DM: ReddestMage
Players: Lloyd(Zandaris), Bouboukis(Vilios), Rubr(Khora), Valerian(Valerian), Fridgeous(Johann Tower), Iceforge(Nalkris), the stunning black raven Avarace
We was all minding ourselves, enjoying the music and dancing, at least I was, in the tavern in WMC, when the major came in and took issue with us just having a good time at the inn, and he selected, seemingly at random, myself and Avarace, along with 5 other patrons of the Inn and told us to go out of town and don’t come back today or tomorrow.
We introduced ourselves, besides myself and my trusty black raven Avarace, we had quite a colorful group.
Vilios, male the half-orc, who talked about his sister being why he was sent to Sleeper Island, it sounded quite complicated.
Khora female Merfolk, armor with different weird pieces of metal attached to it, is often tinkering with something
Valerian, male mountain Dwarf, dressed in chainmail, carrying a warhammer, he likes to sing sea chanties, and talks like a veteran sailor, spreading the word about some inferior dwarf deity
Zandaris, a rather lean male Kor, wears black mask with silver etchings in it and is the quiet type, wears a bow and shortsword
Johann, a blueskinned male Merfolk with a commanding presense in the room, as he plays his lute, clearly a bard.
We started traveling north along the road near the beach, exploring the lands as we travelled, and quickly elected Khora as the leader of our little ragtag gang, Valerian was keeping lookout for troubles and Zandaris was double checking our bearing, so we wouldn’t get lost.
The first several hours was peaceful and then we left the roads to continue following along the beach, now curving to the east for us, and our travel was as peaceful as the calming sound of waves striking sand, feeling the light salty breeze of ocean air was over us, and we continued like that for a few hours, before the daylight started to dim, and the sky quickly turned dark, so we made a suitable camp a bit up from the beach and into the plains, with a small campfire, hoping we would avoid unwanted attention.
Zandaris lead a little forage expedition, and with my aid, he managed to lead us to a bush covered in plumb delicious berries and we picked as many as we could carry back to camp.
After we gourged ourselves on the juicy berries, people got sleepy, so I took the first watch along with Avarace, and everything was peaceful and the landscape was beautiful. As the fading light made the colors drain from my sight, the ocean seemed even more beautiful than it had during the daytime. I stopped watch and left Johann and Zandaris to keep watch, as I started resting with Avarace.
Some time later we was awoken from our sleep by Vilios and Valerian, and we could all feel this strange draping tingling sensation cover our bodies, it felt icky and unpleasant, and upset Avarace.
Khora wandered down the beach a bit, instructing us not to follow her, and I started activating my Eldritch Sight to see if this feeling was somehow magical.
Khora let out a distant whimpering moan of pain, and before I could give it any consideration, I let out a scream of pain myself, as my eyes burned as my Eldritch Sight activated, it felt like it burned pain into my memories.
The others said they knew what this was, it was apparently a disturbance of the weave of magic itself and quite a natural thing, making the usage of magic painful while it lasted, and we went back to sleep, altho the lingering pain made that quite hard to do.
Later yet again, our rest was disturbed, this time a rumbling scraping sound awoke us, as Khora and Vilios was already awake, watching these two strange creatures near our camp; The others later informed me these creatures was calling Rhinosorauses; Truly beautiful magnificent creatures, they used these long horns ontop of their snouts to ruzzle the trees and make fruit fall down to them.
I rolled our few leftover berries over towards the smaller one, I think it was a mother and kid pair, which scared the little one initially, and made the mother eye me out to make sure I was not a threat. Once she was satisfied, her pup moved up and ate the berries and then they moved on, and we finished our rest.
In the morning, unfortunately the tingling draping sensation was still covering us, but we picked up camp and started trekking along the beach once more.
To lighten the mood, I asked Johann to play his lute for us, and to my delight, Valerian offered to sing one of his shanties for us, and as he began singing, Johann joined in, both playing along on his lute and singing the same lyrics.
The next few hours of travel felt so easy with nice music, and the unpleasant tingling soon stopped.
After a few hours trekking, Valerian pointed a ruin ontop of a cliff ahead out to the rest of us, and we sent out Avarace to scout it from the air.
It was an old abandoned temple of some sort, and looking through Avaraces eyes, I saw that over the stone double doors of the tempel was a strange seemingly religious symbol that I did not recognize.
I called Avarace back and drew the symbol in the sand, but none the others recognized it either, so we tracked up into land to get up the cliff to the temple.
On closer inspection, still nobody recognized this symbol, of a shining black orb or opal, with a crashing wave on each side, falling away from the central orb.
After a brief exploration outside the temple, Valerian used his divine gift to make the doors of the temple quickly push open with an almost groaning rumbling noise that echoed through the building, revealing a small entrance champer for the temple, with just 20ft before the next double stone door.
When Valerian once again used his divine gift to make that swing open quickly as well, while I was thinking how I wish my Queen will one day grant me a similar gift from her majestic power, we heard noise inside and saw strange green creatures inside, or well, I saw them a moment later, as I could not see inside, but the others assured me they saw them right as the door opened.
Most of them was small, nearly our size, but one, behind the old alter, was huge, bigger than an orc, more like the size of an ogre, and they became immediately hostile towards us, and battle broke out.
We let loose arrows, crossbow bolts, and I used my Eldritch Blast, one of the gifts my Queen has given me so far, while Vilios took frontal position, and he nearly cut down one of those approaching that the rest of us had hurt badly, but then the other walls of the temple started shaking and rumbling and I warned the others of the footsteps I could hear on the other side of the wall.
Johann had such cutting words, shouting to the creature that its mother was a snake, but despite his harshness, it did not seem to mind.
We barely had time to react to these noise, before it became a loud thunderous clap of stone against stone, or perhaps metal against stone, and the wall crumbled and more creatures emerged. We was significantly outnumbered by these strange creatures, and worse still, another of them was huge as the one from behind the alter, and they was charging straight at us, and while we was so far unharmed, we had only downed one of over 10 of these creatures, so we started retreating, while Johann informed one of them that its mother was so fat, that she juggled with planets.
Valerian used both his divine powers to slam closed on of the double doors again and to create a cloud of fog, obscuring our retreat, and we downed one more of the creatures from the distance, as we retreated, and happily noticed they did not give chase to us.
We briefly debated if we should go back, but then again, the creatures had not attacked us, but merely defended their temple when we came and loudly swung the door open, so perhaps they just wished to be left in peace, so we started heading back towards town, once again trekking along the beach, and everything was peaceful for several hours, until we heard a loud crackling laughter coming from inland.
I assumed someone was just having a grand ole time and enjoying life, what a wonderful thing, but the moment I sent out Avarace to investigate, a dart struck Avarace, instantly killing him, and I could feel my blood starting to boil with fury, and my wonderful new comrades all seemed upset as well, how glorious a gang I had been seemingly randomly put into.
We quickly discovered 3 lousy worthless gnolls was behind this despicable act, and while they seemed to initially consider us easy prey, Zandaris quickly showed them otherwise, expertly killing one of them with the strike of a single arrow from his bow.
One of the surving gnolls immediately started fleeing as the cowardly foul creature it is, while the last moronically charged into melee with Vilios.
Vilious released a fury of blows on it and without it hitting him once, he beat it to death, wile Zandaris, Khora and Valerian helped me chase down the fleeing cowardly one, who tried to duck and hide behind a tree, but with Eldritch Blasts having already hit his back, he had no chance when Zandaris arrows once again struck true, and we killed him easily as well, still unharmed, except for poor Avarace.
We looted their bodies, they did have a lot of gold on them, enough that we all got a split of 20 gold each, and we took a short rest, and my Queen brought Avarace back to me from the Shadowfell, and we finished our trek back to WMC, arriving just before midnight, and despite coming back before he had told us we could, the major seemed pleased we had at least been out of town and not just drinking away in the tavern for 2 days at least.
And perhaps I should talk to Valerian more, having seen his power, perhaps his Dwarven deity is not as inferior as I first assumed.