Here is an account of my time spent in Greyhelm some two weeks past. I should really stop calling these journals, since they are always written well past the event from my notes. But that is a matter for another time. I have placed this journal here for those us you that wish to learn what deeds were performed by your friends and colleagues in a far away and distant land.
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In the month of August I decided that it was time once again to expand my horizons a bit. I wished to travel to some far off and lands and meet some new and different people. My one previous such trip was to the northern lands of Aeran’Or earlier this spring. Lately I had met a number of people in Blackstone who hailed from the lands to the south, and so I decided that my trip this time would be in that direction.
As chance would have it, there was a gypsy party scheduled for the fourth of August in the lands of Greyhelm. While I am certain not one to disparage gypsy culture, I don’t tend to spend a lot of time carousing and dancing and drinking strong spirits. But the party did mean that a small group of the local adventurers would be traveling down south in a group, I decided to add myself to that little caravan for both safety and companionship.
We made a rather odd looking group. Three gypsies made the trip. Nicolai and Nadja were going down to see their friend Karahna, and they were taking someone named Jezebel with them. I had not met her before, but learned that she had not been traveling long.
Accompanying this garish and boisterous threesome was myself, Arcos, and Tovolia. Arcos was the stark opposite of the three gypsies. Where they were loud and flashy, he was quiet and understated. The sun did not particular suit his dark elven eyes, and for this reason we traveled often in the afternoon and late into the night. I’d met Arcos only a few times previously, and only in passing.
On the other hand, I was quite familiar with Tovolia Aberdeen, Biata Mind Warrior, holder of the Book of Telarus, Waylayer of Evil, and a host of other titles each more impressive than the last. Tovolia and I had crossed paths many times, and while it may be a bit of a stretch to say he can be relied upon, I was quite comfortable adventuring in his company. I knew that he had been to the lands of Greyhelm previously, and so I intended to follow his lead a bit in the beginning.
The trip down was fairly uneventful. The further south we got, the hotter it became. By the time we pulled into the outpost known as Keljin is was well after dark, yet the temperature was still quite stifling. This wasn’t to be my first gathering were the weather was hot, so while I wasn’t looking forward to the discomfort, I felt I could manage.
The first thing we did was to find our cabin. As it turned out, all of us ended up being assigned to the same cabin, with the gypsy Karahna also sharing our space. She had not arrived yet, so we all picked out bunks or spots on the floor and got our things in order for the night. Then Tovolia and I made for the tavern.
Despite the late hour, I was a bit surprised to find that Tovolia and I were among the first ones to show up in the tavern. In fact, there was no one there when we entered. The tavern keeper was busy trying to get things straightened up before everyone arrived. When she saw us, she directed us to two old discarded bundles in the corner. Previous patrons had rather absentmindedly left all manner of items and junk in the tavern, and the tavernkeeper told us that if we wanted them we could have them. She was only interested in getting rid of them.
Tovolia chose one bundle, and I chose another. Both were full of all sorts of common items like weapons and shields and such, but there were also quite a few things that were quite nice. Tovolia found a very sturdy shatter resistant shield in his, and I had the good fortune to find a tiny white stone which to my complete surprise detected as magical. I put it away for the time being.
Someone had proceeded us in the tavern, however, because there was also a package of papers placed on one of the tables. We went ahead and looked it over, and it turned out to be copies of some of the journals of previous gatherings written by Sinai, along with a map and some other relevant notes.
Some of these documents I had already seen while I was studying up for my trip south, but others were new to me. Tovolia and I spent a time reading them over and pointing out various items of interest to each other. Eventually other people began to arrive, and pretty soon the tavern was quite full.
I didn’t recognize many people at first. The only two people I immediately recognized were Baron Travador and Carak Talias. Both had recently visited Blackstone. There was the normal amount of socializing that goes on before these events where people greet friends and catch up on lost time. Before long people began to break up and move about town on their own business.
It was shortly after this that we saw our first action. A few wandering pairs of undead attacked those of us that were around the tavern. I believe they were leviathans or something similar. They took no damage from my normal sword, but my silver dagger pricked them rather nicely. After we fought off around half a dozen of these the tavern was peaceful again for a while.
Around this time a person who I judged to be a local came in to the tavern and helped us fight the undead. He was well dressed and sported a rather jaunty hat. I asked someone who he was, and I was informed that his name was Dominic and that he held the position of guildmaster in town. I decided to ask him about the small magic stone I had found earlier.
When I approached him about the matter, he agreed to go with me to the celestial circle to have it identified. When we got there we found a few other people already inside the guildhall and in the earth circle. If I recall correctly, Douglas Bluewater was there working on trying to get some sort of spirit mark identified that had been placed on Crazy Eye Sam. A moment after we entered, two more undead burst into the rear door.
These were a different sort than the ones that had attacked the tavern earlier. They were more gangly and had sharp fangs, and they cast nauseating poison at us. I got caught flat footed and took a blast of the poison, but luckily I was standing right beside the celestial circle at the time. Dominic merely recognized me inside, where I collapsed in a heap, and then he proceeded to take apart the undead with spells.
Once he was done with that he purified my blood. He examined the stone that I showed him, and he explained that it was a very minor magical bauble, with two spells stored in it which could be only cast once ever. The magic was very nearly faded and gone, but considering I found it lying around in the tavern I could hardly be disappointed.
Once I had concluded my business in the guildhall, I spent a short time exploring the town as best I could. I was careful to watch for any further undead, but I didn’t spot any more of them as I prowled around trying to get a feel for the lay of the land. The sky was overcast and the moon had long since set, so the night was very dark. Every few moments the sky would light up with heat lightning. The alternating brightness and darkness was a little disorienting.
Around this time we began to suffer attacks of a different sort. Small bands of chaos elementals began to be seen roaming around the outpost. The were able to hurl elemental chaos at us, and some had the highly annoying ability to become gaseous once they began to get in trouble. They would then float around the battlefield until they found the right moment and spot to solidify and attack once more.
I saw Tovolia trying to speak with one of the creatures at one point. He kept asking it why they attacking, but I don’t think he got a particularly satisfying answer. One of the creatures seemed to be calling for someone. At some point during the fight it left the battle that was going on around the tavern and made its way over to the guildhall.
Tovolia took off in pursuit and I followed as well. Tovolia followed in into the front door, and I went around to the back door. When I crept inside, I saw the creature pacing around trying to keep the earth circle between it and Tovolia. Two people were in the circle at the time. One was Crzy Eye Sam, and I don’t recall who the other person was. The creature was calling out to Sam seductively, and she was visibly upset by its presence.
Tovolia kept edging around the circle. When I stepped inside, we had the creature wedged between the two of us and the wall and the circle. Tovolia made a lunge for it and I followed up, and a moment later we had beat the tar out of it. Tovolia told me to stand back while he delivered a killing blow, which caused the creature to explode into a pile of dust.
The explosion made a real mess out of Tovolia’s suit of armor, but caused no other harm. In the middle where the creature had been was a small mirror lying on the ground. Tovolia grabbed this up and detected it to be magical with a spell. A short while later we agreed to split the items thusly. When it was identified, if it turned out to be earthen, then it would be his, and if it turned out to be celestial then I would have it. It was much later on in the gathering when it occurred to me that if Tovolia had detected magic on the item, then he probably already knew it was constucted of earthen magic. Oh well.
Shortly after midnight I heard a great hue and cry come from over by the tavern. I heard the words “attack” and “Mandrake”, so I guessed that this was going to be a big assault. When I arrived I found that this was in fact the case. Most of the adventurers that I had seen earlier were there and others were arriving just as I was. I saw undead of various shapes and forms spread out in a wide semicircle surrounding the people who had set up fighting in front of the tavern where there was some light.
In addition to the undead, there were a number of cold black elemental shapes that someone told me was more chaos elementals. They appeared to be assisting the undead during the attack. Two figures stood out of the crowd. One was a liche which carried a sword and wore a glowing crown of some sort. The other was a regal looking undead warrior wearing armor and a gold filigree crown and wielding a large wavy black two handed sword with a skull emblem on the cross guard. Obviously this was Mandrake, the Emperor of the Graveyard.
The battle was pretty dicey. The undead minions were mostly just rabble, but here and there among them were some pretty strong foes. Some were swinging polearms, and quite a few were using carrier attacks of various sorts. I was struck by both a curse effect and a paralyze effect at different points in the battle.
The real problem was of course Mandrake and the liche. Mandrake was juggernaut of destruction. He seemed to be defended by a powerful protection aura. I struck at his back with all my might, and he just ignored my blows. He was swinging for large amounts of damage with his huge sword, and I saw some of his massive blows clobbering people right through their shields.
The liche was a little less offensive. He was casting celestial magic spells about willy nilly, but his real power came from the constant casting of defiling pools. I snuck up and struck him some pretty sound blows a few times, but he would just send me running with a few dragons breaths, and then heal himself with his defiling pools. He was also healing Mandrake whenever he got scratched, and occasionally raising some fallen adventurers as undead. If all that wasn’t enough, he was also able to rift at will. On a number of occasions he grabbed hold of Mandrake and rifted the two of them out, only to pop back in at another part of the battlefield a moment later.
Early on in the battle I was trying to sneak up behind everything. I eventually discarded this tactic. Stabbing the liche and Mandrake in the back wasn’t accomplishing anything, and I was pressing my luck trying to dodge all the spells and elemental chaos that was getting tossed my way. I kept bumping into Kier as I ran around in the rear of the battle. He had somehow managed to become transformed into some kind of shadow creature himself. About half the time I saw him he looked as though he had desecrated himself. This alarmed me a little, but it seemed as though no one else either noticed or cared, so I chose to ignore the matter.
(Note found on the Fey Tree of Blackstone: An excellent account, Duncan. I look forward to reading the continuation of it.
Just to clarify one point... During that battle in which I was transformed I was actually drawing upon the innate abilities of the form I was in to cloak myself in an aura of darkness rather than invoking chaos to desecrate myself.
~Kier)
The battle see sawed back and forth for quite a while with no side seeming able to press any advantage for long. I tried to stay close to the middle of things and as far away from Mandrake as I could manage. My luck finally gave out when the liche came up behind me without me noticing him. He surprised me by popping me with a simple disarm spell. My sword flipped out of my hand and I took a few hasty steps back. A moment later the liche strode forward and tucked my sword under his arm and waded back into battle.
Well, now I was in a fix. That was my good magic sword. I didn’t have any backup weapon with me at the time, so I was left standing there empty handed in the middle of a swirling battle of undead and chaos elementals trying desperately to figure out what to do next. Nothing makes you feel more naked than standing in the middle of a battle with no sword.
Obviously I needed to get my sword back. I ran through a gap in the action and hid over by some trees. I stashed my shield away since I needed quickness more than defense at the moment. I waited until the liche drifted towards the outside of the melee, and then I padded over towards him as quietly as I could. He turned around and spotted me, and I took of before he could blast me with spells.
This series of events repeated itself a number of times over the course offor about five minutes before I was finally able to sneak up close enough behind him to make a grab for my sword. Luckily he still had it just tucked underneath one arm, and he didn’t even have a grip on it. I reached out and snatched it and took off running before he could react and fry my sorry carcass.
I went over and retrieved my shield, and spent the rest of the battle fighting undead rabble and avoiding the liche as best I could. I don’t think I could manage to pull that snatch and grab routine twice in one battle, and I wasn’t anxious to try. In any event, the battle didn’t last too much longer after that. Mandrake and the liche retreated a short distance away and rifted out, and this time they didn’t return. A few moments later the last of the undead and chaos creatures were destroyed and all was quiet once more.
That was pretty much the extent of the excitement for the first night. With nothing left to do and no more monsters attacking, there was little else left to keep people out of their beds. I wandered over to my cabin and crawled in and went to sleep almost instantly despite the oven like temperatures within the cabin.
Saturday morning dawned bright, early, and hot. I lay in bed until I couldn't stand the heat any more. Finally I grudgingly got up and made my way over to get washed up. I poured cold water all over myself and emerged fresh and squeaky clean. By the time I had walked half way back to my cabin I was already soaked again in sweat. It was going to be that kind of day.
The first order of business of the day was breakfast. It was still a bit before ten o'clock, and I guess the cook sleeps late as well, because there was no one in the tavern to serve me when I arrived. I decided to take the opportunity to do a little more exploring while things were still slow and the woods were not yet crawling with monsters. I wandered around the town and the surrounding woods, and even to a walk down to the river.
When I returned to the tavern I saw that it was now beginning to show a few signs of life. I put in my order for breakfast and went to sit outside to wait for it to arrive. A few other people were up and about at this point. I spoke for quite a while with Carak Talias and got him to explain a few things to me which had not made much sense the night before. I also spoke to Katarina about a few things.
Right after breakfast some of the local wildlife decided to show up. Maybe they were attracted to the smell of the food. A small fire breathing salamander crept up and tried to take a bite out of a few people before we killed it. A scorpion came by a little later and met a similar fate. A whole crowd of giant wasps came buzzing by at one point. They didn't mess with us as long as we ignored them, but eventually the temptation was too great and someone tossed a spell at one of them. That led to the predictable fight.
Once things quieted down a bit a saw some people over by the guildhall talking to an odd looking fellow. I walked over to see what was going on. The odd guy had a sparkly looking complexion, so I figured he had to be fae. I asked Simon what was going on, and he said that they had some private business with the fae relating to a matter which occurred a few months ago. I was curious about this, but I didn't know how private a matter it was, so I went ahead and found something else to do.
I went back over to the tavern and talked to Katarina for a little while. I got her to show me the odd looking round flute type thing she wore around her neck. She called it an oculara or something similar. She went to play it for me, and was quite distressed to hear her dulcet tones marred by a hissing noise. The flute had developed a leak. Most likely it was damaged during the fight with Mandrake the night before. This made her more than a little cross, and I learned a few colorful gypsy phrases that morning.
Katarina was carrying around a large hourglass shaped wooden shield. I thought it somewhat incongruous to the rest of her gear, but when I went to look at it she snatched it back. She said it was Simon’s shield, and that he had entrusted it’s safety to her while he was off on his private business with the others with the fae guy.
I took the opportunity to play a prank on Katarina. When she set the shield down and went to order some food, I snatched the shield and tiptoed out the front door. She saw me leave with it, but by the time she could get to the front door, I had already run around the tavern and came back in the side door to place the shield right back where I found it. She yelled for me from the front door for a few moments before finally noticing what I had done.
It certainly wasn’t the funniest joke I had ever played, but Katarina didn’t see any humor in it at all. I decided to stop screwing around with the shield before she really got upset. I walked over and began discussing some things with Douglas, when one of the other guys who was hanging out in the tavern decided to steal the shield and hang it from the rafters. Knowing that Katarina was already pretty wound up as it was, I thought that now would be a good time to be elsewhere.
I left the tavern, and I noticed that a small pool of golden liquid had bubbled up not too far away. I took a quick look at it, but declined to investigate it any further. I spoke to some people about it later in the day, and they told me that the pool was infused with something they called "jester magic", whatever that was. The pool caused a number of random beneficial and baneful effects. That didn't sound like anything I cared to get involved with, so I was glad that I had left it be.
I passed the pool and started down a road that led out of town through some woods. I had not gone very far when I heard something thrashing about in the limbs of a tree up ahead. I moved a little closer to see what was going on, and a big fat spider leapt down and practically landed on my head.
I jumped back out of the way and managed to avoid his entangling webs. I considered just hightailing it back to town, but decided to make a try at taking it on myself. I remembered that I had a magic item that was recently given to me, and I used it to call forth a flame blast which practically cooked the spider right then and there. I chopped it a few more times and it keeled over dead. I poked around in the leaves where it came from and managed to knock loose a few pieces of equipment and treasure left over from former victims.
I decided that maybe I ought to find someone else to keep me company while I wandered about in case there were more spiders lurking in the trees. I walked back towards the center of town, and noticed a small group of large ant like creatures marching towards the tavern. I saw Baron Travador, Katarina, and a few other people there, and they were mounting a pretty effective defense.
I looked around, and I saw that there was a slow but steady stream of these ant things marching towards the tavern. They were all emerging from behind the guild building. I snuck over there and took a peek around the corner and saw that they were all burrowing up from a small mound of sand that had been pushed up in the middle of the ground.
I took a look at the mound, and saw a couple of pieces of treasure mixed in the sand and debris. I grabbed up some stuff, but a moment later another ant popped up and sent me scurrying. I ran over to the tavern and told everyone about the mound, and we all fought our way over to that spot to see what we could do about getting rid of the ants.
I tried grabbing up a bunch of rocks and stones and plugging up the mound with those. That didn’t seem to work, though. The ants just pushed them out of the way on their way out. Crazy Eye Sam ran up and joined the fight at this point and skewered an ant or two herself. Eventually Baron Travador managed to beat on the and mound and stomp it flat, and that seemed to do the trick. No more ants came forth after that.
After all that excitement and activity, I was in the mode for something a little less strenuous. Luckily, just such an opportunity presented itself just a short time later. I noticed a peasant lady or farmer of some sort looking around the edge of the woods and wringing her hands. I went over to her and asked what was vexing her, and she said her poor cow had gone missing.
I figured this couldn’t be too hard of a task to accomplish. She pointed out the path the bovine had followed, and the trail was quite easy to follow. Presently I found the cow standing in a small clearing before a black icky looking pool of ooze. The pool fairly reeked of chaos taint, and sure enough before I could do anything else the stupid cow shoved her head in the pool and took a drink.
At that point the cow started foaming at the mouth and her eyes rolled back in her head. All of her hair started to stand on end and dark splotches started to show up all over her back. To complete the picture of a chaos tainted animal, old Bossy turned to face me and let loose with a cowpie of immense proportions and stench. Then she started to come for me.
I began to consider what options I had, and quickly decided I had only one. I had no means by which to purge the chaos taint. That just left me killing the poor cow. I’ll not relate the short battle that followed or even try to make it sound interesting or heroic. Face it, chaos tainted or not, it was a cow.
After I put poor Bossy out of her misery and returned to tell the poor peasant about her cow. I felt awful bad about her cow getting killed, but I really didn’t see any of options. She went ahead and rewarded me with a few gifts, but I felt like a heel accepting them. All I did was kill a darn milk cow. I insisted she take a few gold pieces from me so that I wouldn’t feel like I was taking advantage of her.
On the way back to the tavern, I got to thinking about that chaos tainted pool. This time it was just a milk cow that drank the water. What if a bear or a wolf or a dire elephant happened to wander by and take a drink? I thought it might be a good idea to see if I could get someone to take care of the pool somehow.
When I got back to the tavern I asked around if anyone knew how to cleanse a pool. Anno said that he had a cantrip in his tome that could be used to purify a well, and I figured that would be worth a shot. So the both of us headed back to the pool to give it a try.
When we got there, I stepped back to give him whatever room he needed to work with. While he was digging around in his pouches looking for components, I noticed that all those weird squiggly markings all over his face seemed to start to glow and move around some. I nervously kept me hand near my sword just incase he decided to go nuts on me or something. But once he found his components, he did a little hocus pocus and tossed a spell at the pool and it immediately cleared up.
When we made out way back towards the tavern, I saw that there were a small group of large armor plated monsters scuffling with people around the tavern. They appeared to be umber hulks to me. I ran over to join the fight, but umber hulks are a tad tougher to kill than milkcows, as you may imagine. On several occasions they plastered me pretty good.
Katarina took to following me around, and whenever I would hit the ground or get paralyzed she would grab hold of something and drag my carcass back to one of the healers that was sitting on the porch. It was a bit hard on my wardrobe and my dignity, but it seemed to work out pretty well otherwise.
Once the umber hulks were taken care of, I decided to take another look down the road that led towards the river. On the way down I spotted an old but well dressed man arguing with what looked to be a goblin. They were playing tug of war with a small box or chest. I wasn’t entirely sure how goblins acted here in the south, and I was thinking about sneaking up and pasting the little green guy, when I decided that might not be the best idea. This looked like a private argument, and maybe none of my business, so I decided to just leave the two be.
A short distance later I spotted another goblin. This one was prancing around some sort of strange metal contraption. I watched him for a few moments to make sure it was just him, and that this wasn’t some sort of devious trap, but when I could spot no hidden ambushers I decided to ask him what his story was.
When I approached the goblin he stopped messing with the machine and greeted me. I asked him what sort of machine he had, and he said it was an alchemy machine. It had three levers and a small slot on the front of it. I asked him how it worked, and he said he didn’t know. He claimed to have just found it.
That struck me as a tad odd. Who would make an alchemy machine and then just stick it in the middle of the woods? It looked pretty heavy, so I doubt the goblin had carried it there. The goblin explained that he wanted to try to get the machine to make him some intoxicant elixirs, but he couldn’t figure out how to make it work. If I could manage to get it to work, he said I could have anything it made so long as he got to keep the intoxicants.
I figured what the heck. Before I did anything, though, I wanted to make sure I had the benefit of a poison shield. The last thing I wanted was for the machine to start spitting out nausea gas poisons all over me. I was pretty sure I had a poison shield elixir on me somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn’t find it.
The goblin was getting a little impatient, so I decided to just risk it. I grabbed two of the levers at random and gave them a jerk. The machine hummed and whirred and rattled, and after a moment a small vial dropped out of the slot in the front. I examined it, and it bore a neat and tidy label that read “Poison Shield Elixir”.
Well, that wasn’t so bad. I chugged down the elixir and yanked on the levers once more with a little bit more confidence. Soon I was holding a vial labeled “Euphoria Antidote”. After that I managed to coax an “Enslavement Antidote” out of the machine. Not bad.
The goblin was getting a little impatient, so I twiddled the levers once more and finally managed to get an intoxicant elixir to come out. The goblin squealed when I tossed it over to him. I tried once more and again produced an intoxicant elixir, which I figured should be enough to keep the goblin blotto for a good long time. I decided that now would be a good time to stop pressing my luck, so I told the goblin I was done, and that he could have his machine back.
The goblin said that it looked real easy, and that he was going to give it a try. I said go right ahead, and turned to walk over to a nearby tree where I had put down my bag of rope and tools. No sooner had I got ten feet away than I heard a high pitched whine behind me. I turned around just in time to see the machine and the goblin go BOOOOM and explode into a million pieces. The explosion practically knocked me down, and completely drenched me in goblin juices. Luckily none of the metal plates and cogs and gears that flew everywhere struck me. Well, so much for my new friend and his amazing alchemy machine.
I scraped as much of the goblin off me as I could with a stick and headed back towards the center of town. On the way back I ran into Baron Travador and struck up a conversation. I mentioned the goblin and old man I had seen arguing over a box, and he got real interested. He said that some people were looking for a box or chest that was supposed to be in the area that contained a dragon turtle. It was very important that the chest be found for some reason, and he thought that perhaps this might be the chest.
He asked if I could take him back to the old man and the goblin, and I said that I would. We started off down the road once more that led to the river, when suddenly a group of men jumped out of the bushes at the side of the road and attacked. Two of them were swordsmen in plain soldier’s armor with no insignia, and the third appeared to be a caster of some sort.
There were three of them including a caster and two of us. Luckily for us they seemed to be fairly new to the game of robbing people because their attack was poorly coordinated. The two swordsman rushed us immediately, which ended up screening the caster and preventing him from attack us clearly. Travador took the brunt of their charge and cleaved one of them almost immediately. He turned on the second one, and between the two of us we made short work of him.
Now that he had a clear field of fire, the caster chucked a few spells at us. He was about fifteen feet away so we were able to jump out of the way pretty easily. When the baron lowered his head and charge the caster lost his nerve and took off running down the road towards the river. We were hot on his heels and he finally screeched to a halt and imprisoned himself.
Luckily, I had an answer for that. Baron Travador began to push and shove the guys back up the road towards town. I told him to stop and to get ready. As chance would have it, a week earlier in Blackstone I had found a small magic item which held a Dispel Magic spell in it. Luckily I had the item in my pocket. Not being very practiced in spellcraft, I fiddled and fidgeted while I tried to remember the proper incant. It was painfully obvious what I was up to, and I don’t know why the guy didn’t just drop his imprison and try running again. Eventually I remembered the incant and dropped his imprison and Travador proceeded to hack him to bits.
We searched the guy over and then returned to where we dispatched the other two swordsmen and searched them as well. We came up with a few valuables but nothing in the way of clues or hints as to who they were or what they were up to beyond just simple highway robbery. We then chucked their carcasses into the woods and continued on until we had found the goblin the old man.
They were standing right where I had seen them previously and they were still yelling at each other and pulling on each end of a small wooden chest. The baron asked them to stop bickering for a moment and to explain themselves. Both the goblin and the old man had the exact same story. Each claimed the chest belong to them and that the other was trying to steal it.
The baron presented them with a solution. He took possession of the box, and after a moment’s thought handed it to me. He then asked each of them to describe the contents of the chest, and whoever correctly identified what was inside would get the chest returned to them.
I thought this wasn’t going to work, because obviously they were both going to give the same answer. The baron asked the goblin first, and he said the chest contained his potions and elixirs and components and scrolls. Travador next asked the well dressed old man what was in the chest, and after a moment of standing there all slack jawed he answered “Ummmm, my stuff.”
I thought at first the goblin must have hit him with a feeblemind gas when we weren’t looking. But when Travador asked him if he was sure, he indicated that yes, that was his final answer. The guy was actually that dumb. Travador asked me to open the box and reveal what was inside, and sure enough it held potions and elixirs and components and scrolls.
Travador then took the chest back from me and awarded it to the goblin. The old man then shrugged and said “Oh well” and walked off. The goblin turned to leave as well, but then decided that since we had managed to get his box back for him he was going to let us have a little of the contents. He handed us a few things from inside the box and then went on his way.
Well, it looked like the box wasn’t the one that Travador was looking for after all. We headed back towards the tavern and then went on our separate ways. I decided to try exploring the other side of the town for a little while, and so went off in that direction and began to explore the woods.
I searched around for quite a while and didn’t find anything of real interest. On my way back just before I reached the tavern I can across a small open field that had small blue flowers growing around the edges. For some reason that rang a bell, but I couldn’t think of the reason why. When I got back in town and went into the tavern I saw Boo and Shaiith, two of the dark elves that made the trip down from Therendry separate from us. Seeing Boo reminded me where I had heard blue flowers before. I recalled that on the way down to Greyhelm I overheard Arcos mention that when he arrived he was going to be looking for some blue flowers.
I had not seen Arcos all day, but I knew he and Boo were on fairly friendly terms. I explained to Boo about the flowers and Arcos, and asked if she was interested in picking some for him. She seemed a little skeptical at first, but agreed to follow me to where the flowers were at. As we walked off into the woods several people observed us and asked what we were up to. I told them I was taking Boo off into the woods to pick flowers. I guess that must have sounded absurd enough that they figured I must be about to roll her. They kept asking Boo if she was sure if she wanted to go.
It was a short walk back to the field and we picked a small handful of the blue flowers. Boo thought they looked a little more lavender than blue, but decided to get them anyway just in case. She said she had no idea why Arcos of all people wanted little pretty flowers, but once I showed them too her she seemed reluctant to get rid of them. As it turned out she hauled around those flowers for several hours until she met Arcos at dinner, at which point he laughed at her and threw away the flowers. Apparently the flowers were some kind of inside joke that I still don’t quite understand.
After I left Boo back at the tavern I decided to take one more trip off into the woods exploring. I went down the road where I got jumped by the spider to see if there was anything further down. I walked down it for a good ways, but it just seemed to lead deeper and deeper into the woods. When I turned around to head back, a spotted what looked to be carved stone off the road in the woods a little ways.
I crept over to take a look and found a small cave in a hillside with gargoyle like stone statues arrayed to either side of the entrance. This didn’t look like anything I wanted to check out alone, so I headed back to the tavern to see who might be willing to investigate it with me.
When I arrived at the tavern I found a good many people were there. Most of them were quite bored and looking for something to do, because when I asked if anyone wanted to investigate a cave with stone statues I suddenly had an army willing to follow me. Boo and Shaiith came, along with the three gypsies Nicolai, Nadja and Jezebel, as well as Tovolia, a local fox scavenger named Valina and a handful of others I can’t recall.
They followed me to the cave, and we stood outside for a moment to try to figure out what the story was with the statues. They seemed to be normal statues and they did not detect as magic. Tovolia suddenly decided he was going to explore the cave and he boldly stepped inside. I leaped to follow him, because I didn’t want Tovolia to spend any time alone inside with the, ummm, danger.
The cave proved to be quite small. The bones of what appeared to be barbarians were strewn about the cave, but I couldn’t tell if this was a burial chamber or some monsters rubbish pit. We found a couple of odd teardrop shaped stones that someone claimed was gargoyle tears. I don’t know what we did at that point if anything to set the statues in motion, but a moment later they were all crowding into the cavern and wailing the mess out of us.
The gargoyles or stone creatures or statues or whatever they were moved a little slow, but they hit like a ton of bricks. One of them backed Tovolia up against the wall and started pounding him like a nail. Tovolia keeled over, and I had seen Tovolia fight enough to realize that his armor had up until this point taken most of the punishment and that he was playing possum. For once, though, this didn’t seem to work, because the stone statue never let off pounding on him.
Tovolia eventually had to roll out of the way, and managed to bring up his silver sword to deal a ringing blow off the statue’s knee. That staggered it for a moment, and Tovolia followed up his advantage and smashed it to pieces. As I stood there like an idiot watching the scene I just described play out in front of me, the other statues were chasing everyone else around the cavern and making a mess out of a bunch of them. I turned around to watch this and got a face full of granite.
Lucky for me not everyone was dumb enough to just stand around and watch. Nicolai and Nadja and Shaiith all were pouring out shatters and destroy spells, and pretty soon all the statues were broken and crumbled. Someone scraped me back together into one pile and healed me back to one piece again, though I still kept snorting out sand and pebbles from my nose for a number of minutes afterwards.
We continued to explore the cave for some clue as to what the story was behind the weird stone statues, but nothing more revealed itself. So we all gathered up our stuff and split up the gargoyle tears between us and headed back into town. I looked around and saw that it was beginning to get late in the afternoon. While we were messing around in the cave, some heavy dark clouds had moved in and I could hear the distant rumble of thunder. It looked as though we were going to be in for a storm.
If that was the case, I decided I better look around quick for something else to do before I missed my chance. I heard Tovolia, Jezebel, and Valina mention they were going to try to answer some of the help wanted ads in the newspaper. I considered joining them, but I figured they had more than they needed in terms of people.
I decided to do one last lap around town to see if I could find anything that needed doing. When I reached the edge of town near a small copse of trees I saw what appeared to be a small raggedy looking girl crying. When I walked over, I saw that it was in fact a small goblin girl, and she was crying her eyes out.
My two previous encounters with goblins hadn’t turned out too bad (for me, at least), so I decided I would try to help her out. I asked what was the matter, and she pointed to a nearby tree. She said her kitty wouldn’t come down. Sure enough, perched on a branch about fifteen feet up in the air was a weird looking cat. It was very dark and shaped a bit like a panther, and it had three tails swishing back and forth behind it. When I approached the tree, it greeted me with a meow.
I considered my options. I thought about the various ways that I might climb up the tree to persuade the cat to get down. I could easily see that ending up with my eyes clawed out on my neck broken from a fall. I thought about few ideas about how I might throw some spells up at the cat to, ummmmm, suggest to him to come down, but again I discarded them as being too chancy, and likely as not to get the little girl to start throwing things at me.
Luckily enough, I had owned a cat or two in my youth, and so I had another idea that I thought might work, and that did not have a great deal of inherent risk. Just as I was about to put my plan into action, however, I heard my name being called. I looked over at a nearby house, and I saw Jezebel leaning out of a second story window. She yelled over to me to ask if I had euphoria antidote on me.
Remembering the alchemy machine from earlier in the day, I replied that in fact I did. She pulled her head back inside the window, and presently emerged from the front door of the house and ran over to me to ask if she could borrow it. As I rummaged around in my bag for the proper vial, I can only image what she thought of see me, a tear stained goblin tike, and a three tailed cat sitting above us watching the scene and contently purring.
Once I had given Jezebel the vial and she had returned to the house, I pulled out what I had been looking for. I took about a fifteen foot length of my rope and played it out on the ground. I then began to slowly pull it back and forth in front of the tree, ocaissionally stopping or jerking the rope in what I hoped was an enticing fashion. Sure enough, the cat’s eyes narrowed and his ears perked up. I kept on making passes with the rope back and forth until presently the cat could stand it no longer, and it leaped from the tree and commenced to attack my rope.
The little goblin clapped her hands gleefully. I gave her the free end of the rope that wasn’t being savaged by the strange cat and told her she could keep it. She was so happy to have her kitty back that she gave me some of her toys, which in fact turned out to be a few components and scrolls and potions and the like.
By now the sky was really threatening and the thunder and lighting was getting quite close. I headed over to the tavern and only just managed to get inside before the sky opened up and the rain came pouring down. It rained buckets for a half an hour at least before leveling off to a nice steady soaking rain. The streets of the town were awash in six inches of water by this point.
I had only a little bit of company while sitting in the tavern. Most of the people were no where to be found. When I asked where everyone was at, I was told that everyone was here one moment, and then gone the next. About an hour after the rain started a large crowd of people practically appeared on the doorstep of the tavern and made their way inside. They said they have been transported to an area far away to help save Juniper’s forest from the menace that was attacking it. I didn’t hear too many details about that trip, because most of the people by this point were more interested in talking about the feast that was being prepared and about to be served.
This probably makes as good a spot as any to bring this portion of my tale to a close. Later on I’ll finish this tale with my recollections on the final assault on Mandrake’s keep, and the weird events I witnessed after getting stranded behind when the gate closed.