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These notes are for The Arrival characters/game.

The party is currently:

• Calliope Laurelleaf – Halfling Bard
• Ellyjobell – Gnome Ranger
• Phalen – High Elf Cleric
• Talerien – Wood Elf Ranger
• Trogdorr – Dragonborn Barbarian
• Twirpo – Hill Dwarf Wizard

Halloween themed adventure – during an event called The Hollowing.

The Hollowing.

It’s the time of year when the sun and moon collide in the sky, and for twelve hours, in which the darkness consumes the light. During this time the barrier between life and death is at its weakest; and the veil is so weak that demons use this opportunity to capture and ensnare new souls entering the world, harvesting the souls of innocent babies yet to be born.

This is where the term “The Hollowing” comes from; children born without souls.

If enough souls are harvested some demons can step through the veil and wreak havoc on the world for as long as the Hollowing lasts.

When the veil is at this weakest point, even magic itself responds in a chaotic manner.

All of you, along with the others of the Ivory Vale, watch the sky as the moon chases the sun, eventually catching up – and slowly blanketing the world in darkness.

In three hours, The Hollowing will officially begin.

Grey clouds move in; but as always, the view of the Hollowing event in the sky remains unobscured. Rain begins to fall as thunder rolls in the distance. Lightning splits the sky as booms of thunder roll along the heavens.

One of the Priests of Dedinsyn (The God of Death) approaches you, his purple stained face (as all priests of Dedinsyn do) looks at you gravely. “Someone has dug up the grave of Varek. Strangely enough, only Varek’s right hand was severed from his body.”

Another priestess approaches you, her tabard having a sword and axe, crisscrossing in front of a shield, that you recognize as a priests of Arikreel – the goddess of strength, and often called upon for protection – especially during the Hollowing.

“Things are worse,” the priestess explains. “It would seem that symbol of protection has been stolen. I am afraid the Ivory Vale is exposed to the Hollowing once it commences if the blessed pumpkin is not recovered.”

The Priest of Dedinsyn reaches into the deep sleeves of his robe and pulls out a potion for each of you. “This potion will only last 24 hours, and has three doses of healing. It will not likely heal all of your wounds completely, for each dose, but it will help invigorate your body and mend most of your wounds. It is a foul night tonight, so please, take these.”

The priestess of Arikreel points to a small push wagon, “While you all look strong and capable of taking care of yourself. For the sake of carrying the sacred pumpkin, it was wheeled in on that wagon. You should take it with you to recover the sacred pumpkin.”

• The party moves to investigate the dug up grave, of the recently hung Necromancer, Varek, to discover his body has been dug up and pulled out of the grave, just as they were told; but there’s something unusual.

You take notice to something very unusual – the grave does not appear to have been dug up by a shovel. If you had to guess, you’d think some kind of animal dug up this grave.

If you had to guess, it would appear that the grave was dug by some kind of canine creatures. They appear to be of various size, according to the paw prints you are able to find. Some prints are unusually large; the size that perhaps a small bear would make, while others appear to be medium to large sized dog prints.

However, you don’t have much time to check too closely – the Hollowing has caused unrest among the dead, and you see several Skeletons have emerged from their graves.

• The party battles the skeletons, which proves to be a long fight. During the fight, Ellyjobel manages to fumble one of her attacks and accidentally strike Calliope, doing only minor damage to her companion. Then she decides to get fancy and attempt an acrobatic move of running and jumping off of Talerin’s back – who, unfortunately isn’t prepared, and thrown off and tumbles into Varek’s open grave. This causes Ellyjobel to lose her footing so the throw doesn’t go as planned, and neither does her landing, as she comes landing on top of Talerin in the open grave. Trogdor, in the meantime, is busy bashing the skeletons with his blunt weapon, and taking them down, one at a time with the help of Callope, Phalen, and Twirpo. They loot the longswords that the Skeletons had, which prove to be the only things of any value. Eventually the skeletons are defeated and the party follows the tracks to where the Sacred Pumpkin was placed, to investigate the scene of the theft…

There are several people standing around – most of them citizens of the Ivory Vale – all of whom wears faces etched in fear. Inquiring among them yields little to no results – some claim to have seen a man, with no head, riding away with the vast pumpkin on a stead as black as night; while others claim that an old wizard appeared, eyes of fire, and cast a spell and teleported away with it. But all accounts of witnessing note one particularly odd thing – there were a lot of dogs – and house hold pets were behaving erractically. It doesn’t take long to figure out that there was no actual witness to the theft of the sacred pumpkin.

The foot prints of the various citizens of the Ivory Coast have done a great job of ruining the idea of being able to see who or what may have left tracks in the mud – but something does catch your eye. Glancing around, you notice, while there are people mulling about, sharing their stories of what they supposedly witnessed – none of them have any pets with them. Yet, in the mud there are several tracks of what appears to be canine prints – and the vary in size. Some appear to be medium to large; but one canine seems to be unusually large.

The question now is – what would canines want with the sacred pumpkin – and how did they carry it away, since there’s no drag marks in the mud to indicate they might have simply bit into it and pulled it away.

A portal shimmers and several fiends step through. Immediately, the air becomes thick and odorous causing your stomachs to turn as a green mist surrounds each of the demons. The demons have a grey, decaying like skin color, while their ears are pink and shaped like an elf’s ear – except that it appears to be melting. The face looks like a dog whose face has been burned off. Red eyes burn with a hunger for souls. The fiend’s hands have black, thick claws, and the feet have four toes, also with black claws.

The remaining people standing about begin to panic and scream, running for their homes.

• Trogdor, feeling confident because of his battle against the skeletons rushes into tackle the three demons. Phalen does a Religion check and recognizes these demons from her teachings at the Church as “Dretch Demons” – a lower end form of demon. Trogdor quickly finds out there’s a difference between skeletons and demons, as these demons unleash two attacks per turn, and render the barbarian unconscious, in a pool of his own blood. Calliope is able to play a bardic song that restores some health in Trogdor and gets him back on his feet; but he’s still greatly wounded, so Phalen heals him further, giving Trogdor enough health to fight on against the foul demons. He manages to take one down, Calliope takes another, and the rest of the party manages to team up on the third and kill it. The demons have nothing of value.
• The party follows the canine tracks from the scene of the crime and follow them towards the Northern Woods. Ellyjobel and Talerin scout ahead, into the Northern Woods…

You follow the canine tracks towards the Northern Woods. These woods have never been fully explored due to the “feeling” these woods give. Standing at the edge of the woods, you can understand the feeling. There is no sounds of birds or any other normal nature type sounds. There’s no sense of magic or anything like that – it’s as if the woods themselves, however, were as silent as death itself.

Entering the forest, it doesn’t take long before you find yourself surrounded by woods covered in webs. The webs vary in size; some are small, some are large, intricate webs. Cutting your way through the webs, while trying to follow the canine tracks proves increasingly difficult. The bones of various birds, animals, and humanoids can be found in the webs as you venture deeper and deeper.

• Ellyjobel and Talerin decide to go no futher and await the rest of the party…

Just ahead you see what appears to be what was once an Elven Village; but now it’s covered in webs.

But before you can investigate, you hear clicking and see humanoid like creatures that have a spider-like face; but two arms, that end in large claws, and two legs that also have large claws, skittering down the webs and coming for you!

• The party is attacked by four Ettercaps. After some time, the party manages to down three of the Etttercaps and the fourth attempts to flee into the webs; but gravely wounded, the party is able to kill it before it escapes. Their claws and fangs are harvested for potential use of poison later.

Making your way through the webbed remains of the Elven city, there are skeletons of Elves, whose clothes are now tattered. As you make it into the center of the city, the webbing seems to decrease in intensity.

The tracks lead to a building, where the door is ajar. As you look at the doorway, you suddenly see eight pairs of eyes. The eyes all suddenly seem to disappear.

• Twirpo uses the spell Magic Hand to tie Ellyjobel’s rope to the third story window. Ellyjobel climbs the rope and gets in the third floor window where she sees a large, two headed dog patrolling upstairs. Talerin attempts to climb the rope but falls just as he almost reaches the top, knocking the wind out of him, and drawing out the two two-headed dogs downstairs. The party engages in combat with two death-dogs, and the third one upstairs runs downstairs at the sound of combat, clearing the way for Ellyjobel. One of the dogs bites and infects Trogdor with some form of poison from it’s saliva. During the fight, when Calliope uses the longsword looted from the fight with the skeletons, the blade glows a faint hue of blue. With heavy use of the potions the party had been given, the party proceeds forward. Upstairs Ellyjobel finds a large chest and her hands initially stick to it – but it appears to be a trap and not a mimic. Inside she finds 300gp. She runs downstairs to see how her companions are doing and finds them in the hall inside the building. They enter the throne room and see a man sitting on the throne.

As you enter the building, you see a human sitting on the remains of a destroyed Elven throne. “So, the Ivory Vale has sent a party of foolish adventurers?” the man sighs as he looks up. “You come here, willing to die – for the people of the Ivory Vale? Even though you do not know my story?” He stands up, and smiles, “Let me explain before we,” he gestures as if sword fighting, “engage in this undoubtedly unavoidable engagement of blades.” He takes a step forward. “I came to the Ivory Vale – no doubt, like all of you – in hopes of finding something new for myself. To rediscover who I am. To start anew without the chains of my previous life. But the only thing I found was a curse. I became infected, you see. And now,” he looks at his hands, “this curse courses through my blood. I sought the Priests of the Ivory Vale – I went to every temple – seeking help. But none of them – None of them! – said that they could cure me. So I was forced to live in the wild – survive in the wild – like an animal for fear of infecting others. But soon, I came to realize – why am I concerned about others when they were clearly never concerned enough to help me? So, tonight – I decided, I would steal the sacred pumpkin, and let the people of the Ivory Vale know what it’s like to be cursed! To let their children be born without souls. To let the priests that failed me, fail them all.”

Almost immediately the man’s features change and adopt a humanoid canine. “Tonight – when the moon is full and synced with the Hollowing – the curse is most powerful. You see, my curse is that I am infected with Lycanthropy. I am, as you can see, a werewolf. And I assume you want the sacred pumpkin. Well, let me say what every villain I’ve ever fought has said – ‘Over my dead body.’”

• Calliope, charged by the blade’s magical abilities goes first – striking deep into the werewolf’s flesh. The werewolf – oddly, ignores her and goes directly after Talerin. The werewolf rends deep into Talerin’s already beaten, bruised and bloody body, and takes him down, but Calliope is able to sing a song to restore some health after Phalen casts a spell Spare the Dying. The werewolf then turns it’s attention on the other elf in the party, Phalen. Ellyjobel notices that none of the wounds inflected on the werewolf have any true impact except those done by Calliope and her blade; and they realize they need silver or enchanted weapons. They attacks damage the werewolf but it always seems to heal half the damage inflicted upon it, except by Calliope. Still the party fights on, and eventually the werewolf is taken down and the sacred pumpkin recovered. Talerin is healed and the party carries the large pumpkin through the web covered woods, with no incident, back to the wagon that was left at the edge of the woods and hurriedly return to the Ivory Coast, with less than an hour to spare before the Hollowing. Inside the city gate’s, the party bares witness to demons outside the city running around for hours on end, wreaking havoc; but the sacred spell placed on the pumpkin prevents the demons from entering the city boundries; and for twelve long hours, chaos reigns outside; but after twelve hours, as the Hollowing comes to a close, the demons are forced back to the planes from which they came; and the children born this day, at the Ivory Coast, have these heroes to thank…