The Charnel Hounds were a famed mercenary company that you were proud to count yourselves members of. All that has changed, of course. Fortunes turn, don’t they?
The life of a mercenary is a series of victories and losses, triumphs and defeats. In the Duchy of Trevania in the Ustalecht Paladinate, the Charnel Hounds suffered a catastrophic rout at the hands of a rival mercenary band called the Fist of Arjal. As the battle descended into chaos, it was every man and woman for themselves as your lines broke and you were scattered before the swords of the enemy. You suspect dark treachery behind the decimation, but everyone seeks to lay the blame elsewhere when things go wrong, don’t they?
You are among the few Charnel Hounds who survived the Trevanian Massacre. As he lay dying, the leader of your regiment, Captain Osvald Kaul, begged you to take his body for burial in his hometown–a place called Braelin in the Vespermark. A captain’s dying command is still a command, isn’t it?
As the ragged remnant of the Charnel Hounds, the future is yours to seize. Will you rebuild the company of the Charnel Hounds to reclaim your tarnished glory? Will you seek whoever betrayed the Charnel Hounds to get vengeance? Will you find another way to redeem your good names? History is yours to make, isn’t it?
You find yourselves trudging to the Vespermark in the cold spring rain, squelching through muddy fields, with a single horse pulling a cart laden with Captain Kaul’s coffin. As you enter Braelin, your first order of business is to arrange a burial for your fallen leader.
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Characters
Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman
Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest who says strange thing about blood
Johanna Albrecht, a lycan bard with a particularly keen nose
Ulu, the party's urska mom
Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword
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Events
The first thing the characters did upon entering Braelin was stop in at Nokovik's Goods and Feed to learn the lay of the land and buy a couple shovels. The couple working at the store, Mae-Lin and Yungfang "Nokovik," looked to be of Far Eastern extraction; their surname is almost certainly not Nokovik. Yungfang explained that there was no functional church in Braelin, as the priest disappeared mysteriously a few years ago and the building had lay dormant ever since. However, there was a revelator of the heretical saint Vionka who maintained a shrine at the end of the cemetery who might be able to help them.
On the way to the shrine, they spotted a walking dead man carrying an iron-shod bludgeon. They were stopped by a portly man smoking a pipe under an overhand in front of the town jail. He introduced himself as Ulysses F. Tavistock, Braelin's sheriff. In the course of their conversation--during which Ulysses was attempting to ascertain whether these well-armed newcomers were going to cause problems in town--they learned that he was a necromancer who animated the corpses of condemned criminals to serve as "deputies" that patrolled the town. Satisfied, he let them go on their way.
At the shrine, they met Sister Eliza, a young woman with unnaturally white hair. She offered to watch over Captain Kaul's coffin while they went to visit the Kaul House--Osvald Kaul's ancestral home--in search of any living relatives.
The Kaul House had seen better days, but it was still inhabited--by a butler named Beaumont D'Orleac (who seemed to slide out of the shadows) and a maid with bouncy blonde hair named Irenya Day. Beaumont was saddened to learn of "young" Osvald's death; he immediately sent Irenya to fetch the Rue sisters, as he thought they should be informed of the matter. He intimated that one of the Rue sisters had been romantically involved with Osvald in his youth, which was strange because when Morrigan and Pandora Rue arrived they looked far too young for that to be true. In face, they were pale twins who dressed in the manner of Siberskan aristocrats--Morrigan favored a riding outfit and tricorne hat, while Pandora wore a frilly dress.
The Rue sisters explained that, as a condition of Osvald Kaul's will, the surviving members of the Charnel Hounds were to inherit Kaul House, as well as a small sum that paid for the butler's services and maintained the household. When the characters expressed a desire to make some money while in Braelin, the Rue sisters offered them a job: a young girl named Salva had gone missing, and they wanted the Charnel Hounds to find her and, if possible, bring her back to her family. As it turned out, Salva was the third child to go missing--one a month, in fact. Salva was last seen by Aivra Williams, the town's school teacher, as the girl headed toward the supposedly haunted Felken Woods.
After a brief service by Sister Eliza, the Charnel Hounds buried their commander. The group then paid a visit to Aivra, who was a prim young woman with her burgundy hair pulled back into a tight bun. She told them what she saw through the schoolhouse window and gave them a description of what Salva had been wearing just before she vanished--noting particularly her bright red clogs.
The Rue sisters had given the group a scarf that belonged to Salva; using her lycan powers of tracking, Johanna was able to pick up the scent in the Felken Woods. The trail led them to the mouth of a cave nestled into the sodden earth. At the mouth of the cave was a single red clog. Before the entered, Varro realized that they were being watched for the trees. The Charnel Hounds executed a gambit to draw their would-be ambushers into an ambush of their own. Their new foes were human-like, but misshapen in body--and they smelled of entrails and rotting fungal matter. They were, however, quickly dealt with. A bit of early character development: Dario and Varro seem to have a bit of a rivalry in the group!
As they explored the cave system, they found some intriguing things that hinted at the kind of person or creature who had been stealing children from Braelin. They found a small library with books on herbs and alchemy (all written in Aelvani, the language of the fey); a scrying pool that showed them the image of a paddle steamer anchored in a river; an alchemy lab (the experiments in progress all looked like they were aimed at creating potions that could restore someone to their true form). They found a nest of more misshapen men, who were dispatched with great violence. They also found what appeared to be remnants of an old, discarded life at odds with this dank cave: a wardrobe full of rich elvish dresses, a cabinet of finely crafted porcelain dolls.
Worse yet, the located a rubbish pit that contained a child's gnawed-upon ribcage. Whoever had eaten the child had very large, very sharp teeth.
Eventually, they also found trouble. In a sitting room, they were charged by two more of the misshapen servitors while the child-abductor scurried across the ceiling of the cavern. Anastasia tried to shoot her down, but the hag-like woman with long arms and sharp teeth proved difficult to wound. She also proved to be a very dangerous sorceress. She dropped from the ceiling, incanting a spell in Aelvani; the spell caused Ulu and Varro to leap to her defense. When Anastasia tried to shoot past them, Varro--against his own will--dealt her a savage blow from his magic sword that almost killed her on the spot.
This situation put the party in a tremendous bind: their two most dangerous comrades were now under the power of their foe. The hag grinned and asked them if they'd like to make a deal. That's where we left off until next week.
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