Matthew Hunter

Alamar We went poking around the section of the city where the derro are supposed to stay, and where our particular derro might have a home or someplace we could find him or at least we could wander around hoping to see him by chance, which is what we ended up doing after paying street urchins to look for our derro while they urched. Some of them had seen him, but not recently, or at least that’s what they told us.

Oscar We ended up fighting the wererats, of course. Because of course they were wererats. We did manage to get some additional information from their spokesrat first, though. They worship Arimaniux, a sewer god who was thought to be eradicated 30 years ago. Their nefarious plan appears to be to nap kids (more sinister than it sounds!) and raise them to worship their god of filth. Probably infect them with lycanthropy, too.

Oscar We collected our gear from the wagon and headed back towards the cellar, stopping on the way to chat with a weaponsmith. I had him mount the two dragon scales that were Frederick’s legacy to a warhammer, which I will carry in his name. The smith swears the scales will have no effect on the hammer’s actual function, but I am not so sure. Surely a blow from a dragon’s scales is more potent than one without such materials!

Oscar We made it to Threshold and stored our wagon and gear just outside the gate. We stayed the night at the Druid and Whale, because the alternative inn, a place called The Drunken Knight, only allows women and elves. On our way to the temple of Denara, we witnessed a mugging; a minor merchant had been set upon by three ruffians from an organization called the Debased Currency or something similar.

Oscar So it turns out the knights were in fact bandits; they demanded a toll of three gold each to cross their ford. Honestly, I never knew trolls could be knighted, nor fit into a suit of heavy armor. They complained about barbarian attacks in the area, and questioned u-Heury closely, but I vouched for the boy and he was not of the same tribe causing the problems. They let us pass without issue once the toll was paid.

Alamar In Grindlebuck we bought some clothes (and I bought a glaive) and were promptly attacked by a stone giant with two heads who didn’t enjoy our fashion sense. We hurt him badly, particularly Alia, who seems quite effective with a bow. I’ll have to make sure to steal her bowstring before trying to steal a kiss. But the fight attracted attention from the guards, who subdued the giant while we returned to our inn.

Oscar Go to Threshold, they said. Bring your wagon, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Nope. So far, we have been rained on by blood, cursed at by peasants, solicited by naked elven ladies and a golden dragon, and had a very expensive mule eaten by hyenas that were, apparently, better armored than most humans. We ended our trip at a ford guarded by 6 heavily armored bandits… err, knights, until proven to be bandits, which is likely to be shortly.

Oscar I write once more with a heavy heart. The dwarf Girm, accompanied by friends Stria and u-Heury, brought me the ashes of Denara’s paladin Frederick. I knew Frederick but little; we rarely adventured together, fearing that two servants of Denara in close proximity would be too much risk of an irrepairable loss to our goal of founding a temple in this region. I’m inforemed those who knew him better referred to him as “The Apocalypse”, and he certainly lived up to his name, if the tale Girm told is even a little bit true.

Fred We were all badly hurt, so we focused on recuperating while Stria mixed up a lovely treat to feed to the basilisks before we killed them. Some kind of fish stew that came from a faraway land. She said it was poy sin stew. We hired a dwarf named Girm and a man and his toothless dog and set off towards the big tree, with two mules pulling Oscar’s cart that I should really tell him I’ve been borrowinmg.

Fred My plan worked! I took off my armor, lay down my weapons, and armed only with two vials of holy water, snuck up on the ghouls as they feasted on the (relatively) fresh corpse of one of our guards. Invoking Denara, I threw the vial and hit one of them right between the eyes! It screamed and gave chase. I ran all the way back to the rest of the group, who had set up an ambush around the teleporting rug.