Game Report: The Order of Gold

The PCs wake up outside of the maze to find that the majority of the other party had departed, with only the dragonborn fighter, named Escil, waiting for them. He informs them that he was only tagging along with the others, and he would guide them into the city. They move towards the city, and hear the following…

“As you approach the Salt City, you feel the aridity and stiffness of the air. The black grass and soil of the plains gives way to long streaks of dirty white salt, and here and there you catch glimpses of a tattered fence or ancient wheelbarrow, bleached white against its surroundings. In the distance you can make out buildings, sickly green against the red horizon, all ringing around a massive limestone fortress. "That's Ar-Aman," Escil says, "it's the Monarchy's now. We're north here." You turn off the beaten path and stalk past a bleached-wood house, with a fence surrounding a field of land that could have been a garden, but now is only barren salt. As you walk through the field, Escil stops and glares at the horizon. "Ambush. Get ready." Looking up, you see five humanoid figures floating toward you, their bodies desperately pale, wearing only rags, their hands stretched into horrible claws.”

These creatures are Salt Spawn, a variant of vampire spawn that thrive in the City, as long as they keep their feet on barren land. They float in and start slashing with the claws, able to cause the players a small bit of panic by shutting down the healing abilities through dazing effects. The spawn are also shocked and awed by various immobilization effects, and eventually the PCs come out without too much trouble.

They continue on to what looks like an abandoned vineyard, and are greeted by a whole clan of dragonborn and other humanoids, known amongst themselves as The Order of Gold. They go to the main ballroom to meet Islith, the leader, and see a familiar face: Riley, the wizard who originally gave the warlock The Devil’s Hand. There is some minor contention, some minced words, until Islith promptly tells them to make themselves useful if they’re going to be here.

They offer their services as killers of things, and Islith reveals that there’s some sensitive information at a former outpost that’s been overrun with “neaderthals,” lizardfolk. They are to go and find or destroy the sensitive information. One of the dragonborn are to accompany them, a ranger named Selena. They sleep for the night, the warlock being promised that she’ll get answers about The Devil’s Hand when they get back.

North they find a fenced-off building with a squat wooden tower, and outside they see a large lizardfolk playing catch with a behemoth. Behemoths are dinosaurs, by the way, their name has been changed in 4E to protect the innocent. The PCs rush forward to meet the challenge, slamming the two big scaled things with daily spells. Three lizardfolk darters provide cover fire from the tower, but they turn out outstandingly useless. Eventually they clean up the group outside and move into the building.

There they find more lizardfolk, a few hunters and a caster, as well as a vine horror. They faced little problem, moving past the front line to take out the artillery units quickly. The party’s troubles with tight quarters seems to be vanishing, as evidenced by the next fight where they encounter another large-sized lizardfolk with a float of crocodiles. The crocodiles charged forward and grabbed half the PCs, only for every single one to teleport away from the danger. The rest of the battle was handled effortlessly after that, and the PCs went up another level.

All the while, the ranger who was assigned to the PCs took a backseat, instead wandering around the building to find and destroy the purported sensitive information, as well as find a trophy case featuring a bunch of screaming flameskulls. Weird. This adventure over, the PCs headed back to the vineyard.

Lessons Learned: Be careful when naming NPCs, in case your made-up fantasy name sounds like a common swear. You’ll never the end of it. Also, I think I’m going to adapt a kind of a DM diet when playing, as I found myself sluggish and impatient while playing, something I attribute to the low amount of sleep I got and the horrible amount of food we ate. Being more alert during the game will require certain sacrifices, I suppose.