Madam Tindrey's Boarding House

     Located in the Westgate district of Absalom, Madam Tindrey's Boarding House is a popular home for students, laborers and tradesmen just starting their careers.  Built in the remains of an multi-story warehouse, no two rooms in the boarding house are the same.  A maze of doors and remodelled hallways ensures that only Madam Tindrey and her tenants can find their way around inside the boarding house.  For ten gold pieces per month, Madam Tindrey provides small, well-furnished rooms, cold breakfasts and hot dinners.  The large rooms on the top floor are less expensive, since large bay windows and a leaky roof makes them drafty and cold in the winter.  Tenants are expected to be relatively quiet, and students from the Arcanimirium are expected to practice their magic elsewhere --- there have been a variety of explosions, transmutations and curses in her rooms over the years, and Madam Tindrey is only tolerant to a point.

   
 The bottom floor of the building is rented out to a halfling baker named Fortius Bibbles, owner of Bibbles Breads and Pastry.  The bakery does a brisk business, selling fresh bread and sweets in the streets of Westgate, and providing special orders to the large estates of the Ivy district.  Tindrey takes a portion of her rent in bread, which she provided fresh to her tenants each morning with pats of fresh butter and herbs, when she can get them.
     Tindrey herself is a plump, middle-aged woman, generally cheerful but often busy and slightly flustered.  Her own room is situated just above the bakery's ovens, making it the warmest room in the building, and she often invites tenants to tea in her comfortable, cluttered sitting room, especially in winter.  For her long term tenants, the sight of Madam Tindrey bustling into their rooms with a tray of bread and piping hot tea is a pleasant reminder of what makes the Boarding House a home away from home.

Wulgruf Banginhorst

A thick apron and stout gloves are
Wulgruf's best friends.  After the
Cockatrices, that is.

Wulgruf is a dwarf from the old and proud Banginhorst clan, hailing from the Five Kings Mountains.  A tall, stout dwarf with a luxurious beard and smile lines like deep canyons, Wulgruf lives in an isolated grove outside of the Isgeri capital of Elidir.  He makes his home in a giant petrified tree, long ago fallen and turned to stone in a titanic battle between the Cockatrice God and an elder druid.  An alchemist by trade, Wulgruf has filled his hollow log with shelves and benches covered in arcane ingredients and technologies used in the distillation of various potions and elixirs.  .  His life-long ambition is a realization of the Kimiya-yi sa'ādat or the Alchemy of Happiness.  Now semi-retired from adventuring, Wulgruf spends his time chronicling his travels and inventions in a collection of giant tomes of home-made parchment, brewing heirloom ales or tinkering with his antique velocipede or safety cycle.

     Wulgruf was raised by a diamond miner, though his father was tragically consumed by a bulette while he was still a youth.  Wulgruf travelled the Five Kings Mountains,  gathering obscure ice mushrooms and various kinds of magical moss.  He composed his magnum opus on the uses of cold weather plants in alchemical potions, and is now widely considered one of the world's foremost experts on the subject.  He soon left the dwarven capital of Highhelm to travel the world, documenting rare ingredients.  Wulgruf is most famous for his piece "The 7 Distillates of Cockatrice Blood and Their Uses" which required years of work with the dangerous and ill-tempered beasts that are its subject.  With several fingers partially petrified, Wulgruf is far from unscathed from his research, but he has developed quite a knack for cockatrice handling and now keeps several as pets.

This is one of Wulgruf's pets.  His name is Chuck.

     When not at home, Wulgruf spends his time expanding his library by combing through the back alley book shops of Elidir and Almas, before stopping in to the dark taverns and public houses to pick up new secrets of the trade and new methods of transmutation. He has sponsored several expeditions to Numeria to recover arcane technologies and ingredients, and will often purchase relics recovered from the wrecked magical vehicles of that land.  Wulgruf smokes an elaborate narcotic of his own concoction, blending the soporific leaves of Kyonin with the fluids that leak from Numerian ruins.  He is also a connoisseur of dwarven ale, and keeps a large number of kegs in his hollow tree, for what he calls his "thinking times."

He lives in a hollow log, but it is a BIG hollow log.

An antique velocipede, rescued from the Bin Men.
It is the only way to travel when pursuing protoscience

Mila Dragosani

This girl is prettier than I.  With fewer scars.

 Mila Dragosani's account of her life, given in a tavern in the city of Highhelm in Druma.:

    I was born somewhere in Isger, I think.  We traveled a lot then, and my mother was never quite sure.  Born in the back of a wagon to a family of Varisian wanderers, and raised the same.  Mom read fortunes and told stories for coin, and my father was a carpenter of no small skill, and put up half the barns in the River Kingdoms.  When I was old enough, I did simple chores and borrowed unattended objects to sell in the next town.  When I came of age, my mother took me out of camp and showed me the first of the secrets of Sivanah, who has been the secret mother of the Dragosanis for centuries. While my parents were wearing the roads of Avistan thin with their wagons, they were also gathering the mysteries of the 7th Veil, guarding our Goddess's secrets and spreading tales of illusion and wonder as gifts to our lady.    And now I was in the family business.

     All that came to an end one night in Isger.  We were camped out side of Elidir, in a little farming village, when the horde came.  They lurched out of the night, driven by their infernal masters, and fell on us like beasts. The bodies of dead farmers, dead milkmaids, and dead soldiers tore into us with cold claws and broken teeth.  They pulled my parents apart, as they killed the entire town in an evening.  The Isgeri necromancers walked behind them, animating the corpses of the slain to swell the ranks of their undead army.  I survived locked in a box of books, concealed in the wagon until the zombie mob moved on, watching though a chink in the chest.  When it was over, I killed the things that had become my parents, and swore my revenge.
     Yeah, I know --- poor little Varisian girl seeks vengeance.  It's the kind of story that ends with a body in a back alley, dying of blood loss and frustration.  But that's not me.  My parents taught me well --- how to blend in, disappear in plain sight.  How to wait.  Sivanah is not the Goddess of Direct Assault, after all.  I can bide my time, be patient, be thorough.  There are evils in the world to be put down, not just my personal evils.  I fight on my own terms.  But my enemies should make no mistake --- their doom will come to them.  It will come from the shadows, wrapped in fine paper, or as a silver bolt in the night.  But I will come for them.

My dad had a thing for mustaches, and awesome shoes. 

Session Notes, Retrograde

Goblins are bastards.

1st Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, 

Hired by Godric Gorm in Absalom to retrieve a map from one Tonz Hardwagon.  Headed out of town toward Verna, 3 days travel in the hills of the Kortos Mounts.  Attacked by a band of goblins on the first night, and confiscated a parchment map of the area from one of the bodies.

2nd Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, Godric Gorm

Continued on to Verna, spread rumors about Tonz to turn the town against him.  Found Tonz at a lumber camp outside of town, he ran but was was caught by Vai.  Under interrogation, Tonz drew a copy of the map from memory; the party took his stuff and sent him down the road.

3rd Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, Godric Gorm


Cut through the forest to a place on the map marked "The Black Door."  Accidentally camped in an owlbear's nest.  Tokteh now wears his skull as a hat.  Found the Black door and got it off the hinges after a lot of lamp oil was lost.

4th Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Tokteh, Grorgnorb the Half-Orc Cleric, Godric Gorm

Explored the crypt behind the black door.  Killed a lot of undead guardians.

Why don't the dead guys ever just stay dead?

5th Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, Trilliam, Cecil, Valerious, Godric Gorm

Met up with Trilliam, Cecil the Sorcerer and Valerious.  Killed a giant undead frog and some reanimated ogres, found both of the spider keys to open the crypt.  Some poor jewelry decisions were made. Camped outside the crypt.

6th Session

Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, Trilliam, Cecil, Valerious, Godric Gorm

Opened the crypt door.  Argued about what to do about the large black casket chained shut inside, while chains broke off one by one.  Emos the Silken Tyrant awoke from centuries of slumber to an angry gnome and a sorcerer trying to smash his head.  He was not best pleased.  The party ran, shutting the crypt behind them to the cackling laughter of the lich.  Good job releasing the ancient evil.

7th Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Tokteh, Grorgnorb

Fled to Abasalom, sold off a lot of loot and reported Emos to the Pathfinder Society.  Parted ways with Godric Gorm and boarded the Silent Tide, a merchant vessel bound for Almas.  After Norm bought a lot of rice, that is.  Several days into the voyage, two flying Hounds of Yeth attacked the ship.  Carved in the skull of one was a note from Emos, implying that he was not pleased with the party.  Arrived in Almas, the capital of Andoran, during the middle of a month long trade fair. Norm sold a lot of swords.  Vai found the local low-lifes, and ended up taking some unseamly work from Molki, a local pesh dealer.

8th Session
Party: Norm, Vai, Hishomi, Trilliam, Cecil, Valerious, Godric Gorm

Left Almas once Norm had sold all his rice.  Took work guarding the caravan of one Kurtif Grantz, a dwarven merchant hauling cargo north to Isger by way of Falcon's Hollow.  Two weeks in, the caravan was attacked by a large group of sellswords lead by a figure in a dark mask.  They foiled the robbery attempt, which was aimed at a case of old books.  After a short interrogation, the party killed the cleric of the Dark Tapestry who had been captured.  More specifically, Cecil the sorcerer stabbed him to stop the argument over how they were going to kill him.  They opened the case of books, discovering a variety of necromantic and occult tomes.  Once th case was opened, the party began to be pestered by an as yet unseen force.  It stole Vai's boots and returned them full of shit.  It chewed through the wagon spoke. You know, mischief.  The party pulled in to Falcon's Hollow at the end of the session.

Kurtif deals in books, exotic salt, and various small hand tools. This is not his wagon.

Session Notes #1

I am going to try to write out short synopses of each session, so that I can keep track of what has gone on.  Players are welcome to write their own in the form of character journals, which I will post here as well. For now, I will have to work backwards from last night.

The Darkmoon Vale, in north western Andoran.  It is full of fucking wolves.

Session 9
Sunday the 12th
Party: Norm, Vai, Cecil the Sorcerer, Trilliam, Valerious

After three weeks of travel, the caravan crossed the River Foam and pulled into the logging town of Falcon's Hollow. Kurtif hauled his wagons to the High Market to sell goods to the Lumber Consortium, and the party rented rooms in the Sitting Duck.  Cecil and Trilliam went hunting for drugs in the High Market and got thrown out after the purchase of some fine dwarven bacon.  The local alchemist asked the party to give her a hand treating a local disease, and they decided to set off into the Darkwood to hunt three rare ingredients she needed --- ironbloom mushrooms, elder moss, and rat tail root.  They set off in the morning, hoofing it north through the area timbered by the Consortium, reaching th real forest by late afternoon.  After being decidedly not welcomed into a lumber camp, the party set up camp in the forest and were set upon by wolves.  Lots of wolves.  After lupine population management, the night passed rather uneventfully, except that the camp trickster decided to use wolf entrails as garland for the local trees.  The next morning, the party ran into a pair of loggers who gave them directions to an semi-abandoned witch's hut.  In a dank, mushroom-covered bog they found the hut, guarded only by an ornery animated cauldron (which Norm and Vai proceeded to knock over and tie up.  It is now angry).  Inside the hut, they  found a variety of rotten herbs, including the rat tail root that the alchemist Laurel asked them two retrieve.  One ingredient down.

Yeah, we should definitely burn that down.

Session 10
Sunday the 19th
Party: Tokteh, Vai, Hishomi.  New additions: Grorgnorb the Half-Orc Cleric and his brother, the alchemist Hodg Q. 

Began in the abandoned hut of a swamp witch.  Looted odd ingredients, including the musk glands of various foxes, then burned down the house (which screamed).  The party set off through the Darkwood vale, searching for the oldest tree in the forest.  Found twin dead pixies staked to a tree, which they later buried in a stream.  After Tokteh decided to free a fox from a trap, the party was ambushed by a hobgoblin trapper and his hunting apes.  Hishomi beat them to death, and Hodg lit a lot of the forest on fire.  They spent the night in the hobgoblin's camp, then it was on to the oldest tree in the forest.  Vai used magical trickery to grab eldermoss from under the watchful eye of a giant serpent, then they headed on toward the ruined dwarven monastery of Droskar's Crucible.  They spent a wet and dreary night in the woods, during which Tokteh and Hodg both found themselves meddled with by the persistent camp pest. The monastery was a short walk from the evening's camp, and the party easily cleared the yard of threads (there were none) and dealt handily with a giant spider living in the watchtower.  It was as big as a pony.  Tokteh smashed it's head.  It was cool.

Creepy dark forest.  What could go wrong?

Y'cak Bloombright, Badger Handler

Y'cak Bloombright as a young girl.

 Y'cak Bloombright is a elven badger-handler who lives in the city of Absalom.  Y'cak was born in the Chelish colony of Sargava in 4602 AR.  Her parents were elven scholars and brightness-seekers who came to Sargava to work for the colonial government.  When the death of Aroden in 4606 shook Chelish power in Garund, Y'cak's parents sided with the natives in a failed revolt, and were killed by the devil dogs of Cheliax.  The infant Y'cak was smuggled to Absalom in a pickle barrel, where she was adopted by an aging human wizard with a fondness for pickles.  It is oft joked that her disposition was formed from her journey in the brine.

     Y'cak grew up in the market stalls of Absalom, selling her adopted father's mechanical birds, picking pockets and pretending to smoke pesh cigarettes.    She took a job waxing badger harnesses in order to woo a young man, and took to badger handling quickly.  Sadly, the young target of her affections was petrified after an unfortunate encounter with a cockatrice, but Y'cak stayed on at the badger handling shop, since she had been getting bored with him anyway.

Another satisfied customer
at the Fierce Stripe.

     Y'cak can generally be found in the yard of the Fierce Stripe, Absalom's premiere badger handling establishment.  There she trains badgers as guard animals and pets, and specializes in the crafting of fashionable badger saddle bags.  She is occasionally called on to remove a badger from a business or residence, since the harming of a badger is strictly against the law in Absalom.  She is a young elf with the grace of a well-strung puppet, with skin ruddy from the badger-yard.  Though tall boots and thick gloves work better for tricky badger extractions, Y'cak tends towards business attire, with a taste for scarves and shrugs from the markets of Katapesh and Jalmeray.  When she came of age, she got a magical animated tattoo of a badger, named Nina.  Usually on her shoulder, Nina sometimes wanders down her arms or on to her face.  She drinks fine Dwarven mead in small amounts, though after a bad day at the yard Y'cak has been known to over-indulge in Taldoran wines, which she thinks are fancy and has often found herself cleaning from her bed linens.  Though she has frequent suitors, she is holding out for a gnome, man or elven princeling who works outside of the animal handling and tack professions.    

Jesus, Galadriel, look at the size of that badger!  Run along and tell your mother to  call Y'cak!

Tokteh Icehammer

Friendship Stick.
We're friends, right?

Tokteh relates what he knows of his birth:

Like all of the Icehammers, my father Toktin was strong, but devoted more to crafts than hunting. He made good use of wood, stone, and hide, but was a master with bone. He made strong hammers, sharp harpoons, and beautiful ornaments.

It was one of the ornaments which caught the Walrus-god's eye. He had made a cloak-pin for a cousin which was especially fine work, four walruses in a circle with a miniature narwhal tusk for the pin. His cousin believed there was magic in the pin, but it was not enough from keeping him from being lost on one hunt.

Some time later, Toktin also got lost, stranded on an ice-floe when his canoe failed. On his third day, delirious and succumbing to the cold he was amazed to find a beautiful, dark-skinned, blue-haired gnome beside him, wearing a walrus-hide cloak fastened with his own pin. She told him she thought his bone-walruses were as beautiful as the creatures themselves, and she kept him warm for three days. She vanished just before my cousins found my father.

A year and a summer later, my father felt drawn to the shore. There was a walrus cow with two babies-one, my twin sister, a 100-pound walrus calf. She was jealous and wouldn't let me nurse. This isn't surprising since walrus twins are rare and there might not be enough milk for us both. I was a two-pound gnome, and my father found me wrapped warmly in a walrus cloak with the same pin. My mother kissed my father and me and then swam away with my sister, leaving me in his care.


From Timothy

Bow-Chicka-Bow-Wooooow.