The Beast
| The Beast | |
|---|---|
| Date | 3/16/23-3/24/23 |
| Storyteller | Zoro |
| Tier | Trainee |
| Player Characters | Sade, Serene, Roland, Grist |
| Rewards | 200xp, 16gp apiece |
| Result | Success? |
| Author | Dag |
A small party is dispatched to investigate a cult worshiping The Beast.
Log
The four party members meet in the chambers of Gregorios Jude. The councilman explains that two hours prior, a group of night watch raided an abandoned basement where there was supposed cult activity and found nothing. Gregorios thinks they missed something, and instruct the party to check it out. He shows them a gift given to an undercover potential recruit, a book which contains the mark of The Beast, a twisted circle of dried grass, with shards of bone forming teeth. It looked like an open, circular mouth, with tendrils coming from the sides. The Beast is bad news. The party leaves to go to the location of the raid in the Upper Sacks.
Cutter Black leads the party into the building. Everything looks like it's been abandoned for years, and there are two standing training dummies. After an embarrassing amount of time, the party figures out the 'password' to open a passage underground by hitting both the training dummies in a specific pattern at the same time. They find a room that has been recently abandoned, with papers on the table detailing the guard rotations. A door at the back of the room leads to an underground tunnel. Sade leads the blind Serene. They find two rooms filled with crates with containing mining equipment, as well as empty crates with scraps of clothing that have been worn before. The tunnel continues outside into a tunnel of nettles that have pieces of cloth and blood every so often. Farther down they find an abandoned leather jacket caught in the nettles that might have belonged to a guard, or someone impersonating one. The tunnel opens up into a muddy clearing where no footsteps cross the center, though tracks go into the forest and back to town.
Serene throws a rock into the middle of the clearing, and mud is flung everywhere as a Hodag hits the bottom of a lattice structure previously covered in mud which covers what would appear to be a large hole with the creature inside.
The tracks into the woods dead end (but reveal that there are four individuals), so they follow the tracks back to town which leads to the wall and they determine that whoever they were following got away. They retrace their steps and relay the information they'd gathered to Cutter, who sends them to talk to Gregorios again.
They relay the information to Gregorios, who in turn tells them about three guards who have been chronically late (Piper Brown, Greggory Sharps, Vozilkin), who are now around the northern wall in the Laybarons.
The party goes to where the guards are, and talk to them. One of them isn't wearing a jacket, but reveals that he gave it to the new recruit assigned to them (Virtue), who is missing. Virtue kept dropping stuff and making them late. They didn't know anything else about her other than that she was a tiefling grippli. The party returns to Gregorios to see if he knows where to find her, and he says that she's in the file as Peace. He also tells the party that someone has been buying all the teeth (a part of the mark of the Beast) and shipping them to a house in Pettyport.
The party stealths up to the house and finds that the wall between it and the house next door has been demolished to link the two buildings. Serene and Sade go in the back while Roland and Grist go in the front. They find a pile of blood-stained clothes that match the scraps from the tunnel, talismans and charms, and symbols of the Beast. There is also general materials, food, and four bed rolls. Under the bed rolls Sade finds a hatch which leads to a short ladder into a hand-dug basement. A red light emanates from the basement. The party enters the basement, and find a yucky creature with "a mouth a meter wide, with teeth as long as an arm, and surrounded by spider legs has grown in the middle of the floor. There are drag marks indicating where four individuals were pulled into the maw, which is sticky with fresh blood. As the associates enter the legs twitch uncertainly and try to move to the fresh meat, but cannot do so in such a malformed state. The creature has no eyes, but the associates can feel themselves being examined by its otherworldly mind, seeking weakness." Everyone is forced to will save against a curse. Sade passes, Serene and Roland fail, and Grist critically fails. As a result, for his next session Sade will be under the effect of a minor curse of the Beast, for their next three sessions Serene, Roland, and Grist will be under the effect of a minor curse of the Beast, and for his next session Grist will be under a moderate curse of the Beast.
Grist and Serene try to leave, but Roland convinces them to kill it. Serene throws 20 javelins at it and it dies. They determine that the four individuals sacrificed themselves in an attempt to summon the Beast or one of his children, but it wasn't enough power so they got the little freak that was there instead.
The party returns for the final time to Gregorios' chambers and relay the results of the rest of their investigation, and give him all the evidence they gathered. Roland recommends that if anyone is cursed to go visit Viktor. Gregorios dismisses them and says he'll send their rewards to their residences.