Basic Fantasy RPG Campaign Journal #4: Betrayal and Undead in the Slums

 This post will continue the reports of our BFRPG campaign. I've been doing a video series on BFRPG for those that are interested. You can watch them here. Again this is a few different sessions smashed together in order for me to catch up to where we are now in our game.

After spending the night in the glad of the elven druid, the party elected to head back towards the orc lair which wasn't too far off. Arriving at the lair, they discovered there had been heavy combat all through out the lair between the two tribes. The hope the party had that the orcs would kill each other and they could swoop in to clean up the survivors seemed to be a reality.

They traversed through much of the lair encountering a straggling orc here and there but no real resistance. As they entered the area where the temple was, they saw the bodies of the fallen and the slain in the room, including the corpse of the chief from the losing side. On his body they found a key too. They continued forward through some double doors to the side of the winning tribe and heard the sounds of eating and orcish laughter. The chief of the winning side was holding a feast with his surviving warriors at a long table in a chamber. Brishoff the dwarf druid decided he would cast Entangle on the group in the room. Immediately roots sprouted from the ground grasping at the limbs of the orcs. With their movement greatly reduced, the party pelted them with arrows killing the remaining orcs before they could do anything. They removed the head of the orc chieftain and made their way back towards Caelfall in order to report back to the mayor that their task was done.

The journey back was uneventful except for the fact that their old halfling friend Wymarc came to them a few miles outside of town. He warned them that the mayor had put the cleric Bavard on house arrest and has ordered to guards to arrest the party.

Obviously the mayor had double crossed them.

The party waited in the woods until nightfall and snuck into town in the night. Their goal was to rescue the cleric Bavard and escape to the city of Craydon to the south. They were able to rescue Bavard with minimal bloodshed to the guards. They killed only one guard in scuffle and fled town with Bavard in their care.

They traveled south towards the city of Craydon. No random encounters occurred. Upon entering town they heard some rumors about how the Kings daughter, the princess Asralyn, has gone missing and the king has been acting strange. Land and Title has been offered for the safe return of the princess. They also heard rumors of a black dragon harassing caravans to the west in the marshes and that zombies and ghouls have been eating people in the slums of Craydon.

The players investigated the disappearance of the princess and discovered that a human sized winged creature carried her off one evening a few months ago. In the meantime they also investigated the undead in the slums. They found a well where the undead were coming from. The players went down and encountered some zombies. The zombies almost killed and ate the party but they defeated them and fled back up the well in the slums. They went to the church in Craydon and recruited their friend Bavard the Cleric and a few footmen to go back down the well to clear out the rest of the undead. Returning to the well and the catacombs beneath the well, the players cleared out some more zombies and found a scroll detailing an evil ritual for summoning a demon lord named Lord Tolgoth. They also found a temple with a gold idol to these demon. It was clear a magic-user of some sort was performing dark rituals to this demon which probably caused the undead (and the magic-user's death).

The players found a room labled "Failures" that was full of ghouls. They dealt with them (with another entangle spell, I gotta find a way to make that spell less a given victory). They returned to the surface above the well after dealing with these ghouls. I should also note that they found a barred room they were never able to gain access to.

Going forward, I'm sure their cleric friend will want to take the scroll from them and destroy it. He destroyed the idol to the demon, smashing it to bits with his mace. The players kept the broken pieces and plan to melt it down and sell it. We'll see how all of this pans out as you are now caught up with a summary of where we are now in our game.