The Nerathian Temple
Those were terrible moments, huddled at the foot of the stairs that gave access to the Temple, spiders and hungry beetles blocking our way forward, the angry wyrmlings preventing a retreat.
With the booming thunder of the drakes' lightning shocks resonating in our ears, we used several flasks of oil to defend ourselves from the incoming beetle swarms and Adolfiel vented her fury on the critters, preventing them from becoming a serious menace.
Once we had rested some minutes, I had enough time to create a Tenser's Floating Disk and we carefully placed the body of our sister on top of it. As we still could hear the screeches of the dragons, we decided to explore the ruins. They seemed to be an ancient Nerathian temple, part of which had collapsed, probably due to an old landslide. The place was infested with insects, and several scary centipede-looking bugs attacked us appearing from tunnels they had burrowed through the walls and floor of the collapsing temple. We killed several before the rest decided to flee to their warrens.
In the temple we found an old altar with an indentation, some Nerathian tablets, a magical orb -which we placed in the middle of the altar, following the instructions of the tablets, but with no apparent results- and several other minor objects.
Scientific Notes
Today I have time to do some sketches - I am using a new book, as the original one I left at Ioun's chapel in Marshport to be copied there by a priestess-. Here you can see the horrible crocodiles that devoured poor Streisan and the centipede-looking creatures that attacked us in the temple. I have decided to name this new crocodile species Streisanorum Bocatae, in honor of my decesaed sister.
The Long Road to Poisson
The following day we left the ruins. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I could not avoid remembering when we three used to play near Leavendale's river and how I taunted Streisan and told her she could not run faster than her shadow and I could -of course using magic, but she was too young to know back then.
We followed the road, which at times could not even be called a path. Slowly, the ground became drier, and the swamp gave way to a beautiful forest where we found a nice tree to bury Streisan. We were preparing the digging tools when a screech alerted us to the presence of one of the blue wyrmlings that had attacked us the day before. I focused all my anger on the creature and she felt semiunconscious to the ground, where we quickly surrounded and almost killed it, but dragons, even young ones, are full of cunning and surprises, and this one survived our flurry of blows and, seeing itself in peril, decided to retreat to her lair to lick her wounds, even though Vistra, for a short time, was able to ground her again.
So we buried Streisan with her spear, and sent her body to the Circle, so that her soul can enter again the Wheel of Life, and with a final tear we said goodbye to her recklessness and to her playfulness, to her naivety and to her good and loving heart.
A few hours later we left the forest and reached a lonely hut, surrounded by a beautiful garden. We knocked the door and a halfling woman greeted us with good manners. She told us her husband was a lumberjack and that we could not stay at her place, as there was not enough place for a group of big adventurers, but we could sleep near her hut if we wanted. She invited us to tea and asked, as a favor, if we could repair the roof of her hut. While Adolfiel and I worked on the roof, Tyrion and Vistra shared a cup of tea with the halfling.
From time to time we heard flapping noises and saw big bats hiding in the shadows, but the woman assured us they were harmless. She also told us that Poisson was only half a day to the north, and that most of its inhabitants were working in the construction of the tower of some crazy wizard.
After the nice conversation, we made camp near the hut... We were awakened by some loud noises... the halfling woman was a horrible disfigured Hag! She had poisoned the tea, and even with the loud noise Tyrion was still snoring. Thankfully, Vistra's dwarven constitution allowed her to resist the effects of the poison and she had alerted us.
The battle was fierce. Every time any of us left the area illuminated by the campfire, she was attacked by the bats, so we tried to stay in the light, but there we heard the insidious thoughts the Hag tried to plant in our brains, and they provoked an agonising pain. It was a miracle that we survived, but we fought with all our resources and with a final push from Vistra, the Hag fell in the camp's fire, where she burnt like a dry husk, her horrible screams resounding in the darkness of the forest.
Pressing Problem in Poisson
After the attack of the Hag, the night passed uneventfully and we prepared for the final leg of our journey. After half a day of swift march, we started seeing some farms, all of them showed signs of being slightly unattended. We asked the occupants of a couple farms, and we learnt that they were inhabited by Halfling women, and that the men were "having fun" in Poisson, helping in the construction of a tower. All Halfling women wore expensive golden jewelry... it seemed the owner of the tower, someone they called Sionas, was a good employer.
We arrived at the main square of the village at dusk. The only inn of Poisson was surrounded by a multitude of tents, and several dozen Halflings were busy in and around the inn, spending their money in getting drunk as fast as their little mouths allowed them to.
The prices at the inn were outrageous and we couldn't even get a real bed, but we were tired of eating rations for three full days in a row, so we accepted the offer of the owner, a busy Halfling called Samner, and took our first nice warm dinner of the trip. I tried to earn some money for the group using my magical skills, but I was too tired to focus and I did not get much money out of the drunken Halfling builders.
We also asked for directions to Mandin's home, and everybody told us he lived at the construction site. We also learnt that the workers had been mainly digging what would become the cellars of Sionas' tower.
We were thinking about retreating to our tents, when a scared Halfling rushed into the inn calling for a cleric. The Halfling priest -probably these little creatures honour a Barrel of Ale above all- had prayed too much and seemed too tired after honouring the Barrel for what looked like hours, judging by his drunken stupor, so Vistra offered herself for help. The Halfling did not seem very convinced, but he had no other choice, so he finally told us that there had been a cave in at the construction site and Sionas needed help to rescue the workers. We all rushed to the Tower - a three mile trek-, following the Halfling, who was riding a pony, as fast as we could.
At the entrance to the tower we were met by Sionas. He was an extremely stern-looking eladrin. He told us that there had been a cave in while expanding the cellars of the tower and that he needed help with the wounded and with the removing of rubble. We followed him into what seemed like a constructed mine shaft, leaving behind some kind of elevator and descending into the depths following a long flight of stairs.
The end of the shaft had collapsed and we saw some people already working removing rubble. When we approached to help the workers, we were amazed when we got closer to them... They were some of the elves that had been taken prisoner in Leavendale! They seemed well-fed, but our surprise turned swiftly to anger when we heard their story...
Apparently, the captain of the ships that assaulted our village was a hobgoblin brute called Szakim, and he had sold the strongest elven prisoners to Sionas to work in the digging as slaves. They had not been tortured, but forcing an Elf to dig without seeing the sun and feeling the wind in the leaves of her forest can be considered a sort of torture. I confronted Mandin, who was the construction chief with the information, and he seemed to be ashamed of the events, but told us that removing the rubble and rescuing the wounded was of utmost importance now. Mandin also warned me not to use magic, as he feared that could have been the cause of the collapse.
While we worked helping our fellow Elven citizens, Sionas came from time to time to check the progress. He seemed genuinely concerned, so I tried to resist the urge of insulting him for his part in the enslavement of the Elves.
Soon, we started finding bodies. The first one we found was still alive, but his legs had been chewed off from knee down! There seemed to be more to the situation than the collapse, and our suspicions were confirmed when all the other bodies we found had similar marks of having been bitten by critters.
I spoke with Sionas, told him that the tunnels were obviously compromised and that he would need someone to clean the infestation before he could proceed with the construction works. In exchange for the job, I asked him to at least release the Elven prisoners, and he agreed with my demands, with the condition that we did not use magic while in the caverns.
One of the Elves said he would join us. We gave him some of the equipment we had found in the Nerathian temple, and we prepared ourselves to enter the dark and dangerous tunnels...
