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New Argonauts, Session 5: Hydras and the Road to Colchis
| With heroic effort, Arcturus and Thyrsos stood
up on their own*. With the hydra distracted, Doxthenes healed Xanthos,
who took a long drink of boar's brew
and tightened his grip on his sword. The three warriors hacked at the
hydra's necks long enough for Doxthenes to heal Zale and Arcturus, and
after a quick round of boar's brew and some lucky hits (as well as a thundering smite by Xanthos and a
careful application of torch-flame to the hydra's neck-stumps by Dox), they
reduced the hydra to a headless corpse. With the immediate threat over,
Doxthenes worked on his friends with thread and poultice, getting them
into walkable shape.
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Given the results the Calydonian alchemists were able to
work with the bones of the boars, Dox suggested taking parts
from the hydras in the hopes of wrangling something out of the
legendary creatures. The others agreed, and they did their best to skin
the two beasts, and cut the heart out of each as well. When Dox was
done tending wounds, they continued looking for a suitable tree, and
after they found one and cut it down they dragged and floated it back
to the New Argo.
Once they repaired the ship, the Argonauts continued
on their voyage. Each night that they beached the ship, Doxthenes
carefully smoked the hydra hearts over the remains of their campfire
(eventually reducing the two hearts to fig-sized pieces of tough
jerky). Two weeks later they reached a coastal town in the land of
Colchis**, a land at the extreme end of Hellenistic (Greek) influence.
Though long ago under the sway of the Greek gods (King Aeetes, who
bargained with Jason of the original Argonauts, was the son of the
Greek god Helios), with the passing of the centuries they had adopted
strange foreign customs and barely remembered the Greek gods. Phaedron
suggested he and the sailors keep the New Argo
ready to leave in case the people of Colchis turned against them, and
the others went into town to learn what they could. The coastal town
was a small place, and while the locals knew their king had a new
Golden Fleece, they did not know why or what it would take to convince
him to meet with foreigners or hand over the treasure. The heroes would have to travel inland to the capital. Dox convinced them to wait a day for a tanner to property treat their hydra skins, and Zale and Arcturus each took one of the finished hydra-leather cloaks.
The trek to the capital took a few days. The
Argonauts dealt with the stares and muttered comments of the locals,
and made way to the palace, where they spoke to two palace guards
watching over the main door. Zale blustered for a while at the guards
and Thyrsos tried friendly words, and eventually one of the guards sent
someone to fetch a noble. An hour later a thirtyish man came out to
meet the heroes. He introduced himself as Hippolyon, a noble in king
Goran's court and occassional diplomat. Zale and Thyrsos tried their
usual tricks but Hippolyon would have none of it, unconvinced that his
king would want to speak to some unwashed barbarians from the west, let
alone hand over the Golden Fleece. Then Thyrsos used Aphrodite's charm
and won over Hippolyon, who agreed to bring them into the palace, set
them up in guest rooms, and arrange for the heroes to attend that
night's dinner with the king, at which time they could plead their
case. He spent some time answering their questions about Colchis, the
king, and the Golden Fleece.
Hippolyon explained that centuries ago their kingdom
had another Golden Fleece. The fleece was the skin of a golden ram sent
by the gods to whisk away Phrixus, the young prince of another land,
from his stepmother, who wished him killed. The ram brought Phrixus to
Colchis, where king Aeetes took him in. Aeetes presented his daughter
Chalciope as a wife, and in gratitude Phrixus sacrificed the ram to
Zeus and gave the Golden Fleece to the king, who hung it on a tree
within a sacred garden. Years later the Greek hero Jason took the
fleece with the help of the king's other daughter Medea. The current
Golden Fleece is the result of a similar event; six months ago a flying
ram brought Attis, a boy prince from another land, to Colchis. King Goran sacrificed the
ram, adopted the boy, and hung the fleece on the same tree as the first
one. Like all of his country's riches, the king was particularly fond
of the fleece. After hearing this news, the Argonauts bathed and
prepared themselves for the meal.
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At the feast, the Argonauts were seated at the far
end of a pair of long tables. Other nobles of the court and their wives
filled the other seats, with the king, queen Polynicia, young prince Attis,
princess Meledria, and young princess Erigone. The king was an
arrogant-looking man approaching his fiftieth year, his wife at least
ten years his junior and still looking very beautiful, and Meledria a
vision of the mother in her youth. The usual dinner conversation among
royals took up much of the dinner, until finally Zale could hold it in
no longer and demanded the Golden Fleece, for the oracle at Delphi had
instructed them to bring it back. The king laughed and asked why he
should award the fleece to a group of barbarians whose only claim to it
is the word of some heathen oracle living in a hut somewhere (when the
heroes corrected the king by telling him the oracle lived in a cave, it
only reinforced his point). Zale then tried the "we're descended from
the gods" tactic, which caused many nobles to roll their eyes; of course the barbarians claimed to be descended from their barbarian gods!
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Fortunately, king Goran was in good humor that
evening, and with some nudging by Hippolyon (still under the effects of
Thyrsos' magic) he promised the heroes the Golden Fleece if they
completed three heroic tasks. The first task was to slay a group of
meddlesome centaurs that had taken residence in the hills near a town
on the northern border of Colchis. These four centaurs had a habit of
raiding nearby farms, stealing food, wine, and women, and the locals
were tired of it. If the Argonauts brought back the centaurs' heads,
the king would tell them the second task. The heroes agreed, and Zale
practically had to be restrained from leaving the table that very
moment to pursue the centaurs. Fortunately the weeklong journey to the
remote town convinced him he'd need a good rest that night. Hippolyon
brought them a map to the town and the heroes made plans to leave in
the morning.
To be continued....
* Ok, so let me explain what happened here. I had expected them to
deal with both boars in the same session, then proceed to Colchis in
the next session (leading to the swamp encounter with the hydras),
giving me the interval between game sessions to give them some downtime
to level up their characters. However, the escaped boar threw a wrench
into those plans, and the downtime occurred in-game (last session) and
they didn't get a chance to level up. Thus, the hydras were too tough
for them, and all of the PCs got knocked out. Before the start of this
session, I had everyone level up to level 4 (as they were supposed to do earlier),
and applied their new level's hit points to their current hit points
(as would any hp gained from a Con increase or new feats such as Toughness). This meant that Thyrsos was
at 0 hp and Arcturus was at 13 (a combination of a good hp roll, taking
the Toughness feat, and applying his 4th-level ability score increase
to Con). Rather than dealing with a goofy "you're unconscious and get
rescued" scenario, or going back in time to redo the previous fight, I
just allowed those two PCs to wake up and start taking actions.
** For reasons I won't go into here, the schedule of our game sessions
accelerated at this point in the campaign, and I didn't have time to
fully research this part of the world in this time period. Thus, people
familiar with the historical lands in this area will notice some
geographical errors. My apologies, and in the published version of this
mini-campaign, those errors will be corrected.