"I think we're here," Everard says.
The warrior unhooks his Goblin club and leans it against a tree before he makes his way into the little clearing. He calls out:
The Stag snorts, shaking its head. You almost think the Stag is laughing at you...
He closes his eyes and motions like he’s going to lie down.
"You can talk," Everard mutters, chuckling ruefully.
Then he steps through the crevace and repeats his call.
The Stag turns and leaves.
Once inside the crevice, Everard sees evidence (quite old) of past campfires. Searching around, you also find a rusted out pot lying against some rocks, and near the back of the crevasse, an old grave marker. If any name had been written on the weathered wood, it has long since faded in time.
"Guys!" Everard calls. "It's not what I was thinking! Come have a look."
Felix comes up behind Everard. "It's even better. A real camp site. Who knew that following mysterious white stags was so tiring? He starts making a fire to cook their dinner. Make yourself useful and get some water."
Everard finds water in a clear mountain stream a short distance from the entrance to the campsite. Felix collects enough firewood and has a blazing fire going in no time. Soon, the scent of roasted venison fills your camp.
Do you want to set watches?
Before discussing watches, Everard takes a look at the grave marker.
Only after that does he return to the others for a venison dinner.
"Suggest I take first watch," he offers. "Felix takes second and Zayla takes third. Sound fair?"
Zayla is interested in examining the grave marker as well.
"Sounds fair," she says in response to the watch order.
The grave marker is faded. The wood looks like it had been whittled with some sort of knife from maple or oak branches.
After your meal, you pass an uneventful evening in your natural campsite. The day dawns clear, with even a hint of warmth to it. You make yourselves a quick breakfast of leftovers with tea, then head out to look for your guide.
About two minutes west of the crevasse entrance, you find the bodies of two trolls on the ground. Their wounds are fresh and are a combination of hoof impacts and antler punctures.
Searching the bodies, you find pouches containing a total of gold coins.
"Wow." Felix deadpans. "I feel safe and horrified at the same time." He still goes through their pouches though and divides the gold evenly, giving the extra one to Everard this time.
"So, do we continue on in this direction (west?)?"
"Might as well, since that's the way our formidably guide was taking us."
Zayla grimaces at the sight of the troll bodies. "Well, I'm glad we didn't have to fight those," she says. "Yeah, let's keep going."
You leave the troll bodies behind, their wispy beards fluttering farewell in the early morning breeze.
It’s another two and a half hours of travel, parallel to the mountains, before you start to notice a difference in the forest around you. The pine trees are fuller and greener, the breezes are warmer, and many of the deciduous trees have buds or even leaves. The undergrowth gets thicker, too, hampering your progress.
Pushing through a particularly dense pocket of brush, you stumble into a clearing. Several early wildflowers are in bloom along the bank of a babbling forest brook. Drinking his fill from the cold, clear water, is the White Stag. With a “What took you so long” look, the Stag turns and slowly makes his way west into the bushes on the opposite side of the clearing.
Following the Stag, you notice that the bushes on this side of the clearing seem to part in front of you, requiring no effort on your part to pass through. You also see that the bushes close in tightly behind you, and you aren’t sure how easy it would be to force your way back through. As quickly as the bushes closed in around you, they are gone, and you find yourselves in a protected alcove amongst the rocks. Lush green grass carpets the ground, and a clear spring bubbles out of the ground along the southern edge of the clearing. It is a peaceful area, and you can sense that it is protected. The Stag crosses the clearing, hopping over a huckleberry bush which is inexplicably producing fruit at this time of the year, and continues its drink from the spring.
Your attention stays on these ground level things for only a moment, before your eyes are drawn to the enormous oak tree in the centre of the clearing, easily the largest oak tree any of you have ever seen. It feels ancient, standing well over a hundred feet tall. You are unconsciously drawn towards it.
When you come within thirty feet of the tree, the bark at ground level begins to move about, splitting up the middle, creating a small opening, just large enough for a human-sized woman with green skin, hair of the softest moss, and eyes of starlight to step out. She wears a crown of holly leaves, bejeweled with sparkling dew drops and captured sunbeams. She looks wise, imperious, but also kind.
”Welcome, travelers. I am Nerissal, queen of the fairie folk in this part of the world—ruler of the natural world. Are you friends of the forest?”
"Yes! And I love you." Felix is totally awed by the scene. He immediately regrets selling the one gem to the thieve's guild and returning the ring to the herbalist. He would have much rather used both to show his love for Nerissal.
"Um, yes," Zayla says, peering wide-eyed at Felix. "I'd say we're friends of the forest. I mean, not that we actually know you, but we're friendly to the forest at any rate. And, we, uh, love you?"
Everard makes his best courtly bow. Which, admittedly, is a bit awkward because he grew up in an orphanage in a simple farming town. Still, it's the thought that counts - hopefully.
Queen Nerissal smiles fondly at Felix’s...enthusiasm, and nods politely at Zayla’s pragmatism and honesty.
”If you are indeed friends of the forest, I have a task for you. Along the northern edge of this valley, growing on the side of a rock face, lives a colony of the spore-spitting spirea. Bring me a seed from those rare magical plants, that I may plant it elsewhere and perpetuate the species.”
With hearts in his eyes, Felix agrees to do as his beloved says.
"Have feet, will travel," Everard says with a shrug and a smile.
He glances at the white stag and gives it a courteous bow.
"Thanks for keeping those Trolls off of us last night, by the way."
The Stag glances up at you, blinks several times, and returns to his drink.
Queen Nerissal nods politely to your group, then steps back into her tree.
Zayla waves politely to Nerissal and then to the stag.
"Well, that was interesting," she says to the others. "I guess we'd better these spore plants."
"Yes. Let's go. It could take us all day to get there."
So how do you wish to go? Straight north? Back to your campsite? Back to town then north?
You head out of the grove the same way you entered, and the bushes do allow you to leave. Turning north, you resume trail blazing through the forest.
About mid-afternoon, you notice that the foliage has thickened and greened up again, compared to normal, similar to when you approached the dryad’s grove this morning. Through the trees to your right, you see a strange-looking clearing.
Presuming you wish to investigate anything that appears odd, you make your way towards it. You can see that several large, mossy stones, some four to five feet high, have been placed in a circular pattern around this clearing, with several more scattered throughout. In the centre of the clearing stands a ring of enormous mushrooms, with several smaller mushrooms growing in scattered clumps nearby.
Do you wish to enter the clearing? You will have to walk past the outer ring of stones.
Felix thinks this is an interesting landmark and would like to investigate a bit before continuing on. "Let's see what there is to see. He walks the circumference of the stones before going inside.
Perception
Being too engrossed in the large stones, Felix misses the one buried in the grass, and ends up on his face inside the stones, a few feet from the mushroom ring.
Suppressing a laugh as Felix tumbles over, Zayla approaches the ring of stones and takes a good look at the clearing without entering it yet.
Zayla is pretty sure this is a faerie ring. The fairies that make these are typically extremely tiny, flying creatures, very magical, and capricious. She knows they defend their rings against intruders, but they sleep during the day, only to come out at night to dance and sing their nature magic.
It should be safe enough to explore during the day. Fairie rings are also known for sprouting magic mushrooms (which the Healer is willing to pay you for). Magic mushrooms are the smaller variety. Zayla is pretty sure trying to pick one of the big ones would wake up the faeries no matter what time of day it is.
"Oh wow," Zayla breathes. "I think this is a faerie ring. It should be safe to look around for now. The faeries only come out at night. Don't disturb anything though. We don't want to wake the faeries up."
She wanders into the clearing. "We might be able to find some magic mushrooms though. Little ones, I mean. Not those big ones."
"Yeah, we wouldn't want to upset the little ones when we're doing a job of work for their queen," Everard says as he helps Felix to his feet.
"Right. It was probably a faerie that tripped me." Felix says trying to salvage his dignity. "I was going for one of the big ones. That's why."
"Almost certainly a faerie," Zayla smirks. "They're known for sleep-tripping."
So all joking aside, no faeries come out to trip or otherwise harrass anybody. Is there anything you’d like to do here, or note it’s location and keep moving north?
Zayla will take a cursory look for any magic mushrooms, but doesn't want to hold things up too much.
Everard looks around for some of the smaller mushrooms as well -
- and scoops up a handful if he finds any.
You easily find many smaller mushrooms and can harvest a generous supply, say five pounds, without making a noticeable dent in the current crop.
Tucking your mushrooms away for safe-keeping, you continue on northwards. After another hour, you suddenly step out into the remains of a very old road, running east-west. You realize that this must have been the old road between Spielburg and the iron mines. The forest has begun the reclamation process, but the ground was so hard and well-packed that little growth has occurred on the old road itself.
However, your destination is north, so you continue onwards through the trees. Unfortunately, your light begins to fade before you arrive at the northern mountains, and you must decide to either press on in the dark or make camp.
If you choose to make camp, please give me Survival rolls to help find the best campsite.
"Suggest we don't blunder about in the dark, but we need to be wary. There's no magic stag watching out for us tonight, and that road is probably the Goblins' main route into the rest of the valley now. They can see in the dark. We should try to find somewhere we can put our backs against something solid, and rotate watches so two people are awake at all times."
"Agreed," Zayla says, as she pokes around for an appropriate place to make camp. "So...uh...I have to admit I don't have much experience camping in the wild. What exactly makes a good campsite?"
"This! This here is a good campsite." Says Felix. "There's a large rock there to put our backs to. Trees and undergrowth to hide us, but not too much so we can see for a distance. This is a great site for camp."
You find yourselves a lovely spot for a campsite, with a rock and trees, but fail to notice that you've camped inside a small hollow, and as the rain begins to fall, your hollow quickly becomes quite soggy, causing your fire to sputter and hiss. After an hour of everybody being awake, cold, and soggy, you decide to risk moving your campsite to higher ground. Though you eventually get your fire going again, you are cold, damp, and miserable. Fortunately, the nasties that live in the forest also chose to avoid the rain. You aren't attacked, but you wake up tired.
After a miserable breakfast (yuck, the rations got soggy), you rouse yourselves to continue north. The cold morning breeze cuts through your damp clothing, adding to your misery. In your tired state, it takes most of the afternoon before you reach the northern edge of the valley.
You see none of the plants the dryad described in the immediate area. Would you like to search west, east, or something else?
Felix is tired and grumpy. The only reason he isn't arguing with with Zayla or Everard is that he isn't talking to them. "She said it was on the side of a rock face, so let's go toward the mountains." Felix starts going east.
"Seconded. Best we keep moving, so we stay a little warmer."
Moving to the east, you travel several hours along the base of the rockface before hearing a strange sound. Up above, growing out of a series of narrow ledges, you see five strange pitcher plants. Every few seconds, one of them spits out a large seed, making the bizarre spitting sound, and another plant unerringly catches it.
The lowest of the plants is twenty feet up the sheer rockface. Others are between five and fifteen feet higher. The Climb DC to scale the sheer rockface is 25, though there are rougher patches beside and above the plant patch with a DC of 15. You would still need to climb ten feet down the sheer face to get to the nearest plant.
"Here, Felix," Everard says as he braces his hands against the rockface. "Use me as a step-up. You're the better climber."