Before they left Kraggodan, Wulfram contacted Rhyna via a Sending Spell, "Tomorrow, we head into the Blighted depths of the Fangwood Forest. We are searching for something called the sardonyx shard. Thinking of you always."
**********
Wulfram prepared for the day ahead. After communing with the fire sprits, he cast several spells on himself.
1st (5): Cure Light Wounds, Entangle, Liberating Command, Remove Fear, Open Slot
2nd (5): Barkskin (x3), Calm Emotions, Delay Poison, Open Slot
3rd (5): Magic Circle against Evil, Sleet Storm, Stinking Cloud, Open Slot
4th (5): Blessing of Fervor, Divine Power, Great Magic Weapon, Freedom of Movement, Open Slot
5th (3): Break Enchantment, Overland Flight, True Seeing, Open Slot
6th (3): Mass Cure Moderate Wounds, Open Slot
7th (2): Heal, Fairy Ring Retreat
Wandering Spirit: Battle
Wandering Hexes: Battle Master, Eyes of Battle
When they reached the clearing with the runestone, Wulfram greeted the young woman, "Hello, my name is Wulfram! What is it that you need rescuing from, if I may ask?"
Knowing Wulfram could handle this sort of thing better than him, Rogar stands back, looking for threats.
"I was part of a refugee caravan fleeing from the hobgoblin armies. We were trying to find a fort in the woods held by the Rangers, but I got separated from the group and turned around in the forest! This place is so frightening, but I managed to stumble upon this stone. It seems relatively safe here, but I want to get back to my friends!" the woman says.
Rogar peers at the woman closely, noticing something off about her. It's hard to pin down, but the way she moves seems strange, as if she's not entirely comfortable in her skin. Of more immediate concern, though, the dwarf spots two creatures lurking in the trees at the edge of the clearing. Swathed in shadows, these hulking humanoids have the bones and teeth of numerous creatures tangled in their matted fur. They seem to be watching you intently...
Rogar picks up a metal shard buried beneath the ground, and raises it to eye level, "Wha' are ye?" he asks, "Ah know ye aren't human."
"Look a' 'er. She doesn' move like a human woul'. An, per'aps of more interest are 'er two friends, lurking there an' there, tha' do na' look friendly a' all." Rogar responds to Karla's curious glance by pointing out where in the shadows the creatures were hiding.
Eustoma looks around to where Rogar points. "I'll not trust anything in these woods." She stands as tall as she can next to Sia.
Wulfram looked into the woods, trying to spot the creatures that Rogar was talking about.
The young woman laughs at Rogar's attempt at intimidation. "You'd like to know that, would you? Well, how about I show you what I can do..."
Wulfram spots the hairy brutes in the trees, noticing them tense up as they prepare to leap out from hiding!
The shaggy monsters pounce down upon Rogar, tearing into him with teeth and claws!
The woman floats up into the air, 30 feet off the ground. She casts a spell attempting to occlude your minds!
Rogar, in pain from the sheer amount of punishment he just took, barely even notices the attempt to mess with his mind. He looks at the two hulking beasts next to him, though, and realizes that trying to turn his attention towards the mage would likely mean death. So, he instead turns towards the larger creatures, summoning a solid metal battleaxe, and he tears into the creature, calling to his teammates, "Can someone take care o' tha mage?"
Then, if that killed it, Rogar steps out of reach from the other and blasts the mage with a final blast of earth.
Rogar's metal blade tears into one of the furry monsters, sending it sprawling to the ground. The dwarf hops back before sending a torrent of earth directly into the flying woman's face! She shrieks as the rocks scour the flesh from her face, and she plummets back to earth, still alive but bleeding out!
The monster bellows as Karla's spells wreak havoc on it. Portions of its body have burned away, and the magic missiles burn holes in its hide, but it's still standing! At least, until Nik'o pounces upon it, hitting with all of her attacks. The cat bears the furry beast to the ground, where it lies still.
Wulfram administered first aid to the strange woman, to try to stop her from dying before he could determine her nature.
Wulfram is able to stabilize the dying woman.
I would like to know something about her, before I let her die," Wulfram explained. He examined the unconscious woman, trying to figure out if she was human, or something else.
Examining the woman, Wulfram realizes that the skin she's wearing is not her own. It's like she's wearing somebody else's skin. He is able to peel it off of her in gruesome fashion, revealing the form of a woman with ghastly pale skin and claws. The shaman recognizes her as a blood hag. Blood hags, known to some as soucouyants, prefer to live near isolated human communities or on the edge of civilized lands. A blood hag takes the appearance of a young woman by day. At night, she assumes her true form, as her skin peels back and sloughs off to reveal the monstrosity beneath.
Rogar hefts a boulder above the unconscious hag, and looks at WUlfram, "Say tha word, an' ah'll jus' drop it."
Wulfram conceded, "Very well, I agree such a creature is too dangerous for us to let it live. Do what you will."
Rogar lets the boulder fall, putting an end to the blood hag before she can cause any further mischief. She has no gear save for a magical item--a bracelet of friends.
With the threats neutralized, you are able to perform the ritual Karburtin provided you with. The entire process takes an hour of chanting and burning rare minerals. Once completed, you can chip off a small piece of the runestone (a finger-sized piece shears off from the block if struck by a weapon or sturdy tool), which tugs gently toward the heart of the Darkblight...
"Ah guess we shoul' follow i, then." Rogar notes, able to feel the tug of the stone slightly even when not holding it. He looks to the forest, "Le's see how this works."
Wulfram readied himself to continue deeper into the forest, "Let's see where this leads, then."
You follow the tugging sensation deeper into the Darkblight. As you travel, Rogar brushes against a tree and feels its hudder. Upon closer inspection, an enormous crack opens in the tree's trunk, revealing a yellow, bloodshot eye. The eye focuses on the dwarf for a few moments, blinks, and then closes again.
You walk through the twisted woods for about an hour before coming upon the smoldering ruins of a miniature village built along a muddy creek. It looks like the devastation here is quite recent. Searching the ruins, you can easily identify that the settlement belonged to small creatures, perhaps gnomes or halflings.
You also uncover a massive, clawed animal print in the creek's mud.
Completing your search with a scan for magical auras, you discover numerous potions that have been dropped in the creek. You recover four potions of cure serious wounds, three potions of good hope, and seven potions of haste.
Rogar looks to Wulfram, not really knowing what sort of creatures were here. Once again, he looks around for dangers.
After examining the miniature settlement, as well as the claw print, Wulfram declared, "This village was inhabited by small fey called quicklings. I don't recognize the print; it wasn't made by any natural beast. I wonder what happened here?"
He looked around for further clues as to what had transpired.
Pele sniffed around the area, looking for clues.
Searching around the remains of the village turns up no more clues as to what transpired here.
Eustoma has no idea what the creature might be. She looks stunned at the destruction of the village, and stands quietly not interacting with anything or anyone. Tears fall down her cheeks, and she is clearly seeing something else from her past.
Sia moves up and noses her.
You press on from the ruined village, encountering a few minor fungal creatures that you quickly dispatch. As you travel, you pass by a gruesome monument. Arranged neatly between bushes is a pyramid of skulls with mushrooms blooming from their mouths and eye sockets.
A few more hours pass, and you happen across a small swath of greenery and bubbling springs passed over by the Darklight--an apparent safe haven in otherwise hostile lands. Voices call out from somewhere within. "Come, weary travelers! You've earned some respite!"
"Aye, come relax by our springs before plunging back into those nightmarish woods."
Rogar, instantly suspicious, sinks underground and glides over to get a sense of what's happening by using his tremorsense, then returns to tell his friends what's going on.
While underground, Rogar can feel the roots of the trees threading through the dirt. One particular set of enormous roots twitches slightly, and her realizes it belongs to an huge animate plant that likely lurks at the edge of the clearing above.
Rogar pops out of the ground, "Have any of ye heard o' walking trees?" he asks, explaining what he felt to his companions.
Wulfram looks into the clearing, trying to make out the tree that Rogar was talking about. "It could be one of Longfrond's kin," he said warily.
Wulfram's keen senses spot the danger here. Amid the foliage is a large plant covered with dozens of clear tendrils, each tipped with a glistening red bulb. Whiplike fronds unfurl from the center. He recognizes it as a giant sundew, an enormous, predatory version of a smaller, insect-eating plant. When a giant sundew attacks, it does so by slamming targets with its thick, leaflike fronds, each of which is covered with globules of sticky, acidic goo. The giant sundew exudes an unmistakable scent of honey—an attractive odor that often proves irresistible to nearby creatures.
The sundew can't talk, though, which leaves the source of the voices unknown. However, the shaman also recalls that will-o’-wisps in particular are quite fond of the methods a sundew uses to capture and consume prey, for the anguish and fear of creatures stuck to a plant that is slowly dissolving and digesting them form quite a delicious tonic of horror for the wisps to feed upon.
"I don't think we should go in there. We need to move around the clearing." She looks for a safe way around.
Wulram agreed with Eustoma, "Indeed, it looks like a trap! These are dangerous woods."
"We can easily find out," Wulfram replied to Karla. "Let's move around it, and see if the runestone pulls in a different direction."
"If na," Rogar adds, "Ah can try ta move it out o' tha way. Ah've been working on improving how much' earth ah can move at once."
You skirt around the edge of the clearing. The voices continue to call out to you, inviting you to stay with them, but they soon fade away as you avoid the dangerous trap.
As you move closer to the Blighted Depths, the forest’s terrain becomes more stable even as it grows more odd, alien, and diseased. At one point, you come across a large blackberry patch, but the once-healthy berries are covered in sticky green-and-black slime.
A short time later, the forest gives way to a clearing. Fully in the grips of the Darkblight, this clearing is surrounded by looming trees covered in withered bark, viscous slime, and crisscrossing ropes of sickly, green fungus. Between the trees stand enormous mold infestations spattered with black mushrooms. Furred fungus and filth carpets the clearing’s floor, and the scent of vegetative decay and rot permeates the air.
Both Eustoma and Rogar notice that one of the trees near the northwest corner of the clearing has several small eyes embedded into its trunk, and that those eyes are carefully following your movements. They also spot a hulking mass of vegetation on the opposite side of the clearing. It is similar to a shambling mound, but has four fungal arms. It doesn't look like there are any easy ways to go around, and the runestone fragment is tugging you in this direction.
Rogar points out the mass to his allies, "Shoul' we make thi' quick?" he asks, starting to gather material from the surrounding area.