It has been a long time since I last traveled to Fengate. In the time that I have been gone, Logenn Marr has become a magistrate and been helping keep Fengate peaceful. Uzuri Brightwing has become the Seneschal of White Sands County. I personally have become squired to the Duke of Therendry. And, most impressively, Pyre became the Count of White Sands. Still, you know what they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And Fengate is no exception. It is still plagued with problems, and that is why I traveled there this weekend along with my friend Squire Verbal.
The foremost problem for the County was a rift that was open in the middle of
the town of Hope’s Crossing. The purpose of the gathering that Count Pyre
called for this weekend was to close that rift. In addition to Verbal and I,
a number of other adventurers showed up, some of whom I had met before (Seneschal
Brightwing or Melok, for example) and some of whom I had not met before (most
of the town).
Once we arrived in town, Verbal and I met up with Melok, who we had previously
met in Lorinorea. Everyone’s memories were a little sketchy, though, as
all anyone remembered about that gathering was running for our lives a lot from
Zemos’s absurd minions. We also met Doan, a guardsman of the town who was
the only adventurer in town who was a fighter by profession. He is still young,
but when he becomes more experienced I think he is going to be a really strong
asset to Fengate.
Well, not long after those introductions were made, Count Pyre arrived and informed
us that the rift was going to be closed that day. He had the components he needed,
and he had the people he needed to cast the formal. However, there was one problem.
There was a horde of dark goblins pouring out of the portal trying to stop us
from getting the formal cast. While the rest of the town engaged the dark goblins
to distract them, I covered Count Pyre as he ran around the outer edge of the
dark goblin horde so that he could get to the portal and throw up a Circle of
Power. Once his Circle was successfully up, all we had to do was keep the dark
goblins off his back. They continued to pour out of the portal, but Squire Verbal
came up with an excellent idea. He put a wall of force in front of the portal,
and that stopped the monsters from pouring out.
Of course, what we didn’t realize was that the portal had two sides. They
started pouring out the back of the portal instead, and so then we sealed that
area up with another wall of force. At that point, they started gating in, and
they brought casters with them to dispel our walls of force. Taking a trick
I learned out of Caliphar’s book, I ran behind the lines of dark goblins,
which split their attention and made them easier kills. Unfortunately, they
still managed to dispel the walls of force another couple times, but the town
fought valiantly and stopped their advance most of the time, and Melok managed
to put up new walls of force.
At one point, the dark goblins showed up with three babies that they intended
to bring through the portal and eat. Well, everyone present found the idea of
eating babies disgusting, but Squire Verbal became especially enraged, and charged
the dark goblin horde, taking them all out by himself. He rescued the babies
and took them to the celestial circle to care for them while we continued to
fight off the dark goblins.
Unfortunately, the dark goblins kept getting tougher, and eventually they were
coming at us with powerful spells and slays. We fought as hard as we could,
but we needed help. Help came in the form of Clayfoot, Count Pyre’s personal
earth elemental. Being unaffected by most of the attacks the dark goblins were
using, he was able to tear through the dark goblin line and provide us some
much needed relief.
At around that time, Count Pyre completed the first formal and moved onto the
second one. Squire Verbal and a gypsy girl (whose name I unfortunately did not
catch) were both needed for the second part of the formal, so they joined Count
Pyre in his Circle. The dark goblin attacks kept up for a while, but soon they
were replaced by three blue fey coming into town instead.
I went over to greet the new fey, and they requested to speak to the person
in charge. Since Count Pyre was occupied, Seneschal Brightwing came over to
speak with them. They wanted us to stop the formal to close the rift. We negotiated
with them, but the negotiations didn’t go much of anywhere. Eventually,
we went to confer on their proposals, and they just up and left. Then, they
came back in, with more fey and a mystic wood elf, who seemed to be a little
bit more than an ordinary mystic wood elf. His name was Chill, and his hands
were cold to the touch.
He informed us that he was taking over negotiations for his master, and he was
much more forceful than the previous fey had been. We kept negotiating, but
still weren’t able to make any progress. The fey did not seem to grasp
that the portal doing evil things was a problem for the people of Hope’s
Crossing.
Eventually, though, it became a non-issue when Count Pyre completed his formal.
Chill and they fey with him then attacked, but the town jumped in just in time
to save Seneschal Brightwing and myself. Personally, I let the town deal with
the fey and went looking for Chill. I started out fighting him sword to sword.
He swung for a lot more than me, but he couldn’t hit me very effectively,
so I was doing a fair bit of damage to him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough
to bring him down, so I switched to spells instead. I chained an imprison spell
and two deaths into him, but he phased them all. Mystic wood elves that can
phase are pretty rare, so that just confirmed my hypothesis that he was more
than he seemed.
At the same time that I was chaining spells into him, so was another adventurer,
a dark elven caster whose name I unfortunately do not remember. If not for his
aid, though, it would have been much more difficult to take Chill down. Chill
broke away from us, though, and I kept after him, finally dropping him with
a death spell on the far side of the field from where the portal had been. I
searched him, and all I found was a sword. I grabbed it and went and helped
to disperse the remaining fey, but found that the town needed very little help,
as most of them were already dead.
Once the fey were gone, we went to find some shelter to take stock of what had
just happened. Happy townspeople, meanwhile, came running into town to thank
Count Pyre and the rest of us for taking down the rift. Seneschal Brightwing
and I agreed that the sword should be split amongst the town, and so we devised
a lottery system to determine who would get it. It went to Kivuli, an earth
templar who was an integral part of the town’s defense, and I was happy
to see it go to him.
Thankfully, after that things were quiet for a while, which the town needed
for a chance to get some rest and recuperation in. We did have one incident
that needed to be dealt with. A captain named Abrams came into town, and apparently
he had quite a history. In the past, he had been convicted of piracy and locked
up in the basement of the tavern. Finding lots of rum and whiskey down there,
he proceeded to drink it all. From what I understood, though, he had cleaned
up and was now helping the County. In fact, he had come into town to pay his
taxes.
Of course, sometimes one’s past comes back to haunt you. Bandits came into
town looking for Captain Abrams. Not sure exactly what was going on, I jumped
in between the two groups to stop them from fighting each other, while I looked
to Count Pyre for instructions on what to do. The bandits made it an easy decision,
though. They threatened to mutiny the town of Hope’s Crossing, and Count
Pyre ordered them detained. They attacked, but they didn’t make it very
far. We beat them pretty easily, and dragged them over to the earth circle to
stand trial.
One of the bandits mouthed off about Count Pyre before the trial even began,
and he was ordered executed for mockery of noble title. Amongst the other three,
two were executed for mutiny and one tried to run away. Unfortunately for him,
Seneschal Brightwing and I caught him and dragged him back, and he was executed
as well.
The next major thing to happen was a visit from the Big Stick tribe of goblins.
They told us that in their culture, he with the biggest stick was mightiest.
They also told us that their warriors were mightier than ours.
I had two responses to this. First, I walked off into the woods, found a gigantic
stick, and presented it to them. Then, I challenged their mightiest warrior
to combat. The combat challenge did not last very long, but I did heal up the
goblin after he fell.
Apparently, the goblins were in town because we had broken a peace treaty with
them by attacking them, but they admitted that they attacked first. I was a
little confused by their claim, but then again, goblins are often confusing.
I think the situation got worked out, and they returned to their king to report
on the negotiations.
Afterwards, a healer from town told us that there was a cavern infested with
undead that needed to be explored. The town of course agreed, and so off we
went. Count Pyre stayed back in town to deal with business, but Seneschal Brightwing
accompanied us to provide noble authority. The passage we had to go down was
tight, but we could fit two people side by side. I took the front right, and
was joined by Doan on the front left. I offered to let anyone else take my spot
if they wanted it, but everyone felt that it was a good idea to keep two shield
fighters at the front. Tomas and Malak stood behind Doan and I, using their
spears over our shoulders. Verbal stood behind them, providing support fire
when needed.
The first few rooms were easy, being filled with basic skeletons that fell in
two strokes of my sword. As we got deeper, though, we found some greater undead.
These undead inflicted carrier attacks and swung for a little more than a magic
missile worth of damage. Something (I am not sure if it was a carrier or a spell)
took out Doan, and I found myself on the front line alone. Thankfully, Kivuli
and Uzuri stepped up to give me a hand, and Verbal and the dark elf gentleman
provided excellent support fire, and we managed to blast through several waves
of the greater undead. The healer gentleman thanked us for our help, and I did
my best to convey my thanks to everyone else for all the help they provided.
That was the end of the gathering, and Squire Verbal and I headed back to Therendry.
I enjoyed my stay in Fengate, though. Fengate is a good land with a good group
of people, and I hope to be able to visit more often.