Session 27: Tomb Raiding Has Consequences‽

General Summary

With Good Mead's town speaker and militia avenged and the verbeeg Duhg prisoner the party proceeded to loot what they wished from his dwelling space. They took what they determined might be stolen goods from Good Mead as well as the two remaining barrels of mead. The party found what appeared to be an ancient tomb depicting a tribal chieftain leading her people through mighty mountains and across terrible tundra. It showed through pictographs the chieftain leading her tribe to settle here after fighting off terrible monsters to claim the land and how they found peace here. The party then proceeded to unearth the tomb and Michael took the two magical items buried with the long dead chieftain. This could not have any foreseeable negative repercussions.   Continuing to explore the chambers the party found a statue of Silvanus, god of wild nature, buried in the ice of a frozen pool. They quickly started digging into the pool to reach the statue, which was giving off a magical aura of protection. Once they had excavated enough to reach the statue Michael used his magic to determine what it was capable of. He learned that the statue blessed the pool and bestowed upon those that drank of it an effect equal to Greater Restoration, though only once to any given person and only if the pool was in a liquid state. They had no immediate use for this (that they knew of), and so left it alone while filing the information away for future exploitation.   The party left Duhg with his animals and means to care for them along with a day's food and water. They extracted a promise from him not to steal stuff from people anymore. The verbeeg marauder agreed and the party left to turn in the ogre head and collect their reward. As they camped for the night in the woods Michael found himself wracked with nightmares and unable to find any rest in his sleep. Back in town they collected the promise of free room and board and several free drink coupons and prepared to continue their quest to find the duergar fortress before they could launch an attack on Ten Towns. Martok, Grimsby, Dwayne, and Michael prepared by drinking heavily in a short span of time, competitively. With their bellies freshly emptied and their brains freshly poisoned they rejoined the rest of the party to quickly march south through Dougan's Hole.   Upon arriving in Dougan's Hole Michael gave the party the copper tour and showed them the "pole" where the incident with Dick had happened. It turned out in fact to be the central megalith of the Twenty Stones of Thruun, the only notable thing about Dougan's Hole. Michael also brought the party to meet Dick and Pete. Michael quickly caught up with Dick before learning that Pete had recently recovered from the tundra. He had been unconscious since being recovered a week or so ago. Apparently a pair of large horse-sized wolves had stolen a pair of teenagers from town and demanded food and gold in exchange for their return. The speaker being a pragmatic individual and with no gold and little food she refused. The wolves came for a week to repeat their demands before suddenly stopping. With no adventurers regularly making it to their little hamlet the children were given up for dead, by all save Pete. He set off on his own with meager supplies to try to find them. He was found nearly a week later, arms and legs badly frostbitten and unconscious.   As Grimsby was heating up his shovel in preparation for Pete's "surgery" he recognized the description of the wolves in the retelling. Winter wolves are intelligent creatures capable of speech and breathing a frigid cone of cold air. After some debate the party agreed to proceed with the quadruple amputation, with Grimsby operating and Galanodel assisting. With the dead limbs removed Martok purged the poison that might remain from Pete and the party set out to hunt down a month cold trail of these winter wolves.   They made their way to near where Pete was found and set up a mock camp complete with cookfire. Gal set up a magical shelter nearby and the party disguised it to try to ambush the wolves. They prepared for a stakeout, surely it would only be a few hours until the two wolves who were in the region a month ago would arrive, long before any of the other tundra dwellers happened upon the camp. Fifteen hours later, after most of the party had rested and long since gotten bored and with Michael still unable to find any rest from his sleep, the party decided this must be unnatural and perhaps that pool could help cure him of his guilt. They packed up the faux camp and began to hurriedly travel back towards Good Mead via Dougan's Hole, Michael growing ever more exhausted and delirious. Shortly after leaving Good Mead as they once again camped in the woods Galanodel's goddess bestowed upon him in dream the knowledge of how to purge the curse plaguing the graverobber Michael. With the knowledge Michael was finally able to rest as the party returned to Good Mead to settle in to fix all their sleep schedules.