Kay's Journal, 10/16, Reaper Errant #013

 Kay’s Journal, 10/16

Treasure & Stuff:

• 30GP
• 100SP
• Magic Dwarven Great Axe ‘Stonebreaker’ - Gooseneck

The next morning the wagons were packed and we’d gathered the supplies we needed for the journey. Pujol got a cask of ‘special’ mead – he thinks the mead might make for valuable trade goods, especially considering that the bees that make the honey that goes into the mead get pollen from the medicinal herbs that grow in the area. It gives the mead a slightly bitter flavor. The bee keeper is Samantha, who lives on the outskirts of town.

There are two wagons, each with a driver. One of the drivers is a human man, and the other one is Mercury, a young halfling. He’s the hot head we’d been warned about.

Rothfern gives us a map and describes our possible paths. The old road is longer but safer. The river road is faster, but said to be swarming with orcs – at least 100 or so. Sounds like it’s the old road!

Gooseneck talks to Mercury, who really wants to take the river road and have an excuse to kill orcs. Mercury thinks Rothfern is exaggerating how many orcs there are along the river road.

Pujol suggests we go out on the old road, and if Mercury wants, he can come back along the river road (when we won’t be with them). Mercury seems to think that our group might be able to drive off the orcs. He thinks there are only 50-60 orcs, and that they are in small groups of maybe 10 or so each. Gooseneck asks Mercury about possible ambush points on both of the roads, and Mercury says there are many on both roads. Oh, goody. Mercury also tells us that the old road is an old dwarven road, and while we’d only encounter one orc tribe, the road itself is harder to navigate.

We decide to take the old road. Mercury says it should take at most a week to get to get where we’re going on the old road.

We set off. Abran scouts ahead, while CornCob and I ride in the front wagon, and Pujol, Gooseneck, and Fathom ride in the second wagon.

Towards the end of the first day, I see tracks across the road ahead of us. Abran and CornCob take a closer look. The tracks belong to some larger humanoids and seem to be following a trail toward the river. They look like they’re about a day old, and CornCob says it looks like there were about 10-12 individuals taking the path. 

We see an indication of some old dwarven ruins on the map, and consider going to investigate. They’re off the trail a ways though, so we’d have to make a detour to get there. We decide to skip it.

We continue on. Up ahead, the trail narrows and cliffs close in on either side of it. Abran thinks it looks like a great spot for an ambush, and suggests we scout ahead. Pujol says he has a spell he can use to disguise himself as an orc and go scouting.  He doesn’t speak orcish, so that might be a challenge, but he seems pretty amped about the idea even so.

Pujol heads off, disguised. He goes to the river side of the trail and climbs up the cliffs there, trying to be stealthy about it. Once up there, he sees three orcs in wait at the top. They turn toward him, and he casts a spell on a couple of them to make them friendly. It seems to work on one of them. He tries to mime that he can’t speak, and then gestures for them to follow him down the road. They don’t seem to be buying it.

Another orc steps out of hiding in some bushes. Pujol starts playing music and dancing around to try to charm the rest of them. It doesn’t seem to work, as one of them pulls a weapon. The orcs notice our wagons; one of them points at the wagons, and then blows a horn.

On the trail below, we seem some other orcs come out of cover on the top of the cliff on the other side of the path. Gooseneck starts running toward the cliff that Pujol climbed. CornCob keeps an eye on the orcs on the other side, and readies a spell for when they show themselves. Abran and I shoot at the orcs on the other side of the path; he hits one and I miss. Up on top of the cliffs, Pujol creates an illusion of an elf in the trees and tries to get the orcs to pay attention to that. It seems to work, as they go running toward it.

The orcs on the other side start shooting back at us, and one hits Abran. 

Abran and Corncob move toward the base of the cliff on the other side of the path, while I take cover behind a tree. Pujol makes his elf illusion vanish, like it went invisible, and then points in another direction, like he wants to say the elf went off that way. One of the orcs falls for it, chases after the illusion, and runs off the cliff. The other orcs aren’t buying it, though, and head back to the trail and start climbing down.

Gooseneck approached the cliff and started climbing up. I shot at one of Pujol’s orcs and took it down.

We see they have boulders up on top of the cliffs that are meant for pushing down on to wagons. The orcs up with Pujol start pushing one over to where Gooseneck is climbing, meaning to push one down on him instead. Pujol once again tries to charm them, and has more luck this time. He gets one of them to follow him away from the cliff. One of the others is still climbing down, though, and attacks Gooseneck.

Gooseneck tries to bite the orcs throat, succeeds, and then jumps off the cliff, taking the orc with him. He lands on top of the orc, who (amazingly!) survives the fall. Even so, I yell to the remaining orcs that their leader is dead, and they should flee now if they do not want to share his fate. They are not impressed.

We’re basically mopping up at this point. CornCob, Fathom, and Abran have been concentrating on the orcs on the other side of the path, and steadily whittle down their numbers. Pujol somehow convinces another one to jump off the cliff. He’s little, but vicious!

Once all the orcs are dead, we search them. Gooseneck finds the axe the orc he fought was using, and CornCob says it’s of dwarven make, is called ‘Stonebreaker’, and is enchanted. Gooseneck hangs on to the axe, which everybody agrees is a good idea and his due.

Kay's Journal, 10/2, Reaper Errant #012

 Kay’s Journal, 10/2

• 200 XP
• 14 GP

We’ve made it the rest of the way through the mountain pass to a small village. There’s one good-sized building, and everything else is small homes and such. Based on the number of goats around, we’re guessing that sheparding is a big part of the local economy. 

As we get into town, we find the blacksmith and the tavern. We started with the blacksmith, a fellow named Rothfern. We told him about the goblins we ran across on the pass. He said they occasionally had problems with the goblins, sure, but they have bigger problems. He didn’t want to get into the details right then, but agreed to meet us in the tavern that evening. 

He also agreed to exchange all that copper to gold for us, and did that right then.

We headed toward the tavern, and on the way there passed a woman carrying a water bucket. Pujol cast his Unseen Servant to help her carry the bucket. We went on in to the tavern. It’s small, but the bartender is happy to have customers, and asks us if we’ve come from the lakes. We tell him no, we’re from Woefield. He’s super impressed that we’ve travelled all that way.  He also tells us they’re having trouble with orc raiders in the mountains. They don’t know where the orcs are coming from. 

We got meals and rooms for the night, and continued chatting. We learn that there are some wood carvers in the village. They also gather herbs with medicinal properties. They trade these products with the towns by the lakes. They usually send a couple wagons in the fall, but have been putting it off this year because of the orc attacks. There was an attack on the outskirts of the village 2 nights ago at a homestead belonging to Margaret and Sam; some goats and other supplies were stolen. We this that a good tracker would be able to follow the 2-day old tracks.

We agree to escort the caravan down to the lakes. It’ll be 1 or 2 wagons and drivers. They’ll pay us 5-10% of their take on the trade, which he expects will be about 200gp.

Pujol asks about bounties on the orcs, and is told that Jeremy would be the guy to talk to about that. So, we get directions to Jeremy’s house and go to talk about him. Jeremy is an elf, and it turns out he’s about to do his rounds around the village to look for intruders. Abran, Fathom, and I go with him. 

As we travel around the outskirts of the village, I spot a humanoid behind a rocky outcropping. I told the others, and Jeremy signaled for us to split up and flank them. It would have been a great plan, if they hadn’t already seen us. They threw javelins, and one hit Fathom right in the chest. There are four orcs to contend with.

Abran and Jeremy ran up to the rocks and took cover. Fathom and I went to the side, intending to get up on the rocks above them. 

Two orcs jumped over the rocks to attack Jeremy and Abran, but both missed. They traded blows while Fathom and I climbed up on the rocks. I shot at the orcs and Fathom cast a spell at them, but we both missed. OK, fine…I shouted down at the two orcs to surrender if they wanted to live. It was a decent distraction, if nothing else.

Abran and Jeremy killed the two orcs that had attacked them pretty quickly. Fathom and I shot at one of the other orcs again, and killed it. The last one went running, but Abran shot his ensnaring vine thing at him. He fell, but died before we could get to him to question him. We took a handful of coins off the bodies and went back to town. On the way, Jeremy told us that these orcs were from the Bone Chewer tribe.

While we’d been out fighting orcs, Pujol, Gooseneck, and Corncob had stayed in the tavern. While Pujol played for the crowds, Gooseneck and Corncob learned that there were two tribes of orcs that had been harassing the village. The orcs prefer hitting soft targets. There had been a handful of orc raids in years past, but this year there had been quite a few more than usual.

Abran, Fathom and I returned to the tavern as the sound of Pujol’s music was winding down. Gooseneck and Corncob learned that we could expect it to take at least a week for the caravan to get to the village. Wagons go slow. The smith is also concerned that one of the drivers going with us might be hotheaded and foolish enough to lead us on a shorter, but more dangerous, path in hopes of encountering more orcs and having a chance at vengeance.

It was pretty late by then, and things were winding down. The locals went home, and we retired for the night.

Kay's Journal, 9/18 - Reaper Errant #011

 Treasure: 

• 4 art objects, religious idols, etc. @25 GP each
• Potion of Healing
• 2700 copper (54 lbs)
• 1100 silver (22 lbs)
• 80 gold (1.6 lbs)

We were back in the mushroom cavern. A devil had been teleported back with us, right over by CornCob and Fathom. We drew weapons and went at it right away, while the mushroom queen watched. You’d think she might have been at least somewhat interested in getting the devil out of her territory, but she must have been more interested in testing us. Or just the spectacle, who knows?

In any case, we seemed to be doing pretty good against the devil, and then it…disappeared. Lovely. The mushroom queen said that it was loose in the world now. However, she’s happy with the results of our trip. Oh goody! She gestured for Fathom to give her the dagger, which Fathom did.

Here it comes. The mushroom queen said we had done so well on our trip to hell, she feels indebted to us now, and that while she understood we want to do good in the world, there might be more she could do. There’s an item out there that she needs taken from one town to another, and while we’re there, maybe we can help resolve some kind of conflict that’s happening in the area.

Awesome. So, she thinks she owes us, and to pay off the debt, she wants us to do another job for her, and maybe while we’re there we can do some other stuff for ourselves. She gave us directions to through the Twylen Pass, roughly north of where we are in the cave, to a lake community around the three sisters. From there go through Pinebrook to the north to a port town.

She gave Fathom back the dagger to use to track her item, which she thinks is probably at the bottom of one of the lakes in the Three Sisters region. Lovely. She also gave us 2 mountaineering packs, some coin, and some rope, and sent us on our way.

This seems like a pretty bad deal to me, and Gooseneck also has doubts. Seems to me we could just head up north and go deal with the problems going on without doing Mushroom Lady’s task. We discussed, and decided to do the job.

We headed on through the mountains to the pass, following a couple of elk. CornCob and Pujol managed to get it to give them a ride. Nice. 

Towards the end of the day, I saw a small humanoid riding a large dog/wolf thing. Then I saw more of them. It looked like an ambush, so I called ahead to the elk riders to hold up. The elk didn’t seem to get it, though, and trucked right on in to the ambush spot.

So, then we were fighting goblins and their pet wolves. It was a rough fight, but after a while we defeated them…but not without most of us getting hurt. CornCob cast a spell that healed us all. We searched the goblins and the area around them, and found a surprising amount of coin. We’ll be in good shape when we get to town…if we can carry it all.