Party:
Nalkris and Avarace
Jub the Goblin
Xenon the Archer
Eddings the halfling Bard
Britney the Kenku with an Ox called Toxic
Tohil Swift
Firey redheaded and bearded dwarf greeted us at the Jubjub strip mine, asking if we was from the Cove. This turned out to be Eddick Firebeard.
Fairly quick job, in and out, go in and check, take care of anything that might be existing at a location and come back to give him a report.
They (Jubjub’s) are a clan made of clans, its complicated, but they got permission, his clan (the firebeards) to take a good portion of the upper mountains next to the plains on the other side of these mountains.
Those who went to check it out did not come back yet, and they cannot rally any of the other dwarves, as that would make the Firebeard clan look weak.
Asked how long, they informed us they been gone a week, give or take, more of a recovery than a rescue mission, as they are assumed dead due to their lack of return, not fighters, more prospectors, more into the high altitude deals, avoiding the underdark and its dangers for fighters.
Location near the mountain ridge, nothing too far, take us a couple days to walk around the mountains to get to the location.
The site we are looking for is near a small lake/pond, easy access to fresh water, a “not too big an opening”, to mine from the inside rather than the outside.
Asked how many are missing, he said he belive its 4, 2 prospectors and 2 guards.
If we do find them, they should be carrying shields with the Firebeard symbols, a coat of arms a very large mountains in the middle with the sun directly behind it glowing.
If they are dead, we should bring their bodies home to a proper burial, they would appreciate it and consider it as us doing them a big favor.
Fairly chilly and windy, and cold in the snow, journey around the mountain, as we did not have the climbing gear for the more direct route.
As we was walking along Britney took some time to talk with everyone, boosting our spirits. It seems she had overheard an, admittedly, really motivating speech and was replicating it with her mimicry.
We encountered(saw at a distance) a funky tree, it was silvery in its leafs it still carried during the winter, a bird landed at the tree and in the blink of an eye it disappeared, leaving just something dripping from the branch it landed upon.
The funky tree was funky as the smaller branches seemed to support the bigger branches, rather than the other way around and its unnatural coloration in general.
We travelled on for the next half of the day and decided to make camp for the day as the sun started to set and everything got a dark tone to it, as the moon rose.
We ate nice game(rabbit) for dinner and then went to bed, I got the last watch.
Saw a small creature, tho unable to make out precisely what it was, but I got a feeling it was near the size of a medium dog, the type used for comfort and companionship near a fireplace more so than as a guard dog, playing around in the heavy snow not far away, searching perhaps for something to eat. Then I noticed another creature, more the size of an ox a few hundred feet more away, seemingly digging in the snow to look for food to eat, but again, with the snow I was unable to identify precisely what this 2nd creature was just like the first.
Then the small creature ran over to the large creature, grew to a huge size, like an elephant, and apparently quickly slayed and started to consume the large creature. Im just happy it moved further away from camp and stared at it for a good long while.
Also saw explosions in the sky revealing a blob like shape, woke up Eddings, but he couldn’t identify this distance explosion making creature far away in the sky.
Next evening we found the cave mentioned by the firebeard dwarf with a split little pond on the outside and immediately inside, worm/leech creatures attacked us, whom had glowing purple eyes.
Insane quantity of hideous worms:
The basic layouts of the fight was the 2 Big-mouthed Purple-leechers rushed forward towards us, covering the cave entrance, through not blocking it, taking advantage of their long range bite attacks, while the initial around 10 Grey-leechers rushed slowly forward, spitting poisonious slime at us until they got inside range, at which point they started biting and latching themselves on to our skin and sucking out blood before trying to bite even deeper into our skin.
Meanwhile, 4 hidious purple egg-sacks at the back of the small cave was continiously spewing out more and more of the tiny grey-leeches, and before we got those egg-sacks destroyed with our ranged attacks, they had increased the Grey-leeches from a around 10 to around 30, swarming out towards us, I think Britney had 6 of them attached to her body at one pount, poor little Kenku.
Fortunately with a combination of all the area of effect magic we could conjure and the Purple Parents indiscriminate usage of gas cloud attacks they could unleash, hitting their small minions/children and killing some of them in the process, we was able to pull through this hard fight, but it did look grim at some points.
For myself, the only way I could harm several at once was with the Maddening curse I was able to spread through my Hex and a single use of my Eladrin fey-step ability combined with the newest power granted to me by my Raven Queen, thunder step, magically stepping into the midst of the monsters and then with a thunderous roar and snap stepping magically out again, sending the damage of a thunder out to those near where I had just been, did unfortunately hit Britney a bit as well.
Britney went down a few times, one of these times, Avarace flew to Britney’s aid and put a goodberry in the mouth of Britney to wake her back up.
Edding also went down, but was also quickly brought back to life, it was a challenging fight for sure.
After we won, we searched the cave, which was small so took not too long, and found out the leeches had used the bodies of the dwarves to make those egg-sacks, finding shields with their emblems, mixed bones and their skulls inside, finding 5 skulls, weirdly enough, but 4 shields matching the mission firebeards. Packed up the 4 shields and 5 skulls to take back to Eddick..
Then we made camp at the cave entrance, using the magical spell of Tiny hut to cover the entrance and blocking it. Good thing too, because during the night, we encountered a new type of Leech:
Looked absolutely terrifying to wake up to, but turned out to be rather easy. A Quick barrage from each member of our team and it was down. Guess they thrive in flocks rather than as loners. It looked like it was going to flee, but never got the chance.
We started journey back around the mountain, a 2 day trip.
On our return, we found the dwarves punishing two bandits with their own style of justice, beating them up very badly, breaking some limbs, in a public circle. We took care of the hurt allegded bandits while getting our reward from Eddick Firebeard and then on the way back to the Cove, we let the bandits go, once they recovered enough, we just wanted to avoid the Jubjub’s getting carried away and eventually becoming murderers due to their rage, which had already almost crippled these two misguided souls.