Dragonlance Session 9

 

Player Characters

• Amity, Light Fighter 4, Butcher, Sword Specialist
• Kirilov, Neutral Cleric of Habbakuk 5, Healer, Barber/Surgeon, Endless Endurance, prophetic dreams. Nine fingers.
• Lunethalas, Dark Elf 3, Sword Specialist, Polyglot, Naturalist, Master Historian

Hangers-on

• Rhona, Neutral Ranger 3, Sword Specialist, Naturalist
• Elka Reed, whose dead mom they found earlier. A 0-level villager they've hired to follow them around and sketch the amazing sights they discover.

Peradventure

The players headed, unsteadily, into the Halls of the Toad-King.

Finding a bridge over the river, they threw in one of their newly acquired buckets of fish-guts to placate the enormous Toad-Hydra that lurked below, then left the remainder of those guts with a Toad-Man that was selling them on the other side.

Passing a butcher's shop in an open-air pagoda, they headed north and spoke to two disinterested sentries, who informed them that both the Toad-King, should they wish to find him, and the Guest Quarters, could be found further to the north. As one began to show them away, there was a sudden attack of stirges from the ceiling!!! But Lunethelas quickly put them to Sleep. This then also distracted the sentries, who took a stirge each to noisily gulp down just out of sight.

Heading north alone, the party came by a large red gate and a large bronze gong. Ringing the gong loudly, Amity unintentionally signaled the beginning of the Hours of Mystery - which angered and confused almost everyone, as the Hours of Mystery had only just ended! They distracted the first angry guards by offering them more stirge-flesh, then slipped behind the gate.

Behind the gate, they met with three mystical and mysterious Obor, slighter and more refined than any of the Toad-Men in the larger caverns. They were treated with tea and vague koans, and felt (some of them) resolved to address the issue of what they believed to be somewhat lessened Toad-Men outside of the gate. Kirilov's intentions seemed especially to move the masters, if any were moved at all.

Finding no one waiting for them when they left the gate, they quickly found and bluffed their way into the quarters of Karamantis, the black-robed wizard who Atalanta had directed them to possibly seek out. He passed on his shared concern that something was wrong in the Halls of the Toad-King and, determining that they might be able to do something about it, provided them with directions towards a secret underwater passage, and some potions of water-breathing with which to explore it.

On their way: the party stopped back at the butcher to get overcharged for fish oil as they were running low on lamp oil, avoided two Toad-Men rutting in a crude hut, and an oversized, seemingly diseased Toad-Man in an even cruder hut.

Lunethalas repeated his job as underwater scout and led the rest of the party to a brief 10 foot shelf which would need to be climbed to be free of the water again. What he discovered when he was lifted up first:

     A cage full of sickly humans

    A cage full of feral Toad-Men youths 

   A ritual table with ritual devices

  Two, previously unseen, Toad-Men priests. Who spring into action!