Return to Thistletop

“Return to Thistletop”
Rise of the Runelords episode
Episode no.	Episode 23
Date	2009
Game Master	Abbe
Characters	Dorothea Honeypot Nathaniel Nell Velicia
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "The Sweetness of Victory" "The lumber mill"
Rise of the Runelords chapter list

In this chapter the heroes return to Thistletop one last time to kill the demon.

Return to Thistletop

There were some kind of group of stuffy old boring people meeting that had invited Velicia and Honeypot to talk about old buildings, statues and people from thousands of years ago, when those runelords supposed to live. I heard that it was Brodert Quink, Chask Haladan, Sabyl Sorn, Ilsoari Gandethus and lately also Lyrie Akenja that usually met and talked about the old stuff. Velicia and Honeypot was talked into to showing some of them to Thistletop and asked for us others to join them on another expedition there.

The other scholars didn't like Lyrie and when the trip to Thistletop was suggested they wanted to exclude her, even though she had been studying that place specifically. There were rumors of foul play when she applied for membership in the seeker, which is some kind of society for stuffy people. I said that if you don't give her a chance, she can never reform. She joined us and muttered that finally she could do something more than just cooking tea for the others.

Finally it was me, Velicia, Nathaniel, Honeypot, Dorothea, Orik, Lyrie and Brodert that went on the trip. It turned out that Nathaniel had hired Orik as some sort of servant or help.

We swam over to the ear of the cliff head where you could get straight into the treasure room in the old parts. That way we didn't have to bother dealing with the goblins. We even threw a deer into the water to make sure that the seamonster would be full before we swam, and then we swam in strange magically changed shapes of animals.

For several hours they looked at the pictures on the walls and things everywhere. When they were content somebody had to show the demon to the scholars. When the secret was out we discussed if it was safe to leave the demon there anymore. We decided to attack Malfeshnekor.

Malfeshnekor.

We readied for battle and opened the doors. Malfeshnekor made an awful roar chilling me to the bones. The first to catch herself was Lyrie who ran into the room and cast a thundering spell not that different from the spell Velicia sometimes cast, but instead of blowing him into a corner the thunder seemed to daze him. I used that to throw my dagger into him while he was open for attack. Dorothea used her scary magic to create a terrible cloud that appeared in the corner covering half of the big demon. The awful demon and Nathaniel fought with sword and enormous claws. There was another awful roar from the demon, which made me miss my throw. Nathaniel also seemed shaken and missed his attacks. Velicia used some new magic I hadn't seen before. A burning ball of flame that appeared next to Malfeshnekor and attacked it with flames. Honeypot danced up to the demon and confused it with her moves. I used that to throw my dagger deep into the demon. Dorothea turned black and terrible herself almost as the cloud that tore at the very flesh of the demon. Honeypot continued to dance but it looked more like she was trying to seduce the demon. It was definitely distracted so I used that to throw my dagger one final time into the demon Malfeshnekor killing it.

It turned out that the demon wore an armband that was able to magically produce a shield with the seven pointed star on.

Brodert Quink payed us 500 gp for the trouble of making the trip and bringing him.

Guard Duty

One evening Nathaniel sighed sitting down at our usual table at the Rusty Dragon. We were all there. I asked what was wrong and he said "Nothing!", but after some pushing mentioned that his aunt, the mayor had wished him to start working for the sheriff, and I think it's to get into politics or so. Anyway, he had been hanging around at the garrison a lot lately, and he told us about some people who were wanted by the guards. He said that if we saw any of them we should tell him about it.

There was a river pirate called Shadz "Rodshaw" Bilgar. They also wanted a rhenne called Grayst Sevilla, but they only wanted him for questioning. Nathaniel said there were drawings of them back at the garrison. There were apparently some rewards too, to be claimed at Magnimar from a judge called Ironbriar. When he said the name I froze. All my bad memories came back. I coughed and excused me from the table and ran up to my room. I thought I had put that awful, evil elf who I met in Magnimar behind me, but I hadn't. I just hadn't thought of it for quite some time. I emptied my back pack and ripped open the seam in the bottom. From it I took the piece of painting of the hated mans face and sat on my bed saying "I hate you." over and over again while tears fell from my eyes.