Part I
A motley crew of adventurers came to be under the leadership of Keen Bill, Hero of Westend. Skilled hands, they found their first contract, a cushy job, with a noble-born lady traveling to the outpost of Wayward. Bill, Vaaris, Nameless, Aro-mon, and Eli took to the journey well. Few words were traded between the party and Ariath, the third-born child of Hilvada's Solce nobility. The enormous stone chest pulled by the horse-drawn cart drew a few, long glances from all five. Seemingly with eyes in the back of his head, Ariath's brute of a personal escort made known that any action taken on the chest would see the offender's arms felled from his body. The remainder of the journey drew out in a long, sullen silence.
Arriving in Wayward on the night of the third day brought a happy release from the hard road. A soft bed and all expenses covered by the noble's coin eased all of the built-up tensions. Bill and Aro-mon, tasked with the stowage of the great chest, made their way to Ariath's private room on the second floor of the inn. The others made a chase to the bottom of mugs of ale and bowls of soup. Despite being well-stocked of food and drink, some of the party were disappointed to find no crab on which to sup.
At one point, after much prodding and encouragement, Nameless made work of his bardic skills and performed sweetly to the tavern locals. Everyone was moved, and hard eyes and suspicions were eased. Cairn, the innkeep, sent the boy Saul to fetch his father Praxon before the night grew too dark. Praxon entreats the strange band for help with a creature that has been terrorizing his goat herds. His livelihood is being destroyed, and he needs them to come on the next day to hunt when the strange creature would be prowling. Our kindly leader, Bill, after being relieved of his watch over the highly-valued chest, is conflicted. Their duty, and payment for their work, is dependent on pleasing the cold and disagreeable Ariath. Seemingly doing both jobs would not be possible. However, this will be a problem for the morning, and the party tries to ease the emotionally-drained farmer Praxon with promises to see what the next day would bring.
Cairn at the bar is a good man, strong and sharp. He serves till the end of the night, then leaves the party to retire to their shared single room. Ariath is paying their expenses, but her cheap accommodation showed she valued the group very little. It was a good thing everyone had their fill and drank each other into a rich stupor on her coin.
The morning breaks clear and crisp. Each member quietly assembles downstairs. Bill had learned the night before not to wake the gentle lady unnecessarily, the echo of the slamming door still fresh in his thoughts. Perhaps with her royal sleepiness in bed, a quick visit to Praxon could be arranged? The halfling Eli has the best handwriting of the team and writes a short message outlining their intention to help the farmer. He slips the note under Ariath's door but notices some resistance. Pulling the slip of paper back out, a riot of thick, red blood can be seen soaked into the paper! Alarm spreads through the party, and Cairn runs for the garrison shortly after unlocking the door and revealing the naked corpse of Ariath.
They don't have much time. Whatever passes for guards in this backwater hamlet will be here soon. It will only bring complications. Vaaris immediately bends over the body to attempt to revitalize her. The body remains cold and lifeless. All the others start investigating the room. Not a single thing is out of place. No clothes or belongings are in sight, and the great stone container is ajar. Looking inside, Bill finds a small note.
"Until you return what is mine, I will take what is yours!"
The message is signed in a script that doesn't read like any known language but hums with a kind of arcane power. The heroes fail to note while the body was cold, the ink was still wet. Nevertheless, Bill darts into action, pushing his new compatriots to a chase after finding footprints on the ground outside the second story window. Naturally, the guards Gareth and Molza arrive with Cairn and slow any plans of a chase. Some quick words of persuasion from Nameless yield release, and the chase is on!
West into the woods tracks in the dew take Bill and Aro-mon, then south cutting into the road. Others flag behind. Bill calls a wait. The tracking finds them to fresh ruts and familiar horseshoe prints, embedded with the Solce family crest. Believing that they could overtake the fleeing suspect or suspects, Bill pushes on south. At each push, the strongest runners of the group burn hours on the road out of Wayward and back toward Hilvada. By the time the sun starts to wane, they are desperate enough to climb a dried husk of a tree that reaches high above the canopy around the road. There is no sign of their quarry. The group is seemingly on the hook for a noble woman's murder. The family of Solce practically runs the township of Hilvada. Showing up at those gates could be the same as suicide. After some deliberation, the wary and spent party sets camp with intent to return to Wayward, not to clear their names but to help where they could, while they could, with the good farmer Praxon.
The night passes without danger, and the weather remains on their side while they hike north to Praxon's farm. He is truly jubilant when the "able men" as he calls them arrive at his farmstead. He tells of his herd and how every last one of his goats has been taken, taken by a creature that seemingly burrows through the ground like a trout upstream. The party wants to bait a trap with a goat, but poor Praxon has none left to him, well none excepting the "gruffs." These gruffs are no ordinary goats. They have the run of the town, coming and going as they please. Not even Praxon has been able to tame these giants. "Well, where would we find these beasts?" Praxon says they usually keep to slopes near the Tower of the Lily. Surprised to hear about a remarkable tower in such a spit of a town, the party wants to know more. Praxon tries his best to answer all of the questions but he knows little. Perhaps an elder of Wayward would know more. All Praxon can say is that the tower used to hold a school of some sinister nature in long past times. As happy and forthcoming as the poor farmer has been, the group still has reservations as he was one of only a handful of people who knew they had arrived two days ago with Ariath. He is marched ahead as their de facto guide. North of Wayward, as the woods start to thicken, the party spies the large tower rising over a bend in the river. Nameless is truly excited by the prospect of finding a real-life troll under the stone bridge connecting the northern reaches to the Tower of the Lily. He darts to the bridge, the others calling out for caution and Praxon turning white as a sheet. He knows all the stories of the cursed place, even though to a trained adventurer the stories amount to simple fear and old wives' tales.
Instead of pressing their luck with a dark, crumbling tower, they turn to continue pursuit of the gruffs. Eli, noticing a small back trail, discovers a steel grate next to the bridge. Noting this for later, the team follows Praxon in the midday heat up the rise. Hearing a deep, resonating bleat in a clearing, the group finds three enormous goats pacing in the distance. Keen Bill, confident in his knowledge of tame creatures, approaches the gruffs. Trying to read their intentions, he extends some rations to the visibly angry creatures. Without warning, the largest charges! It covers the distance in a flash of hooves and horns. Bill takes the strike deep into his torso but keeps his footing. The team, rallied behind their leader, splits wide left and right, trying to close the distance without tempting a blow from the enormous horns. A flurry of daggers, bolts, and arrows strike deep into their hides. Vaaris, in a feat of heroism, charges into the strongest two of their number, felling one with a mighty strike. Bill recovers after a quick retreat and nearly takes one of the heads of the goats clean off with his heavy crossbow bolt. The flurry of battle is over nearly as quickly as it started. Vaaris stabilizes one of the fallen goats, and the team ties it expertly. The gruff with his head nearly ripped from its shoulder is carrion fodder, while they stabilize and leave the third to recover on its own. They have their bait. Praxon helps lead the limping beast, and they return to the farm after a short rest; Bill needs it.
By three in the afternoon, the open fields of Praxon's farmland are a welcome sight. They will finally have a chance to see the beast that has been snatching goats and leaving six-foot deep holes in the ground. Eli and Vaaris take the poor, bloody gruff into the open field surrounding a massive flagstone. Just as the stake is hammered into the turned soil, a terrible rumbling shakes the entire area. A moving mound of earth courses toward Eli, Vaaris, and the suddenly panicked gruff. In a flash of earth, a monstrous creature bursts upward, and a torrent of soil and rocks shower down. With the world literally shattering under their feet, Eli and Vaaris fall prone, praying the giant pincers and crab-like appendages don't fall upon them. Instead, the creature sets upon the gruff, and with one strike of its claw bursts the entire beast into a slurry of flesh and viscera. It drops its mandibles into the pile of blood and meat and gives no regard to the adventurers who stand frozen in fear. But soon the fear melts into action! Arrows sing and bolts fly as the creature feasts. The fallen champions scramble away after the monstrosity is struck by a grazing shot. It rages at the pain and burrows quickly into the soil. The team circles the suddenly quiet mound. With each step, the soil shifts to regard the vibrations being made. Vaaris stands silently readying his willpower as Aro-mon and the others draw taut, ready to unleash hell.
Three heartbeats pass, and again the earth bursts forth. In perfect concert, all heroes unleash their projectiles. Deep strikes burst out chunks of its chitinous exoskeleton. With a burst of energy, the enormous pincers plunge towards the neck of Vaaris. Without flinching, he raises his two hands, unleashing a hellfire into the face of the vile abomination. Enormous necrotic energy rips it in twain. There won't be any crab soup as the meat starts to blacken and rot. Nameless is overly cautious as he goes into Praxon's house to relay the good news. There had been some wild misunderstandings earlier in the day after Nameless charmed him and later rebuffed him. At one point, Nameless was certain he saw Praxon naked, but it might have been attributed to the bump on the head that Nameless took while sneaking around the farmstead. At least they earned some Alchemist Fire and gold.
At this time, the sun is starting to hit the trees, and Nameless has to surrender to exhaustion. He was welcomed by Praxon to stay the night in the hay loft. The others, now fast friends bonded by blood, are eager to re-visit the hidden entrance outside the Tower of the Lily. Making good time, despite avoiding the town of Wayward, they cautiously make their way underground. The ladder that was weakly guarded by the grate opens to a subterranean stone chamber, ten feet across and lined with four alcoves. Their pace is slow as they are wary of traps and the inevitable creatures who take shelter in such places. Vaaris is supremely confident that no ambusher can take them by surprise after imbuing a small stone with a holy light. The tunnel stretches deep into the darkness, and every forty feet Vaaris throws the stone ahead of the reduced party. By the third such throw, and quite remarkably to all present, the stone fails to fall to the ground. Its glowing form simply hangs, suspended in the air. None of the adventurers can discern the curious state's cause. Undaunted, Vaaris moves within ten feet to try to reach his burning cantrip. Suddenly, the stone shifts toward him at great speed. He deftly dodges, not backward to his companions, but to the side, which proves deadly. In a gushing sucking terror, he becomes engulfed by a gelatinous cube. An absolute nightmare for a group so new to the road and its perils. The acid instantly burns the armor and starts eating away flesh as the shock overloads Vaaris' mind, and he falls unconscious. With no strength to break free and his allies too far to close the gap, everyone understands that if they cannot slay the cube in the next ten seconds, they will be forced to watch Vaaris slowly erode to be digested for nutrients. A volley of metal shears off large chunks of its transparent form. It isn't enough as, again, the wall-to-wall cube advances on the party, large hunks of Vaaris fading to translucent, bloody soup.
The narrow corridor offers two options- retreat to the now-nearby ladder, or shelter deep in an alcove, hoping to stay beyond the acidic reach of the cube. Wisely, they retreat as they also test the vile creature's movement while continuing to inflict damage at range. Eli expresses his dismay at being without projectiles. Keen Bill, with his quick thinking, throws him a satchel with sling and iron balls to keep up the pressure. Aro-mon's quiver grows lighter, but his arrows fly true. The fletching of his attacks burns away on impact, but with relief the party watches as the ooze melts with it. All that remains of brave Vaaris is a chunk of meat connecting a dessicated hip bone to a thick femur.
In tribute, Aro-mon retrieves the femur, noting one of his arrowheads bored deeply into the bone. The others set about burning all of the remaining acidic blobs in grim determination and shock. Three days had passed with some sweat and laughs, none of them thinking strong Vaaris would fall. They can no longer stand. This tunnel leading under the Tower of the Lily has waited this long. It can wait another day. The adventurers shamble back towards a warm bed and strong ale in Wayward.
Vaaris
Race: Elf
Class: Cleric
After being coerced into performing dark healing magic at a young age by someone he trusted, Vaaris had worked the rest of his life to repent for his sins by helping all who suffer. Unfortunately, this life was to be cut short deep underground beneath the Tower of the Lily. Were his good deeds enough to make up for the evil he had performed early on? May he rest in peace.