Played on 13 January 2011 by Hanna, Yvain Sabat, Martín, Pritchard Hood, Richard Loubeau, and Robert Hazart, dm'd by the illustrious quendalon. Carousing and inter-session thread here.
We planned, perhaps to excess on the scaling and entry of towers, and too little for what we would find there.
Aelinor's Tower held some angry shade of the long-dead wizard Stefarin de Veldt, which lashed out at Martín before even pausing to parley. The Black Swordsman was shaken to the core, and he seemed diminished for the remainder of the expedition (though not so much as he would be). Desperate to avoid death at the spirit's coldly incorporeal hands, the party convinced it of their noble service to the Ambrevilles and ultimately dispelled it with an "honorable" burial in the family crypts. These latter were curiously well maintained, and probably hold vast hoards of wealth to be retrieved later. Also of note, once entering the open-air crypt area of the graveyard, skeletons began scrabbling out of the ground. They were turned by the force of Pritchard's gloom and chaos-hating, but it would be wise to keep in mind.
The Storm Tower was home to a horrible, composite monstrosity of human forms. Mounds of withered corpses lay at the foot of its cold, stone pallet. Its enormous fists dealt crushing blows, and its lumbering gait belied a dexterity in dealing out its fearsome strikes. For all the dancing tactics, heroic maneuvers, quaffed potions, hurled spells, flaming brands and shouted commands they deployed against it, the party was in the process of a humiliating and profitless retreat when Robert struck the enormous wretch down with his mighty staff.
Martin supped a potion of Enlargement that mixed false with the potion of Troll's Blood he had just drank — reducing him permanently to three feet tall. Hanna was slammed into a wall and then, later, the stone pallate itself, by the golem, breaking ribs and dislocating her shoulder. Pritchard cast Mirror Image from a scroll, allowing him to go toe-to-toe with the beast for a few rounds.
After dealing with the monster, Pritchard, Richard and Robert climbed rungs implanted in the tower's wall to a hatch in the ceiling, where they discovered machinery for collecting the violence of the air. There, they pried loose a staff dedicated to absorbing and metering out electrical bombast.
Losses and Loot
The party did not discover much against the eventually buried spirit - and refused to loot the crypt. But in the Storm Tower they discovered parchments detailing how to manufacture flesh golems, a snazzily jewel-encrusted skull (partly damaged by dagger strike), and the Staff of Shocking.
The party resolved to trade the staff to the House Marais for an as-yet undetermined bounty.
Each character gained 1069 experience points and 913 gold pieces.