^

Once again I felt the mayor giving me the stink eye and seeing as it was a matter of time before he would come up to me and Avarace and force us to leave town, I decided to find others heading out first, to avoid building up a bad relationship with the mayor.

I quickly teamed up once again with Valerion the dwarven cleric and Zandaris the black mask clad ranger, and made 3 new friends; Peri the cleric of Kelemvor, Rael a mechanically tinkering elf of a sound mind and strong morals and lastly, but not least, a black feathered Kenku named Plink, I think, or maybe that was just the closest approximation of his name he was able to produce with his mimicry.

We headed along the southern road, taking an initial detour to look at the cracked landscape to the southwest of WMC. We got to the edge and a magically lit stone was thrown over the edge. I felt slightly nausiated when the stone and the light it was emitting became impossible to see before we even heard it strike anything as it felt down, and fortunately the others did not feel like jumping arund the cliff edges either, so we resumed travelling along the southern road and away from the canyons.

Later on the first day we encountered some goblins. We saw them from a distance and had a discussion about what to do, and a few of my travelling companions seemed eager to just attack and kill the goblins without finding out if these creatures was indeed hostile or not first. Fortunately sounder minds prevailed, thanks strongly to the calm nature of Rael, and we approached the 4 goblins. They was indeed not hostile, but it seems Plink with his sweet naive nature, some magic and his mimicry almost caused a misunderstanding to arise between us and the goblins, but again, we managed to get the situation diffused and parted ways with the goblins, who said the only threat they seen for the last day had been us.

We made our first camp near the beach and mine south of WMC, and made a disturbing find during the night, a corpse

corpse found in the night, which we later burned

I found it, during my watch, and it looked like it had washed ashore long ago, and was riddled with arrows. On further inspection it appeared to have been a sailor due to a tattoo of an anchor on one of his arms. He might been betrayed or summarily executed by arrows, or perhaps his ship had been the victim of a pirate attack, we may never know.

The next morning we burned his body, the best funeral we could do for this unfortunate soul, and both Valerion and Peri said some moving words on behalf of their deity, the worship of this unfortunate soul. Plink tried his best to do a sad melody, but was clearly too emotional to perform well, given the circumstances, I think that is understandable.

On our second day we decided to track due west along the edge of the marches, but not entering the marches themselves, and we encountered a collapsed old building, which might have been a two story inn, before the top floor had collapsed into the lower floor, and the wild had since started to reclaim the structure. Entering it was only possible if one was to crawl inside, and we selected not to risk it, as the building seemed rotten and unstable, doubtful any treasure inside was worth the risk of getting pinned by stone in there indefinitely.

Then we came upon a circular site made of stone and with some primitive carvings, might been a druidic circle or otherwise religious site, but we could not identify it and moved on and eventually made camp for the 2nd night.

We was woken up to the presense of a necromancer who had come upon our camp, along with his 4 ungodly cursed companions, undead minions. The necromancer was emitting a foul presense, but attempting to appear civilized and friendly, but his rotten intentions became clear during our talks and he wanted a corpse that was near us, it wasn’t until later I noticed it was the same bloody corpse we had burned the previous morning

He claimed to be a warlock, not a necromancer, and that his name and title was Lord Helm. Who had granted him this lordship, we did not ask nor did he tell.

The corpse was a lot more creepy to find once again the next morning once again, but in a new location and once again unburned

As he tried to take the corpse to do unspeakable things with it, one of my comrades let loose a projectile towards the undead minion who tried to take the corpse first, and the battle between our party and the necromancer broke out.

Things got very heated fast, but Rael and Plink both stepped out of the combat, Rael declaring he wanted no part of this, as to his mind, the necromancer had done nothing wrong yet that we could prove.

Artist rendition of the one of the four minions the necromancer Lord Helm had with him

It was a struggle, but fortunately Peri at the front was an expert at avoiding the glasping foul claws of the undead minions, with bought us time to harm them all, and Valerion to move forward and with a powerful thunder-inducing divine magic knock down the necromancer and all but one of his remaining minions, which we then got rid of fast, with Plink jumping into the combat in the last moment.

I scolded Plink a bit after the battle, feeling I could at least respect Rael for stepping out and staying out of the battle, but jumping in only when we was clearly winning was the move of a coward. I was probarly put in my place and could feel my own boot in my mouth, as Plink explained in his simple mimicry terms that he had jumped in because now the creatures had been attacking and swarming Peri. I felt bad for the rest of the day for misjudging poor Plink so horribly.

We took everything of value and burned the necromancer, his minons and the arrow riddle corpse (once again) before we set out for the day, feeling disturbed and fearing the corpse appearing again the next night.

We ended up crossing through the swamp and came upon a place where lots of colorful ribbons, red, blue and purple, was tied to the trees, but we found nothing else there, and pushed almost all the way through the marches, but ended up finding a dry spot and made camp for the night.

Next morning, we finally got out of the swamp and out to a road again, and started heading up north-northeast and made our way back towards WMC.

We came upon a location with tracks of kobolds crossing the road, and initially we wanted to pursue them, but once it was loudly declared we could follow the kobolds and kill them, Plink jumped infront of us and seemed to panic a bit, the feathers along Plinks neck was pulsing and standing on edge. Someone misunderstood and thought Plink was getting aroused for the kobolds, in a…. unspeakable way, but clearly, Plink had a great fear of Kobolds. And the voice of reason, Rael, once again made it obvious that the kobolds might not have done anything bad and be civilized, so instead of following where the kobold tracks was going, we started following them to where they had come from, but after several miles it became obvious they had not attacked anything nearby, so we resumed our route back towards WMC, with nothing else of noteworthy impotance happening on the rest of our travels.