Session 8

General Summary

Ruling my Fairy Tale Kingdom 1/16/2016 (Session Eight)
Sarenith 28 continued. After the fight with the worms, we searched the rest of the area and rested. The night passed uneventfully. Oewin believes that the pair of worms were the apex predators in the area, thus the lack of other dangerous animals.
The morning was chilly, there was frost of the leaves. We decided to travel to an adjacent area to the west (hex 1516?). Oewin believes we will have snow tomorrow, even though it's in the middle of the summer. More Fey magick at work it seems. Nothing happened along the way. We arrived in the new area and pitched camp, with extra firewood for the fire.
Snow arrived in the early morning making the ground soggy. Not enough to impair our travel but certainly making our company We began exploring. As we did so, our intrepid huntsman Oewin noticed the wildlife signs dwindling and then eventually grow silent.
Ominous.
Other than that nothing happened while we explored until we pitched camp. Snow continued to fall and the forest animals and insects continued to be absent or quiet. The next day while continuing the exploration we started to hear bird sounds again. Perhaps there is an area of unnatural silence, but caused by what? The snow was making the ground worse, more boggy, slowing our travel, but still traversable.
We came upon a clearing which was a deeper bog, six to twelve inches, which stank with foul water. Yet another fetid scent to add to my memories of this place. There was a noticeable mound about a 100 feet away. After some discussion, for some reason Oewin wanted to shoot it, we approached the mound, myself and Ava were mounted. About halfway, Leana sensed magic ahead, a lingering aura of a past spell or effect.
Nothing else happened until we reached the mound of snow. Gilain brushed off the snow and revealed the body of what at first appeared to be a horse, but after Gilain examined the body, determined to be a unicorn with its horn shorn off. Oewin circled around but did not find any tracks.
After some more discussion, we pulled out the unicorn body and stacked rocks over it to make a cairn. We continued onward and encountered another quiet area. From looking at a map we determined that there was a ring of quiet surrounded the bog where the dead unicorn lay. We decided to make camp outside of the eerie silence.
During my watch while watching the snowfall, I was amazed by its subtle beauty. It was as if the snow were tears and forest was crying in mourning of a death of a dear friend. The next day we traveled North to a new area (hex1414?). Oewin’s horse, in the lead, stepped on a patch of mushrooms which caused both Oewin and his mount to be engulfed by a cloud of spores. He was sick for a short time but suffered no other ill effects.
We avoided the rest of the mushrooms and continued on. We moved out of the snowy area and then found the body of a bear. It appeared that a hunter had partly dressed it but didn’t finish. No tracks were found. After using magic to make the meat fresh, we salvaged several days of meat from the body and moved on, pitching camp.
On Oewin’s watch he heard a loud croak, like a huge frog. He was cautious but did not raise the alarm yet when a frog like humanoid armed with a spear appeared out of the woods. Unfortunately neither shared the same language and Oewin’s warning alarmed the frogman and hostilities started. There was at least four of them, some attacked us, while others cut the horse lines. They also let loose frightening croaks.
A fierce fight followed but we were victorious, killing 3 of the frogmen and driving off the survivor. Ava and myself gathered up the horses and then returned to camp to rest. In the morning we felt stronger for our experience, Soldier actually seemed bigger. His barding certainly didn’t fit anymore.
We started to explore the area. We encountered a swarm of hornets, who flew around us but didn’t attack. Strangely they follow us for about four hours. After that, we entered a terrain that was filled with rabbit holes, which can be dangerous if stepped in. There were wolf howls that night hunting for food. A stag jumped into the camp, was scared by Ava’s shouting at it, bounced into the fire, flinging flaming logs, almost burning down the tent. Liana deflected it with her hair and the wolves did not attack, chasing the stag. Other than that, nothing occurred.
Continuing to explore the area the next morning and found a shrine with a fifthteen tall statue of Erastil. There was evidence of a burned down structure behind the statue and judging from the wood growth happened over a hundred years ago. We cleaned off the statue and made an offering of food to it. Because there was an aura around it that warded off hostile animals we deemed it a safe place to camp. After we cleaned the statue something happened, we were granted a boon, giving extra sharpness (keen) to our weapons for a week.
The night was peaceful.
The next morning we headed East towards the river (1413?). That day was uneventful as was the following night. The next day we began exploring around the aptly named Skunk River, which in this area was mire. We spotted a small ruin out in the middle of this morass. We found a camp spot for the horses and waded our way out to the site. When we approached we heard a familiar Crroooaaakkk. A frogman appeared on top of the structure. I also spotted something prowling around the bottom of the ruins.
The frogman, known as a Bogger, called for a truce. We started a discussion with it, but the language barrier was difficult to bypass having no magic. The prowling thing was a “slurk” whom Owien fed to befriend it. Strangely, later we discovered that cousin spoke Bogger! He came with us for our next visit and spoke with the frog man in a disturbing display of croaks and ribbits. We found out his name was Garuum a refuge from his tribe. He was exiled after challenging the chief after being intoxicated after eating dragonfly innards. He avoided public execution by smashing his hand to slip out of the manacles.
We asked for and got a few mushrooms to examine. They were deemed edible but foul tasting.
After some negotiation we agreed to build a wooden palisade around his “kingdom” in exhanged for gold and gems. We spent spent six days doing this backbreaking, stinking, sweating work in a swamp. I am thrilled. Oh and because we weren’t pursuing our geas, we were plagued by nightmares. Yayyyy.
We were paid 210 GP and 50, 90, 25 gp gems.
After saying goodbye to Fort Boggard we continued on. Garumm informed us that the bandits came from the East. We followed the river upstream to the next area (1314?) with no encounters and the night was free from interference. We continued to follow the river to find the source of the Skunk River, a hot spring, explaining the rotten egg smell.
Before Ava and I could take much needed bath together we were attacked by giant frogs. We dispatched them and finally got our bath. We explored the next area to the West (1315?), back in the plains, which had nothing interesting.
We returned to Oleg’s to plan our next expedition.
monsters 4000 xp explore 2000 xp events 3000 xp 9000 xp = 1500 each.

Report Date

16 Jan 2016