Session 1
Real Date: September 26, 2010
Campaign Session: 1
Adventure Session: 1 (The Sultans’ Claw)
Campaign: Legacy of Fire
Adventure: Howl of the Carrion King
Theeurth Date: Lorendon 15, 2901 (Autumn)
Location: Kelmarane, Har’Akir
Players/Characters Present:
Alan Kohler – Khalil
Andrew Sayer – Tain
Fred Munn – Marud
Jay Robinson – Ribas
Richard Bennett – Sabir
Tommy McGowan – Diox
Having been previously been bought (slaves) or hired (the freedmen) by Garavel, the party arrived at the rendezvous point with the caravan, a large tree called the Sultan’s Claw. They were there to meet Garavel’s employer, a merchant princess named Almah. As the party arrived, fire broke out in one of the tents and quickly spread to the Sultan’s Claw. A burning harrow card flew out of flaming tent and struck Marud in the chest. It was “The Cyclone”, signifying a destructive force in the hands of an intelligent being. The card portended war, arson and destructive plans.
The party helped to put out the flames and secure the caravan’s animals. During the fire, Ribas and Sabir spotted a ratty-looking man sneak into Almah’s tent. They confronted him with the aid of Diox and learned that he was Dashki, the expedition’s expert on gnolls. He admitted he was trying to take some personal item of Almah’s because he was in love with her.
Then Almah asked them to investigate the cause of the fire. They interviewed the ordinary caravan guards, the elite guards assigned by the Red Emirs, the caravan driver and his wife and Dashki, the gnoll expert. Their investigation soon centered on Dashki, largely because of his weasely personality, but evidence cleared him. He suggested that it was something called ‘pugwampis’, a tiny race of malicious gremlins that brought bad luck to all around them. According to Dashki, pugwampis worship gnolls and are in turn viewed with loathing by their ‘gods’.
Although this seemed highly suspect, Almah ordered the party to investigate and soon they found tiny tracks leading away from the encampment. These led them to a forest of cacti, where bad luck began to overtake them in great abundance. The team could not seem to move more than a few steps through the cacti without twisting an ankle in a gopher hole, falling into a cactus or cutting each other with their blades. They would soon learn to associate such events with the presence of pugwampis.
Sabir and Ribas, identical twin halflings, went into the cactus forest to search for the caravan’s missing goat. They found it, badly beaten and tied to a cactus near a steep embankment. Ribas tried to cut it loose, but by a phenomenal stroke of bad luck, he slipped and fell down the steep embankment, landing on a particularly thorny cactus plant. Sabir found and confronted the lone pugwampi while Diox, Khalil and Marud worked their ways into the forest. At the edge of the forest, Tain was having his own problems with another pugwampi he could not find.
Eventually both groups overcame a host of accidentally-inflicted bruises, cuts and broken laces to defeat the two pugwampis and rescue the frightened goat.
Forward to Howl of the Carrion King, Part 2.