A report on Rageipedes

To Master Shanxu of the Black Paw Lodge.



Your servant Y'Howell reports to you this account of a new venomous beast.



I met up with a Cleric hight Sylavor and a wild elf named Khatar Shil and Luna the wolf who owns him, at the Apothecary shop in the Mistwood Town of Yegtroth.



The apothecary, a human who called himself Belmar, offered us a small amount of gold to bring him the venom gland of a "rageipede" from the forests northeast of the Hobbit settlement to the north.



The three of us decided that it would not be a bad thing to kill a few bugs.



He told us that the creatures' bite causes near-instant maddening, murderous rage in the creature that it bites, and that the bitten will attack and ferociously try to kill any nearby living animal. The centipede will then nest in the corpse, devouring it and possibly laying eggs.



He had purchased a recipe from a traveler from Treadway which would, it claimed, allow the imbiber the benefits of the rage, without the madness.



Acci, a cleric of Selune, a moon-touched Aarakocra, was sent by his goddess to come with us on our expedition.



We spoke with the guard at the Arabis cattle farm, who told us about the place where the creatures had been seen, and we went there directly. Shortly after, the wolf Luna began growling as though she scented or heard the creatures moving, and to my surprise and dismay, I, a Tabaxi with training as a hunter, atop natural ability, was unable to locate them, though the irritating skittering of their movements was evident enough, and I couldn't see them well enough to locate them otherwise. I wish I could boast that it was their natural disguise, but I fear I may have been hung-over from the previous day's partying, as I have been earning my way performing at taverns, and there was a celebration for a marriage that night.



Over the course of the next several moments, we were attacked by three of the beasts: Centipedes, about the size of a long river otter, with brilliant yellow underbelly, redheads, and black-and-yellow striped carapace. Their natural armor was much more impenetrable than any I had seen and took more effort to crack and pierce than I would have credited from anything short of metal.



The beasts survived blow after blow and took several of my best-thrown daggers, along with the arrows of the Wild Elf, but it was only through the entreaties of the cleric Sylvaor to the entities he gives worship, that I was rescued from the clutches of death, twice. The beast's bite is fierce, and they can claw as well with legs like daggers. I resisted the venom's insidious will twice, but the third time my mind went red with the desire for murder, and it was only that I fell unconscious from the stabbing of the legs into my guts and the loss of blood that I did not attack my fellows.



We killed the three creatures, in the end, by being more stubborn than they, and by having the literal help of the gods.



I recommend that the venom be studied for its benefits to the Order and that the potion if it does work, be added to our apothecary's library.



Most humbly, Your obedient servant, Y'Howell of the Black Paw Lodge