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.