Session Three

The scene opens on our protagonists in the badlands near Copper Ridge, saying goodbye to Skalka, one of the Wreck Wenches who accompanied them to the airship wreckage, as she returns to town. The heat of the summer day drags on, as the party resumes their journey to Red Rock Ridge, the location of the rumored Vipers hideout.   Along the way to the Ridge, our protagonists come upon a strange sight - a massive boulder, part of it carved into the shape of an anatomically correct hand, made out of one single, huge piece of jade. Strangely cool to the touch, "Nigel" was able to determine that there were ancient, lingering traces of magic to it, but any signature of a specific spell had long since worn away. Vaurvan determined that the boulder had either sunk into the sand, or this hand had been here long enough that substantial sand drifts had risen along its base, making it impossible to see how deep it goes without heavy machinery. Harmony Moonweaver deduced that this is probably the hand of a small jade figurine, like those she has seen on shrines, but magically enlarged quite a few times. But that's silly.   As the day wore on, our heroes finally are able to lay eyes on Red Rock Ridge, its 80-foot-high plateau sitting with steep cliffs on all sides except for the one steep, hilly approach. A wooden palisade had been erected, the entrance closed with a solid wood gate. The camp was dotted with three watchtowers, and a plume of smoke rises with the scent of roasting meat. Two guards stood watch at the gate, and individual figures were seen in each of the watch-towers.   After much discussion of tactics and battle planning, Cheyanne "Doc" Adkins fired a crossbow bolt with a demand for surrender to the two gate guards, only to hear their laughter echo down the ridge walls. Time for Plan B, then. Firing two small stink bombs into the southern and western watchtower provided a small distraction for Harmony to launch a few fireballs from her necklace over the palisade and into the camp. All of a sudden, no laughter could be heard, replaced with the commotion of bandits calling for backup and readying themselves for a fight.   The next few minutes were fraught with tension as the party battles against the bandits in their own lair. Making excellent use of her wand of lightning bolt, Cheyanne blasts a hole right in the middle of the gates, granting our heroes a vantage point into the camp, in addition to charring a couple bandits in the process. A few well-placed fireballs dealt with the majority of the chaff, and before too long, only a hidden pair of thugs presented a challenge to Cheyanne as she ran out of the range of Harmony's protective twilight.   Until, a well-placed and poisoned knife found its way into "Nigel's" ribs as he hung back from the rest of the party. Stepping out of the shadows, was the leader of the Vipers, Fang himself - distinguishable by a distinct scar through his right eye. With a second precise strike, he downed "Nigel" and fled right back out the front gate. Nigel's corpse didn't seem to match him in life, as instead of a tall black dragonborn, there was now an unconscious, undead(?) triton lying on the ground, the sand around him slowly darkening with the water seeping from his body. Paying no mind to the now twice-dead fishman, Vaurvan, with his keen eyes and vantage point from the western watchtower, caught a glimpse of the fleeing Fang. Still empowered by Cheyanne's jump spell, he leapt from the tower, and began his pursuit of the bandit leader, who now wore a pale boa-constrictor around his arm and shoulders as he ran. Vaurvan launched a javelin at Fang, and in response, Fang raised his hand, one of his rings emitting a gleam of red magic and, in a puff of black smoke, he disappeared, only to reappear 500 feet away.   Vaurvan did not give up his dogged pursuit, utilizing every single empowered long jump he could to close the distance. When he was close enough to see, Vaurvan noticed that the pale constrictor snake around Fang's shoulders seemed to emit some tendrils of bluish magic, but it wasn't until those tendrils shot out at Vaurvan did he recognize them as mage hands... one hundred of them. They began to pummel at Vaurvan, but he was not deterred and continued his onslaught, throwing javelins when he could, one even striking Fang in the leg, causing him to stumble. As Fang stood upright, Vaurvan noticed the snake was nowhere in sight, but continued his pursuit. Fang, now unable to move quite as quickly, soon found himself in Vaurvan's shadow, and before too long, a well-placed strike from Vaurvan ended both his flight and his life.   Meanwhile, Cheyanne and Moo quickly dispatched the two remaining thugs now flanking Harmony. Harmony, seeing her ally nearly deceased on the ground, paused. Her face transformed from battle-focus to pure anger, her eyes glowing brightly as a similar glow emerged from her back. Utilizing her newly formed angelic wings, she flew over to where "Nigel" lay, and laying a healthy cure wounds to bring him back.   Between the three remaining heroes, the remaining two gunslingers didn't stand much of a chance from their watchtowers, and before too long, the battle with the Vipers was over, and our heroes were able to search the camp for any sign of the Copper Ridge money, to no success.   It looks like the bandits were well prepared, and had already moved the money some time within the last three days. A couple letters were found; one on Boulderchain Hotel letterhead, referencing a mage named "Crow", presumeably responsible for the snake with a hundred mage hands, "Sage", and seperate letter confirming a payment was made to the Vipers in exchange for them interrupting the construction of the Rusty Rail Railroad Company - signed by "H."m, presumably in Z'Veena.   A couple odd things popped out to Harmony in her investigation; the northern watchtower bore great gouges and scrapes in its top and sides, easily a foot wide, and maybe half a foot deep, by some large sharp object, or perhaps a claw? These scrapes also extended along a section of the palisade before whatever caused them broke through the palisade itself, where a long groove or drag mark in the dirt extended about 15 feet before ending. In addition, she noticed a set of (normal sized) wolf prints around the northern watchtower, but no matching tracks entering or exting the palisade, and no other signs of a wolf habitat.   Curious, she climed the northern watchtower to get a better look where the scrapes seemed the deepest, and along with some supplies to salvage, she found a small iron box housing an odd colleciton of items; a guttering candle next to a jade bracelet carved to look like a snake, two silver coins, and a piece of shed snake skin with a couple strange runes painted upon it in a dark oily substance. Harmony recognized it as a shrine or small altar, although she was unsure to which deity it was dedicated, so she left it alone and carried on investigating the rest of the camp.   Eventually, Vaurvan returned to the bandit camp, dragging a deceased bandit leader and clutching a piece of paper that fell out of Fang's boot. Handing it over to one of the protagonists that could actually read revealed that someone with the initials S.V. had received a shipment of a large amount of coinage from the Vipers. A doodle of a screaming person accompanied the handwritten receipt.   The undead triton, who had spent the last half hour digging a shallow grave into which he pulled the bodies of all of the bandits, introduced himself as Captain Blackfin "Ice Heart" Thornside, and explained that "Nigel" was an alias and a disguise he had used in the past. Vaurvan seemed to have some sort of impression to hearing the name.   Our heroes, now armed with several leads and equipped with a cart laden with salvaged supplies and pulled by two horses rescued from the bandits, began the journey back to Copper Ridge. Only a few hours away from the town, a loud echoing BOOM rumbled throughout the badlands, causing a few pebbles to slide off a nearby rock formation. Hurrying back to town, they were greeted with screams and the crashing of wooden shanties falling into one another, as whatever explosion had just occured triggered a rockslide of the eastern ridge, with people still inside of the collapsing buildings.   Tune in next time for "Rocks Fall, Civilians Die!"     Note: @Lucis not mentioned in this session report, as he stayed back outside of the bandit camp during the assault, just in case things turned south and someone needed to run back to Copper Ridge for backup.