Oscar arrived in Thatchem by ravenback, still looking frazzled. His robes were scorched and burnt, but he had acquired a book of magic that seemed valuable to the mages in the tower of the leaning goose. He asked me to take his raven back to Highfell and help the others bring back more. With my promise to return Verminbane to Forrest fulfilled, it seemed a reasonable way to spend my time.
The raven flew me right to Stria as she hid outside the tower she had been exploring with Oscar. She was watching a chained griffon consume the body of a halfling. At least I hope it was a halfling. What a horrible way to die.
We flew by ravenback, first simply to escape any pursuit from the tower. We didn’t make it far before we had to camp for the night, and we agreed the best course of action was to fly the ravens to the tower we had already partially explored. We could scout others along the way and return with, hopefully, more goods and knowledge of this place to sell.
The next day we caught sight of a bit of bone sticking out of the ground, and landed to investigate. It was holding a scroll sealed with a crossed-sword sigil. Breaking the seal revealed a map that did not match our surroundings. We stowed it for further investigation later.
The ravens took us past several towers, and we had to stop for weather twice – once for acid rain, preceded by green clouds, and once for an ice storm. One of the towers was protected by some sort of magical force that we were completely unable to penetrate.
We did gain entry to one tower populated by goblins after another storm forced us to seek shelter. They turned out to be willing to negotiate, seeking to hire us to kill either dragonmen or baboons. Stria showed them a holy symbol from a dragonman that the group had killed before I arrived. They promised us books from the tower as rewards. We asked to see an example, and they showed us A Guide to the Mating Habits of Giant Ravens. Given our ride here, that could be very useful. They claimed the baboons were in the third tower to the northwest of theirs, and the dragonmen mostly claimed the plateau. It would be easier to simply fight the goblins, but they had treated us peacefully so far. I would not strike the first blow against intelligent creatures. Eventually the storm passed and we moved on, still seeking the first tower Oscar had explored.
Finally, another glint of bone caught our attention from above. We landed to find a pile of skulls. Remembering the map, we dug up the pile, revealing a strange fused shape of four skulls with a spine leading into the earth. We dug it up… until it animated and attacked u-Heury.
