Ottokath's Journal #13
General Summary
Actions have consequences. So do ideals. Not sacrificing others to obtain the needles meant we needed an alternative. We were told to bring an entire cactus, but that was never going to be the case. Luckily for us we made a friend. Buddy is the name Mavis gave him. We took to calling him that. He told us a story of a life where the only path was to steal from others. Funny how some can delude themselves as such. He would rather drag down others than climb from the pit himself. I suppose he got lucky. We could lower a rope.
He told us of a town by the name of Ridayh. A slaver's town to the north. It pleasured me none to indulge slavers with business, but we needed those needles. And this was the lesser evil. So we marched north.
On the way north, we came upon the a giant snake, not unlike the one that I have found myself capable of calling upon. When the bigger snake appeared, we ran. My own snake acting as a bigger meal for the creatures, running in an opposite direction before vanishing into fey glitter.
We were attacked further north. A group of bandits nailed me in the chest. Leather armour can be of great help and it surely protected my vitals, but the wind was knocked clean from my chest. Hamood and Mutt engaged them as Mavis dragged me clear of the incoming fire. The fight was over quickly, until only two bandits remained. One of them proceeded to make a grave error. He pulled an object from his belt and flung it in our direction. From it sprung a malignant tree spirit. A flaming treant appeared in the desert. This foe was beyond us, but could not be left to its devices. It is then that it grabbed a rock and flung it at me. Had it not been for the cloud of dust and sand that surrounded me, I would have died then and there. It missed me by a hair instead, landing in the sand.
We were lucky. Fate decided we were not to die. And so none of us got crushed by the flung boulders. Eventually, it fell, leaving behind nothing but a branch, emanating evil intent, and a large chunk of charcoal. I took both.
Tired and bruised, we marched on north.
I noticed it first. The calm. An eerie stillness not usual to the desert. Many consider deserts to be a dead thing, but they fail to see all that is and was here. For those that know to look, spectral fish and whirling wisps of air dot the land. Earth spirits flock between the sand. For those of nature, these creatures are easy to spot. Yet they did not congregate here. Something chased them off. Mavis noticed it too. It wasn't long before we came upon the barrier that prevented us from straying off the path. And soon we were beset by figures of none humanoid nature. They came to claim Mavis. Extending my powers beyond our plane, calling up those fey that would aid my cause, had come to haunt me. For Mavis was of the feywild. A runaway princess cast adrift through the realms, now retrieved to serve once more. And I had been the beacon to guide them. I tried to stop up, that was the charge I had set for myself after all. But I had no power to stop any of this and these fey cared little for me or my request. So I did the only thing that was left to me. I gave Mavis an anchor. An item strongly linked with an individual of this plane. I had explained of my sword, the inscriptions of which read; the weasel of the land, in sylvan. I had made it with my father back home, more than a century ago now. It had never failed me. And in passing it on the Mavis, I hoped it would never fail her either.
And so a companion was lost to us. The first of our company to leave our ranks. The first charge, I truly failed since way back when. I can't say I took it well.
Report Date
08 Jun 2021
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