The conclusion to The Old God’s Return! Another great session and adventure that contained an epic low level story. I had six returning players and three more dropping in for the first time, all of the latter new to DCC. Last session the players made it through about half the module, stopping after the pit trap in 2-2 and a wild battle with the crafty Joulbok and his five Tontuu ambushers. Pleasant business preceded the actual start of the game with Spam the Wild, former animal trainer, leveling as a Halfing wanderer. The party now consisted of three level one characters: a warrior, thief, and a halfling, and a minor horde of seven returning zero level survivors, soon to swell in number.
The action picked up right after the fall of the ram-creature and his minions, the party warily poking at the bodies to make certain they were indeed dead and accounting for their own lost. A quick search of the rest of the icy room where the ambush took place revealed a group of a dozen tribesmen from their village bound and gagged in the corner. Quite glad for the rescue, they quickly decided to throw their lot in with the party and aid the quest to stop the evil behind the stolen souls of the village children. They also came across several ragged bundles of bones and hide containing the meager belongings of the horrid ice imps and their ram-beastman-lord. Searching through the packs they found a few trinkets and trader’s coins that were sure to be worth something at the next southern market.
The group considered whether to go down the hole in the broken ice created from the pit trap or to take the stairs, the bottom of which were dark and filled with a cold silence. Surf Jurples the orphan, a newly freed villager, decided to lead the way down the stairs. The room below was constructed of the same worked dark stone, intact on all sides but the far wall, which had collapsed and had been overrun by a tongue of ice forced in from the outside. Columns supported the ceiling and a ice-filled circular basin lay in the middle of the room. A single door exited out the wall opposite the collapsed one.
With lanterns and torches, they spread out to search the room. The basin turned out to be a frozen pool of water several feet deep with shadowy shapes in its depths. Lou Reed the thief summoned Loptir’s fire to melt the ice down to one of the dark shapes and discovered a frozen salmon, slightly rotten, but still eagerly devoured by the party’s pair of wolf pups. Inspecting the ice of the collapsed wall, they spotted another shape: a man entombed by the surrounding mountain, a spark of gold glinting about his neck from the refracted torchlight. While Anahk the warrior kept careful watch on the far door, the rest of the party swung at the ice with clubs and flint axes, eventually uncovering the frozen body to the waist. The dead man wore rotting ebon-colored robes and was quite tall. His skin was slightly decayed, but well-preserved; a necklace hung from his neck and a large tome lay clutched in his arms.
Suddenly a shattering crack echoed through the room followed by the sound of grinding: a horrid insectoid shape made of ice rose from the reflecting pool, bits of rotten fish sticking out of its body. Before anyone could react, Luigi the hunter and Yoshi the gatherer, both so recently rescued, were killed by slashes across the neck from razor-sharp claws of ice. The party regrouped and began to fight the demon, chipping away at it with spear and axe before Surf Jurples the orphan landed a crippling blow to the head with his club, cracking the ice and dazing the creature. As it reared-up and wailed a high-pitched scream of pain, Spam the Wild raced up its slippy, chitinous back, and with a bit of luck, plunged his dagger directly into the crack in its head, twisted, and shattered it apart.
With the guardian slain, they returned their attention to the body in the ice. The necklace had an amulet with more of the strange markings that they had seen on the building’s walls, but no one in the party could decipher them. The book had similar writing, though it was also filled with quite detailed etchings of dwarves depicted in various activities. Twiddledum the gatherer pocketed the amulet while Bog the hunter took the dark tomb. After the battle, Stanwick and Lou Reed the tanners, and Slog the hunter, newly renamed Thufuir, each took up the trappings of their new professions: squire, beggar and witness of Ildavir respectively. Thufuir called upon his new god to heal the wounds of Anahk, but was denied twice before his prayers were curtly answered.
Cautiously they opened the door to the next room. An overbearing scent of pine filled the air, and they saw a corridor crowded with huge, corpulent trees, unnaturally pale in color with a sticky sap clinging to the branches and splotching the floor. Thufuir again called upon his new god, this time to send a sign as to whether the trees were harmful, and though he received a feeling that they had some malice for the party, he also knew he had displeased Ildavir who would require his future repentance. Tying a rope about her waist, Peaches the gatherer took a lantern and entered the corridor. Seeing two doors at either end of the corridor, she headed towards the left door, pushing her way through the tangle of branches. The sticky sap clung to her clothes and skin, feeling oddly cold, which numbed where it touched. Unnerved, she tried to brush it off, but the ache from the cold kept spreading until it reached deep inside her chest. Uncontrollable shivers ran through her body as ice gripped her lungs and heart, and with a cry she collapsed. Her tethered corpse was dragged back for inspection.
Bubba two-step, deciding that he was nimble enough to avoid the sap, found a safe path to the far door. The party was encouraged by his example, and devising various ways to cover as much of their exposed skin as possible, dashed through the trees to join him. Not everyone made it without touching the sap, though. Lou Reed the thief brushed against the sap and found himself shivering uncontrollably until he invoked the fire of Lotir to tame them, and Ale the halfling animal trainer, Twiddledee the weaver, and Joxy the gatherer each clumsily rushed through the trees and fell to a shivering death on a bed of pale pine needles. Finally only Fodder the butcher, Meatshield the hunter, and Mario the hunter remained separated from the party on the far side of the trees. Instead of risking the passage, Meatshield decided to light the trees on fire with his torch as he passed, and found the flames took eagerly to the sap. In fact, the trees roared to a blaze as he passed through, filling the air with a choking smoke. Everyone rushed through the doors at the end of the corridor, but Fodder, following behind, struggled for air and collapsed senseless under the inferno canopy. Mario remained on the far side of the fire and rushed to the cleaner air in the chamber above where the pit-trap lay.
The party found themselves in a large forested room, the smoke behind them being confined by some unfelt wind. Through the trees they could make out a large stone altar in the distance, a nimbus of dancing aurora-colored light seeming to surge around it. More trees spread out to their left and right. Lou Reed the thief noticed shapes attempting to stay hidden behind the screen of branches: another large ram-creature and one of the smaller minions. Obliquely alerting the rest of the party, they decided to move towards the distant altar while also preparing to fight. Their enemies shadowed them and rushed from the forest to attack, but they were caught off guard when the party quickly split to engage them, Anahk grasping the spear of Kos and leading the charge against the ram-beast, while Stanwick threw javelins at the leering ice imp.
The party swarmed the two creatures, Loptir’s remaining champions crying out for his aid. Rat the gatherer fell, gutted by the imp’s knife, while Anahk and the ram traded terrible blows. Those who were not too distracted by the fight saw the distant multi-hued lights shift and stir, and the crowns of the nearby trees began to bend as if they were being parted by great arms. When the disturbance reached the the copse of trees next to them, a huge creature emerged: a fifteen foot reindeer-headed monstrosity, skin rotting, its head crowned with massive antlers that enclosed a shifting sphere of color filled with the half-formed faces of silently screaming children. Some of the party could only stare dumbly at the approaching horror, their weapons limp by their sides. With a gesture, a sickly tendril of color extended down the reindeer-god’s arm and wrapped around Anahk’s spear, which began to bend and twist and sprout sharp thorns that cut through the warrior’s hand. Thufuir finally reached his god on the first try and steadied Anahk, who dropped her now-useless weapon and grabbed for a knife, using it to slay the ram-creature. Almost at the same time, Meatshield the hunter was struck down by the small grinning imp, but fell in turn to Lou Reed, who sliced its throat from behind.
Only the god remained. It shrugged off the petty blows of the party and with blazing malice, made another gesture at the cowed party with fingers splayed, but a puzzled look came over its face as nothing happened. Stanwick saw his chance and hurled a javelin at the reindeer god’s antlers, Spam the Wild causing just enough of a distraction to prevent the god from dodging out of the way. With a mighty crack, the horns shattered, spilling the cradled light and toppling the god. A silent concussive wave erupted outwards, bending and breaking the surrounding trees. Reaching the walls, the whole of the mountain of ice shuddered, fractures appearing in the surrounding stone. The party realized the mountain was falling apart and their only chance was to run and hope they could find a way down to the ground. With the building crumbling around them, they reunited with Mario the hunter and fled to the ice plateau above, managing to avoid being flattened along the way. A mad flight down the ice-carved stairs followed, the mountain splintering and calving all around them. They reached the rope ladder and swarmed down it just as the stairs were obliterated by an avalanche of debris. When they looked up, they saw only an expanding shower of ice above them, and reflected within, a faint nimbus of colorful light playing about the drifting crystals. Before long it coalesced into a small multi-hued cloud and streaked off towards the northern horizon.
The survivors huddled together under the quietly falling snow. Somehow they knew that the frozen magic that claimed the spirits of the village’s children had been broken.
The frostbitten heroes:
- Bog the hunter
- Slog the hunter - now Thufuir, witness of Ildavir and level one cleric
- Stanwick level one warrior and former tanner
- Zugbar the hunter
- Boogar the gatherer
- Surf Jurples the orphan
- Anahk, level one warrior
- T. Cib the butcher
- Lou Reed level one thief and former tanner
- Sparn of the wild, level one halfling
- Bubba Two Step level one thief
- Mario the hunter
- Twiddledum the gatherer
The mighty frozen fallen:
- Luigi the hunter
- Yoshi the halfling animal trainer
- Peaches the gatherer
- Ale the halfling animal trainer
- Twiddledee the weaver
- Joxy the gatherer
- Fodder the butcher
- Meatshield the hunter
- Rat the gatherer
