The Bloody Marches - Session Four

The Brood Snatcher lay anchored in the demesne of Ingmaind the Ascending, counting their coin and mourning their losses. An outrigger from the Shattered Islands approached, the grinning captain bringing adventuring supplies to exchange for hard-earned treasure.

Also aboard the karakoa was a somber Axedwarf from the Mountainhomes. He said he was a friend of Father Dewyd, journeying on a quest to slay the daimones that killed his drinking buddy. The party eagerly welcomed their newest recruit and arrayed themselves for further adventure:

• Burned Leaves, Elf 2.
• Godwin the Green, Fighter 3.
• Heiwae Mann, Thief 4.
• Robin, Cleric 3.
• Varg, Dwarf 2.

Shanty

The adventurers asked Varg to decipher the black box they'd recovered. It was a standard expedition log, seven dwarves operating as a franchise of Mimblewimble Arms searching for archaeological sites to ransack. According to the logs, they'd been bribing a clan of Wererabbits so they could excavate a suspected Giant Kingdoms barrow below their lair. The greedy miners had abandoned their carrack, hoping to bring all their dwarfpower to bear on looting the dungeon. Given they'd never returned, something terrible had probably befallen them.

Unwilling to tangle with Wererabbits before Robin could cast Cure Disease, the Brood Snatcher instead set course for an old dwarven ruin in the mountains. Given it was listed on their Serpentman map, the party assumed the halfmen had been collaborating with the snakes. Varg grumbled about traitors to the Mountainhomes. He had no problem robbing such hoopheads blind.

The adventurers anchored their boat opposite the Dwarven wreck and went ashore. They immediately spotted mutated vultures circling above something ahead. Mounting their horses, they rode into hills of torched grass and charred trees, the aftermath of a bushfire ravaging the area. Producing an eyeglass purchased from the Islanders, Godwin crept onto a hillock to observe the necrophages.

The Vulbats circled the massive corpse of a cyclopes. The monocular giant had hung himself on a burned mountain ash, a golden rope taught around his neck and a toppled megalith as his feet. The man-sized scavengers were greedily devouring his corpse. Assuming they'd be violently territorial, Heiwae Mann volunteered to return to the Brood Snatcher and procure something to distract them.

Mounting Fred the Horse, the thief rode across the burned fields back to the Redriver. He stopped short before a copse of charred paperbarks, spotting a cabal of purple-cloaked figures. They'd also seen him, and the leader shouted a call-and-response in Chaotic argot. Both sides relaxed when Heiwae Mann responded in kind. After a cryptic conversation in alignment language, the rogue learned the purple men were scalphunters from the Floating Gardens, a city state infamous for its assassins. He offered their leader, Genos, the head of the rotting cyclops in exchange for their help. The bravos agreed and exited the woodline, revealing the squad of Thouls auxiliaries shadowing them. Heiwae Mann gulped at the sight of the hobgoblin supersoldiers, thankful they were now on his side.

Carl Bloch

Godwin grimaced as he stared at the Vulbats. The beasts carried diseases on their claws, and his party was days away from the nearest source of healing. A voice next to him asked what he was looking at. He spun around to see a brightly clothed man with a stupid goatee grinning at him. The party soon realised they were surrounded by rival adventurers armed with poisoned crossbows and serrated talons. Genos assured the knight their mutual friend had already negotiated a truce, twirling an arrow with Heiwae's fletching between gloved fingers. Besides, he'd heard about their exploits. They weren't the easy marks he and his men were used to.

The thief soon returned, Fred laden with jugs of corpseflower juice courtesy of their newly hired homunculus alchemist. The adventurers planned to lay beartraps in the open and slather them with the juice as a bait. Heiwae crept forward, traps and alchemy flasks in hand, and was immediately attacked by the territorial bird-things.

Dropping his paraphernalia, the thief swept his sword in the air as he retreated. His fellows covered his retreat with slingstones, javelins and pistol shot. The latter missed, but the crack of gunfire routed the Vulbats. Burned Leaves struck out with Sleep, dropping the fleeing necrophages from the sky, and the Gardeners killed the survivors with a volley of envenomed bolts. 

With the immediate threat dealt with, there was still the question of getting the giant's corpse from the tree. Godwin fired a grappling hook from his crossbow, scoring a perfect strike at the treetop and earning a cheer from the Gardeners. Heiwae Mann and Varg scaled the charred trunk. They examined the cadaver and golden cable, identifying it as a rope woven from white gold. The pair eventually chose to melt the cyclops' neck with a jar of Green Slime recovered from the SINKING TOWER. With a sloppy crunch, the body fell free and crashed to the earth, spraying gross juices everywhere. The head soon followed, toppling free of the noose and landing with a squelch among the rotting detrius. Genos wasted no time ordering their Thouls to begin defleshing the skull for transport.

There was still the question of freeing the golden cable, so Varg doffed his maille and went to work with his axe. The assassins wolfwhistled as the shirtless dwarf hacked away, pale torso glistening with dense muscle. After half-an-hour's work the branch fell away and he kicked the cable free for the party to unweave. They found a length of vantablack rope at its centre. Unable to identify it, they stowed their treasure and bid farewell to the swashbuckling bravos.

The following day the party found the ruin in a narrow valley, where a distributary of the Redriver led into a fissure in the earth. A paved road ran parallel to the creek, terminating in a cave mouth. Fetishes decorated the entrance, which Robin identified as belonging to a tribe of giant-worshipping Orcs. After watching a pack of Blink Dogs pass through the valley, they decided to buff Heiwae Mann and send him ahead as a scout. Burned Leaves popped a scroll of Infravision and the thief went forth.

Nagli

The flooded grotto was dark, but Heiwae's enchanted eyes picked out a trio of cyclopean Orcs gathered around a pile of handcrafts. He spoke enough of their tongue to pick out a conversation about gifting worthy offerings to the Cyclopes. It seemed the monocular giants were brutalizing the greenmen, despite their futile attempts at appeasement. After he briefed the party, they settled on a tried-and-tested tactic: Burned Leaves cast Sleep and ended the combat before it began.

Once the Cyclorcs were incapacitated, the elf placed his hand over one's face, pickling his brain with a Charm Person spell. When the monsterman woke up, he blinked in confusion and apologized profusely for falling asleep on watch. The adventurers forgave him, then quizzed the ensorcelled sentry for information. Sven the Orc explained his tribe served the Cyclopes, who used to be Margraves of the Giant Kingdoms until state-sponsored adventurers massacred them all and founded the colony of Fallowfields on their domain's ruins. The condottiere were paid with the giants' beloved golden sheep, flaying the poor beasties for experience points.

The Cyclopes went mad after their forced exodus, lashing out in violent outbursts and killing Orcs in droves. The tribe decided to hide inside an old dwarven hold, hoping to find legendary tools they could offer to their living gods and give them a productive outlet for their rage. They hadn't had much success due to the dungeon being full of overpowered monsters. The tribe had managed to capture two Bucentaurs, but couldn't agree on whether to offer them as sacrifices to their pharaohs. Their leader, Bruce, had vetoed the decision, fearing it would only fuel the giants' bloodlust.

Once prompted by Godwin, Sven was able to identify the vantablack cord as a Rope of Climbing. He even knew the command word - MASTICATE. The adventurers then ordered the charmed greenman to introduce them to their warchief. Sven dutifully led them past a few rooms full of traps to the tribe's lair, occupied by a dozen warriors and an equal number of noncombatants. Things nearly turned violent, but Heiwae leveraged his language skills to talk the tribals down. Bruce, a tall Cyclorc crippled by a broken ankle, asked the adventurers what they wanted. The party offered to clear out the temple so the tribe could strip it for magical crafting equipment. In exchange, the greenmen would give them free passage and permission to loot anything else of value.

Unknown

Bruce agreed. Robin sweetened the deal by healing his crippled leg, assuring his primacy as tribe leader. In exchange they demanded the release of the Bucentaurs. The Cyclorc said to take them, the buffalomen were nothing but trouble. Cyprian and Severa cautiously thanked the adventurers and accompanied them back to the Brood Snatcher for clerical healing. Severa only had superficial cuts, but Cyprian had been castrated after stomping a greenman to death in an escape attempt.

Robin decided to channel the power of Phantom Limb to restore his manhood. They weren't sure if his family jewels exactly counted as a limb, but he begged them to try. His tribe was suffering a total population collapse; it was his duty to ensure the survival of his people. With a prayer to the Lord of the Hunt, a ghostly pair of testicles apparated. He'd be jizzing ectoplasm for the rest of his life, but Cyprian was made whole again. 

The grateful buffaloman gave the adventurers a call-and-response his tribe used to identify allies. He also told them the location of their hidden camp, where they waged a guerilla war against the Druid Mafia and their ilk.