World of Samoth: Adventure Logs #17 - #23

I just posted seven more adventure logs for my World of Samoth game, #17 - #23.  These sessions date back to late 2002 and early 2003.  One of the interesting things I noticed was that our game actually started in May of 2001, but by March of 2003, we'd only had 23 sessions.  So, our plan of playing bi-monthly really turned into a monthly schedule on average.  This is a little misleading, though, because I know that during this time I got married in November of 2011 so we put the game on hiatus for a few months around that time, and we also took a long break during the holiday season of 2002.


A lot of really interesting things happened during these sessions, which is when the campaign really started to get into a groove and a larger story started to develop.  Here's a quick summary of each session:

• 17th Session: The Company enter the city of Marlona in the country of Esoría, where they encounter a small goblin encampment/shanty town and fight a group of "rat-men" and are ambushed by two massive "worms" that appear out of thin air
• 18th Session: The Company seek to find a paladin who has been kidnapped, and have their first encounter with the Illumination, an inquisition-like arm of the Ætonist faith.  This group of the Ilumination arrests the Prelate for failing to dispose of a nearby group of dwarven settlers (who are not Ætonists, and therefore subject to death).  They then announce that they will cross the border of the neighboring country, Courrisseux, to slaughter the dwarves.  This seemingly small act will have continent-wide implications in the coming months.
• 19th Session: The Company fight some odd cultist types and a very strange and out-of-place aberration type nightmare creature composed entirely of mouths.  There is a lot of talk from the cultists about "she must be waiting for the gate to open."
• 20th Session: Jeremi does research at the local library and finds reference to a place called the "Banevault", a repository of ancient evil artifacts, located someplace called "Sinjapur", which Jeremi has never heard of.  His research was prompted by his superior in the church, Cristobal Arino, who ordered Jeremi to find where the artifacts where hidden.  The Company also attend a party held in their honor, but are later ambushed by some assassins.
• 21st Session: The Baron of the town, seeminly under supernatural control, outlaws the Ætonist faith.  The Company make moves to rescue him and enter into a battle with some kind of powerful fiendlike creature, the likes of which they have never encountered before. 
• 22nd Session: The Company finally rescue the Baron, but are unable to help the poor town librarian, who is slaughtered by a finger of death spell cast by the powerful fiend.  The fiend seems unconcerned with the Company, for they are beneath his notice.  They feel helpless and unprepared for the wider world they are beginning to discover.  They also encounter the three pure-blood Jade Elves whom they had met once before, and learn that the powerful fiend was potential much more dangerous than they have guessed.
• 23rd Session: Sebastian has a meeting with his father, Jeremi's superior in the church, now the Junior Illuminator of the Ætonist faith, actually transfers Jeremi to the Illumination, ultimately leading to consequences that none can now guess.  He orders Jeremi to travel to Verundhi (which Jeremi has since discovered is the modern name for ancient Sinjapur) to find the Banevault.  Jeremi also gains a cohort, the elf warrior Estacio, former prisoner of the Radillar family, who has taken the vows of the Ætonist faith.  They also have an encounter with the Radillar family and wonder when exactly they will be rid of this cruel dynasty.  

 A couple of notes about these sessions:

• The adventures were mostly based on the awful WotC 3rd Edition adventure, The Speaker in Dreams by James Wyatt.  That adventure is just a total cluster-f*ck and I was too much of a novice for 3rd edition, and to DM'ing in general (I had mostly been a player up until this point in my life) to see it.  I was just searching for a city-based urban adventure that I could slot into my campaign as a "stop-gap" until I got to the next adventure, and I thought this one would fit.  I was really wrong.  In retrospect, I would've been better off just taking the map and ignoring the entire rest of the module.  It's got wererats, cultists, gibbering mouthers, mutant purple worms, mind flayers... it's just a mess.  
• I had, by this time, purchased Monte Cook's massive epic Banewarrens adventure (it's really almost a mini-campaign setting) and decided months before to use it as part of my campaign world.  So, I started dropping hints, and used the device of Jeremi's Ætonist church to basically provide a reason for the group to seek it out.  I knew that I wanted the location of the Banewarrens to be on the other side of the world, because I wanted the group to deal with how to get there, and use the excursion as an opportunity for them to encounter other cultures in my world.  
• The whole issue of the Illlumination really came to the forefront during these sessions, but the act of the small group of Illumination troops crossing over the border of the neighboring country to kill a group of "pagan" dwarves set off a months-long war that, as far as the characters know, may still be continuing (they are far away now, roughly halfway across the world).  It involves both church and government politics.  
• Jeremi's character getting "transferred" to the Illumination was something that the player, Brian, didn't expect and was actually something that I only thought of doing right before the session started.  I thought it would make an interesting development to have a guy be forced to join a group that hunts down and executes non-believers and arcane magic-users, but the guy himself is secretly an arcane magic-user and associates with non-believers all the time.  Brian's character, Jeremi, had a very hard time with this, and still struggles with knowing that he's betraying his faith even as he uses the authority of the Illumination to gain access to places and acquire knowledge, equipment, and and resources that the average person could never get.