Gaming

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.

Alamar We finally got to Grindlebuck or whereever we were going, a city filled with dwarves, which is only marginally better than a city filled with fish that got ate by a demon. The first thing we saw was someone get murdered, so of course Alia took their purse. He had only 17gp so he certainly wasn’t killed because he was rich. Getting there was a bitch. We scared off the stirges, or maybe exterminated them entirely (I hope!

Fred After spending a few days healing in Eastdale, u-Heury felt well enough to walk around town. We visited the wizard and sold him the scroll of dim-in-you-son. I bought some gear and hired a guy and his dog, and we went out to the holy oak to try to trick the ghouls out of their treasure. When we spent the night there, we were attacked by glowing balls of light and had to use our pillows to fight them off!

Alamar I hate the underdark. We fought stirges, mermen, a water weird and it’s pet soggy mummy, and something else that I can’t even remember on our way between two cities that I definitely can’t pronounce. At least the mummy had treasure, even if the tapestries were waterlogged and probably now worthless. Do people mummify their ancestors, stuff treasure into their sarcophagi, and drop them down wells? Is that a thing?

Fred We headed north, finding another beach along the underground river. This one had a gnome tending fish traps. He said there are big lizards that take a tithe of his fish catch just to the east of his Beach, and we saw them for ourselves. Probably basilisks because they have weird swirly eyes. Ogbond the gnome introduced us to Grim, another gnome, who promised a 159gp gem if we killed two basilisks and a treasure map if we got all four.

Fred The ghouls came at us fast. Stria killed one with a headshot, and I landed a solid hit in return, but then everything seemed to go stiff and everyone started moving really fast. Their voices buzzed like flies! I kept trying to talk but no one listened, until somehow I fell into a boat and we sailed away from the ghouls. Everyone slowed down again once they were out of sight, but u-Heury was playing at being a statue, so I gave him a mousetache.

Fred The big hairy ranger called Bern came back with his friends on a stretcher. They said he was dead, but when I asked the head priest of Ygg about him, the priest said Bern was just resting and seemed eager to wash his hands of the man. I don’t understand. Bern’s a bit gruff and uncouth, but his heart’s in exactly the right place, slightly left of the spine and between his ribs.