As of late, our progress at tracking the vampires in Haven seems to have stalled, and so the adventuring life seems to be getting somewhat back to normal. Several of us, including Andris, Taylon, Kajah, and myself, still spend most of our free time in Haven trying to acquire information about the vampires, but as of recent we have been dealing with other issues as well.
So, this past weekend, when I heard that Baron Warclaw needed help attending
to some matters in Blackmoor, and Baron Mithrilmist needed help attending to
some matters in Whitemane, I figured I would try to help them out.
First up, on Saturday, was helping Baron Warclaw in Blackmoor. We were just
doing some routine patrols when we came upon a fey. Now, my past experiences
with fey have been fairly mixed. Thus, I am not automatically hostile towards
fey, but I am not automatically trusting either. My opinion on fey tends to
be that they have to earn my trust if they want me to trust them.
This particular fey did not seem hostile, but he did nothing that would earn
him my trust, either, and so I avoided him at first. However, when he told us
a sad story about how he owed a life debt to a mortal who had saved his life
when he got caught in an iron mine, and was trying to repay that debt by helping
save the mortal (a dwarf named Anthony) from the iron mine, Danrick agreed to
help him out, and the rest of us went along with it. Regardless of how I feel
about fey, helping to save a life was a worthy cause.
To get to the iron mine, the fey sent us through the fey plane itself. Unfortunately,
he deposited us at a point in the plane which was trapped and we had to maneuver
very carefully through so as to avoid being injured too badly. Being able to
jump over the traps proved very helpful, and so many of us were able to escape
uninjured. The few who were injured were easily healed, and so we made it through
the trapped area with minimal difficulty.
Then, we came to a little hut. Inside were some fey having a feast. They invited
us to share in their food, but I would take no part in it. I had seen too many
bad things happen to people for eating fey food. I remember when my friend Titania
decided to drink fey water and wound up able to speak in only nouns. Fey do
weird things.
Of course, not everyone has the same mistrust of fey that I do. So, Danrick
decided to partake in some fey food, and he got some plusses and some minuses.
He did get a strength bonus, but he also got feebleminded. Viscount Silvercord
grew a claw, and suffered a mood change. Some others partook as well, but I
don’t know what happened to them.
Some of us, such as Baron Warclaw, High Lady Kilana, and myself decided that
fey feasts were a bad idea, and so we stood off to the side and watched everyone
else eat. Then, the fey decided that since we had shared in their feast, they
would help us get to the cave we were looking for. Before they did, though,
they offered us green and red candies. The green candy, they told us, was for
getting into the cave. The red candy was for getting out.
After the fey rifted us back to our own plane, and landed us right outside the
cave (thankfully Viscount Silvercord remembered where the cave was), we looked
and discovered that the entrance to the cave had collapsed. Danrick, remembering
the candy, decided to try to eat the green one, and shrunk down to a tiny size
so that he could enter the cave. Others followed suit, and soon the only people
standing outside were myself and the High Lady. However, she decided that she
was going to trust the fey candy, and so she took some and went inside. Personally,
I stayed behind to guard the entrance, because there was no way I was taking
candy from a fey.
Perhaps if they fey had earned my trust, I would have taken the candy. However,
the fey had sent us into traps, and then made us wind up at a hut where we were
poisoned with fey food. Suffice to say, he had lost a lot more trust than he
had earned.
After I had been standing outside the cave for two hours or so, some dwarves
approached. They told me that the mine was their iron mine, and they pointed
out to me a back entrance into the mine. They informed me that you always insert
a second mine shaft in case the first one collapses, as happened in this case.
They didn’t know about anyone trapped inside, though, which I found odd.
At any rate, I asked them to see if they could clear the rubble in the primary
entrance, and then I went through the second mine shaft. I found the diminutive
group of my companions engaged in fighting a snake that was probably six feet
long, and struggling. Since its focus was on them, I was able to sneak up behind
it and cut it into two pieces with just two swings of my sword.
Some of them went to bring some item to a mouse king, and then the rest of them
eventually took the red candy in order to become big again. After they did,
we were assaulted by giant lizards, who to the best of my knowledge were working
for the fey. We dispatched them, and eventually managed to find and rescue a
dwarven miner. However, he was not the dwarven miner we were looking for, and
so we had to continue pressing on.
As we were walking, we came across the fey we had seen distributing food at
the fey party earlier standing beside a goblin. He gave the goblin some food,
the goblin transformed into a giant goblin, and the fey rifted out. We then
had to fight the giant goblin. We went right after its legs, and after we took
those out it fell over. Then it began swinging at us with its arms from its
position on the ground, so we had to take out its arms. Once we finally managed
to stop it from swinging at us completely, we moved on.
We found another collapsed cave entrance, and this time Danrick and Viscount
Silvercord used their extra strength to throw the rocks out of the way. I am
not sure, but I think Viscount Silvercord may have been throwing his rocks at
me. I know I had to dodge a couple of them.
Inside, we finally found Anthony Brightforge, the trapped dwarven miner. I considered
it ironic that his name was so close to that of Anthony Darkforge, the great
Evendarrian soldier, but didn’t think too much of it.
We brought the two dwarves back out to the entrance, left them with the other
dwarven miners, and then proceeded towards Whitemane to help out Baron Mithrilmist.
The problem was that we got jumped along the way by bandits. They were almost
all spellcasters, and they were tough to beat. They liked to drop people and
throw circles around them, which is going to be guaranteed resurrection in many
cases.
Xander went off and charged a group of four by himself, and got dropped and
thrown into a circle. We managed to negotiate him out of that situation, but
then Viscount Silvercord got imprisoned and put into a circle. Roxi managed
to jump into the circle before they could put it up, but that meant she had
to fight two by herself. She did okay against one of them, but then the other
one hit her with two dragon’s breath spells and she fell. So, the bandits
had Viscount Silvercord and Roxi in the circle.
I looked around on the field, saw one of the bandits laying there, and stabilized
her. I then offered to trade my captive for the Viscount and Roxi. The bandits
insisted first that I heal my captive, so I paralyzed her, and healed her. In
return, they made sure that Roxi and the Viscount were stable.
The sticking point was that we could just jump them after they dropped their
circle, and they wouldn’t take our word as evidence that we would not.
Danrick suggested that we could pin ourselves, and then we couldn’t chase
them. They accepted this idea, and so Danrick and I pinned ourselves. I then
let my captive go, and they dropped their circle. I released myself, rushed
over to make sure that Viscount Silvercord and Roxi were okay, and after I was
sure that they were, I moved over to help Xander, who was being attacked by
the bandits.
The particular bandit I was dueling made my life difficult because he kept putting
up displacement spells. With help from Xander and Sox, I finally managed to
take him down, though, and we seemed to generally clear out the rest of the
bandits.
With that finished, most people headed out for Whitemane, but the barbarian
Hadrick and I found an interesting area that we decided to explore. It was a
glowing box in the ground, and there was a gentleman inside named Valorus. He
informed us that the box was a ley line, and at the ley line he could summon
spirits who would take on forms for us to fight. For us, it would be good practice.
For him, it would be entertainment. Also, he would reward us for each successful
fight. I thought it sounded like a good idea for some low risk practice, so
Hadrick and I accepted.
The first few rounds pitted us a against basic things like ogres and trolls,
which we won pretty easily. Valorus didn’t think much of our intelligence,
though, since he assumed we couldn’t do much more than swing sticks. However,
he was impressed when he sent a leviathan against us in the next round and I
beat it by using a turn undead spell and forcing it out of the fighting area.
A few rounds after that, though, we were up against a death spider. It had lots
of physical webs and swung death poison. Well, I accidentally jumped out of
the playing area, and then Hadrick lost to it. Valorus was going to bump us
back to the beginning, but I suggested an all or nothing rematch, just me against
the spider. Valorus accepted, and the match was on.
The spider started the match by catching me with two quick physical webs. I
magic armored the first one, and the second one got me. I escaped with a magic
release, and then got myself a new magic armor and magic deliverance. I magic
armored a couple more webs, and then closed with it for close combat. I knew
I had to avoid the dripping poison from its claws, so I kept my shield in front
of me and blocked every one of its advances. Meanwhile, I used some of the sword
fighting methods I have been learning at Anthony Darkforge’s “Brothers
in Arms” sword fighting guild to counter-attack it when it went after me.
In the end, I managed to take it down without sustaining a hit, and I was glad
about that, because I knew that I couldn’t have sustained many hits from
it.
As we went on, we beat a few other tough creatures. I banished one extra-planar
creature, and we fought a couple death knights, that Hadrick distracted while
I took them down with harm and destroy undead spells. At about that time, we
figured we had had enough, so we split our winnings, bid Valorus goodbye, and
rushed off to Whitemane.
When we arrived in Whitemane the next day, we weren’t entirely sure why
we were there. However, we found out soon enough. We came upon a goblin feasting
upon a bird. The bird had attached to it a note saying that the old mill was
under attack. We had the goblin tell us where the old mill was, and when we
arrived, we found it under attack by bone trolls. We dispatched them easily,
but the mill wasn’t salvageable. However, one of the trolls had a map telling
us where the rest of the troll encampments were.
We began heading off towards the first location described on the map, which
was in the middle of an open field. However, about ten minutes before we arrived
at the troll encampment, we discovered an old man with a walking stick and a
parrot on his shoulder. Now, usually people with parrots on their shoulder are
pirates, and so Viscount Silvercord had me use the pirate test on him. We asked
him to repeat the phrase, “Where are the gold dubloons?” You see,
if he had been a pirate, he would have wound up saying, “Where arrrrrr
the gold dubloons?” However, he didn’t say it that way, so he passed
the pirate test.
Apparently the man was offering to pay money for feathers. Baron Mithrilmist
wanted to move on, but many people wanted to stand and talk to the old man instead.
This would be something of a continuing pattern throughout the rest of our encounters.
Finally, the Baron got everyone to move on, and we made it to the troll encampment.
At the encampment, we pretty much hit the trolls head on, and took them out
without too much difficulty. However, we discovered that the trolls were working
with mind flayers. Now, mind flayers presented several problems. First, they
can use arcane vampire charms. Second, they have large spell trees. Combine
that with an army of bone trolls, and it’s a fairly effective combination.
However, the presence of the mind flayers clearly indicated to us that there
was something going on there besides just a few trolls.
After we took out that encampment, we moved on toward the next one, which was
in a swamp. Before we could get there, however, we ran into a vardo full of
gypsies. I went up to greet them, and they seemed friendly enough. However,
there were problems caused when we discovered that amongst their clothes they
had a Kingdom tabard, a Blackstone tabard, and a Saxon tabard. They said that
they had recently partied with the men wearing the Saxon tabard, so that gave
us a clue that Rawling, the last remaining Saxon operative, may be close to
us.
Unfortunately, things got a little messy when they refused to hang over the
tabards after an order to do so, and Baron Warclaw was forced to drop one of
the gypsies. Hadrick helped me first aid him, and the other gypsies were more
cooperative from that point forward. Finally, when we had gotten all the information
we could out of them, we moved on.
The second encampment was kind of messy to attack, because it was in a swamp,
but we managed it. I commented that it was a good thing that Keno wasn’t
there, or he would wind up messing up yet another pair of new boots. I swear,
it’s a good thing that man makes a lot of money adventuring, or he would
never be able to afford all the new boots he buys.
The encampment was defended by bone trolls and another couple of mind flayers.
The only point where things got a little ugly was where I got webbed and then
Danrick got vampire charmed and told to kill everyone. Danrick getting vampire
charmed is always an ugly thing, but fortunately either Tygil or Alcuin got
him with an awaken spell, and I got healed by Roxi.
We discovered a girl being held captive at this particular encampment, who was
from one of the local villages. We left her with some local soldiers who were
from that town, and they promised to get her home safely for us.
With that encampment taken care of, we began moving towards the next encampment.
As we did so, though, I noticed a man wearing white being attacked by goblins,
and so I rushed off to help him. It turned out that the man was my friend Andris,
and while he probably could have handled it himself, I figured that a helping
hand is always appreciated.
Some more goblins came and attacked us while we were at that spot. One of them
came out of the woods, stood in front of me, and declared, “I am the genie
of the goblin. I will grant you one wish.”
He then took off and started running away from us, calling back over his shoulder,
“I’ll bet you wish you could run faster than me.”
I took off after the goblin, shouting, “There’s only one problem with
that – I can run faster than you.” With that, I caught the goblin
and beat it down.
After we dispatched the goblins and moved on, we came to some men blocking our
path in the road. They announced that there was a toll that had been instituted
by Tweed, the area administrator. When Baron Mithrilmist showed them his writ,
they insisted that it was a fake and we had to pay the toll. Violence ensued,
and by the end there was no more toll in the roadway.
Moving on, we next came to a grove of birds. Now, this area created some tension,
because the Baron Mithrilmist saw no reason to disturb the birds, and so he
wanted to just move on. However, others among the adventuring group wanted to
collect feathers so that they could sell them to the old man when they found
him again. What resulted, unfortunately, was a slaughter of some innocent animals,
and abuse of others, such as the feeding of a berserk elixir to a harmless bird.
Viscount Silvercord, though, found a bird that he considered extremely useful.
He thought that the bird had once belonged to Rawling, and it might be able
to tell us where Rawling was. It knew several phrases, such as “night night”
and “whatcha doing,” but it gave us no indication that it knew anything
about Rawling, and so we let it go.
Finally, we moved on to the next bone troll encampment, that being encampment
number three, and this encampment was hidden in the woods. We approached cautiously,
but that did us no good, as they were ready for us. Viscount Silvercord heroically
strode out in front of the group and engaged three bone trolls at once, but
unfortunately he was defeated and fell. Nonetheless, the distraction helped
us take out the rest of them, and we were never in much real danger.
With that encampment eliminated, it was off to the fourth one. Before we could
get there, though, we found a tower rising up into the sky, and this created
the real controversy of the gathering. You see, Baron Mithrilmist asked everyone
to ignore the tower and move on so that we could go fight the bone trolls, but
some adventurers went inside anyway.
Baron Mithrilmist then gave an order for everyone to follow him, but it was
not heeded. Then, to see what was going on inside, Baron Warclaw went into the
tower. Now, while Baron Mithrilmist acknowledged that Baron Warclaw was clearly
beyond his authority, I think he would have liked to see everyone else follow
his noble order. Because they did not, though, the group of Baron Mithrilmist,
Roxi, Andris, Viscount Silvercord, Danrick, Hadrick, and myself moved on alone
to the fourth troll encampment.
The encampment had advance scouts, but Andris and I took them out quickly. When
a mind flayer showed up, though, we ended up with a bit more trouble on our
hands. Danrick took out the first mind flayer. However, the second mind flayer
took out him and Roxi, and just as I was rushing over to heal Roxi, Baron Warclaw
and his group caught up to us.
With their help, we cleared out the encampment and moved on to the fifth and
final encampment.
I was expecting a big, dramatic fight at the fifth encampment, but it was pretty
much the same as the others. However, when we beat the bone trolls there, they
dropped a map that appeared to be useful. It showed the way to a couple other
areas of note, including a graveyard and a mummy cave. However, the mummy cave
was a distance away, so we went to the graveyard first.
At the graveyard, we found two gravediggers moving a body. They said they were
going to go bury it in a family plot. We had no reason to suspect otherwise,
so we just let them take her. However, before long, a family member of the deceased
showed up and wondered where his daughter’s body was. At that point, we
knew there was foul play going on, and so we went and recovered the body. We
killed one of the grave-robbers and interrogated the other, but unfortunately
the one we killed was the one with the information.
At that point, we decided to take a break before going to the mummy cave. As
we were doing so, Tweed and an associate of his wandered up. Tweed spoke to
the Baron for a while, and they appeared to have a fruitful discussion. However,
I began to doubt how fruitful it was when Tweed’s associate later wandered
into town to assassinate the Baron Mithrilmist.
Of course, the assassin wasn’t very good, because he led off by attempting
to assassinate him with a magic storm. Along with Xander, I went to go attack
the assassin, and it turned out that he swung as hard as Baron Zug and could
get out of the way of oncoming spells once per day.
Nonetheless, he wasn’t much of a match for the three sleep spells I threw
at him, and so he fell to the ground. I recovered his hat, but his polearm was
spirit locked or linked and I couldn’t get it. The hat, we learned later,
could cast magic storms and elemental shields, and I believe Roxi won it in
the draw. Of course, the hat was really more of a dew rag than a hat, and so
when she put it on, she started to look like a pirate, and so I had to administer
Viscount Silvercord’s pirate test.
As the sun began to set, we realized that we would need speed to get to the
mummy cave in time, and so we stopped at a nearby farm, hoping to acquire horses.
However, the horses were being attacked by wolves, so we had to dispatch the
wolves first. Afterwards, we bought a large quantity of horses. Personally,
I wound up with two horses, a Blackstone Charger than I named Lightning and
a pack horse that I named Brutus. Having them has made transportation a lot
easier, as my old horse was becoming a bit old and broken down.
We got to the mummy cave around midnight, and the cave was appropriately named.
It was filled with mummies. Thankfully, Roxi and I both had the same idea, and
we opened bane of the dead cantrips in the entranceway. With the constant stream
of our harm undead spells and the constant damage from Baron Warclaw, Viscount
Silvercord, and Danrick inside, the mummies died rapidly.
Afterwards, we split our winnings for the day, and I brought Andris to go help
me find Valorus again. Valorus was more than willing to run his arena fighting
for Andris and I, and we thought it would be good practice for working together.
Working with Andris was a different dynamic than working with Hadrick had been.
Andris and I know how to fight together better, and so we were much more consistent.
The challenges were tougher this time, and required an entry fee as well. Nonetheless,
Andris and I made it through the first rounds with ease. We began to face challenges
when we came upon heavy spell-casting and elemental abilities, and my elemental
shields went quickly. Thankfully, I had some extra shield magics, and so we
made good use of those.
One of our bigger challenges was ice golems, who could swing fairly hard and
throw elemental ice. They concentrated their elemental ice on Andris, and so
he fell a lot, but I managed to get him back up with healing pools each time.
We eventually beat the ice golems, and we came to something very strange.
Our next opponent was a crab creature that could swing as hard as Caliphar does
from the front with one of its claws, but only as hard as a base polearm with
the other claw. To make things more complicated, the creature also could swing
through shields with its big claw. I was unsure of how to fight it, but Andris
and I came up with a strategy. I weaknessed the crab, thus moving its damage
down to the point where I could reduce it with my protection aura. Andris, meanwhile,
grabbed his bow and stood behind me. Together, we managed to take down the crab
and move on to the next round.
The final round we went into was three liches, one at a time. This was extremely
difficult, and it didn’t take me long to realize I was more valuable as
a caster than a fighter on this match. So, I stood behind Andris and backpacked
him as he fought the liche. He got deathed a lot, but I lifed him a lot, and
I gave him a bunch of shield magics. The first two we beat down until they fell,
and the third one jumped out of the arena while trying to dodge the destroy
undead spells I was throwing at it.
After we won that match, we decided it was enough for the day. We thanked Valorus
for the training, and headed back to Haven, there to remain until we finally
get things in that town sorted out.
Also, I will be heading to Therendry for this coming week, so I hope to see
many people there.