Quest Report #2: A Religious Coercion

General Summary

25 Tartarus Falling
I took my first official quest for Dragons Wings, people have been going missing in the forest at night and while the guild has sent out a scout to look for them, none of them have returned, nor have we heard back yet so we have been sent to find all of them. According to the quest posting, reports have said that the group may be in a large church found in the forest, led by a "silver-tongued" man who we have been asked to be careful around. The group that I am travelling with is an interesting one, specifically the woman Trevor Longbottom who seems to have quite the affinity to fire... Nonetheless, we did not take long to find the church itself. 
We greeted the doorman, informing him that we were just here to investigate, and he informed us that they were having a service inside but that we could investigate as long as we were respectful to which we mostly agreed. Entering the church itself, the doors closed behind us and as I looked around, the more the whole ordeal seemed like a cult to me but we continued to look around discovering that the church worships something called "The Fallen One"... with the exception of Trevor. Trevor seemingly decided that she was going to interrupt the sermon with questions, despite being told to be silent and sit down. It was stressful in all honest, and it only further devolved from there as the "priest" slowly but surely lost his temper, causing the church to "flicker" around us. I suppose Trevor was successful in speeding up the process of revealing that the church was an illusion... 
It was not long before the priest snapped and the illusion of the church fell, revealing that all the other "attendees" of the church were the missing people, all seemingly entranced and floating where the pews once sat. Battle ensued as the priest revealed his true "form" which was deformed and monstrous while remaining humanoid. Trevor attempted to escape through the door during the chaos, eventually resorting to fire which was... unsuccessful. Once the priest revealed his true form, the civilians all snapped out of their trance and rushed him before they were all killed in a blast of magic summoned by the priest, calling his other cultists to attention and summoning four strange fey dogs. 
We managed to defeat the priest and his cultists, all still shouting about this "Fallen One" as they died. Quickly searching his body we found a note reading: "The scout has been dealt with, we've hidden him behind the church as instructed. However, with one comes many, we should be on the lookout for more. Praise the Fallen One." Following the notes direction, we managed to find the scout hung dangling from a tree outside. Cutting him down and untying him, we found that he was not dead, just unconscious. (This did not stop Nawa from stealing his boots however...) We scooped him up, looked around the church a bit more, and when we found nothing besides the massive hole in the church, we returned to the guildhall to report back.
Soon after we arrived at the guild, Quostor stopped me and Kaylessa who greeted me when I got back, to tell us that he has found another one of the sea god idols while scouting the western side of the coast. It seemed he had just returned as he was still covered in seaweed and mostly soaked through. This one was a different color than the one that we found before, and Kaylessa is now in possession of both idols. We plan to investigate a cave that he found on the coast in a few days time, hopefully all goes well...
- Callias Thaig.

Report Date

29 Aug 2020