Session Report #10
The group gets together planning to go after the karvi that Gwyndolin had stolen from her by the two once thegns of the slaver Skaldr, Thorfinn and Thorkell. These slavers had held Gwyndolin as chattel for months at one point on their ship and she fully means to claim it from them. Gwyndolin also works to sell her Wormskin Armor she had crafted assuming she needs the funds for the days ahead.
Alongside Gwyndolin is Dorgas, Ruda, Blackmoon, and Yelwyck. In addition Gwyndolin looks to recruit a thegn from Caernyff. She finds one in a former rower on her ship that was left behind with the theft of the ship. A man named Huw.
Starting in Caernyff the group heads north by horse riding hard to try to make the journey in 2 days and do make a great distance on the first day reaching all the way to Brychdyn where they soon encounter The Roaming Court for the first time. A hundred tents surrounding the small village hundreds of horses here being shoed, bartered and in some unfortunate cases put down. All preparing for the great annual horse race that Brychdyn holds in the kings honor.
Dorgas of course uses some of the credit he has built for himself to seek an audience with the king where he tells the tale of Boudicca and how she torments the city of Caernfan and despite the bitter look of the queen the King sends 10 royal guards alongside Dorgas to verify these reports. Thus does Dorgas leave the party.
At this Ruda decides she shall enter the races and backing this claim she puts down 1000hs as a bet with the boast that she will win it all. Buying a fine warhorse on top of it.
Alongside her Gwyndolin also decides to enter the race on her well tested warhorse Mongfind.
The races start with Ruda winning her first race but taking a riding crop to the face in the process unhorsing some youth from the village in the process. Gwyndolin also wins hers a little easier managing to outride a courtier from the king's court.
The next round the two racers face off against each other and Gwyndolin decides to throw the race (rolling against a 1:6 chance of it not being believable). This gives Ruda an easy path forward into the semifinals. These short sprints of races down the main street of Brychdyn already having left blood in the soil.
In the lower bracket Gwyndolin faces off with and defeats one competitor before coming face to face with the youth that Ruda had defeated in the first round. She rides hard against the youth but even with spurring her horse on the youth manages to keep a lead in the race and Gwyndolin ends up eliminated.
In the upper bracket then Ruda breezes through to a finals appearance against this youth from the village. The pair of racers ride hard in this final sprint tousling and pushing their horses as hard as they can go when Ruda grabs at the youth just to find herself pulled off balance suddenly and lose her seat on her horse. The last thing she sees before darkness comes for her is a warhorses hoof rushing to meet her face.
She nearly dies but her companions do manage to pull her off the track and keep her alive and she awakens several hours later to news of the boy being accepted into the royal entourage of the King where he will train as a thegn.
She needs time to recover (and the player was feeling sick) so this is where Ruda leaves the party.
So thus with the Roaming Court packing up and preparing to head south does the party head on going north to the city of Guthrym. They take a day and ride their horses up to the city and immediately set out seeking Birger. A guard that the party had once worked with in their hunt of the White Thread.
They find him at the docks working to tally the goods coming off a ship so the Queen could get her due. They speak to him about the ship. They find that the ship they seek has in fact been here and has been operating out of Guthrym for the last month or two. However they currently are out at sea.
He does share the 2 laws of Guthrym with the party
- The Queen always gets her due.
- The Queen's men maintain the peace.
From there realizing they will need resources and have time to kill in order to try getting their ship back.
So they hatch a plan to pursue a goal that had evaded them in the past. The White Threads horde. A rumored horde of impossible sizes hidden in a massive labyrinth of subterranean passages that are sure to leave any navigating them lost forever.
The White Thread has been dead for some time but the party has been unable to delve into these caves due to not having a way to navigate them. The only being knowledgeable of their ways dead and skinned.
However fighting a group of Ogres some weeks back the party came across 3 vials of Goldsong Elixir. A potion which when imbibed allows a person to sing out to treasure and have it sing back to them.
The party knew of this rumored treasure but not how to reach the entrance to its paths and thus must hire Birger who was part of the group that slew the beast to navigate there. He agrees to guide them there in exchange for a full share of the treasure and first pick of any items it contains.
They also purchase 1km worth of twine to lay down so that they may find this treasure and return out of the caves.
They go as a group to the cave and see the White Thread had been bled of its blood and is now a rotting corpse and the group (minus Birger and the hireling Huw) go into the cave. Gwyndolin drinking the potion and hearing its song.
She noted
"I can hear this treasure sing to me and it isn't large. It is massive"
Thus they go down and into the caves singing and walking as they go. They travel through many winding passages small and large and feel they are doing good when suddenly they run out of twine. Gwyndolin can still hear the song. It is close and it is massive. Thus she boasts that she will recover this treasure and walks away from the twine alongside the new companion Blackmoon.
They walk through the dark and lay arrows pointing back the way they came at every intersection for the last 400 meters until they reach their treasure. The horde is massive. More wealth then any of these PCs had ever seen before. Enough to ransom a king and still have enough left over to buy a boat to sail him home on.
Seeing this great horde they head back to the group and they set out a plan to gather the last of this wealth. It will require a lot of rope (like 500 hs worth), a wagon, 2 draft horses, dozens of torches, and a lot of time.
First they must make it back to the twine and get out. Going through the dark by the light of a single flickering torch can make you miss things. But with some good rolls they manage to find their way back to the string and avoid becoming lost here in the dark tunnels.
They make their way to the surface and reunite with Huw and Birger and go to town and quickly purchase the supplies they will need and go back.
Because the passage is too small for draft animals they strip down in order to be able to carry more things leaving their weapons just in the entrance and delve into the dark once more. Going to the end of the string they place heavier rope that is less likely to break as they go and eventually reach the end of the string when they imbibe their final dose of Goldsong Elixer and head once more into the passages finding the horde once more.
They take this horde and they take it to the surface in two trips the first trip takes a while but is uneventful. The second they take the stuff back to the surface and there in the midst of the night they see things in the darkness. Too many figures to be just Birger and Huw. They call out and a word is called back. Orcneas. Demanding metal and surrender. Only waiting here on promises of more bodies from the cowering Huw if they don't kill him.
The group will not take this and now Gwyndolin fresh from her boast of recovering the treasure from the caves makes her second boast of the night. Without armor and outnumbered she will drive off the orcneas.
Thus the group takes up arms and though they are outnumbered charge forward hoping to free Birger who is known as a good warrior first and they blitz into one of these Orcneas and beat it down freeing Birger. From there they roll some really good hits and avoid taking too many hits in return and the group manages to quickly pick off two of the orcneas. Leaving the others a bit shaken. After a 4th round of combat where none of the players party goes down, Blackmoon makes a boast of eating the liver of one of these fiends and a third orcnea falls to blows of near naked men in the dark the morale of the creatures break and they flee climbing up into the mountains to escape back to the Black Strathe on the far side.
Thus the group stands victorious. Wealthy. Covered in blood both their own and that of marauding orcneas. They look over all they have gained.
12000 hs in roman coinage 5 gold ingots. 25 silver ingots. 25 pouches of strange spices. A strange vial of mirrored glass (given to Birger as his first choice).
Blackmoon eats a liver. It tastes of iron.