The Chapel by the Locks

Day: 52

Summary

Kael and Vorg came into Gildwater intending to answer The Royal Call in High Alden, only to be steered off the proper road by a pair of blue-cloaked men and sent into the riverside woods instead. At the same time Zero Infinity, aboard Jenny Be Good as it descended through the Alden River locks, heard a distant cry and left the ship to follow it ashore. The three strangers met beside a forgotten chapel and cottage, killed a hungry wolf after an introduction full of strange thought-bleed and an even stranger fixation on wolf-testicle pie, then discovered that the body on the chapel steps was no simple dead man but a fungus-ridden servant animated by something deeper under the grounds. Keys taken from the dead keeper led them into a hidden chamber where two clue parchments and an older puzzle revealed the session's first truly dangerous truth: Prince Jan was not killed in the Black Temple. By the time they came back out, the chapel was burning, the surviving family in the other house was terrified, and the party's attempt to calm them only made the rescue more chaotic. The night ended in a hard fight with a territorial Myconid Sovereign, a brutal moment in which Kael tore one of its arms free, and a final escalation as the sovereign pulled the dead wolf and another spore servant back into motion before the party put the whole fungal knot down for good.

Players

• Zero Infinity
• Kael
• Vorg

Image

Timeline

Kael and Vorg arrived in Gildwater as fresh answers to The Royal Call, expecting to make for High Alden by the usual inland road. Instead, a pair of blue-cloaked men intercepted them and sent them along a "quicker" route by the river, which only led them into the wrong woods at the wrong hour. At the same time Zero Infinity, still newly awake aboard Jenny Be Good, heard a cry carrying in from the trees beyond the lock walls and jumped ashore to investigate. That choice brought all three of them together above a small chapel and a nearby house just as a hungry wolf began circling in.

The first fight was brief and ugly. The wolf came in bold from the trees, the new party managed to decide they were on the same side just in time, and the beast went down before it could do more than announce that the place already smelled of blood. In the aftermath the three followed the crying they could now all hear, with the odd telepathic bleed between their thoughts already beginning to show itself in fragments. The wolf-testicle pie idea somehow survived the walk downhill, even as the chapel steps came into view with a dead lockside keeper stretched across them.

Touching that body proved to be the next mistake. The keeper rose again as a spore-driven servant and forced the party into a second fight at the chapel door, one marked by drifting fungal clouds and thoughts that no longer seemed to belong to only one mind at a time. When the thing finally fell, the party recovered the keeper's keys and pressed deeper into the site. What followed in the hidden chamber below is only clear in outline from the surviving export, but the essentials are firm: one clue parchment came from the body at the chapel, another was found in a bookcase, and together they helped the party solve the room's puzzle and uncover the message that Prince Jan was not killed in the Black Temple.

By the time they emerged again, the chapel had become an active fire. The remaining cries drew them to the other house, whose locked door they forced open before finding a frightened family hiding upstairs: a father, a mother, and two children. The rescue that followed was sincere in intention and terrible in practice. Zero Infinity tried to get the father out with mechanical directness, Vorg tried beer and physical reassurance, and none of it made the family trust the armed strangers, the spores outside, or the situation any more than they already did.

That tension broke when the fungal mind behind the place finally showed itself. A Myconid Sovereign emerged near the burning chapel and met the party in open conflict. Zero Infinity launched himself through a stained-glass window to rejoin the fight outside, Kael charged the sovereign hard enough to tear one of its arms free and throw it into the fire, and the battle spiraled wider when the sovereign pulled the dead wolf and another spore servant back into motion. Even with the survivors still cowering in the house behind them, the party held the line and cut down the sovereign, the reanimated wolf, and the second servant before the chapel grounds could fully become a fungal nest.

People Met

• A pair of blue-cloaked harbor men - intercepted Kael and Vorg in Gildwater and deliberately sent them off the proper road toward the chapel woods
• The surviving family in the cottage - a frightened father, mother, and two children hiding upstairs from the spores, the dead, and the very alarming strangers who came to help them
• Myconid Sovereign - the territorial fungal intelligence behind the thought-bleed, more interested in reclaiming what it touched than explaining any of it

Items Found

• Two iron chapel keys - taken from the dead keeper on the chapel steps and used to push deeper into the site
• Two clue parchments - one recovered from the chapel body and one found in a bookcase; together they helped the party solve the hidden chamber and uncover the Prince Jan message

Unanswered Questions

• Who were the blue-cloaked men in Gildwater, and why did they deliberately steer new arrivals toward the chapel grounds?
• Why was there an older hidden chamber beneath the chapel at all, and who first built a puzzle around cards, symbols, and the Black Temple?
• If Prince Jan was not killed in the Black Temple, what really happened there, and who benefits from the lie surviving?
• What exactly was the Myconid Sovereign protecting or cultivating beside the locks, and how far has that spore influence already spread?

Notes

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