Cimmaron Hooks

Armies on the land
The party are travelling alongside a detachment of fresh recruits for the Hueste - a large army that mans the southern fortresses of Paramo and Bastion. This company is training up to be dragoons - soldiers who know how to defend on foot or in a fortified area, and who can ride out for scouting missions and guerilla attacks.

The party has the option to bring either young Magnus or Thierry along with them (but not both - one needs to stay and train the militia in Delemont).

The leader of the detachment is Fronteiro-Mor Juan de Calles (he also answers to Comandante). He looks older than his years, with a white streak in his dark hair and a weathered, worried face.

de Calles spends the spring and summer recruiting and training troops, and the winter administering the movement of supplies, arms and people between the southern fortresses. He has the honorary title of Comandante of Bastion (though he tends to leave a prefect from one of the other Cartels or Houses in charge of the place, so he can check out the lay of the land for himself.

Juan is well travelled and has seen and fought many creatures. He can confirm for the party that the perils of the Voyivod, including ice giants, are very real (though fortunately, the ice giants prefer not to roam into the warmer areas of Ladinh). He has also traded with Spitzbergen and confirms that drakes and dragons exist - he wears a nice fenric pelt round his neck, an export from those volcanic islands. Dragons sometimes explore the seas south of Bastion: he's never had to fight one and he'd like to keep it that way. Juan de Calles is increasingly worried about Vestfalian threats and reports that Vestfalian skirmishers are a constant threat to smooth mining operations in the hills near Lago. He can't seem to pin down where they're coming from.

Dona Corona de Carros is off fighting in the Spring Wars with a detachment of cavalry. If the party wants to snoop, they can find out that she's scouting near Speranza, trying to find out the intentions of the wayward House. Cimmaron is avoiding the field of war in the Fertile Swathe as much as it can - and Speranza is situated quite close to their territory, so Cimmaron has reason to be cautious!

When sounded out about the war situation, Cimmaron comandantes and nobles will say this:

"It looks like Speranza is making a beeline for the Heath. Neither del Flor, Cimmaron nor Vilaverde want open war in the Heath. The risks of disturbing the area's wild magic, or disrupting the harvests that keep Ladinh fed, are too great. The cartels (and House Venere) feel that Speranza generally acts in Ladinh's best interests, and want more answers before they punish the wayward House. Perhaps there is some grander plan in play here..."

Army Shenanigans
Drill Sergeants Pablo (nickname Pablito, enormous man) and Amarilla (nickname Armadilla, as she wears heavy segmented armour and has little beady eyes) are always looking for ways to occupy their greenhorn troops. Training dragoons involves making them dig small fortifications each night and do drills with arquebus, crossbow and polearms, as well as some riding practice for those who already know how to ride. There aren't many horses in the Company, but they are meant to pick some up in Lago.

The two Drill Sergeants will happily engage Roquette to perform a sort of touring 'USO show' and/or challenge the rookies to feats of strength. Private Ines and Drill Sergeant Pablito himself will both step up as challenging contenders.

Lobo and Lorenzo are a father/son team, Lobo has a bit of salt and pepper in his beard, he plays the vihuela round the campfire when he's not fighting. Lorenzo is still a teenager, short, nimble and headstrong. He's the unofficial mascot of the detachment.

Someone keeps stealing the cacao and coffee rations out from under Ugo the Quartermaster's nose and he'd love to bring the perp to justice. (signs point to Lorenzo but he's under instruction from other soldiers).

Massimo the dodgy elven archaeologist is along for the ride too. Quite a few of the troops will be keen to buy and trade for his antique pornographic etchings (this is not his first time travelling with the spring armies). He might get himself into a bit of trouble with either a puritanical villager or an over-eager group of soldiers on the trip.

From woodlands to pampas
The party heads out around dawn, with pink tinging the tops of the mountains to the East as a large, swelling but fractured moon sets in the Southwest. A fat bear frolics in one of the mountain streams, and there are great clouds of birds hustling and cheeping in the treetops.

The southern part of Foret Barbare is a lot rougher than the path to Delemont - which is looking quite civilised now that the party knows the area and has cleared the place of naughty fey and ravening beasts. The few fey cairns the detachment comes across have been knocked down, desecrated and in one case pissed on by some sort of smelly wild animal.

During the journey, several groups of night scouts or solitary recruits going for a dump will be attacked by creatures in the darkness.

The first to appear: Tulio the night guard - scratched up on vegetation and badly bruised. Something has nicked him in the neck and the side of his face and he is pissing blood from the superficial cuts.

Tulio's story: Private Alexa went off to the bushes to take a piss while Guillermo was on watch. Tulio was woken up by an awful noise, like an animal but not - a high pitched cry that turned into deep gurgling and grunting, coming from the general direction where Alexa had gone. Guillermo has already rushed to the edge of their clearing and was in the half light when Tulio came awake and sprang into action. Some.... Thing, with great clawed limbs but dark, a large shapeless mass in the shadows, took a great swipe at Guillermo and laid him low. Tulio remembers only the rush of black limbs, the campfire and lanterns all going out, and a noise that scared him beyond reason. It seems he turned tail and ran before he knew what he was doing. From there, he got lost in the bushes and went after the nearest available light source.

Tracking rolls can get the party to the other campsite (which is a fair way into the forest - a cunning Wisdom roll might leave them to wonder why the guards were out so far, so late). It's in a wooded glade, there is a campfire which has been blown out and the ashes swept aside as if by a great broomstick. Guillermo has been gutted with a neat swipe (multiple gashes) from his left shoulder down to his right hip. Closer examination of the body indicates he was also flung about like a ragdoll. He's very dead. Elek may try to use Burning gaze to commune with Guillermo's spirit before he passes on.

On to the survivors. Besides Tulio, there is Lobo - who is half dressed and says he was asleep in a tent when the attack happened. When he tried to engage with the attacker, the lights went out, he fell and hit his head, and has only recently become conscious. Burning Gaze shows that he was not thinking consciously until recently, he desires very strongly that Private Alexa be unharmed and considers her a friend (or more), but he is definitely concealing something from Elek. There is also Emilia, who is also in an extremely groggy, slurring state. Her eyes are unfocused, she smells of booze and meat and is definitely in no state to be keeping watch. Her clothing and armour are on but rumpled - clever eyes will notice that someone else has tied the strings of her hose, doublet and sleeves back on, and her undershirt is stained with mud. There is no sign of Alexa's corpse, though there is human piss not far from the camp in the direction Tulio indicated, and great gouges in the earth nearby, too large for a dog or even a bear, and misshapen - asymmetrical limbs dug here, perhaps? Everything reeks as if of some large beast but none known to any of the party.

Drill Sergeant Amarilla is the officer on duty and will ask the party to aid in investigations if they haven't stuck their nose in already.

The campsite itself is odd in a few ways. It's further away from the main camp than it should be. There are bottles of alcohol along with a stash of coffee stolen from the quartermaster's supplies. In the grass, keen eyes might find the odd petal. Round the campfire there's a bit of chargrilled game (rabbit legs perhaps) and various drinking vessels. There's also a washbowl and swept under the ash, a crushed garland of flowers. Lobo is concealing something on his person - a sliver of moon rock with a hole drilled in it, that he wears on a thong round his neck, but that he has bundled up inside the waistband of his breeches.

Questioning Lobo won't have much of an effect - he has some kind of barrier protecting his mind and an iron will. His son might know a few clues but isn't in on the full game. The whole group did a naked ritual in the glade under the moonlight that night. Tulio was in on the party, so was Guillermo and so were Alexa and Emilia. The women partied the hardest, aside from Lobo. Lobo is the ringleader of this little escapade and his 'bacchanal' is in fact a ritual to worship Lene, the mad moon goddess. Alexa has transformed into some kind of terrifying were-creature and Emilia was headed that way herself, till Lobo knocked her out unconscious. Were-Alexa turned and fled into the forest after diesmbowelling Guillermo and Lobo has hastily tried to cover up the scene. Were-Alexa is still at large and Lobo has no idea how long she may remain transformed.

The soldiers responsible are given the option of a dishonourable discharge or a purging ceremony with wolfsbane and a tobacco ritual, that binds them to the service of Ladinh and severs their old ties of worship with Lene the mad moon goddess. The ritual is suggested by - of all people - dodgy old Massimo. He knows a bit more than he lets on, it seems.

The Lakeshore
The detachment will all gather to bathe, horse around in the lake, rest and have some R and R when they first reach the shores of Lago. In the distance the part will see the enormous stone face of a male Desh, carved right out of the looming cliffside above Lago. The Weeping Man - as he is called by the soldiers - disgorges a huge torrent of water from his open, tusked mouth that fills the lake. A narrow and unsteady-looking road, filled in with narrow causeways in places, runs along the north shore of the lake. This is called the Underpass. Eventually the detachment will need to make their way along it, through some northern marshland and to Lago itself.

Lorenzo is in deep thought following the departure of his dad, Lobo, on penance. Tulio, Alexa, Emilia are all back in service. Everyone who was attacked during the glitch-wolf incident bears small, silvery scars. This includes Roquette and young Marcus.

While everyone rests and prepares to squeeze between the cliffs and the lake, some gauchos from the local stockyards will show up and accuse the soldiers of butchering their livestock. They'll call the party to investigate.

The dinosaur corrals are situated by the northeastern shore of Lago. The gauchos and their herds need to migrate constantly because their beasts consume vast amounts of grass and green vegetation - so much that they cannot pasture in one place for long. Dinosaur herds are a little kinder on the pampas than buffalo, however, as their large spreading feet distribute their weight more softly and they don't churn up as much mud.

There are two main kinds of herbivorous dinosaur in the pampas: the glyptodonts (giant armadillos the size of small cars) and the billcrests (similar to a Parasauralophus). Terror birds don't really roam in this part of Ladinh. There are larger predators, though carnosaurs are increasingly rare.

The Wending Mire
The mire is always a dangerous place, but it's especially treacherous this Spring. The company will find their path to the city obscured by magical mists that lead them away from safe paths and into the clutches of various swamp monsters, including large leeches, kappas and a gigantic dire bichir.

The mire is a semi-alpine estuary, full of reeds, lattice-like shrubs with small leaves and blunt spines, enormous columns of lichen, scrubby ferns and the occasional marsh palm or cabbage tree jutting out of the landscape. The terrain is full of jutting glacial boulders, great pads of sphagnum moss that can sink and swallow a person's leg, little alpine streams and huge mats of rotting, peaty vegetation that give off a faint smell. Animals the party can spot on the journey include clutches of ibis, swarms of iridescent dragonflies, big, lazy koi, huge stick insects and many little martlets (spring migrating birds with no legs that pass through the swamp on their way south, picking insects out of the mist).

On a good roll, Elek should be able to work out that the mist surrounding the mire is being magically augmented. The magic's signature, and the strange, acrid mist could remind him of the goddess Sha the Teller. The mist has a faint hypnotic aspect to it, that will lure soldiers off the path and into the mists, into danger. Elek can commune with his god Dajbog to work out the source and cause of the mist. Sha only has influence in places where great atrocities have happened, as she's unable to manifest otherwise. She's using the collective pain of some awful crisis to influence the area.

Things that can happen in the mire:

Rescuing lost soldiers - they may need healing from leech bites, or they may end up fighting kappas (who are quite small but attack in swarms - it's a fight of attrition). The kappas have hard tortoise-like shells and nasty beaks, and can grab things with their forelimbs, but only have pointy stick technology.

Talking to Sha the Teller herself, while she roams the marsh - in this setting she'd appear as part beautiful girl, and part marsh hag. She's quite delusional but happy to make strange prophesies about walls that weep, a lost twin, the wing whose beating breaks the tree, the spindle of the world has slipped, pain to the promise breaker. She will gravitate towards Yiuri but castigate him for his lack of faith. If you please her, she will grant a boon - the boon of stealth, the boon of vision or the boon of darkness (player's choice!)

If the party ends up in deep water, they'll get ambushed by Am'Korkor, the gigantic dire bichir and apex predator of the wending mire. Am'Korkor isn't very intelligent but she is naturally resistant to all forms of magic, very old and has a cunning instinct. The only sound she makes is a clicking, heavy breathing. She is heavily armoured, has small legs to venture on land, a powerful tail attack, thick mucus over her scales that helps her shrug off fire damage. She doesn't see that well on land but has a nasty bite and barbed teeth that pull victims further into her stomach. She also casts simple magic - the Entangle spell, which manifests as a gooey membrane around a victim and pulls them down into the swamp.

Lago
No backup is forthcoming from Lago for the company. In fact, when the group gets to the Customhouse - what should be the outer fortifications of the city's northern suburbs - the walls and guard post appear to be deserted. Many of the buildings have been evacuated, and cart and animal tracks lead south towards the city itself - and small plumes of dark grey smoke rise up here and there. Everything indicates that Lago is in some kind of conflict.

More kappas are scuttling round some of the houses, doing some casual looting. Otherwise, the company can take shelter in some of the northernmost buildings.

Scouting notes: north of the city
About halfway between the Customhouse and the main city walls is a large crossroads, like a roundabout with a traffic island in the centre (there's a Desh statue of a fat man with an elephant head here, looking very weathered and a bit blackened). There are various seasonal shops and trading houses around this crossroads - we'll call it the Hub.

There are the signs of slaughter, a desperate retreat and quite a few civilians cut down. A fat elf has been slit open from crotch to sternum and his innards are being browsed on by a family of skunks as he lies slumped against the base of the Desh statue. Several other elves, half-elves and the odd human corpse dot the place Only a few were armoured and these look to have been mine security or town watch. Any weapons have been hurriedly stripped from the corpses before the besieging force moved on.

The party will find two retailers hiding there, Amos (an Y'd) who sells masonry and tools, and Beatriz who is a human falconer - she is hiding a clutch of panicked, hooded birds in the outhouse behind her shop which has been looted.

West of the crossroads are a lot of low, round houses made of adobe and scavenged stone. There is also a trio of small sculpted pillars, shaped like cigars or small ziggurats, and the low dome of a very humble temple. Yiuri will recognise the iconography of an Y'd religious site. This appears to be a slum settlement where various dwarves, presumably mine workers, sleep and pray. It's been ransacked by the invading forces but there are Y'd still camping out among the slag piles who can supply the party with some intel, and who might be persuaded to help break the siege. There are more Y'd traders and children stuck inside the city's market district. Thankfully, most of the youngsters attend a cartel-sponsored boarding school in the city.

Hard East of the crossroads are some docks - there are boats here, but also a few Vestfalian guards keeping watch. To the south and east of the Hub is a small peninsula that juts out into the water, which is a religious shrine to 3 pairs of deities: Lathander/Chanti, Mitras/Dajbog and Jergal/Mama Minuit, each pair representing birth, mortal achievements, and death.

To the Southwest of the Hub is a collection of smelters, slag piles and warehouses. There are quite a few troops here but also plenty of raw materials for mischief making. The party can also find some goblin and dwarven workers holed up in a warehouse, fending off Vestfalian besiegers with a zesty array of homemade explosives, crossbow bolts and the occasional spray of molten slag.

Goblin worker names: Leinth (Two - a smelter), Alfia (F, a foreman), Esplace (a doctor), Cath (F, a black powder specialist). Dwarven worker names: Benson (a cart driver), Tyrek (a plumber), Samson (a very brawny miner), Vida (an accountant), Yakov (a Gopnik chemist), Dafna (a mechanical pump and elevator engineer).

Far to the West, a winding alpine road that goes up into the mountainside and the great mines of Lago. There are torches in the night, and signs of supply trains weaving tenuously up and down the mountainside. Backup is only coming very slowly from Vestfal and there would be vulnerabilities in this supply line.

The City and Such
And to the far south, there is an army laying siege to the main city walls of Lago itself. Vestfal has broken through the border, and your detachment of troops has snuck up on their forces under the cover of Sha's grieving mist.

If the party asks about possible allies they can learn that there are a lot of goblins who live south of the city - probably not a side of the city that has come under fire, yet. Most everyone else is inside the walls. However, the Vestfalian force is just an expeditionary one. They seem to have tunnelled or climbed their way through the mountains and got into the mines. So they don't have very much equipment and their supply line's pretty weak. It makes you wonder... why did they break through? What are they hoping to achieve?

The main city's walls are Desh in origin and seem to be quite flame resistant. Fire and missiles reaching inside the city are still able to set things alight, though. The city watch has deployed some magical firepower in the form of quite an effective shield. This makes sense - the Cartel's mages and paladins are reputed to be specialists in Abjuration magic. But also, many of the mage troops would be out in the Spring Wars or guarding the South. Presumably the mages in the city can only hold out for so long.

Goblins to the south

Lars Telecles - obsessive trinket collector and head of the Janitors

Unata (F) - Janitor, rogue skills for days

Petra (F) - local matriarch, almost as wrinkly as Seianthi

Who's in town?
Auberto D'Itria (no relation of your patroness Mam Itria, you think???) is a major shareholder in Rio Copos Mining and oversees the mine operations. He'd have been in the city when the attack went down. Auberto is known to moisturise and groom himself a lot (at least for a Cimmaron-affiliated elf), and he wears a lot of flamboyant dark red outfits. He has a little touch of non-elf blood in him and it isn't human - you can't quite place what it is.

Sabio Francisco de la Plata, the Head Mage of the Cimmaron family. He's a distinctive elderly elf, with great streaks of white hair at his temples, lots of fine threadlike scars on his arms and face and some light facial hair (which is quite unusual for an elf). The party might get a quick glimpse of him on the parapets of the city walls, crippling the enemy's magical capabilities. It's odd he was in town at the time. Checking up on the activities of the company perhaps?

DomNa Pepito de Carros, Dukessa Juana's young heir (Two) - they haven't been able to produce heirs of their own which is pretty worrying, since the Dukessa governs alone. They are a bustling entrepreneur, very dapper and quick-witted, and have been married and divorced three times (to a male, a female and a Two elf). They're reputedly on the market yet again.

All the fancy nobles have probably retreated from the Golden Quarter (elven pleasure gardens and mansions) to stay safer in City Hall. The Golden Quarter is out of the direct line of fire but its still outside the city walls proper.

The Siege hits a crucial point and de la Plata is called back to reinforce the front lines! The Bullette/ Land Shark mounted cavalry have tunnelled a small breach under the city wall to the North, in a last ditch raid of the city.

Hints and portents
Coulisse (the village headman) - de la Plata knows something about what he was doing

Auberto will offer the party a deal. He's tempted to break faith with Cimmaron - but this will make a rival of de la Plata.

Unata gets an offer from DomNa Pepito - they like her style!

Auberto has "a fair idea of what the goblins might be on about" and takes some of the characters underneath the city to get a peek at some mysterious, monumental pre-Desh architecture - including the central spine of an enormous, descending spiral staircase.

The Vestfalian army is generally dense, but interestingly, they are accompanied by a couple of navigators from Argos - a northern principality of the Vestfalian empire who have travelled a very long way to attack Lago. They're not willing to talk, and may decide to die rather than talk - but they bear distinctive tattoos with a wheel symbol - the insignia of the Kubernetes, some sort of Argonian organisation. If Elek tries to use his burning gaze trick on them, all he will see is a blazing wheel etched in fire, with a shimmering pillar at its hub.

General notes
The Rio Copos Mining Consortium owns this place as their company town. They make a great show of venerating Dukessa Juana 'Rubia' de Carros, the Cartel's current leader, with statues and other shows of civic pride. However, the mining families have a great deal of real power here, and Juana herself is not based in this city. Her capital, Cimmaron, is to the East of the lake, at the intersection of Rio Copos and Rio Neiro.

An impressive pair of ferry terminals span the lake from West to East. DomNa Pepito de Carros (Two), a younger scion of the de Carros family, runs the ferry business and hauls ore, people and beasts to and fro in a 24/7 operation. Hundreds of smaller fishing boats and pleasure craft bustle along the waterside. The coastline has been fortified against enemy landings along the eastern shoreline, protecting the city.

Vestfalian troops might talk if questioned. Only the really senior people know the actual objective, everyone else was told they could definitely take and hold the city while the silly Ladinhos were off at Spring War. More senior people would know that this was intended as a desperate raid, to get inside the city. Specifically, to get to City Hall and either acquire or destroy an artefact of value to Cartel Cimmaron, which was known to be there through magical divination.