General Summary
The session begins with Calum immediately heading off to join the archery competition while the other four are recruited by Cynewise Hadamont to watch over Gitrog. Celeste, Violet and Asha bond over the existence of Gitrog and feed him a mix of Violet’s raw turkey legs and a raw rabbit which Calum had given the group in the previous session.
Calum’s participation in the archery competition goes surprisingly well. He hit the fourth ring of the target three times in a row, making it to the second round of the competition with a commanding second place behind Cynewise. In third is Rhook Sorrowine, a lesser noble from the coast of the Meadows. Calum immediately picks fun at Sorrowine’s family name, but the noble does not take the bait. Calum, in a surprising show of sportsmanship, agrees to an eventual chat over wine with Cynewise and Sorrowine.
The second part of the archery competition is a mile run with targets throughout the forest. Each competitor is marked for their accuracy and their time, with the victory having the best score in terms of speed and accuracy. While Calum initially falls short, he finds himself lucky the moment Cynewise and Sorrowine are attacked by “displacer beasts.” Gitrog, the loyal frog, senses his master in danger and begins to lead the rest of the party towards the forest.
Encounter - “Displacer Beasts” (2)
The group encounters two “Displacer Beasts” which look odd and unnatural to the plain eye, they emit cyan tinted smoke and are unusually aggressive towards people. A surprise round goes quickly, with Calum catching the attention of one of the beasts fighting Sorrowine and buys time for the rest of the party to appear.
Gitrog, followed by Alastor, Violet, Asha, and Celeste all manage to arrive in time to see the beasts attacking the two nobles. With no other options, they launch into a bloody combat. One of the beasts, seeing new prey, leaps onto the newcomers and viciously swipes at them, leaving Alastor and Violet especially bruised and bloodied. Celeste, an Everwinter native, astutely points out that a normal displacer beast would not be found this far south. They are native to the Everwinter and rarely stray to even the Cordillera or Goldlands—why would they be down in the Meadows? Additionally, when Alastor uses his divine smite, he’s surprised to notice that it’s extra effective against the beasts.
During the fight, a mysterious individual catches the attention of Calum and Celeste. The man is dressed in noble silk and he wears a belt with two dual scimitars at his sides. The rest of his features are somewhat foggy, but what is unrecognizable is the sight of blood that stains his nice coat, his forearms up to the elbow, and the lower half of his face down to his neck. In one hand he holds what looks to be a blackened heart, dripping a black ichor down his forearm staining with the red. When he squeezes the heart, it appears to rejuvenate the displacer beasts.
The battle continues, Calum and Violet both fall unconscious while Alastor is able to finish the first displacer beast with a quick sword to the eye. Calum is revived by Sorrowine shoving a healing potion down his throat while Celeste takes the final shot with her mechanized crossbow to finish the second beast off. It’s at this point that the man with the heart vanishes, using Dimension Door to exit the scene. The bodies of these creatures do not fall over dead, but instead quickly rot, sinking into the ground to become an unrecognizable blob of blackened flesh.
At this point, the group reconvenes to lick their wounds when they’re interrupted by the presence of Lord Hessian Hemlocke. Lord Hemlocke hurriedly asks who the party has sworn their allegiances to and seems extremely satisfied with the answer that they are not loyal to any of the Meadows nobility. Lord Hemlocke hurriedly requests that they not speak of the “displacer beasts” and agrees to pay for their entrance into the five-man melee competition as he assumes they are an established group.
With the tense approach of new guests, the party agrees before being interrupted by the presence of one Brass “Hawk” Loreflower, a Meadows noble who tells the party to hurry back to the festival while he conducts an investigation of the area. The party has no choice but to agree, walking back alongside Cynewise and Hemlocke with the realization that perhaps they had bitten off more than they could chew.
The session concludes with Violet pulling Hemlocke aside, trying to get her best read on him. Hemlocke explains the details of his concerns, explaining his suspicions that this tournament has been set up for nobles to meet about a greater cause. He also explains that his mother, the late Lady Hemlocke, died only a week before the tournament under mysterious circumstances—looking all too similar to the dead displacer beasts left in the forest clearing.
