Planting 15, 621 CY. Starday
The Village of Greenleaf
The hostel had room for everyone that night, but Vask had slept out in the barn to watch the mules. In the morning, when everyone emerged out of their rooms and rendezvoused at the neighboring tavern, Vask was there to greet them with two strangers he had met in the night.
One of them was Gendri, a man who hailed from far to the east, in the Great Kingdom. He was on a pilgrimage of sorts, having journeyed all this way to see the infamous Castle Greyhawk. While crossing the Nyr Dyv, his boat was attacked by a giant lake monster and was destroyed. Gendri was washed ashore, and found gear to reequip himself with in the wreckage that had also washed ashore. He was too hurt to travel, but hunters from Greenleaf found him and brought him back. After two weeks of convalescing, he was able to repay the village by starting his nightly patrols.
On one night, he met the other man who was now with Vask, who had an even stranger story -- and appearance! The man was pale, oddly dressed, and wore luxurious items like spectacles and a magic bracelet with a clockface on it and hands that moved as if a real clock. The man could speak no language anyone knew, but frequently had pointed to himself and said something that sounded like “Keeth Winton.” Since the locals thought Keeth bewitched, but liked Gendri, Gendri had appointed himself Keeth’s protector.
Gendri was very open about himself and the Company learned all this, and more, from him, including how , thanks to Vask, Gendri now knew the Company of the White Oak was heading to Castle Greyhawk and wanted to accompany them, with his own companion. No promises were made about Castle Greyhawk, but the members of the company saw no harm in at least letting these two travel back to the city with them.
So the Company set off once again, following the Western Road east. The weather turned strangely colder again and then cold sprinkles fell from dark clouds off and on through the rest of the day. Two more unnamed hamlets came and went, their armed occupants liking strangers no better than they did when last they came this way. The Gnarley Forest was always in the distance, at their right flank. They had only passed the second hamlet by a short ways when they realized there were no communities ahead they would reach that night, so they backtracked a little. An armed party of locals met them and were not initially receptive to the Company’s offer to pay them one gold for the use of their biggest barn for the night. After much arguing, the locals agreed to two gold, and the Company slept warm in the company of cows and pigs.
Planting 16, 621 CY. Sunday
Great Western Road
Part of the deal was that they got fresh bacon in the morning.
This day the road moved away from the Gnarley Forest, finally leaving it behind them, and the company traveled through largely flat, open fields. More small hamlets came and went. Outside one, they encountered a group of ten peddlers with their carts, talking to the shepherds from that hamlet. The peddlers were pushing mundane fare, like shoe repair and tailor work on the locals, in addition to selling some sundry goods like wax candles and hemp rope. Upon seeing the wealthy-looking Company of the White Oak, the peddlers rushed them! The members of the company, wanting to leave happy people behind them, bought soap and rope from the peddlers until they were all satisfied (and let them pick rocks from their mules’ hooves too!).
After the Company left, they heard screams of fear coming from the group they'd left behind them! In the distance behind them, something was floating towards the crowd. It was the size of a medium shield, but spherical in shape, and instead of any heraldry it looked from here like it had a big eye painted on it. Many of the people and their animals tried to flee, but some then stopped in their tracks, and others that still fled fell to the ground.
Those with missile weapons in the company held a line and waited to launch an attack if the thing came their way, but instead the people who had just stopped fleeing in fear herded their animals back into the hamlet and took the spherical thing with them. Only once the coast was clear did the company return to the scene to see what had happened. Most of the people left were just asleep, but one man had been turned into a stone statue! The locals who had been asleep, after being awoken, wanted to go back into the hamlet and free who they could from that monster, but when they went in, they did not come back. The remaining peddlers were more than happy to leave with the Company, and in fact offered to pay them for protection!
The Company had to consider where to go to alert the authorities. Surely not as far as Greyhawk City. Thinking back, they remembered that they had missed needing to cross the Selintan River at Ford Keep because Zagyg’s Bridge had proven to be safer to cross than they had been led to believe. If they pushed hard enough, they might reach Ford Keep by nightfall…and they did. Or at least they reached the Selintan River by nightfall. Then they had to wave torches in the air to summon a ferry.
There were only two sentries on duty at the gate to Ford Keep. The story of what the company saw sent them running inside to their superior, but the corporal of the watch yelled at them from an upper window in the gatehouse and told them to go away and stop scaring his men with fairy stories. The company gave up; they had told enough people that they felt they had done their due diligence. Plus they were tired. Luckily there was the hamlet of Wainford around the keep. Unluckily the local hostel, the Sign of the Drover’s Repose, was locked up for the night already. The hostelkeeper did not respond to pounding on the door, so Reed used his magic boots to leap up to an open upstairs window and he pulled himself in. A tradesman was sleeping in the room, locked in. Reed picked the lock, went down to the front door and let everyone in. Then the hostelkeeper showed up, bothered by their intrusion. The company was paying in gold, though, so they got to use the common room for the night.
Planting 17, 621 CY. Moonday
River Road
Now on the River Road, the Company took the last leg of the trip back to Greyhawk City, reaching it by late afternoon. For everyone who came from Greyhawk, it was time to squirrel away all the loot they had carried home from Verbobonc. For some of the Company, it was time to rest.
For Percy, it was time to head back to the orphanage and see if they needed any help. Clifton Grey, the manager, did need some help. Maxim Mannering was a baronet, but a 16-year old baronet not ready to inherit from his dead parents yet. Richard and Adela Wood were cousins, five times removed, but wanted to be Maxim’s guardians until he came of age. Percy was asked to talk to the Woods and convince them to give Maxim to the orphanage. Reed came along to help. The Woods promised to consider it.
Reed was not done; he took Herv to his thieves guild friends to see if he could help them. A burglar named Humbert was his contact with them. Humbert appreciated how good Reed and Herv were at beating up women, so he gave them a new job. That night they went with two other thieves to a store that had two hired guards; the guards were easily overpowered and tossed out in the street, sending just the message the guild wanted.
Planting 18, 621 CY. Godsday
Menhir Road
The way to Castle Greyhawk was familiar to everyone but the new blood, Ulrich and Gendri. They saw the wilderness beyond the village of Hawfair Green. The lonely side trail off Menir Road. The lonely castle in the middle of nowhere. The abandoned gatehouses in front of the drawbridge. The ruined barbican. The bones and debris in the courtyard.
Now that they were here…what to do? The dungeon? The keep? The ogres had been a persistent problem in the past. Maybe it was time to go through the towers along the curtain wall and flush them all out.
The east side of the barbican housed two ogres. The Company lured the first one out, circled him and peppered him with missile weapons, then finished him off in melee, with Herv delivering the killing blow. The second ogre met the same fate, decapitated by Herv after the seriously hurt ogre fell prone before him. Neither had lasted more than a minute. But before coming out, the second ogre had sounded a horn. A third ogre was sighted, watching them from further away in the courtyard. John tried to bait him into charging the Company, but the ogre wasn’t biting. But that ogre died, three more ogres died, four last ogres were cornered in a tower and killed one at a time until two ogresses remained on the middle floor of the tower. When they died, the company found what they were guarding was the treasure chamber of the ogre tribe. There were hundreds of gold pieces and a jeweled gorget worth thousands. But the company would not know that until returning to the city, where they had it evaluated…
Session 23
Flocktime 18, 621 CY. Godsday
Castle Greyhawk
Haruspex Niv, Langdon, Percy, Vask, Rom, and Gendri returned to Castle Greyhawk. John Grond was busy, Reed Underbough was feeling under the weather, and Brother Ulrich had dropped out of sight in the past two weeks after spending a lot of time in the Old City. With them were some of their hirelings, Langdon’s Saraband, Rom’s new companion Orin the Dwarf, and Vask’s trained attack bear.
Vask had sunk a lot of money into buying that bear, and then storing that bear during their long side trek to Verbobonc. Last night, when the Company of the White Oak had spent the night at the hostel in the Village of Hawfair Green, Vask had to spend 10 gold paying the local farmers to clear out a barn for him and the bear. But he was confident he was going to get a good return on his investment today.
The drawbridge was down and the Company moved unmolested through the courtyard. They took their cart and mules up to the stables and “parked” them there for the day before returning to the trapdoor that led down into the dungeon. They had not, until arriving at the castle, made any kind of plan for what they were going to accomplish here today. Langdon recalled there was a dwarf in Grossetgrottell who was paying for maps of the dungeons, so they could complete the level 1 map and then sell it. They had two large sections of the level mapped already; not maps they had made themselves, but ones they had found in the dungeon in the past. The maps looked complete, however, there were some blank areas that seemed suspicious to Langdon, like there might be secret rooms in those spots.
But first, it was agreed that they had to check on the women of ill repute, Madam Muriel’s girls, and see if they needed rescuing. They did not have John’s more complete maps of the southern part of the level, but from what they did have it was pretty easy to plan their route to the brothel rooms. Before they got there, though, they found two piles of dead bodies, mostly kobolds, had been left in corridors, one at the bottom of the stairs down into the dungeon and a larger pile just south of the “trapped chest” room. This second pile was the home of five giant centipedes, all over a foot long, that skittered out and came at Vask and his bear! Vask made short work of the centipedes in front of him, while one skittered past, crawled into Gendri’s boot, and bit his ankle! Rom pulled the boot off and the remaining centipede was squashed, but Gendri was limping badly after his bite.
Vask and Haruspex moved to inspect the pile of bodies – and were surprised by four more centipedes! One of them crawled up Vask’s hand and bit his exposed wrist. The four were soon killed, including one that was killed by Vask’s bear. Vask’s wound, though, unlike Gendri’s, was swelling up and changing color right away. Vask tried to downplay it, but Rom knew a thing or two about giant centipedes from his military training and knew that Vask could be dead within 30 hours. Luckily Langdon had one of the magic potions of neutralizing poison that had been found in the very “trapped chest” room to the north some months back.
There was a blood trail that led south, the very direction they wanted to go, but they lost the trail on the way to the brothel rooms. At the brothel rooms, they knocked on the entrance door and were admitted after identifying themselves. Muriel had a sword and shield now for defense, but she was still there with five girls, two more than the Company knew about. Surprising everyone, they were happy where they were. True, there had been some months of pure chaos in the dungeon after the Master was slain, his lieutenant Herg was slain, and his other lieutenant, Gregory, went missing. Muriel feared for their lives, until the demi-humans took over. The elves (who the Company already knew about) have been joined by four dwarves and a gnome and have been protecting the brothel rooms. The Companions, to a man, rejected the offer of services here (particularly if they’d been servicing non-humans in the past…).
Gregory’s annotations on their dungeon maps showed an area to the east that was inhabited by skeletons. Langdon wanted someone to give them directions to that room, or guide them there, since the map showed no direct route to that room. One of the girls, Bethany, offered to guide them for two gold, but not long after leaving their rooms she got turned around and claimed she could get them there better from the north side of the dungeon. Luckily, this played into Langdon’s plans to go back and check some of the “blank spots” on the map to the north, so they all backtracked that way and did some searching first.
The first “blank spot” was by the “spear trap” room. None of the four walls around that section yielded up any secret doors. The Company had run afoul of that spear trap months ago and figured there was a good chance the trap had been reset by now. Luckily there was a way to foil it – have the near-superhumanly strong Vask bash the door down onto the spear-throwing device. It worked! Four of the Company moved into the small room to search it for secret doors – only to fall victim to the room’s second trap – a pit trap that dumped all four of them 15’ to a hard floor below. No one was killed, but Rom was seriously hurt.
After finding no secret exits from the bottom of the pit, and after fishing everyone out with rope, the clerics decided it was time to share their healing spells with their companions, including bequeathing one to Gendri, who had put up with his foot injury in stoic silence all this time.
Moving on, the Company next checked a room, not far from the entrance, they had never bothered with before, that Gregory had written “I think Rowan was hiding here” on, on the map. The Company never did learn who Rowan was, and learned no clues now, as the room seemed abandoned. The map looked like there might be a secret room to the south of it, but what it had were two concealed doorways in the south wall, behind curtains, that led into a narrow corridor that only connected the two doorways. It seemed to serve as nothing but a past hiding place, and there was nothing to be found back there now, so the Company moved on.
Bethany was back on the scent now and said the way to the skeleton room involved moving through the muralled hall. The hall had the chamber of the berserkers connected to it in the northeast corner and Niv was curious to see if they were still there. Many months ago, Niv had run for his life from those berserkers; now he was powerful enough to deliver some long-delayed payback on them. But, upon forcing the double doors, they found no one home. Two lion statues magically roared, but did not move. There was a “blank spot” on the map in the southwest corner and Langdon wanted that checked. This time, Rom did find a secret door. It led into a small, 10’ x 10’ cloakroom. Langdon stepped inside to examine it – and vanished.
The rest of the Company was flabbergasted. Had Langdon been instantly destroyed by magic, or magically transported away? Hoping it was the latter, Rom moved into the cloakroom and also disappeared (leaving everyone else in the dark, since Rom had been holding the only torch). But then (after Niv had lit his lantern) Saraband tried to follow his master, and nothing happened to him when he went into the cloakroom.
There was no sign of the two missing companions anywhere in the chamber. They searched the dais for clues. They had a theory that they could activate the room to return them, somehow, by manipulating the roaring lion statues. The statues had no moving parts, including the four statues of primitive warriors in the chamber, and they did nothing when touched, or when the bear tried to chew on one. The roar was definitely emanating from the open mouths of the two lion statues. No one wanted to reach into the statues’ open mouths, but Gendri inserted Vask’s spear into the mouth of a statue, and that did nothing. Frustrated, Vask ran into the cloakroom – and this time he too vanished.
Meanwhile, from Langdon’s perspective, everyone outside the cloakroom had vanished. Only, the entire chamber had disappeared with them, replaced with a small room with two 5’-wide corridors leading out of it. Rom soon joined him, and they decided to wait awhile to see if everyone else did too. Eventually Vask joined them, but Vask explained that the others were too busy looking for another way to find them and would likely not come through. They seemed to have no choice but to find their way back to the chamber where the others were, or the room with the skeletons, since that was where they had originally been heading.
The way ahead was ominous; both 5’-wide corridors led past side passages that were actually sepulchers lined with coffins. But no undead occupants emerged. Langdon even cracked open a coffin and found a skeleton inside in rotting clothes, but no sign of jewelry to steal on its person, so he left it in peace. After moving past the second sepulcher, they saw torchlight from up ahead…
Meanwhile, the rest of the Company decided they had best move on and find wherever the trapped cloakroom had sent the others (still preferring this explanation to the bleaker alternative). Where had the berserkers gone? Bethany and some of the other girls had been here before (the berserkers liked to do more than fight in here…), but she had never seen the secret room. She told them she had heard rumor that many of the men of the dungeon, including the berserkers, had been recruited by those on the second dungeon level to come join them down there, but they had no evidence that was where the cloakroom had sent them. They wanted Bethany to keep leading them to the skeleton room. She led them east through the muralled hall to a 5’-wide passage they had never taken before. It led to another large chamber with a giant central pillar in the middle of it, and Gregory’s notes told them they were near a giant spider lair. They avoided that door, only to discover the spiders weren’t home – three large spiders with 2’-long legs were crawling towards them. A fast fight ensued, and the Company won it without injury.
Meanwhile, the three displaced companions approached the torchlight and noticed the torchlight was approaching them. At a crooked four-way intersection they met seven lightly armored men, some with bows, who trained their weapons on them. Langdon explained they only wanted to find the skeleton room and offered to pay for directions. The men agreed to guide them there for 10 gold, to which Langdon agreed. The way took them back the way the men had come from, zigzagging around until they came to the door of a room filled with oversized chairs.
Meanwhile, Bethany had directed them to another single file, 5’-wide corridor heading back west (man, did these girls really know their way around small passages!). They passed a door that read, in Gregory’s notes, “bandits + storeroom” on their map. Curious, they went inside and found a single dwarf! Grunnar was about to talk a nap in one of the room’s chairs, which is how safe from bandits he felt until just now. The Company identified themselves and Grunnar showed recognition; he had heard of them! They wanted to be shown to the skeleton room? Sure…normally he gave that room a wide berth, but he was willing to help get them there…
Just then, the south door opened, from the oversized chairs room, and bandits filed into the room, along with Langdon, Vask, and Rom. Grunnar told them not to trust the bandits, but they had done what they had been paid to do so far, and Langdon gave them their 10 gold here as they parted ways.
The map led them straight to an archway that should lead into a room, with neighboring rooms to either side, all three of which might have skeletons in them (Gregory’s annotations were unclear on this point). The room behind the archway contained four standing skeletons, with weapons and shields. Langdon and Percy, ready for this long before they got there, presented their crosses and called on holy names until the skeletons were blasted into ash by their combined power. Their weapons and shields clattered to the floor, but also a single sheet of paper floated down from where it had been rolled up and stuck in one of their ribcages.
The paper was examined next and it turned out to be a magic scroll. There was also a large pile of ash, containing bits of burnt furniture, further back in the room, and this pile yielded 10 gold pieces when Langdon sifted through it.
The door to the south was opened, and this opened up on to a near-identical room, where three skeletons were rising up off the floor. Behind them, more skeletons opened the door to the far north. Percy and Langdon divided their turning ability, but it still was enough to dissolve all the skeletons in both locations, giving a grand total of 10. There was no treasure in either of the other rooms.
A door from one of the rooms led west into what Gregory’s notes called the “pillored vaults.” Haruspex suggested this might mean treasure vaults, and everyone was eager to see some treasure, since they had already spent more than they’d found down here this trip. The rooms were so called, apparently, because of their vaulted ceilings, and how a central pillar came down from the apex of the ceiling in each room. A face was carved in each of the pillars, facing west. The first room’s face had no eyes. Langdon tried to talk to it, but it did not answer. The second room’s face had no ears. The third room’s face had no mouth. Langdon got the connection between them, but could not solve how to activate them, assuming they did anything in conjunction.
It would be a riddle for another day. The Company decided to end this expedition, in the hope that the spell scroll they obtained was valuable enough. On the way back, though, they got as far as the muralled hall when they were ambushed by goblins, some of whom had bows. Percy and Orin were hit – and Orin was dealt a critical hit! Saraband’s sleep spell put the kibosh on all ten goblins, but the best treasure that could be looted off of them were two short bows in good condition.
As the Company was heading out, Grunnar promised to take Bethany back to Muriel. They found their mules still comfortably waiting in the stables, undisturbed. Nothing further was encountered on their way out of the castle, or heading back to the Menhir Road.
Back on the Menhir Road, the Company returned to Hawfair Green, where they now traditionally stopped and celebrated their success at the Leaping Trout Tavern. A crowd of 15 villagers came to see the Company of the White Oak return, hoping to hear tales of Castle Greyhawk (their destination after these visits long since no longer a secret). As the Company settled in (minus Vask, who stayed outside with his unwelcome bear), they recognized a gnome dressed all in black. This was Mather, one of the gnomes Haruspex and some others had long ago freed from the Castle Greyhawk dungeons before the Company of the White Oak got its name. Mather, the gnome whose family they had stayed with before exploring the Forbidden Caves north of Grossetgrottell.
Mather clearly recalled Haruspex and came over to clasp hands with him. Mather had a short, sad tale to tell of why he was dressed in mourning. “As you know, the Forbidden Caves were well-guarded after you discovered goblins and gnolls had taken up residence there. Two months ago, my nephew, Horach, was on patrol duty at the entrance to the Forbidden Caves. The patrol was not meant to go in, but they must have heard something and gone in to investigate. They were all…found dead. The monsters that did this had not returned to the Forbidden Caves to invade Grossetgrottell, as we always feared. Instead…do you recall a stone cube in one of the caves? You touched it and one side glowed bright while the opposite side turned dark? It must have been a magic puzzle box of sorts, but whoever did this knew how to open it. They opened the box, took whatever was inside, and left with no other clue than leaving the lid open…”
