[Channel Teaser]
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.
Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel,
All Things DnD.
Second part of this video will be posted in
3 days.
Stay tuned for more amazing Dungeons & Dragons
content!
