Spoiler alert: if you plan to play The Evils of Illmire, don’t read this!
We started the session with our plucky band of cult bashers (Anistor, Evalore, Gravik and Kristos) putting their “it’s a crazy plan but it just might work” plan into action. The situation was this: the miller and his wife had been dragged by the cult to the defiled Temple of the Luminal Star as they had the audacity to try to leave Illmire. Our band suspected they were either going to be sacrificed or have mindphage worms inserted to bring them under the cult’s control. This could be an opportunity to end the cult’s influence in Illmire once and for all…
- Anistor and Sergeant Wilfret donned uniforms of Captain Frey’s thugs, the guards who had accompanied him to collect Lord Crellmont and now rot in the cellar of the mayor’s mansion. They would accompany the mayor as his guards with a story about Captain Frey taking ill. The aim was to get the two fighters close the action when things kicked off.
- Kristos stealthily lead Evalore and Gravik to the side of the temple where they would be hidden from town and could climb through a window into the Luminal Star room. A comical scene ensued of failed attempts trying to scrabble up the 15ft to the window, but their luck held out.
- Lord Crellmont, nervous at the proposition of facing the cult accompanied the two fighters. When they entered the temple there were a half dozen cultists, a handful of guards, Birella from the Inn of the Weary Wagoner, some other villagers and the priestess Nivendra who the party now suspected was controlled by a mindphage worm. The priestess was handling a jar and had extracted one of the mindphage worms from it. Anistor carefully closed and barred the doors to the temple behind and escorted Lord Crellmont towards the altar.
- Meanwhile the others had secured the Luminal Star room and peered out into the main temple where they could only see two guards and little else. Kristos did spot a movement in the shadows of one of the alcoves and suspected it was the assassin. Not wanting to take any chances he aimed a crossbow and fired…1
- At that point all everything moved into overdrive. Anistor and Sergeant Wilfret took on the cultists and guards near the altar, while trying to save the millers. Anistor’s trusty hammer ‘four pound’ created havoc when it found it’s mark, but he was unable to prevent Birella and Nivendra from fleeing deeper into the temple.
- Gravik and Evalore moved with Kristos to engage with other guards and cultists and proved highly effective. Evalore surprised himself by cracking a few skulls, a little out of his comfort zone, but it felt good!
- The shadowy figure was accompanied by three others, in total four assassins lurking and waiting for their moment to strike. Fortunately the sharp eyes of the party meant these cold blooded killers couldn’t get into position to attack most effectively.
- A few rounds later the fight was over. Cultist, guard and assassin bodies littered the floor, and the converted villagers quivered in a corner. It was time to catch their breath and assess the situation. First thing was to make sure the bad guys were properly dead (although some innocent mindphage worm victims had lost their lives) and to burn the mindphage worms in the jar.
- It felt like the cult was close to being crushed in Illmire, but Birella and Nivendra were still in the temple and there was the small problem of the terror in the basement to deal with. Plus there’s the worrying development of the whiteness in Gravik’s eyes and the cold he feels…
Old Scouser Roleplaying 