The People's College of Acryn seeks staff for an academic expedition from the Department of Ecology. The Department is seeking individuals skilled in combat, wayfinding, or other useful or esoteric skills to travel with an academic cohort into the Bluepeak mountains to assess the ecological impact of the Upheaval on predatory reptile populations.
Pay will be 50 Acra per head, with possible bonuses for academic excellence.
The adventurers travel with Professor Lyman Bolton to the Valley of the Pines, facing bandits, suspicious caravans of nobles, a cave-ghoul infested mines, flux-grubs and more. Once in the valley, they find Flux claw-fiends savaging consensus wildlife and Tender-blessed Consensus claw-fiends striking back. At the village of local hunters, the adventurers hire a guide to the nests of Consensus claw-fiends, but not before getting in an argument with the leader of the hunters, Peter Redknapp. To prove the power of the Tender, Vincent is taken to fight the Disemboweller, a fearsome claw-fiend the village has had run-ins with. The village is shocked when Vincent returns accompanied by the huge claw-fiend, having made peace with it.
The party set out for the caves, where they find the bodies of both claw-fiends and humans. The humans are wielding crude weapons - stone knives, flint arrows, and so on. The adventurers beat back the cave's defenders and press in, where they find a woman in the travel-stained robes of a cloistered Tender priestess. She introduces herself as Sister Myrtha, and explains that the Tender had granted her visions of this cave; one of the few remaining nests of Consensus claw-fiends. She needs the adventurer's help getting these claw-fiends to a safer place where they're in less danger from the flux claw-fiends and the valley's hunters, who are a front for a secret Warrior cult; the Cult of the Claw. Lyman is very willing to help out, as are the adventurers, and so they are told the plan; first, they participate in a ritual to make them mystically part of the claw-fiend pack; then, they attack the Cult of the Claw to lure them into the flux and do the inverse to the flux claw-fiends. While both parties are distracted Sister Myrtha will sneak the claw-fiends through the valley and out to the plains below.
The plan goes well, especially as the ritual gives the adventurers the ability to assume the guise of a claw-fiend. The party are sneaking out through the valley when they encounter a blood-spattered and wounded Peter Redknapp, who is about to attack when he is devoured by a giant Tyrant Lizard that Vanessa recognises as an Anomaly. A fearsome battle ensues, but eventually the beast is defeated.
The party guide the clawfiends out of the valley of the pines and into the plains. There they bid farewell to Sister Myrtha, as the academics take some more measurements and set up an observation deck.
Lyman is well pleased with the party and when they return to Acryn he pays them 60 Acra.
Vincent returns to the Church of the Tender and reports in. He also anonymously informs the Warrior church of Peter's death. His new guardian 'the disemboweller' continues to wait for him outside the City.
Vanessa informs the Wayfinders guild of the Anomaly they encountered and they resolve to send their own expedition.
You have a large claw-fiend watching you from afar, ready to remove you from danger. Once per adventure you may call on this to get removed to a safe place where you can heal and rest (getting healed by 1 if you're bleeding out). This power is only usable outside of urban areas.
In addition, once per adventure you may use this ability on someone else, under the same restrictions as above.
Once per adventure, you may channel the spirit of the claw-fiend within, taking beastial form and gaining 1 REND for that encounter.
Your shift into claw-fiend form shocks those around you. When you transform, call MASS FEAR. This cannot be arced. In addition, you can use Claw-Fiend Totem Spirit one more time each adventure.
Once per adventure you may call on the power of the Tender to summon a vicious pack of claw-fiends to wreak havoc on your enemies. For this encounter, you gain access to the following calls: