A Question of Honor

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About the Saga

The Blackrazors continue their exploration of the "weapons" Star Cairn. 

Note: This adventure is based in part on the TSR Module Star Cairns Part 1: The Lost Tombs by Sean Reynolds. Many thanks to Sean for this very excellent adventure. And now...

Timeframe

Cast of Characters

Notable Quotes

  • "Maybe it’s not evil, maybe it’s just megalomaniacal" -- Kalib, referring to one of the swords found in the Star Cairn.

What Has Come Before

The Blackrazors – comprised of the cleric of Trithereon, Kalib Ironfist, the dwarven war cleric D'klar Ironforge, the thief Gaiseric and the elven mage-ranger (and Guildmaster) Tanevir -- finally arrived at the Star Cairn that served as a base for bandits raiding trade caravans in the surrounding hills. Rather than destroy them outright, the guild members decided to talk to them and discovered that the "bandits" were former inhabitants of the Bright Desert who had been forced out of their homelands by the manipulations of Rary the Traitor. They were planning to recover a powerful magical item from the cairn in hopes of returning home and taking the war to the mad mage.

Sensing a chance to actually avoid a fight, the Blackrazors offered to retrieve the magical item … if the bandits would stop attacking the caravans. The bandits agreed, and adventurers were led to the cairn’s lowest level. Once there they puzzled their way through several magical traps and recovered the magical item. They are now debating what to do with it.

The Saga

Sunsebb 16, CY 587

A Bad Mood

D’klar was not in a good mood.

In and of itself, this was not troubling. The dwarven war cleric was rarely in a good mood when he wasn’t smashing evil-doers or draining a keg of fine stout. But this time he was in a particularly foul mood. He and his comrades had just succeeded in retrieving a powerful magical item – or at least that was how Taniver described their find. And now they had to turn the damn thing over to the bandits, all because of Kalib’s foolish decision to agree to the bandits terms. He growled to himself. The others had gone along with this travesty, and he’d had no choice but to agree with them. And now he was faced with having to uphold this idiotic arrangement.

His mental wanderings were broken by the sounds of plate mail armor slamming into the floor of the room behind him. He whirled around, battle axe instantly in his hand and then stopped. Before him, sprawled on the ground, was the cavalier Demetry Hawkins and the mage Aesop. He scowled at them and returned his axe to his belt.

"I told you I’ve never teleported anywhere before," Aesop protested as he climbed to his feet and Demetry began cursing. "And using the crystal ball isn’t an exact science. There are cross-currents of magical instability and I didn’t know we’d end up 10 feet above the floor and ..." He stopped when he noticed no one was listening. "Well, I need to get back to my studies," he said and began casting another of the teleportation spells.

The other Blackrazors blinked and shook their heads. Guild life just kept getting weirder. Demetry stood, checked his armor, and then spoke. "I thought you might need some assistance," he said, drawing his sword.

"Certainly," Kalib said. "D’klar," he said, turning to the dwarf. "I’ve been thinking about about working with bandits: they betray everyone."

"You knew that when you agreed to this. I told you that. I said we should split their heads. But did you listen?" the dwarf said, growling through his thick brown beard. "Now you think we should betray them?"

"Yes – they are going to do it to us," the cleric of vengeance responded.

"Pah, you knew that. That’s no excuse to go back on our word. You made an agreement and we’ll stick to it."

Kalib considered this, and then decided to humor the dwarf – at least for the time being. "How about we head upstairs and see what happens? Once we’re on the surface, we can make a more informed decision."

"Fine," the dwarf said.

The Blackrazors prepared to make their ascent. They decided to hide Demetry with an invisibility spell, not wanting to explain his presence and liking the element of surprise that the spell provided them. Then they headed toward the stairs and the bandits.

To the Cairn

The bandits waiting for them at the stairwell held out the crude burlap sacks that served as blind folds for the adventurers. The Blackrazors had worn them on the way down, and now reluctantly donned them again for the trip back up. As the Blackrazors climbed the cairn’s spiral staircase to the second level, Kalib took the lead. Nearing the top he could feel their guides stepping out of the way and could sense that something was very wrong.

His intuition wasn’t fast enough. As he struggled to give a name to what was wrong, he felt a wave of magic wash over him and gasps from behind him. He sliced his hood open with his dagger, Quickstrike, and saw a man standing on the landing above him. The man held a black sword in his right hand. Kalib had seen the man before when they’d first encountered one of the bandit’s patrols. Outside, Kalib had been at least a hundred yards from this man, but now he was a dozen feet away – and his sword Justiceseeker knew it. The magical sword screamed into his weilder’s mind. That man is a murderer! He wields an aspect of Nerull! Kill him Kalib … avenge his victims now. Kalib couldn’t agree more.

He started to run up the remaining stairs when the man with the black sword pointed it at him and sent a wall of black mist billowing towards him. He felt its magic wash over him, but the gasps from behind him told him that the others weren’t so lucky. A quick glance backward told him that Demetry and Gaiseric had been stricken by the black smoke. They appeared as though the life had been drained from them and although they were still standing it was obvious that they were much weaker than they had been.

But they are alive, he thought, a condition they won’t share with my friend at the top of the stairs in a few minutes. He took the stairs two at a time as he closed on his opponent. He hit the man with Justiceseeker, and his opponent momentarily faltered before regaining his stature and counter attacked. Kalib followed up with a one-two combination from Quickstrike and Justiceseeker. The man tried to land blows of his own, but couldn’t. Another thrust of Justiceseeker’s steel proved fatal, and the man slumped to the ground.

Clash of Swords

As Kalib ran up the stairs, oblivious to his surroundings, the others noticed that the black-sword man was not alone. He had companions and they were moving into a positions where they could start throwing things at the Blackrazors. Demetry acted quickly, pulling himself up onto the second level as Taniver prepared a barrage of spells.

Neither was needed – when the man with the black blade fell to the ground, the morale of his companions broke. Kalib – recognizing that there were other opponents – demanded that they halt or be killed.

They stopped.

The Blackrazors stripped the bandits of their weapons and led them to the cairn room below, which they promptly locked. The adventurers then continued their trek to the upper levels.

The Second Level

The second level held few surprises even though all of the Blackrazors had been blindfolded when they’d come down the stairs. On the second level they encountered a handful of opponents, but Tanevir decimated them with Evard’s Black Tentacles. While they waited for the tentacles to disappear they explored a series of rooms containing forges, weapon-making supplies, and the signs of combat. But no gold. No treasure of note beyond some fine steel bars. The Blackrazors moved on.

At the entrance of the second floor’s stair case they had found strange runes floating in the air and they encountered them again on the first floor. They made about as much sense as they had the second time. Kalib scribbled down some notes on a piece of parchment about the runes. They then plunged back into the mayhem, and headed back to the surface.

The Silver Sword

As they emerged from the cairn, they saw a field full of bandits – and a man holding a silver sword over his head. Standing behind him was a robed human – probably a mage. The Blackrazors felt a spell wash over them with absolutely no effect. The man with the sword didn’t seem to notice or even care. "You will tremble before me, as all of Greyhawk will tremble before me" the man screamed. The Blackrazors smiled.

Kalib pointed a finger and sent a lance of disruption against into leaders, staggering them and isntantly killing a follower standing behind them. Then Tanevir blasted a group of the thieves out of existence with a fireball. As the smoke rose and the bodies roasted, the mage retaliated with a stinking cloud, the effects of which the Blackrazors – save Gaiseric – ignored. Kalib down the hill and engaged his unnamed opponent. Two slashes from Justiceseeker had the man reeling. The freak didn’t care. "Do you hear the silver dragon now?" he asked.

"No," Kalib said, and hit him again.

Quick glances around the battle field revealed that his fellow Blackrazors were also fighting. Tanevir had four of the bandits on him, while D’klar was shrugging off the attacks of another three men as Demetry carved a path through his advesaries to aid his friend. Gaiseric, of course, was wretching.

Meanwhile, in front of him, the leader. was oblivious to his half-dozen bleeding wounds "Kill all you want," he said as the Blackrazors cut through his ranks. "I’ll make more."

He never had the chance to make good on that threat – Kalib put him down with a final thrust of Justiceseeker.

With the fight over, the Blackrazors gathered up their surviving opponents and began searching the bodies of the fallen. They made a small stack of the magical swords they’d found in the cairn and the bandits.

The silver long sword the leader of the bandits had been wielding dominated the pile. "I don’t know if we want to mess around with smart swords," Demetry said, looking cautiously at a sword. It looks so nice... he thought. "But it's not evil," Demetry said, sensing the sword’s neutral alignment.

Kalib stepped up beside the cavalier. "Maybe it’s not evil, maybe it’s just megalomaniacal," he said.

"Oh, like Malphas," Demetry said.

"Yes, like Malphas," Kalib replied. And that ended that conversation.

Kalib looked at the black blade he’d carefully sheathed in a burlap bag after slaying its weilder on the second level. Written in a barely legible dialect of Common, were the words Arm of Nerull. That was all he needed. Using an enhanced strength spell cast on him by Tanevir, Kalib broke the blade. A wisp of dark essence rose from the shattered steel … but there was no violent feedback. Justiceseeker went quiet, finally sated. He then turned his attention and strength against the silver blade – and snapped it like a metallic twig.

Emboldened, he picked up the sword they’d identified as Unholy Vengeance and tried to break it. The sword resisted and Kalib looked at it in surprise. He tried again. Again the sword resisted. He put it aside and turned his attention to the other items.

The sword with the reptilian eye in the hilt didn’t look dangerous or particularly powerful, so he and the others put the blade aside.

Their divinations revealed that the hand axe and dagger they’d taken from the cyclopes’ lair, as well as a cloak they’d found on the bandit mage, were mildly magically enchanted. After identifying the magic, they found the bandits’ treasure hoard and quickly counted and loaded it into more of their sacks. Content with their success against the bandits – and still carrying the strange rod they’d found in the depths of the cairn – the decided to return home.

Sunsebb 17, CY 587

Returning Home

The trip home wasn’t an easy one. First they dragged the bodies of their defeated adversaries – in addition to the prisoners they’d taken – back to Storm Keep. The commander wrote a letter attesting to the fact that the Blackrazors had killed or incapacitated 28 members of the bandits, including their leader. A day later -- with the help of Aesop -- they teleported back to Greyhawk.

Once in the city, the Blackrazors went looking for the merchantwoman who had hired them, but found that she had fled. They quickly reasoned that it had been a set up – the merchant had planned to send them to their dooms. They alerted the city guard to the scam, and then returned to their guild home.

Over the next week Tanevir took their captured swords to the Guild of Wizardry, where they spent 1,500 of the Blackrazors’ gold to get the weapons identified. While the swords were being studied, Demetry ordered a fine set of plate mail armor to replace his beaten and battered partial plate armor.

As the Blackrazors settled back into its their routine, Guildmaster Tanevir took some of the brighter guild members aside and introduced them to their greatest treasure – their wyvren eggs. After carefully explaining how to care for the eggs, he and the other senior members meet in one of the building’s more secluded rooms. "We’re going to need a place to raise these things – a place outside of the city," Kalib said.

Someone piped up: "We need to buy some property."

Gaiseric scoffed at the idea. "Every piece of land within the Domain of the city is held by someone."

"Ok then," Kalib said. "We’ll have to rent..."

Experience & Loot

  • No experience and/or loot is available for this saga.
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