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"I cannot tell you what might be in that tomb but these stones are very intriguing and support the work that Cenenviel and Urwal are doing back at the camp. Namely that the old cyclopean civilization that settled in this area used the Bruorsivi pines for energy and created large stones that would function as batteries for abyssal energy.
Based on these diagrams the stone Urwal mentioned is likely broken and releasing abyssal energy that is twisting the leshys in the area. If I am able to get close to the stone I believe I might be able to reverse the process and bring the leshys back to a normal state!"
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Tiger takes a look at the scarecrow and determines that this was not animated but rather one of the forests spirits that chose to inhabit it like some sort of psuedo-leshy.
Spry ends up getting in the way as Nuoc begins to slide the stone lide off, nearly pinching his finger. Inside the tomb you find some dusty, crumbling bones and an ancient amulet depicting a single staring eye.
With your investigation of the stone circle and tomb complete, you continue on your way. 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 out a ruddy sap. Massive, pitcher-like flowers seem to pulsate to some unheard rhythm, and the few animals still present 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 valley itself is a peculiar and ominous place. Though the crevasse is indeed the blasted valley that Urwal warned you about, 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.
Of more immediate concern are the dozens of corrupted leshys. 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.
You notice that the leshys seem oddly focused in their actions. Perhaps the spirits inhabiting their bodies are still new to the corporeal realm and are having difficulty processing the myriad physical stimuli.
The monolith at the far end of the valley is half-destroyed, most of the top part battered by some ancient rock-slide, but you can 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.
You realize that the monolith is channeling energy from the Abyss into the surrounding wilderness, and that disabling it is necessary to stop the Abyssal pollution.
Around the monolith, a single leshy moves with quiet efficiency. He looks for all the world like a simple leaf leshy, quite mundane compared to his more gruesome allies, save for the chunk of gray stone embedded in one eye. That chunk of stone is a fragment of the monolith, and 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. As each body is built, the stone eye flashes, and an eerie leshy totters off to join their fellows.
You conclude that the stone in the leshy’s eye is channeling energy from the monolith into the leshy crafter, and that the leshy crafter, empowered by the structure, is infecting the rest of the leshys in turn. Removing this immediate vector, either by killing the leshy crafter or by removing the stone from his eye, will also resolve the problem of the angry nature spirits—at least long enough for the you to destroy the monolith and end its threat for good.
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Nuoc follows his companions in towards the monolith. The juxtaposition of this monolith compared to the one he studied in his home guild is uncanny. Where that one was pure and life-giving, this one is tainted, bringing ruin and desolation in it's path. As he walks, he eyes the shard of his monolith affixed to the top of his staff, a token of his devotion and dedication to the water element and Lysianassa herself. He was meant to be here, just like every other place in his journey through this life. He was proud to fighting alongside such brave adventurers.
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Spry tries to take advantage of his natural abilities and clings to the cliff-face far above. to try and avoid notice.
In spite of their obviousness, the lack of aggression on your part means that the leshys simply continue with their various tasks, aside from the occasional ominous hoot as one of the party ventures a little too close to a busy leshy.
Spry Conor sticks to the edge of the valley, then climbs down the rugged cliff face quite nimbly. Unfortunately, as each of you reaches the bottom of the cliff, Spry drops a few stones down with his movement to the ground with a very noticeable thump.
As you gets close, 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 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 Rhee's foot.
The leshy crafter tilts his head and considers this, then speaks, ”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!” he says, addressing the Pathfinders. “Do you have an adder stone?” The leshy stops and looks around. “Or string? Used mine. Need more.”
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Rhee pulls an extensive amount of rope. "It is possible you could splice some of this to work for string. Let us see what we can do together."
Rhee moves up towards the crafter and the abyssal monolith in an attempt to study it and make friends with the leshy crafter.
"My name is Rhee, do you have a name?" Rhee holds out the rope and pulls a dagger to start splicing the rope into thinner strings.
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The leshy crafter thanks Rhee profusely. “Thanks! I’m restoring the natural order! The forest here is very unnatural. Very strange, sad. The plants are a very strange color, they’re green, the rivers never flow with blood, strange monsters everywhere! Just other day, I saw a thing. Like a rat, with a long, fluffy tail! Burying an acorn in the ground. Very horrifying! And my brother leshy says he saw a thing, four feet and a little white tail, branches on its head. Monsters everywhere! Very disturbing!”
The leshy looks quite earnest as he says this. One of the smaller leshys, which looks like a fox that has been turned inside out and is leaking dead leaves from within, comes and bumps their head against the leshy crafter, as if comforting him.
“So I think—something must be done! It’s unnatural, this place. But I’m only one leshy, so I’m making friends. Together, we’ll make this place work right, proper nature, with eye-mushrooms, and screaming flowers, and snakes! Not these bad snakes, only one head. Very upsetting. Should have sixteen heads! We will fix.”
“It’s a very difficult and important job.” The leshy puffs up as he says this. “But I can do it. Eventually.” He pauses. “It may take me a bit, though. But you are friends too! You will help?” The sharp stone in the leshy’s eye glitters as it says this. “You look a little creepy. But maybe you are friends?”
It is clear that the leshy crafter’s perceptions have been badly warped by the chunk of Abyssal rock in its eye socket.
"My name is Rhee, do you have a name?"
The leshy crafter pauses and considers this for a long moment. “I haven’t decided. Maybe… Yew, a good name. Or Oleander. Or Foxglove. I think I look like I could be a Foxglove. Maybe. Your thoughts?”
"You're making a lot of these, and they are hurting things," the gnome then remarks worriedly. "Is it because of the dragon bone ghosts?"
“They’re new! A little overenthusiastic. But people are being very strange, attempting to plant their strange plants, bringing in their monsters. Very annoying. No Dragon Bone Ghosts around here.” The leshy looks around. "“This is a great and powerful standing stone, left behind by ancient druids and spirits! It’s very fancy.” The leshy smacks the cyclopean monolith proudly with his tiny hand, causing its yellow glow to flicker for a moment. The leshy crafter looks briefly concerned, then sheepishly amends his statement. “It’s very fancy and very slightly broken. I’m fixing it! But it’s very hard, not having the tools.”
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"Abby Rock..." The leshy Crafter seems to think on this name for a moment as he seems pleased before being caught off guard. "Of course I am the source of these normal leshy's. You are the unique one."
As Kelviros begins to point out the crafter's strange eyepiece it seems a bit perturbed but quickly calms down as Kelvris explains the situation. “Why do you have a gooey round thing in your eye?” The leshy puffs up, affronted. “It’s my eye, thank you very much. I like my eye, it’s the very best eye any leshy has.”
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Approaching the group discussing the stone shard in the leshy's eye, he recalls the amulet they found in the ground earlier.
Inside the tomb you find some dusty, crumbling bones and an ancient amulet depicting a single staring eye.
Nuoc motions to his companions to gather together for a second to flash the amulet from his pouch collected earlier from the tomb. "Coincidence?" the young wizard asks, offering it to the group to aid in a possible ocular transfer for their new misguided acquaintance.
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"I have seen a snake eat a rodent nearly twice it's girth. It can do do this with a flexible jaw. A snake with sixteen heads, would always be feeding, but would then starve because it only has one stomach. It might also starve because one throat stretching to accommodate a large meal, would close off the others. It could choke on its throat!"
Spry Conor talks about the energies of nature such as the sun. "Saranrae, goddess of the sun, feeds the plants through photosynthesis, plants feed insects, insects feed birds...." An animal that dies, is returned to earth to feed the plants. A plant can grow in earth, soil and even sometimes sand. There are exceptions of course, but a plant cannot generally grow in rock, nor in fire, he explains. And your rock, and the runes on it are even worse for plants than fire.
"This rock you are using with for an eye, its energies are not those of the sun or of nature. It is tainted with energies of he Abyss. I believe it is also tainting the Path you see before you. Please let us help you correct it." the emissary finishes.
Unless we are using Flynn's check above:
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Your team work in a concerted effort as Spry, Kelvris, and Flynn explain what is happening to the leshys and the forest, Rhee takes the chance while the Crafter is distracted to alter a few of the glyphs on the monolith.
An uncanny yellow light flares one last time, then fades forever. The leshy crafter observes this, blinks a few times, then suddenly rips the monolith shard from his eye and smashes it against the ground.
The leshy crafter stands stock still for a moment, raising a hand to touch the gaping hole in his face where the cyclopean shard had so recently rested. He gingerly probes the hole, swaying like a sapling in the wind..
“Oh. Oh.” The leshy crafter looks about slowly, taking in the twisted and deformed leshys, the Abyssal plant life, the burnt and ruined valley. “...it’s possible that I might have misinterpreted one or two things.”
There is a very long pause.
“Oops.”
He stands, quietly aghast at what he has done, until he sees that the tainted leshys, now free of the monolith’s pollution, begin to revert to their normal forms. They gradually slough off the rocks and animal parts that the crafter used to form their bodies and return to somewhere close to normal. Many of them still seem to retain signs of their Abyssal origin, such as a bark pattern that looks vaguely like a bleeding skull, or extra vines that sway in an unfelt breeze, but the crafter breathes a huge sigh of relief as the demonic corruption seems to flow out of his creations, and he can see that the threat of the Abyss-warped leshys has ended.
The leshys gather around the Pathfinders in celebration of their return to the natural order of things, convinced that you are the greatest heroes in this leshy community’s entire history (which is, admittedly, only a few months long). In recognition of what the Pathfinders have done, the leshy crafter calls out in an unknown tongue, and a still rather-disturbing leshy trundles out of the woods dragging a sword behind it. The crafter explains that it is “a legendary sword, for the good monsters.” He hands it over, and it turns out to be a low-grade silver longsword with the image of a grasping arm etched into its blade.
After a pleasant night’s rest, the party returns to the Redpine camp, where Urwal greets you enthusiastically – if a bit cryptically, as always. As a reward for their great success, he gives you a beacon shot, though he notes dryly, and a touch dismissively, that it is ”A warrior’s weapon. But you are to be recognized for resolving the dilemma we faced without need for such things.”
Soon after, Jaldan canters up and exclaims excitedly, ”I heard what you did! You saved our forest, and made my tribe a new ally! And you didn’t even die! That’s sooooo cool!” She looks at Urwal for a long moment, and when he nods, she turns back to the party and continues, her tone even more excited, ”I’m going to be a Pathfinder! I’m going with Urwal when he leaves, and I’m going to study and travel and adventure, and then I can come home one day and be an even better shaman for the Redpine clan! And it’s all because you all got me so excited about being a Pathfinder!”
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...”I’m going to be a Pathfinder! I’m going with Urwal when he leaves, and I’m going to study and travel and adventure, and then I can come home one day and be an even better shaman for the Redpine clan! And it’s all because you all got me so excited about being a Pathfinder!” ...