Session 8: Bountiful Harvest IV
General Summary
Our previous adventure kicked off with the squad still in the woods, trying to get their bearings after the old hag vanished from existence. As the group calms down and reorients themselves to their surroundings, they set their gaze on the children. Ranging from toddlers to 15 year old emo teens, the kids are generally distraught and confused, wondering why Unos left them. To us, it was obviously an illusion the old hag had made, but the kids definitely thought it was the real deal.
To make the kids feel better, Varvem attempts to summon a tiny bicycle in his hand. In a miraculously disastrous fashion, the bicycle fell off his had, exploding on the ground, which scared the younger children. To correct the situation, Fizz reassures them that Unos wasn’t actually there, and that it was a hag who had nefarious intentions, and it was all illusionary magic. The older kids seemed to slowly get it, and the younger kids kind of went along and became a little less scared.
Now focusing to finish their journey and get the fuck out of the woods, Leo and Fizz asked the kids where they could find the rest of the berries to fill the basket, so they can go back to camp. The kids inform them that without any lights, once you’re close enough, you should be able to tell if they’re will-o-wisps or the real berries because will-o-wisps slowly move along the branches, while the berries are more stationary on the branches.
Fizz gives Zex the basket, and Var and Leo take the kids to go pick the berries and earn their right of passage. Zex gives the basket to the kids, and Var leads them toward the berry bushes, with Leo guarding the kids from behind.
While they are off doing that, Fizz decides to sit back at the combat site and rests, and begins to do a detect magic ritual to clear any of the negative magic. Rodney stays behind and had the zoomies, doing perimeter checks for Fizz and acting as the Paul Revere now that the group was split in 2.
As the kids gather the berries in a form of child labor, Zex and Leo are doing perimeter checks for the kids, while Love is holding the 2 youngest kids hands. The 15-year-old emo kid is staring at Leo and having a super hardcore mancrush on him. Leo is weirded out and asks if he has a question. Leo shows him his scimitar and tells him he can’t touch because he doesn’t want to taint it with kid’s blood.
They eventually walk up to the glowing berries. Var had his heads in the clouds and thought we were approaching a bridge for some reason but really we’re still in the forest. Love is hardcore babying these younger kids and applies Lapines bark on everyone around him. The kids sure are warming up to him. They confirm that the berries are in fact berries and not will-o-wisps. They fill the basket to about 80% full. The kids say that the berries can be combined into a potion where the elder performs a ritual to bring the sun out more often.
They get the basket close to being full at that point, and the last bush they approach also happens to be real berries. There’s a weird voice in the sky with a little rumbling of thunder (but kind of sounded like huge ass dice), and the voice mumbled something like jesus these kids are lucky, one of these bushes really should have been a will o wisp. They carried on without much thought.
Once the bucket was filled, the grown ups decided to pick a few extra glowberries for themselves. Var picked an extra 18 glowberries, Love picked 11, and Zex doesn’t pick any. Leo originally doesn’t pick any, but after hearing they’re used for magic stuff, he changes his mind and picked 7. Similarly, after hearing they can be used for alcohol, Zex changed his mind as well and he picked 12.
While they were still there, Leo had the idea to make the kids get some of the berries and take apart the seeds from them, so that we can hold onto those seeds and grow our own later. They oblige, and some of the children plus the four grownups gather a total of 84 additional berries, and the emo 15 year old disassembles 2 berries for a total of 5 seeds, showing Leo how to do it in the process.
The group divvies up the berries and walks back to Fizz who was ready to finish her ritual. The ritual pulls Fizz’s attention towards two giant boulders, with a stone slab across them, which resembled a makeshift altar. The altar was creepy with black dust like stuff around it, evil-looking engravings into the stone and on the sheets of paper all around. The papers and the engravings had an ominous and burning red glow to them, that looked dangerous to the touch.
In the center of altar, engravings surrounding a circular type focus in the center of the altar which was part of the elaborate drawings. Black magic candles lined the altar, with flames that glowed darkness.
The center of the focus engraved on table was giving off most magic, and the engravings and ground materials are magically imbued, papers and candles are imbued. The ritual also gave Fizz some insight that the most northern hut, the hag’s living quarters, was also emanating a magical presence.
The group began investigating the camp site, with Fizz and Var going to the northernmost hut. Zex investigated the southern hut and just found some grain and other food stuff. In the middle hut there were some dried meats with weird textures in them. They didn’t look like the safest thing to eat, with them having a greenish tint and all. They were weirdly fuzzy and maybe moldy… And we had no idea what kind of meat it was. There were also some other basic storeroom items like ropes and butchery tools, and a wooden table that was littered with meat scraps.
In the northernmost hut, Var and Fizz saw a bed, shelves, a chest, and between the shelves, black glowing candles. There were weird trinkets on the shelves, including a dried severed hand, a dead rat, a dead flower, and a black rose, among other things.
Fizz thought surely whatever was pulling her to the hut must be inside the chest. Fizz gestures to Var the chest. Varvum cracked his knuckles to check if there’s any traps on the chest. He strides up confidently to the chest, gets out his lockpicking set, and within a blink of an eye, he opens it and walks away – because cool guys don’t look at explosions, he thought.
Within, Fizz glances upon some treasure and a tome. It’s bound in yellow plates and inlaid with silver. The front cover has something written in luminous script. She takes the bedsheet uses it as makeshift gloves, and pulls the tome out of the chest, paranoid that there might be a transfer of evil energy to her. Opening the tome, the pages also have words written in luminating script, and as she scrolled through, in the middle of the tome was a map, and above it said “Arcane Dungeon”. There were also chapters on necrotic spells – cause fear, comprehend languages, false life, and ray of sickness. Fizz was appalled and immediately wanted to destroy the tome. But her better judgement and curiosity shined through, and before destroying anything, thought it’d be at least good to get a copy of the dungeon map. Perhaps maybe there’s more evil to deal with, she thought. Fizz called Var back into the threshold of the hut, and asked Var to create a copy of the map as she held the tome open. Var created a quil from a nearby feather in the camp, and grabbed charcoal from the fire, grinded it and added water to create a paste-like ink. He began to make a map copy, doing a pretty good job. It wasn’t an exact copy, but he got the major pieces of the map.
Once the copy was made, Fizz wanted to see what would happen if we tore out a page of the tome. As she tore off a page, the page ignited with blame flame, and disintegrated before their very eyes.
Fizz and Var met up with the rest of the group, who was hanging out by the other two huts. Leo and Fizz came to the suspicion that this camp could have been trying to bring Uros back or something, or that the camp elder and people are in cahoots with the hag. There was some discussion about whether to destroy the tome or take it with us, and we ultimately wrapped the tome in the bedsheet, and stuffed it into Leo’s backpack.
In the second hut, Fizz entered and saw Zex taking a mental inventory of what was in there. Fizz laid eye on some green herb stuff that wasn’t identifiable, and she’d never seen it before. Fizz summons out her hawk spirit, and had Var, an expert investigator, check out the herb. Next to the green stuff, while he was doing that, was some beeswax that Fizz shoved in her bag. Var narrowed down the substance to either Betel Nut, or ground Anise seed. Anise seed, he noted, is used to increase the power in all psychic workings, while Betel Nut is a powerful ingredient in black magick arts. When chewed with lime, it’s said to increase ones spiritual and mental power. Fizz didn’t like the possibility of this being Betel Nut, but eventually agreed to take it with us, so we can have an expert botanist identify it for us. If it was Betel Nut, they were to destroy it later, and if it was anise seeds, it’d be a handy thing to have for psychic magic.
At this point, the group was about ready to go, and obviously they couldn’t leave the camp site as it was. They decided to burn it to the ground. Everyone equally took all magical imbued items to the fire, either kicking it, throwing it, or playing hockey with sticks, forcing everything to the center of the fire. The huts were burned to the ground, along with everything in the camp. For safe measures, Leo knocked the altar over so they would look like a normal rock formation. With his adrenaline pumping, he feels like he was magically blessed with strength and wisdom. He feels like he unlocked the power to absorb elements, create or destroy water like some kind of god, move air, shape stone, and scorch rays. This won’t last for more than 3 casts, he thought. And for some reason, Var also feels a bit of residual blessing and feels funny, but in a good way (giggity).
As they watched the bonfire roar high above their heads, they distributed the chest treasure: 1500 copper pieces, 1300 silver pieces, 40 gold pieces, 5 x diamond, a moonstone, zircon, and 2 x Potion of Healing (common, dmg 187). Leo claims 1 potion of healing and the moonstone, Zex claim the zircon, and everyone else split the copper (300 each), silver (260 each) and gold (8 each) equally, with everyone getting a diamond to pocket. Fizz shoves the remaining potion of healing into her sticky beeswax and food-filled backpack.
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