Rompchella (TF008)

“Rompchella” is the eighth session of the Team 3.5 campaign. Gathering themselves to strike at the heart of the Infestation, Team 3.5 discovers a number of oddities in the forest, as well as some interesting new people...

= Synopsis =

Abralis 14
Immediately after Lemmy’s near mortal shaving, Aine directed the party to hunt down the local Solari Satellite, who turned out to be Amafrey, the owner of the Sunbeam Library. Amafrey chatted with the three, passing along whatever notes she had compiled about the infestation, knowing for a fact that it was malignant and unnatural. Amafrey also struck a deal with Aine: if they returned from this incursion into the woods alive, she’d be more than willing to trade out her second volume of Love, Distilled for the first one, as Lath had already finished it and Aine was almost halfway.

After leaving the Sunbeam Library, the party debated briefly about what their next step should be. Lath was a proponent for just leaving immediately, as the town’s pretension was giving him bad vibes. Aine argued against setting out as the sun was setting, as they didn’t know what they were getting into. A compromise was reached where Team 3.5 headed for the Eighter Alleys, the poorer district in town.

Upon their arrival, they swiftly realized why this section of town was known as the Eighter Alleys, much to Aine’s chagrin, Lemmy’s benign confusion, and Lath’s enjoyment: the Alleys had a breed of harmless arachnid, the tapestry spider, that lived everywhere. In order to get away from them, Aine hopped up onto Lemmy’s shoulders.

The three met a halfling worker named Stennis, who brought them to the Red Gauntlet Inn and Tavern. Over a couple of mugs of ale, Stennis explained a bit of Crusene’s economy, and the need for silk necessitating a deal to be struck with followers of Orthabe, the goddess of spiders. The three spent the night at the Red Gauntlet Inn.

As they slept that night, Lemmy made it a point to move any spiders on Aine’s body to Lath’s.

Abralis 15
The team set out bright and early the next morning, Lath being appointed the pathfinder. Picking up a dowsing rod and going off his (admittedly pretty sharp) intuition, the party set out from Crusene. As the set up for camp that night, Aine was off collecting branches for the fire, reading Love, Distilled volume one, when she ran into an injured dryad. Guiding her back to camp, Lath healed her up, as she introduced herself.

Her name was Dreyla, and her tree had been “touched” by a vine of the infestation, crushing it as she escaped (and leaving tremendous wounds on her body as a result). She had a moment of explosive anger, the leaves on her body turning red, before she grew skittish and ran off into the gloom of the forest. Lath and Aine chatted briefly about following her, agreeing she had definitely been marked by the infestation in some form. They resolved to follow her in the morning.

As Lemmy stood watch, he heard a hefty branch fall from a nearby tree.

Abralis 16
As the party awoke the next morning and started tearing down camp, Lemmy wandered over to where he heard the branch fall last night, and found lying on the ground wooden spear, woven out of three branches with carvings similar to Dreyla’s. Aine took up wielding it.

Lath led the Team on Dreyla’s path, and managed to keep a pretty good track of it (no small feat for a mortal, as dryads specialize in hopping from tree to tree to throw off pursuers), before eventually realizing she was so far away from any settlements that, if she is infected, it would be hard for her to hurt anyone. He then led them northward again.

As they changed directions, the three stumbled upon a curiosity, a wishing well, from an ancient settlement that is now forgotten to time. The three peered into the well, with Lemmy tossing in a copper, Lath a whopping ten gold pieces, and Aine a single gold piece (that her player clearly didn’t want to part with, but that’s dedication to the character). Aine enchanted her piece with light, and the three watched as it fell… and fell… and sunk… until it hit the bottom. They saw two things at the bottom of this deep well: a small fortune’s worth of coins, and a skeleton.

Lath meditated for a bit at the foot of the well, feeling very intune with the fact that this was once a settlement of common knowledge that is now lost to time.

Abralis 17
The next day’s travel was weird. As a result of the portal to Delirium, the walls between the planes were weak, which meant that the Interstice, the “backroom” plane (the place between places, as Lath put it) that allows for planar travel, was starting to leak through to Loctet in the form of fog. The three kept catching glimpses of other planes in the distance, and Lath eventually realized that, due to space becoming fluid, they were actually just going around in circles, forcing them to call it quits.

Lemmy watched at night as the mists receded, placing them firmly back on Loctet once again.

Abralis 18
Setting out the next morning, Lath quickly realized that, as a result of the Interstice warping space around them, they are actually several miles off course, and they would have to make up a lot of lost ground for today.

As they did, however, they found the remains of a Divergent Legion squad, rendered into tiny pieces and chunks by the infestation. A gruesome, horrifying sight, Aine and Lath set about putting the pieces to a proper burial, and Lemmy found that, yes, the soldiers came from the same direction they did… which means they’re ostensibly on the right path.

Abralis 19
After the gruesome find of the previous day, the Team underwent a pretty severe emotional whiplash as they came upon a gnome hermit in the woods. Introducing himself as Schnicktick, the gnome stated that he was a child of the forest, constantly gyrating cosmically (as Lath’s player put it) as he asked them their purpose here. When they said they were interested in putting an end to the infestation, Schnicktick offered to combine his power with theirs, as he was also interested in seeing the infestation come to a close.

As Schnicktick began to twerk in the middle of the forest in front of three befuddled (yet amused) adventurers, Melanine appeared out of the brush as well. The centaur warrior introduced himself, and set about ascertaining the history and intent of the three individuals in front of him (ignoring Schnicktick entirely). Melanine’s straightforward line of questioning and assessment of their character threw the party for a bit of a loop, prompting Lemmy, for the first time ever, to rescind a thank you. Aine later collected tea herbs with Lath, asking the drakeblood cleric if she was annoying. Lath assured her that she wasn’t, and that he very much admired many of her qualities.

Melanine talked a bit about himself as well; he grew up in an annex village of Crusene, one that was on the front lines of the infestation. As his village attempted to warn Crusene, the higher ups ignored their pleas, essentially leaving them to fend for themselves until the issue became too big to ignore. Melanine decided to take matters into his own hands, and was independently searching for a solution when he bumped into the three of them (and Schinicktick). To that end, Melanine also joined forces with Team 3.5 (and Schnicktick).

Abralis 20
The now larger by two thirds Team 3.5 set out for the heart of the infestation, which they quickly realized was a giant, gnarled oak tree. They arrived at it’s foot, where they were greeted by two horrifically dried out husks, puppeted by vines: both wearing crowns, one had an immaculate grey-white cloak, and the other was wielding a gleaming sword. On the tree itself was an emaciated orange skinned elvish creature, with vines coming out and wrapping around the tree from his shoulders down. Underneath him was a portal, humming with pink arcane energy, and, distressingly, carved above was the same symbol they found off Sharp-ear, the holy symbol of some unknown god. He welcomed the “five pieces of meat” into the heart of his web, and asked them what their goal was.

Lemmy pulled out his rapier, and spoke on the behalf of the party, introducing them as Team 3.5 2.0, here to put an end to the infestation. The creature bound to the tree responded in suit, stating that all five of them would be going to the same place.

= Featured characters =

Player characters

 * Aine Solana
 * Lemmy
 * Lath
 * Melanine (new)

Non-player characters

 * Amafrey Solana, half-elf Satellite of Crusene
 * Stennis, halfling silk collar worker of the Silk Tunnels
 * Schnicktick, gnome “child of the leaf”
 * Dreyla, injured dryad of the Avonstead
 * The Infestation’s Source