Roland's Song (Inactive)

Game Master Meditation

This is for a specific player. Lurkers are welcome. It will detail the attempts of one character to infiltrate the Whispering Way in the Carrion Crown adventure path.



Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

This is a game intended for a specific player. Lurkers are welcome.


I am ready to give Caromarc a piece of my mind about the realities of life and death, and am putting the words together in my mind, when I hear the call of a whippoorwill through the darkness. All the way up here? I think to myself, but then I realize it is a sign from my goddess. I focus on the information about the Whispering Way instead, and made Caromarc give me all that he knows. It isn't much - the Shudderwood, the Silent Path, some hidden purpose. I bet that my companions will go straight to them, in their forthright and confrontational way. But I also know this never works against the Whispering Way. Not really. We killed their Whispering Tyrant in a straight up battle so many years ago and look at them now. Still around. I bet they even thank us for it, secretly. They all want a chance at the big seat themselves, I'll bet. I would.

I need direction, I need guidance. I need to know how to best proceed from here. I must report back to the Temple of Pharasma. I must revisit my superiors. I approach my companions and explain it. I need to tell my church about this threat. I tell them to go ahead, that I will catch up with them again on the Silent Path. Then without stopping to wait for any objections, I immediately take my leave and head towards my own temple. I hope they know more than I do about this.


Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

It's a long trip back to Cryptgate. You get yourself a horse in Lepitstadt and ride continuously for several days, staying and inns and resting your horse as needed.

Returning to the Cryptgate, the massive Gothic cathedral in Kavapesta, you immediately seek an audience with your superior Bishop Bavhulameta Ulametria.

Stooped on her knees, she receives in you her simple domicile. Her ways absurdly humble and she does not look at you as you enter. Robed in all black, a bare bit of flesh is clear, from her daily shaven head to the nape of her neck. This area of flesh gives you a glimpse into the world of pain she regularly visits upon her body. The strongest of men would wince to behold such disfigured flesh, but you have seen this before so you merely lose your appetite.

Her voice is low and soothing as she says,"You have returned? Have you completed the task set before you?"


This lady always creeps me out. I'm glad that she never goes out into the field, though. Any of our various enemies would jump at the chance to exploit her obvious weaknesses. I'm completely okay serving as her field operative. Whatever keeps her in her chambers for more hours per day. I bet she hasn't left the cloister in years.

I try to arrest this line of thought before it begins to appear on my face, and also drop to one knee and bow my head in case I didn't succeed. "Bishop Ulametria, I have dire news, urgent information on the Whispering Way. As you know, I recently went to bury an old colleague, Professor Lorrimor, down in Ravengro. He was mixed up in some bad business with the haunting of Harrowstone. The bad business eventually led me and several other of his former colleagues to Lepidstadt, an investigation, and a trial of The Beast, a construct that frequented the area. After we freed The Beast from his charges, he invited us to his creator's abode, the Schloss Caromarc. But his creator, Caromarc, had been imprisoned by Whispering Way agents in his own laboratory before we arrived. They had taken some items from him and used The Beast to gain something we do not know. But what we do know is that they went on from there along the Silent Path into the Shudderwood. It was then that I heard the whippoorwill's call, and took it as my sign to return here. I lay all this before you, and trust in your greater wisdom given from the Lady of Graves that you know how I may serve her will more closely in this matter."

I pause here, as decorum and training dictate. I can only hope this information can be exploited, somehow. And despite all my urgency, I suppress my desire to plead for a chance to infiltrate the Whispering Way. But still, this could be it! All of my training, everything I have ever learned, could be put to the test soon.


Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

The bishop sits in silence for a long time with an unblinking stare that seems to pierce your soul. Given your special training in infiltration, I believe that our next step should be for you to find a way within their organization.
We have methods created for divining the location of individuals in the shadows but there is a cost to bear to gain such knowledge. Only through pain can your answers be found. You must perform penance Roland. Are you ready?


I pause for a moment, my jaw clenching in momentary defiance. Why is it always penance with this one? But if this is the way then this is the way. Yes. I am ready.


Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

"In your ignorance you believe you are prepared but soon you will see that your journeys have scant prepared you for joys of pain."

Long you suffer beneath the lash deep in the earth below the cathedral, hidden in chambers unfit for public display. There are times when your resolve weakens and you find yourself on the verge of despair. Yet in those very breaths, when mercy is the sole dream of your heart, brief but inexplicable images flash within your mind's eye. A city begrudgingly welcoming a nobleman and his army. Their resentment thinly veiled and altogether known to the man seated in silk, surrounded by swords. A nights rest filled with dreams of emancipation. But come the morrow, all that the village held dear was taken along with their very lives. Swords rise and fall with the monotonous rhythm of a butcher at his block. As the silk seat departs for battles abroad, mass graves remain and spirits unsatisfied cling to spaces once loved. Empires rise and fall. The wind blows through empty homes and lost opportunities long before the coming of those chased by death. Ever dealing it but seeking to never taste it. A gagged skull and the rattling of bone worn like cloth. A whisper, filled with satisfaction: Feldgrau.

Feldgrau, a ghost town found only on old maps. With this lone bit of information you spring off on a rested black steed. Riding for days you come to the edge of Feldgrau. It is night and the decrepit village is dark save for flashes of light, magical and unnatural.


I once heard that some people, when the bad things happen to them, try to never think of them again; try to ignore it. Years later if someone or something reminds them of bad days long gone, it can send them running. I also heard that other people, when the bad things happen to them, become obsessed with the event, living it over and over again, unable to move on. They make it part of their daily life.

I'm definitely the second kind. I always seem to find myself in the company of the unquiet dead. Like now, here in Feldgrau. Sighing the sigh of familiar resignation, I chant out my most well-worn abjuration to hide from the undead, slip off my horse, check my gun, touch the corner of my hat, and begin to look around the place.

I hope I don't see any ghosts of laughing children or unquiet mothers. I hate those the most.


Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

Moving along quietly you see in the distance individuals in black robes using magic. Their purpose is unclear at this distance.


For all their vaunted secrecy, the Whispering Way really dress to stand out. I crouch down, take out my gun, and make with the sneaking, hoping to get close enough to figure out what's going on.

1d20 + 10 ⇒ (19) + 10 = 29


Male Shoanti Barbarian 5

You can see that people in dark robes are digging up mass graves and animating the dead. They don't seem to have noticed you. There are about two dozen individuals and several dozen skeletons freshly animated.
Feldgrau is located far from any other cities, it is a ghost town, literally and figuratively.


I try to study the group, to think of an angle to introduce myself. I need to make these people trust me. I need to pretend to be one of them. I need them to think I'm... evil.

I retreat to a safe distance out of earshot, and cast Misdirection to appear Chaotic Evil. I cast Detect Alignment on myself and sense the foul miasma of my own false aura surrounding me. I try to suppress a grimace. Then I take out my disguise kit and look for ingredients around me. Dirt, mud, fragments of bone - this is all I have to work with. I make myself look more dirty, more roughshod, more feral. As long as I don't look like myself, I'm fine.

(I have +5 in Disguise and a Disguise kit, which adds +10)

1d20 + 15 ⇒ (13) + 15 = 28

Finally, I put my gun in my pack, and grasp a simple walking staff that I brought with me. With this look, I saunter confidently up to the assembled villains. I address them with a sneer.

Carromarc got out. He told. I've been sent to tell you that you've been sloppy, and I'm here to clean up your mess.

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