Mutation Solution II - Carcosa & Cha'alt World Campaign Session Report III - The Streets of Zothique & Unexpected Guests

 In a lost land, that only dreams have known,
Where flaming suns walk naked and alone;
Among horizons bright as molten brass,
And glowing heavens like furnaces of glass,
It rears with dome and tower manifold,
Rich as a dawn of amarant and gold,
Or gorgeous as the Phoenix, born of fire,
And soaring from an opalescent pyre
Sheer to the zenith. Like some anademe
Of Titan jewels turned to flame and dream
The city crowns the far horizon-light
The City in the Desert  (1922) 
by Clark Ashton Smith




Zothique is by far one of the most fun & most daunting settings to run a campaign. Especially if your players run afoul of a necromancer. There is one god of death in Zul-Bha-Sair & his name is Death personified Mordiggian. The whole thing began in earnest when the players were going into a local village market to get supplies, buy new equipment, & generally get a layout of the place. This was one of numerous villages in the shadow of the ruined city that surrounded the village.  It was two days ride into the larger inhabited city that held the largest populated urban areas. The technology of the place was early Roman empire & there were a few monks scattered about. 
The real draw here was the local alchemist/noble who had quite a small walled estate within the former city ruins. The PC's had demon blood aplenty to sell but it turns out after their trip to Hell to retrieve one of the PC's last session. 

But this is Zothique & there are demons a plenty so with few coins in their pocket, the alchemist mentions that a guest of his has a small job that will pay quite well. All the party has to do is deliver a load of chemicals & ointments to the temple of Nodens for a royal patron whose got a necromancer bodyguard. And when the party  met the necromancer there was instant dislike between Magus Cru &  the party's barbarian. The Baron D'Amber smoothed things over & gave the party a small amount of gold as a retainer. The could spend it as they wanted on weapons, supplies, etc. in the village market. The party decides to take the job & go shopping. A small begger was selling curios & the party's wizard buys a strange five pointed soap stone star with weird dot markings all over it. He is overcome with visions of a strange stone block city in the desert. 

The party runs straight into a rival set of adventurers & their lead by a wizardress from Glantri! She demands that they stop working for the Duke. For she is the only one capable of taking on the family's tasks! The Wizardress Tr'aci D'Amber is a cousin of the duke & only her group of adventurers have the Amber's best interests at heart. The Wizardress Tr'aci D'Amber & her group of mercenaries are from Mystara straight out of Glantri: Kingdom of Magic. 

The players ran into her during my Hundred Years War campaign & a few Lamentations of the Flame Princess game adventures on Carcosa  as a part of a foreign mercenary company. They hated her then & do so more now! A fight broke out & the party thrashed the rival adventurers. She & her party retreated. The party finished shopping & stopped into a local watering hole. They found through a series of role playing bits a local information broker. They wanted to know why Wizardress Tr'aci D'Amber & her group of mercenaries were nearby. The information broker let drop that she was there to find the tomb of the Zaharan Sorcerer-Queen Semiramis for Stephen D'Amber. 

The party got back to the alchemist's house just in time to see the beasts of burden being loaded up. And this is where we ended on tonight's game.