Homewreckers Report

General Summary

1490 DR - Winter - 24, Ches (3) - The Trackless Sea  

• The Chosen are given a small berth at the rear of the ship with some space to work. The crew leaves them largely alone, but is not very cooperative or friendly. They find that the ship is protected from scrying (at an increased charge), provided by crew members named Andruil and Aginor.
• Llewellyn is begrudgingly allowed to look at some maps, and studies some of the area they are headed to and through.
• Huden uses some subtle Dark Speech to begin corrupting members of the crew, including Ender, who start to show signs of their nature changing towards evil.
• The trip is otherwise uneventful despite the rough seas and heavy storms, which the crew handles deftly. The trip takes two months.
• They negotiate for a different drop off location at the mainland, and agree to a slight discount to be dropped off in the Mere of Dead Men.
• They are long-boated to the shore, and water walk the rest, and begin the trek through the dark and misty swamps.
• From the mists and muck rise zombies and ghouls en masse, crowding the crew in to a certain path through the muck. The ghouls respond obscurely to questioning, but seem commanded to not attack.
• Oudman claims he has an ingenious plan for the situation, and summons bees from his bag. Only to disappoint the crew by asking the bees to become his armor. The dismayed crew can't stop laughing.
• Llewellyn tries to travel off the path and quickly loses her way in the mist. She is able to ethereal step back, but just barely.
• The crew resigns themselves to follow the path, and upon exiting realize that The Corpse was responsible for the path, and he is lounging at the exit, speaking as usual only a few words before leaving them. "This place is close to somewhere you wouldn't want to end up, and we don't need that now."
• The Chosen return to their base across the wilds, avoiding the roads, only to find the place has been ransacked and demolished. Their servants and guards are all dead and the defenses torn up. A note has been left by Sabyn in her darkened chamber:

"As you can see, our position has been exposed to assailants. I have been summoned to prepare something for our new Avatar, and cannot aid now, but watch the mountains as something invades from there, and take care of the issue at it's source. We will need this base again." -Sabyn  

• There are large scratch marks from metal along the walls and the doors have all been busted off their hinges. Lucyan interrogates the rats who explain that large fleshy things showed up and killed everything. Lucyan repairs the front door with a fungal fabrication.
• The Chosen stay overnight and huddle back in the laboratory, alarming themselves in. They are not awakened but the area is again ransacked and the fungal door just missing.
• Llewellyn attempts to track the insurgents but only finds too many tracks to be useful.
• The crew plans to set an ambush (by hiding in the entrance arrow blind) and follow one to their source. They wait until nightfall when crunching is heard inside the base, behind them!
• Lucyan and Llewellyn explore into the base but the sounds stop as they get closer.
• At the entrance, Oudman sees a large fleshy creature squeeze past the arrow slits, followed by more creatures.
• Lucyan and Llewellyn discover a 20 foot tall creature eating the wood in the marketplace area, learning it to be a Hill Giant scrounging for food!
• Huden identifies the Hill Giants and Ogres in the entry, followed by orcs, and they are spotted in the blind.
• Llewellyn and Lucyan plan to back off toward the entrance, but are cutoff by more wandering the halls they hadn't seen and are pulled into combat. Lucyan transforms into a wasp to fly back, but is nailed by an ogres Javelin and begins falling into the chasm, barely catching himself with his insect wings. He places an insect plague on the bridge to weaken the giants and ogres in their way.
• The crew in ambush begins murdering the orcs with thunder and blade and spiders and deadly crossbows.
• The crew tries to back off, being surrounded, and Huden begins his song of festering death, which begins to slay those in the area. Some party members become collateral damage. An ogre on the bridge dies, also eaten by insects, opening a way to retreat for Llewellyn. who misty steps back to the arrow blind.
• Yasen continues throwing magic at the creatures, and Llewellyn looses arrows. Oudman critically hits with his crossbow twice dealing massive damage and destroying an Ogre. The team pulls in more damage and takes down all but one of the Hill giants, who squeezes out the entrance in fright and begins running.
• Lucyan transforms into an Eagle with a torch and follows the Giants retreat, with the others following behind.

To be continued...