Going Primal
The group set out for Faunel, or, I guess it would be more accurate to say the Walking Castle began marching towards the gate-town to the Beastlands, and the characters were along for the ride. Along their journey I described crossing an infinite and impossible landscape of one type of terrain turning into another. Eventually, the castle parked near the gate-town of Faunel. The custodian of the castle gave Q’or a sending stone to contact her when they wanted back into the castle, but she wasn’t about to leave it at ground level again.
The party immediately met Razak at Camp Greenbriar, an overly friendly sloth that is excited to talk with the party. They find a bear sleeping at his stall whom can’t care enough to interact with them when awoken by Razak and slumps back to sleep, a turtle acting as a mobile table and a unpleasant leopard selling baubles. The group wants to find Blanka (you know, the poor dire wolf fucker they summoned several times, albeit on accident), presuming he is in town, and is informed that he’s likely with the predators and that if they want to find themselves on his good side, they need a side of yak.
So, they split the party: Bob and Kera went to reset the mimir’s bluetooth connection with the gate and Lynn and Chad went hunting a wascally wabbit, er, I mean a yak. Cause when I think yak, I think yum…
After a short walk Bob and Kera’s characters found two capybaras drinking from a pool below a stone sentinel. The first one to drink from the waters started talking in a confused manner and is weirded out a bit and then tries to talk to the other, and then just shoves it in the water. The stone guardian asks what their business is and hobbler rambles at him and it decides they are telling the truth. So, they are allowed to set the mimir straight. The sentinel warns them not to submerge themselves in the waters. Then, after some roleplaying with the newly intelligent critters, Hobbler and Bitzie help bring water to the capy family and make them all smart.
Having wandered in the direction suggested Lynn rolled well twice in a row for Z to find tracks and then locate a few yaks. Not to be outdone, Q’or readied his bow and we watched Chad roll a nat 20. Perfect clean kill shot. When he looks back, Q’or finds a moose glaring at him. When Z gives reverence to the corpse for giving it’s life to them and their needs, The moose decides they are ok, nods its antlers at them and strolls off.
Both parties barely make it back to the camp when their reunion is disrupted by a commotion. Entering a clearing off to the side of the Greenbriar the party catch a pack of gnolls mid massacre of an ibex (you know, a goat thing). The Gnolls turn, faces covered in gore. Then we roll initiative. They took down the hyenas first to defend their action economy. At the start of turn 2 they are joined by Grumblegor the surly boar and Razak, who doesn’t follow the boar into the fight. Q’or goes down when he get surrounded and when we lose our Paladin, the smart Q’or arrives dramatically and fireballs the shit out of them, finishing off 2 and mortally wounding two more. After a little more violence, the last two surviving Gnolls try to rabbit: one gets shot down as it tried to run and the other was chased into the forest by the bad attitude boar.
Interested Parties
Turns out the Razak suggests they bring news to Ophelia. The team leaves and crosses the plain where several of them had recently went hunting. Oh, yeah, Z was carrying a cleaned carcass. They meet the elephant named Ophelia amidst a discussion on how all animals should be treated fairly. think that the predators did it. for retaliation for beatign down their attack. disgustsed by vile hunt
They find the sabertooth tiger Ebonclaw sunning on a rock surrounded by lady lions. He doesn’t so much respond while Kera’s Tiefling, then Chads Githyanki and finally Lynn’s Goliath all try to question and then convince him to help. It wasn’t until Bobs Tabaxi mentioned sharing the newly cleaned yak meat, not just saving it for Blanka. That got the sabretooth tiger talking. With a little raptor pacing back and forth ask “can we eatz them, they are outsiderzzz” Ebonclaw sends the raptor to get Blanka, slaps harem of lionesses and the panther away and eats some yak. says they didn’t do it, that there is no reason for his kind to kill the goat, and he detests the vile hunt as much as the herbivores
In a turn of luck for the group, Blanka wants to stop the vile hunt too. He agrees to join up with them for the moment and with him comes the little girl Itoli. Having patted her horns when they first met in the bazaar, Itoli refers to Bitzie as the horny lady: it’s awkward for a child to say that (especially in my small girl voice) and the group laughs. She calls Hobbler the Catman and Z is of course Biglady. The best was her refering to Q’or as Ugly Guy, to which his wizard acted rather outraged and proclaimed “I am a Gith”, to which Itoli replied “I am a girl.” Playing the 6 year old ranger was kinda fun.
Blanka leads the adventurers to the aerie. They are greeted by an owl and I don’t waste the opportunity. “Hoo-goes there?” it was said. I amuse myself, but the players chuckled too, so it was worth it. Having been given directions by the owl the party walked for 2 hours under the watchful gaze of many feathered “friends.” At the end of their journey, which would have been twice as long had they not succeeded in prying instructions from their greeter, and they climb inside an impossibly tall tree. When they think they have made it to the top, they come out on a landing, huffing and puffing, to find they are only halfway up.
At the peak, they find the Albatross totally indifferent. He does not care for Vile Hunt but also isn’t worried. The gnolls can’t fly, so he doesn’t care. Asked what the Aerie will do if the gnolls climb this tree and they say simply fly away. Eventually, they talk him into offering to help, but for a cost they cannot afford: The albatross asks for the item they were promised by elephant, and when they are not willing, suggests that they will offer something later. At a time of his choosing.
Magic Q’or explains how an IOU is like when a librarian takes someone else’s lunch and leaves a note behind instead. The group is not thrilled but accept that, after enquiring about enlisting the air of the birds in finding their wayward wizard they grudgingly accept. This totally won’t backfire against them or anything. The eagles are for rent, 100gp each, and they have to hire at least five and up to ten at once. My players just didn’t have that kind of cash. Yet. Maybe they should visit one of the leaders they already met. Turns out the Vile Hunt camp is about a half day’s walk from Greenbriar. Time to get a move on.
We end night one heading back to the predators on the way to Greenbriar Camp. I was worried I didn’t have enough for one night when we started the evening and ended up needing a second just to close the game out.
Primal Continued
It would have been better to have pushed a little more at the end of the last session: instead, the group made their way to the Ebonclaw at Razortooth Rock and explained that the birds have given them the location, and Blanka was fairly certain he could find the spot. The raptor is sent to fetch a “bauble”, which it runs off and rapidly returns with, spitting a 100gp gem at their feet. Then he asks if he can “eats them” yet.
I don’t know if Kera was trying to have at me a bit or what, but she had Bitzie ask if any predators had been missing recently. So I took the opportunity to add a side quest.
Turns out an allosaurus named Ravorax had been a bit dissatisfied with the leadership at Razortook Rock and more aligned with the morals of the Vile Hunt, or lack there of. Ebonclaw offers an additional gift if they can bring the dinosaur back to his camp for “interrogation” and while he will not send his people against another of his kind, he will send a half-dozen dire wolves to protect their flank while they do the deed.
It is the darkest of night when they get back to Greenbriar Camp, and Razak is nowhere to be seen, but, a marsupial drops down to hand from it’s tail and interrogates them. When they ask a question, another drops down next to the first, and this is repeated a third time before the party moves on for a half-day trek to the theoretical location of the Vile Hunt.
I described the walk from woods into dense and humid jungle. A big flying bug lands on Bitzie, Z catches a 3-foot long centipede and starts chewing on it, Hobbler enjoys some as well. Wizard Q’or is just disgusted. Otherwise, the trek is uneventful. In my head, the dire wolves pack hunted and eliminated a few gnolls out patrolling, keeping clear the way to the Vile Hunt Camp. I had them all roll for stealth, deciding on majority success for the team. Everyone did well except for the wizard, whom did a bit of roleplaying associated with failing his check but otherwise the group got to the edge of camp unnoticed. Then I proclaimed:
ROLL INITIATIVE!
This is where we should have started, since I had a side quest lined up for after they finished Faunel, assuming they survived that is (as a side note, I still have the “they didn’t survive” sidequest waiting around, too). Yet I had not thought far enough ahead last time so we got into it here. Anyway, I gave them advantage on Initiative since they made their stealth checks well enough and we were off.
There were also four gnoll pack lords and a Fang of Yeenoghu named Mick Mangehide, who was the leader of this camp. One gnoll was at the back next to the cage with the frustrated triceratops. The others were spread about in the camp. Much like I did the previous night, I added extra Hyenas to mess with their action economy: they weren’t much of a threat, but a few extra attacks made them think about what they were going to do first.
Before they even knew the part was there, Z destroyed a hyena, then Bizie tumbled into some bushes and backstabbed someone. Round two the gnoll at the cage let loose the dinosaur and, rolling randomly, it charged a gnoll. Then Q’or used a fireball, killing a damanged Gnoll, reducing two more to 11 hit points, damaging the Fang of Yeenoghu and turning a honey badger that Z summoned to ash. With the combat looking a little one-sided at that point and wanting to make sure this combat would be sufficiently awesome for the evening, I adjusted the plans.
Two more gnolls joined the fight, one right behind the wizard that had just ruined my plans, and the other far off, currently fighting a dire wolf. This one I could use to adjust on the fly, either killing it or the wolf as needed if the fight took a definative turn one way or another. Then the real fun happened.
The allosaurus they were looking for emerged next to Bob’s character, tossing aside half of a dire wolf carcass and biting the shit out of Hobbler. I crit on a roll of 20. The cat-man nearly died. The pressure was on. Then Blanka nearly killed the predator they needed to keep alive, followed by the fucking triceratops nearly murdering Blanka while he held the allosaraus down, jaw on it’s throat. Blood gushed out of Blanka’s mangled chest as the dinosaur horn tore through flesh and organs. My players were officially worried.
Shortly there after, the gnoll that had released the three-horned dino killed Hobbler and we finally met the stoic monk version of Bob’s character. He arrived in meditation, opened his eyes and busted out the flying fists. His alternate had no idea that they needed to keep the allosaurus alive and in attempting to clear the space around him, and having no idea how few hit points Ravorax still had, he knocked the viscous thunder lizard twenty feet back. And killed him. Gave the gnoll that brought him there from another reality a good thrashing as well.
Side quest failed successfully.
They were each given the opportunity to describe the grisly death of a gnoll. The fight was close, stressful in that fun way and was a good replacement for a true boss fight in the adventure. They gathered some magic items and money, then limped back to Greenbriar Camp, being entirely unwilling to sleep in the flee infested gnoll beds. Seemed like the right choice anyway, but I made them make Constitution saves and half the party ended up with a level of exhaustion for pushing through.
Post Combat Cuddles
They arrived back at camp it was midday. Razak was thrilled with the outcome and commanded the innkeeper to feed and house the heroes for free. As they moved to their own rooms, they found the marsupials interrogators hanging from rafters, asleep. They all passed the fuck out. I let Bob and Chad decide which version of their character they awoke as and we continued through their day.
They needed to make contact with Shemeshka’s contact. After asking around the learned that it was a hunter type loner that often wandered between the camp and the gate. They found Darrigant the hunter most of the way back to the pool and the Sentinel: after a short exchange, he shook his head and proclaimed that they’re so fucking doomed. Failed intimidation check resulted in Darrigant voicing his opinion that he had used tougher people as toothpicks, he said he passed tougher things. After some interesting roleplaying conversation the party, the moved on.
At the herbivore camp they found Ophelia unwilling to believe that the predators as a whole were not behind the whole thing. Q’or challenged them to an honorable duel to defend his honor and that of the predators. After a few crit misses, Chad’s paladin made short work of the fight and they left with the matter solved.
The nasty little raptor was heard to say “hehehe the foodz is comings” as they walk toward the rock that Ebonclaw sunned upon. Woken by his harem, the sabretooth tiger greets the adventurers. Blanka explains that Ravorax died a coward and Z is put on the spot and does some great roleplaying. Lynn speaks as a less than brilliant barbarian that often forgets why exactly they are doing whatever it is they are doing. With that, the rest of the gems are handed to the party and they move onto the birds.
It is here that we stopped for the night. With a bag of precious gems they climbed the impossibly tall tree again and paid for a full set of ten hunting birds to go look for signs of the wizard Kheloseos. They were told they can wait in the forest, but not in the trees: turns out the albatross doesn’t like the smell of them.
Guess we will see if the birds of prey can locate their arcane prey. Check back here to see what the adventurers get up to next.
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Tyson
Obsessive and neurotic collector of little plastic men, novels about the same little plastic men and paints to make the little plastic men pretty. Married to Kera, who puts up with him and pretends that she doesn’t hear him speaking to the little plastic men in between making pew pew noises in the hobby room. Requires adult supervision. A menace to himself but rarely to others. More beard than man
