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Honor Among Thieves

This is the first Campaign taking place within the Tempest Heart setting.  In addition to the core D&D 3.5 rules we are also using Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed rulebook.

The game started in Dragon's Dive the Capitol of Kalendor.  There Jens and Llewellen were both members of a small gang of street thieves who lived in the Warren.  (The area of town that is a combination slum and shanty town.)  The youths in the gang were mentored by the "Old Man"  who taught them what to steal and how to do it. 

Llewellyn was not nimble enough of finger to be a pickpocket nor limber enough to specialize in burglary so he became a lookout, tough and occasional  mugger.  Jens on the other hand was quite gifted at both lockpicking and she had a good head for heights.  Neither one really had ambitions larger than making sure they were fed and hopefully clothed.  

Then their sometime cohort Rory the Red started making suggestions.  Rory was a previous member of the gang and was well known to them.  He had joined the Church of Loki a few years earlier after being caught trying to steal from the priest Mintarn.  Rory mentioned a bounty that had been placed on the head of two members of a rival gang.  Jens and Llew decided that the risk would be worth the money and along with Rory tracked them both down.  After a brief and savage scuffle, their quarry was captured and turned in. 

Next Rory mentioned the undead sometimes seen around the city of the dead, and a reward being offered by the Priesthood of Arawn for eliminating the cause.  They decided to check out the Necropolis, and picked a shadowed spot to climb the stone fence that surrounded the City of the Dead.  There they spotted a cloaked figure leading two walking corpses in plundering old tombs.  Suddenly the corpses began chasing someone.  Llew, Jens and Rory quickly dispatched the ghouls and the necromantic priest leading them.  They made the acquaintance of Aldon Underbough a local weaver of the halfling race.  They quickly discovered that Aldon was a sorcerer.

Then the disappearances started. At first they paid little attention to them.  But then they stumbled upon a murder in one of the many dark alleys in the warren.  The victim was Davvy, a member of their gang, and the interrupted *something* in the process of skinning him.  They then began investigating the disappearances.  They discovered that most of the disappearances occurred within a mile or so radius and while there were no real similarities between victims  there seemed to be eerie foreshadowing.  After the first victim each of the following victims was seen in the presence of the proceeding victim.  In other words, Garm the baker was seen meeting with Shaer and then disappeared a day or so later.  About five  days after that Shaer disappeared as well.

They came to the horrible realization that whatever it was they interrupted in the alley was skinning it's victims and wearing their skins.  Then a few days later it would kill a new person and assume their identity for a while.  Eventually the tracked the last victim to a local apothecary, a little old woman.    There they confronted the creature and after a terrifying battle disabled it.  It seemed to be some sort of strange golem.

Rory took charge and a few days later came and spoke to the others.  The city was at a loss to try and discover what it the golem was and where it came from.  They knew of a sage, a powerful wizard that lived not far from the border with the Republic of the Compact that might be able to uncover more, and they offered a fairly large sum to the group if they would take the construct to the sage and bring his findings back to them.   They quickly agreed, though only Aldon had ever left the city before.

When they left the next day Rory introduced them to a guide that he had hired to take them to Hommelet where the sage lived.  Sharna Blackmane was a rather plain woman with an acerbic wit and a gruff no nonsense viewpoint.