Day 1
Woohoo! More roads! I ended up in the Axe and Thistle tavern, looking around for a crew to help me go build a road that Vla’si’ka Lyric funded, running from the bridge west of Ruined Oak in a southerly direction.
I had already roped Sid Aisling, a druid green to the island, into the task, and it wasn’t hard to recruit Piper Songheart, Koro, Dimble, and a strange kobold named Sokos to join us. Sokos appeared to be under the impression that he was looking for frogs, and we didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise.
We braced ourselves, and hopped through the portal, with minimal damage, and made our way to the Bitter Dwarf to find our crew. We found them, and set out. When the workers began to work, the foreman expressed his doubts about our party, and basically told me I was incompetent. Whatever. Part of life is dealing with assholes.
On our path, we came across a pillar, and a suit of armor, both of which promptly attacked us. Fun stuff. I’ve dealt with mimics in the past, however, and we dispatched them, Sokos scoring the final blow.
Next, we killed some thugs with the help of Sid’s nature magic and Koro’s fog clouds. We kept one alive, however, as we found a note saying:
Bring us 5 subjects and you get the same amount again.
Also take this as a sign of identification.It had a scorpion symbol as a signature.
Night 1
We interrogated the worker, to no avail, simply learning that the leader of the thugs was supposed to meet the cultists associated with the scorpion somewhere between the Rotmoor Fork, which is where the river we were following splits for the first time.
I had a good chat with Piper about where she had been for the past few weeks, and we slept.
Day 2
In the morning, we released the thug, and moved on.
We came across an altar dedicated to the scorpion cultists, not finding anything interesting there. We decided to go around it.
We passed a tower, but decided that it would be irresponsible to leave the workers in order to explore it.
We came across a lady in a lake, who stunned and charmed us, forcing us to approach. We fought her, and she was joined by multiple monkeys. Multiple people fell to unconsciousness, and I was forced to use a Potion of Healing on Piper to keep her from dying.
We eventually managed to kill her, and we rested. The Foreman came up to us as we were resting, and bitched at us about losing time. Piper put him in his place.
When we moved on, we had to bury some bodies lying in the way of the road.
Night 2
We had a remarkably uneventful night.
Day 3
That day, we lost a few workers to a herd of wild boar. We killed them, however, and the remainder of us feasted on boar meat. Piper gave me shit about having feelings, and I’ll have to talk to her about that.
We came across a woman and her child being chased by a bear. We dispatched it quickly, and agreed to escort them home.
That’s when everything went to the Hells. We were ambushed by a total of eighteen goblins and wargs, and we lost more than half our workers. The party itself didn’t fare too poorly, but the workers took a massive hit. Tensions were high, and morals were thrown out the window, but we eventually prevailed.
The foreman finally seemed to begin taking us seriously, and after a rest, we continued on, albeit at half speed. We came across a party of four seasoned-looking adventurers that none of us recognized. They claimed to be named Sir Gregor, Togengar, Valindra, and Brother Jonas. They struck me as odd, especially seeing as they refused to disclose where they were from, simply insisting that they were on the hunt for the scorpion cult. Due to their refusal to tell us their origins, I did not disclose the suspected location of the scorpion cult’s hideout, instead directing them towards Ruined Oak.
More thugs attacked us. It was beginning to get incredibly annoying. We killed them, and moved on.
We came across a dark cave leading down, and came to the same conclusion that we did for the tower: it was irresponsible of us to explore, as it would mean leaving the workers behind.
Night 3
Yet another peaceful night.
Day 4
We set out that day on our slow pace, eventually coming across a pile of boulders. It promptly rose and attacked us, seeming to employ telekinesis to create more rock creatures from surrounding boulders, pictured above. We lost some more workers, but managed to kill the rock thing, despite the lack of effectiveness on the part of Sokos and me.
After this, we decided that our losses were too great, and we resolved to return to Ruined Oak. On the way back, we came across an elvish woman and her company, who introduced herself as Elanoreth. She read the future at the cost of ten gold, saying that the rest of trip would be uneventful, and continued her journey northeast. She knew not what awaited her there, but nonetheless insisted upon journeying in a northeasterly direction. Dimble postulated that her divination magic was leading her.
Night 4, Day 5
Elanoreth’s prophecy proved true, and the rest of our trip was uneventful.