Yatari, Lionel, Eos, Clawe, Pawed, Jevin
Another successful mission! Well… mostly… no one died except some of the people that should have. And only one of my party members had their blood stolen to be used for a nefarious plot…
So we hit to the winter road with the sun on our backs and went searching for the groady gnolls. When we reached the crossroads, there were more makeshift shacks that had apparently been erected and subsequently destroyed since my last pass by here. Someone spotted some boot tracks in the area. Two sets of boot prints, one much heavier than the other. It led north away from the road but being as gnolls are usually barefoot we decided to keep following the road.
Now about this time, we noticed a possible storm coming on. I recall someone saying we should stop for shelter but I felt cocky, I mean what could go wrong?
Everything went wrong…
We got caught in a blizzard, visibility went to almost zero. We walked close together to keep sight of each other when suddenly a howl froze us cold. I heard Jevin struggling and hopped next to him and almost died.
I have to admit dear reader, while I do try my best to hold it down for everyone, I just cant not deal with dead things that move. Between screams, I tried my best to help out. All I heard were yells coming out of the white blankness of the blizzard, mixed with the howling wind and the crunching of bones.
These gnolls had no reason to exist anymore, most of their rotting flesh was gone, their putrid smell was overpowering. It took a long time to get that scent off of me. So so gross. One dropped but another rose in front of me. Bigger and stronger than the one before him. Revolting tendrils of decayed flesh wrapped around me and pulled me with it. I could hear my companions but I couldn’t see them. I heard cries of terror and pain all around me… some of it was definitely my own.
I was gonna die alone in the snow…. this was gonna be the end of my tale. Suddenly Clawe popped out of the white wall of the blizzard and killed the creature holding me. I could see the fear in his eyes, the shakiness of his voice. True fear had struck him. I bolstered my strength and placed my hands on his shoulders and told him. He was our only hope. The sing-song of my voice lifted his spirits, (thank you, professor Donaldson, for teaching me the words of heroism.) and sent him on his way to save everyone else.
We all huddled together once the screaming stopped and I could collect my self. For some reason, the attackers just fled. We worked together as a team to create a shelter to protect us from the storm and waited it out. We set our watches and I closed my eyes under the protection of jevin.
I was awoken to the morning light…
Jevin forgot to wake the next watch. Luckily we were not accosted as we slept, however, we did awaken to the presence of an elf standing adjacent to us and watching us. Which I have to say, dear reader… CREEPY AF!!!! Like seriously who does that? Like how long was he standing there? Why was he standing there?
Lionel and I tried to talk with him but he basically ignored us and only would talk in elven. We later learned he was gonna go off with a bunch of other creepy elves and go look at a crater all day. He told us not to follow him as it was too dangerous. I am certain they were gonna just gather around and share creepy stories with each other.
So while Jevin and Pawe talked with the Elf the rest of us discussed our next moves. At this point I learned we were nott attacked by just undead… oh no… apparently we had a very strong gnoll that seemed intent on attacking Lionel with a syringe and apparently stole his blood right before they took off.
Lionel asked what could they do with a vial of his blood. Blood magic was one of my favorite courses of study in college so I began to describe all of the fun things you could do with it. When I got to the end of the list I noticed lionel was becoming very disconcerting and put on my leader hat and told him everything would be fine. See I told you reader, I am like super good with this whole leader thing.
We packed up and hit the morning road towards the Tempest Plains. At the next intersection we found a dead human, bootless and robbed of all valuables. Pawe and Eos looked the body over and found a puncture wound in it’s neck similar to lionel. I admired the naked dead guy because he did what you are supposed to do when you die. Just lie there. We continued on.
Along the road, we found a Shrine to Zoran. It had that symbol he always wears. There was this bowl of unfrozen water that Lionel tried to commune with… I think he’s made Zoren his god now.
We continued onward to the end of the road when we heard a lot of guttural voices in the distance. We activated stealth force alpha where the cat cousins and lionel ventured ahead of our scouting, I kept back from them while keeping Eos and Jevin in the rear as they did not feel they were sneaky. I was so proud of everyone acting tactically. We slowly crept up to a ridge where the three could see what was happening.
Using a message between. Lionel and I were all able to pass on information. Apparently over that ridge was an army of gnolls practicing military drills being lead by some sort of bird person and a few dwarves. We were too far for any of our scouts to make out any insignias.
They seemed to have some powerful magic users that opened portals of ice to bring forth even more impressive dwarves and their chieftain Gnoll that stole Lionel’s blood. They counted about 30 soldiers, plus saw a small army of very tough undead being risen from the snow. Eventually, they set up I to a marching formation and were lead northwest, further into the tempest plains.
This army is large, comprised of powerful soldiers that are well trained.
We debated sending someone to try and follow but demeaned the information was too valuable to risk dying. So we decided to head home. After we slept we headed cross country to reach a well that I had read could transport us back home. Along the journey, we found some dwarves dead in the snow being picked apart by a wolf. Beyond that our journey towards the well was uneventful.
We slept and awoken and headed to the road crossing where we met some merchants from white moon cove who ended up picking us up and taking us to the Jub Jub mining group. We have them all the I for we had and they dispatched their eagles to inform their people. We were finally able to get a warm place to sleep. We will be heading back tomorrow with the merchants and I’m told this will reach WMC before I get back. Be careful out there.