_{Session 2 - Played Oct. 10, 2016}

These campaign diaries are meant to be a very detailed breakdown, and nearly blow for blow recap of events from my (The DM) perspective. These will be very long, and if you are more interested in a shorter recap, please checkout this Youtube Series on the same subject.

This week the group started off in the tavern, just after Gorpus The Constructed showed up. Read the story up to now, here.

The Tavern

Gorpus stood in the doorway and said with a very lazy, authoritative voice that Talio (the barkeep) should 'just hand it over.' Talio is nearly to a panic, he repeats that he doesn't have any, just as he said last week (presumably).
Everyone checks to see if they can see this person in the doorway, and with their rolls, Amofrey is the only one who sees Gorpus. So I show her the image of him I've found.

Seeing the panic in Talio, John decides to get up and head to the bar, to see if he can see Gorpus or help diffuse the situation. He decides to act drunk so he has an excuse to blatantly head for the bar while seemingly ignoring the literal stone giant in the room. He rolled great in performance, and gets to the bar to ask Talio for another drink. Talio however is less convinced that he is actually drunk, since he can clearly see the lack of drink in his eyes.

Gorpus begins to head into the tavern towards the bar with thunderous footsteps, walks straight to the bar, completely ignoring John. Gorpus repeats his question, and Talio repeats his lack of knowledge or possession of whatever Gorpus is looking for. In the exchange, Talio is becoming increasingly panicked, and the group also gets the sense that Talio may have dealings with Gorpus in the past, similar in feel to a gangster collecting protection money.
John continues to try and talk to Gorpus and drunkenly get the guy to chill, but Gorpus only once even glances lazily in his direction.

Fed up with the whole situation, Gorpus lays his hand on the bar, and offers one last time, for Talio to give him what he knows is here. At this point Amofey has gotten up from the booth, and made her way to the bar, to stand on the other side of Gorpus, so now Amofrey and John are standing at the bar on either side of Gorpus thinking perhaps they might have to fight this guy, as Gorpus addresses Talio the barkeep, who has gone near completely catatonic with panic. His unresponsiveness somewhat angers Gorpus, and he just applies an effortless amount of force down on the bar, and the whole bar crumbles and breaks in half. Which quickly elicit an 'Oh shit...we probably shouldn't fight this guy' response from John and Amofrey simultaneously.

Gorpus then walks and leans against the doorframe, calls in his minions and in come a half dozen goblins, and a short, strange, hooded creature, with what appears to be feathers poking out from underneath his cloak. As the goblins begin to harass the patrons of this tavern, Gorpus informs Talio that if he wants to keep his tavern and his life, he will fork over the Electrum. Thats when the players finally realize what this is all about, and Amofrey decides to say screw it, pull her coin from her pocket, and find out why Gorpus want this stuff.

As soon as the coin leaves her coin purse, Gorpus instantly perks up and starts scanning the room. He finally notices Amofrey twiddling the coin between her fingers tauntingly. Gorpus stands up from agains the wall, and immediately everyone in the tavern becomes still and silent. He saunters over to stand in front of Amofrey and holds out his hand, says 'Give me the coin, child.' To which Amofrey replies 'Not until you tell me why you want it so bad.'
Suddenly there is a powerful booming avalanche of noise, that everyone quickly realizes is Gorpus' laughter at Amofrey's audacity. After a long laugh he replies 'Fine...' And he then proceeds to swiftly lift a hand, and instantly knock Amofrey unconscious, and snatching the coin from her hand as she falls to the ground.

Gorpus heads back outside and his minions continue harassing the patrons. At the same time Alben jumps out of his place in the booth and makes his way towards Amofrey. John casts Healing Hands on Amofrey, gaining her 11hp and having her regain consciousness. The Hooded Creature heads for Amofrey and Alben decides to step in between the creature and Amofrey, and raise his shield in a gesture to block the creature. The Creature stares up at the drow in challenge, and in doing so reveals to the drow that underneath its hood were a set of small beady black eyes, set in a field of black feathers, and sitting just above a long orange beak.

Seeing the challenge, John decides to walk up and take a swing at him with his staff. The creature pulls out a dagger and they contest each other in some kind of impromptu duel. The creature wins it and stabs John in the stomach causing 4hp in damage. To which Amofrey responds by casting Sleep. Which effects everyone in the tavern except the adventurers and the feathered creature.

Hearing the commotion, Gorpus comes back into the bar, saying he still senses some Electrum, and has the creature begin kicking the goblins awake so they can start searching the patrons of the tavern for the Electrum. Gorpus himself turns to the party members and tells them if they have Electrum, and give it to him, he will spare them. John reluctantly complies, and Gorpus thinking that he got all the Electrum here leans back against the wall, instructing the creature and goblins to continue searching the other patrons just in case.

The party decides to leave. I have them roll stealth and they all simply walk behind Gorpus and out the door without his noticing. As the party stands in the empty street determining what to do, they overhear Gorpus say '...Of course we are going to take them! Did you think I would just leave them be..??' in his deep stone voice.
Naturally the party decides to GTFO of there as soon as possible, and start running down the street. When the group gets to the end of the street, they realize they are not being followed. As such they stop and look back towards the tavern, to which they see the goblins beginning to exit the tavern carrying what appears to be the unconscious bodies of the patrons from within.
They are very indecisive about what to do next. Do they run back and intervene? Do they just forget the people they saw at the tavern because they don't owe them anything? It was a tough and long decision and they decided to go back to the military installation to try and get some answers about Gorpus and Electrum.

As they walk up to the same doorway that they exited from when they were last here, out comes running a very small, semi-familiar, gnome. The party instantly remembers this as the same person who initially gave them the Electrum and sent them on their way. They ask about a very large semi-glowing, stone gangster. The gnome immediately knows who they refer to and informs them he is known as 'Gorpus The Constructed'. To which the players immediately react '...The Constructed?? Did you guys build that asshole?'. Which of course the Korimi military did NOT. The party asks for some help recovering the patrons and putting an end to this bully's reign.
The gnome respectfully declines, because he claims that it is not the prerogative of the Korimi military to get involved in small bully cases. He backs that up with asking if Gorpus has ever killed anyone. The players have no idea and respond in kind. After a brief conversation about the likelihood of Gorpus having murdered someone at least once, the gnome offers the party a deal: Bring Proof of Gorpus having killed someone, and the Korimi military would probably help them dispel such evil.
The party then moves on to the Electrum, and the gnome informs them that most knowledge about Electrum is common knowledge even farmers know. Since they did not in fact know pretty much anything about Electrum, the gnome reluctantly proceeds to inform the party of the main points;

• Electrum has latent magical abilities

• Electrum is extremely rare, due to having been mined into 'extinction' because of said magical abilities
• The general knowledge of said magics lies in the same realm as making drugs does here on Earth:
• people know how, and one can find that information out in the world, but only 'ne'er-do-wells' would try to know it.
• Due to the rarity of Electrum, and its magical properties, it is also EXTREMELY valuable (near 100,000el : 1gp)

The gnome then proceeds to offer to take that Electrum off the adventurers hands for 'safe keeping'. The party (rightly) assumes that he wouldn't just be holding on to the coin, but instead keep and cash it for himself.
Sensing they have gleaned all the knowledge they're going to from this gnome, the party bids farewell and heads back into the heart of Viltodir to find a blacksmith, John very desperately wants a real weapon after his encounter with Gorpus highlighted the uselessness he felt towards his wooden staff.
Inside the smithy John interacts with a very old man, that is so hunched and disheveled the party mistook him for a dwarve from behind when the first came in. John strikes a very charismatic conversation with the smith and ends up buying two hand axes from the man. One very fine axe with inlaid gold and an amazingly sharp edge (offered for 3gp), and a second very mediocre axe, which seems to have a good sharp edge, is free of rust and chips and such, but is still very 'lower tier' (offered for 5cp). He strikes a deal because of his conversation, and John essentially gets himself the lesser axe for free.

They head out of the blacksmith shop, and begin to make their way after the goblins. After a few minutes of searching and asking, they locate what appears to be the mass of goblin footsteps heading northward out of Viltodir. They have no other real leads so they follow the trail out of town and into the woods. They have no way of knowing how long they were unconscious and therefore have no idea how far behind the goblins they are trailing. After about an hour of uneventful walking, the forest has gotten more thick and the sun has nearly set. So the party decides to look for a clearing and set camp for the night, in order to continue on in the morning.

A few hours into their night, while John is on watch, he notices a small dark figure moving in the bushes at the end of the clearing. He immediately wakes up the other two and points to the incoming danger. He then begins edging closer to the disturbance, and when he is about 6ft from the edge of the clearing, in burst 2 large badgers, they are about dog sized and appear to be somewhat aggressive, or possibly defensive, its hard to tell. Not wanting to risk it, John attacks the two badgers in a flurry or axe swings. The two badgers both let out a torrent of squeals and bleats as they head into their death, but before they can be fully dropped dead, on the other side of the clearing two more even larger badgers come bursting in! Making it clear the two badgers that John had just killed were, in fact, adorable little babies. Now that the baby badgers are dead, the parents are thrown into a rage and one of them charges its nearest enemy, Amofrey. She attacks as well as to not be caught unsuspecting, casting Magic Missle and doing some sizable damage to this badger. Alben turns to the second badger, that is nearest him and pulls, draws, and fires his short bow. Striking its rear thigh and causing it to bark and squeal in response. John, being closest to Alben, charges to attack the badger that Alben had just shot. He swings his axes in a hail of metal, and severely injures the poor giant badger. Alben knocks, draws, and looses two more arrows in rapid succession and takes the badger to within an inch of his life. John pounces. He manages to get his axe underneath this giant badgers throat and finishes the deed. leaving only the one badger left, that Amofrey has been whittling down with Magic Missiles while the boys played on the other side of the clearing.

Amofrey decides to try and up the ante and kill this badger quickly. She does this via means wholly her own. She shoves her hand up the badger's butt and sinks all the way up to her shoulder inside this badger.

She then casts Firebolt and (rolling a Nat20) explodes this badger from the inside out, causing guts and viscera to fly all around the clearing, and all over John and Alben nearby. She immediately exclaims "Holy hell that was a-maze-ing!"

After a bit of light clean up they remake their camp, and head off to bed prepping for the next day of travel in their trek.

They continue on the next day, picking up the trail easily due to Johns inherent affinity for tracking, and begin to make their way across the country-side. Another hour or so passes and they come upon a huge tunnel carved into the mountainside. This tunnel is obviously not a natural tunnel, it is large and square and the walls are straight, and very smooth. it was carved into the mountainside, and the rock on the walls doesnt even really match the surrounding rock

Inside the mouth of the tunnel they find a very large unconscious man. He is too large for them to realistically carry back to town, but they surmise he is one of the townspeople that were taken, and therefore one of the people they are trekking to save.

They leave him there.

Heading into the tunnel they notice the rock is incredibly uniform in texture and coloring. there is a subtle pattern to the stone walls, like white marble. they continue walking and admiring the tunnel, noticing at one point that the stone abruplty shifts pattern. On the other side of the shift the pattern and color is the same, though mismatched at a point in the tunnel. As if there were two tunnels of the same material that were joined together. Thinking it was weird but not too weird, seeing as how this was clearly a man-made tunnel, they continue one, and come uneventfully to the other side of the tunnel. Just as they see the 'light at the end of the tunnel' they notice a dark blob of something slumped against the wall just in the opening of the tunnel.

As they approach this blob in the mouth of the tunnel, they slowly realize its the same guy they left there when they headed into the tunnel. A quick inspection confirms and reveals the forest outside is the same too. They deliberate for a while and decide to head back to the

[[UNFINISHED LOG]]

~ after minutes of trial and error and searching and coming up empty handed, John has the idea to press the Electrum to the wall where the seam is

~ Alben does that, and instantly the two sides of the seam begin to cascade apart. the seam itself never grows larger, its just as if the TEXTURE of the rock is moving apart like two pool of flowing water spreading apart from the center. Alben also feels a gentle breeze hitting in apparently from the seam.

~ through some experimentation, Alben realizes that as soon as he removed the coin, the wall returned to normal, and all weirdness abruptly ceases. This effect works the same regardless of which wall he tries, as long as he places the coin up against the strange texture seam in the rock.

~ through more experimentation, John finds that he can touch alben, and then turn inline with the seam, and in doing so, he instantly vanishes.

~