Game summary for February 7, 2017, Reign of Winter campaign, for Phoenix Gaming Club. Session included: Deska Starseeker (Half-Elf Druid played by Kaliegh Belda), Svala Alehorn (Dwarf Unchained Barbarian played by Todd Hughes), Tiswichtt (Orc Witch played by Casey Scruggs), and Tulvur Xandersen (Dwarf Fighter played by Taylor Averdick). Game Master for this session was Charles Plemons.
The team came upon a summer pocket created by druids resisting the power of the Winter Witches. A great elk was under attack from a pair of worgs, and the team was able to drive the beasts off and rescue the megaloceros.
The team then found a ruined temple of Desna and met a pair of old priests. The team made came in the ruins as night fell. A haunt overtook the area revealing an ancient horror: giants and trolls slaughtered a group of children rounded up by the priests. The team learned the priests, in the ancient past, betrayed their deity and the children by offering them as sacrifice to Baba Yaga during the Winter War. This resulted in the death of the kids and the priests who rose again as heucuva, blasphemous fallen priests that appear as normal humans during daylight. The team was able to destroy these two undead abominations once and for all.
A few days later, the group discovered a woodsman shack under siege from a twigjack and quickling fey. The woodsman was dead on the lawn, and the fey tore into the party. The team took them down and discovered a third quickling beating the homeowner’s bastard half-breed son with a shovel. The faun was distraught over what had happened to his mother’s spouse, and his grief awakened his fey nature. His falling tears healed the slain woodsman and restored this family. Nadya, who knew this family from her travels, agreed to leave her kids with them now that the danger of the fey was eliminated.
As the group approached a bridge, a trio of freshwater merrows clambered up to block the path. They demanded the team’s papers. Tulvur walked up and handed them a crude handwritten note. One of the merrows snatched it up and read it, or pretended to. They demanded a “small tax.” When asked, they said they wanted Tiswichtt as a tax. Instead, Tulvur drew Icebiter and tried to kill them. Battle erupted, and one merrow grappled Tulvur but was slain by his blade. The group closed in and took down the merrows and discovered a previous victim hidden under the bridge.
Approximately 8 days into their journey, the team was ambushed by four Winter Guard falconers and their falcons. As the creatures swept in, Deska noticed a winter wolf creeping around to flank the party. She used wild shape to assume wolf form and charged after it. Svala, Nadya, and Ten-Penny took the fight to the falconers right up the middle. Tiswichtt summoned a bat swarm that brutalized one of the poor guards. Deska tried to talk to the winter wolf, and it called her a “Wolf Sister” and told her to flee, but it had to kill the others for their crimes against the Winter Witches. It then darted around her, dragged Tulvur to the ground and mauled him nearly unto death. Nadya moved in to try and rescue him and was tripped up by the fearsome creature. Deska failed to catch it in entanglement as well.
Meanwhile, falconer archers riddled Tiswichtt with arrows and falcons clawed at her face. She distracted two of them with birdseed, and fell back. Ten-Penny and Svala cut a deadly swath through their foes, leaving falcons and falconers dead in the snow. Nadya landed a pair of critical hits on the wolf from the ground, and Deska charged in and bit it in the flanks. Now outnumbered and badly injured, the winter wolf turned and fled into the snowy forest.
