that means, they put that aside to focus on the immediate issue, which is to find a place to stash the loot they took from the Expeditions Unknown cellar and to either try and get Kern's property back or to go find their missing employer. They reason that it would probably be a waste of time to try and settle Kern's financial situation with the council until they deal with Councilwoman Krais, who is behind the repossession of Kern's property, so instead they decide to try and rescue Kern, who they believe is somewhere on Krais' island, just off shore of Tradeport. They toy with the idea of getting their boat back, but decide against that. They go to the home of Pops to have him stash their loot until they return. Pops agrees to do so and says he'll gather the crew, get the ship back and prep her in case the heroes must leave the island quickly. The heroes leave Pops and head back to the town of Greed and spend a few hours trying to get some information about last night's events and what the town's law enforcement is doing, particularly to see if they are in any danger of being arrested since they did have an encounter with a guard and there is the rogue who they hired that ratted them out when he was captured. They aren't very good at getting people to talk on this day, so they take a chance and head back over to the Expeditions Unknown building and find that guards have been set at each entrance. The group resorts to magic to suggest to one of the guards that they should be let inside, and the guard immediately cooperates, assuming them to be crime scene inspectors. Inside looks much like they left it, so they head down to the cellar and activate the teleportation circle, which takes them to Krais' Island.
When they materialize the heroes find themselves in a small stone chamber with the glowing magic circle beneath their growing dim and going out, leaving them in darkness. Bantu turns invisible and does some recon out the only exit to the room and finds a side chamber with 4 suits of armor within, which seem to activate and move to intercept the heroes. Bantu's invisible form is ignored, but the animated armor moves to attack the others. A short fight commences and the armor is destroyed. With Solomon's lit torch lighting the way, the heroes proceed into the complex, finding another door that has a strange giggling sound behind it. They decide to skip that room and the continue down the hall to another door. Within they hear muttering of some creature so they decide to lure it out by magically emulating the giggling sound just outside this door. The muttering creature opens the door, saying something about the damn gibberer getting loose again, and reveals itself to the invisible Bantu as a Spectator. The creature does not see anything outside the door to the room it guards, so it shuts the door again. The heroes decide to rush the room and spend time preparing themselves with potions and magic, then burst into the Spectator's room and killing it before it can get a single eye ray shot off. It guarded a store room with a variety of strange torture implements and supplies. They find another door and try to open it, but are surprised by a glyph of warding that they didn't see, which explodes and hurts most of them. They enter the room and find a study with papers, books, jars of a strange drug known as "agony", which is distilled pain. They also find a globe that seems to depict a living island, but in the shape of a sphere which seems odd to them. No island they've come across yet is a perfect ball shape. They also find a stone structure that has more of the Grand Equation etched upon the stone. Norro tries to copy down the equations, but as he does so the elf begins to feel pain in his head as the formula begins to burn itself into his brain. When it finishes, Norro realizes that he now knows 25% of the Life Equation and 10% of the Anti-Life Equation. As this is going on, Bantu does more invisible recon and finds a long hall with two rust monsters huddled in a side passage. The group lures the creatures into the store room and lock them in without having to engage them. They continue to explore the complex and find a room where they hear the sounds of a weeping woman within. They open the door to find a very attractive woman that is held within a magic circle. She pleads for them to free her, but Leikner the Paladin senses that she is actually a fiend and she transforms into her true shape, that of a Marilith demon. The heroes know that this fiend is far beyond their ability, so they close the door and ignore its attempts to coerce them into a conversation with her, for fear of the demon somehow tricking them into releasing her. The group find another door which leads to a section of the complex that is built differently and seems to have an evil about it. Within they find Krais, who stands atop a boiling pit and she calls forth skeletal warriors to attack the heroes. As skeletons pour forth from the massive cauldron, Leikner uses his newfound power granted by the worship of the Micronians, and summons forth a band of berzerkers to deal with the skeletons. The heroes focus on Krais, but they find that she is a similacrum and not the true Krais. Upon destroying the skeletons, the heroes climb a stair to a large double door, beyond which is a vast sanctum of evil. Inside, Krais is performing a ritual, with Kern as an apparent offering to something that she is trying to get to come through the portal at the end of the room. Reciting lines from the Book of Vile Darkness before her, she does little to defend herself as the heroes storm in to rescue Kern. Krais is magically compelled to flee, which she does, directly into the portal she was attempting to open. Her entry seems to have the result she intended and from the portal a terrible, tentacled monster erupts forth and begins attacking the heroes. An epic battle ensues and thought the monster is massive, the heroes are able to fight and destroy it. They release Kern, who appears to be beaten and worn, but able to move on his own. Kern says that the rest of the council is held in this dungeon, having been kidnapped and replaced with doubles by Krais so that she could control the entire island. They go back to the demon chamber and find that it is gone, apparently no longer held to whatever trap Krais had summoned it to. They continue on and find two neogi guarding the rest of the council in the jail. They allow one to escape and kill the other. The heroes take the council and Kern back through the teleportation circle to the mainland and to the Tradeport Council's chambers where Krais kept the teleportation circle in her chambers. The council summon their guards and the imposters are captured.
Having saved Kern, the Tradeport Council and having dispatched the power-hungry Krais, the heroes are informed by Kern that he knows now that the Book of Vile Darkness must be destroyed, so he tells them that he's leaving to do just that. He leaves his business and his ship to them and asks only for a suit of armor and a weapon - preferably Stonebreaker, the magical warhammer that Leikner has been using. Kern feels that such a weapon belongs in the hands of a dwarf. Leikner is torn about this and has not yet responded to Kern. End of session.
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