Dungeon Master: Calmseeker
Player Characters: Balthier, Cavendish, Horace, Murdrum, Nalkris, Nuemu and Tenfoll’at.
Salutations Reader,
I hope that if you are reading this it is because I shared this note with you or you went through my stuff while I was sleeping; hopefully I am not a dead body yet. It has been a long time since I’ve decided to document my perilous adventures. A group of us gathered to head to the Briarwall and deal with some former slavemasters causing trouble. I was very cautious with so many new faces joining the party this time. Well, spoiler alert, I made it out alive so I guess we can somehow trust them but that might be their ruse to steal my hat and precious belongings. I will have to keep track of those individuals but if I die, you might want to check their alibi.
After introducing ourselves, since we will be spending days in each other’s company, we traveled North. Once we reached the stone pillar, Murdrum told the rest of the party about our previous excursion where Faenoa used her blood to open the passageway. Nuemu volunteered to used his blood to open the staircase to the tunnel. Interesting that someone would volunteer to cut their palm to do that but I guess it is better than them cutting my palm eh.
The party then entered the dark labyrinth and having been there before, I told them about the deal we made with the cloakers and not to attack them at first sight. I knew if I didn’t share this with them, someone would attack them and all of our hard work would have gone in vain. Knowing the way around, I lead the party through and re-introduced myself to the cloakers(showed the armband) and followed up with the offerings of a few rations to let us pass through. After a tiring day, we set camp and I pulled the Leomund’s Tiny Hut for some much needed protection at night. During my night watch, I heard a few drow pass by and as any smart creature would do, I woke everyone up and asked them to be quiet. One of the drows were sniffing something in the air, I believe Balthier didn’t take a shower in a looooong time. Being a friend (until proven otherwise) of his, I prestidigitated him and made him smell like a garden of roses. The drows moved on and didn’t bother us that night. However, we were woken up at some point because there was a hag and some wraiths detecting magic and found us. I am no longer surprised at this point, they are always coming for me but with the help of the party mates, we were able to defeat them and get some beauty sleep that night.
As we started heading out the next day, we met a few elves lead by Lieutenant Penny who was in charge of escorting adventurers who responded to their request. They guided us to Silver Town where we were given Amulets of Ranking Taxonomy (ARTs). Needless to say, they gave me one of the lower ranks(rank 4) so that they could take advantage of me but worry not, your favorite hobgoblin was alert throughout the adventure. The party was then brought to Elena Coppers who was the acting leader of Silver town during the absence of Silverson. She briefed us about the slavemasters and how Lieutant Penny would be our guide through the forest. Before we left the town, a few of us bought some ration. Be warned, if you are of a lower rank, you will get duped for even the simplest of things like rations. We eventually set out on our way to free the abducted former slaves, Horace and I got pricked by some magical thorns. We were both injured but Horace seemed to have aged from that incidence. How did we manage to get hurt with such skilled guides as a Lieutenant you ask? I do have the same questions. Maybe being a higher rank isn’t better after all. As our day was coming to an end, we set out camp and brought the much needed LTH up.
During the night, we were woken up because a skeleton figure which was riding a skeletal horse was approaching us. As he approached us, he started questioning us about the gnolls. I don’t like to be interrogated by unknown creatures but I guess enemies of my enemies are alliances? Having read about such creatures, I figured he was a revenant who was seeking revenge and as long as we do not obstruct his path, he will not be hostile towards us. We offered to help him fight some gnolls that caused great destruction to our former place of residence but since he was in a rush, he mentioned that he works closely with Sitaris if we wanted to contact him in the future. As he was leaving, he did warn us about being careful about the vampire; that was some wise advice, one should always be wary of vampires(or any creatures). The next day, we found some humanoid tracks and we followed them to find the cave mentioned by Elena Coppers. Penny and the other drows guarded the entrance to welcome the freed slaves. Being an avid adventurer, I knew we had to be careful for traps and magical things, so I was always look out for those and found quite a few. Further into the cave, we were welcomed by 2 young remorhaz. After defeating them, we found a tunnel that they dug through to come attack me and you would never guess what we found in there. Brace yourselves, there were 4 tied hobgoblins!!! They must have missed their target(me) and captured these 4 poor hobgoblins. After talking to them, I learned that they were slaves to the drows. I was both shocked and disappointed in my kind and tried to share some of my wisdom with them about being wary of creatures on the island. Hopefully that will help them survive in the future but who knows? I told them to head out and that we have reinforcement by the opening of the tunnel, who are here to rescue them.
We moved deeper into the tunnel where we heard more voices coming from and not to our surprise we found the drow slavemaster in the company of a drider, 2 drow minions, an adult remorhaz and a swordswoman of torture. Noticing our fellow elf friends, Arara, the leader, tried to convince them to join her quest to enslave the inferior creatures but they denied it. I guess I can trust our elf friends based on this interaction, they could have dominated the world but chose to fight by our sides. After a very intense battle, with a lot of injuries and feeling drained, we freed the slaves. During the night, we were approached by a group of monks; I recognized Kirumi and felt safe to let them spend the night with us. The next morning, they told us about their findings; a tunnel appeared by their monastery that seemed to have been dug by those remorhaz creatures. One should be careful if one were to use these tunnels in the future, those remorhaz were not fun to fight against as when you kill them, they cause damage to everyone within melee range along with some other features they have.
The party started heading back the next day and on our way to ruined oak, we saw Sitaris. We mentioned the Skeleton Knight and he called him by the name of Eribor. However, Sitaris was more keen to learn more about a certain Alex who might be a potential future vampire spawn. I am not sure what all of that entails but if anyone knows Alex, I would let him know about Sitaris so that he is not taken by surprise. We finally made it back in one piece, it was a rough adventure, I am going to recover from it and try to improve my skills so that I can assist my party even more in tough battles like the other day. Hopefully you will hear back from yout favorite hobgoblin Tenfoll’at. If not, he must have found me and that is all the knowledge I would have been able to share with you, stranger reading my notes.
Until next time,
Tenfoll’at
xoxo