Session 10 — The Portal That Wasn't and the Fall of Roger Payton

Session Recap

The night of the 27th split the party in two (Vale absent — Ashlyn in the background). Outside Ankley's gates, Fenric glamped up a campsite in a minute flat and went herbing (ironroot, whisperleaf), Draak rebuilt the tavern disaster in stones to learn his lesson ("the bigger one does not hit first — everyone gets scared"), Silithane finally heard his hawk Berdig's report — the spike-rock island holds an ancient ruin and a hidden camp of about eight people with fire-juggling, bows, and bell-alarms — and rigged the woods with magical Alarm tripwires. On watch, Thalia rolled a nat-20 and the GM unveiled what it caught: Thalia herself, moonbathing, gobbling up the moon. Down at the Sand Gets In, Lash played at being a normal commoner — paying for her meal, getting healed by the village healer Old Margaret (and taking on a message-quest to Margaret's grandson Old Margaret Jr., a Varian-spy type lost beyond the Wall) and learning the local read on the pirate Roger Payton — then undid all of it by luring Vernon Cleave to the bunk room and flashing her sun-fire eyes at him in a "friendly" warning. He spent the night awake, watching her door like a hostage. In the morning, when Lash and Fenric jogged back toward the gates to tell him the party would skip the town, his will broke entirely: he threw down his sword and ran. "You've terrorized the last of the villagers willing to turn."

The party voted to hunt the pirates anyway — leaving Ankley safer being the only apology left to give — and Silithane "portaled" everyone (boat included, Drak carrying it) to the island in one glittering orange leap that only Fenric recognized as Feather Fall dressed in a minor illusion. The ancient ruins came first: 1,400-plus-year-old white stone where nature refuses to live, symbol-inscriptions Silithane copied into his book, a prehistoric longsword Fenric dug out of a barren field, and Thalia's Primeval Awareness returning the session's quiet horror — 50 to 100 celestials arranged in perfect rows beneath the ruin, minor undead, and one aberration that sensed her sensing it. Then Drak got bored and wandered into the pirate camp, the recording gap swallowed the parley, and the transcript resumes mid-battle: Payton's whole crew against the party. Thalia thorn-whipped the pirate king into his own wound-up trap (52 damage), Drak hammer-threw a pirate into a bowman, an archer leapt off the cliff rather than face Lash, and the deck wizard Devlin surrendered to a growling Fenric. The killing blow on the trapped Payton went, fittingly, to Tegrak — the crew's abused captive — who took up Payton's own giant cutlass, wheezed it through him, and earned his first class level. The session closed with a looted breakfast, a treasure divvy, Devlin's ugly revelation about Vernon's father, and a magical paternity test to find Tegrak's home.

Key Events

• Long rest, camp edition: the GM debuted the resting screen — gather, craft, perform, hide the camp, take watch. House rules restated: short rests are 10 minutes, long rests heal no HP (spend hit dice; 2 come back free). Most of the party has no rations and marked a day unfed.
• Fenric's herb haul (nature 18): ironroot — thick palm-width roots, common in the Veilwood, ground into a bone-mending paste (5 uses' worth) — and whisperleaf (a.k.a. Silverbloom), found by ear in the night wind, a balm for burns and irritations. He spared the herb-eating caterpillars.
• Berdig's report: the tidal island is ~150 feet long — old foundational ruins on one side, and on the other a man-made camp built from scavenged ruin-stone and a cut-down tree: ~8 people, red coats and bandanas, one brown-robed man passing fire hand to hand, two bows, tents, bedrolls, chests, shovels, and stake-and-bell tripwire alarms. No Firebrand brands or necklaces on any of them.
• Silithane's Alarm perimeter: inspired by the pirates' bells ("I can do that way better"), he wove invisible arcane tripwires around camp with mental triggers. The night passed uneventfully for both camps.
• Thalia eats the moon: her nat-20 watch revealed nothing outside and everything about her — moonbathing in a tree under a 95%-full moon (full in 3 nights), visibly absorbing it. "I bring so much to this group. I don't eat anything. And I have all the money." The GM had apparently written the feature himself and was still surprised by it.
• Magra's watch freebies: the Foothold–Ankley road carries marching battalions every couple of days — Ankley is effectively undefended because it's the safest corner of the island, all spare soldiers going to training or the front. Also: a second campfire ~6 miles off, halfway along the Foothold road — someone else is camping out there.
• Lash at the Sand Gets In: her insight check read the room — the braided, machete-wielding barman was serving her free food out of fear, Old Margaret out of kindness, and Vernon out of babysitting duty. Lash paid a gold (got 7 silver 5 copper change, then refunded it "in case I cause any trouble"), showed off axolotlan regeneration (18 HP of hit dice; Old Margaret's competing herb paste managed 4), and collected the village's Payton lore: he once camped on the beach edge, was polite, and set off every gut alarm Margaret has; passing Reclamation guards named him a known pirate.
• Old Margaret's quest: her grandson — named after herself, Old Margaret Jr., goes by Junior — left beyond the Wall on "some kind of secret thing... one of them Varian spy types" and never came back. The message, if found: come home to Ankley, it's not safe out there. Lash booked it through Thalia's postal service.
• The fire-eyes incident: at bedtime Lash beckoned Vernon to the bunk room and used Kiss of the Sun — one eye a pale moon-blue, one blazing gold — to deliver a twitchy "be more careful, even I could tear out your throat, so do better" speech. Vernon's hand stayed on his sword hilt; the barman fled the building with his wife and daughter; Vernon stood watch all night without sleeping.
• Vernon breaks: next morning he escorted Lash up the Thousand Steps as promised — but when Lash and a jogging Fenric ran back toward his gate to tell him the plan changed, he threw his sword to the ground and ran for his life. Lash drew a smiley face and a question mark in the dirt next to the abandoned sword. Thalia's verdict: "We should leave and never come back." The vote went 4-ish to 1 the other way: kill the pirates, leave Ankley safer than they found it, then never come back.
• The portal (that wasn't): Silithane sold the party on a one-way "portal" to the island. In reality — confessed in DMs mid-session — he can't make portals: it was Feather Fall wrapped in a minor-illusion tunnel, a running leap off the clifftop and a gentle diagonal glide. Fenric clocked it instantly and said nothing, a magician admiring another's trick. Drak carried The Land Boat through ("boat needs rest" was overruled — the GM: "Through the portal is zero work"). Drak's smiley-faced boulder friend stayed behind. "Don't worry, he's rock solid."
• The ancient ruins: waist-high grass, white stone monuments of a building once 5+ stories tall — airy, bubbly-textured rock that still knocks solid, predating the Reclamation and probably the settling of Orathos (third era, maybe second; 1,400+ years old). One intact archway joins a perfect stone circle. Nature shuns the place: no birds, no burrows, no trees — only grass, weeds and moss dare grow.
• The prehistoric longsword: ~600 meters from the ruins, a weathered blade stood stuck in the barren field. Fenric excavated it properly with his tutorial-area shovel: a longsword (greatsword for a small creature, dagger for a large one), blade rust-eaten but astonishingly intact for its age — and per his magic sight, not magical: his detect-magic vision hit a sheet of lead baked into the blade and couldn't read its interior, but he judged it just an unidentifiably high-quality material that weathered millennia and could take an enchantment later (or be left pure). Lash's weaponsmithing check slipped (rolled a 2): "I think I know what this is" — she needs a second look in a better environment. Her working theory: cursed graveyard sword. It rides wrapped on Fenric's pack.
• The inscriptions: Silithane peeled the moss like wallpaper (climbing dangerously high in the process) and exposed rune-like symbol bands — linguistically meaningful but not a language; Comprehend Languages can't crack them. He copied them one-to-one into his book for later codebreaking.
• Magra remembers: no check needed — Sprigglesby's kids played in white-stone ruins exactly like these (bouncy moss, no trees, partial stairwells for rain shelter), and on a fishing trip blown ~10 miles off course she once saw the top of one underwater — these ruins are all over Orathos, and at least one drowned.
• Lash digs; Thalia senses: Lash shoveled to the ruin's floor level 2.5 feet down (carefully re-homing every clump of moss). Thalia's Primeval Awareness (a ranger spell slot) found: no fey, fiends, elementals or dragons; minor undead lingering below; 50–100 celestials beneath the ruin, arranged with barracks precision — perfectly aligned, equidistant, row upon row, unmoving — and one aberration skulking around that sensed her sensing it. Her eyes snapped open in pure terror and she told nobody. Lash's cheerful shovel-dinging went from cute to no no no, don't open that.
• Drak wanders off ("this is not pirates") straight toward the pirate camp — GM: "I'll put you on the camp map, see if they have a cage big enough" — and the session broke. The recording resumes ~37 minutes later mid-combat: the approach, the parley (if any), and the fight's opening rounds are lost to the gap.
• The battle of Ankley Island — see Combat. Roger Payton died in his own trap, by his own oversized cutlass, in the hands of his own captive. Devlin the deck wizard was the only survivor taken; 2–3 pirates fled or swam beyond reach.
• Tegrak: the crew's whipped captive — an orc abducted by pirates as a child from a coastal town, kept "too long," father made shoes, has never heard of the Reclamation. He killed Payton with the great cutlass ("I'll let him have it out of pity") and gained his first class level on the spot. Drak appointed himself protector ("Hero of the pirate killing!"); Magra's attempts to ask where home is made him cry; Thalia led him to a quiet stretch of beach for the comfort action.
• Devlin talks: hired help, knows it, surrendered the moment his best spells bounced off Fenric. He confirmed the crew never planned to raid Ankley ("we like Hankleton — we get rum from there") — and then, horribly casually, that the crew brutalized and killed Vernon's father while Devlin watched. Lash: "I'm not gonna tell him about that." Devlin wants rehab with "the Major Society" (Mage's Society); Fenric ruled that Foothold's authorities decide. Drak extracted a promise: "Yes, I am definitely reborn as a good guy... and I'll try."
• The Identity spell: Devlin offered to cast Identity ("it's like Identify, but you do it on people") on Tegrak to find his birthplace — Silithane held the spellbook open to the right page so he couldn't get clever. Players pinned guesses on the world map; Johan came closest (right island) — Tegrak hails from Amos, an island in Atollia's pirate waters (the GM's nearby marker was Trivisk). Fenric kept Devlin's spellbook; Devlin objected ("I thought you were meant to be the good guys").
• A looted handout: among the camp's papers, a document bearing the name Minal Chronovamp (Ryan: "Mindel Cromelon" — a name he's hated since spotting it in the GM's pre-campaign test rolls). No further context given.
• The plan: sail back to Fort Foothold in the pirates' rowboats and/or the Land Boat — return the seven looted signets of Payton's victims, hand Devlin over, claim the Payton bounty (probably filed at Foothold) in Tegrak's name, since Tegrak struck the killing blow, and get word to Sir Ronald of Chapston so Ankley eventually hears its pirates are gone. The GM's closing to-do list: divvy the loot, prepare a bounty for Payton, make Ryan's sword, "consider ocean battle?"

Combat & Encounters

• The party vs. Roger Payton's pirate crew at the beach camp (opening rounds lost to the recording gap). Enemy roster as fought: Roger Payton (command tent, hat, two-handed giant cutlass, a "high roll" 2d6 ability that bought him 4 attacks, and a leadership bonus action handing out inspiration); Devlin the deck wizard (a sculpted not-quite-fireball that hit Magra 17 / Fenric 9 / Silithane 4, fog cloud, Shield, and an enchanted two-word command); the named crew Rowena Stormbreaker and Sam Rackham (the two who fronted the confrontation) plus unnamed archers; rowboat-men with rifles so warped they missed Magra all day; assorted "shouty boys" (slap + scimitar combos — 1 point of slapping damage, "10 points of insult"); and hidden wind-up jaw traps in the sand, marked as kill-zones.
• Payton's fall: his high-roll quadruple attack cut Drak's back for 8 (halved by rage); his rum-and-lighter fire breath got 5 through Drak's double resistance. Then Thalia hunter's-marked him and thorn-whipped him into a wound-up trap — 52 damage, instantly bloodied, leg clamped until "the trap is destroyed or the leg is separated." Pinned, dodging, throwing his sword at his own captive and missing, he ended at 1 HP by Thalia's deliberate choice (crit, whip around the neck, stretched flat) — and Tegrak finished him with the pirate's own great cutlass.
• Drak the siege engine: tanked back-to-back crits (18 halved to 9), grappled a pirate, walked him to the cliff and Olympic hammer-threw him into the bowman on the rocks (crit; both into the sea, one "folded in half twice"). His intimidation of the last pirate (24, with the folded corpse as visual aid) met a nat-1 intelligence check — "Now I'm the last guy left, I get all the booty" — and ended the only way it could.
• Lash on the cliff edge: an entire side-fight of mutually failed shoves and grapples with Rowena (matching 18s; "no one's even been injured yet, both of you could stop at any time") settled by double knives and daytime sun-eyes — no roll needed, the intimidation was automatic. A different archer was so scared of Lash she jumped off the cliff herself rather than take the opportunity attack. Lash pincushioned her last target well past the point of finished.
• Fenric vs. Devlin: ignored everything else, took the 20-foot cliff with a running parkour leap (acrobatics 16, 4 damage of "your knees hurt"), and growled in the wizard's face. Devlin burned Shield to stop the claws, tried an enchanted "Go north" — Fenric is flatly immune to charm — summoned fog and ran, got chased down by footprint-tracking, and finally laid his focus gem and spellbook in the sand and put his hands up. "He's not willing to die for this."
• Supporting cast: Silithane's Bladesong AC turned the entire enemy to-hit table into comedy (16s and 17s bouncing); he Booming-Bladed a crit, twirl-healed Magra (8), and ran the hawk as a flying help action. Magra dueled the rowboat-men behind her kite shield (+2 vs. ranged — it mattered), finished one with Lash's borrowed d4, and put the last swimmer into "the elements will claim him" range 2 miles from shore. One rifleman's gun flashed "weapon has no ammunition," so he threw it at her and swam for it.

NPCs & Factions

• Devlin — new note: the pirates' hired deck wizard, sole surviving prisoner; spell-sculpting skill "you wouldn't expect from a guy that's just a pirate"; bound for Foothold justice, dreaming of Mage's Society rehab.
• Tegrak — new note: Payton's captive, slayer of Payton, hero of the pirate killing; Fighter 1; from the Atollia pirate coast; traveling with the party until they can find his home.
• Roger Payton † — pirate king of the Ankley bounty, dead in his own trap. His crew: Rowena Stormbreaker, Sam Rackham, and the unnamed archers, rowboat-men, shouty boys — dead, drowned, or fled.
• Old Margaret — Ankley's trembling village healer; 4 HP of leaf paste and one standing request: bring word to her grandson Old Margaret Jr. ("Junior"), a Varian-spy type lost beyond the Wall.
• Vernon Cleave — broken: kept all-night watch after Lash's fire-eyes threat, then threw down his sword and fled his own gate. The party now knows his father was murdered by Payton's crew — and has agreed never to tell him.
• The Sand Gets In barman — braided, tattooed, machete-coconuts; served Lash under visible duress and evacuated his family after the fire-eyes show.
• Mage's Society — Devlin's hoped-for rehab destination; also the party's assumption for handling a captured caster.

Locations

• Ankley Island — new note: the spike-rock tidal island ~2 miles off Ankley — pre-Reclamation white-stone ruins (celestials in ranks below, an aberration that noticed Thalia, undead remnants, symbol inscriptions), the barren sword-field, and Payton's now-empty beach camp with 2–3 rowboats.
• Ankley — the party's exit was somehow worse than its entrance: the last villager willing to stand up to them ran from his post. The village is now down one town guard's nerve and up zero pirates.
• Amos — the island in Atollia's pirate waters that Devlin's Identity spell pinned as Tegrak's birthplace; the GM's own nearby marker was Trivisk.

Loot, Items & Rewards

• Coin & treasure: 46 gold, 92 silver, ~502 copper, plus a chest of assorted plunder (chalices, rolled paintings, a golden peg leg, monocles, foreign currency) worth 165 gold when sold.
• Giant Cutlass — new note: Payton's oversized magical great cutlass, claimed by Draak (giant back-sheath included); stat block TBD ("make Ryan's sword"); Lash already planning a serrated-edge mod.
• Prehistoric Longsword — new note: the 1,400-year-old blade from the barren field; not magical, material unidentified; Lash wants a proper look; carried by Fenric.
• Bropes (×2, belt-slot ropes at will) — one to Fenric. Rogue's tool sash (apply poison as a bonus action) — Lash. Charlatan's Dice (you choose the result) — Thalia. Payton's Tricorn (+1 Perception) — Fenric, on the GM's thematic insistence. Devlin's Enduring Spellbook (unburnable, unwettable; Fireball inside) — Silithane, over the owner's objections. Corsair shirt (10 + Dex, +2 Dexterity) — unclaimed, Drak has dibs. 3 pairs of pirate boots (+5 swim speed).
• 7 looted Reclamation Signets — pulled from the pirates' victims; to be returned to Foothold for the casualty record.
• Mundane pile: 6 cutlasses, 2 wonky rifles, a matchlock pistol (candle not included), 1 bullet, salt-stained longbows, 8 sets of ruined armor (scrap value only — one set has 16 dagger holes).
• The sun-colored pearl (100 gold, Identify-grade): Silithane's beach nature check found "the forbidden creature, the cloyster" — rolled a 2 on the pearl, burned his Queen's-speech inspiration on the reroll, hit a nat 20, and won the right to pick its color: sun-colored, with little swirling fires inside.
• A looted handout naming Minal Chronovamp — contents undisclosed.
• Lash's looted breakfast: her cooking turns a short rest into +1d8 healing (once per rest). Attunement house rule confirmed: there isn't one — "World of Warcraft rules: put it on, feel good immediately or be cursed immediately."

Decisions & Open Threads

• What's under the ruins? 50–100 celestials in perfect formation, minor undead, and one aberration that knows Thalia sensed it — and Thalia told no one. The grass-only dead field, the underwater twin ruin off Porth Redroot, the Sprigglesby playground ruins, the circle archway, the copied inscriptions, and the prehistoric longsword are all pieces of the same unopened box.
• The Foothold run: hand over Devlin, return the 7 victim signets, file Payton's bounty for Tegrak, tell Sir Ronald so word reaches Ankley. The GM is preparing the bounty paperwork.
• Tegrak's home: Amos, an island in Atollia's pirate waters (per Devlin's Identity). Getting him there is now a party project — and Atollia is 'Seadog' Jon Thomas territory.
• Vernon's father was murdered by Payton's crew; Vernon will never hear it from Lash. His sword is still lying at Ankley's gate with a smiley face drawn next to it. What his Foothold report says now — after the fire-eyes night and his broken flight — is anyone's guess; the GM's words were "you've terrorized the last of the villagers willing to turn."
• Old Margaret Jr. — a verbal message ("come home") to a Varian spy somewhere beyond the Wall, riding in Thalia's postal queue.
• Minal Chronovamp — a name on looted paper, deliberately unexplained, that the GM has been saving since before the campaign had a map.
• The other campfire on the Foothold–Ankley road (black smoke, 6 miles out) was never investigated.
• Lash's "I think I know what this is" — the prehistoric longsword wants a second weaponsmithing look in a proper workshop.
• The moon: Thalia visibly feeds on it; full moon in 3 nights. The GM wrote the feature and seems as curious as anyone.
• Devlin's future: prisoner, promised to be "definitely reborn as a good guy"; his spellbook is in Silithane's bag, which even Devlin notes isn't very good-guy behavior.

Memorable Moments

• "Lash, we went to the store, be back in a few hours." — "Gone for cigarettes, promise I'll come home." — the camp's proposed note to its missing member.
• The GM discovering Thalia's own character sheet: "Look at you gobbling up the moon. What the fuck is this? That's so cool."
• Old Margaret on her grandson: "I named him after myself. His name is Old Margaret Jr." — "He hates it. He just goes by Junior."
• Lash's blink-blonk at Old Margaret, who "doesn't have the nerval awareness to blink-blonk."
• Vernon's will breaking: sword in the dirt, full sprint — and Lash carefully drawing a smiley face and a question mark next to the abandoned blade.
• "Boat needs rest." — Drak, repeatedly, as doctrine.
• Drak presenting Thalia with an 8-by-4-foot boulder debate partner with a drawn-on smile and a love heart. "Don't worry, he's rock solid." — Fenric.
• The portal reveal: Johan DMing the GM mid-session — "I can't actually make portals, what do I do?" — and Fenric silently grading the illusion like a magician at a rival's show.
• Thalia's Primeval Awareness face journey: closed eyes, snap open, pure terror, blank face, "this will be fine," says nothing.
• "It's a special ability, you'll find out if I get a fucking chance to do it." — the GM, on Payton's high roll.
• The trap: "If it's on the map and it's a trap, you don't want to be in it, brother." (52 damage.)
• Lash and Rowena's endless failed shoving — "No one's even been injured yet. Both of you could stop at any time." — resolved by Lash going feral: "It's just that, but Lash is feral."
• The archer so terrified of Lash that she jumped off the cliff herself: "Who knew the best way to push someone off is to make them so scared that they jump?"
• "Weapon has no ammunition." — the pop-up that ended a rifleman's career; he threw the gun.
• Drak's mid-battle ethics: "If we have a prisoner, does that not make us the bad people?" — and to Fenric: "You're bad at your job." "I only stop the battle without hurting people."
• Devlin: "We're the good guys. It's their fault for getting scared." Lash, nodding: "They got scared of me too."
• "That's not a guy anymore." — Devlin, asked to look at the pirate folded in half twice.
• "It's like Identify, but you do it on people." — Identity, the spell.
• Silithane finding the forbidden creature: "the cloyster, half clam, half oyster" — then burning his Queen's-speech inspiration to reroll the color of a pearl and rolling a nat 20. The GM: "the funniest thing I think could have ever happened."
• Tegrak, trembling, pushing the great cutlass those last five inches — "I'm gonna make a note that he just gained his first class level."