Sessions 32, 33, 34 - The Ones Where They Tried to Hang a Witch
In-game timeline: DR1489 Eleint 20 - Eleint 20
Our "Heroes" leave Neverwinter in the early morning, hoping to arrive in the nearby town of Whitewater by lunchtime. The journey is an easy one and they arrive without incident.
Crossing the bridge into the town of Whitewater, they see a very pretty town, very basic as befits its reputation as a puritanical town. The outskirts of the town seem quite empty, and they see people, presumably inhabitants of the town, walking quickly towards the centre of the town. Our "heroes" follow the general trend, and walk towards the town centre.
TC stops a middle aged lady heading in the same general direction, and asks what the fuss is all about. He is told that there is a hanging about to take place in the town of a suspected witch, or maybe multiple hangings of multiple witches. The group continues on and reaches the town square, that indeed seems to be set up for a hanging, with three gallows set up, and three women bound and gagged on the platform, before a baying crowd.
After some discussion and explanation, they meet the Mayor Bagshott Crawford, who is trying to encourage Father Greatshaw (who they came here to meet) to make the decision as to who amongst the three women is guilty of witchcraft. Father Greatshaw is somewhat reluctant to do this. When the group express a desire to talk with Father Greatshaw, the Mayor suggests that the group may be able to help by investigating the situation and deciding which of the women are witches, given that they are independent and have no bias or opinion on the matter. Father Greatshaw is overjoyed at the suggestion, and promises to give the party whatever information they need in return for them taking the decision out of his hands. The group agree to this and are given the freedom of the town in order to make a decision before sundown.
Our party of "Heroes" begin their investigation by talking to the Mayor and Father Greatshaw. They gather information about the children who have been affected by the witchcraft - the symptoms seem to be varied and strange, and there seems to be no links between the victims, other than that they are all children and all from this town.
The group decide to start their investigations by visiting the Horned Helm Smithy, as one of the affected children was the son of the smithy. Mahtis and Kandi stay outside the small shop whilst TC and Carro enter and talk to the smithy, a dwarf named Helmin. They also chat with the apprentice, Dwaylin, whose sister, Lott, has also been acting strangely recently.
After some discussion with Helmin's wife and son, which resulted in very little useful information (according to the party, at any rate), our efficient "Heroes" decide to split up and save time by doing some investigations in tandem.
Kandi and Mahtis head to the Guard Post to interview the guards and the accused. Unfortunately they are not allowed to ungag or untie the women, so their questions are somewhat limited to ones that will produce yes or no answers. This proves somewhat problematic, and the two adventurers struggle to get any useful information from any of the accused. Frustrating, eh?
Meanwhile TC and Carro visit Lott in the hostel. They too, struggle to discover much, although they do find out that Isabel gave Lott a doll toy, which seems innocuous at the time, but proves to be helpful later. The two then head to Elizabeth's house to check that out. At Elizabeth's house they find Ada, Elizabeth's elderly mother who appears to have some form of dementia, or madness. Chatting to Ada proves to be a bit of a struggle. Carro (or "Carrot", as Ada insists on calling him) escapes the conversation by making a cup of tea and finds a number of jars containing various herbs and dried mushrooms etc. TC (or "Tissy", according to Ada) also finds a number of pieces of equipment that suggests a dabbling in herbalism or even alchemy.
Tissy and Carrot quickly go outside, pleased to escape the strange and unfruitful conversations with Ada. They head back to the square to meet up with the other two to share the miniscule information that they both found out…
----- End of session ----
Back at the square, they find out that another child in the village has been affected by what they assume to be witchcraft - Helen Copperpot, a gnome and daughter of Lesley, has come down with a fever and her vibrant red hair is starting to turn white as of that morning.
Carro, getting increasingly frustrated, wants to dash off to check out the well where he has found out all the people get their drinking water. TC wants to talk to Helen, but after realising that Helen is a gnome, decides that he doesn't care what happens to her, and instead runs to the well with Mahtis - both finding nothing unusual with the well or the well water. They go to Mayor Crawford's residence and meet his wife, Gilda. They ask to talk to their children, Phoebe and Luke, who have also been afflicted previously. They discover that both of the children have received a couple of gifts from Isabel recently - a mirror and a little wooden soldier. Thinking that this may be the key to the town's problems, and a link between the affected children, TC and Mahtis borrow the items to investigate later. Our "Heroes" leave to rejoin the other two back in the square.
With the well being investigated, Carro and Kandi instead go to talk to Helen Copperpot, the most recently affected child. Pursuing the avenue of gifts from Isabel, they find out that Helen did receive some wooden animals from Isabel recently, which only increases their suspicions.
Meeting back at the town square, Carro hurries everybody, conscious of the evening drawing in. They run to Isabel's house and break the door down. It takes them 4 attempts. There's not a lot left of the door. TC casts detect magic within the house, and on the toys which they have 'borrowed' from the ill children. He senses necrotic magic from the toys that they have, as well as a faint aura of necrotic. He also detects something emitting a very faint magic from behind the full length mirror on the wall.
They manage to dextrously pry off the mirror from the wall using a crowbar, and it swings open, revealing a dark passageway beyond. They head down and discover a very incriminating "witches cave" at the end of the passage! Case solved!
Or maybe not. They still think that possibly Isabel may be possessed, or charmed, or maybe the tunnel also leads to Matilda's house, and they may both be witches. So they decide to investigate the cave further.
Unfortunately this proves to be problematic. A large stalagmite in the middle of the cave suddenly seems to come alive, and opens a large maw filled with sharp, stony teeth, and extends a number of long, wispy tentacles, which fly out to attack anyone in the cave!
One of the tendrils grabs Kandi and Carro starts to drag them towards the scary looking mouth. TC quickly dashes in and pulls Kandi away from the tentacle. To add to their problems, some small stalactites starts to drop from the ceiling, seemingly trying to hit Kandi before then scurrying slowly away towards the wall and start to climb up the wall - they are obviously not normal stalactites!
Our "Heroes" don't know how lucky they are, as the first bite from the moving stalagmite completely misses a restrained Carro, and, although Kandi is again restrained by another tentacle, very little damage is being done to them. For now. However, TC's eldritch blast attacks miss, and demonstrate just how hard to hit this creature is, as its stone skin protects it from all but the most well-aimed attacks.
Kandi takes some more damage from falling stalactite creatures, and Carro finds out how bad the bite can be when he takes a bite in the back as he runs away from the creature. This is confirmed when Kandi is on the receiving end of a nasty bite, which takes him into unconsciousness. TC runs in to revive Kandi, and then misty steps out of the cave again. Our intrepid "Heroes" decide that retreat is probably the best option, so one by one they run out, whilst trying to cover their backs with various spells (flaming sphere, cloud of daggers, fog cloud, shatter) either previously cast, or cast as they make their escape.
And so they manage to escape the cave, having only suffered a single near-death experience, and burnt through a number of their spell and ability slots. Job done!
----- End of session ----
Thinking that they now "may have a lead", our "Heroes" consider their next steps. They only have an hour or two left. They head to the guard post and let them know of their findings and warn him about what they found at Isabel's house - "a long, many-armed octopus with a big mouth". They take him to the house and consider taking him down into the cave to despatch the creature. They change their minds and stay in the house instead. They then spend a long time discussion what they should do next. Business as usual, then.
They head back, quickly, to the guard post to further interrogate Isabel. When she is presented before them, TC waves his holy symbol and discretely channels his divinity to turn the faithless. She seems not to react to this. They manage to persuade Captain Marphet to allow her to have a hand free to write responses to their interrogation, and they spend their final 15 minutes presenting to her what they found in her house. She initially denies everything, but when TC continues to press her and put the damning evidence before her, she eventually just smiles at them (difficult, when gagged!) and writes, slowly, "Bring it on!".
With this, pretty conclusive, evidence, our "Heroes'" minds are made up. Kandi wants no further part in the hanging of a witch and decides to retire to the inn rather than be present at the verdict - a decision that proves to be quite safe for him but rather concerning for the rest! The others return to the town square and, with the crowd regathered and the accused women once more bound and gagged, they deliver their verdict - Isabel is the witch!
Unfortunately, before the death sentence can be carried out, our "Heroes" can only watch as before their eyes, the children of the town, in the crowd, fall into a trance and start to rise up, levitating 15 feet above the ground. At the same time Isabel, with a smile on her face, also rises up from the platform, somehow losing her bonds and her gag in the process.
TC rapidly fires off an eldritch blast, and Mahtis follows up with a frostbite spell. The crowd are cowering at all the magic that is being displayed, as well as being worried by the children who remain in a trance. Isabel produces two balls of light that seem to be channelling energy from the floating children into Isabel. She then fires three magic missile bolts at TC. They then notice that the orbs seem to be healing Isabel. Seeing this, TC decides to switch his eldritch blast attacks to one of the orbs, hitting it and its light flickers and goes out. Success!
Mahtis casts hold person at Isabel, and succeeds, paralysing her and making her fall to the floor. With her paralysed on the platform, she is easy picking for TC's attacks, which do significant damage, although his first attack seems to cause icy spikes to fly into TC in response - unfortunate since he is vulnerable to cold - and causes him an immediate 20 points of damage. However, his hits to her are critical due to her paralysis, and he does 58 points of damage to her!
With Mahtis missing on her attack, Carro drops her bow and runs over, drawing her shortsword and scores a couple of hits. The remaining glowing orb seems to feed her with the icicle spiked shield she had before. Despite seeing this, and suspecting that he would once again receive damage from hitting her, TC strikes her again. As he falls to the ground from the damage from her magical ice spiked shield, he takes her down, impaling her head upon his sword. Ding dong, the witch is dead!
TC is revived with a healing word from Mahtis, and the party, exhausted but impressed at the amount of damage that TC can produce when he really tries, explains to the Mayor that they now have further evidence that Isabel is really a witch. Kandi is still tapping his gold piece on the bar, waiting to be served.
After all the excitement, the Mayor presents them with 250gp as a thank you for their help and the party talk to Father Greatshaw, who provides them with a lot of information on the Isle of the Abbey, and the Clerics of Shar that have taken over there. Having got the information they came here for, they stay with Father Greatshaw overnight, with TC and Kandi grateful that they can have a long rest to remove their exhaustion and recover properly.
And so we leave our "Heroes" intending to return to Neverwinter the following morning before potentially heading out to the Abbey Isle in search of Mahtis' sister, and the Wise Woman of the West!