CCA Recaps

Back in the early days of the pandemic I was contacted by an old friend - Jason Hobbs of Hobbs & Friends - about joining up for some role playing gaming. Jason and I had played D&D back in the day, and I’d been playing a bit with my child in the months before, and found I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it, so I jumped at the chance.

After we reached the end of that first game we moved on to another called The Chronicle of the Cursed Axe. Jason’s games are intricate and involved in all the best ways, and I found myself writing up recap summaries for those sessions to keep track of everything that was going on, and that took on a bit of a life of its own. These are those recaps.

If you like what you see here and want to learn more, you can check out Hobbs & Friends.

And - many of these games were streamed live, and you can find them at the Hobbs & Friends channel on Youtube.

CCA Session 11 - “Seeds of Fate”

1/24/2021

Blood Flies.

Blood flies in front of us, blood flies down the stairs. Our world is blood flies.

Aldred of House Richelle and Nediri the Barbarian formed a wall at the top of the stairwell blocking the flies and taking them out, with ranged support from Hah Bess the Ranger and Anaria the Sorceress. But it’s hard being on the front line. Aldred ends up with proboscises of 1-2-3 blood flies in him, finding their way thru the chinks in his armor. And some get past the shield wall, flying over it and after Anaria and Pigsy the Pitch Pot Boy.

But our heroes are resolute. Anaria takes out a blood fly with her spear (yes - they are that big), and Hah Bess comes to Pigsy’s rescue (though not the way Pigsy would have done it, I’m sure).

On the front line Aldred is struggling, taking the brunt of the damage. Nediri is able to take one out with his axe, and finally the opening is there. He grabs the blood fly off of Aldred’s neck and crushes it with his bare hand. Then Aldred is able to take the last one out himself.

The group rests to recuperate, and Anaria lays hands on Aldred to perform a Fusing of the Flesh.

After some time to rest, the group proceeds down the stairs. In the corridor after the first landing there are rooms to each side full of body parts and offal.

That’s “offal”, not “awful”. But it was that, too.

One room has a trap door. Who knows what the hell is below? Not our crew - and right now they don’t want to know. The loaded buckets of... well... parts on to the trap door to weigh it down.

Crisis averted, right?

So the group moves on through the corridor and down another flight of steps. At the bottom of those steps are bushes in bloody soil. Lots of them. Tree dudes in the making, one assumes.

And a chest across the room.

Hah Bess strikes forward from the base of the steps to check out the chest. The floor he steps on is... soft. Soft and bloody. Soft and bloody and gross.

But he perseveres. And as he investigates the chest he feels some...thing crawling on his skin. And then into his skin.

Yup - into his skin.

What follows is a flurry of activity. Aldred - so recently on death’s door - rushes forward to grab the chest. Anaria fires a Lash of Unerring Pain at one of the creatures trying to burrow its way into Hah Bess. Nediri puts a torch another of them. Both work, but the torch causes... damage.

Which means that, when Aldred is also infested and Nediri applies the torch it works. And comes close to killing him.

But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And nuclear war. He’s alive, if only just.

Spells spent and one of the crew seriously wounded, retreat seems the best option. But they take the chest with them, and while investigating it, Hah Bess is stung by a clockwork scorpion. But he’s a hardy lad, and bears it.

And there we ended, the crew, all alive, if some more so than others, is:

Hah Bess, the Ranger and Mukai, his wolf companion
Nediri, the Barbarian
Aldred of House Richelle
Anaria, the Sorceress

And there is a chest yet to explore.

CCA Session 12 - “Sanguine Sagacity”

1/31/2021

The session opened with Aldred of House Richelle tenaciously clinging to life, if only just. And with a chest full of stuff.

That stuff included 1200 gold worth of loot, and scrolls.

Among the loot is a white veil with a fine, shiny metal chain. Anaria the sorceress investigates it closely, and finds that it possesses the eldritch touch. But what it does she does not yet understand.

And the scrolls - well, two of them are spell scrolls - Witchblade, Waking Dream, and Hunger for Blood. Good, potentially useful tools.

The other appears to be multiple pages of journal entries, some of which Anaria can read. The snatches she can interpret speak of Mordoth’s gift, the taking of blood, the Oath of the Sanguine Circle.

And it speaks of the scratching. Always the scratching.

The phrase takes Hah Bess the Ranger back to the sound he’d heard at the trap door, deep in the stairwell. The scratching. Always the scratching.

It unnerves the resolute Ranger just a bit.

Our crew agrees that it’s time to retreat to Willem’s rest for recuperation. While there, each member pursues their own separate efforts:

Nediri the Barbarian and Hah Bess decide that a bit of time in the bar is just thing, but they are on different paths.
- Nediri pursues his curiosity about the Cursed Axe, and tries to talk the owner/bartender into taking it off the wall and letting him hold it. He reconsiders when the owner indicates he’s too afraid of it to even touch it. In their discussion he also learns:
  - The bartender knows about the Sanguine Circle. He says the townsfolk still tell their children to fear Mordoth’s Kin. The Circle was formed to protect the people from Mordoth and his offspring, but they haven’t been heard from in nearly 100 years.
  - He also learns that Ortuvo of the Monger’s guild is back in town.
- Hah Bess, carousing his way about the tavern, learns:
  - The Fennori - the fish men the group faced back in session 5 - are amassing - its only a matter of time before they waylay the trade route.
  - The King of Argosa has fallen ill and is surely being poisoned by his wife because she is having an affair with his stepson.
  - A procession from the Nydissians has given to the king a sword called Astralius Predatus or: Veil Bane
- Anaria meets with Nadaya. She is rather busy - frustratingly so, given that the group has essentially been on the mission she gave them. But she does take a little time to look at the book - Powers of the Second Age - and the scroll about Mordoth and his Kin. She suggests that Tadudaen was likely staying somewhere else - not among the huts, and that the Scrats were working for him.
  - This prompts the realization that the Scrats had been taking things from the town, suggesting Tadudaen might be closer than they had thought.
- Aldred focuses on recovering and recuperating and, as the group comes together, suggests that they investigate Isden Manor - the ruined family stronghold - on the outskirts of town.

And there is where the session ends - just outside of Isden Manor. But it’s just a ruined manor house - what could possibly go wrong?...

CCA Session 13 - “I am not Corey Hobbs”

2/7/2021

We begin our session just outside the ruins of Isden Manor. The group is:

Hah Bess, the Ranger and Mukai, his wolf companion
Nediri, the Barbarian
Aldred of House Richelle
Anaria, the Sorceress
Pigsy the Pitch-Pot Boy

But then Aldred looks down at the blade of his axe and says that it isn’t sharp enough. The group should go on ahead because he wants to make sure it is really sharp. Morkie-Poo sharp, he says, and then starts muttering names - Thor, Loki - names unfamiliar to the others.

The rest of the group doesn’t really know what any of this means, but they trust Aldred, so they smile and nod, and go on ahead.

The group breaks into two in order to scout around the ruins - Nediri and Anaria to the north, Hah Bess, Mukai, and Pigsy to the South. As he moves around the perimeter, Nediri feels that things are... not quite right. There are, he notices, many more rat tracks than there should be for a ruin of this sort. As they move past the northwest corner they notice that the cliff face below them appears to have rudimentary handholds carved into it. They continue to move around until they meet Hah Bess and crew at the south end of the ruin. Then they move into the remains of the structure together as a group.

As Hah Bess looks around the first corner, he sees a Scrat and, with the speed and silence of a Ranger, releases an arrow before the man-rodent can get his crossbow up. The Scrat takes the missile in the throat and drops.

And the fight is on. There are two levels to the ruin, the higher having been at an angle that our heroes could not see into. Now it is clear the Scrats had been there, biding their time. The crew moves to attack, and:

Hah Bess takes out another across the grand hall with a deadly shot.
Nediri runs up to the second level, immediately engages with the first Scrat he sees, chopping it in twain with a single mighty blow of his axe, and spits on the remains as they fall.
Mukai the Wolf takes a crossbow bolt, and is injured.
Anaria tries to hit things with her sling multiple times, to little effect
Nediri cuts another Scrat down, and then they have had enough. What was seven rat-dudes is now down to two - two who bold down a stairwell that was previously unseen.

A quick check of Scrat bodies finds bits and bobs worth about 11gp, and - to Nediri’s pleasure - a steel hip flask with a craftsman’s mark from a popular distillery. He pops the top and lets the aroma of a fine whiskey waft gently into his nose...

But there is no time for the finer things. The group gets into marching order and moves down the staircase after the fleeing rodentia-sapiens. What follows is fast, and challenging.

As Nediri comes down around the landing two Scrats see him, firing their crossbows at him. One strikes, and he flies into a berserker-rage.
Hah Bess moves off the stairwell, drawing his sword, and cuts into another Scrat.
Anaria drops off the staircase, and hoping for better luck, fires her crossbow at one of the Scrats. Her hopes are not realized.
Nediri’s rage continues, as does the deadly arc of his axe, slicing yet another of the creatures down. It looks promising, and then...

Then Nediri sees a Scrat as big and wide as himself - a Scrat giant... nay, a Scrat-Hulk. And a huge batch of rats - just normal rats, not Scrats, not giants, but a lot of them - begins to swarm along the wall.

Past Nediri, Anaria can see a creature in the back of a room - it looks different than the Scrats, maybe more mole than rat, she thinks - and she can see that it is controlling the swarm, can see that it is harnessing black spiral magic.

Before she can ponder this further, however, a wave of energy moves out, and Nediri and Pigsy are paralyzed, but Hah Bess and Anaria are spared its effects. Anaria quickly calculates the distance of the creatures around her, and utters the words that are forgotten as soon as they are heard, casting insidious slumber.

The swarm of rats drops. The Scrat Hulk drops. Several of the other opponents fall to the ground. Nediri, already paralyzed, is now asleep.

Before anyone can celebrate, Anaria is hit with a crossbow bolt. The pain is different than usual, with an icy burn to it. Hah Bess moves up and takes one of the remaining creatures out with his bow, and Anaria strikes out with a lash of unerring pain.

On the ground Nediri, trapped inside a human prison of paralysis and slumber, is quietly fighting his own battle - one of will and strength - and breaks free of the magic that was binding him.

Seeing this, and seeing the continuing barrage of missiles from Hah Bess and Anaria, the mole-magician and another still-standing combatant choose the better part of valor and bolt away.

For good measure, our crew goes through and makes sure everything that was sleeping remains asleep in perpetuity. As we are doing this Nediri believes he can just make out the shape of a man... a snake-man? In the shadows behind him just before it disappears.

And the session ends there. Victory in battle, but the war clearly is not over.

CCA Session 14

2/14/2021

The session opens as Aldred of House Richelle, his axe now sufficiently sharp, comes down the stairwell into the depths below Isden Manor. He enters to a scene of victory hard won - the Scrats have been killed or dispersed, Nediri the Barbarian has willed himself free of the magic-induced sleep and paralysis that imprisoned him, and caught a glimpse of a snake-headed man in the shadows. The group, once again whole, is:

Hah Bess the Ranger and Mukai, his Wolf Companion
Aldred of House Richelle
Nediri the Barbarian
Anaria the Sorcoress
...and Pigsy the Pitch-Pot Boy

But there is no time to celebrate - there is more here still to investigate, and the fleeing Scrats will almost certainly raise the alarm to whatever else lies beneath. The group must move forward.

As they move through the passages that follow, they find Scrat nesting areas. Anaria and Hah Bess investigate while Aldred and Nediri move slowly forward. Looking through the nests, Anaria finds pages that seem to match the journal found below the huts. Anaria picks them up and puts them in her pack.

In the meantime, Aldred and Nediri find themselves suddenly face to face with a group of serpentine-humanoid creatures. Aldred decides to speak before swinging his axe and finds the creatures willing to discuss. In sibilant tones, they tell the two Nydissians:

The group can move forward if they wish - the snake-men will not attack.
The Druid in the passages below is “mad”
And they tell the two men to tell “their master” that the alliance isn’t working.

Moving down the next stairwell crossbow bolts fly at the group, but as soon as they reach the bottom the attackers bolt. From this room the group can hear the sounds of a forest in the distance - water running, wind through the trees - despite the fact that they are underground. There are multiple exits from the room. Hah Bess listens at the doorways with a Ranger’s ear and pronounces the doorway to the south to be the most likely route.

Anaria asks the group to wait for a moment before they proceed. She utters words that can only be heard and then forgotten, and traces a circle in the air in front of her with her fingers, leaving a floating shield of energy in its wake. As the words trail off, Hah Bess looks down the hallway and believes that he sees a cloaked woman in the darkness.

But if she was ever there, it was only for a moment, and then she is gone...

The group starts into the next room, but crossbow bolts sing past them. They step back. Aldred takes Pigsy’s mostly spent pitch bucket and lights the residual material with his torch and slides it into the next room. This appears to clear the critters from the space, and the group moves forward. In the middle distance they can hear voices - human voices - chanting. Then a booming voice shouts “I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed”.

The passage seems to progress from forest to jungle as the group moves forward. In the following room it is clear the jungle is growing out of a gash in the dungeon floor.

Druids begin to gather along the floor, moving into position to attack. At the far side of the room, in front of a writhing, glowing birch tree, is a horned priest - clearly Tadudaen.

Anaria leans forward and whispers to Hah Bess: “Take him out!”

Hah Bess steps forward and fires his bow, scoring a solid arrow strike on the priest.

Aldred charges forward with his axe, taking on the nearest Druid. Anaria lest fly with a sling at another Druid, hitting her mark.

Tadudaen, taken aback by his injury and the subsequent attack, waves his hands in front of him. A wall of vine arises and blocks the view, shielding him from further attack. From behind the shield wall he shouts “meet your doom!”

The voice of the Mole-Magician can be heard to scream, and then his body is flung from the fissure in the floor, bloody and broken. And then it comes.

It is a serpentine creature that rises from the crack in the floor. It looks at Aldred, and then spews a cloud of noxious green gas at him. He is caught in it, hurting him badly. What happens next happens quickly:

Hah Bess fires an arrow at the creature, hitting it solidly and knocking it back, if only for a moment. Anaria strikes it with two lashes of unerring pain. When she drops back two Druids come into the corridor behind them, attacking her, thought the blow is glancing.
Meanwhile Nediri is in pitched battle with the Druids on the ground, axe swinging.
The creature reaches out to grab Aldred with tiny arms, but he sacrifices his shield to block the grasp. He bolts away from the creature, taking a blow as he does.
The party tries to retreat, Anaria leading the charge by plowing through the Druids in the passageway with her mystical shield. Aldred follows, bulling past them, and Mukai bolts thru in his wake.
Nediri, Hah Bess and Pigsy are trapped behind, facing the Druids in the passageway. Aldred charges back and kills one, and Anaria takes out the other with her sling.
As Hah Bess and Nediri start to back their way out they take a face full of noxious gas from the creature. Hah Bess fires thru the toxic fog, striking the creature again. He takes a deep breath and charges into the cloud, but is grabbed up in the creatures tiny but powerful T-Rex arms. Nediri charges after him, crossbow bolts whistling past him. He goes into a Barbarian rage and attacks the creature as Hah Bess breaks free.
In his rage the Barbarian hacks off one of the creatures tiny arms (that’s just descriptive folks - we don’t arm shame here), and then kills it with a backswing across its throat.
The remaining Scrats try to flee, but Hah Bess and Nediri cut them down. They look up, and see that the shield of vines has fallen... but Tadudaen is gone, the dais upon which he stood now holding only the weirdly luminescent birch tree upon it.
- Nediri hefts his axe and begins to chop at the tree, each slice resulting in a spurt of blood - not sap. With each blow a keening sound fills the air. As he chops away, the glow of the tree begins to dim.
- Anaria comes back into the room to help. Aldred, severely wounded, hangs back. He sees creatures moving towards them past the hallway. He shouts to the others “whatever you are doing, you are passing things off.”
- Hah Bess sees creatures coming - tree men and thorn-dudes, among others. He urges Nediri to move along with the process.
- Anaria reaches them, and casts Witchblade onto her spear, engulfing it in eldritch flame.
- The tree men move in as Nediri chops, one stepping up onto the dais. Nediri turns his attention from the birch to the take on the tree man, killing it. The three agree it’s time to bail. But how?

The group casts about for ideas. An idea occurs to Anaria, almost as if delivered by a voice on high (GM Ex Machina) suggesting that fire might be the answer when dealing with living trees. Anaria looks down at the flaming spear in her hand. She turns and flings the spear into the base of the glowing birch tree. The creatures scream and run forward to save the tree, and the crew uses the opening to run, run, run away.

A win? Let’s call it a partial. Everyone survives, and we know more than we did, and possibly delivered a serious blow to the horned priest.

CCA Session 15

2/21/2021

After narrowly escaping the woody but corpuscular minions of Tadudaen in the passages below the ruin of Isden Manor, the group retreats back to the safety of Wiillem’s Rest for some much needed R&R and information gathering. In brief, while resting at the rest:

Aldred of House Richelle meets with Lady Ildreth to make her aware of some of the goings on below Isden Manor. She demurs at the suggestion of activating the militia, but suggests Aldred return to the depths once again, and gives him a sword called Spellbane to aid in his efforts. As he examines it later it appears to him that the blade is has metal folded into it that will allow it to strike magical creatures. It is also covered with runes that he learns, in consultation with Anaria the Sorcoress, gives it the ability to trap souls.
Nediri the Barbarian spends his time carousing as only a Barbarian can. Whilst in his cups and rolling dice he acquires a ferret who wears a red velvet vest and is known to have a skillful now. Nediri pronounces him to be more hardy of spirit than most men, and dubs him “Ned”.
Anaria meets with Nadaya, her mentor, and reads through Powers of the Second Age, the book they found beneath the hut in the woods. She learns that:
- the serpent men they encountered below Isden Manor - who let them pass without confrontation - are creatures of the second age, who in their day enslaved humanity, making their presence here, now, quite concerning.
- Nadaya is not certain what Tadudaen has wrought with the eerie birch tree under Isden Manor, but she feels it is attached to Mordeth and his kin. Nadaya indicates she will be returning to Crowe’s Keep to meet with the College of Scholars to gather more information.
In his waking hours, Hah Bess the Ranger outfits Pigsy the Pitch Pot boy with some armor and a dagger and trains him to use them. But in the night, despite the company of Mukai, his faithful Wolf companion, he is plagued by nightmares of a shadowy woman. Sometimes he is chasing her, sometimes he is trapped, his fingers bleeding from scratching at the wood above him. In one dream he finds himself walking into a torchlit room, where stands a statue with a shield. The statue reaches up and pulls down on a torch sconce, opening a passageway, releasing the sound of screaming voices, and revealing in the darkness an ancient, evil beast with spiked ears, an almost skeletal tail, and ruined leathery wings for arms. His amount of drinking before bed - already prodigious - increases.

The group gears up to return to the dark passageways below Isden Manor. They get Pigsy a new Pitch Pot, filled with, yes, pitch, reasoning that some fire might be just the thing if they are to re-encounter the woody foes beneath.

Beneath the ruin the torches have all gone out, and they encounter nothing and no one as they work their way downward. In the open hall just above the cavern with the eldritch tree they re-encounter the statue of the knight on the dais. Hah Bess stares intently at the statue, torchlight flickering across it. Then he looks across the room, to the sconce on the wall, walks over, and pulls it down.

A passageway opens - of course - the floors and walls within coated in layers of dust deposited over a century or more. The group moves into the passageway, encountering sections of floor that are broken up, soil and sand where flagstones once laid. Hah Bess grabs Aldred by the arm and hisses “can you hear the scratching?”

Aldred shakes his head, and they continue forward, the passageway sloping slightly downward. Anaria hears an audible click from behind. She knows the secret door has now latched behind them.

As they move forward, a set of stairs reaching up to a platform can be seen at the edge of the light. An eerie voice calls out “who awakens me?”

Aldred answers “It is I, Aldred, from House Richelle”.

“I can smell your blood” the voice replies, as the shadowy figure steps into the flickering torchlight, his leathery wings unfolding as he moves forward.

CCA Session 16 - Hunger

3/7/2021

Our crew is standing in a shadowy passageway, facing a shadowy, humanoid figure with leathery wings standing at the edge of the flickering torchlight. Facing this figure are:

Hah Bess the Ranger and Mukai, his Wolf Companion
Aldred of House Richelle
Nediri the Barbarian
Anaria the Sorcoress
...and Pigsy the Pitch-Pot Boy

As they move forward, they hear the creature ask, in its eerie voice “who awakens me?”

Aldred answers “It is I, Aldred, from House Richelle”.

“I can smell your blood” the voice replies, as the shadowy figure steps into the flickering torchlight, his leathery wings unfolding as he moves forward.

Aldred knows this must be Lord Isden, the former master of the ruined manor house the group is beneath. But then the creature - Lord Isden - pauses for a moment and says “... House Richelle...?”

Aldred continues to engage with the creature, saying that he knows that Lord Isden was once part of the Sanguine Circle, the secret society that fought to protect others against the Children of Mordeth. Isden replies “that doesn’t sound right.”

As he is speaking, Isden stares at - through - Hah Bess. The ranger hears a man’s voice in his head saying “I am a friend, come closer.” He feels his feet shift slightly beneath him, but then another voice - a woman’s voice - enters the cranial dialog, saying “he’s not - he is your enemy.”

Hah Bess stands his ground.

“Your blood calls to me, Aldred of House Richelle” the winged creature pronounces “will you deny me it?”

“Over my dead body” Aldred replies. “You should know, Lord Isden, that we will fight, and we are mighty!”

“I serve Mordeth” Isden replies. “And the Hunger!” He raises his arms and a swarm of dark, leathery creatures fly out from behind him. They encircle the group, flying around them, landing on them, biting at them. Everyone is targeted, but Anaria and Pigsy are engulfed by the bats.

Hah Bess directs Mukai to drag the Pitch Pot Boy clear and to safety.

Anaria steps back from the group and swings her spear in a wide arc, slicing through and dispersing the winged rodents in its path. Freed momentarily from the dark cloud of chiropteras, Anaria utters words that can only be heard and forgotten. Multiple winged creatures drop from the air in mid-flight, eldritch sleep forced upon them. Multiple - but not as many as she’d hoped. They are, it appears, something more than they seem.

Aldred charges fiercely forward, but as he begins pull Spellbane from its sheath, his armored foot catches on a flagstone, and he stumbles into Isden’s reach. Something unseen, unreal happens between the warrior and the creature, and Isden says “you serve me, do you not, Aldred of House Richelle?”

In a slow, stilted voice, Aldred says “yes, Lord Isden”.

Hah Bess knocks a silvered arrow and carefully targets the winged man. When he lets fly it strikes home, knocking the creature back. Suddenly, then, Isden is gone, transmogrifying into a mist that then wafts away.

But the affect on Aldred is still in place. Nediri and Hah Bess run to their companion, hoping to subdue rather than severely injure or kill. The Warrior is mighty, but the Ranger and the Barbarian are persistent and succeed in guiding him to unconsciousness.

Meanwhile, though Isden has scoffered, the bats remain, diving in and out and taking their shots. Anaria calls for the companions to get behind her. Nediri throws the warrior across his massive shoulder, and they move clear. The way open, a Thunderous Invocation is, well, invoked by the Sorceress, slamming the swarm across the room and against the far wall - physical force proving more effective than somnolence against the creatures.

A check back down the entryway finds that the secret door into the passage is, indeed locked. The crew decides to return to investigate the area around the recent conflict to see if there is another way out. And - of course - to seek any potential treasure. In this effort they find no alternate route out, but they do find some cash, and, in a box of dark, hard wood, a deed to Eventide Isle, a small island located in one of the larger inlets of Lake Argosa. Aldred notes that the cash should be divided up with Lady Ildreth. The deed, however, he indicated, she did not need to know about.

What followed was a study in disappointment. The group gets through the locked secret door, only to find that the caverns which had previously held Tadudaen and his minions - the reason for their return to Isden Manor - are bereft of life. The jungle has died back, the eerie birch tree is but a dried husk. The Horned Priest appears to have moved on, a few coins and a potion of giant strength the only items to show for their exploration.

Except - Aldred indicates that he believes he knows where Isden is - can feel his presence. He leads the group to an etching on a blank wall. He looks at his companions and says “You know, I don’t know that Lord Isden is Evil - he may just be misunderstood”.

This earns skeptical looks from his companions, but Aldred reaches out, responding a memory he cannot actually have, and presses a spot on the etching. The wall opens up, revealing a stairwell that has clearly been untouched for ages.

And there our group is poised to descend, but the rest of us must wait until next time...