November 5, 2017 (yes, late, being busy sucks)

A Long Journey

From my left:

Nicholas playing Merrick the 7^th level human fighter

Evan playing Lyagia the 3^rd level human mystic

Mikey playing Ivan Lok'tar the 5^th level dwarven fighter

Zack playing LaVeya the 6^th/3^rd level human druid/magic-user

New Connor playing Iloxiron the 3^rd level half-elven spellsword

and the DM playing Ydee the 6^th level half-elf thief for the absent Catherine

The return to Ruinheath was as expected, with little or no difficulty making the jaunt. Once back in town the adventurers take some time to take care of some business. LaVeya has earned enough experience to train to her next level as a druid (4^th level spells! Woohoo!) while Ivan has decided that he wants a little more variety in his life and begins the basic work of learning to be a member of the clergy.

While this training was going on, some time was spent in other activities, including going to the Curio Shop every few days to see if there was anything interesting there. In the second week on return there was a smoking ruin where the Curio Shop had been, and several guards standing watch over the site. A fire had suddenly broken out and engulfed the storefront, killing the assistant and critically injuring the shopkeeper. This leaves a concern in the mind of Merrick, and so an effort is made to contact the Council of Eleven to pass on information about the thing known only as Legin the Scarred. Gregor (not Gordon. My mistake in memory at the game) the White is the closest member who lives an hour or two out of town, so Merrick, Ydee, and Lyagia go to talk to him.

Gregor has heard of the attack, which he has assumed to have been a fireball detonated within the store by persons unknown. Merrick tells him about Legin the skeletal faced and glowing eyed “mystic” they had encountered, and the result of their refusal to complete his mission for him and his pet doppelganger. Gregor is very concerned and suggests that the adventurers sleep in the empty bunks in the apprentices' barrack room and they can all leave the next day to go and investigate. This is agreed on, and the party bunks down for the night.

During the night Merrick is startled awake by a sound from somewhere in the house. He carefully checks to see if Ydee is awake, which she is, and fails to wake up Lyagia, so the two of them do their best to sneak downstairs and see who made the noise. They follow the faint sounds until they come to a door which has a broken handle. Carefully opening the door they find that they are in a small study lined with bookshelves, and a hooded figure is searching through the books on the shelves. While Ydee sneaks around to be in a position to possibly cosh the potential intruder, Merrick stands in the door and says “Hey!” when Ydee is as close as she can get. The intruder turns and sees Ydee and Merrick and tells them that he is a member of the Council come to retrieve a book from Gregor's study. Merrick doesn't believe this for a minute, so the intruder throws a book at the fighter then snaps his fingers and vanishes. Attacks are made where the intruder was but is no longer as neither of the attacks hit. While Ydee watches for the intruder's return, and they both suspect the intruder was Torbek the doppelganger by this point, Merrick goes to wake an apprentice to fetch Gregor and tell him of the break in. Gregor returns and finds nothing missing, so apparently the intruder did not find what they were looking for. There is quite a bit of concern over this, and Gregor decides to increase the house's defenses in case the intruder returns.

After an uneventful and relatively sleepless rest of the night, the small group plus Gregor head back towards town in Gregor's carriage. Meanwhile Iloxiron heads out to Gregor's house on his riding horse trying to both catch up with his fellow adventurers and to ask Gregor some questions of his own. Unaware of the manner in which the adventurers are traveling, he passes by Gregor's carriage without a second thought and reaches Gregor's house to be told that the people he was looking for have left already. Sighing in mild frustration he mounts his horse and rides back to town.

Meanwhile the others have arrived at Ruinheath and have begun to explore the ruins of the Curio Shop before Gregor goes to the church to try to talk with Golmar the shopkeeper. Golmar is able to tell Gregor that he surprised someone who was looking through the hidden books in Golmar's study, specifically looking through the book that was a summary of a supposedly connected logic chain in the ancient Tomes of Prophecy, copies of which have been lost for hundreds if not thousands of years. With this information, and an idea of what the intruder has been looking for, the party leaves the wounded man to his rest and gathers to talk to Gregor. After some conversation the decision is made for the party to volunteer to go in search of these Tomes of Prophecy, and that a mage who isn't a member of the council, but who is loosely affiliated with them, may have information on where the tomes can be found. So once the training is done and the adventurers have gathered the party is teleported to a place near where Sylax the Grey's tower is in the northern wilderness of the coastal side of the Trade Confederation.

After appearing and orienting themselves, the adventurers see a small tower nearby. Upon approach they discover no obvious front door but do discern the secret door where they carefully knock. The door is opened by what must be a flesh golem who bids them enter with a wave of its hand and leads them down a hallway and into a room larger than the exterior dimensions of the tower where a grumpy looking mage sits half slumped behind a desk, one hand to his face, and watches them approach.

After some minor repartee, grumpiness, and polymorphing someone into a ferret, Sylax agrees to teleport the party the many hundreds of miles to the south of the Stormteeth Mountains so they can begin their quest for the tomes.

The following morning the adventurers and Sylax teleport to a rise above a beach and a bay. Sylax orients them to their new location and gives the party some basic information. He points to a city visible at the far end of the bay to the west and tells them that it is called Safeport. Their journey lies to the east. They will follow the curve of Dolphin Bay until they reach the saltwater marsh and swampy areas. From that point they will see the town Swamptown to the south of them, but their journey will be to the north along the edge of the swamp. The party will follow the swamp until it merges with and is replaced by an old growth forest. Continue north until they reach the ancient road that cuts through the forest and follow it until a path cuts off to the north from the road. Follow that path until you reach the tower. Get into the tower, find the tomes, escape, and then return to be collected. Sylax points to the river mouth a mile away to the west and says that when they are done they should return here and then they will be teleported back when Sylax notices that they are ready. Sylax waits for a moment to see what intelligent questions the party will ask, but when none are asked he simply teleports out again.

The first day's travel towards the swamp is uneventful. Some small fishing boats can be seen out on the bay, and some birds, squirrels, and typical wildlife can be heard or seen, but little else and nothing of real interest. The next day the adventurers reach the edge of the swampy area and can see the town at the swamp's edge a few miles to the south. Some movement can be seen, and a few lazy streamers of smoke rise from chimneys before being caught and scattered by the winds coming off of the Stormsea to the south. The adventurers camp for the night. During the night the party is attacked by four sahuagin. Much of the party sleeps through the ensuing carnage with Merrick and Ivan quickly hacking the attackers to bits before using the now-looted corpses to chum the waters.

The next day the adventurers continue north along the solid ground beside the swamp. At a little after highnoon on the second day they come to a place where the hills have risen above the swamp leaving a sloping cliff edge down to the swamp. A small spit off land juts out into the swamp with an ancient stone bridge spanning the gap between the hills and the raised spit of land. A small ruin of a keep is clearly seen on the spit of land and there is the momentary desire to explore it, but Merrick helps keep the party focused on the main mission of the tomes. He also points out that since they will be back this way, they can explore it on their return.

During the subsequent night Ivan, who is on watch, is surprised when a wyvern swoops down on him and latches on with both claws before stinging him and paralyzing him with its tail stinger. (Among questions not asked of Sylax: “Does the swamp have a name?” “Yes, it is called Wyvern Swamp since the swamp is lousy with the bastards.” Oh well, live and learn.) Merrick is awakened by Ivan's half voiced dwarven curses before the poison paralyzes him and leaps to his defense awakening the rest of the party except for LaVeya because comfy bedroll is extra comfy. The wyvern is having a hard time getting off the ground with its hard-shelled morsel, but after a couple of solid hits from Merrick and others it does start to fly away. Anti-aircraft fire from Merrick and Ydee manage to bring it crashing down into the camp which should have done more damage than it did to those impacted. Everyone goes back to sleep eventually and awakens the next morning to bicker over scavenging parts from the corpse to carry with them, in spite of the fact that doing so would overburden the party significantly. The decision is made to leave the majority of the wyvern, which has been semi-dissected by this point, here to be scavenged upon the return from getting the tomes. Ivan insists on taking the stinger, and there is a reason why “dwarf-stubborn” is a term. :-p

By the late afternoon of the next day the forest can be seen ahead and the party makes camp for the night where the two meet. The next day the party reaches what must be the ancient road mentioned by Sylax and turn to head into the forest along it. The night is fairly uneventful though the swamp intrudes into the forest near here as a faint and flickering light can be seen through the trees off to the south. Merrick carefully moves to investigate but halts where the ground gets soft, deciding that the flickering lantern further out is a will o' the wisp waiting to draw fools to their doom. And yet he does not follow it. Okay, Merrick is no fool, but still... Merrick warns Ivan to ignore the light to the south when he wakes the dwarf up for his watch, and the night passes uneventfully.

The next day the party continues down the winding road further into the forest. The weather is cloudy and there is an occasional drizzle as the day goes along. Midday Merrick sees a double line of slim humanoids in all-concealing white hooded robes like those of pilgrims* coming toward the party. Merrick speaks to the leader as it comes near, but the figure holds up its extra-long-sleeves arm as if putting a hand over its mouth, which Merrick intuits means that these figures have taken a vow of silence. He suggests that the party not interfere with their passage and they step to the side except for the spellsword who moves in front of the lead figure and tries to peek under the hood to see what is underneath. He catches a glimpse of two very large eyes over a wrapping across the figure's nose and mouth before the figure swings its staff and knocks him out of the way to land on his butt as the double line of a dozen troops past. Iloxiron the Paranoid does not trust these figures** and wants to go and attack them unless they explain themselves, and possibly even if they do, but the rest of the party overrules him and they continue.

With an uneventful rest of the day the party settles down for the night. During second watch the party is attacked by what seem to be overly muscled wolves wearing the filthy and tattered remnants of what look to have been pilgrim's robes. The rainy conditions allow LaVeya to do something she has wanted to do forever, and she calls down lightning killing two of the werewolves and slightly damaging a fellow party member or two. One of the werewolves manages to hit Merrick with three of its slavering, drooling bite attacks doing significant damage and possibly infecting the fighter with lycanthropy.**** LaVeya casts her newly obtained remove curse spell just to be certain-sure that the mighty fighter does not kill and eat the party in a lycanthropic rage. Over several minutes after their demise the werewolves gradually change back into their natural forms that look like the glimpse Iloxiron had under the hood of the pilgrims earlier, and after Iloxiron's “I TOLD YOU WE SHOULD HAVE KILLED THOSE THINGS!” the party goes back to sleep.

The next day the party rolls a wandering monster, and the result the party gets is the worst possible result. The DM has Mikey reroll his result which results in only the third worst possible result, which the DM sighs and runs with. The dark-greenish skinned giant is (or should be since it wasn't familiar) familiar to the adventurers as it looms out of the trees by the road. The party moves to attack it and the poison giant breathes out its deadly poison breath weapon damaging the party and severely damaging some of them. Remembering what this thing is now, the party spreads out and attacks with all they have to try to kill it before it can breathe its caustic poison again. In this they are successful, if badly damaged in the process. After looting the corpse and providing some healing, the party lurches on.

Later that day the party finds an old overgrown trail heading north from the road.***** They follow the trail north and after a while enter a clearing with a large tower in the center of it and several copses of trees and some small ruined outbuildings scattered around. Oddly, the top dome of the tower seems to glow faintly with a ghostly light making the adventurers wonder what they will encounter inside...

And there we ended for the evening.

Experience points for the adventure

Merrick – 1717

Lyagia – 1717

Ivan – 1717

LaVeya – 1717

Iloxiron – 1717

Ydee – you don't need to know about my life.

Footnotes:

* Blanchlings. Means nothing to you? Good. Since I made 'em up and haven't used them in a couple of decades it shouldn't.

** And for once this actually is paranoia since these*** blanchlings have no interest in the party.
*** See the following night.
**** Though lycanthropy might have been cathartic for Merrick. Who can say?
***** The stone trail marker that Sylax would have told them about if they had asked ANY questions is easily found in the brush nearby, but since the party didn't ask and the DM didn't want the abuse from them following EVERY SINGLE PREVIOUS TRAIL between the edge of the forest and the trail they were SUPPOSED to take, the DM just decided to make this the first trail they found.