As mentioned last time, I came up with a death twist for each of the players at the start of the campaign. These have changed as the game has gone on, but for Don Hector I wanted to have a misguided fairy godmother turn him into a flesh and blood person, instead of a marionette made out of wood.

So, that’s what I did. Please let me know if you think this was a good or bad idea.

Night falls and Don Hector’s body is prepared for burial by the village priest. Ha’Des and Nicolo are staying with the priest as well. It’s Nicolo who discovers that Don Hector has been transformed from wood to flesh and blood, and is now awake and asking for food*. This all gets sorted easy enough and we play it as a montage sequence with Ha’Des and Nicolo teaching the reborn Don Hector, now dubbed Chad Hector, how bodies work. Chad Hector is not happy with any of this. But so it goes. The priest and scholar agree to keep Don Hector’s rebirth a secret, because I don’t want the party to get side-tracked.

None of this stops the funeral in the morning. Ha’Des and Nicolo attend mostly for the free food. Speeches get made. Duke Testaccio speaks glowingly of Don Hector’s bravery. Sylvena tells of her tragic love for Don Hector. And Pontiacci holds the marionette baby (dubbed Ash Hector) and says he will raise the child as if they were his own. He also plans on staying in town to help the Duke (and probably marry Sylvena). There is weeping. Then the casket with a log inside gets buried.

The party decides to indulge in some needed down time.

Ha’Des is annoyed because Chad Hector being flesh and blood means there’s another mouth to feed, and they now need to find food for him. Nicolo hangs out with the scholar and learns that she’s not a vampire, but an inventor like himself. She teaches him how to make a scrying glass that can detect living creatures even when they’re hidden from sight. However, Nicolo has no time to work on making one for himself, as news has reached the town from San Uzzano.

Remember all those stories about rats they kept hearing?

Turns out a witch employed by one of the mercenary armies summoned all the rats to Uzzano and then during a dinner honoring the other mercenary captain she used a fey artifact to change all the rats in the city into goblins.** The consensus among the populace is that this is not how wars are supposed to be fought, and isn’t it just awful.

The party also learns more about the mountains.

The place they want to get to is called the Devil’s Bridge, which was built a thousand years before by Roman Plutonian wizards and their demonic allies. The bridge spans the river and once on the other side, they’ll only be a day or two*** away from their destination (a ruined village called San Basle). There are three trails they can take: the High Path into the mountains. There are griffins, a monastery of reclusive brawly monks, and ruins left over from the Cyclopean Age. The Middle Path leads through a valley and is the fastest, but at the far end is where the ogres have their base. Last, there’s the Low Path. This goes by a once sacred spring and is home to ferocious serpent-cats and witches (supposedly).

The party hates all these options, but in the end decide to take the Low Path. They spend another night in town. Using the opportunity to take another bath, before buying some supplies in the morning and setting out.

Almost at first things start going wrong.

They annoy a peasant, whose actually the local Benandanti, and he throws a wasps’ nest at them. The party scatters and spends hours lost in the woods. They regroup, realize they won’t make the spring before nightfall and decide to camp.

The night passes uneventfully, save for the howling of wolves in the valley north of them. As they prepare to set out in the morning, a pack of serpent-cats fall on them from the trees. These get driven away, but the party’s injured and filthy now. Also, half their food has rotted unexpectedly during the night (the Benandanti’s second action). Undaunted, the party presses on. Nicolo spots a pillar marking a Plutonian road and suggests they follow that. This takes them up a hill, where they encounter a barrow mound****. Nicolo promptly freaks out (he was a prisoner of the fey as a child), turns around, and walks back the way they came. Ha’Des and Chad Hector notice nothing, but follow Nicolo back down the trail. Hours behind schedule they reach the spring at last.

The spring is overgrown and semi-wild, and the party wants nothing to do with it nor with the ruined temple***** they can see near it. They sneak away, avoiding some dozing serpent-cats, and make camp north of the spring where the ground rises once more. Night falls. Tomorrow they hope to reach the Devil’s Bridge. The party begins to prepare a meager meal, but before they can eat something weird happens with the camp fire.

Tune in next time to discover what it was.

NOTES

1* Marionettes don’t need to eat, drink, or breathe. Don Hector’s player made this a cornerstone of Don Hector’s personality much to everyone’s groaning.

2* The party would’ve got caught in this mess (and had a chance to prevent it) if they had gone to San Uzzano. At least now the party learned what those rumors were about.

3* Hahaha. The party made it across but are now stuck in a pocket dimension for who knows how long.

4* The inhabitants would only have interacted with the party if they’d camped near it, and even then they weren’t _that_ bad.

5* They would have encountered the Benandanti here again and had to deal with him and his mom issues.