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Before I start posting any journals from this, here's the back ground I wrote up for my character.
As far as Korgoth knows, life started for him a few years ago when a group of bandits found his body washed up on the shore of the East Sullen River near the Narlmarches. Surprised that he had actually survived in the river and curious as to how he got there, the bandit leader, Traben as Korgoth would later find out, decided to spare his life and take him into the camp.
At first, not being fully trusted by the bandits, Korgoth was given simple tasks like cooking and gathering fire wood for the gang. After working for the gang for a couple months Korgoth was given the opportunity to go along with them on a hold up of a merchant caravan passing nearby on its way to New Stetven.
The holdup was going well until fighting suddenly broke out. Korgoth has no idea what started it, but suddenly the air was filled with the screams of men fighting and dying, the clash of weapons and the coppery stench of blood. And then he froze. The scene felt vaguely familiar but at the same time frightening. He didn’t see the guardsman that was coming towards him, or the bloody long sword held in the man’s hand. He didn’t hear the shouted warning to watch out, but was finally brought out of his paralysis by a splash of blood across his face as one of the bandits, Ulrik, stabbed the guard through the throat from behind, saving his life. With the fight over, the bandits stripped the guards’ bodies of anything useful, loaded up the wagons and headed back to camp.
When they got back to camp, Traben took Korgoth off to the side to talk to him about what happened and why freezing in a situation like that is a bad thing. After the talk, Korgoth went back to camp and started to make dinner for the night. While he worked, the rest of the bandits drank and joked with each other about the raid. He ignored most of what was going on until he heard Ulrik start to describe how he saved the life of the “stupid half-orc cook,” the story brought about some laughs but something about how it was told irritated Korgoth. As the night continued, Ulrik continued making derogatory comments about Korgoth, which continued to bring laughs from those around him and irritating Korgoth.
The situation got worse quickly when Korgoth accidently bumped into Ulrik, when turned and roughly pushed Korgoth saying “watch where you’re going you stupid half-orc. We should have never pulled your useless body out of the river.” Korgoth finally snapped with this, and with his vision turning red, he rushed Ulrik, slamming him into a nearby tree before starting to pummel him. When Ulrik dropped to the ground, Korgoth followed and continued punching him in the head until the bandit gang managed to drag Korgoth off the beaten bandit. When Korgoth’s vision cleared, he saw Ulrik’s still body laying at the base of a tree, his head was mostly intact except for a slightly larger than a fist sized hole over a large dent in the ground beneath it.
After the incident with Ulrik, the gang mostly left Korgoth alone. As time went by, the gang slowly began to accept Korgoth again, though they were still a little wary of him. Eventually he was asked to come on another robbery. This time, when violence erupted, Korgoth didn’t freeze and killed one of the guards.
Back in camp that night, while everyone was celebrating their successful robbery, Korgoth was oddly quiet. Killing obviously wasn’t new to him, he had killed Ulrik after all, but he had an odd feeling about killing the guard. As he sat contemplating the difference between killing Ulrik and killing the guard, Korgoth realized that the guard hadn’t really done anything to him and was just defending himself and the caravan, the gang had provoked him where as Ulrik had insulted and attacked Korgoth and he was just defending himself from that. After this revelation, Korgoth went to talk to Traben about not going on anymore robberies and going back to just doing the cooking and such around the camp. Traben was ok with this as everyone else hated doing those chores.
As time went on, Korgoth began enjoying his place in the gang, but wasn’t completely happy with things. They were constantly on the run from the patrols from the River Kingdoms and the monsters of the Narlmarshes, and had plenty of close calls with both, occasionally loosing men to either. The welfare of the camp was constantly in flux based on how well robberies went, and how often travelers and merchants passed nearby. But he couldn’t justify leaving. After all, they had saved his life and given him a place to stay, even if it wasn’t permanent.
One night while out gathering fire wood for the night and next morning, Korgoth heard creams and the sound of battle coming from back near camp. Dropping the wood he had gathered, Korgoth rushed back towards the camp. As he neared camp, Korgoth saw the bandits fighting with several large creatures with a rough, green hide. As he started to rush into the clearing camp had been set in, Korgoth saw Traben look at him and yell “Run!” right before a creature larger than the others wielding a wicked looking axe cut him in two. Following the last order of his boss, Korgoth turned and ran into the forest, abandoning the rest of the gang to their fate with the green creatures.
Korgoth spent that night hiding in a tree, ever vigilant for the sounds of the creatures. In the morning, Korgoth carefully worked his way back to the camp. The scene he found at the camp was horrifying. One of the green creatures from the night before was laying where the small fire had been the night before, thoroughly charred, everyone in the camp was missing limbs and it looked like some of them had been partially eaten. Fighting down his revulsion, Korgoth went through camp gathering up anything that was still in a useful condition before starting to bury the bodies of his former gang while deciding what to do next. A couple days later, after he had finished burying his gang, Korgoth began the trek up to New Stetven.
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Our first session, it's really long, I know.
Upon my arrival in New Stetson, I heard rumor that the Sword Lords were looking for adventurers to help settle and reclaim the Stolen Lands. Seeing this as an excellent chance to start over I decided to head to Restov.
We had normally avoided any large cities for fear of getting caught and hung, so going to the largest city in Brevoy was a little frightening for me. I was worried that some how people would just know that I was a bandit. Surprisingly people were pretty oblivious to me and the guards treated like anyone else in the city.
For some reason I didn’t need to ask a guard for directions, I just made my way to the office of… whoever it was that was letting people reclaim the Stolen Lands like I knew exactly where I was going. It was strange and I had no idea why I seemed to know where I was going, but I didn’t know why I knew much of anything so I ignored it. When I got there, there was already a group of what I can only assume to be professional adventurers from the quality of their gear and their air of calmness. I talked to some bored looking official and he put my name down under a column that read “Green Belt” with a couple other names, a Tristan and Jarendlon Windrunner. I asked them who they were and if they were around, but all the official could tell me were they were a couple elves, that he didn’t know where they were and that I would meet them in a couple of days when we were scheduled to begin our reclamation of the Green belt.
As I left the recruiting office, for lack of better term, I passed a strange half-orc armed with only a bow, I haven’t known many half-orcs but I do know that they’re rarely archers or use a bow unless necessary. Shrugging off the strangeness of it I began wondering the streets of Restov until I came to an oddly familiar looking inn. I couldn’t figure out why it looked so familiar, pushed the feeling of familiarity to the back of my mind and went in to see if they had any rooms. Having cooked for the gang most every night, I also inquired of the inn keeper, a man by the name of Gustov, if the cook could use any help in the kitchens. After assuring Gustov and the cook that I didn’t want payment or anything and just wanted something to help me pass the time until I left for the Green Belt they finally allowed me to help out in the kitchen for a couple of nights. Even though there were no festivals going on and not too many people staying at his inn, those two nights were two of the busiest Gustov’s kitchen had seen.
Finally the morning of Calistra the 26th, the day I’d be meeting the two elves and the rest of the Green belt group, arrived. After packing my gear and making a quick breakfast, I left Gustov’s inn and headed back to the recruiting office. As I approached the office, I noticed a draft sized horse and a large wolf looking dog waiting outside. Eying the wolf dog, I gave both creatures a larger than normal distance as I made my way into the office. As I entered the office I saw two elves, one wearing a suit of armor that appeared to be made out of dragon scales and the other some leather armor with bits of metal sticking out with a long bow and scimitar. Once the dragon scale wearing elf introduced himself as Jarendlon, I introduced myself to the other and discovered that I had rightly assumed it to be Tristan. The bored looking official from when I was in last informed us that the other two members of our group, a Leon Ilsold and Storn, were late and would hopefully be there shortly. No sooner had he said this than the strange, bow carrying half orc I had seen the other day walked into the office and introduced himself simply as Storn. A few minutes of uncomfortable silence later, a thin human with bright red hair came rushing into the office with, of all things, a large frog following behind him. Smirking at the obvious fear on the face of the official at the sight of the frog, I asked the young human if he was Leon to which he replied he was and apologized for being late.
After introductions were finished, the official handed us our charter to explore the area to the south known as the Green Belt and explained where the other groups had gone. Talking amongst ourselves, we agreed to leave the following morning after making any final purchases we may need.
The following morning, the group and I met up at the front gate of Brevoy and headed out towards a trading outpost in the northern area of the Green Belt ran by a man by the name of Oleg and his wife Svetlana. It took us a few days to travel to Oleg’s, but those few days also gave us a chance to get to know each other. Storn was some sort of monk from Cheliax, not exactly sure why he left but here he is; by the cut of Leon’s clothes, he appears to be from a better off family, possibly a lesser noble one, he wouldn’t say, I’m still trying to get used to his frog that he refers to as “Gribbit”; Jarendlon seemed a more in touch with nature than most elves I’ve heard about, this was confirmed when he said he was a druid of Erastil; finally there was Tristan, who with his valet Jacobi might have been some sort of elven noble, but I can’t be too sure of that since I don’t even know for sure if elves have nobility.
We finally arrived at Oleg’s at the end of the month. When we arrived, Oleg and his wife Svetlana were both relieved to see us, but that diminished when they learned that we weren’t the guards they had sent for. After talking to them for a little bit, we learned that they had a problem with bandits seeking tribute from them every couple of weeks and that they would probably be back the next day. Even though we weren’t the guards they had asked for, we all agreed to help them out when the bandits came and started planning an ambush for the bandits in the morning. The talk of the ambush reminded me of preparing to ambush passing caravans when I was with Traben’s gang, big difference being that this time it was a defensive rather than offensive ambush. After we finalized our plans, I offered to help Svetlana cook dinner for everyone. We continued talking during dinner, getting as much information about the area and the bandits as we could from Oleg and Svetlana. With dinner over, we decided to go to bed so that we could be up early and prepare for the ambush.
The following morning, the group woke before sunrise and started preparing for the ambush. We opened both of the doors to the palisade around Oleg’s trading post, stacking barrels between the end of one and a building for Storn and I to hide behind with the intention of closing the gate when the bandits were inside to hinder their escape. (insert what everyone else did, I can’t remember)
The bandits arrived a little over an hour later, there were six of them including their leader all on horses with two extra horses I could only assume were for the tribute, and their apparent leader said he was there for Oleg’s tribute. As soon as he said this, Storn and I began attempting to close the gate we were hiding behind. After a few failed attempts, I just squeezed through the barrels to enter combat with the bandits. I still remember what it’s like to be a bandit and the risks they take in making their “living” and they hadn’t done anything to threaten me, so I didn’t try to kill any of them. Between Tristan’s and Storn’s exceptional use of their bows, Leon’s frog Gribbit and Jarendlon’s wolf the fight lasted less than a minute.
After securing the bandits and ensuring none of them were going to die from injuries they took, we put them their horses in Oleg’s stables and while the rest of the party interrogated them, I helped Svetlana prepare breakfast. After learning that they were just a smaller group of a band hiding somewhere in the Narl Marshes, we locked them in an empty storage room until the eventual arrival of the guards.
Over breakfast, Oleg thanked us for taking care of the bandits and gave us two healing potions he had bought from a hermit named Bokken that lives about a day’s travel to the east of him and then told us how when the bandits first arrived they had taken his wife’s wedding ring from her. It wasn’t exceptionally valuable, but she really wanted it back and thus he did too, and asked us to find it for her if we could. We accepted his request and then decided to go find Bokken.
We hadn’t found Bokken’s hut by the time it was beginning to get dark, so we decided to make camp. Nothing happened that night.
The next morning, after breaking camp, we continued our search for Bokken. We eventually found him around the middle of the morning. He was definitely… strange. He spoke quickly, like he was perpetually nervous – almost like a bird – and slightly high pitched, he didn’t look or smell like he had bathed in awhile and was stirring something in a cauldron over a fire. We mentioned that Oleg had told us about him and began asking him about what potions he could make, how long it would take him to make them and how much it would cost. As we were leaving after speaking to him about potions, what potions he could make, how long it would take and their cost, he asked us to find something called fang berries for him. Jarendlon had never heard of fang berries, so we had to ask Bokken what they were. According to Bokken, fang berries were a rare berry that grew near the forest about fifty miles south east of Oleg’s. With this information in hand, we started to head back to Oleg’s to rest before starting to explore the Green Belt.
When we arrived later that day, there were some tents set up around Oleg’s stable and the bandits were handing from the palisade around the trading post. The guards Oleg had sent for had obviously arrived. Once inside, Oleg introduced us the guard in charge, a Kesten Garess, who had also brought with him a proclamation from the Sword Lords stating that there was a bounty for any bandits caught. He also asked us to keep our eyes out for an older bandit by the name of Falgrim Sneeg who had apparently stolen something from him years before.
Before we left Oleg’s to continue exploring the Greenbelt, Svetlana approached us and asked us to bring back some moon radishes if we come across any so that she could make her husband’s favorite meal, moon radish soup. With this new request in hand, we decided to head south west into the forest and begin exploring it. We arrived in the forest and spent some time exploring it before setting up camp for the night. The next morning, after breaking camp we set out to continue exploring this area of forest. A few hours later we came across a small group of humanoid looking lizards that Jarendlon pointed out were kobolds that were laying in a patch of what appeared to be radishes. Scattered around the forest clearing were a few baskets with what appeared to be white radishes. As we entered the clearing, someone made a pre-emptive strike against the kobolds and shot one of them. I couldn’t tell who it was’ but I thought it was uncalled for since they hadn’t attacked us yet. With one of their group pierced by an arrow, the other kobolds got up and attacked. The fight was short lived and we quickly dispatched them and gathered up their baskets of moon radishes, Jarendlon had identified them as such. With the moon radishes in hand, we decided to head south east from the forest clearing and see what’s over there.
We camped that night near the forest’s edge and had a very uneventful night. Shortly after we set out to continue exploring the next morning we ran into an injured hunter. He claims that there’s a vicious monster of a spider near-by that killed his friend and both of their horses. We assured the hunter that we would take care of the spider and see if we could recover his friend’s body or any possessions of his for him.
Heading in the direction the hunter pointed us, we quickly came across an area had spider webs covering the ground. Jarendlon warned us to be careful as this looked like a large trap door spider. Moving through the area of the webs we were soon attacked by a large spider lunging out from one of the webs on the ground. With the spider revealed, we quickly began attacking it and soon had the creature dispatched. A search of the area revealed the hunter’s friend’s body and we removed anything that might be of any value for the hunter before burying the body and setting fire to all the webs on the ground. After doing all that, we went back to where we had left the injured hunter and offered to escort him back up to Oleg’s for his own safety.
The first thing we noticed when we arrived at Oleg’s was two wanted posters, one from Oleg himself requesting the head of something called a tatzlwyrm and the other a request from the local hunters to kill a boar by the name of Tuskgutter that’s been causing them problems. After reading over these requests I delivered the moon radishes to Svetlana and was then kicked out of the kitchen after I offered to help her make the moon radish stew. Being kicked out of the kitchen, I went to find the rest of the group. When I found them, they were talking to Oleg and another strange man that I would later learn to be a priest of Erastil by the name of Jhod Kavekin. I managed to catch the last part of a conversation about a lost temple to Erastil in the forest somewhere and that there’s a good change some sort of bear is guarding it.
The next morning we decided to attempt to find the camp of the bandits that had attacked Oleg’s earlier and began heading south back to the forest and moon radish patch. We managed to reach the patch of radishes on the first day and decided to set up camp there. The next day we began looking around in this area of forest for the bandit camp buy didn’t find anything, then headed further south.
The next morning we stumbled across the bandit camp. Well, not quite stumbled, it was more of heard them. Knowing a general idea of where the bandits were, we set just Tristan out to see what’s happening. It didn’t take Tristan too long to find how many bandits there were in the camp and he came back to report his findings to us. Based on their numbers, we decided to attack shortly after sunset.
About an hour after sunset, we attacked the camp. Tristan fairly well sneaking up on the camp and I thought I had but someone had seen me. As I reached the edge of the forest clearing I saw a female bandit get up from where she was sitting in her “throne”, grinned wickedly as so approached me and pulled out a pair of hand axes. The next thing I knew was that I was laying on the ground and Jarendlon was praying to his god and healing me of some wounds I don’t recall taking, but could infer from the axes laying near be that it was the female bandit.
Rising from where I was on the ground, I saw that the group had the bandits subdued and bound. Walking over to where the bandits were, I pulled a dagger out of my belt and began removing the female with the axes’ right ear as proof of our dealing with the bandits for Kesten. As I began removing the ear, the rest of the group started panicking but wouldn’t listen to my reasoning for removing the ear. I was a bandit for awhile, I know many areas require an ear or a hand or something as proof of its death, I was just acquiring said proof of death. When I started removing the second bandit’s ear, much to the party’s horror, I didn’t realize how close to death the bandit was and accidently killed him. After the bandit’s death, they refused to let me remove any more ears.
Searching the camp we found some jewelry and other possessions that had been taken from Oleg as “tribute” and the cart they used to transport them. We weren’t sure if Svetlana’s ring was in the jewelry we found, so we loaded everything and all the bandits up in the cart, hooked it up to one of our horses and began heading back to Oleg’s.
We made it back to the moon radish patch before we decided to make camp. Talking to the rest of the group that night I found out that the female bandit had nearly killed me after hitting me with her axes twice and that after Jarendlon healed me, I went on a rampage and just started dropping bandits with my great axe as if they were flies. I don’t remember any of this, but had guessed that part of the lapse of memory was due to the woman.
The next day we continued our trek back to Oleg’s with his recovered goods and the bandits, force marching the last bit of the way rather than resting to save time. When we arrived at Oleg’s, Kesten and the rest of his guards were visibly sickened when I attempted to give them the two ears I had cut off. Obviously this wasn’t the practice in the area. I’m glad I didn’t cut their hands off. We decided to put all the bandits in one of Oleg’s empty buildings and to question them later. We also had Svetlana go through the recovered jewelry to see if her ring was in it, it was not.
In the morning we decided to head over to Bokken’s to get some more potions before dealing with the bandits. When we arrived we bought the two curative potions he had on him and prepaid for two more in advance. With that business dealt with, we headed back to Oleg’s to question the bandits. Arriving back at Oleg’s we were approached by Kesten. He had sent word back north about a strange stag shaped amulet we had found on the first bandit leader and he had finally heard back. According to him, Restov had heard of a bandit lord calling himself the Stag Lord and that the Sword Lords had offered a bounty for his death of 5000gp.
With this information in hand we began the interrogation of the bandit prisoners. The woman was clearly hostile , I’m not entirely sure if it was over the fact that she was captured or the lose of her ear or possibly both but wasn’t too concerned with it, and claimed she was the only one who knew anything about the Stag Lord. After making use of the prisoner’s dilemma and other interrogation tactics by Tristan, the woman, who went by the name Kressle, agreed to talk to us if we spared her life. She could only provide us with a little bit of information regarding the Stag Lord since she had only been to his fort once. According to her his fort was on the north side of Lake Tuskwater and that he had three lieutenants there; Dumb (Ox, but she just referred to him as Dumb) was a big guy who made me look small that carried around a big club; Black had a goatee and black hair, she didn’t have much more information about him; and Gorgeous (said she had heard him referred to as Izmort) wielded a fancy long sword. We also learned from her that Falgrim Sneeg was currently in the Stag Lord’s fort.
After getting all the information we thought we could out of her, Tristan decided to honor his agreement with Kressle and let her live, much to my annoyance, and use her as an informant. She was rude, extremely hostile and had nearly killed me, she should be hanging from the walls with the rest of her bandits. He did however talk to Oleg about leaving her in the storage shed, which he reluctantly agreed to but said that she wasn’t his concern for feeding and such.
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Session 2
The next morning, we headed off to Bokken’s to see if the potions we had ordered from him were ready yet. The excitable man was a little surprised to see us, but remembered the potions that were ready and handed them over to us. With our new potions in hand, we left the hermit’s hut and headed east.
We spent the next few days exploring new areas and hunting to help supplement our trail rations. Between Jarendlon, Tristan and myself there wasn’t a night where we didn’t have fresh meat of some sort or another. The days went by pretty uneventfully; we didn’t find anything or run into anything out of the ordinary.
On the night of our fourth day out however, we were woken up in the middle of the night by Tristan. Crawling out of my tent, axe in hand, I looked around a bit until I spotted what I was sure was the reason Tristan had woken us all up. Even though I couldn’t make out the color of it, I could tell by the shape and size of it that it was one of the green creatures that had killed my gang and it was attacking Jarendlon’s pack horse. Knowing we wouldn’t be able to deal with this… thing, I quickly mounted my horse Tardek and started fleeing north with most of the others. Tristan got separated from us while trying to distract the thing and lead it away. As we left someone, I couldn’t tell in all the confusion, yelled “Bokken’s!” as we headed into the night.
We pushed on through the night on what little sleep we had gotten north to Bokken’s hut. He seemed, and probably was, very surprised to see us again so soon after we had left his hut the last time, but quickly understood why we were back when we explained what had happened. Apparently, the creature that attacked us and the gang were trolls. I can’t remember seeing a troll before they slaughtered the camp, but I somehow knew that they were extremely difficult to kill and could only really be hurt by fire or acid. Once we had finished explaining things to Bokken, we bedded down and waiting for Tristan to show up.
Tristan finally arrived the next day around midday. He had led the troll away from us a bit and then fled to the south. He had headed back north towards Bokken’s after he felt he had lost the troll. On his way back north he passed by the ruined camp. The troll had destroyed our tents, most of our supplies and eaten most of Jarendlon’s horse. Short on supplies, we all decided to head back to Oleg’s in the morning to restock. It would be another night spent with the strange hermit and his odd food like gruel.
The next day we headed back to Oleg’s to restock and rest a bit more. Oleg and Svetlana were both shocked to hear that a troll was spotted that far north and so outside of the forest but were pleased we made it back safely and with no casualties. Before we left in the morning, a trader arrived with some things that Jarendlon had ordered the previous week.
Once Jarendlon got his new gear stowed, we headed back to where we had ran into the troll to continue exploring. We spent the next few days exploring. We headed south a bit and ran into the northern bend of a river, we weren’t sure which one though so we decided to name it the Tristan River for the time being. After resting near the river, we began heading west. While exploring the next day we discovered a tree on a hill. Searching around the tree Storn discovered a buried bag containing, among other things, an odd wooden ring with a frog eating a snake or something to that extent. Leon and Jarendlon could tell that the ring was magical, but they weren’t sure what to do. Given the frog motif on it, we gave the ring to Leon and continued to the west. We headed a little more to the west before we stopped to rest for the night.
Early the next morning we were woken up again by Tristan, seemed like something always wanted to show up during his watch. Crawling out of my new tent, I was relieved to see that this time it was just a couple of hungry boars. After quickly dealing with the boars, Jacobi and I started to clean, cut and salt the meat from them. No use letting two perfectly good boars go to waste.
The next morning, Jacobi and I made breakfast using some bacon from the boars before we continued exploring. While exploring we discovered an abandoned gold mine that we decided to rest in before heading west some more and back into the forest.
The next day we headed back into the forest. Some of the forest seemed familiar and we soon came across the camp of the bandits we had beaten earlier. Figuring it was a safe place to camp since the bandits had been there for awhile, we decided to rest there. In the morning we continued on with our west ward trek through the Green Belt. We found some old ruins, but that was about it.
Heading west yet again we discovered a ruined temple. In the center of the temple was a fetid looking pool of water and the cliff at one end was carved to look like an elk’s head. Jarendlon was awe as he said that this was the Temple of the Elk that Jhod had mentioned, a lost temple to his god Erastil, but was also upset at the site of the fetid water pool and its state of ruin. Musings on what had happened came quickly to an end when we heard a load roar from inside the elk head, followed by the source, a large angry looking bear. From what Jhod had told him, Jarendlon guessed that this was the strange bear that was guarding it and probably the source of the corruption.
I may not be much for religion, and definitely not that of Erastil, but I felt that I couldn’t allow the source of a temple’s corruption to remain there, and pulling out my great axe I charged the bear. That may not have been the best idea as the next thing I knew, I was waking up on my back near the steps and Jarendlon was once again preying over me. According to everyone after I had charged the bear, it and I had traded a few blows before it hit me pretty damn hard and dropped me. Between Storn’s and Tristan’s arrows and Gribbit, the rest of the party was quickly able to bring the bear down. Once they had, the bear shifted into the form of a man and then dissolved to dust. As soon as the man dissolved to dust, the water in the pool looked to become clean. Thirsty from my near death, I took a drink from the pool and suddenly felt much better. Guessing that the water had some sort of curative powers, Tristan attempted to bottle some of it, but it instantly went back to being normal water once it was placed into a container other than the pool. We decided to rest here for the night as it seemed a very safe and peaceful place.
The next morning we continued west through the forest and discovered, what we decided to call, the River Korgoth. It was odd having anything named after me, but I saw no harm in it. It seemed like we were just going to be naming things after each other. We rested that night along the banks of my river, and then continued exploring a bit more in the morning. After a few hours we discovered a hot springs at what I guess was the source of the river. Having been trudging through the forest for the last few days and getting beaten up by a bear, I felt like a soak in the hot springs would be a good idea and quickly climbed in, followed by Leon. While everyone else was saying that this was a bad idea since we didn’t know if anything was in there or not, I felt something sticky wrap around me and start pulling me towards the center of the pool. Cursing for having left my axe on the shore and out of reach, I quickly called for someone to throw me a weapon so I could kill whatever it was that had a hold of me. Tristan attempted to throw me my axe, but he threw it a little short and I could quite stretch far enough to catch it. Realizing I was in trouble if I didn’t start to do something, I moved closer to whatever had a hold of me and just started punching it. I don’t remember what happened next, but the next thing I knew, I was out of breath, my knuckles were slightly bloody, there was one large frog floating in the pool and another one being eaten by Gribbit. Looks like Leon had almost made a new friend but Gribbit got jealous.
After another uneventful night resting near the pond that night, we headed west to what we discovered was the edge of the charter we had been given by the Sword Lords. Having been gone for most of a month, we decided to head north back to Oleg’s to rest up a bit and restock our supplies, not that we really needed to since we had been hunting a lot and Tristan had been making lots of arrows each night in camp.
As we headed north, we heard a strange roaring squawk sound. Looking around, we soon spotted a strange owl looking bear man thing coming towards us. Not wanting to fight it head on, we stayed as far as we could on our horses and shot at it from a distance. After shooting it easily a few times, I decided to get up close and personal with it, thinking it looked tougher than it really was. Riding Tardek closer to the creature, I dismounted then closed with it. As I got close enough to hit the bear owl man, it reached up with one of its large wing paws and took a swipe at me. And I was wrong about it looking tougher than it was, cause that swipe hurt. Repaying the painful favor, I drew my axe back and hacked into the things torso drawing a large gash in it and causing it to roar in pain. The rest of the group, being less inclined to close up violence or just being smarter than me, continued shooting the man bear owl from a distance and eventually managed to kill it before it got to take another swipe at me.
After I remounted, we continued heading back to Oleg’s and started exploring the northern portions of the forest. While we were going through the forest, we kept setting off bear traps. After opening each trap and freeing whichever horse had stepped in it, I then thoroughly destroyed the cruel traps. We set up camp that night after running into a few traps and had an uneventful night.
In the morning however, things were far less than uneventful. As Jacobi and I attempted to make breakfast of boar bacon, the bacon kept floating into the air and then slapping one of us in the face. There were some other pranks going on in the camp, but I was more concerned with not being able to cook the bacon and make breakfast to really pay attention to those. After a few minutes of these pranks going on, Leon suggested that it might be fey having fun with us and that we should give them some sort of bribe of something shiny. He offered them a ring he had gotten from… somewhere, I can’t remember where, as soon as he did he was left alone. Following his lead, I left a few gold coins on a log for the supposed fey, who then left me alone after a few minutes. Eventually the fey left us alone even though Tristan, Storn and Jarendlon hadn’t given them anything.
As we continued traveling that day, the three that hadn’t paid off the fey continued to have some minor pranks pulled on them. At one point, a small army of squirrels showed up and started pelting them with acorns. It was rather amusing to watch and at about this point, Tristan decided he had had enough and offered the fey a bribe to leave him alone.
After a few hours of traveling, we came across a man at the bottom of a hill who had been crushed by some logs. As we looked around the area, we noticed that there was some rope at the top of the hill and that some of it had been cut. Thinking that the fey might know something about what had happened here, Leon called out to them and asked. As he did this two strange creatures appeared. One was a very small almost dragon looking creature and what I can only describe as a half human half cricket. The half man half cricket introduced herself as Tyg-Titter-Tut and explained that the man crushed by the logs was a mean hunter who had been setting up the bear traps I had broken all over the place. He had been preparing a log trap for some animals when the small dragon had bitten the rope holding it back and crushed him. Thanking them for their help, we bid the two fey farewell and continued on our way.
The next morning, we awoke to yet another prank by Tyg-Titter-Tut and the small dragon. During the night, they had dyed Jarendlon’s hair bright green and Storn’s a very bright pink. At this point, they both paid off the fey and Storn cut his hair off before we broke camp.
Just because we had paid the fey off didn’t mean they were going to leave us alone. Especially not the two that had waited so long to offer them a bribe. At about the middle of the day, another army of squirrels showed up and started pelting Jarendlon and Storn with acorns. While the bombardment was going on, the rest of us joined in by throwing small rocks and other small things at them. It was a nice change in our normal routine. During the bombardment, I somehow managed to coax a squirrel over to my shoulder and then caught it and tossed it (I didn’t throw it, I didn’t want to hurt the squirrel after all) at Jarendlon and as soon as it hit him, it dashed down his armor. A few of us almost fell off our horses laughing as Jarendlon tried getting this panicked squirrel out of his armor.
Once the squirrel was freed from the armor, the squirrel army dispersed back into the trees and we left the forest without any more pranks by the fey. Once out of the forest, it was quick and uneventful traveling back to Oleg’s.