As our adventurers awake, heads reeling from a night of carousing after a successful wedding ceremony, Queen Lukith bursts through the door!
“Princess Vlakith has been kidnapped!”, She declares.
Our adventurers are off to a bad start… Let’s see how each group handles the situation.
Hasselhoff, King Knut, Andoryx, Geo, and Uhr
It appears that in the early hours of the morning one Vornix Dale had led a small team into the city and kidnapped the newly married princess while nearly the whole town slept off a massive hangover. The Queen quickly kicked out or roused people from the lobby of the hotel and turned it into a makeshift command center for Clan Skre’lor as more and more orc teams are summoned and sent off in different directions in search of the princess. The party was quickly informed that they would be acting as escorts for Elune and Jemwise Faroot. Children of the Governor of Landfall. Jemwise is determined to find his new bride and bring her to safety…or at least be there when that happens.
The governor assigned his best Ranger to his children’s team. Stallenor is a middle aged man of middling height, with a preference for simple leathers and a large brimmed hat that droops a little too much to be fashionable. The air of confidence he exudes is almost increased by his simple clothes.
Accompanying Elune are two of her “Trusted Men” Staxalon and Bromwell. Staxalon is a large black dragonborn who carries a longbow and wears half plate. Bromwell a tall skinny High Elf, with a bastard sword and obvious spell components at his waist.
After a brief “misunderstanding” between King Knut and Staxalon over Elune’s horse (that required Stallenor to resolve) the party sets off outside of Landfall, headed West towards the mountains. After a first day of relatively easy travel, Stallenor was able to find tracks that matched those found near the scene of the attack. The long chase is on… after a night’s rest.
Toof, Dresden, Luzon, Bastian
Queen Vlakith stormed off, swearing vengeance, and Governor Ribble Faroot said that the orcs had already formed search parties and were already marauding across the city, and that he had to try and calm Vlakith and her kin before things got out of hand. He asked the party to watch over his two children while he dealt with the crisis.
Dresden convinced Jemwise to take the group back to the site of Vlakith’s abduction at The Guilded Melange’s honeymoon suite. There they found signs of a struggle and some puzzling muddied footprints that obfuscated the assailants’ means of escape. Bastian looked out the bedroom window and found another set of muddy prints on the outer wall. Sensing that this new clue indicated an attack from above, the group raced to the Melange’s rooftop. Toof found evidence of a shapeshifter at work, which caused the party to suspect that the perpetrators may have been druidic followers of Xerakath.
Meanwhile, Elune Faroot revealed that she’d brought in outside help in the form of the elven hunter Stellanor Whisperleaf. With Stellanor’s help, the party followed the trail left by the kidnappers and picked up more traveling companions that included Draevax, a mild-mannered elven man who claimed to be a disciple of The Witness who simply wished to observe the proceedings.
So, the mistwood team does some sleuthing, while the Goran’s cut team gets right on the road. In any case, the two parties join up and make their way towards shadowspire peak, following the trail of the Xerakath’s Blade cultists.
After a day’s travel and a night of tales and song, the party once again picked up the trail and were rewarded with a clue to Vlakith’s whereabouts: the scrimshawed antler Jemwise had presented to her as a wdding gift. The item had been dropped on a trail leading into the Shadowspire Mountains, home of the mighty giant clans.
The group barely had time to process the notion of heading into rugged, giant-controlled terrain when they were attacked by a member of Xerakath’s Blades who unleashed a mob of giant poisonous snakes, spiders, and wasps while casting druidic spells. The fight that followed was grueling, but the enemies were dispatched without any party members being incapacitated.
While they were engaged in battle, Draevax magically opened an entrance in a stone bluff that ran alongside the road, which Elune and her guardsmen used to spirit Jemwise away. Draevax revealed himself as a Blade of Xerakath and dispatched Stellanor quickly and brutally before stepping into a tree and vanishing.
There is now. a choice to be made: journey upward into the mountains to brave the giants and find Vlakith? Or delve into the gloom of the underdark to hunt the traitorus Elune and rescue here kind if inept brother?