Pathfinder Campaign Report – Wyvern Hunt I “The Road to Asku-Korla”

The Road to Asku-Korla

Beginning in the Jade Pillar Dynasty, our brave venturers: the young sorcerer-prince Touched by Golden Scales Zhuang Tae Boe, former knight Lorrend Littlehelm, Sagacious Lieu, and Tae Boe’s entourage begin their travel or exile.  Their journey to the edge of the dynasty’s lands is uneventful.  Crossing over by starship to the nearby island they then pass through the expanding village-town of Gong from which a bridge is slowly being built to the lands of the Dynasty to expand trade.

The road from Gong through the steppes to Asku-Korla, the last place red cloud wyverns were known to be held, is rough and unpleasant to one such as Tae Boe who is used to extreme and lavish luxury.  Even his portable meditation pool, complete with carp, is insufficient to sooth him.  The continuous and tedious complaints are halted when a flaming skeleton, riding an equally flaming skeletal horse, appears and demands tribute in the name of his Mistress, Burns Brightly.  Sagacious Lieu dragged over the tribute, one of Tae Boe’s traveling chests, and then struck the skeletal horse in the face from surprise.  The skeletal rider threw back his head let out a terrible wail summoning forth a small army of dust skeletons from the surrounding land which charged forward.

Lorrend, mounted on his faithful charger Tulip, counter charged, trampling skeletons under hoof as he closed with the mounted enemy.  Between Tae Boe’s magic, Lorrend’s lance and sword and Lieu’s fists, the rider was quickly dispatched and with him gone, the dust skeletons returned to, well, dust.  Tae Boe instructed his poet to write about his epic victory and retired after having his wounds dressed.  Lieu and Lorrend pondered the wisdom of traveling with a spoiled princeling, but as their other choice to accompanying him was execution, their path seems only slightly safer.

A few days later, they arrive at Asku-Korla, once a mighty and wealthy trade city, now mostly abandoned.  They note that the outer walls have recently been repaired.  The guards, while possessing mismatched equipment, seem competent and assign an urchin to guide ‘the Imperial Party’ to the palace quarter.  The outer part of the city in from the walls has been cleared and turned into farmland, again, which seemed to be a recent development.  The city was obviously once massive, but much of the city had been abandoned as trade dried up and many buildings are still abandoned but the city seems to be slowly coming back to life.

As soon as they hit the bazaar they were promptly sidetracked: Tae Boe to look for a new courtesan, Lorrend to restock his healing supplies, and Lieu was searching for anything magical (and found a magical twenty-sided die, cheap).  At the end of a round of magically enhanced negotiations, Tae Boe was in the possession of another concubine, Inge known as “Snowy Hawk of the Windswept Mountains” (or something equally absurd, changing each time) and the group considerably down on traveling funds because of it.

After a stop at the local bath house, which almost dissolved into a fight between the old and new concubines, they finally arrived at the palace.  They are shown into the presence of the mighty T’sang Al’Rashad, the Bronze Lion, Lord and Master of Asku-Korla, Slayer of Monsters, and Humble Servant of the Jade Pillar Dynasty.  Who welcomes Tae Boe and his entourage as representative of the Dynasty with a huge feast and various entertainments.  At the feast, Tae Boe gets extremely drunk and boasts of how he will capture wyverns and lead the restored Red Cloud back in triumph to the Dynasty. The Bronze Lion pledges his support.

The next day while Tae Boe sleeps off his overindulgence, Lieu and Lorrend visit the palace library, sadly depleted following a fire several generations ago combined with centuries of neglect and only recently (since the Bronze Lion seized power) have attempts been made to rebuild it.  There they find minimal amounts of information on wyverns.  They do learn that once, long ago, the city of Asku-Korla had been gifted with a flight of red cloud wyverns which later escaped and have long since gone feral in the hills.  Working together Lieu and Lorrend managed to arrange things so that only one concubine, Inge, and the poet accompany them the next morning.

Find out what happens next.