On+to+Predallen

=__**On to Predallen**__=

**__The Plan__**
The people interested in fulfilling the Gremlin's quest will sail to Haunted Island 5 at a time (the captured sailor going back and forth) during the night. We will then move onto the mainland the next night. We will form up with the following cover story:

We are a historical exploration expedition, which is paid for by the House of the Two Doves. The rest of us were "barbarian" slaves from the GhostMoon who survived the attack and were brought to Predallen and survived the first gladiatorial games (where one group was eliminated, fought on Foreigner's Island. Four groups ganged up against group 5 because they were led by a necromancer. Always hide a lie by wrapping it in the truth!). At that point we were bought by the House of the Two Doves for this expedition. The acolyte will lead us. He will claim to be a historian also with connections to the Scholar's Vale. We will be looking for the actual location of the first meeting between Odin, Tatemae and Honne where they agreed to be protectors of Predallen in exchange for Odin's blessing and physical bodies. There has been interest for years in finding this location, but neither Honne nor Tatemae has ever said where it was, and no one else has found it. We will roam Predallen, meet the people, and form opinions to give to the Gremlin. We may even look for this location.

We discussed the dangers at length. We are depending on not running into anyone from the House Of The Two Doves. We hope that the acolyte remains convinced that his is a mission from Odin. Most of all, we hope to not meet any of **"The Unspoken"** - agents above the law and answerable to none but the highest powers! The ultimate goal is to get a boat and flee Predallen, but we must be careful, and our journey might be longer that we hope.

The first wave headed over to make beachhead camp for rest of group. Mojo, Ace, Loricifera, Obadiah, Feyren and Edgtho were the first to go ashore. Our intrepid "expert" sailor nearly made it a one way trip, as he tried to navigate into the harbor lagoon, he over compensated the tide/current, crashing on the only big rock on the shore and causing a significant breach. Fortunately, the multiple Mending spells cast by Obadiah and Edgtho were sufficient to restore the boat to sea worthiness.
 * __Transfer to Haunted Island__ (July 19)**

While establishing camp, Mojo noticed some figure far down the coast walking away. Mojo, Loricifera and Feyren headed off in pursuit. Edgtho headed back to the Last King Island with our "expert" sailor, letting Ace and Obadiah set up a camp. Loricifera, believing himself to be a new hybrid elf Tarzan, proceeded to run among the branches of the thick woods on the island, with Mojo/Feyren following on the ground. Mojo noted Lori seemed to be humming some ditty about "Elven man, elven man something something can can". Feyren, rolled her elven eyes internally at such crazy behavior.

After a few minutes of movement after this figure, Mojo and Feyren hear laughter coming from inland, and decide to head back to camp, while Lori continued his pursuit. Lori soon realized that the figure was pacing Lori, just enough to keep on edge of vision. Lori stops, then slowly reverses course and the figure keeps pace until Lori sees the figure out in open. Then it proceeds to take off from Lori, Lori decides to follow and soon ends up in an abandoned/destroyed village with a dock. Loricifera sees the figure on the docks and gets a clear look, its the "Gremlin" and then it disappears. Lori looks around and investigates, notices that there are rough cut wood ruins on top of more advanced marble ruins, with the wood ruins showing effects of a significant fire. Lori decides to head back to camp and on the way notices the spot the Gremlin had openly stood earlier. Lori proceeds to hastily get the entire group and leads them to the body of a dead young man, no more than 20. He was sitting around a small burnt out fire, with a bowl of dirt and small pebbles in his lap. It looked like he starved to death, which made no sense to Mojo and the elves, as they spotted plenty of wild fruit that would sustain a person. Lori also found on the body a nice necklace, a ring to match, plus a few other rings that suggest of some wealth, and a weird hat made from plants on his head. Mojo sets out to backtrack the dead guy, "Fred". Why call him Fred, because Mojo said so.

Fred's path was a wandering stumbling falling route for Mojo to track, clearly Fred was no longer in control of his senses. After about a mile, the party started to hear laughter and then see a young man and woman running/skipping thru woods. Fred's path lead to same direction and as we followed, Loricifera up traveling in the trees (seriously, Lori never missed a balance check the whole night) said he saw an opening up ahead. As we cautiously looked thru the woods, we came to see a wide grassy glade, and in the middle a huge willow tree, its branches providing shade to over half the glade. Around the glade, thronged a party of 30-40 young men and women, chatting, laughing, dancing, eating, drinking and frolicking about. Ace and Feyren, completely sucking at this game with terrible hide checks, are discovered by one of the young women, who calls on them to join. They decided to go ahead and check it out, trusting the rest of the group to provide cover when things have to go bad. Karen was the name of the woman who spotted Ace and Feyren, given each a garland of flowers. Ace held his while Feyren claimed allergies and threw it away. However, thru the gala, eventually both had a flower necklace placed on them. dun-dun-dun-ta-dun. Ace and Feyren each politely tokenly sampled the wine and platters of fruit and nuts.

Not feeling any side effects. Ace tries to ask about why Karen and her friends did not help Fred. They said Fred who, where was he and nobody is missing, then went on partying. Again Ace brought it up and several began to get angry, why does Ace ask them to go check out Fred, maybe Ace is the bad guy who killed Fred. Ace said no, it was not him and if he wanted to harm anyone he could have earlier, waiting when a couple left the glade. That seems to calm the partiers down. At some point, Mojo and Edgtho went to get Fred, (Jeff, Andrew - I might have sequence of events wrong) and to bust up this partiers naïve gaiety. Once they returned, Mojo wanted Lori to drop the body on the largest group of partiers.

At that point, the earth at the base of willow tree erupted open and out came these 3 foot long cock roach beetles, attacking the young men and women. Feyren and Ace, began to fire arrows and magic missiles at the monsters to help cover the fleeing partiers. Obadiah runs to the opening and swings, and swoosh, weapon goes right thru like a fog. The cockroach runs past Obadiah and bites off a leg of a woman. Mojo and Loricifera have to grab Ace and Feyren to stop wasting their shots. Ace goes on a rant, the group are all bunch of murders, cold hearted no good stinking scum to let the carnage go on. Only when Obadiah swears what Ace sees is an illusion, that Ace lets himself get dragged off. The group ties Fred to the willow tree, in order to see if he was real and see if could disrupt the illusion. Next morning, Ace garland of flowers is still fresh and he gets convinced something is amiss and removes the garland.

Our group heads back to the willow tree glade again and watch same results of previous night "attack" and investigate more. The willow tree is way too perfect, too big, so Obadiah tries to detect evil and is "blocked", Edgtho tries to detect magic and is "blocked". Ace tries a read magic and gets a brief flash of some glyph but not enough to redraw. Group heads back to destroyed town, find a boat(Fred's), some official papers with insignia that match Fred's ring and necklace. Also find a newer grave site about 15 years old, of about 30-40 people each with same headstone epitaph about the young being foolish reap their actions. So the group opens up one grave and on the body find crushed limbs or sawed off parts, as seen in the illusion. Since the Gremlin showed us the body of Fred for a reason and then last stop was at the pier, it must be a reason. Searching the pier uncovered 3 stone rods, each with a unique symbol on them. Feyren recalled that there were 3 stones placed perfectly around the willow tree. We decide to rest for the night after viewing the willow tree one more time. Lori clips off a strand of willow branch and piece of bark to see if tree is perfect next morning. During the night, Lori gets a dream vision of this motherly woman seemingly imprisoned by unseen bonds.

With the Predallen acolyte now shipped over, he is interrogated more about the story of haunted island. He relays that Honne and Tatemae came to the island to take care of a spirit creature and the battle resulted in this place being haunted. He believes the young group killed where interfering in some manner and thus accidentally triggered the cockroaches to kill them. He helps to determine that there is some order to the rods but can only provide which one is first. He warns group not to interfere and looks in dismay at our sacrilegious behavior. On the stones around the tree, each has a slot for a rod. Taking an educated SWAG at rods 2 and 3, the rods are slipped into the stones...we guessed correctly. There is a big thunder and whoosh of wind straight out in all directions from the tree. A section of the ground under the tree gives way and a large cave exists. The group goes into the cave and on a rock slab, is the woman from Lori's dream vision. She looks to be in a deep trance. Obadiah casts a healing spell and she wakes up. In shock she demands to know who we are, where is she and why does she feel as if she been in a nightmare.

In sharing of stories, this is a daughter of Freya. She thought she had agreement/alliance with the sisters and was caught by surprise by Tatemae when attacked. She tells our group to wait here and then teleports to Last King Island to talk to the baboon avatar as well as confirm other parts of our story. She comes back expressing her thanks of her rescue with a gift, touching each(+Con point). End of session.

Additional note, the papers of Fred are traveling credentials. He belongs to the "House of the Lantern". There is thought if a member of group matches the description, to impersonate Fred to help party as it travels Predallen.

We did a lap around the Haunted Island to check the place out. It was too steep and rocky for there to be anything on the interior so we took a couple days to walk the perimeter. We found a couple of hidden camps that looked like they were places herb hunters came to. The island is very lush and there are plenty of plants to pick. The crossbow traps at the entrance were scary but we managed to avoid them with only SpiderElf getting a scratch near miss on the poison. We got ambushed by half a dozen kobolds but since we were all 2nd level we managed to take them out. Fearing a swarm of the vermin we continued the lap and came upon their canoe. Turns out they came over from the mainland to hunt and do not inhabit the island. We kept the canoe for our use. It was big enough to hold 2 people and it turns out one of Andrew's characters is an expert at handling a canoe.
 * The Pigeons Have Landed** (Aug 2)

The Daughter of Freya [name to be remembered by the DM soon] spent time blinking in and out checking on what she has missed in the last 120 years and we had an occasional chance to ask her a question. She would not say who her dad was. She existed when Tatemae and Honne were created and remembers their "birth". When we freed her there was a huge release of energy so it's possible that 1 or both of them know something happened. She feels more confident in our story having backed much of the information up. Mostly we got a bigger impression that her mental state is pretty messed up right now. The "dancing ghosts" seen around the tree were a manifestation of her nightmare of the kids killed when Tatemae attacked. She's spent 120 years reliving that so all is not well between her ears. We also got some more details on the untouchable orders. Tom has a sheet to read next time but there are 4 colors. Each color has a specific function. The lighter the color of your outfit the higher up in rank you are.

We made plans to move to Predallen. The plan was 2 people would take the canoe across the 2 miles and scout the other coast for a good landing spot while everyone else (all NPCs) transferred to the haunted island. This proved to be a very ambitious plan. We had about a week of bad weather and laughed as the expert canoeist tried not to drown. (It was an 04 kind of night with that being the high roll in 3 tries). There was a small village directly across the island and some good landing areas. We used the 2 ships to take us to the far side of the village (west) so that it would appear we were walking in from the military outpost on the bay. The ships dropped off the canoe at a designated spot on the east side just in case. All the NPCs are to wait 3 weeks before heading to the outsider island and getting away.

We spent the night off the road and walked into the village around noon. Our cover story was very plausible and no one questioned any bit of it. Groups of foreign barbarian slaves led by a citizen for a House must roam the countryside and no one thinks a thing about it. "We're on a mission and can't talk details" seems to be a pretty common statement and everyone accepts it. To our advantage they even assume it (more on that later). But it should be a easy peasy for us to throw that statement out and LAY LOW.

We did some interacting with the villagers and sold a few common items to get some cash. Spent a couple nights at the Inn to rest up and recoup from our weeks of camping. Nothing in the town stood out. it was a quiet place but they got traveler through often. Our presence was the news of the day but not a big deal. In the center of town there was a tent with a blue light hanging (magical necromantic). A middle aged guy in dark blue robes (i.e. low leve blue order). Laid out before him is a table with basic food and drink. The blue order provides for the people and this is for those in need. Turns out this guy is also a very bored drunk. Being in the order none of the locals will talk to him. Being just off the boat and stupid we sure will. He was demoted and exiled to this podunk hell for sleeping with the wrong girl. A charge he denies but since the order is totally corrupt blah blah blah. He also said there was a hive of kobolds that has lived nearby forever and been pretty harmless but lately has started stealing livestock and kidnapping a person once in a while for ransom. It sure would be nice if someone would slap them around a bit. The Paladin wasn't present but felt a disturbance in the force and about laid an egg as the discussion moved to us helping out this village.

Then the acolyte got summoned for a meeting with the high citizen who lives in town (House of the Lantern - same symbol as on the ring of Dead Fred from haunted Island). Several people went with him to help and good thing. He blew it stammering and shaking. The old guy though assumed he was blowing him off keeping our mission secret and dismissing his offer fro help. He got irate and demanded the whole party come over for diner the next night. The whole party goes and he's laid out a huge feast. No one dismisses the House of the Lantern and let it not be said they did not offer aid to the acolytes. The kid blows it again big time (Andrew really sucks as this game). Luckily the PCs interject and distract the Old Dude. He ignores the kid the rest of the night as we talk about our worlds. We are to spend the night at his manor. The Inn isn't good enough for us. The next morning we get ready to leave and there's a load of provisions and the guy's personal carriage waiting for us to take. He went totally over the top from the kid slighting him and dumped the goods on us. Crazy.

So now we're on the road with a train of good (can't remember if a couple mules were included) and a 2 person high end carriage with the Lantern House emblem on it. We have a letter to give to someone when we ditch the thing so it gets back to him. There is a coast road that goes all the way around the continent with a village a days ride along the way. We get to the next village and it's pretty much the same set up. We talk to a few slaves from another house on a mission they can't talk about. They were taken from some fishing village 10 years ago and love it here. They eat regularly and get treated better than when they were growing up. We were told again to stay away from the Orders. The Blues take people. The old and infirm - anyone unable to contribute - is taken by the Blues to be "cared for" and never seen again. Sure enough in this village square is a tent with a blue light and a kid in dark blue robes. Up hobbles an old guy on crutches as is apparently his daily routine. After a bit 2 guys in light blue robes appear and sit by him. Can the group just let this happen? Hell no. Laying low is for wussies! It's Obadiah freekin' rescue. In the end we get the guy to the Inn and have him convinced he was a huge help to up the other day offering advice. He now has plans to become the town's crotchety old guy telling everyone what to do. It looks like we got away with this and will be leaving in the morning. The light blue robes just let it happen and melted away. The kid however started stomping around about how he reported this guy like he was supposed to and he did not help anyone he's a leach. We managed to confuse the situation and shouldn't have an issue here but don't know if the light blues took note of us. They know that all this did was delay them taking him for a few days and it's no big deal. It just depends on how much of an annoyance they think this was to them. If they don't care then they'll probably forget the whole thing. If they were anxious to get out of this backwater hole then maybe they'll be pissed enough to jot down our description. Either way I say we steer clear of the Blues for a while just in case. Damn this roll playing. Has anyone thought about switching over to a LE party?

We continued our counterclockwise loop around the east side of Predallen hitting small towns. Between 2 of them we walked up on some bandits trying to rob a trio of wagons heading the opposite direction as us. They were pretty distracted so we prepared and got pretty close before they noticed us but as soon as they saw us they started attacking. Saffron sang, Loricifera and Hunter feathered them, Clopid cut them off at the knees, Hayden bled profusely, and Basil got slowly beat to shit. Three of the wagoneers managed to live and continued their way, 1 bandit ran off when the battle turned, but we surrounded and captured the leader. He begged us to kill him quickly rather than taking him into town. The penalty for being a bandit is the Blues get you. They suck out your life force and turn you into a little blue light so you can become something that contributes to society. We said we would make it quick if he took us to their camp so we could lewt. It was a day's hike away so the Acolyte and non-present members of the group took the carriage into the next town while we hiked to the camp. Our haul ended up being 10pt. We beheaded the bandit, had a brief wolf encounter that night, and headed to the village.
 * Traveling and A Lot of Backstory** (Aug 16)

Lori spent more time observing the Blues and noticed that the light blue robes had some intertwined threading on the cuffs and collars so it looks like there is some rank designations. Word of the bandit attack had made it back to this town but there was no description of us, just vague references to outsiders showing up. We got a good night's rest, Basil finished healing up, and we took off toward Huntingchester Fell, our first true walled town.

About 3/4 of the way there we caught up with a fancy carriage moving slower than us with 8 mounted and heavily armed guards pacing it. 2 of the guys in back held up and politely requested that we stay behind and not try to pass. We noticed that they were all wearing the symbol of Honne (snow capped mountain). We dropped back and had a slow walk into town, getting there after dark. As we approached the Honne group took a left before entering the city and one of the guards said the priestess was sorry for delaying our travel and would either enable our entrance through the locked city gates or would let us spend the night in her temple, whichever we wanted. We picked temple without hesitation. We got a glimpse of the priestess as they helped her out of the carriage. Extremely old. Terrible scars from burns covering all the skin we could see. The Acolyte was summoned and came back acting like he's just had a big O. We outsiders were given instructions and provided for (baths, food, etc.) and later on given an audience with her.

Her name is Fepoa and she had an idea who we are. She opened up telling us the history of Honne and Tatumae and the war from a participant's point of view. She was middle aged when it happened (100yrs ago). Honne started spending lots of time off Predallen working with the other countries to bring in trade. She was "protecting" by enabling peaceful trade and interactions with other societies. What she missed while she was gone so much was the increasing influence Tatumae was having and the direction she was taking society. When the comet hit and magic was weakened Honne could not be gone as much and then saw what Tatumae was doing. Thus started the "it's on, bitch" war. The country was split east vs west with the central mountain range acting as the front with little movement in the trench lines. It turns out this sparsely populated country has plenty of room for the lesser races (kobolds, orcs, gnolls, etc.) to exist but they've remained low key. The civil war emboldened them and after 3 years of fighting they struck everywhere like a plague (possibly with Tatumae's urging). This was accompanied by a real plague that was equally devastating. Honne diverted a bunch of her army to deal with the menace within and to protect her people in the east. Tatumae did not and used the opening to break through and started to scorch the earth. Honne lost, Tatumae won and could write the history that the scorched earth in the east and raids in the west was Honne's fault. According to the priestess the story about Honne going crazy has a grain of truth to it. The devastation to the land and all the slaughter did unsettle her a bit. The goofy thing is that Tatumae truly does care for her sister and does not want to kill her. Tatumae is the stronger and could do so but wants to rehabilitate her, not eliminate her. [Group Hypothesis 1: the 2 are tied together and the death of 1 means they both die] Tatumae's "rehabilitation" however would hardly be conducive to an open society though.

The Priestess believes that Tatemae never "betrayed" Honne, but simply ran Predallen as she saw fit, the Lawful Evil way, while they were supposed to work together and balance each other (Honne being good, not sure of law/chaos). However, with Honne gone so much, little collusion occurred, and even the priestess felt that was a failing of Honne, not a secret betrayal by Tatemae. It is part misunderstanding and part overstepping to fill the vacuum created by Honne. There may be a possibility of getting them together again, but only if Tatemae would give up some of her power and let Honne's ideas be reimplemented. I suspect that will happen when Hell freezes over or when she is weakened and forced to submit.

Honne started the orders and Tatumae has since corrupted them. The Blues were to help the poor. They still do that for those who can be helped. If you're beyond help then it's time to become the little blue light of the world. The Reds were to help people find their calling or to escort volunteers to careers they could work at, not abduct people and force them to become what was chosen for them. The Greens were to foster the arts and Predallen culture, not be propaganda ministers and spies (Greens do not wear their colors like the others so any bard or acolyte could also be a spy). The Whites were to ensure the orders followed the rules and ensure no one gained too much power not be the secret police with ultimate authority. There's also a secret Black order that operated off the island doing things like the backing the pirates.

We wanted to know why she was telling us all this. She first claimed that she tells select groups the true history. Many people in the east know about the wholesale slaughter Tatumae brought but no one in the west knows. She wants the true record to be out there but we are not to start spreading it like apostles. We'd be killed if we started doing that. She also was not taking much risk. If a low level acolyte and a bunch of outsiders start running around claiming "the priestess told us this" she'd just deny it and we'd be killed. So we fessed up to being on the Moon and witnessing the Honne/Tatumae encounter. She said she suspected it was us. She had received word that an encounter happened but had no details but knew there was a group of survivors and was on the look-out for us. We told her what we saw happen on the ship and said we ended up on Ghost Island and about freeing Freya's daughter and then making our way onto Predallen and now we're wandering. We did not mention the Kings Island stuff or meeting the Gremlin although the conversation migrated to the Gremlin legend so she may suspect something there.

She confirmed other information for us. Honne's home base is Mt Fuji and Tatumae's is Mt. Kilauea, the one volcano on Predallen. Both of those locations have temples on them and the Reds are still performing sacrifices on both of them. The sacrifices used to be animals and food, but are now human also. We broke up throwing around courses of action.

We stayed in Hunterchestertonfieldtown for a day which turned out to be the eve of their biggest holiday, the ending of the Time of Madness. It all started with children making wreathes, bouquets, etc of flowers and selling them and decorating the town with them. The Green order (propaganda) is out in force, and there is both excitement and fear in the air. The next day everyone dresses down (some in costumes) and everyone roams the streets. Free food and drink (but very simple survival foods, representing the poverty of the time) are given out at every home, and the people celebrate the end of the war. The Temple of Tatumae closes and the Orders are nowhere to be seen for a day. As the day gets later and later, and some are drunker and drunker, the talk and singing gets more and more Anti-Tatumae. No one seems to care, like it's one day where all is allowed. The House of the Lantern, which has a major headquarters (and treasury) here, are seen as heroes for their saving the town from getting sacked during the war. The soldiers parade around and everyone welcomes them and gives them the choicest food. No one takes advantage of the situation, and the Lantern soldiers carry the drunks home and clean up a bit afterwards. At dawn, the Tatumae temple reopens and the blues come back out serving breakfast. Every townsperson queues up to take a ritualistic bite and sip. Our accolyte, feeling rebellious, tries not to drink their offering, but they brought him back to do it correctly.
 * __Meeting the Resistance__** (Aug 30)

During the freetalk we learned that the ruins to the northwest is the ruins of a group of soldiers who fought Tatemae to the death during the war. Tatemae completely destroyed their fortress island and it remains haunted to this day. It's also a sanctuary for anyone running from the orders. We travelled there, found some signals left in dirt and moss, and continued to the lake. Ruins of a fort were visible on an island two miles out. We found a hidden rowboat and started ferrying people out. Our first group, stopped by a crossbow bolt as they approached the ruins, sat and waited while others arrived and negotiations began. They brought us into the keep where undead surrounded us and sniffed us then left us alone. Their foulmouthed teenaged girl leader was astounded we weren't attacked. They allowed us in at that point.

It seems that this is a halfway house of about 30 refugees, who stay here a bit then move on. In particular we met former agents of the Red and the Blue who decided they would rather flee than do their jobs. They were telling us all they know of people and policies, etc.