The Lost Vineyard: Session Three

Josian stumbled back into the Megaron's cellar to find Aedric had woken up. He wasn't surprised to see a new face, other people had to have heard the rumors of this place, and surely some of them had to be insane enough to go investigate. Both of them were surprised when Vraifigi popped out from behind one of the Megaron's cyclopean stone walls. 

The group decided to give the building a once-over to see if there's anything they'd missed. Their suspicions were correct. In the monastic cells attached to the kitchen was a suspicious patch of wall. Vraifigi went at it with her crowbar, revealing a hidden shelf with a skeleton. The adventurers stood at the ready, waiting for it to animate and attack them. If it was an undead, it was a very patient one. Vraifigi guessed it was probably a woman from the hips and that there were signs of trauma in the neck bones. Josian and Aedric both pointed out that it wasn't customary in this region to bury your dead in a wall. Not wanting to encounter an angry ghost nun in the future, the group dug a hole outside and poured in the bones. Aedric scattered some seeds over the grave as a blessing of the Grain Goddess while Josian asked Mercy to forgive whatever crime the nun had been killed and denied proper burial for. Traditionally, there was supposed to be a corpse to nourish the seeds you planted, but it was the gesture that counted.

The party then turned their eyes towards the hermitage across the fields. Vraifigi led them through a path where the vegetation would shield them from the eyes of the wyvern. There, they ran into the siblings Anderson and Dia Schempf. After swapping stories, they realized they could probably help each other. They dug up the nun's bones and camped out in the kitchen. After hearing the Schempf's stories of being harassed by creatures drawn to their campfire, they decided to let it die out.

Unfortunately, this attracted the attention of the two surviving trolls. They whiffed their first set of attacks on Vraifigi, who had been keeping watch. She ran for her life, banging her rapier onto her buckler in an attempt to wake up the rest of the party. One of the trolls pursued her, but wasn't able to keep up. She climbed up onto the roof and hurled rocks and scraps of ancient tile so hard at the troll that it reconsidered whether it could tank the damage with its regeneration and fled. The remaining party members fought the troll until Josian panicked and cast a sleep spell, knocking out the Schempfs. Aedric and the troll continued to trade blows, gritting their teeth to power through the drowsiness of the spell. Josian stuck a torch into the remnants of the fire and stirred up the coal and ashes. This created enough of a burst of flame to provoke a morale test, which the troll failed. While technically a victory, the encounter pissed off the Schempfs and they left the following morning without any discussion of reimbursement for helping them find their grandmother's bones. 

The adventurers decided to explore the thicket of thorny acacia trees next. Vraifigi peered into the miniature forest. She was a cave elf, but had spent enough time above-ground to develop the green sight. She saw a creature tormenting a bear hiding in a tree. Curious, the party approached. The Polevik demanded to know what they were doing. Aedric stepped forward and explained that they were here to restart the winery and uncover its past. The Polevik told them about the buried treasure. It was a spirit of agriculture, and honest work deserved rewards. Then it went back to screaming insults and orders at the bear. It took the party the rest of the day to dig up the nuns' secret stash, as they only had their hands, a crowbar, and an old stone tool for shoveling ashes from the kitchen. The tarnished silver wouldn't fetch much on the market, but they could polish it up. Plus there was a cool iron gauntlet and bronze censer. The back of the censer was etched with an image Saint Lampiã fighting a monster, a massive roiling wave of oil, filled with mouths and eyes. Aedric and Josian identified it as a religious magic item, probably capable of casting some kind of protection spell if used to burn incense.