Zlotii, you're aware that Taldor attempted to settle this area in one of their expansionary periods; the buildings may date to that.
Zlotii rouses from his stupor, mumbling to himself.
Oh, right. That business. Umm...something...is about to happen. We can go have a look at those buildings, but we won't get there uninterrupted.
The odd fellow loads his crossbow, one of the few things he does without awkwardness. He doesn't seem particularly alarmed, for some reason.
Beatrix frowns and dismounts her horse, splashing in the muddy ground, and offers to help Adam down as well. Once situated, she draws her sword and steps towards the ruins, waving the group to join her.
The area around the ruins is pretty mucky, with pools of standing water and a lot of mud. As the paladin approaches the ruins, a humanoid figure splashes out from them, waving a crude morningstar. Movement under the water near the figure indicates the presence of something else with it. It shouts in Common, "Stop! Mine!"
Freezing in her tracks, Bea looks down, eyes scanning to make out any danger through the water and muck.
Bea holds her ground, unwilling to move until she knows where the danger is. She calls out to the creatures, "Thanks for warning! You live here...sorry, I never met your kind before - what do I call you?"
In response to the lack of aggressive action on Bea's part, the humanoid seems to relax slightly, although it's not clear how much of her speech it understood. "I Garuum. Truce?"
Havrin dismounts from Stepper as Bea dismounts from her horse, following after the paladin with his bow in-hand and an arrow nocked to the string.
He begins to raise his bow when the strange frog-like humanoid appears, but pauses with his arrow still pointed toward the ground when the creature warns the party to stop. When the creature - Garuum - calls for a truce, Havrin nods silently to Bea, but continues to warily watch the two creatures next to Garuum.
Bea relaxes significantly and sheathes her sword on her back. Pointing at herself, she smiles and replies, "Truce! I'm Beatrix! He's Havrin." Pointing back at the ground, she continues, "Safe path?"
In a low voice she adds to Havrin, "You ever seen these before? Dangerous?"
Havrin, you have no idea what either of these are.
In a low voice she adds to Havrin, "You ever seen these before? Dangerous?"
"No idea," Havrin whispers in reply. "I've seen giant frogs before, but never any that stood on two legs and spoke."
Bea's apparent acceptance of the offer of truce relaxes Garuum still more, and he lowers his morningstar before emitting a string of sounds that might be language--bubbling noises and tongue clicks, punctuated by throat sac inflations and croaks. In response the two other creatures retreat a few feet.
"Travelers," Havrin says to Garuum, pointing to Bea, Adam, Katya, and himself. "Safe passage?"
Bea speaks again in a low voice to Havrin, "Any idea what kind of food they might eat? Maybe we can offer a gift to show good will?"
"Most frogs I've seen eat bugs," Havrins whispers back to Bea. Glancing again toward Garuum and the other two creatures he adds, "We'd need some pretty big bugs..."
All of you can see that his left hand looks like most of the bones have been broken and healed badly. He also isn't following most of what you're saying. "Truce. You go." He points the way you came.
Adam murmurs, "Garuum looks like a boggard. He's far from home, though--there are a lot of them in the Hooktongue Slough." Katya adds, "Those things with him are called slurks. If we have to fight them, watch out--they shoot some kind of slime around."
Noticing the damaged hand, Bea calls back to Zlotii. "Doctor, I don't suppose you would have any way to help our friend here with his lame hand?"
It's Zlotii's opinion that if a human's hand looked like that he would either have to rebreak it and reset the bones that had healed wrong (an extremely long, difficult, and painful process, with no guarantee of success), or use high-level healing magic. CCW might do the trick, Restoration probably would, and Heal or Regenerate would definitely work.
"Perhaps it would be best to turn away from this... boggard," turning to Adam for a moment to make sure she is saying that correctly before continuing, "And leave it to this area. The house seems dilapidated and of little value anyway. We don't want to use up resources that could be put towards finishing the bandits once and for all."
Bea nods at Katya through the pouring rain. "The house and land may be worthless, but we're short of friends out here. Maybe he knows something about the land, the bandits, or a safe path to their lair. That kind of help'd be worth a bit of healing in my mind."
As usual, Zlotii's deadpan gaze doesn't flinch, though he stares curiously at the sabertooth frogs.
We do not yet possess the communication skills or healing power to take advantage of this situation. Umm. Standard doctrine states that we walk away without conflict, to return when the situation warrants.
Bea looks at Katya, the Doctor, and back at the Boggard, an obviously conflicted look printed on her face. She holds up her hands and tentatively takes some slow steps towards the creature, then points at her own left hand. "Can I look at your hand? I'd like to help if I could."
Bea, he doesn't understand most of what you're saying, but your tone of voice must be reassuring because he doesn't attack you when you approach.
Approaching cautiously and slowly, Beatrix again points to the boggard's hand, then back at her own. "Garuum hand hurt? Help?" As she reaches him she kneels down and reaches out to take his left hand in hers.
She looks up into the rain, letting it wash over her face as she tries to figure out how to address her patron deity. "Lord of the land, I need help. We're trying to build a safe place here for families to live, and I think the best way to do it is with friends who trust us to do no harm. I don't know if that's right...but it feels right to me, and that's the best I have to go on. I don't know if it's in my power, but help me heal Garuum's hand to prove our friendship and intentions." Bea feels a warmth from deep inside her travel along her arms through to the boggard hand, guiding with her whole will Erastil's healing power to him.
What everyone else sees is that Bea stands still, her hands on Garuum's larger ruin of a hand, for most of a minute. Part of the flesh of the creature's hand flows and rearranges, a few of the bones snapping and reknitting, though the boggard does not seem to be in pain. Then Bea speaks in the bubbling, croaking tongue that the boggard used before, a brief phrase only, but the creature nods in apparent understanding. Bea, it's here that you return to awareness.
"Good! Good! Yes! Garuum go!" The boggard calls his slurks, makes his splashing way into one of the decayed buildings, and emerges a moment later with a sack. He pauses to flex his newly-healed thumb, which allows him to carry the sack and his morningstar without trouble before waving in farewell and mounting one of the slurks, riding off to the east-northeast.
The Doktor looks very confused, which is not a lot different from his normal expression. He starts to say, But you... then simply trails off. He starts again. Well done. I believe that you have made an ally. We now appear to have no impediment to investigating the ruins.
Bea falls back into the mud, sitting dazed for a moment before reaching up to rub her throat. Not knowing what to say, she watches in amazement as the boggard rides away, then shrugs at the doctor. "Yes, I suppose so." Pulling herself again to her feet, she waits for the rest of the party to gather before moving into the ruins.
"Well done, Bea," Havrin says with admiration evident in his tone.
The ranger pauses for a moment as he studies the direction in which the boggard left. "Ummm... Why is Garuum heading back the way we came?"
Bea looks back at the direction Havrin indicated. "Could be any number of reasons. I don't like to take chances though. Jacyn, I don't suppose I could convince you to trail him for a few days, make sure he stays out of trouble? We can meet up again at Oleg's once you're convinced he's safely out of the region."
Jacyn nods and sets off after Garuum. "I'll see you back at Oleg's."
The rest of the day is uneventful (if a bit damp), and the party is able to finish exploring the area. Incidentally, the ruins were pretty-well picked over; it looked like Garuum didn't have much to pack. He did leave a fairly impressive bit of artwork in the lee of one corner, a painting in various biologically- and mineral-based pigments showing a boggard eating large blue dragonflies.
During the night, the weather turns for the worse. As morning breaks, a thunderstorm moves across the area. The wind howls out of the south, a warm and moist gale that provides no comfort. Exploration is impossible that day, but Havrin's skill suffices to find the party a place to hole up.
Late in the day the storm comes to an end. By midnight the clouds have completely retreated, and it remains dry through the next day.
"Let's head southeast," Havrin suggests, studying the group's map .
Zlotii sleeps fitfully, mumbling and jerking awake on several occasions. The next day, he stares at the storm, shivering despite the warmth. He simply nods and follows Havrin southeast.
The party rides off into unknown forest, taking notes and performing their usual routine of exploration. This area of the forest is much less marshy than the region you just left.
While riding into the new area, Havrin notices that the few oaks in the forest tend to have gouges along their trunks running from near the ground to well over three feet up, and there are signs of burrowing near them. His forest training interprets that as signs of a particularly large male boar in the area.
"Be careful, everyone. There's a large male boar in this area. It'll probably react violently to our presence," Havrin whispers a warning to his companions, steering Stepper with his knees and nocking an arrow to his bow as he peers about for any sign of the boar.
Beatrix grabs her spear and tries awkwardly to hold it in one hand while holding the reigns by the other. She obviously doesn't know what she's doing. "I don't know how Jacyn makes this look so easy," she grumbles.
"I propose that we withdraw before we make contact with the dangerous swine."
Katya nods towards the Doktor. "I really must agree, our job is to find the Stag Lord and remove his bandits from the area. We will never accomplish that if we keep stumbling into every problem this forest has. Every day we spend in here is another day the Stag Lord has to prepare."
The party is forming up to retreat when movement in the brush up ahead is heard by everyone, along with a frightened whinny. A moment later, a panicked horse plunges towards the party, the saddle on its back slipped to one side.