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DM: DMG
Party: Clawe, Xell, Black, Taishina, Freyja, Ruebekka, Tehran, Kavor

Today I lost two friends, one was new as I had just met her that the morning before, but the other was a friend who I’ve traveled with most of my time on Sleepers Island.

We were getting tired of sitting around the tavern and instead decided to check up on a few leads from Ghostwood Marsh.
It sounded fairly straight forward, head down south, find out what the commotion was about and then come back.
It wasn’t even that far from White Moon Cove, so we felt quite safe during our travels.

However, things started getting weird only a few hours after we left. Clothes full of holes was strewn across the road. No blood, no tears or stabs, just motheaten.
Everything pointed toward old clothes, but they seemed to have been scattered recently.

As we traveled it became clear that our destination coincided with whereever these items came from and we started finding more things. Backpacks, more clothes and then what might have been a human. The body was half eaten by wolves, but underneath it was a wing around the size of my torso.

Giant Moth

At this point we should probably have known what would happen, but as we rested during the night a swarm of gigantic moths came upon us. They grabbed Ruebekka and Kavor, raising them high into the air. They both fought their way back into a free fall.

We had quite a fight, but in the end we all came out alive, most of us fairly unscathed. Kavor was hurt, but Taishina had no problem stitching him back up with the power of the divine Sune.

This was when we made our mistake.

RueBekka went around and buried the bodies, but we never took the time to wash away the blood. If we had remember to wash away the scent things could be different.

Bipedal Spinosaurus (5e Creature) - D&D Wiki
Young Spinosaurus

During the early hours two huge spinosaurus’ came upon our camp. We tried to keep quiet and stay hidden, but before long one of them grabbed Xell and swallowed him whole.

You might thing that was the end of Xell, but you would be wrong. Xell was an adventurer through and through, so even in his dying moments he did what he could to help the rest of us. I don’t know how, but in his dying moment Xell must have spend all of his power to blast the creature with enough fiery force to incinerate the dinosaur from the inside, killing it before it ever had the chance to enjoy its last meal.

Meanwhile the other Spinosaurus tried to grab a bite of RueBekka, but her magic made it perceive her as a friend. At least for a short while. When I turned my back, hoping against hope to save Xell, it crushed her between it’s teeth, ripping her into a gory mess.

At this point we just hammered away on the creature until it stopped moving, and then some.

No one wanted to keep going, so we made our way back hoping to resurrect Xell or RueBekka, but even with all our founds combined we didn’t have the gold.

This is why, friends and fellow travellers, when you bury the bodies of your foes, you also wash away the blood and gore. Learn from our lesson so you don’t have to bury a friend.

And to you Xell and RueBekka, I hope whichever god you worshipped in life has opened its arms to you.