Previous installments: Session #1, Session #2, Session #3, Session #4, Session #5, Session #6, Session #7, Session #8, Session #9, Session #10, Session #11, Session #12
After the untimely demise of Ellipsis the Hunter (formerly the spearhead of the party and guide in the perilous wilderness), the small group of adventurers returned to the village. Ellipsis' player decided to play as Buff the Warrior.
After the burial ceremonies, they discussed their plans with the colony elder and the priestess of Hestia. The priestess was happy to learn about the existence of an oracular cave nearby, and wanted to visit right away, but this pilgrimage was postponed until the place becomes safer.
Suddenly, a man (of the the colony's fishers) came running back from the seashore. He told that a ship appeared, adorned with a horsehead. Many warriors disembarked from the vessel, took a villager hostage.
Buff and Porphyra quickly commanded the colonists to fortify themselves in the houses, then took six guards, and went down to the beach. There, indeed, they saw a big ship, and about two dozen foreign warriors.
They introduced themselves as Phoenicians, who came to visit their compatriots who founded a colony here. The adventurers explained, that those colonists had disappeared before the coming of the Greeks. Then they led a big group of Phoenicians back to the village. Luckily, Bal-Shazzar was there, who corroborated the adventurers' story, and told the other Phoenicians that the adventurers rescued him from monstrous cyclopes.
A long discussion followed. The Phoenicians still laid claim to the village, as belonging to them. Furthermore, they needed proof about their missing relatives. Buff and Porphyra explained their suspicion, that most of these missing people were now slaves of the vulture riders up north. The Phoenician captain agreed to give a couple of his men for a scouting mission.
Porphyra used her oracular powers and learned that a way to get into the volcano's caldera undetected lay through the abandoned silver mines: a tunnel entrance she spied earlier in her prophetic trance.
So the group (two adventurers, two warriors, and four Phoenicians) spent a day preparing, then set out once more into the wilderness. They managed to navigate the well-trodden path through the forest, and made it back to the river source without encounters. There they rested, and waited for the night to fall. They though their best bet was to move in the darkness, to avoid scorpion patrols and the vulture riders.
At night, they moved closer to the lumber camp (which was still very active), and staked it out from a hiding place during the day. They saw vulture riders come and go, and also a squad from the wasteland arriving there. During the next night, they tried to make their way through the wasteland, but the terrain proved to be very hard to traverse: a thin crust of hardened earth above a deep layer of volcanic dust. The dawn caught them out in the open wilderness. But a lucky break: the weather was overcast, cloudy, with bad visibility. This aided them on the last leg of their journey, and they reached the entrance of the abandoned mines.
This was just a short session, but quite eventful. To be continued!
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