Episode 4 – It Gets Serious: Crossing the Bridge

Played 16 March 2015. All players were present, though some might wish they hadn't been...
NB: From now on the pseudonymonous NPC Amira will be known by her real name of Vanessa to avoid confusion with the similarly named PC, Nymeria.

Taking their leave of the druid Erdas, the travellers cautiously approach Yrgon’s Bridge, pausing in the cover of the trees to observe the valley below.  Each end is closed off by a ramshackle looking gate. On the other side sits a thin tower, from which a pair of narrow windows overlook the bridge. Careful observation suggests that there is someone hidden behind the remains of the spire on the tower roof, but otherwise nothing is stirring. In the middle of the bridge lie three humanoid bodies, along with what appears to be a wolf or large dog, above the body of which a shifting haze suggests a cloud of flies.

People from all over the Sunset Lands are just dying to take a trip across Ygron's Bridge

The guards leave Lucinius, Lodvik and Aris with the mules in the cover of the trees, and approach the bridge with caution. The gate at the near end is a flimsy affair, but they chose to bypass it by climbing around it. Kam, who has now learnt to produce an illusory duplicate of himself, summons it into being and sends it ahead of the group, approaching the corpses. There is no reaction to its presence, so the characters move forward. Suddenly, once they get to within about 60 feet, there is a stirring....

I don't want to suggest that the bridge is dangerous, but have you seen the last guy that tried to cross it?

Three weapons – a flail, a sword, and a morning star – rise from the ground by the bodies and fly forward to attack. One of the bodies staggers upright and lurches towards the group, but it appears that this is not undead, but that it is the armour it wears that is moving. All the animated objects ignore Kam’s illusory double and attack the flesh and blood characters. The weapons are dispatched relatively quickly but the armour takes some grinding down; nevertheless, before too long the broken remains of the animated equipment lies on the roadway and the characters loot some small change and a couple of healing potions from amongst the grisly remains of what looks like a small adventuring party. From the tower there is no reaction. Cautiously the group move forward again, on the lookout for traps such as cheese-wire strung across the roadway at ankle height – but the bridge is clear of such ruses.

When they get within about a hundred feet of the tower, however, it is clear their presence has not gone unnoticed. A bolt of magical energy – a guiding bolt - shoots from one of the windows, aimed at Kam, followed by a volley of crossbow bolts, also directed at the vanara cleric. Fortunately the magical attack misses, but Kam is wounded by the bow shots. Leaving Vanessa and Open with Kam on the bridge, Nymeria and Olrik dash forward, climbing the parapet to get round the gate, in order to assault the door of the tower, but in the meantime Open is pounded by another guiding bolt attack from the tower and is forced to use his only healing potion. Kam attempts his own guiding bolt in return, but without success. As Nymeria and Olrik smash away at the door, Kam and Vanessa elect to rush the tower to follow them up. But before the unfortunate Open can join them, further crossbow attacks - and a sacred flame from the tower - strip away his remaining hit points, and his first Death Save is a disastrous 1. Kam is out of magic apart from cantrips, but if he can get back to Open before he fails another death save, he can at least use spare the dying to stabilise him. Unfortunately, even a Dash leaves Kam just out of reach of Open, and the tiefling's next Death Save is ... 2. It’s all over for the wizard.

If this is what you can see, something has gone wrong...

As the disaster unfolds on the bridge, the melee fighters are into the tower and amongst the enemy at last, and the fight swings in the party’s favour as they dispose of a priest and three cultists, all half-orcs. But it has been a hard won victory, with Open fallen, and Kam and Vanessa badly beaten up. The party badly need a rest, and the tower is the only obvious place to do it. A search of the area throws up some interesting discoveries:

The corpses on the bridge appear to be several weeks old, except for the wolf, which is rather fresher and still accompanied by flies. From their appurtenences the bodies appear to be an elf and two humans, one of them a priest of Martek. A couple of healing potions and some small change are gleaned from the grisly search. The wolf has injuries suggesting it ventured onto the bridge to scavenge the corpses and was cut down by the animated weapons.

The tower has four storeys including a basement. The third floor is largely unsafe, but allows access to the roof, where one of the crossbowmen had been shooting from. The inhabitants are all wearing pendants depicting a coiled serpent, which Kam recognises as the symbol of the obscure god Ulur, also known as the Father of Monsters, a Chaotic Neutral deity who is regarded as the progenitor of strange hybrid monstrosities such as the owlbear and peryton. He is occasionally worshipped as a member of the Bathuran pantheon, for instance by those who supply beasts for the combat arenas, but his cult is largely historical, and associated with the Iliran people who ruled Valkania before the Empire. Ulur’s main point of curiosity is that he is said to live on the Prime Material, rather than one of the outer planes.

In addition to the pendants, the search turns up some further healing potions, a little cash, and a rather nice looking ring worn by the leader, which turns out to be a ring of evasion.

On the roof, they find a strange ovoid stone wrapped in strips of rune-inscribed fabric, about four feet across and roughly shaped out of something like basalt. Its surface is irregular and, from certain angles, gives the impression of hands and faces apparently trying to escape from the interior... It seems to be magical and Kam attempts to attune to it, but is almost knocked unconscious by a psychic blast in response. There are traces of blood on the plinth upon which its sits. It is too big to fit in the party’s bag of holding, and too unwieldy to transport otherwise. The party don’t want to leave an apparently evil item lying around here in the wilderness for anyone to find, so after a bit of debate pitch it first off the roof and then off the bridge into the water below, though they worry whether this might contaminate the river. Tethered nearby in the woods is a rather ill-kept mule, along with the broken remnants of a wood and fabric drag, which suggests that the stone was brought here by the followers of Ulur, rather than already having been in place.

In the basement they find a rude temple containing further symbols of Ulur. Here also there is a collection of papers, written in a rough Orcish scrawl, which unfortunately no-one can read, and a few pages apparently razored out of a larger book, which are in Bathuran. This is a section of Miklos Cassio’s History of the World (Part One), dealing with events shortly after the death of Corandias the Magnificent in 707, when the Iliran inhabitants of Valkania took advantage of the ensuing succession struggle to rise in revolt against the Empire.

In addition to the temple there is a makeshift cell containing a single captive, of whom we shall discover more next time....

Credits: the location for this session was taken from The Forge's "Ygron's Bridge", available at RPGNow.