Al Hazir

Me, Carmilla and Svenya decide to take our new mounts for a quick race around town to get used to the feel of riding such unusual creatures. Though they seem to be getting along with eachother more, me and Kuukivi work well together and manage to pull ahead, weaving through obstacles and launching out of the water across the finish line - though, maybe he was just busy trying to get away from the others.
 
After a bit we settle down and make our way to the Treehouses, with barely any Nidhoggs to get in the way this time. While Svenya takes a quick stop to the library to see if there's anything useful she can learn about the graveyard and deurgar there, the rest of us ask around to see if anyone knows of the elf. The grung man serving drinks at the tavern was able to tell me a name: Al Hazir. A rather strange and eccentric old man, he wasn't well know, though he worked in the observatory and would probably be better know to Hulin or Hje, so we go over to the greenhouse to find them. After a quick reunion, those two being some of the ones that helped us in fighting off the twig blights, they tell us what they know. Though they have somewhat differing opinions of him, from a mad old fool to merely a bit strange, they agree that he was quite obsessed with the kraken. He kept trying to grow some black, inky stuff - suspicious - and after he was eventually banished they think he went down to the coast to try to find the kraken.
 
Svenya reminds us that one of the fishermen blamed the poison on the kraken - if Al Hazir is worshiping it, could he be not a victim of the poison, but its source? Either way, we don't have much of a way to track him, but Hlarifa is quite well connected to the forest. She sees dead animals and plants scattered all around upriver, far too fresh to be blamed on the poison from last winter. Whatever may be of the elf, we've got a fresh lead to the poisoner.
 
While we were there, Tek popped out of a hammock to say hi - and he seems to be a bit of an aspiring young wizard! He's found a spellbook (or on closer inspection, more of a spell scroll), and he's been making some good progress on learning it despite the best efforts of everyone else in the Treehouses who would rather the child not learn to throw motes of fire. Svenya takes him aside and offers to try and teach him the light spell, as a safer first step, telling him if he can master that then perhaps the others will be more willing to trust him.
 
On our way out they also offer to sell us some more stamina potions, for a discounted price being that we're on such good terms with each other. Several of us buy a few before heading back home and up the river, me and Kuukivi swimming up the river with the others following alongside. There certainly seems to be more poison in the water than last time we came up here, as well as fresh traces of activity at the cabin. We follow the trail up a small branch of the river, and before long we're surrounded by the death described by Hlarifa, with not the sound of a single chirping bird to be heard.
 
Near the source of a river is a lagoon, with thick forest all about and the only way to reach it being under an archway over the river. There are some faint traces of writing on it, but if its anything like the other arches the magic is long since faded, overgrown and covered by moss. After swimming across to the land on the other side of the lagoon, we're at the foot of a large tower with a purple light at the top, bright enough to be easily visible even in broad daylight. The water is thick and murky, bile slipping off me and Kuukivi where our bodies dipped into the water, and large purple webs spanning across the rocks. Gorm tries cutting them and they knit themselves right back together, though fire seems to slow them.
 
I went to quickly scout around the sides of the tower, thinking there might be a better way to go about this than simply walking in the front door. As Kuukivi steps into the water though, several heads pop up, putrid green scales lying flat against their skulls as they crawl towards us, trying to bite chunks out of Kuukivi's legs. A couple of them have not even scales, but bare bone covered in moss and ichor, while two large, human-fish creatures appear and start throwing tethered spears at us. Although I was rather surrounded out at the edge of the river, none of these creatures are terribly tough and after trading a few blows we've beat them off, for the time being at least. Still, better we fought them off now than letting them surround us once already inside the tower.