Ulfgar's Enemies Part II
In The News
Sharn Inquisitive: Sul 15 Barrakas - Front Page
Skycoach Joyride Nearly Kills a Young Human - Residents of Lower Central Plateau got a rude surprise last Zol evening when several skycoaches went flying recklessly through the narrow streets and tower foundations of the area. These areas are strictly off limits to the coaches, yet reports indicate that between two and five of the vehicles ripped through neighborhoods and marketplaces at ridiculously unsafe speeds.
Azalia Kirkwin's son Quiq was nearly run down by the reckless drivers. "I was in the middle of the market, taking down my stall, when suddenly at least four skycoaches went sailing at insane speed through the middle of the crowd. I saw my Quiq and he was nearly mown down - fortunately he lived up to his name, and wasn't harmed. Those drivers ought to be ashamed! Joyriding through a marketplace!"
It seems that most of the joy riders met and unpleasant end, however. The wreckage of one skycoach was found near a narrow alley - apparently unable to fit through the confined space. Another two were found crashed into each other atop the large roof of Gyko's Dance Hall. In addition, along the path of carnage are the grisly bodies of several creatures. Two half-elves, one changeling, one human, a gnome, a gnoll, a goblin, an orc, and a bugbear were found along the trail of destruction. This points towards Daask involvement - but it could just as easily have been drunk miscreants on a joyride.
One of the coaches belonged to Goldenbar Skycoach, and one of their drivers is among the dead - most likely killed when the coach was hijacked. The driver, Elkew Jammer, is survived by his wife and three young children. The other two coaches were unmarked. The watch is investigating the matter.
Chronicle
Suddenly an arrow whistled out of the rain and growing darkness of the Sharn evening. With a thud it crashed into the skycoach driver's back. He lurched forward, sending the coach into a sudden dive before slipping over the railing. Their stomachs suddenly flying up to their throats, Sadie, Cora, and Thaspar were instantly thrown into panic as the streets of Sharn rose up to meet them.
Thaspar immediately flung himself out the door and attempted to climb down to the controls. Unfortunately he almost immediately lost his footing. Unable to grab ahold of the coach he began floating away - freefalling at the same speed as the vehicle. Sadie had better luck. Shifting and bracing herself with her claws she clambered down the falling coach. Purusing the controls she figured she had a pretty good idea how to fly the coach and pulled back on the oars. The coach quickly leveled out, and Thaspar came crashing back to the prow - and had the wind knocked out of him.
But they weren't out of the woods yet. Before Sadie could gain control the skycoach was suddenly amongst narrow streets and alleys of the foundations of Sharn's mighty towers. Thus began a deadly game of reflexes. In addition two skycoaches were hot on their tail and gaining fast. As they raced past shops a flurry of arrows thunked into the sides of the coach.
Trusting in Thaspar's superior intuition, Sadie handed the controls over to the elf, and moved to the back of the coach and up onto the roof of the cabin. Almost immediately the coach came shooting out from the passage it was traversing... right into a busy marketplace. A large crowd of lower city denizens were gathered in the open space - and with the low ceiling, there was no way to go over them - they would have to go through.
Despite his normally wise judgment on matters of mechanical controls something about the skycoach mechanism baffled Thaspar's usually sharp senses. He just couldn't get the hang of the mechanism. Twisting wildly on the oars the skycoach careened madly through the crowd. People were screaming and fleeing in all directions as they jumped out of the way and overturned stalls. All except one small boy. As the crowd parted he stood transfixed at the skycoach bearing down on him. Thaspar made a desperate jerk of the controls, and despite his lack of understanding of their function the coach veered crazily and just barely avoided the child who was knocked down in a gust of wind as the vehicle roared by.
The pursuing coaches took advantage of the cleared space and began closing the gap. Cora and Sadie tried firing upon their pursuers, but it was hard to make the shot from coach to coach - especially with Thaspar's shaky and jerky driving. Fortunately their opponents suffered the same disadvantage, and none of their shots hit their mark either. But in almost no time the nearest coach had come almost within jumping distance.
It was then that Thaspar noticed it. In the dim, rainy light he suddenly realized that the tunnel was about to end in a wall. In the split second before they reached the wall, Thaspar realized that the floor of the tunnel sank to join a lower tunnel and the coach was going to have to drop - fast. Trying to accomplish this as best he could manage he yanked on the oars. The craft responded by pulling downwards at a crazy angle, but not quite enough. The ceiling ripped the entire roof of the cabin off the coach. As the roof began to buckle as it was torn off, Sadie made a mad leap to the opposing coach. With shards of the destroyed roof that had been her perch moments before flying through the air, Sadie landed, catlike, on the opposing coach (which had pulled under the ceiling) and found herself locked in battle with the waiting gnoll.
With the coach under Thaspar's control still pitching wildly, the nearby coach pulled up immediately beside and two well armed assailants made to board. The first, a half-elf, made the jump, but was knocked prone by a sudden jolt (due to Thaspar's substandard piloting). Thinking quickly, Cora hurled a dart at the attacker and he was killed instantly - pinned to the skycoach railing. The second attacker suffered even more at the hands of Thaspar's bad driving. As he jumped the skycoaches suddenly rammed together. He was thrown off balance and fell between the two. His horrified screams echoed into the night.
Thaspar was still recovering from the low ceiling, when he saw something truly terrifying. There was no way to avoid it. Up ahead the tunnel narrowed into a very narrow alleyway... more narrow than the coach. Working purely on adrenaline he twisted the oars and despite his lack of understanding of the controls managed to get the coach to pitch on its side. Whipping through the alleyway on its side, the entire cabin of the skycoach was torn off, but the controls (which were now vertical) were left intact. Cora clung wildly to the wooden door frame and managed to stay on. With the sudden movement and the fear that he had lost his friends, Thaspar’s stomach leapt to his throat and he was overcome with nausea. He let go of the controls and fell against the railing. The coach was on its side. And no one was driving it.
The coach beside them did not fare as well. The driver tried to maneuver his coach to follow behind, but he was out of time. The coach struck the corner of the wall, smashing into pieces. The driver was instantly killed and half of the coach was obliterated. Having barely had time to enter into combat with the gnoll, Sadie realized she had better jump ship: she tried desperately to leap back onto Thaspar’s coach. In a mad jump she found herself clinging by her claws to the rear hull of the ship, and with a jolt she felt the gnoll grasping her leg for dear life. As the wind screamed through her ears, she could see the other coach approaching.
Meanwhile Thaspar was climbing slowly back towards the controls of the coach, while Cora aimed a few darts at the other coach. Thaspar grabbed ahold of the controls and tried to coerce the contrivance into righting itself. It did so with a crazy sideways twist - which sent the gnoll attached to Sadie crunching into a passing gargoyle. At the same time a blob of acid went flying past Sadie’s head, splattering onto the back of the coach.
As she struggled to hold on to the jerking ship Sadie decided it might be an opportune time to leap upon the enemy-ridden oncoming craft. Crouching her knees up to the hull she shot herself out through the air. It was a crazy distance to jump but somehow she ended up tumbling onto the deck of the incomers - much to their shock. Before her attackers could move she grabbed hold of the driver and wrestled him from the controls. As he released the oars he pulled back, and in an instant the craft pitched and shot straight up. Everyone on the coach was thrown off into space except for Sadie and the driver. But the coach was rapidly shooting straight up towards the buttressed ceiling of the arched tower foundations.
Both Sadie and driver desperately scrambled towards the controls, and the driver got there first. Attempting to grab a hold, he slipped on the now vertical deck, and pulled the controls even father back. In a heart stopping moment the coach turned upside down hurling the driver from the craft. This left Sadie - her claws barely wedged into the boards of the upside-down deck - on a coach now careening towards a stone wall. She swung her hands across the deck, digging in to each new set of boards with her claws. The wall was rushing up, and her breath was ragged as she threw every ounce of strength into her climb. Her claws sliding terrifyingly from their grip she made a mad grasp for the controls. Grabbing hold of an oar, her weight pulled it down, and the craft shot straight downwards, its hull scraping and splintering on the wall that was nearly her end. Gaining full mastery of the craft, she quickly brought it onto a level path.
Meanwhile Thaspar had spotted an exit from the tower foundations into open air, and finally getting the hang of the skycoach slowed the craft and navigated out into the pouring rain. Soon after Sadie followed suit. Piloting their crafts they landed them on a large, secluded roof - unfortunately inexperience led to a small crash with seriously damaged both vehicles.
Safely on the ground the group decided they had best go to see Ulfgar right away. But after walking to his mansion, they found no-one there. Sadie thought she could see a body on the doorstep. After bypassing the gate and its traps the party found themselves inside Ulfgars home. The body on the doorstep was the gate guard. Inside the building was a faint trail of blood, which they followed up to Ulfgars bedroom. There was no sign of anyone left in the home - even the child’s room was empty.
Before heading back to the Mantle for a well deserved rest they reported the incident to a less than helpful secretary at the local Watch station.
The next morning they headed directly for Kundarak bank to find out what was going on. The watch seemed to be fully aware of situation. Apparently Ulfgar and his wife and child had been kidnapped yesterday evening. The watch was looking over the office, along with crack Inquisitive Varieny Knicknar. After some persuasion the party was also admitted to the Dwarf's office.
Miss Knicknar was tall for a gnome, and her long blond hair flowed down around a beautiful, yet cold face. She was accompanied by a halfling assistant and two watchmen - one of the watchmen was the party's old ‘friend’ Sergeant Dolom. Varieny was not particularly warm to the trio. She asked them her questions with a mix of suspicion and condescension, and they relayed the information that they knew.
"Well if they are no other leads I check up on your little story," she finally said, bitingly, "Come Helen!"
With that she, and Helen left to investigate the vaults. This left the party and the two watchmen in the room.
"Take a look around if you want, I'll go with Varieny," Sargeant Dolom said as he quickly left the office.
After Varieny's intensely rude and insulting treatment, the party wanted desperately to find some clue that the great Varieny had missed. They found two.
First, Cora noticed that the Dwarf's walking stick was lying against his desk - but the large gem that normally topped it was missing. Meanwhile Sadie made another discovery. Inside Ulfgar's desk drawer there was a faint buzzing. Cora wisely shut the door and Sadie maneuvered the lock open. As she opened the drawer a tiny mechanical winged object escaped and began flying madly about the room. It took a long time, but eventually the object was caught by Sadie. Exhausted, she held the tiny, struggling thing in her hands. Cora wisely suggested that she not let the guard know she had it. Since her chase was hard to miss, she pretended to put the object back into the drawer and lock it - all the while slipping it into her backpack.
The last stop the trio made at the bank was to talk to a witness to the kidnapping, who they heard from the watchmen was out in the main lobby. The dwarf in question was well dressed, but a little disheveled.
"Damn warforged! They're out to get us all! First they catch you.... then they cut you up into little bits!"
The information they got from the witness mostly consisted of grandiose claims of a warforged conspiracy. He did claim that it was warforged that took Ulfgar, but the veracity of his statements was difficult to ascertain. There was, however, one useful piece of information they got from the Dwarf. The gem atop Ulgars staff was a tracking device, and there were special magical objects in the bank to find it. By convincing him that they would quest to destroy the warforged who took Ulgar, the witness was easily convinced to pilfer the tracking stone and give it to the party.
"If you are getting closer to Ulfgar the stone gets warm, but if you are moving further away it feels cool."
And so, without further delay the three adventurers hailed a skycoach and began tracking Ulfgar d'Kundarak. After circling the southern city for a while they established that Ulfgar was most likely in the district known as Fallen. Fallen had once been the Golden Gate district until, during The Last War, saboteurs brought down the
The coach let them off just on the edge of the Fallen district. There were sick and destitute people on the streets everywhere. As they passed some asked the party for a few coppers, while many simply lay in the street – too drunk or sick to get up. Eventually the air opened up and they find themselves among dilapidated buildings rather than the foundations of the mighty towers. But the buildings were becoming more and more derelict. Entire buildings and even city blocks had been utterly annihilated.
As they came over a small rise the trio got their first view of where this district got its name. The lower area below was almost a wasteland. Huge chunks of shattered rock dominated the landscape. In the dim light of the falling rain mighty statues of the gods looked down on them, but most of these had missing limbs, heads, or were destroyed almost entirely. As lightning illuminated the sky the scene was that of a ruin – one could imagine that these statues were to long forgotten deities – but they could see Dol Dorn and Olladra clearly enough – and many of the Soveriengn Host. There were still a few standing buildings, but most of these were at least partially destroyed. Pieces of towers lay haphazardly across the landscape. The area was utterly desolate, but there yet were occasionally figures darting between the buildings and rubble.
After asking a disturbing old lady for directions, the party set out into the rubble strewn wastes. Following their tracking stone through the silence, rock crunching underfoot, they slowly made their way towards Ulfgar. Nothing opposed them, until...
"Many years ago the
“Many years a go the
We live among the death and smell,
This poem sucks
Now you die!”
He began hurling rocks at the trio. Alone he wasn't much of a menace, but to the horror of the three, suddenly an entire crowd of crazed people swarmed out from the rubble, brandishing rocks, boards, and other pieces of rubble.
The Ravers had the advantage of number. Their onslaught seemed endless. But Thaspar, Sadie, and Cora had the advantage of skill. While the blows of the ravers were painful they fell easily enough, and with a few fancy maneuvers the party made quick work of the ravers which were supposed to be such a dreaded foe.
After a few more minutes of walking through the rubble they came to a large fallen tower. On its side amongst a clatter of rubble the tower appeared to be the place that the stone was leading them to. As they approached the boarded up windows they suddenly found shots raining down on the them from what was once the top of the tower. There a flapping piece of cloth provided an entrance. While Sadie drew her bow, Cora and Thaspar ran forward to engage the foe at close range.
As they approached the entrance they found themselves facing three warforged. The one which had been firing arrows retreated into the tower, leaving two to face the party. The first stepped forward to attack. His body glistened with black adamantine and his hand had been replaced with a huge spiked fist which he brandished menacingly before Thaspar. The warforged in the rear began fiddling with some material components.
Thaspar engaged the black warforged by charging towards him and assaulting him with a magnificent drop-kick. The warforged did not appear pleased. Sadie fired her bow from a distance trying to avoid hitting her friends. Cora skirted around to the artificer who had just finished casting some sort of infusion on his adamantine companion. She feinted left and right, and suddenly plunged her dagger into an unprotected spot on the artificers body. She hung there for a second, seemingly absorbing something, before disconnecting. The artificer angrily made more incantations. Suddenly, the black warforged’s spiked fist burst into flames and he attacked Thaspar with renewed vigor. Thaspar consistently ducked and punched and began to wear the warforged down. The adamantine armor provided strong resistance to the monk's flurries. Just as the warforged began to look weaker, Cora spun from the suddenly fallen Artificer and finished off ‘Spike-fist’ with a deadly sneak attack. In a sudden stillness, the curtain on the tower door flapped in the breeze. Two warforged lay lifeless.
The party took a breath and moved further into the tower. They proceeded through a door which was once a trapdoor into the next room. The door opened into the middle of the wall and rope dangled down to the rubble below. Vertically the room was circular (a tower on its side) but the floor was a flattened pile of rubble. The walls were covered with beautiful carvings which had been destroyed or scratched out. The tangled remains of a wrought iron staircase lay to the side of the room, as well as some weaponry.
A hole in the wall which was once the top of a staircase, led them into the next room. It was similar to the room previous, even down to the mess of wrought iron. Unlike their current location, however, this room contained several warforged. All of them were waiting, at the ready. Near the rear of the room a warforged was standing - his long sword held across the throat of a desperate looking dwarvish woman. In front of both was a warforged covered with arcane markings.
"Any closer and she dies."
Negotiations led to an impasse. The warforged leader did not want to fight the party - he was convinced that he and his cohorts would win, but also realized it could be a very costly battle. On the other hand, the party could not attack directly without jeopardizing the life of the woman. In the end the party backed away into the next room to consider their options. Meanwhile they could hear the warforged casting spells.
Ultimately Sadie came up with the plan. The tower was lined with windows, but they had all been boarded up. Fortunately they always had their trusty crowbar with them. Thaspar and Cora readied themselves outside the entrance to the room while Sadie stealthily crept up the side of the tower and onto the top, above the warforged. Carefully and quietly placing the crowbar in place, she prepared for a daring entrance.
With a crack the boards covering the window flew apart and Sadie dived through the window, rapier pointing downwards at the warforged holding the dwarf hostage. Screaming war cries as she fell, her rapier came crashing down into the floor. There was an air of stunned surprise. Before the warforged could act Thaspar and Cora were upon them. Ready at the instant they heard the window break they rushed the warforged captor and he fell before he could finish off his captive. This left only two warforged to deal with. One, however, was a wizard.
While Sadie moved to intercept the third warforged Thaspar and Cora focused on the spellcaster. He had not been idle while they planned, however. A fiendish viper suddenly slithered from behind his legs, straight towards Cora. The snake quickly sunk its venomous teeth into her heel. As the poison shot through her veins Cora nearly blacked out, but managing to stagger away she kept her consciousness. Thaspar moved to engage the serpent, when suddenly sticky strands shot out from the metal wizard’s hands and filled the corner of the room with an immense spider web. Ever nimble, Thaspar managed to avoid being entangled in the spell, but movement was still constrained. Twisting through the web he managed to get close enough to the snake to make an attack. The creature turned to strike him, but as it lunged forward, the monk’s sword flew through the air and sliced the creature into two long half-snakes.
Meanwhile Sadie had easily dispatched the third warforged with her improving rapier skills and turned on the wizard. Now flanked between the elf and shifter he was defeated quickly. As the dust settled they found Cora in a cold sweat and shaking on the floor. After a few minutes the worst of the poison was over.
The dwarvish woman introduced herself as Orilla d'Kundarak - she was indeed Ulfgars wife, and Sadie found her son whimpering in the next room, along with Ulfgar's tracking gem. Orilla said that Ulfgar was no longer here. He had been, but the warforged had insisted that he take them to Aaren's Tomb. They had left a couple of hours ago. The trio decided that they had best head for this tomb as quickly as they could (though not before Cora nearly got herself killed by exploring a room with an unstable ceiling in her weakened state).
Before they set out across the wastes of Fallen, Thaspar and Sadie noticed Cora doing something odd. She pulled some cinnamon out of a small pouch, sprinkled it on the dwarf boy's shoes, and muttered something. Then she told him that he would be able to outrun any danger they faced. The others found this very strange, but they didn't have time to think about it, as they were attacked by a large group of ravers muttering "First I'm gunna find 'em, then I'm gunna eat 'em". By the time they were defeated the moment had passed.
As soon as the shadow of Fallen was behind them, the party hailed a skycoach, dropped the dwarves off in the upper city, and made a quick stop at House Jorasco. There Cora, in a poison and Liam induced stupor, was treated and recovered from most of the damage the poison had done. Thaspar and Sadie also benefited from some aid.
Not wasting any time, they quickly left the healers and got into another skycoach. This time speeding straight towards the City of the Dead and Aaren's Tomb.
Timeline
- Zol 10 Barrakas - Skycoach chase and investigation of Ulfgar's Manor
- Wir 11 Barrakas - Investigation at the Bank and the Warforged in Fallen
People
Varieny Knicker
The best (or at least most expensive) Inquistive in Sharn. She was hired by Kundarak bank to track down the missing Ulfgar d'Kundarak.
Heroic Actions
- Sadie ended up leaping on every one of the coaches involved in the coach chase, as well as climbing along the underside of an upside-down coach in order to man the controls
- Thaspar charged and dropkicked an adamantine plated warforged
- Sadie, aiming at the same warforged, shot Thaspar in the back... with an ice arrow
- Cora did some kind of strange and extremely deadly attack on a warforged artificer
- Sadie bashed in a wooden "skylight" and came crashing through with her rapier to attack the warforged holding Ulfgar's wife hostage... and missed
- Cora was nearly killed by a small falling rock
Heroic Quotes
- "Haha! My butt is safe!" - Robert
- "Yes, that impression was so good that I want to punch you in the face." - Sadie
- "I just drank the last healing potion because I failed my wisdom roll." -
- "I'm just going to quickly search that room." - Cora
Adventure Names
- Robert - ~~First I'm Gonna Find 'Em - Then I'm Gonna Eat 'Em~~
- Robyn – Cora’s New Tricks
- Bryan - Boatjumping
Legends & Lore
The name that most people associate with the warforged is that of Merrix d'Cannith. This man developed the first of the creation forges, and his warforged titans were the first of the sentient constructs. As brilliant as Merrix II was, it was his son Aaren who created the first truly living constructs. Born into an age of war, Aaren was a philosopher as well as an artificer. While his father worked on weapons, Aaren studied the nature of life itself, seeking ways to breathe true consciousness into metal and stone. Many ridiculed his ideas until his work bore strange fruit. Using a modified creation forge, Aaren blended a diverse range of materials and techniques to create an entirely new form of construct. Aaren's creations were capable of independent, creative thought, and even emotional behavior. These were the first true warforged.
The warforged possessed many advantages over traditional constructs. Aaren had incorporated organic material into their design, binding steel and stone together with a flexible material similar to the roots of livewood trees. These binding roots could be rapidly grown within a creation forge, reducing the cost of production; they also responded to traditional healing magic, though these spells were not as effective on the warforged as they were on creatures of flesh and blood.
Aaren was a dreamer, who sought to unravel the mysteries of life. But his father had other plans for his son's inventions. Here was the tireless soldier the house had been seeking. Merrix adapted the creation forges to use Aaren's designs, and soon the house was producing platoons of armored constructs, which were indoctrinated into service as soon as they emerged from the forges. During this time, the term "warforged" was coined, since Merrix sought to hammer a martial purpose into these constructs from the moment of birth. Aaren protested what he saw as the abuse and enslavement of his creations, but his pleas were ignored. In 970 YK, Aaren was excoriated -- formally disinherited from House Cannith. Merrix d'Cannith adopted his grandson, who was also named Merrix; in time, this boy would become House Cannith's Baron of Sharn.
Following his expulsion, Aaren disappeared. His fate remains a mystery, and diviners and inquisitives have found no traces of him. Most believe that Aaren is long dead, but a number of conflicting stories present other possibilities.
Statistics
Date Played: November 13, 2005
Session Length: 6.5 hours
Experience Gained: 1525/character
Foes Vanquished: 2 skycoachloads of foes, 14 Ravers, 5 Warforged
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