The comforts of home are rarely appreciated unless you spend most of your life away from them. Recently, my work as a Knight of Therendry has kept me away from my home in Exeter for long periods of time. Thus, I was glad to be able to get a little time to go back there before the most recent gathering. Unfortunately, while at home I caught one of those unhealable illnesses, and so I was feeling pretty miserable by the time that the gathering rolled around. Nonetheless, I soldiered myself over to the adventurer’s quarter as best I could, and prepared for whatever was to come.
The gathering was very cold, and that did nothing to help the way that I was feeling. I had a very warm fleece cloak on, but even though that kept me somewhat warm, the cold still penetrated my hands and feet. A fire would likely have been nice, but we couldn’t afford to pull an adventurer away to tend the fire, and we didn’t want to risk the fire getting out of control and burning something down. Thus, we remained without one.
I had an inkling before the gathering began that we would be dealing with undead elves coming out of the Lost River Forest, or, as Canaan calls it, Gilliard’s Folly. As people sometimes say, I hate it when I’m right. They attacked the tavern, and we went out to the porch to meet them. The skirmish that ensued was tough, but manageable. Sir Milo, Lord Zerr, and Nightshine were visiting from the south with their friend Shirokaze. Their help during the fight was very useful, and I found myself fighting alongside Lord Zerr quite a bit. We complement each other quite well on a front line, and I enjoy fighting alongside such a skilled and accomplished fighter.
Another thing that occurred the first evening was that Duncan had the magic words necessary to weaken the remaining vampire from the Great Dark Swamp, the one that caused my resurrection during that gathering. He distributed them, and a gentleman named Malcolm told us that he knew of a way to weaken the vampire even more before we fought it.
We survived a few waves of the undead elves, but eventually I decided that I was tired and so my squire, Rillien, and I headed off to bed. As we were getting ready for bed, Caliphar showed up and told us that they were undertaking a mission to weaken the vampire, and asked if we wanted to come. I still felt sick, and so Rillien went with Caliphar and everyone else and I went to sleep. Apparently they accomplished their mission, or at least the first half of the mission, and so the vampire was weakened, and that had to be viewed as a good thing.
On Saturday morning I got up and went down to the tavern to find Roc, Caliphar, Loremar, and Duncan awake. I thought we made an interesting adventuring party. We decided to go off scouting in the woods. We ran into a dryad who gave us a bit of information about what was going on in the Lost River Forest. We spoke to her for a while, and then I remembered that I had wanted to speak to Nevah Starcrafter at the Wester Wind Inn, so we hurried over there.
At the Inn, they told me that Nevah had been gone for days, and so I left a message asking for him to contact me when he arrived in town.
We continued to wander through the woods, and we came upon a group of peasants returning from having sold their farm products in Stormhold. Apparently in Stormhold they pay very well for such things, and the peasants were very happy with the money they had made. The father, an older gentleman with a cane, attempted to marry off his two daughters to us. First, the interest was in Loremar, and then eventually the interest turned to Roc instead. I think Caliphar scared them off eventually, though.
Moving on, we kept wandering, following Duncan’s lead, until we wound up at a circle of benches in the woods. We hung out there for a while until we heard a scream. The scream got us to run back to town, just in time to save… well… no one. We never did find out where the scream came from. We did find Rillien, Count Lyonesse, and Viscountess Zobrist, though, and so we went with them to investigate some laughter we heard off in the distance. It turned out to be a bunch of peasants getting drunk.
We spent a few minutes talking to them, but we didn’t find out anything interesting. They weren’t doing anything illegal, so we let them be. Besides, the Count was happy that they were drinking good Lyonesse alcohol.
When we headed back to town, more people had begun to wake up. We sat around a bit on the porch of the tavern, and then some spiders came to attack us. I got entangled at one point, but Rillien was there to get off the quick release spell. I kept getting mangled by a spider that was devastating me with its two short pincers. To make matters worse, the pincers were tipped with paralyzing poison, so I had to be careful to keep my armor intact.
At one point, the piercing paralyze poison pincer spider ran around the back of the tavern. I asked Roc to chase it with me, but he told me he was going around the other way to intercept it. I thought Rillien was behind me, but it turned out she was with Roc. So, I chased the spider, and when I got around the corner of the building I couldn’t find it. I knew it had to be close, so I searched under the building, and sure enough it jumped out at me. I definitely had my hands full, and I had to use a spell to refit my armor or risk becoming paralyzed.
Thankfully, eventually Roc and Rillien came around the side of the building, and they provided the extra push needed to finish off the spider. It was a kill I was especially happy to make.
At that point, a representative from the Academy came to talk to Rillien, and I went with Caliphar to go scout some more in the woods. Caliphar and I came across a dead body in the woods. We investigated, and found out that it was a merchant that had been killed by two bandits and had her horse stolen. We buried the body, but unfortunately there wasn’t much else we could do. Bandit attacks are unfortunately part of life for merchants in Exeter. It’s just sad to see the results of an attack.
Another expedition into the woods was later undertaken by Roc, Katherine, and I. We came across a pile of clothes on the ground, and we brilliantly deduced that someone had recently resurrected. We investigated the clothes, but couldn’t find anything of particular note to give us any clues. As we were investigating, some ogres showed up, and they started talking about how we had captured the baby or something like that. We thought they meant the pile of clothes at first, but eventually we figured out what they really meant. They meant that Roc was a baby, and they thought that Katherine and I were holding him prisoner. As they approached to rescue Roc, Roc was heard to say, “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.” Roc tore into one ogre as I tore into another, and the rest ran away. I think Roc enjoyed getting his revenge for being called a baby.
When we returned to town, we brought the clothes back and checked the circle to see if someone belonging to the clothes was resurrecting. We didn’t find anyone, but I did take the chance to make a stake of woe in case the vampire from the Great Dark Swamp showed up.
As morning rolled into afternoon, I was told that we were going to be going to Jhivantane to deal with a unicorn that had been transformed into a black unicorn. I counseled against the idea, as I was the only person present that had been to Jhivantane before, and I knew just how nasty a place it is. It is an unending swamp, filled with chaos and corruption from years of necromancy corrupting Tyrra to the point where the damage is probably not salvageable. I doubt even a skilled earth shaman like my friend Ashe could do much to fix Jhivantane.
My objections were noted, but overruled, and thus we headed off to Jhivantane. The swamp was filled with hordes of undead. Roc and I were the first to enter through the gate, but he caught a quick arcane fear and went running back through the gate, and so then there was a ton of aura coming at me alone. I took some of it and got out of the way of some of it, and was soon joined by reinforcements.
We pushed through the first mass of undead, and when we turned the corner to get deeper into the swamp, Lord Zerr and I noticed that there was some type of formal going on. We rushed over to stop it, but the guardian was quite tough, and he kept us from getting to the formal. Thankfully, Tovolia and Caliphar came around behind, and Tovolia threw the Enough Talk Dagger into the caster, thus interrupting the formal. We later learned that the formal was a strengthening formal designed to give the black unicorn more power. Unfortunately for us, interrupting the formal didn’t really help, because he was still far more powerful than what we could handle, and he hosed us a number of times.
Worse yet, there were far more undead in Jhivantane than what we could handle. Both Viscountess Zobrist and I started telling Count Lyonesse that it was time to get out of there, although I feel that we probably should have started telling him even sooner. By the time we did tell him, almost everyone’s resources were tapped and we didn’t have much to make a fighting retreat with.
At one point, I saw Katherine von Sering down next to Shirokaze, and I was quite certain they were both dead. I ran over and gave them both life spells. Then something came up and slayed me from behind, and Shirokaze reached behind him and healed me. The creature then circled around me, and beat down Katherine and Shirokaze. I healed them again, and eventually the creature left. The carousel of healing probably saved all our lives.
There were a number of other close calls as well. I was getting slayed most every time I got up, and so I spent a lot of time bleeding into the ground. Thankfully, I got saved by Count Lyonesse once, Duncan a couple times, and Rillien countless times, amongst other people that I am probably forgetting.
As we began to make our fighting retreat, we were still losing badly. Caliphar and Tovolia were trapped in a circle, and the black unicorn had them surrounded, so we couldn’t get to them. Nightshine was also trapped in a circle, and her unicorn transform had gone off. Count Fellmist and Roc were still on the ground, and we were barely holding our line of retreat despite Lord Zerr, Count Lyonesse, myself, and others doing all we could do try to fend off the undead.
Thankfully, it turned out that Count Fellmist was still conscious, and he rescued Roc and the two of them re-joined our line. The extra fire power helped, but we were still losing badly, and when their minions started crossing through the gate and attacking us on Tyrra once we thought we were safe, that only made the situation worse.
Tovolia and Caliphar got back to us because the Black Unicorn let them go, although I am not sure why. Nightshine was still left behind, but there wasn’t much we could do for her. We didn’t have enough left for another charge. If we made one, everyone would have resurrected.
Thankfully, Nightshine made it out on her own, and the Black Unicorn agreed that he would not attack us if we didn’t go back in after him again. We had little choice but to agree, as we had no ability to go back in after him, and so the mission ended as a failure.
We headed back to town beaten and bloody, and Caliphar proposed a trip off into the woods to get foods, since there was no tavern. I would have liked to join him, but I knew that I had more pressing business to attend to. Thus, Rillien and I set off for Stormhold to see how things were going up there. It is, after all, the task of a Ducal knight to make sure things are well in all parts of the Duchy, not just the ones that happen to hold adventurer gatherings.
While we were in Stormhold, Rillien had to leave early, so I completed the rest of the trip by myself. It wasn’t very eventful, though, so Rillien was probably best for leaving a little early.
Not long after I arrived back in town, we were told that there was an army of undead fey around. We went to go fight it, and it was a tough, nasty, resource draining fight. At one point, Rillien and I saw Roc and Juniper down and went to help them. Well, I got slayed, and Rillien wisely retreated. Thankfully for me, she circled back around, and the two of us got Roc and Juniper back up, and we were able to rejoin the fight. We eventually defeated the undead fey, but we took a beating in the process.
After the undead fey fight, there wasn’t much going on. I became engaged in a long discussion with Algorian for much of the evening, and while it became heated at points, I think that as a whole it was a productive discussion.
Not long after the long discussion wrapped up, I was informed that Nevah Starcrafter had arrived in town and wished to speak to me. This was fortuitous, since I also wished to speak to him. He also wanted to include Kes and Juniper in the discussion, and I wanted to include Rillien, so the five of us sat around a table discussing the problem of the drazeel.
As we did so, drazeel actually began attacking outside, and so Juniper went out to help fend them off. She wanted to know if we wanted one captured if we got the chance, and Nevah and I both said yes. We thought that studying a captured drazeel could give us useful clues into their nature.
Well, a few moments later Juniper managed to capture a drazeel. We all went out to investigate it, and after checking how long it would be unconscious for, I decided that it would be a good idea to haul it off to the celestial circle to identify it. At first we were moving the drazeel with just Nevah, Rillien, and I, but then Rillien raised the good point that moving a drazeel with three elves was not a good idea. Thus, Katherine von Sering came along as well, and her help was much appreciated. I am pretty sure Juniper also came with us.
When we got there, I decided that I should probably identify the drazeel, while Rillien, who is also invested in the celestial circle, waited outside in case something went wrong. Thankfully, the identification proved uneventful, and it gave us a little more information about the drazeel, but not as much as we were looking for.
At that point someone, I think it might have been Juniper, suggested that we should try to DFM the drazeel. I thought it was a good idea, so the only question left was who to cast. I knew I would be the default choice, so I asked if anyone else would like to cast. My intention in asking such a question was actually to give Juniper or Rillien or Katherine some more formal casting experience, but Nevah volunteered, because he wanted to help free his kinsmen.
I had no objection, so Nevah cast the formal. Five minutes later, the drazeel transformed back into an elf. As it turned out, this drazeel was actually the one that I had originally fought with Rillien and Kaiya at the previous Therendry gathering. That meant that we had never seen the original, which worried me a bit. Clearly, the original drazeel is still lurking out there somewhere.
We did find out from this drazeel that elves were turned into drazeel by being cocooned and then somehow undergoing a magical metamorphosis. We also found out that there was a cave nearby with thirty cocoons in it which was guarded by only three or four drazeel.
I gathered together a force as quick as I could, and Nevah went to make sure the coast was clear. We got there, and I sent Nevah and Duncan ahead to scout. A couple minutes later, Duncan came back shouting that Nevah was captured and there were somewhere around twenty drazeel. At that point, I sent Tovolia in to provide a distraction while I sent Duncan back to town for more help. Four drazeel was one thing. Twenty was quite another.
Tovolia did a song and dance routine for the drazeel, but he wasn’t an elf so they weren’t attacking him. I sent Katherine and Chilean in to see if they could find Nevah, but they never made it any further than Tovolia, where they were somehow forced to join Tovolia’s entertainment routine.
Meanwhile, the backup arrived and we pushed for a full out assault. Our resources were strained, but we did okay, and everyone fighting the drazeel bought time for Rillien and I to look for the cocoons. We looked all around the cavern, but couldn’t find any. Kes was the only person to find a cocoon, and that was cocoon they had wrapped Nevah in.
We rescued Nevah, and I guess that all the cocoons had already hatched, which is why we couldn’t find any. It is sad that we were unable to save any of our elven brethren, but at least we were able to put them out of their misery.
As we headed back to town, Algorian sat down with Nevah to talk about his experience in the cocoon. Algorian was able to use Nevah’s memories to find out a great deal of information about the history of the drazeel, which hopefully will eventually allow us to deal with them once and for all.
I stayed with Algorian and Nevah while everyone else headed back to town, and then once they were finished Nevah went back to his people and Algorian and I headed back to town together.
When we got there, Algorian told us about what he had found from the drazeel, and a few of us were there to hear him. However, most of the town was elsewhere. I didn’t know a great deal about what was going on, but I knew that Baron Kyth Wild had volunteered to help out with an experiment, and I figured everyone was off dealing with that.
Rillien was around, but she was very tired and kind of sitting by herself, and so Duncan somehow got the impression that she was upset with him. I assured him that she was not, but that she probably didn’t want to do much except rest at that particular moment.
Duncan wandered off for a while, and then came back a few minutes later and whispered to me the most disturbing news I have heard in a long time. He told me that Baron Kyth Wild had failed to resurrect after the experiment he helped with.
At first I didn’t want to believe Duncan. After all, Duncan had given me some information earlier that turned out to be false, and I was hoping he was wrong again. In my gut, though, I knew that he wasn’t wrong.
A few minutes later, Juniper came into the tavern crying hysterically, and for me that confirmed it. Juniper had just recently become Kyth’s squire, and to lose him already must have been a tragedy for her. In some ways, I can sympathize with her. A couple hours after I became squired to Duke Pinetree was when he was infected with the Draconian Sessuar transformation, and so I never really got to know my liege while I was a squire. For Juniper, though, it was even worse. Kyth had not gotten a curse of transformation; he had been killed, never to return.
Juniper insisted on going off to find Kes to tell her, and before I could stop her she and Rillien ran off. However, I knew that Kes had already left town, because she had passed by Algorian and I on her way out. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find Juniper and Rillien, though, so I called Caliphar over, explained the situation, and asked him to find them. He told me that in view of what happened to Kyth, he felt like mourning would be more appropriate, but he said he would do his best to put aside his grief for the moment and help me find them.
After Caliphar found them, Juniper returned to the guild. Personally, I felt that I wanted to give Kyth’s closest friends, like Roc and Juniper, some space, and so I stayed at the tavern, as did Caliphar and Rillien. Caliphar and I sat on the floor, reminiscing a bit about Kyth, and neither of us could find a way to believe that he was gone. All that time, and then gone, just like that.
Caliphar suggested that we should all go to his cabin and warm ourselves by a fire. We all agreed, and so we headed down. Shirokaze got the fire started for us, and we were joined by more and more people, until finally the only people in town not in the cabin were Roc and Juniper in the guild building.
After we had been there for almost an hour, Kaz came running in, telling us that the vampire was there. None of us were in much shape for fighting, but we nonetheless got ready to do the best we could. I pulled the words to weaken the vampire out of my pouch and started screaming them into the night. Nothing happened. Tovolia tried, and we heard the vampire scream in pain. Success!
Another vampire came up and DFM’d our ward with an arcane spell, so obviously they meant business. I ripped a component, and started a healing pool and a healer’s grace, which I invoked against every vampire I could see.
Two vampires attacked first; a very large one and a very small one. They got through our door, but we managed to fight them into a corner. While our casters kept the others out, our fighters cut down the two vampires. They went gaseous, but we couldn’t do anything about it. We needed our stake for the big one.
Next, another vampire came in alone. This one unloaded into me with a series of charm and fear spells, but I resisted all of them while I just kept swinging. The amount of healing damage I was dealing out soon one the day, and the vampire went gaseous and left. That left us with three to go.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck. Kaz got vampire charmed and ordered to come outside, and he flung himself out the door. He was cut down outside and eventually resurrected.
Lord Zerr had much the same thing happen, but he got a life spell and threw up a circle of power, so that saved him.
Meanwhile, the fight had slowed down to a standstill. I guarded the door to keep anything from coming in again, while Count Lyonesse, Sir Milo, Shirokaze, Caliphar, and anyone else that had spells and abilities left threw everything they had at the vampires at the door. We picked off one more vampire, but the big two were still left.
Finally, a charge was ordered, and we surged out the door at the two vampires. I went for the big one, since I had the stake to kill it. We dropped it, and I have to admit that the staking wasn’t quite as dramatic as I thought it might be. It was more of a hurried, herky-jerky staking than a true heroic act, but it got the job done.
Meanwhile, the small vampire got imprisoned, but then went gaseous and got away.
At the end of it, we were all exhausted. We found a little bit of treasure that we split up, and I suggested that we give the magic item to Kaz, since he took the resurrection of the fight.
Speaking of which, Kaz made it back from his resurrection successfully, as Rillien improved her record to two for two all time in resurrections. I have a great deal of faith in her abilities, and so I think Kaz was fortunate that she ended up resurrecting him.
It also turned out that Juniper and Roc were okay, as they had wisely decided to hide in a Circle in the Guild building instead of fight.
As a whole, I cannot call a gathering where we lose an adventurer like Baron Wild a good gathering. However, we will do as we always have done, and do our best to persevere. As always, it’s all we can do.