In this session, our party guided their weary band of travers back toward Greenest and had some misadventures…

Escape - (Skill Challenge requiring 5 successes before 3 failures)

• Once at the top of the plateau, the party herded the escaped prisoners to the west, and down the outward wall through a dense thicket of obscuring trees and brush.
  • Zoyana’s guidance of the group and magical Pass Without Trace ensured that the raiders were not alerted to the escape (Survival 37, Nat 20 = 2 successes in the skill challenge. 2 Successes / 0 Failures)
• At the bottom of the cliff, the group took a short break for Aegar to cast Find Vehicle to make a covered wagon and Find Steed to conjure a moose to pull the cart. The wagon and steed were worth the rest time needed, getting the party a full mile away from the camp before Pass Without Trace expired. (Charisma spellcasting 17 = a skill challenge success. 3 Successes / 0 Failures).
• While the others focused on logistics and silence, Pliny worked to build relationships, raise morale, and win over the people that they had taken out, calming them and making sure that they knew that the party was on their side and they were protecting them, and scanning for and supporting anyone who was going to freak out and try to run away. Much of the success on the first leg of the adventure was due to Pliny’s musical ministrations (Persuasion 18 = a skill challenge success. 4 Successes / 0 Failures).
• By 10PM, the group was approximately a mile from camp, and neither saw nor heard sign that the raiders were yet on their trail.

The white fox and rest

• Around 10:30PM, Pliny spied a white fox up ahead, almost glowing in the night. It turned to the left and disappeared, and when the party got to the spot the fox had been, they found that the road curved in the same direction.
• About 3 miles into their quest away from the raiders’ camp, around 11PM, Pliny spied the white fox again.
  • It turned to the left and headed into the bushes.
• Pliny, at the head of the small caravan, followed apprehensively at a distance. As he pulled aside the first row of berry bushes, he saw a clearing with a large white willow.
• He approached, scanning for arcane magic. Instead, he felt a sense of peace wash over him, and the clearing looked like an excellent place to camp and give the escapees some much-needed rest. It was ringed with berry bushes and the willow swayed gently in the breeze.
• Pliny gathered a handful of berries, knelt down, and held out berries for the fox to eat. Pliny could swear that the fox smiled and took a couple fox-hops over and gobbled the berries from his hand. Then it hopped backward and headed around the trek.
• Pliny hansel-and-gretel’d his way the 15 yards back to the party, dropping berries to leave a trail.
  • Zoyana immediately recognized the berries in his hand as Goodberries (which were particularly strong, and added 5 temporary hp and removed one condition per day from someone who ate them).
• Aegar explained to Fang the need for it to take watch, and alert everyone if it saw anything:
  • “Not the fox.”
  • “But the fox was pretty big though.”
  • “Not to me.”
  • “Yeah, I guess, yeah, not the fox, ok.”
• The party and their charges took a nine-hour long rest, with Aegar, Pliny, and Fang each taking watch. Aegar’s moose supported the watch throughout the night, circling the camp.
  • As they slept, Pliny dreamed of the battle with a ghost that the party might have fought, had they chosen a different resting place, and a giant white dire bear had they treated the fox poorly or desecrated this clearing.
  • Pliny woke fang with a “Fukyoo”, and received a waft of Fang’s fruit-scented breath weapon in response (luckily passing his save).
• As the sun rose, Pliny serenaded the group with his loot, aiming to take the edge off and further prepare the escapees for the trek to Greenest. (Performance 18 = a skill challenge success. 5 Successes / 0 Failures. Challenge complete and successful).
  • While he played, the group felt the weight of the captivity and escape roll off them, and the realization dawned that they were free: if the raiders were going to catch them, they would have done it last night.

Rashida

• Breakfast started and the group started preparing for the next leg of the trek. One of the humans rolled over and startled, blurted out “But Tom…”
• She ran over to Pliny as he played and grabbed him by his lapels: “What are you going to do about Tom?”
  • Pliny kept his cool, and replied “Tom. Right, you know I have every intent of making sure that I get to Tom, but there’s no point saving Tom if we don’t save you. We need to get you the Greenest. We need to get you home.” And then he continued, “But tell me more about Tom…” and started casually talking about Tom.
  • Rashida shared again that her name was Rashida, that his name was Tom, he was a halfling, he couldn’t carry a tune.
  • Pliny talked about his time in the band Dragon Scales, and his bandmate Tom started believing that he saw aliens. They had to kick him out of the band for a little while, but they hope to get him back.
  • Rashida left the conversation with conviction that the best and right thing was to get everyone back to Greenest so the party could go back and rescue Tom.

Arming the escapees

• Now that the escapees had rested, the party armed them for whatever might come:
  • The half-elves got a javelin and slings
  • The dwarves got a heavy morningstar and daggers. The bearded one (of indeterminate gender) raised the morningstar in salute to House Glondale.
  • The humans got daggers.

Travel

• To start the traveling day, Aegar cast Find Vehicle and the worst-off of the escapees piled in.
• The party chose to take a round-about path to get back so they didn’t encounter any raiders.
• While the group traveled slowly toward Greenest, Aegar probed the escapees, talking and listening to see what they knew and what information he could find out about what was there at the camp, what they were doing, etc.
• Aegar spoke with Leosin about his experience and what might be going on.
  • Leosin didn’t know where they were headed: which city or anywhere else.
    • He thought that they were going to have to split up what they’ve taken so far, and that they would probably group with other merchants to hide.
    • He filled Aegar in on the Harpers and that they want good in the world, but this is clearly a bigger deal than any of them had realized.
    • Leosin told of a fellow harper named Carlon Amofell, a human spy with a short gray beard, who was one of those who were also concerned about the Cult and had gone North to investigate something north of Baldur’s Gate when Leosin had come South. He didn’t know of any other harpers currently investigating the Cult. He only came because he heard about the eggs.
  • Leosin’s sense was that the eggs needed to stay here to hatch.
    • Rezmir was bitching about something about them needing to go to early.
      
    • And from that he gathered that the eggs were near hatching, and that the eggs would need to stay here until then.
    • He got the sense that whatever else was happening with the Cult was separate from the hatching of the eggs.
      • That Rezmir and her crew were here (as oppsed to somewhere else) because of the eggs.
      • That the reinforcements came here because Rezmir was here.
  • Once the raiders sent off the treasure, they would need to return for the eggs-now-dragons.
    • Leosin thought that they needed to either capture or destroy the eggs.
    • Aegar was visibly confused about how there could be a benefit to capturing them.
      • Leosin replied that “there are those who say that there’s good in everyone” - and so they could be raised as good dragons. And there are the other people who aren’t crazy.
      • But the other reason is: who’s the mamma?
        
      • And this is now high-level stuff, and those eggs are pieces on the board. Destroying the eggs, killing the hatchlings gets you one thing, but different groups around would have different opinions. The Lord’s Alliance: destroy all the eggs. The Emerald Enclave: rescue all the eggs.
      • It really depends on which perspective you’re taking whether or not it’s best to just destroy them and get them off the face of the planet or to use them. They are part of the natural order; whether that’s a good thing or not, who knows?
      • “What would I do? I don’t know what I would do. I would capture the eggs if I could, but I wouldn’t hesitate. If the question was destroy them or let them go there would be no question. You can always figure out what to do tomorrow. But letting the Cult have them, that’s not good. That wont end well”
• Aegar also found out that the dwarves were in the camp because the raiders took Easton - the raiders decided they could use the arms of some dwarves to break some rocks.
• The half-elves were hunters who were caught on the road when they were out hunting.
• Both the half-elves and dwarves were used for labor around the camp - anything manual that the raiders didn’t want to do themselves.
• The first Find Vehicle cart expired at around 7 miles from the raiders’ camp.
• Pliny and the party discussed that they might need to prepare for whatever condition Greenest might be in. At least they knew a way into the keep if it was under seige when they arrived.
• Zoyana and Pliny had a nice moment when Pliny tried to apologize for his treatment of her when she was his “prisoner”: “Just so you know, when we get back, Widows Swift is going to know about your obsession with chains.”
• Far up ahead, and West of where the party planned to go, they saw giant birds fly up into the sky, circle tightly, then dive bomb for the ground. A minute later, they flew back up, carrying a horse. They proceeded to pull the horse apart in the air and fly away further to the North and West.

Gathering the horses

• Mid-to-late afternoon, the party returned to their previous campsite where they had left there horses and cart. Everything was still there.
• The party put Leosin in the cart, and had a brief back-and-forth with the dwarves about riding in the cart (“I can walk just fine, lizardman”). Aegar’s charm failed (Persuasion 8), but Zoyana’s cheery demeanor (Intimidation 12) convinced the dwarves of the soundness of the cart plan.
• Zoyana approached Rashida (“He’s my little ball of fun”) about Tom, and then wondered out loud whether it was worth it to go back to save him.
  • As a sack from the cart flew over her head (thrown with malice), Zoyana heard Rashida spit “You take that back! You’re going to go back and save him!” … “Are you… are you telling me you’re not going to go back for him…” and she started to cry.
  • Pliny got an amorous look in his eyes, but Aegar stepped in and deflected to what information could help save Tom. Through her cries, Rashida told the party that the raiders took people into the caves, and usually they didn’t come out. She didn’t know anything else.
  • Pliny promised her that the party would return to get Tom and reunite them.
• By 9PM they started looking for a campsite, they were 24 miles from the camp and roughly 6 miles from Greenest.

The Lady of the Spring

• The party spied a small game trail to the side of the road, leading to a pond and the best campsite they’d seen in a while.
• When they went down to investigate, they realized that it wasn’t a pond, it was actually a spring that flowed down into a pretty large creek, and was likely the headwater of a river.
• As the others prepped the campsite, Zoyana walked down to the water for a drink. She saw a ripple in the water, as if there was something moving there. And then, just in the corner of her eye, she would swear she got a glimpse of a woman there. She turned, trying to see what that might have been, and Fang slid up her back and in her ear whispered: “Be careful. Be careful. They’re nice, but they’re dangerous.” And then Fang snuck back away.
• Zoyana alerted the others, and Aegar called out to the woman in the water.
• In the center of the water, they saw a ripple, and then a woman began rising up like she was walking and they could see with each step that she took forward she also took a step up. And by the time she was standing an inch deep in the water, she also reached the edge of the pool
  • She was wearing an incredibly thin dress that they could swear was made of water, and looked to the party and said “Hello” in a melodious voice.
  • Pliny realized that this was the kind of being who would not want to be ogled, and he decided that this was not the time that he wanted her to ruin his life.
  • In conversation with Zoyana, the woman shared that the spring was there to bring life to the world, and that the place where the party was preparing to camp was good.
  • The lady excussed herself and stepped back into the water and disappeared.
• Zoyana next cast Speak with Plants on the nearest tree to the pool and spoke with the tree.
  • She’s a water spirit and the keeper of the pool and she protects it.
  • Those who try to desecrate the pool, she deals with them and they feed the tree’s roots.
  • Others give her gifts, and seem to leave quite happy.
  • It has been some rings since the pool had last had visitors.
• Zoyana kindly shared with Pliny: “No fucking pissing in the pool, or she will murder us” and then to Aegar “we need to leave something, a gift of some sort”
• That night, Pliny chose to spend the night composing a song for the lady of the spring.

Blessed is the lady of the lake Words unworthy of singing for her sake protector of travel and protector of the weary I find new hope with you a near me The way you shine with eyes averted This vagabond is now converted I swear to thee I sing your praise Until this bars final days Like the tide my hopes are high as I slumber by your side Guide us home you earthly being her for soul that need a freein’

• As the session closed, Pliny planned to share his song (Performance with advantage), and Aegar cast Purify Food and Drink on the pool as a gesture to the water spirit…