Session Notes
The heroes, the Circle of Darkmoor, returned from the Lord Baron’s speech to his peoples, which was met with wide-spread acclaim, to discover that their captive, a member of the highwaymen who apparently call themselves the “Silencers,” and who reportedly had professed contrition and a turning over of a new leaf, retreating from his life of crime, had been murdered in cold blood, alongside his gaoler, Anker of Aldmaar.
The Circle pursued the attackers, who they saw fleeing on the High Road. The pursued fled as long as they might, but eventually the heroes overcame them, once again demonstrating mercy in taking a captive rather than to cut the murderers down like dogs in the street.
Is there no end to these murderous onslaughts? How can the baby-faced Baron implement his far-reaching policies if at every turn the criminal element outflanks him?
After Baron Grey’s magnificent speech, the heroes were alerted, having returned to the Ragged Moon for a communal libation, that there was trouble upstairs. Juttah, the northern ranger informed them that their captive, Norwich, the former dark cloak as well as his ranger guard Anker, had been assassinated in the immediate aftermath of the speech. They raced up to the common room to discover a bloody scene, and through the window, another group of dark cloaks fleeing on the High Way.
After defeating this group of assassins, they took a captive, a creature who called herself Lucretia. She shared a typically dismal history for this type of depressing woman which had led to her joining the group of dark cloaks — the so-called Silencers. She answered the questions put to her with enough seeming sincerity that the Circle allowed her to escape, unpunished.
The party, rather unceremoniously and by most accounts, alarmingly, returned, with the blood-soaked armor and weapons of the slain assassins decorating their shoulders.
They reported what they had learned from the assassin Lucretia and put the Baron into a state of alarm that he might be the subject of additional murderous escapades. With little enough evidence, I amend parenthetically.
The Circle then returned to the matter of the mysterious waste pit discovered behind a hidden door in the catacombs having first secured a hastily-constructed rope ladder fit for purpose.
They descended the 75 or so feet down into the noisome space beneath even the catacombs. And thereby discovering an underground river of shit. Directly beneath the vertical column they had just precariously traversed, a collection of rotting or long-past rotting corpses.
From the narrow walk space alongside the slow-moving turd torrent, the heroes could see a sewer passage heading both east and west. And, dimly in the dark in each direction, light, perhaps streaming down from above.
The Circle moved east, upstream of the crap creek, with the presumption that moving towards the center of Elder Pool might yield a better result than away. After some travel on that narrow shelf adjacent to the feces flood they found themselves in a circle of diminishing daylight, from some sort of exposed grate a few score of feet above, occasionally dripping down into this space. They discerned the remnants of iron handholds in this vertical shaft, but the party, having experienced more adventure with the rope ladder than anyone had hoped, they eschewed the opportunity to ascend.
As they continued along the passage east, the waste wave accompanying them, they began to believe that the passage was trending generally upwards. And then, to their considerable surprise, they discovered a woman to the left, a door opened above a climb of shitty stairs, hurling her reeking chamber pot their direction.
Recovering admirably, they climbed the steps coated with soil of the night and after maneuvering through a cellar crowded with coal and firewood, they emerged into the ruin of an Elder Pool home, to startle the older woman squatting in this abandoned space.
And that is where we find ourselves, gentle reader. In a state of affairs where one dark cloak, intended to serve a penance has been slaughtered while under house arrest. Another who participated in this murder in the center of Elder Pool, released to perform whatever foul deeds a tramp of the meanest sort might contrive. The Baron confined to his apartments, shaking in fear. And the great heroic hope of Elder Pool playing at seek-and-hide amongst the excrement.
Every day in Darkmoor is an adventure, I must say, gentle reader.