Session 12: Midday Nap, Evening Breakfast, Building Defenses

General Summary

Midday Nap

The session began with you all exhausted and maneuvering your camp away from the creek which may potentially flood as you sleep per both Agave's and Croak's warnings. Agave also worked on redirecting additional water away from the camp site with DAN and Frode's help. DAN, Frode and Kaswink also moved the camp away from the creek. Namina, while unwilling to do manual labor, did prepare and spread some more of her protective barrier with the assitance of Hysteria.
With everyone's evening chores and rituals done, Kaswink took the first watch that afternoon. During her watch not much was seen or heard besides a few innocent sounding noises. Kaswink through some food towards one of these sounds, a rustling in a nearby bush, and a squirrel revealed itself. It had dark, charcoal-grey fur with a shocking white stripe down its tail. It greedily grabbed the meat that Kaswink through in its direction before disappearing back into the woods.

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Frode was the next one on watch duty. Similar to Kaswink, most of their watch was uneventful, but they were able to spend their time finding some herbs to help with future meals. He found an herb that looked great for cooking, and with Hysteria's affirmation decided to harvest it.
In the second hour of his watch, Frode did hear an ominous noise in the woods. A soft crack as a small twig was broken under some creature's foot. He decided to investigate, and, knowing that Hysteria never sleeps, invited them along as well. Hysteria confirmed that they would be right behind him. Frode was, however, alone during his initial outing, but he did find a clutch of six chicken-like eggs in a nest at the bottom of a tree. Not seeing the mother nearby, he decided to take some of them back to camp.
Back at camp, Frode greeted Hysteria and was confused by how they had yet to move. Seeing the eggs, Hysteria did end up actually leaving their meditative state to confront Frode and instruct him to get rid of the eggs before the mother shows up. They both went into the woods once more to either return the eggs or find a nice bush to abandon them in. As they were dropping the eggs off, however, a familiar clucking sound could be heard and thoughts of demon chickens entered Frode's mind.
While they were deciding how to proceed, the head of an Adderhen appeared from the fog. Thanks to her long neck, it seemed as though the head was actually disembodied and floating there ominously. The two travelers panicked and decided to avoid the creature and flee back to camp. Thanks to their much faster speeds, they were able to get ahead and make it back long before the creature did and ready the rest of you for combat. Kaswink hid in a bush and encountered an Adderooster, DAN entered the middle of the camp and began juggling, and Frode and Hysteria hid behind a tent. Meanwhile, Agave and Namina remained asleep.
With your combined efforts you managed to subdue the snake-chickens and begin the task of domestication, but that could wait until later as it was time to get back to bed for the remainder of your rest.
The early evening was mostly uneventful. Hysteria wandered into the woods at some point to find the eggs again for a snack before everyone else woke up for breakfast.

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Evening Breakfast

The sun had eventually set, and the night sky, still obscured by the dense rain-filled clouds of an impending storm, was upon you. Everyone began waking up as Hysteria's watch came to an end, plans for a delicious and nutritious meal were considered, and you all set about your tasks to bring this breakfast into existence. Everyone, save Frode, was still quite exhausted.

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Kaswink set forth to find meat with the help of Hysteria. She was able to spot some tracks, digging and veggie-munching that suggested a boar may be in the area. With their combined and very tired efforts, the two of them were able to follow the boar's tracks into an area with more dense trees than the surrounding forest. Here the boar's tracks ended, but this was not enough to trick Kaswink as she was wise to the beast's trap. She was able to spot the creature in a nearby tree just as it launched a barrage of whip-like vines that clung to Hysteria's and her arms.
The two of them were both able to peel the vine off, but Kaswink fared considerably better against it than Hysteria. As Hysteria attempted to remove the first vine they began to feel the poisonous barbs harming their flesh, and with its removal they were simultaneously struck and grappled by another vine. Kaswink, on the other hand, was able to not only remove the vine but grab hold of the second attack against her to be able to pull the creature from its tree.
The two of them discovered a vine-boar, and Kaswink was able to knock the creature out with a combination of both a mighty headbutt and the momentum provided by the previous yanking from its tree. This would make a vine addition to breakfast...after the poisonous seeds and vines have been removed, anyways. The two of them began their journey back to camp with Kaswink looking for a sharp stone along the way. She managed to find exactly what she needed, conveniently enough, and the dissection/butchering of this animal was able to begin.

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Meanwhile, DAN and Agave were out foraging for some more plant-based nutrients for the evening's meal. DAN was having a run of bad luck, but was still able to locate and identify some Rice which they eventually discerned to be some kind of "Spirit Rice". Their history of traveling with all sorts of different folk throughout the lands helped them remember how to properly care for and raise rice, and the Spiritual Travelers gained a new source of grain.

Agave, however, was feeling a bit more lucky and happened upon an average-sized tree full of Avocados. These avocados proved to be incredibly durable, and their skin was covered in dragon-like scales. Agave attempted to cut one open to no avail (and very nearly trimmed his own finger off instead), but DAN utilized the amazing power of juggling to split one open with a war pick. With their sheaves of rice and bundle of avocados, the four of them returned to camp to present their findings to Frode.

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Kaswink and Hysteria eventually made it back to camp as well, and Kaswink began dissecting/butchering the boar. She was able to set up a nice guillotine-type knife with a system utilizing a pulley, the sharp rock she found, and a tall tree. The boar was easily split in half, and from their she removed the poisonous seeds, vines, and was able to cut up some bacon for breakfast. The vines were given to Hysteria for further poison research.

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With everyone back at camp and ready for food, Frode was able to plan out the meal. With the help of DAN doing prepwork, everything was prepared quite deliciously. Everyone felt a bit tougher, and those of you that ate everything (especially the avocado) felt even more durable than that.
The meal prepared was a nice bowl of rice with sections of egg, bacon and avocado resting on top which Frode has decided to call "BEAR" (Bacon, eggs, avocado, rice). Seasoned to joyous exhaustion-reducing perfection by the resident culinarian it helped you all feel much better rested. Levels of exhaustion were gone and the new evening was ready to be faced. A decision needed to be made: Explore or build defenses? You all eventually ended up choosing to build some defenses, or, at the very least, get them started before heading out.

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Building Defenses

A general consensus was had amongst you all that a short wall would be helpful for at least keeping critters out while Namina continued to defend with spiritual wards. How this would be accomplished was debated for a short period until a plan was set forth by Kaswink to dig a ditch in an octagram and begin building a wall from within that ditch's foundation. Trees could be cut down and dragged to camp with ease, split, cut and eventually laid out as a wall.
A better plan was then presented by her and Agave to dig the ditch, set up a Cheval de frise within that ditch so that there are spikes facing in either direction, develop gravel slips up the edges so that creatures have an even harder time climbing, and then top it off with the poisonous vines that grow from the seeds found in the vine beast. 24 of these seeds were collected from its entrails, some of them need to be studied by Hysteria to develop an antidote, but the rest can easily be utilized to grow the wall.
DAN, Kaswink and Frode would dig a quick outline of the foundation while Agave uses Mold Earth to deepen the trench much faster than normal digging could. It was calculated that the entire perimeter would take about One hour and twenty minutes to complete, which Agave suggested might be doubled to move the excavated dirt farther from the wall, or to better shape it into an additional defense nearby. This puts the wall portion at a total of Two Hours and Forty Minutes.
After the outline has been marked, the other members of the Spiritual Travelers will be splitting and whittling chunks of fell trees into rudimentary spikes. Not much magic is currently known to help with this process, so it is going to be a lengthy and labor intensive task. However, I think it might only take an Eight Hour Day to complete thanks to the impressive strength of Kaswink coupled with the various talents of the group.
With the Cheval de frise carved and setup in the ditch, the last remaining piece is to plant and grow the vines from seeds. Agave, being a druid familiar with such things, and DAN, being a botanist, can easily set up the proper distance between each seed, soil balances, and acidic necessities to simulate a beast's stomach. After that has been done, all that remains is for Agave to utilize Plant Growth to make the vines grow to a nice dense thicket.
This spell has a 100-foot radius and each point on the octagram of your base is made up of two 25 foot walls. I utilized this calculator and provided the 25 foot walls of the spikes per Kaswink's suggestion to determine the other values of your octagram-shaped base. A particularly notable figure would be the distance from one point to a point on the opposite side of the octagram, this diagonal distance ended up being 92.388 feet, however, the area within your base is not really as perfectly distributed as the octagram depicted with that calculator so I decided to just do some estimations and eyeball it instead.
In the end, with my "eyeballing" the area within your camp ended up actually being smaller than the 92 feet provided by that robot. With this in mind, I'm going to assume that I have again made a map that isn't entirely well scaled and just say that the area within your camp is a nice round 100 feet which means that one Plant Growth will be enough to cover all of the walls. Wow!

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Quince's Response

It's assumed that, towards the end of the night, somebody provided Quince the day's report. These are the responses he had to certain events.
The Spirit of Christmas - A spirit is capable of such things? Completely overwriting emotions, personality, and causing these actions... These "Content" sound peaceful, by which I mean they aren't hostile, but their existence suggests an unfortunate end for those that would follow the jovial spirit you described too far. We'll need to work on defenses against such emotional things for future tourists, perhaps a talisman or something. I'm sure our occultist can figure that out!
Dangerous Creatures - That boar sounds positively dastardly! To think that those seeds could cause such trouble. We'll need to find a way to both identify the seeds and expel them from the body before future tourists can safely travel. I'm sure our apothacarist will get right on identifying an antidote, and our botanist can work on a consistent way to recognize the seeds and the vines for the laymen to use.
New Plants - That rice sounds like a reliable source of nutrition for our future tourists, especially if it yields that much with each harvest. The concept of it being unusable in the material plane is hardly an issue for now, but maybe it'll come in handy somehow someday. I'm looking forward to your continued analysis of that seemingly delicious herb. Even if it ends up being a dreadful poison, I'm sure you'll find a use for it!
Easy Defenses - Wow, those walls sound like we could put them together in a pinch to help with our new tourists, and to know that a large portion of their structure comes from that dangerous creature... everything seems to have its use, after all. Good work coming up with that solution!

In-game Date:
Nurend 05, 308

Report Date

10 Jan 2022

Primary Location

Tympi's Forest

Secondary Location

Home Base

Related Plots

• The Expedition

Related Characters

• Quince

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Discovered Plants
Rice
Avocados
Mysterious Herb

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Discovered Animals
Vine Beasts
Adderfowl