Characters

• Django Staboss - Dwarven Cleric
• Marika Spandrell - Human Rogue
• Raif - Human Sorcerer (with his familiar, Sanchez the monkey)
• Philomena Halimion - Elven Wizard
• Eog - Dwarven Monk
• Heinrich - Human Fighter
• Jayne D’Ark - Human Fighter

14 - The Great River

The party rested at Marikest until the boat arrived to take them south, down the Great River to Crossriver, a town on the Eastern Road. The boat in question turned out to be a magically-powered vessel called the Star of Ardentin, named after the great emperor himself.  Two large paddle-wheels were fixed to the sides of the boat, and these were turned by an iron golem that was fixed into the hold. Captain Ivan, the master of the boat, agreed to give the party free passage on the boat if they would act as guards. Apparently one of Captain Ivan’s crew (a human woman named Jenny) had been killed during a Hobgoblin attack on the journey upriver, and the captain was expecting more trouble on the way back. The remaining crew consisted of a half-orc deck-hand called Hobnob, a Dwarven engineer named Gloina Agna, and Edgar Piecrust the halfling quarter-master and cook.

The boat unloaded some much-needed supplies, re-loaded with some ore from the mine at Brightstone, whatever scant produce the townsfolk of Marikest could spare for trading after the devastating attack, and the passengers. The latter consisted of the party and a mysterious ranger from the north (who looked initially like he might be playing a major part in this story, but turned out to be only a guest star.)  The ranger, called Veralde, arrived on board with his large wolf companion, and a wooden box that was duly stored in the hold.

Off they went, down the Great River, making good time as the paddle-wheels turned and the current carried them away from Marikest and ever closer to Castle Greyhawk, that noisy, ugly, smelly and dangerous place the party were starting to think of as home. The first day passed without event, and the party were able to watch as the hills got shorter and the plains got, well, plainer. The party began to get to know the crew, and Gloina even took them down to the lower hold to show them her workshop and introduce them to the final member of the crew, the great iron golem known as Barzillay. In fact he was only the upper half of a golem, his legs were nowhere to be seen. He was bolted to the wooden floor at his waist, but had apparently lost none of his strength as with each hand he was able to turn a handle that drove one of the wheels. The party tried talking to him, and were surprised when he answered in sonorous tones with fragments of poetry and philosophy, for example:

“The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.”

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

“When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire.”

Later that evening, as they sat at the captain’s table, they were regaled with stories by Captain Ivan who, being a good Celenian, was something of an amateur historian. He told them how he believed Barzillay was once one of the guardians of the emperor’s treasure vaults, located deep under the city of Celene. Apparently they were intelligent golems that, as they fought, recited verse so beautiful and moving that their enemies often refused to destroy them. During the Great War against the Twisted Army, the emperor’s vaults were so depleted that there was nothing left to guard, so the golems were sent to the front line to battle with evil giants and fire-breathing dragons. It was there that Barzillay was damaged, so Captain Ivan believed, and the emperor, taking pity on his faithful servant, had him installed in this vessel, which was allegedly used by the emperor himself before his own fall defending the famous wall that now bears his name. That was over ninety years ago, and the Star had changed hands several times since then. Captain Ivan, once a soldier in the Celenian army, had one it in a drunken card game, and had been using it to ferry cargo up and down the Great River ever since.

The party retired to their hammocks down in the crew’s quarters, and settled in to enjoy the main part of the adventure, now that all the boring back-story had been revealed. Here follows a much-abridged account of their eventful trip to Crossriver:

Wild Growth

During the first night, another surge of energy passed through the ship. This seems to be happening to the party more-and-more frequently. It had two noteworthy effects. The first was that Eduardo, the baby bugbear adopted by Raif, grew instantaneously from an infant into a young teenager. The second was that the seeds inside the box belonging to the mysterious ranger, Veralde, all grew to full-sized plants in the blink of an eye, filling the hold with lush vegetation. Unfortunately for the party, it turned out that several of the seeds were of the more “exotic” variety, and the party ended up fighting off an assortment of plant-creatures such as a tribe of vegepygmys, a violet fungus and a large assassin vine that had wrapped itself around Barzillay.

Hobgoblins and No-eyed Prophets

Halfway through the second day, when the boat was forced to go near the riverbank, the hobgoblins dutifully attacked. The party quickly wiped the shore with them, having more difficulty in not falling in the water as they got off the boat than in the actual battle. The only thing that gave them slight pause was when the hobgoblins called forth their animal trainer, who turned out to be a blind Cyclops with two guide-leopards. The leopards did a fair bit of biting and raking, and the Cyclops swung a huge staff around every time anyone coughed or stepped on a twig, but when the hobgoblins were clearly beaten, the Cyclops changed sides, which pretty much ended the fight. It turned out that the Cyclops, whose name was Tuphlos, had been captured as a baby, deliberately blinded, and turned into a slave. He was only too glad to see the back of his cruel masters, and in fact had foreseen his rescue thanks to his gift of prophecy. Before leaving to seek out a new life he delivered this message to the party, having apparently heard it in his flash of insight:

“Those that were asleep are waking. He who was dead shall rise again. The beast stirs in its ancient prison. The gods hear the music of impermanence.”

Which was nice.

Village of the Kobolds

At the end of the second day the party arrived at a waterfall that blocked the way. Fortunately, a series of locks had been built during the more affluent days of the Celenian Empire that allowed vessels to travel around the falls without needing to sprout wings. Captain Ivan decided it was too late in the day to use the locks, so he put the Star into parking mode, and left the boat sitting in the middle of the river, the paddle-wheels turning slowly against the current so that it moved neither forwards nor backwards. It also transpired that Barzillay had been damaged by the assassin vine, and needed a minor part replaced in order to function at full capacity. The party were charged with paying a quick visit to the nearby village of Eastbrook to get the part made by the local blacksmith.

The next day the party rowed ashore in a longboat and went to negotiate the toll with the lock-keeper. They soon realised something was amiss when he tried to charge them 20 times the normal price and kept looking shiftily towards his little cottage. The party investigated and found two kobolds lurking inside, who were soon dispatched. The lock-keeper then revealed that kobolds had taken over Eastbrook, and had kidnapped his wife and taken her hostage. He begged them to help him, so the party agreed to go to Eastbrook. The fact that they needed to go anyway had no bearing on their decision, honest…

When they arrived at the village it seemed deserted. However, they soon realised this was not the case when Eog was attacked by the statue in the town centre, which turned out to be a large mimic. Things were going very badly for Eog, who ended up glued to the strange creature as it slammed into him again and again with its pseudopods. It would have been a very sticky end (geddit?!) for him, had Heinrich not charged in and delivered an awesome blow with his mighty sword. The mimic tried to escape, but was too slow and was soon lying dead on the floor.

The rest of the exploration of the village was a strange game of cat-and-mouse, or in this case, party-and-kobolds. It turned out that the kobolds had dug a series of tunnels linking the main buildings of the village together in a network of underground passages. As soon as the party identified where the kobolds were, they moved to another location. Philomena managed to infiltrate the kobolds using a disguise spell and was able to find where they had hidden the blacksmith, who was the only original villager still in the village. Meanwhile, the rest of the party mopped up the kobolds. The only one who gave them any trouble was the kobold leader, who turned out to be none other than M’dok, the sorcerer they had encountered before in the mines at Duvik’s Pass. He seemed just as surprised and irritated to see the party as they were to see him. Well, probably a bit more so, as they captured him, then Heinrich beat him into an unconscious pulp with the butt of his sword.

 On interrogating M’dok the party discovered that the kobolds themselves were in the thrall of an evil sorceress who lived in a cavern some miles from the village, known locally as the “Gibbering Cave”. Apparently she had captured M’dok’s children and was holding them hostage in return for a steady supply of humans to use in her foul experiments. So…

Gibbering Wrecks

…off  they went, through the forest and to the Gibbering Cave, which turned out the be a vast lump of rock sitting incongruously in the middle of the trees, almost as if it had been flung there by a giant hand. They found several entrances into the rock at various heights, and chose the one covered in spiders’ webs, presumably on the premise that it was not in use. They left Django on guard outside the rock and climbed up and into the cave. Of course it turned out that the small network of grottos behind the webby entrance was in use, by an Ettercap and several monstrously large spiders. After various sticky web- and poison-related antics, the party slew the spiders and forced the Ettercap to flee into the forest. After the fight, the party heard Django calling for them and, upon hoisting him up, they were informed that M’dok had escaped, aided by the lock-keeper who, as it turned out, didn’t have a wife at all and was in league with the kobolds. Django decided that as he was already in the cave he would join the partying their exploration.

 The party went on deeper into the cave system and soon encountered a room full of mutated humans, apparently the result of the sorceress’s experiments on the villagers. These poor, twisted creatures were half human, half animal and half who-knows-what (yes, I know that’s three halves.) The party were in two minds as to what to do with them, but it soon transpired the creatures were hostile, apparently driven mad by whatever process they had undergone. The party ended up destroying the things, some members more reluctantly than others…

Beyond this room they found the sorceress’s laboratory, with several cages full of un-experimented-upon humans. The iron cages were sturdy and locked. Beyond the lab they found a huge cavern with a large natural stone pillar at its centre. Whilst exploring the area they encountered the sorceress, who initially masqueraded as a young human girl, but turned out to be a young ogre mage. They also met her bodyguard, a small ice golem called Mr. Frosticle who for some reason was wearing a top hat. A battle ensued, during which Mr. Frosticle did a great deal of damage before finally exploding in a shower of icy shards as Heinrich’s sword chopped him in twain. The ogress used her magic powers to some success, but was finally forced to turn invisible and flee, or so the party thought…

As they tried to free the humans in the cages, they heard a sound coming from the huge cavern with the pillar: a wailing, gibbering cacophony and a voice shouting out in alarm. The ogress had opened a secret door in the cavern wall and released a horrid mass of flesh and eyes and screaming mouths that rolled towards the party. A fierce battle followed, as the party fought the thing, whilst trying to avoid being engulfed and de-sanguinated by the biting, gibbering mouths. They finally killed this gibbering mouther, but as it died, it broke into hundreds of tiny versions of itself. The voice they had heard calling out in alarm, spoke to them again, warning them that the creature they had fought was a “seeder” and that they must at all cost destroy all the mini-mouthers before they could escape. The voice seemed to come from the stone pillar in the centre of the cavern, and on examining it, Eog found a glowing area. On touching this, a section of the pillar disappeared and behind it an odd-looking mace was revealed. Basically it was a standard metal-ball-on-a-stick design, but instead of the usual metallic spikes on the ball, there were hemispherical metallic eyes, each one seeming to stare at Eog. Between the eyes were numerous small mouths, all moving together to produce the voice that the party had heard warning them. The mace introduced itself as Makar, and told Eog that it had been designed as a weapon against the Gibbering Mouthers and that removing him from his alcove would cause the entire cavern system to collapse shortly afterwards, thus destroying the mini-mouthers before they could spread and breed explosively. Eog thought for a moment, then decided he had no choice but to take the magical mace, and as he did so, the party heard a rumbling sound, and chunks of the ceiling began to fall all around them.

They decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and legged it. Except… Eog suddenly remembered the humans trapped in cages in the ogress’s laboratory. He ran in to try to free them, aided by Django, as the others ran to the exit. Django called upon the power of Torag and used his Artificer’s Touch to corrode the locks, whilst Eog rained flurry after flurry of blows upon them. They freed all but the last cage of prisoners, however, it became clear that the whole place was about to collapse and they had left it too late to escape. As the roof fell in on them, Django said a prayer to Torag, and Eog waited helplessly for a crushing death…that never came. At the very last moment, the magical mace, Makar, used magic to transport Eog out of the rock. Unfortunately, Makar could only save Eog, and poor Django met his end inside the Gibbering Cave. He died a hero, and surely his spirit will go to the great Dwarven halls of Torag, so it wasn’t a bad death…

After it was all over, Makar explained a little of his history. Apparently, some two thousand years ago, a terrible plague of Gibbering Mouthers scourged the lands of Campania. The Fey, Elves and Dwarves combined forces to defeat them, in the process creating weapons such as Makar, specifically designed to be deadly to Mouthers. The worst of these Mouthers were the Seeders, who would split into thousands of mini-mouthers when killed. Some of these seeders were gargantuan in size and destroying them in battle would simply create millions of new Mothers. Therefore, rather than kill them, the alliance imprisoned them in magically sealed caves and allowed them to slowly starve to death, getting smaller and smaller until they could finally be easily killed. Each cave was left with a guardian weapon, and was trapped to collapse if the weapon was removed. Makar’s full powers only manifest in the presence of a Mouther, so it was fortunate that Heinrich had captured a mini-mouther in a potion bottle. However, on discovering this, Makar forced Eog to kill the mini-mouther, and then lapsed into silence.

After a suitable grieving time for Django (about 9 seconds), the party took the remaining villagers back to the village, got the blacksmith to make the part they needed, then went back to the Star and carried on their journey. This took this best part of two days, and proved to be uneventful. As the river went south it widened, and so they were able to stay further from the riverbank, and also the countryside around them became more hospitable as they got close to the Eastern Road. They stayed overnight in Crossriver, then travelled one more day west along the Eastern Road, back to Castle Greyhawk and to the relative safety and normality of their rooms in the Herzog’s Tower.