H. Bogniks and Girl Sips Black Blood

Catheign - Session 2

On their march back from the Cloud Mine of Catheign the party chatted with Meia, the Gol fighting woman rescued from the first level of the cloud mine. Some relevant notes emerged from the conversation…

On the dusk island of Gol Roc there once was a man called Henryk Bogniks. This man made his fortune offering healings and resurrections. He was not well loved though, as he left an artistic legacy on the bodies of his clients in the form of signature scars, minor disfigurements, and discolored and warted lesions. Bogniks was known as a decadent, a man who consorted with personalities not recognized by high merchants, scholars, or royalty. A decade past now, Bogniks took to making extended forays out of Gol from which he would return with curious and valuable items including flowers that could sing on command, pale gems that could pass through flesh as birds through clouds, and black pebbles that would weep in the sunlight. These, and mundane but rich goods – ingots, bejeweled baubles, and so forth. It was known to a few that Bogniks was making his journeys to Catheign.

700 days previous Bogniks left on one of his trips and did not return. Gie, Meia’s companion, learned from a dying slave precisely where Bogniks was traveling – the Cloud Mine of Catheign. Thus Meia, Gie, and two others had just sailed to Catheign under the presumption that Bogniks had met his demise and left some unexploited riches to be enjoyed. Their party found the mine and had traveled up and up. They had seen two platforms of the mine before they were hassled, and three of the party lost, to dusky monsters. The first station, now explored by the party, has three chains extending into the mist. One directly up, and two extending out and up at steep angles. Meia’s group had taken the chain up to a large floating circular enclosure filled with many rooms of alchemical glasswork, ghouls, and purple goblins. And, indeed, as hoped for, old treasures. No mark of Bogniks, also as hoped for. The challenges posed by the dusky residents of the Cloud Mine destroyed Meia’s companions, and Meia’s only hope was to barricade herself in a room in the lowest enclosure. This is how the party found her in the last session.

The day after returning from their first journey to the Cloud Mine of Catheign, the party rested and restocked a bit in the Feanean frontier town of Tillman’s Grove. Kale the Archer made acquaintance with Janis, a hobbit would-be adventuress. Janis agreed to join the party for half of Kale’s take. The next day the group decided to journey along the rocky coast to find Meia’s boat, which they did successfully and without encounter. They spent the night on the Gol seacraft, and the next morning took Bogniks’ old path up the southern escarpment of Catheign to the mine. On the way the group was beset by stirges and nearly lost their gnome, however they decided to press on. Ultimately the group fully explored the first, small level of the mine and located the three chains leading up to further areas of the mine. Wandering monster rolls were unkind, however - a ghoul a fell from the mist and landed on the top of the platform to accost the party, and the group ran into a good deal of trouble from goblins descending from higher levels. Janis the hobbit finished the last goblin of the session by running after it, leaping onto its back, and biting its jugular. Janis gets the MVP award for Session 2, for biting a goblin's neck and also for finding the most secrets.

The party has not yet journeyed up any of the chains.

See you at the table May 3.