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How The Party Used Silence To Save A Dying Town (Part 1)
The party consists of a kalashtar warlock, a kobold sorcerer, a lizardfolk alchemist,
a half orc barbarian, a drow death cleric, and a bugbear ranger.
The campaign started with them arriving in Anaana, a new continent having been awarded
a huge mansion in the city of Pikani along with traveling expenses by a rich eccentric
old man they saved back on Faerun.
During their travels to the city, they pissed off some sort of angry forest entity that
has been hunting them as the BBEG of the campaign.
They had also been acquiring a ton of healing potions since they didn't really have a good
healer (death cleric hasn't been much help by choice).
They saved a famous painter on the way from a kobold attack who agreed to repay them by
painting a grand portrait of the party that he assured would be worth almost as much as
their mansion would be, and they agreed to it.
After they finally arrived in Pikani, they lived their lives for about a week before
receiving a letter.
I had printed the letter out on an old timey paper template and scorched and torn it in
a very particular way and handed it to Lars, the alchemist.
The letter said,
“My dearest friend Lars, It has been many years since we last saw each other!
Word travels fast here and I hear you recently moved to Pikani!
I would love to see you and treat you to a nice meal.
I'd be thrilled for you to meet my wife and six children too!
Feel free to bring your entire entourage to my house in Siusirijuq, just a few hours south
of Pikani!”
- Roast
They all set off to the south to head toward the town of Siusirijuq.
When they're about half a mile from the town, they get attacked once more by the BBEG.
After a few rounds, the entity moves closer to the party and starts clutching its head
and moaning painfully before fleeing a round later.
The party decides they scared it off and continues to the town.
In reality, the entity entered the false hydra's range and recognized the threat, deciding
to retreat for now.
At this point I let the current song that I was playing end and pretended that I just
forgot to start a new song.
In reality, I started a white noise loop on the speaker very quietly and over the course
of the session I slowly increased the volume, and would occasionally silence it, making
everyone feel as if there was a loud noise that suddenly stopped that they never noticed
before.
This of course signifies the times the hydra wasn't singing.
I would see players perk up when it happened, but no one spoke up about it.
The party is welcomed by Roast, and invited in for dinner.
Partially through dinner at the table that conveniently sits eight people, the alchemist
speaks up and asks where Roast's family is.
Roast of course denies having a family and even claims he's not the type to settle down:
he's got potions to brew after all, and this town allows easy access to the black market!
When shown the letter, he claims he must have been drunk when he wrote it.
Fittingly, after getting extremely drunk, everyone wanders upstairs to sleep.
The barbarian collapses in the master bed while the rest conveniently find six beds
between two rooms to sleep in.
The next morning, they wake up nicely tucked in their beds and are treated to a big breakfast
by Roast.
One of the party members points out that Roast seems to be able to make a large amount of
food unusually quickly, which their host handwaves away.
While eating, Roast asks for assistance from the party.
He's been having difficulty getting his supply of illegal potion ingredients due to the local
mafia's fences not showing up to their scheduled meeting places.
So, he asks the party to meet with a fence he knows frequents the barber shop every evening
this day of the week.
The party agrees and Roast offers them free use of the house and leaves for his daily
business.
The party, having time to kill, explores the town.
The kobold sorcerer suspects Roast of hiding something so he stays behind to inspect the
house.
He finds alchemical supplies and a suspicious amount of clothing in the house, mostly children's,
with a wardrobe full of women's clothing in the master bedroom.
The rest of the party notice a large empty manor in the center of town that everyone
refers to as "the lord's manor" even though everyone denies that the town ever had a lord.
They stop by the tavern, run by a married couple of elves and their 8 year old son.
The elves built the tavern, which was one of the oldest buildings in the town.
Even they deny ever having a lord but can't remember why a lord's manor was built.
They blamed it on some racist ideas about humans.
They headed off to the market which has a sparse population with plenty of empty stalls,
some with products still on display.
The barbarian finds a smith to clean up his axe to pass the time.
The warlock heads to the barber shop for a new haircut and starts gossiping with the
barber.
The barber says that many scandals have erupted in town, with single women finding men's clothing
in their homes, men being accused of hiding the mothers of their children that no one
remembers, and more.
Plenty of houses lie empty and dusty.
Afterward, she heads to the town's guard post and asks about the weird things going on.
The guard says that there have been plenty of reports of breaking and enterings, but
nothing gets stolen, and many accuse the perpetrators of putting other people's stuff in their house.
Strangely, no one has reported this stuff missing so they don't take action after an
initial investigation.
The alchemist meets up with the sorcerer and they head to the post office and search for
Roast's P.O. box, which is labeled "Mr. and Mrs. Roast."
Totally suspecting him of murdering his family and hiding the bodies, they head to the library.
During a period in which I silenced the white noise, the ranger slips and falls, and when
she stands, she finds her outfit smeared with blood.
At this point I turn the noise back on, and when the ranger searches for where the blood
came from, she finds no leads other than the puddle she slipped on.
When she tries to show the others later in the day, they can't find it.
The sun starts to get low in the sky so most of the party heads to the barber shop.
The Cleric stays in the tavern to drink while the sorcerer and alchemist dig up census data,
town charters, and more at the library.
The party members who went to meet the fence learn that there are supposedly only 2 fences
in the town and they always know where the other is.
If Roast wanted to meet with them, he must be screwing up the dead drops somehow.
But if Roast really needs to do business, he'll be at "the usual spot" tomorrow around
noon.
The sorcerer and alchemist find through the census records that the town should have roughly
twice as many people as it seems to have, and they do indeed have a lord.
In fact, town records show the lord allocated taxpayer funds for a festival two weeks prior.
They also learn that Roast's address is marked as having eight occupants.
They write everything down (smart thing to do) and get the rest of the party, minus the
cleric, to join them and they explain to each other what they learned.
They receive a note from Roast's familiar that dinner is ready when they are.
They collect the too-drunk-to-walk cleric and head back to meet their host.
They have a tense dinner as they tell Roast what the fence said, while heavily suspecting
him of using magic to mess with the town, and possibly kill his family off.
They just don't know how he's removing everyone's memories of the victims.
They don't want to start anything without knowing what he's capable of.
They refrain from drinking that night and head off to bed, soon drifting off to sleep.
Here's where the real fun starts.
The Kalashtar warlock wakes up in the middle of the night extremely thirsty.
She wanders downstairs to the main room, pauses a moment, worried to go outside to the well
alone at night, but decides she's worrying about nothing and goes outside.
She takes a drink from the well cup and goes back to bed without anything of note happening.
The fun thing about kalashtars is they are linked with a spirit that can't directly talk
to them.
Instead of dreaming, they relive that spirit's memories from other kalashtars it connected
to in the past.
Tonight she relived the night she just played out.
She woke up, walked downstairs and saw a man she didn't recognize screaming and being pulled
out a window, leaving a large blood trail.
After seeing this, she calmly walks outside, gets a drink, and goes back to bed.
Everyone wakes up the next morning in the empty house they have been squatting in the
last couple of nights.
The barbarian wakes up in a child size bed to his own left arm punching him awake right
in the face.
Everyone meets in the hall and the warlock tells her weird dream.
As they head to the main room of the bottom floor, they indeed find a large trail of blood
leading from the counter in the kitchen, across the floor and out a broken window, whose glass
is laying on the floor, just like in her dream.
After investigating the counter, they find a potion of deafness that affects anyone who
inhales it next to a gas mask and a journal.
In the journal, the author claims that he had faked being drunk so he could test his
deafness potion on his guests, confident that it wouldn't harm them.
He deafened them, made a bunch of noise, but no one woke up.
This proved his success, and the potion’s effects were worn off by morning.
The ranger asks why they're even in the town to begin with, when the alchemist remembers
the letter she got!
She pulls it out and reads it aloud to the party.
“My dearest friend Lars, Oh god help me!
It has been many years since we last saw each other!
Word travels fast here and the town dies even faster and I hear you recently moved to Pikani!
I would love to see you and treat you to a nice meal.
I'd be thrilled for you to meet my wife and six children too!
Please save us!
Feel free to bring your entire entourage to my house in Siusirijuq, just a few hours south
of Pikani!
Hurry, Its eating everyone!”
- Roast I swapped the letters without the alchemist's
player noticing, and made sure to tear and scorch both letters in the same exact way.
The players freaked out!
And I deny any involvement until after the session.
In character, they decide they better step up their investigation.
The kobold compares the letter and his notes and concludes that they were staying in this
Roast guy's house and something must have happened to him, likely the same cause as
all the other weird stuff in the town.
They head outside and notice the door is broken in the house across the street and they investigate
that.
They find that the house is empty and covered in about a week of dust, with rotting food
still on the stove.
The cleric finds drag marks leading from the front door into the street where the traffic
has erased it from being followed.
Session one ends.
That letter swap!
What’s going to happen next?
It all unfolds in the next part.
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Second part of this video will be posted in 3 days.
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