Campaign One: Chapter VI - Fire and Bone

The Sunken Cemetery

Lunas 13th Concord, 30 Fifth Age

With their new ally, Kharmir Stoutbreaker, in tow, the party ventured into the depths of the uncharted Fenmarrow Forest, seeking Father Anselm's missing curate. Kharmir led the way, his blade keen for the blood of any beast that dare cross their path. Visimar stalked through the trees, keeping watch from above. Eventually, they began to spot small, moss-covered gravestones at the roadside, aged and eroded by rainfall. Many were almost completely sunken in the mud, as if dragged under by the ground itself. The shadows of mausoleums - some tall, some buried to the pediment - loomed beyond the misty trees. The party's footfalls shifted the overgrown cobbles of a long-forgotten path. This was the sunken graveyard Father Anselm had mentioned - the final resting place of the Swamp Kings of Correnwald and their vassals, now all but consumed by the devouring swamp. In the centre of the cemetery lay a shallow, murky stream, where a bridge had rotted into the water. A log bobbed in the water just a few feet from the shoreline. While Callidus and Visimar held watch in the trees, Kharmir stabbed the log with his glaive, sharing Vilwyn's concerns that the log was a dormant crocodile. Indeed, the truth was worse.

At the touch of Kharmir's blade, the log reared upright, revealing its true nature: the bloated, shambling corpse of a man. Twigs, branches, and other debris were intertwined with its swollen body, and waterlogged white robes clung to his form. The creature's gaping maw, crawling with scrabbling vermin and drooling a fountain of swamp water and bile, opened wide and shrieked, and bony arms erupted from the graves, heaving skeletal figures from their slumber to answer the summons of the putrid cadaver. The bloated corpse hooked its fingers into the dwarf's chestplate and, to Kharmir's horror, leeches came flooding from its belly in a writhing mass, latching onto Kharmir's exposed face. The life they drank enriched the corpse's unlife, healing its wounds.

The dead rise from the swamp

The party acted instantly; Vilwyn waded into the river to aid Kharmir, Callidus vanished into the shadowy canopy, and Visimar willingly transformed into the beast he became on Saturnas: his jaw split, scales rose up in an armour across his body, and his fingers lengthened into vicious hooked claws. The skeleton's advance could not be halted, so Vilwyn tolled the bell within his mace, and as it rang, the will of Talidorn was made manifest, turning the undead from their purpose and flooding their fleshless bodies with fear. As Callidus harried the fleers with crossbow bolts and Visimar's blood-flame leapt from his claws to incinerate the undead thralls, Kharmir's greatsword glowed with divine power and lashed through the monster, cleaving off its arm from neck to waist. If not for the leeches sapping Kharmir's vitality on their host's behalf, the creature would have been slain in one blow. As the afraid skeletons shambled away and were slain, Kharmir ripped the leeches from his face and decapitated the cadaver as it tried to flee.

With the threat dispatched, the party examined the corpse. Half-fused with the wildlife, the fact it resembled a human at all was a wonder. However, from the mangled spectacles welded to its face, and the sun of golden thread stitched upon its robe, the party deduced that this ghastly mass was all that remained of their charge, Symon Vicario. However, tucked into his robe and sealed in a glass canister was a hand-drawn map of the swamp made by Vicario himself, pointing deeper into the swamp to a nearby lake. Vicario had scrawled notes on the page:

Loch Arkay. X. Creek connects to Ramman River. Burned fish. Foul waters. Corruption?

Wishing to honour the dead man's investigation, and concerned that the 'corruption' Vicario mentioned could be responsible for Correnwald's (and their own) recent woes, the party decided to follow the path onwards into the swamp. Vilwyn and Kharmir wished to get Symon's body back to Father Anselm for the requested anointment and burial, lest the Hellmire's dark power resurrect him once again. However, Visimar and Callidus wished to press on, and suggested sealing the corpse in one of the mausoleum tombs to be retrieved once they return. Vilwyn reluctantly acquiesced, and - as he went to lay Vicario's body in a crypt - discovered the mummified corpse of a former Swamp King, Oelrig, still bearing his silver mangrove crown, though the crown's emeralds had long been lost or pried loose. The discovery of the crown created a trifold debate between the original surviving party members. Visimar demanded to melt it down in order to forge more monster-killing weapons. Vilwyn wished to sell the crown for its weight in silver, believing its historical importance as a relic would enhance its value. Meanwhile, Callidus wished to keep it, possibly to deliver it to his patron Arania of the Deep, who had become known in the criminal underworld as 'The Collectress'. Ultimately, they decided to postpone the resolution until more urgent matters had passed.

The Alchemist's Shack

Venturing on, the party trudged through the tangled undergrowth and sinking mud until they reached the banks of Loch Arkay: a very large lake fed by a smaller offshoot of the Ramman River known as the Brenbach. The party noticed that its waters, unlike the murky currents of the Ramman, were shot through with sickly patches of bright green. Nestled on one of the lake's three islands was a ramshackle shack, its windows glowing emerald in the night. The proximity to the water instantly set the group on edge, as they feared the presence of the monster that had claimed the life of their companion. As Visimar and Callidus kept a watchful eye on the riverbank, Vilwyn marched between the trees in search of wood to build a raft. However, he quickly stumbled across a rowboat and oars, hidden under a mesh of vines and hemp. The party clambered inside and Vilwyn rowed them across the water towards the shack.

The shack in the heart of the loch

As they neared the island, Callidus spotted a crossbowman posted on the porch, so - as the shack's only entrance and windows faced the south - the party docked on the northern side of the island to avoid being spotted. Like a spider, Visimar climbed the shack's wall onto the roof, looking for alternative entryways; however, there was only the chimney, which belched green smoke from the building's centre. Visimar peered over the rim of chimney and was struck by the powerful stench of brimstone - the same that had appeared upon the explosion of the Swamp Snake's distillery. Aghast, Visimar returned to the group with the revelation. The inhabitants of the shack were brewing alchemist's fire, and, judging from the streaks of green in the Loch, it was leaking into the water. With this new impression that something deeply illicit was underway in the shack, the party hastily set about plotting their approach. Visimar suggested coating an arrowhead in flame and firing it into the shack from a safe distance, but Vilwyn resisted, concerned not only that the entire lake would catch aflame, but also that valuable information would be annihilated in the blast. Kharmir also raised the reminder that the shack's occupants may not necessarily be hostile, or at least might be amenable to negotiation. In the end, the group settled on a plan.

Once again crawling the walls, Visimar descended from above and shoved the sentry off the porch, where Callidus promptly struck him unconscious with the hilt of his tangleblade. Visimar peered through the window to see a makeshift brewing room, with tables covered in equipment: papers; alembics; test tubes; mortars and pestles; beakers; stirring rods; pouches of salt, powdered iron, and purified water. Black-cloaked men toiled at these tables, and the light from the freshly-brewed hexenbrand was almost blinding. On an upper dining level, a heavyset man cleared plates, a snake-headed witchmetal mace at his hip. In the guise of the fallen sentry, Vilwyn entered the shack and loudly beckoned the men outside, and the alchemists sent one of their number to investigate, where Callidus promptly beheaded him. 

Shouts of Starazyk - the language of Kastalav, Kingdom of Witches - were raised, and the men armed themselves. Kharmir leapt through the window and disembowelled an attacker with his greatsword while Visimar crawled onto the ceiling and ran upside-down into the room. Vilwyn entered, demanding surrender, and the men threw down their arms. The alchemists' leader, Karlus Vetter, rushed into the room to answer the disturbance, and refused to surrender the substance to the interlopers. At his master's cue, the heavyset, mace-wielding thug - a high-ranking enforcer named Ottokar - leapt over the balcony and attempted to strike Visimar down from the ceiling. He failed, but the blow was laced with snake venom that burned in Visimar's blood. The alchemists recovered their nerve, and while Vilwyn, Kharmir and Callidus did battle on the lower floor, Visimar charged at Karlus and grappled him to the ground, piercing him with his scimitar, and was repelled when Karlus smashed a vial of acid across his face. Visimar sank his fangs into Karlus' neck, draining his life-force to replenish his own, while Karlus stabbed at his abdomen with a dagger. As his adversary quaffed a healing potion, Visimar puppeteered a dead alchemist to stab Karlus and undo the healing magic. On the lower level, Kharmir and Ottokar duelled before Vilwyn's guiding bolt evaporated the thug's upper half, leading Karlus, bleeding profusely from his many wounds, to finally acquiesce to a surrender. 

Fire in the Hellmire

Visimar kicked the wounded alchemist down the stairs, and Vilwyn interrogated him for the truth about Kastalav's operations in the Alagost swamps. Karlus revealed that they were former members of the Alchemist's Guild and their leader, Ilvayne Rosenstock, had told them to brew vat upon vat of hexenbrand until told to stop, though he didn’t know why or who Rosenstock was taking her orders from. He denied that the substance was responsible for the corruption, insisting that such insidious environmental poison was beyond its capabilities. However, he admitted dumping the waste into the Loch, and also admitted to ordering Symon Vicario's death when the young curate stumbled across their operations. When asked where the fire was delivered upon completion, Karlus went silent, but Vilwyn threatened to execute him on the spot. His tongue successfully loosened, Karlus revealed that the barrels were collected by a blonde man with a goatee every fifth day, taking them from the shore in a wagon stamped with a green star. Shocked, Vilwyn recognised the logo of the Emerald Brewery. 

The party turned away to discuss their next steps. Kharmir wanted to speak to Rosenstock, who had been reported to be staying in Correnwald, while Vilwyn suggested a night-time raid on the Emerald Brewery to discover the extent of Osborn Tealeaf's involvement. Karlus discouraged getting involved, and extolled the supremacy of the Alchemist's Guild and warning them of the deeper conspiracy at play.

'You have no idea of the power you are interfering with. Only the venerable alchemists of the Gilde Alkemika know the deepest secrets of hexenbrand. This goes deeper than you or me. Interfere, and you will be dumped into the river, if you do not burn first.'

Disgusted by Karlus and his murder of the innocent Symon Vicario, Vilwyn and Kharmir made a silent resolution, and Kharmir executed the alchemist with one clean swing of his greatsword. Callidus chucked his body into the lake, and as the rest of the party waited on the shore, the remaining artisans were attacked and drained by Visimar. Once they had rowed to the edge of the lake, Visimar fired a single flaming arrow into the shack, and - after a moment of deathly silence - a terrible explosion, larger tenfold than that at the Distillery, sent a frightful plume of green fire into the air. The shack was ripped apart and disintegrated in the blast, and the flaming debris landed in the Loch and ignited the stray substance on the water. The party turned away and made their way back towards Correnwald, collecting Symon's corpse from the mausoleum. Though some mysteries had been solved, others had yet arisen. What was truly causing the corruption in the Hellmire, who was soliciting the procurement of such quantities of alchemist's fire, and were friends in Correnwald in fact covert enemies? 

The answers to these questions were closer, and darker, than the party could imagine.

And so it is written.

The true power of alchemist's fire