Episode 5

I think when it comes to designing longer campaigns its nice to break bigger chunks into 3-4 sessions with  smaller chunks in between which are 1 night, 1 shot adventures.  Doomsward Keep was a big chunk- took the majority of 3 sessions to run.  I then had a murder mystery and some puzzle solving for the next "1 shot" chunks.  Now we are headed back into a larger more plot driven section of the game.  Actually, I had a whole different arch designed where the players went down to the swamp and did all kinds of stuff down there.... and they ignored the hook so this was my backup.

Episode 5:

The players head out of Newhaven with Mordicai in tow and are back up where they left Leanna to hang.  Turns out she killed the constable and busted out of town.  She headed north, but the players failed (the DC) to track her. Leanna has become someone my players really hate.  They know that her death was in their grasp and that simply staying to watch her die would have resolved the whole thing.

They head back to Durrisburg, get their reward and are now told the Count up in Pastan wants to meet the Heroes of Doomsward Keep.  They head up towards Pastan with a several objectives:
1: They want to learn more about the death Cultists and about Belfast- since they heard he was from Pastan. 
2: Sam wants to get some information on being a Traveler. 
3: They want to hook up with the Temple of Tyr since they have a sword of Tyr (which I named Crissus).   4: Mordicai has mentioned he wants to maybe become a Soldier up there.

So they spend some of their cash, get a few horses (and pony named Gertie for Lina the gnome), and head up to Pastan.  On the way I drop another preselected Random encounter.  This one is with some mercenaries the Stoutfellow Dwarves hired to take out Durn.

I have a Chessex vynl flip map that has grids on one side and hex on the other.  On the hex side of the map I drew out a large version of the City of Pastan and laid it out in a district format.  I used this to let the players put their minis where they wanted to go.  It was a nice way to split things up and let people do their own thing while they did their research, since the count couldn't see them for a few days.

They  found out Belfast was the Chief advisor to the count that was recently murdered until 5 years ago when Belfast vanished.  They find out that travelers come in pairs (conduit and source- both needed or neither can travel) and they find out that the Death Cult is related to the Calamity somehow.  Durn gave back Crissus to the highpriest of Tyr, and Mordicai was selected as a Squire.

They meet with the Count and he asked them to look into the death of the previous Count, Athis.  They run around town, look in some dark corners, and eventually find an information dealer who seems to know what is going on.  They pay her 50 gold and she tells them a little something.  She then says for a little more money she can tell them something more specific.  This party hates to spend money on things, so Sam says "Fuck off", and they leave.  I found to be somewhat surprising.  Durn heads to his temple and prays a little bit and I drop some divine intervention on them to head to Athis's Tomb- at that point the Knight Captain Jarick joins them strangely interested in the search.

Athis Tomb starts off with a puzzle I made up.  You give the players a riddle and a sheet of paper with a limited number of letters on it and say "the stone tablet the riddle is written on only has space to place 5 letters".  The reason I like this is that you as the GM have amazing control of this puzzle.  If the players use their characters skill (knowledge nobility, history, or an inteligence check) then you remove some of the letters they don't need.  I may post a picture of what I did so you can see what I mean.  They have 3 chances to plug in the right answer and then the tomb opens.
There are other work arounds for this as well, the rogue could potentially disable the trap or unlock the door, they could try and break the door down, and all of these are fine so even if the riddle fails they still have options.

Inside of the tomb are just a bunch of traps and only 1 fight.  At the end of the maze of coffins and tombs they get in a fight with a mummy.... and Giles the death cultist they left tied up at Dooms Ward Keep.

Sam almost dies and gets mummy rot- which Durn allowed him to save from a second later using his liberation power.  And then they barely manage to kill Giles.  Jarick actually was the one who killed the mummy-  This was because I kind of goofed here.  Jarick is a knight-captain and a 12th level fighter who I forgot to figure into the equation of how hard this fight would be.  So it went from a potentially deadly fight to Jarick destroying the mummy and the rest of the party killing Giles.  In reality this could have very easily been a TPK, because that mummy really got them good he stunned all the melee guys right off the bat and then giles got a crit on Kong that nearly killed him.

After this Jarick admits that he killed Athis, who was his good friend, becuase Athis became involved with the Death Cultist group.  While the party tries to decide what to do about this word rings out that the Red Tusk Orcs are laying siege to the city.

Until next time!
-Ubercroz