I pulled myself to the top of the plateau just as Seleana was promising the ravens we had brought food. Just in time, too; one of them had given the druid a nasty peck on the shoulder that nearly tore her arm off. I laid the seed out according to the directions, while Selaena made silly caw caw noises. I can’t criticize too much, I’ll be doing the same thing later. They ate, and 7 of the ravens seemed amenable to becoming our companions. Which was good, as two new adventurers had joined the knight Stavros at the bottom of the cliff. Selaena and I struck a holy bargain of healing, and Denara smiled upon it enough to bless u-Heury for bravely keeping between the druid and the ravens.
We flew down on ravenback – a nauseating experience – and I recognized Landon the elf, along with someone new in robes. Turns out the leaning goose tower wizards had sent reinforcements.
We had just enough ravens for everyone, including the halfling. Selaena used the last hour of her spell to translate our plans into cawcawq, while I sent Stavros back to Thatchem with the horses. Then it was off to Highfell, which happened to be just a little ways southwest of the raven’s roost. We got there by evening, planning to circle the floating island and locate the right tower before camping, but time was short and a sudden chill convinced us to land and camp rather than risk being frozen while airborne.
We landed near two towers, one ruined and made of earth and satone, the other made of what looked like ice and intact. Since approaching the ice tower on birdback might be what produced the sudden chill, we kewpt our distance and made camp. The night passed without incident, save for a strange shift in the island itself, and an overflight by a bizarre chimerical creature. In the morning we found that the island had moved again, and we were over wastelands.
Falling back to our plan, we sent the birds to scout for the tower we were looking for, while trying to explore the ruined one nearby ourselves. We found the doors unlocked, but marked with bloodstains. Ominous.
Inside, Landon scouted ahead while I lit a torch. Good thing he did; his elven eyesight caught a pit trap not far in. We levered it open; at the bottom lay a dead humanoid in robes with a dragon theme. Between u-Heury’s wire, my rope and pitons, and Landon’s polearm, we got the body back to our level and searched it. He had a holy symbol of the god Vol, which relates somehow to dragons, plus a dagger and short sword.
We checked for the ravens – not back yet – and tried to figure out how to cross the pit safely.
