As the centipede rears itself for the attack, Hammick's axes blur into motion, absolutely obliterating the creature into small, chunky pieces!
Desna's power courses through Orla and pierces the scarecrow with silvery light! Straw and pieces of wood scatter on the floor and the scarecrow looks really worse for wear. From the corner of her eye, the halfling cleric would see the centipede by the woods break away skittering on the forest floor and away from the combat!
Inzo and Amsu deal with the centipede in front of him. Looks like there will be fine dining tonight as both are covered in insect gore.
Bert's axe cuts deep into the scarecrow and at least half its body is gone from the gash, its rotting pumpkin head falling on the forest floor and breaking into pieces, leaving a dark burgundy twisted frame that stands over the dwarf and human. Even without its head it reaches out to claw at Bert.
The claw swipes only to strike the shield's rim and miss the dwarf. It then takes a swipe at Gabros, but the nobleman is too swift-footed and easily dodges the strike, magical rapier at the ready. Frustrated, the scarecrow takes a step back, unsure how to react to these recent turn of events.
The remaining centipede seeing its swarm disperse also turns and runs away from the group!
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As Orla brings up the scarecrow being a leshy, Nazgub manages to get the scarecrow to stop. It begins to point toward the unearthed grave, as Gabros strikes what's left of the creature and breaks it in half, the wooden frame rotted just as much as its head. It crawls towards the grave and in the dirt writes a single word in Taldane.
"ֆǟʋɛ ʊֆ"
It then reaches out into the grave, grabs something in its claw and stops moving.
Approaching the menhirs, you notice that the stones are covered in complex writing in the ancient cyclopean script.
You deduce that these stones originate from Old Koloran, the cyclopean empire that occupied modern-day Iobaria (among many other places), famous for its widespread worship of fiends and other horrors. The cairns seem to show Finadar Forest, with its swift-burning blood pines, as a great ritual battery for the cyclopses, a place to hold Abyssal energy until it was needed. This energy was brought forth into the world by a series of burning monoliths. The depiction of the monoliths (three feet tall and covered in burning runes) matches Urwal and Cenenviel’s description of the monolith in the old dragon graveyard.
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"Ah made it through a fight un-bloody-scathed!" Bert throws up his hands and cheers. "Ah'll sleep well tonight, 'cause I didn't waste me sleepin' hours with any damned dirt naps! HA!" he does what could almost be construed as a joyful jig, armour rustling and jangling, clacking his shield and axe together overhead.
Once the rush of sweet, flawless victory ends, he takes notice of the leshy's dying writing.
"Ugh, now it's bloody tryin' to make me feel bad for choppin' a tree," he grumbles.
He nods at Hammick's analysis: "Right yeh are, fellow dwarf, them's a whole bunch o' rocks. Ah, look at us, on the forefront deducin' things, too much o' this an' our heads'll swell to pumpkin-size with all the stuffs we knows an' thinks."
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As the leshy topples over, Orla tries her darnedest to prevent it from dying while healing her colleagues.
Tears spring to the halfling's eyes as she realises their error. "It says 'Save us'! Oh no! And I killed the poor thing." Orla begins wailing over the formerly-murderous scarecrow.
The fallen scarecrow despite the healing burst is nothing but an empty husk for the leshy spirit that inhabited it. Everyone else, however; can feel the healing taking place in their adrenaline-filled bodies. The broken frame remains on the ground clutching something in its claws.
While her friends are baffled by the menhirs, Orla has a flash of insight based on her conversation with Ceneviel. Using the pictographs to understand the meaning of the script, Orla deduces that these stones originate from Old Koloran, the cyclopean empire that occupied modern-day Iobaria (among many other places), famous for its widespread worship of fiends and other horrors. The cairns seem to show Finadar Forest, with its swift-burning blood pines, as a great ritual battery for the cyclopses, a place to hold Abyssal energy until it was needed. This energy was brought forth into the world by a series of burning monoliths. The depiction of the monoliths (three feet tall and covered in burning runes) matches Urwal and Cenenviel’s description of the monolith in the old dragon graveyard.
Although not well-versed in the lore of the occult, but very knowledgeable about rocks, Hammick and Inzo are able to realize thanks to Orla's information that a monolith spewing Abyssal energy into the forest would explain the twisting of Finadar’s spirits and the bizarre leshys. As the Abyssal pollution is still in its early days, if the source is removed, then the forest spirits would likely return to normal quickly.
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"So uhhh, if there is an abyssal aura if you will affecting these plant spirits, there must be something that started it. This place gives me the heebie jeebies, trees don't act like this normally."
Inzo scratches his head
"I mean, normally they just stand still for the choppin', but even live ones, dryads and leshy and the like. Anyone spotted or heard anything that would flare this stuff up like a slug-rash?"
Can we take one of the smaller Menhirs, or at least Inzo will sketch it down to report back to the society/the druidic tribe if we go back there.
As you approach the grave, you find some dusty, large crumbling bones. The scarecrow holds in its claw an ancient iron amulet depicting a single staring eye.
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Gabros sags, breathing heavily, the rage of battle draining away and leaving him feeling spent. He flinches at Orla's cry for quarter, called too late.
Damn, damn, damn! This is what can come of losing one's composure.
"Here Inzo, this may serve your aims." Seeing his companions search for paper he hands some too the goblin. It is quite fine parchment and an elegant quill and a small bottle of quality ink.
Thanks to Nazgub's guidance, Inzo does a decent job in scrawling the Abyssal runes. However, just the mere act of writing them makes anyone uneasy, it's almost as if unknown entities were whispering directly into your head.
Orla would know this amulet marks one as a member of the scholar priests of the ancient cyclopean civilization and was used as a badge of office.
After taking a break you all continue on your journey.
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As you approach the old goblin valley, the environment grows increasingly bizarre. Much of this area has been burned, but the charred and ashen ground is almost preferable to the plant life that has survived. Enormous, thorny bushes with leaves bent like clawed fingers sprout from the ground while strangling vines have sunk hooked spikes into the bark of the remaining trees and drawn a ruddy sap. Massive, pitcher-like flowers seem to pulsate to some unheard rhythm, and the few animals that you can see bear massive, weeping wounds. The air is thick and hazy with pollen and has a sickly sweet, metallic scent to it, like rotten blood.
The leshys’ valley is without doubt a peculiar and ominous place. Though the crevasse is indeed the blasted valley that you were warned of at the Redpine camp, the area all around it teems with awful and uncanny life. The unnatural plants from before grow twice as thick and strange. Shrubs with gnarled human fingers twitch in the breeze, while vines slither like serpents along the ground. A two-headed crow caws from atop an oak tree studded with catlike eyes.
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Gabros is uneasy in this place, keeping his sword in hand his eyes constantly scan the area for threats. But he works hard to keep his unease hidden
Seeming as composed as ever he is quick to do whatever he can to maintain morale. When Orla is worried by the taint surrounding them he lays a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You are safe my friend. Between the blades of your companions and the majesty of Desna's wings you need not fear."
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Gabros is uneasy in this place, keeping his sword in hand his eyes constantly scan the area for threats. But he works hard to keep his unease hidden
Seeming as composed as ever he is quick to do whatever he can to maintain morale. When Orla is worried by the taint surrounding them he lays a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "You are safe my friend. Between the blades of your companions and the majesty of Desna's wings you need not fear."
You all move forward through the valley, most of you able to remain stealthy and keeping and eye for anything suspicious. Following Urwal’s map and by following Bert and Gabros' lead, you emerge from the undergrowth a safe distance from the leshys’ valley and can assess the following situation:
You have a more immediate concern than the exploding trees: there are dozens of corrupted leshys in the valley. A few simply stand around, singing odd, warbling songs to one another, or else play a game vaguely like pat-a-cake, albeit with wildly varying numbers of limbs. Many of the others are hard at work, gathering strewn-about trash, stray branches, and offal, and bringing their prizes toward an ancient, graven monolith at the end of the crevasse. Most of you notice that the leshys seem oddly focused in their actions; the spirits inhabiting their bodies are still new to the corporeal realm and are having difficulty processing the myriad physical stimuli.
Your main objective, the monolith, is half-destroyed, most of the top part battered by some ancient rock-slide, but you can all still make out the same sinuous script upon the weathered stone, as well as bas-relief depictions of three one-eyed figures: two, in armor, bowed in supplication before a third, wearing robes and a massive pectoral amulet.
Around the monolith, a single leshy moves with quiet efficiency. He looks for all the world like a simple inoffensive leshy made of branches and leaves, quite mundane compared to his more gruesome allies, save for the chunk of gray stone embedded in one eye, a serpentine rune upon it glows with yellow flames that intensify as the leshy busily assembles the gathered scraps left at the monolith into new, disturbing leshys. It's a leshy that crafts leshys, perhaps the first time you've even seen it possible.
As each body is built, the stone eye flashes, and an eerie leshy totters off to join their fellows.
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Bert scans the valley. His keen eyes fixate on the monolith, and a tremor runs through his stout frame.
"Alright, listen up," he grumbles quietly to the group. "Though somethin' took the top off that big carved rock thing, it's givin' me a twitchy feelin' somethin' fierce, like what's left of me beard is tryin' to escape my body. What I'm sayin' is: it's bad, an' it's probably the cause of all o' this badness too. We just gotta stop it somehow..."
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"What do you think we have to do? If this kicks off, I can sneak over and nab it, but I'm no magician. I can try break it, but I'm not that strong. Mayhaps we gotta get Orla to unpick the runes? Or Bert do you wanna crack it in half? Might dull your axe, but I've seen you put enough force through a stone before."
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Orla takes in the action within the valley.
She then spies the leshy crafter.
Orla counters Uncle's argument.
"That monolith...I agree with Bert; it's evil! Like, Abyssal-evil. We just gotta deactivate it somehow. There's no success to this mission if'n we don't succeed there."
She carries on. "I've never seen a leshy making other leshies before...course, I barely met one leshy before this crazy trip. Still, I don't know WHAT to think when I look at him."
Orla takes out a vial filled with a viscous silvery liquid inside. "Might be time to use this," she reasons.
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"If there's a way to reason with these leshys, then I think, as per the advice of our esteemed friend Urwal, we should take that opportunity. If y'all are willing to let me go talk to that leshy and see if I can get him to stop using that stone, then I'd see it as my duty to give it a shot. I don't want to kill anymore leshys if we can manage it - that pumpkin pleaded with us to save them before it died. We've got to try."
Tears brim in Orla's eyes as she mentions the pumpkin leshy.
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"Why not we do both? 'ave a few of us go out to engage them in conversation an' see if we can resolve this without the need for hackin' an' slashin', while some stealthy-types move behind to get the drop on that big rock in case it all turns vinegar-sour?"
Bert looks between his companions, eyeing up their abilities for dialogue or sneakiness.
"I mighta just made a plan I ain't any good at," he chuckles.
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Inzo's head is bobbing back and forth as he listens to the plans of all the longshanks. Planning was a skill taught to him later in life out of necessity. Without it, he'd done okay in the Frostfur tribes, but not when working with Bert in the Irriseni lumber camps.
"Amsu and I are best positioned getting to the corrupted stone, and then if chatting doesn't go down well we can enact plan 'B'. It'll be easy to tell on Bert's face how it's going. His emotions are written right on his face, and without half the beard I can see it plain as day."
You split up. While the rest go around to the end of the valley and ready themselves to approach the stone, you decide to go into the open. Surprisingly the leshys do not attack. They mostly seem to ignore you, although they hoot and bristle ominously at Orla. You are unimpeded as you stride through the camp, despite the hootings and uncomfortable stares from the leshys as they approach and shake their leaves at you. Still, they let you approach the leshy crafter as they begin to close off the exit and surround you.
"χατ χουτ"
When you arrive, the leshy crafter is putting the finishing touches on a new leshy, a hideous monster made from spindly vines growing through the carved open corpse of an opossum, with two small pebbles serving as the eyes, tied in place with string. The leshy crafter finishes attaching the last limb, and the opossum leshy twitches to life atop the broken monolith, their body suffused with a dim, yellowish light. They take several jerky steps forward, then disintegrate, their head falling off and one of the pebble eyes rolling up against Bert's foot.
"χατ χουτ" thud "χατ χουτ"
The leshy crafter tilts his head and considers this.
"No. No, no, no, the river pebbles were not a success. Very damp. Needs an adder stone? Yes. Adder stone works. Then they can see everything. Also, not slippery, I can tie the string."
At first, the leshy seems oblivious to the world. Then he turns his head, the jagged chunk of stone in his eye making odd shadows play across his face. "Oh, hello! Do you have an adder stone?" The leshy stops and looks around. "Or string? Used mine. Need more."
"χατ χουτ"
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Bert suppresses a grunt of disgust at the pebble eye bobbing against his foot, fighting the urge to hoof it off into the nearby plant matter. Instead, he concentrates on watching the surrounding leshys for any signs of danger.
"I gots a bit o' rope," he hisses to Gabros and Orla. "Yeh can offer that if'n we need."
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Orla walks forward with care, muttering a prayer to Desna and lightly touching her medallion just prior to entreating with the leshy crafter.
Orla then addresses the crafter.
"Your pumpkin friend told us you were having some difficulties. He suggested we come to help; he told us to bring rope. He also suggested that your runic eye stone would work better if you didn't have it inserted upside down. He said it would some time if you did so." Orla uses the words of the fallen pumpkin leshy in the faint hope that it would somehow carry additional information.