Whispers of Doom
DM-DGM
Players: Chemist, Olfsiem, Cynder, Lyric, Aldwin, Equinox, Tar
I had made it back to Ruined Oak to check on my friend Buddy, when I heard there was a group that was forming to check out the Whispering woods. Since I had not had any success on finding a group that wanted to go sailing, I decided to head out with them as rum doesn’t come free in Ruined Oak and perhaps it was a chance to earn a few coins.
Once we entered the woods things began to get weird. We encountered a wounded horse, which appeared to have been attacked with a dagger. I calmed it down a little but it did not want to have any thing to do with our group. It was then that Equinox began to detect if there was any magic in the area. It turns out that the whole area we were in radiated a necrotic aura, and strange whispers filled the air. Equinox tried focusing on the magic of the forest and suffered some kind of backlash from it. Not satisfied he then tried to comprehend what the whisper were saying which drew the attention of some foul multi-eyed birds and a large pack of rats, some of which had three eyes. The only thing I remember him understanding from the whisper was “The keeper of the secrets”. Some of the party began asking who that was, but I was thinking if I knew, then that person would not really be a keeper of secrets. I kept this thought to myself so maybe I am the keeper of the secrets, no no that is just crazy talk.
This was also the first time we noticed that the woods had a way of spooking folks making them want to run off in random direction. Had we only understood at that time as to how nefarious this was. We then moved a little ways from the woods, about a mile or so as Aldwin had mentioned that the last time he was here his party had been attacked by darklings and some kind of shadow wolves near the edge of the woods.
We entered the the next day, and the effects from the whispers only got worse, and just dusk was approaching the whole party scattered in all directions. Lyric and I took off in the same direction, I decided to follow her as she had mention preparing herself to be able to speak with the animals and trees of the area and I knew she was more familiar with the woods than I, ” I just wanted to go sailing, and bite things as a shark”. Luckily after a short time we regained our composure and decided to head back to where we had last seen the group. This was a good thing as Lyric noticed something strange which turned out to be Chemist’s little magic hut. The only one that was missing was Equinox. I noticed that the ones in the hut had decided to tie themselves together to help prevent individuals from running off, so I offered up some more rope so we would all be joined.
We had hoped to be able to wait out the night there and then go searching for Equinox in the morning, but we were disturbed by an horrific creature with a large bone saw. I quickly decided that things were about to really go south, so I called forth vines to entangle the creature. Hoping that restraints would suffice in case it turned out it wanted to talked instead of die. but then I was attacked by a most horrific twisted form of a baby that I had ever seen, that came burrowing up from the ground. The a few seconds later at the edge of my dark vision, a shadowy figure dispelled the tiny hut and another of the burrowing monster babies attacked the group from the south. The party was quick to react and subdued the first bone saw monstrosity while managing to stun the bad baby that was trying to bite my leg off. Then another bone saw dude came running up to us, it was very clear that it had been buffed, most likely by that shadowy mage guy. It attacked us in a hastily manner but found stiff resistance from Aldwin and Offsiem as it failed to hit its mark. Then the night was filled with an ungodly noise as the demon baby from the south, which Lyric and Cynder were tending to, let out a scream and a motherly? shadow form began to appear. I think one of the member had warded off the area or something as it did not come up to the party. At this point the tide of battle was in our favor as we were making short work of our foes. That is when the shadowy mage was observed cutting himself with his own dagger and then proceeded to hurl bloody missiles at us, with no regards to friends or foes. “Do evil people really have friends?” With that the mage then exited the battlefield using spatial magic.
We then survived the rest of the night somehow and searched for Equinox the next morning, but we only found a few tracks which looked like they went in circles. Not prepared to handle the dissonance that the woods had on us, we escaped the woods and headed back to town, without ever knowing Equinox’s fate.