Saralas: Session 17

• It is the morning of the 17th
• We hear raycella (the girl) screaming and are awoken
• The room is covered in ice. The paralysis lifts as soon as the woman faded from view
• A guy comes into the hallway "What is going on?!" Rudra explains it away, and the guy tells us to keep it down.
• I heard the scream and quickly gather my gear and look into the hallway
• Rudra describes the lady and is pretty sure it is Auril. I ask her what happened, did she use the door, did she come through the window? Rudra does not know.
• I go outside the inn to investigate, but see no tracks, footprints, or any other signs.
• Back inside, Karthos casts Detect Magic and notices that though the ice and the girl are 'normal' but Resda's dagger, the one she used to cut down the girl, is profoundly magical
• I think about the Sacrifices as I stand outside. Maybe Auril cares, in that way that "this is mine, you shouldn't mess with my things".
• I had my rest so I keep watch the remainder of the night, though the night passes uneventfully.
• Ronaldo comes up and is very excited to hear we went up to the lake and asks if we saw anything. He clearly means Treasure. The white lady said there was treasure worth several thousand gold. He asks if we've seen a cauldron.
  • We have, I say
  • The white lady said the magic cauldron could solve the town's problems
• Karthos brain thing is getting worse and he asks us somewhat urgently if we can try to track down the comet We head towards good mead
• As we are traveling we are confronted by a Frost Giant. He looks pissed.
• The fight was very difficult. The giant seemed to particularly have it in for Korag, who he kept swinging at and nearly killed. Then he throw a huge boulder at me and knocked me fully out, nearly killing me. I managed to recover enough to kill it with a last arrow. The giant rat that I pulled out of the gray bag of tricks was a major help.
• We enter good mead, a verbeeg? has stolen two casks of mead and this has kept happening. Last time when the Speaker tried to prevent the theft the speaker was killed. The town is now without a speaker
• We ask what is going on. I ask if they can describe the giant that is stealing their mead. They think it's the same one every time?
• We are talking to Garrett Pratley. The town sacrifices warmth on the 15th of the month.
• They ask for help trying to stop this. They offer mead and a place to stay if we agree to help them.
• It heads off to the northwest and they sent 5 best fighters from their militia northwest to track it, but they never heard back from them
• Verbeegs are a giant kin race. They are fairly common in the north. They are sometimes known as Behemoths. They look essentially like people but they have very long limbs. They are known to fight by mimicking the languages and sounds of other intelligent races to lure people in. They craft their own armor, and use spears which they throw. They hate frost giants and other giant kind.
• Karthos suggests making a deal with the Giant to trade protection for mead. The town isn't particularly interested in this. They plan to hold a speaker election after this issue is resolved. We agree to help.
• Karthos talks to the druids to get more information.
• I ask about the shrine. It's the shrine of the flaming sword, the srhine of tempus, the god of war. The temple has been abandoned and it is where they are temporarily storing the speaker's body.
• The shrine was built nearly a century ago when Good Mead was fighting regularly with Dougan's Hole, and the lake was known as Redwaters. But now it's mostly abandoned and is used as a gathering place.
• I have strange and vivid dreams of my family, which fill me with happiness and I long to return to those times.
• **Morning of the 18th**
• As we approach the woods a man in cold weather gear runs out of the woods at full speed. He is carrying animal traps and one has a fox in it which appears to be in a panic.
• The man tells us, half in a panic and half exhausted, that he just found the five militiamen. The scene was grisly.
• Rudra wants to buy the fox, so she do it. The fox points to the forest as the location of the dead men and where the forest is, but she doesn't know much about specifics.
• We go track down the bodies. We follow the tracks of the man for about 45 minutes or so at a cautious pace.
• Before too much longer we come across the grisly scene, with 5 human corpses in quite bad condition.
• Karthos is certain that this was not the work of a giant. It was an ogre club. And he sees the tracks he believes belong to the ogre. Large giant humanoid, very muscular, 600-650 pounds, 9-10 feet tall. Bleed black.
• We hear a woman's voice. "Well that sucks she says". It's wodna.
• Karthos points out all the things that explain why it's an ogre. Wodna is finding trees for her employer who is building a great lodge on the coast.
• The tracks lead to a cave entrance, There are three entrances. The west cave has a stream. The northeast cave has a yawning mouth with tracks leading in.
• Half submerged in the icy mire are the bones and tusks of a large dead mammoth. Beyond these lies a yawning cave mouth.
• There is a junction, and light and a delicious smell are coming from the south.
• Karthos keeps creeping his way south. Min follows but trips and yells, which echoes down the corridors of the cave. Everyone hears this. And into the room comes a verbeeg maurader and an ogre.
• We win the fight over both of them. Saralas has the killing blow on the verbeeg. The rat, Bill, gets the killing blow on the Ogre.
• There are 7 goats and 6 sheep in a pen in the room, in healthy condition.
• I search the maurader. The maurader doesn't have any items. The roasting meat is dwarf. I notice a small bundle near the campfire containing a dwarven battle axe and thick leather boots.
• One of the barrels contains meade, the other contains salt and pepper. The crate contains straw that was probably used to feed goats.
• Resda goes north to explore. They find 6 baskets hanging from the ceiling. In the corner of the room there are three barrels marked with good mead's symbols. They lower the baskets. They are treasure baskets, containing 35 gold, a pale pink stone worth 10 gold, a healing kit, a hunting trap, and silver sling stones. One of the three casks is empty. Each of the others holds 20 gallons of mead.
• To the north of me I find a dead end room with a refuse pit.
• Karthos finds an ancient tomb. There is a coffin in the center of the room, and the walls are covered in pictographs, which depect how the chieftain led her tribe to settle icewind dale, and how they fought off terrible monsters to settle this land. One of the pictures clearly shows the chieftain holding a wand and casting a destructive spell.
• I go west. A natural tunnel crosses a ring-shaped chamber that appears to have been a burial chamber. I find a stone knife sitting on the ground. It is of giant make, probably belongs to the maurader. I see sharpening stones and stuff that it looks like the marauder was using as tools to make the knife.
• To the south I see burial niches with bones in them, but animals have been in here and very little is left. I leave the bones be. The others go to crack open the tomb. Min grabs a wand. The other hand of the dead body is holding a stone, which appears to be a large pearl. It is a pearl of power.
• The wand is the wand of the war mage. While holding this wand you gain a bonus to spell attack rolls. In addition, ignore half cover.
• In the northwestern corner of the cave we find a Polar Bear. The polar bear flees
• The room contains a basket of metal fragments that appear to have been gathered. The metal is twisted and charred and appears to have been worked. But it seems odd. Karthos believes the metal is not from this world. Karthos takes it.
• Also in the room is a 7 foot deep frozen pool. Trapped beneath the pool's ice is a stone statue of a smiling young man, naked but for an oak leaf. His face turned upwards towards the sky.
• It's a statue of Sylvanus, the god of nature. The oak leaf is his holy symbol.
• We head back to town to explain everything that happened and where they can find the bodies. They are as happy as they could be, and wish they could do more for us.
• Karthos talks to the druids about the statue. They ask if it is magical, and we say it appeared to be abjuration magic. It may contain a spell or be able to give a blessing.
• In the morning we head toward's Dougan's hole
• Along the road we see a small hilltop on the otherwise flat tundra. On this hilltop we can see two figures glowing. They are wearing cold weather gear, but their faces are glowing a deep blue shining out in front of them. We keep going.
• Dougan's Hole is the smallest an most insular of the 10 towns. The dock is too small to support industry, and ice has rendered the dock unsafe. Min and Karthos want to pass on through and look for where the voices are coming from.
• Dougan's Hole is beset by winter wolves that stalk the outskirts of town. A man says they know words and have a mighty vocabulary. They caught some people out by the stones of thruun. They want a king's ransom of food and gold, and say no one can leave until they are paid off.
• The wolves have been around for weeks, but it was only the other day they kidnapped the people.
• They have seen the comet, a large bright light to the south. Min tries to leave town and a large wolf comes up to her, looking pitiful. But it's a ruse. A mean old frost giant named Groggy has kidnapped two townspeople and the wolves claim they are being blamed for it.
• The wolves claim they would be willing to help, and the prisoners are being held in a lodge a half-day's walk from here. The wolves don't seem trustworthy, but are quite manipulative. We say we have a pressing need to head south, the wolves try to convince us we would be responsible
• We keep heading south. Along the way we see a body on a chair. Rudra pokes it and we all fall off a white dragon we were standing on. Which bellows "Who are you disturbing me?"
• We fall and bow, the dragon seems upset. It clearly wants to attack. It does and we run. We are scattered, and dig in to wait out the blizzard, which lasts 3 more hours. 3 hours later we manage to find each other, and keep heading south.
• Eventually we come across a huge thing that looks like a cephalopod. This seems to be the source of the distress call Karthos is hearing in his head. It has huge tentacles and stuff.
• We approach from the tentacle end.
• Karthos believes this is a nautiloid, a spell jamming spacecraft flow by Illithied. It has very obviously crashed. This is a crashed mind flayer ship.
• Nearby we see carrion crawlers. Large pets often carried by mind flayers.
• We get up on the deck. At the back of the deck, a double door of chitin and iron is between two higher decks.
• Rudra opens the door. Karthos goes through. Attached to the wall in the chamber are chains to hold large creatures. There are four creatures in the room, three are small, the fourth is a stitched together monstrosity.
• After a small amount of time a mind flayer appears on the stairwell.
• Karthos hands over the crystal and the mind flayer goes back upstairs
• We leave, and the ship starts to lift out of the snow. It lifts off and then slowly moves across the landscape and is out of sight, and the valley is quiet. After this happens, the voices are gone. We don't see the carrion crawlers.
• We start to head back towards Dougan's Hole. Along the way we see something under the snow, circling the group. Our escape is blocked by a boulet? which is very intent on us not leaving.
• We manage to kill it, and get back to Dougan's Hole and find someone who will let us stay the night.