DM: Rasz
Players: Zak, Montgomery, Indr, Hanna, Ronda, Naal
Day 1
This morning I embarked on a different type of adventure. Our goal isn’t to excavate an underwater temple, to make friends with kobolds, or to face off against feral beasts in the Neathy Wood. We’re doing something far more interesting: we’re helping to build a road.
I met the group of adventurers that I was to be working with at the Axe and Thistle, and we made our way quickly to the Blood Eye Clan. On the way, we introduced ourselves, and right off the bat, I find General Montgomery the most delightful of people. He serves some god of darkness and despair, and he claims some authority over the rest of us due to a military rank that holds no sway on this island. How charming. I resolved to attempt to be friends with him.
At Blood Eye, we met Constantine, a handsome man who introduced himself as the leader of our crew of workers. He seemed like a fairly trustworthy person, with impeccable pronunciation of my title, and we set out on our intended path west.
On our path, we came across the body of a hobgoblin, a shoddy arrow sticking out of its back. Upon sending Hanna back to the Blood Eye Clan (at an insane speed) we discovered that the hobgoblin was probably killed by a number of “pests.” We were told that if we came into contact with the black blood of these pests, we should immolate ourselves or risk spreading the terrible disease. I found this advice to be simply enlightening–you either die, or you die. Lovely.
Montgomery was being his delightful self, so I tried to take him down a few pegs by claiming military authority over him. Little did I know how many pegs it would take him down. I did get a couple of veiled threats from Indr, and that was mildly concerning, but whatever.
Continuing, we came across a strange book in the trail, and though we treated it with extreme caution, it simply proved to be a children’s astronomy book called Solar System for Kids.
Night 1
Our night was interrupted by a group of creatures dragging one of the workers away. Upon investigation, we came across a group of strange creatures, one of whom I sketched above. Aren’t they simply enchantingly beautiful? The General discovered quite quickly that they did not, in fact, speak French, and combat ensued.
The struggle was difficult, as these creatures proved to have the very same black blood we were told to avoid, and we had to be very careful. We proved victorious, however, with Ms. ka Thrandh saying “All who hunger eventually starve, little creature, it is the law of ice and snow” and murdering the last one. It was quite the one-liner, if I do say so myself.
We cleansed our weapons of the blood, and spoke with the worker who, while traumatized, proved to be physically fine. Hanna found something, but refused to tell us what it was. I deemed it probably harmless, and we went on with our rest.
Day 2
Our morning was terribly boring: you know, everyday things like the sighting of a ruined tower in the distance, out of which 4 gigantic winged shadows flew out of, flying in each of the cardinal directions. How mundane, no? The one flying in our general direction appeared to be on some sort of hunt, but did not come close enough for us to glean any details. We came to the conclusion that they were most likely some sort of drake–how terribly uninteresting for the people of White Moon Cove.
The day became slightly more interesting upon the discovery of a pile of burning ruins, featuring five, burnt-to-a-crisp, vaguely humanoid corpses. The smell was simply delightful. Montgomery discovered a bit of disease in the center of it, and Ms. ka Thrandh attempted to immolate it, but only succeeded in uncovering a cesspit of ooze. We decided to seal it the next day when we had the ability to magically augment Ronda’s muscles, and the workers continued to work. However, as gloaming fell, ten cloaked figures approached, pointing towards our workers and grumbling most eloquently for “food.”
Combat ensued, as can be expected. I was at quite the disadvantage, seeing as I felt forced to use my crossbow rather than face the black poison pouring off of their blades, but eventually got fed up, and whipped out my sword and shield, and upon attempting to run up and slice one’s head off, found myself out of range. Not to worry, however, as everyone’s favorite Tabaxi bodily threw me into range, and, as the Lich Queen says, “off with her head.”
Everyone found themself infected, and Monty was able to cure Ronda, but was tapped out in terms of divine power for the day. I attempted to cleanse my wound with fire, but only succeeded in giving myself a sweet burn scar on my arm.
After a frustratingly long debate, we notified Constantine of our plight and that we had decided to keep watch from a distance.
Night 2
I dreamed of darkness and dirt. I think it was underground? There were babies crying, and screams of agony. And music, dark and twisted music that seemed to be calling to me. Requesting me to come. Scary, but the feeling of unease wore off over the next day.
Day 3
Ms. ka Thrandh and General Montgomery cured us of our disease, Ronda sealed the cesspit of disease with a large boulder, I had a conversation with Conner about his mastery of magical vocal projection, and we came across an altar to the fiends of sloth that put people to sleep upon approaching it. We looted the altar of some coins and a creepy, but nonmagical prayer book, and detoured around it. We found more burning ruins, but did not find anything of interest. We discovered, however, that the item that Hanna had found a while ago was some form of drug, that was causing her to be hyper-fixated on a certain fireplace. I had to drag her away from it.
Night 3
We came across the corpse of a dwarf when we were foraging for food. Very scorched, and raked with the claws of a large beast. We buried him and moved on with our night, as he did not appear to be a dwarf of the Jub Jub clan. I had a fairly inconsequential talk about philosophy with Naal and Montgomery, and we retired. On my watch, we noticed a conflagration on the horizon. Naal reminded us that a similar thing had happened in the ruined town we had come across a while earlier, but it was deemed too far away to worry about. We also experienced what Naal called a “weave quake” in which Montgomery’s light spell surged, blinding us momentarily. We went back to sleep…
…and were waken up by the tortured screams of dying innocents. My favorite way to wake up. A pack of wolves was attempting to eat our workers! How simply delightful. We were dispatching them without much trouble, when we heard clapping from above. A man was floating in mid air, sitting on nothing, scribbling in a book. I finished up the fight by showering Naal in wolf-brain confetti, and we spoke with the floating man. He was elegantly dressed, and quite handsome–I would sketch him, but (despite my proven ability to perfectly sketch various monsters) I have no skill when it comes to people.
Upon being pressed for a name, he insisted upon simply being called “The Architect.” He did not give us straight answers for any of our questions, but did cure the workers and remove their memories of the traumatic almost-being-eaten event. He also cured us, on the condition that three of us gave him samples of their flesh blood in return. I was skeptical of his proclaimed innocuous request, but Ms. ka Thrandh, General Montgomery, and Miss Songheart submitted to him nonetheless.
Day 4
Feeling that the road-building endeavor was simply to dangerous to continue while the plains were infected with this terrible black blood pathogen, we returned to the Blood Eye and went our separate ways, promising to return and finish the road when the plains were cleared.